Appendices
Much of the material in Erich Schmidt’s appendices to the 1913 edition of Caroline’s letters has been incorporated into other parts of this edition.
From Schmidt’s appendix and supplements to volume 1:
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Letters pertaining to Caroline’s imprisonment in 1793 have all been incorporated into the other letters in the main body of the text. Similarly, Friedrich Schlegel’s letters to Auguste, included in Schmidt’s “supplement” in 1913, are now in the main body of letters.
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The passage allegedly portraying Caroline in Friedrich Schlegel’s novel Lucinde remains in Schmidt’s appendix to volume 1, as does Wilhelm Schlegel’s dedication to his translation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Schelling’s Christmas poem of 1799, and Caroline’s draft of a novel. I have also included there the poems Wilhelm and Friedrich wrote after Auguste’s death, which were originally included in Schmidt’s “supplement.”
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Caroline’s review of Johannes Müller’s letters (from Athenaeum 2) has been incorporated into the appendix Caroline’s Literary Reviews.
From the appendix to volume 2:
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Friedrich Schlegel’s inaugural (Habilitation) theses from 1801 remain in Schmidt’s appendix to volume 2, as do Caroline and Schelling’s translations of Petrarch and the “Societal Jest” of 6 April 1806.
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Excerpts from the correspondence concerning the performance of Wilhelm Schlegel’s play Ion (played out in the Zeitung für die elegante Welt in 1802) is now incorporated into the appendix Caroline’s Literary Reviews.
(2) The Supplementary Appendices to this Edition
The supplementary appendices to these two volumes contain material drawn largely from Erich Schmidt’s notes to the two volumes, as described in the Project Introduction. These documents extend from material illuminating the broader context in which these letters were written, to subtle allusions in individual letters.
As I said in the Project Introduction, the main strategy for making this edition more useful to English-speaking readers has been simply to resolve the cross-references and allusions in Erich Schmidt’s original notes, and in most cases, “resolve” means actually including a translation of the cross-referenced material.
Such material includes letters, passages from memoirs, from works published at the time, scenes from plays, various newspaper announcements, literary reviews, letters to the editor, passages from secondary works on the period, and an array of other documentation. These appendices will contain the lengthier materials from among these additions.
It is likely that readers not yet familiar with Caroline will not recognize much of the material listed in the individual volume indices, or will recognize only the more familiar names. But that, of course, is the point of including the material in the first place, namely, not only to identify as precisely as possible allusions and references in the letters of Caroline and others, material often needing explanation even to readers more familiar with the period and with Caroline herself, but also to supply translations of that material to the extent such is possible within the parameters of such an edition so that readers need not search in often obscure sources that are often also difficult to access.
The point is for Caroline’s letters to come alive through this supplementary material. And, through these same letters and supplementary materials, for the people involved in her life and in the cultural period also to come alive, with their frequently all-too-human personalities and foibles, their concerns both large and small, their literary, academic, and personal feuds, and their reactions to an often extraordinary cultural period.
The material enumerated in the indices to the individual volumes is intended to give readers a sampling of what they might expect rather than an exhaustive listing (though see below). I have tried to secure as many of Erich Schmidt’s own references from the edition of 1913 as possible, and have also added material of my own. The end notes in this translated edition will reflect this situation as well, viz. including essentially all of Schmidt’s original notes with additional material from me. Letters to which he refers or cites in part that are now included in the letters section have, of course, been deleted from the notes. More extensive material he references will continue to be referenced in the notes, but translations of those materials will now be found in these supplementary appendices.
A couple of examples illustrate how this will be implemented:
(1) In his notes to Caroline’s letters to Ludwig Ferdinand Huber on the occasion of latter’s review of the Schlegels’ periodical Athenaeum (Caroline’s letters of 22 November and 24/27 November 1799), Schmidt remarks:
This withering reproach was well deserved, since Huber’s review, “Athenäum 1798, 1799,” in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, (1799) 372 (Thursday, 21 November 1799) 473-77, is indeed extraordinarily flat, with hardly a reference to anything of significance or anything really characteristic.
Schmidt then cites a couple of sentences and offers very brief, summary remarks about the review. The review itself, however, provoked significant reactions from members of the group.
After reading the review, Friedrich Schlegel quipped to Schleiermacher, “I confess I really would not have expected something this stale and trivial.” Because Caroline’s “withering reproach” is arguably one of her most eloquent epistolary moments, and because Wilhelm Schlegel also subsequently exchanged letters with Huber on the subject, I have included a translation of the review in full in the supplementary appendix so readers can see the object of Caroline’s ire, of Friedrich’s quip, of Wilhelm’s exchange, and also an example of the kind of material published in academic journals and periodicals that genuinely did often make and break friendships: Caroline had known Huber since her stay in Mainz with Therese and Georg Forster; Huber subsequently accompanied Therese Forster out of Mainz, leaving Forster behind, and married her after Forster’s death. After her marriage to Schelling in 1803, Caroline would meet the Hubers again in Stuttgart in 1803 in some awkward moments; Therese’s accounts of those meetings are included in the letters in volume 2.
(2) In his notes to a letter from 1798 in which Caroline mentions Friederike Unzelmann (who appears on numerous occasions in these letters), one of the most celebrated and apparently genuinely talented actresses of the time, Schmidt provides a brief sketch and references several assessments of her talents, but also remarks:
Moreover despite her diminutive, dainty figure and relatively weak voice, those talents also extended into the sublime tragic roles of Orsina, Iphigenia, and Maria Stuart. Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer’s characterization of her seems best to me (Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder. Beitrag zur Kunde des Menschen und des Künstlers, 2 parts in 3 vols. [part 2 in 2 vols.] [Hamburg 1819; rev. ed. Hamburg 1823] 2:143; cf. 201–2 concerning her performance of the role of Nina).
Not only was Friederike Unzelmann one of the most talented actresses of the time, she also happened to be romantically involved with Wilhelm Schlegel (whose poems to her are also included here); indeed, Caroline’s own references to her in letters generally playfully allude to that situation, with her referring to Friederike Unzelmann variously as the “little fairy sprite,” “Unzeline,” and, on this particular occasion, “Diaboline Unzeline.” Hence it seemed worthwhile to include more about her. Translations of several of the assessments mentioned by Schmidt will be found in the supplementary appendices, though also some of her own letters and, of course, the assessment Schmidt himself found best, namely, that of Meyer.
And finally, though many of the examples in the following indexes are cited in the German original or illustrated in vignettes in German, all are translated in the final edition.