Biographical Essays and Materials
The following classic biographical essays provide overviews of Caroline’s life and letters from various angles of vision. I present them here in chronological order and include the introductions to the editions of 1871 and 1913 as well as Luise Wiedemann’s memoirs, which were composed during the 1840s but not published until 1929. These essays can be accessed either through the links below or in the drop-down menu under Biography Info.
Readers wholly unfamiliar with Caroline and the period may want to begin, after reading the project introduction, with the pieces by Cecily Sidgwick and Karl Hillebrand, both of which, significantly perhaps, were originally published in English and both of which provide fairly detailed overviews.
- Georg Waitz’s Preface to the Edition of 1871
- Georg Waitz’s Self-Review of the Edition of 1871
- Wilhelm Scherer’s 1871/74 Biographical Essay and Review of Waitz’s 1871 Edition
- Rudolf Haym’s 1871 Biographical Essay and Review of Waitz’s 1871 Edition
- Karl Hillebrand’s 1872 Biographical Essay
- Cecily Sidgwick’s 1889 Biography
- Thomas William Lyster’s Review of Cecily Sidgwick’s Biography
- Franz Muncker’s Entry in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 1890
- Ricarda Huch’s 1899 Biographical Essay
- Erich Schmidt’s Introduction to the Edition of 1913
- Luise Wiedemann’s (Caroline’s sister’s) memoirs
An illuminating background account to Caroline’s life, albeit written in 1826 and not concerning Caroline specifically, is the following on German university life, most elements of which still reflect the circumstances with which Caroline was familiar from childhood on and which her letters copiously reflect:
And finally, before beginning with the letters themselves, especially readers less familiar with German social customs might profit from the following brief introduction to the use of honorific titles in German society at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century:
