Würzburg
Würzburg, Fortress Marienburg to the right on the elevation, the town itself across the river to the left, where Caroline and Schelling would spend the years 1803–6, albeit not entirely satisfactory years.
[Gustav von Heringen, Franken, Das malerische und romantische Deutschland: In zehn Sektionen 2 (Leipzig 1847), plate following p. 84. Also in Eduard Duller, Deutschland und das deutsche Volk, vol. 1 [Leipzig 1845], following p. 140.]
Domstrasse in Würzburg, ca. 1832
Caroline and Schelling arrived in Würzburg in early November 1803. Although Schelling’s appointment seemed promising enough, trouble with adversaries soon began. It was in any case a time when Schelling had considerable contact with physicians and medical scholars in connection with his philosophy of nature, and when Caroline would publish several anonymous literary reviews in the new Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. Wilhelm Schlegel would also visit them there in 1804 on his way to Coppet with Madame de Staël.
(Ludwig Lange and Ernst Rauch, Original-Ansichten der vornehmsten Städte in Deutschland, ihrer wichtigsten Dome, Kirchen und sonstigen Baudenkmäler alter und neuer Zeit [Darmstadt 1832], n.p.)
Würzburg
Caroline and Schelling lived in an apartment over the library in the quadrangle of the Old University, in this illustration the west wing of the triangular complex at bottom center adjoining the church indicated in black on the south side. The royal residential palace can be seen at top right.
( Carl Handwerk, Kreishauptstadt Würzburg: Gemessen durch Carl Handwerk im Jahre 1832 [1832].)
Würzburg, Old University
H. E. G. Paulus, who was Schelling and Wilhelm Schlegel’s colleague back in Jena, writes to a former colleague in Jena from Würzburg on 15 January 1804, where he himself now also had a new position:
“Schelling’s apartment is located within the quarré [square] of the university buildings in the wing directly opposite us, over the library, so that we communicate with one another through the kitchen.”
The Paulus family and the family of Friedrich Wilhelm von Hoven lived in the former seminary wing of the Old University, the Schellings in the opposite wing, over the library (with the arcades).
(Illustration: Historisches Album der Stadt Würzburg. Zweiunddreissig photographische Ansichten, ed. V. Jos. Stahgel, introd. Franz X. Wegel [Würzburg 1867], illus. v.)
Caroline’s Apartment in Würzburg
Here a view of the Schellings’ quarters in the Old University complex on the 2nd (Schelling’s auditorium), 3rd (Caroline’s quarters), and 4th (Schelling’s quarters) floors in the wing on the right. The library is on the ground floor with the arcades.
(Anonymous photograph ca. 1900.)
Georg Friedrich von Zentner
This director of education in Bavaria, including the universities, was largely responsible for Schelling receiving his appointment in Würzburg. Almost immediately however, he writes to Schelling in November 1803, trouble having already arisen in Würzburg:
“The Elegante Zeitung published some rather inelegant reviews of several opponents of your system. You will no doubt disapprove with me of such — I would like for you to be both acknowledged and respected in Germany as the calm, dispassionate seeker of truth, i.e., as the true philosopher you are and which I myself have come to know in you.”
As time went on, Schelling was largely unable to comply with this request, and his and Caroline’s dissatisfaction with Würzburg grew commensurately.
(Portrait: Gottlieb Bodmer, Porträtsammlung des Münchner Stadtmuseums, GMI/2143.)
Cajetan Weiller, Jakob Salat
Schelling’s life was made more difficult in Würzburg itself by several faculty members and clergy, including Franz Berg, Georg Karl Ignaz von Fechenbach, and Franz Oberthür. The most resolute adversaries, however, were in Munich, which was of significance insofar as Würzburg was a Bavarian territory. Xavier Tilliette remarks in his biography of Schelling:
“But the most tenacious and venomous of them all, in effect the leader, was, in Munich, the director of the secondary school, Kajetan Weiller, with his no less duplicitous and hypocritical acolyte Jakob Salat. These two will devote their existence to opposing Schelling. . . . Their polemical, sneaky, cunning writings exhibited all the bile that is capable of entering into the souls of the devout. Unfortunately they enjoyed the support of public opinion and to a certain extent also that of the authorities.”
(Xavier Tilliette, Schelling [Paris 1999], 120–21; portrait of Weiller: unknown artist, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften; portrait of Salat: unknown artist, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität: Ingolstadt, Landshut, München: 1472–1972, ed. Laetitia Boehm and Johannes Spörl [1972], illustration 325.)
Heinrich Karl Eichstädt
Editor of the new Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, to which Caroline contributed several anonymous literary reviews. Goethe was allegedlly “quite pleased” with the review of a Musenalmanach she published in 1805, and one scholar even believed Goethe himself to be its author, insisting he could discern “the masterful hand of Goethe in the manner and tone.” Eichstädt, knowing full well Caroline was the author, remarks to Schelling:
“I certainly cannot relate a more pleasant word of thanks for the contributed review to the reviewer, be it him or her.”
(Portrait: unknown artist, Universitäts Archiv Jena.)
Friedrich Wilhelm von Hoven
A Swabian and Schelling’s colleague in Würzburg. His wife, Henriette, however, quickly soured on Caroline, writing to Charlotte Schiller back in Jena on 4 April 1804:
“Neither all her magnificent clothes, her trumeaux for 100 Thaler, her carpets, expensive oven screens, Turkish seats, nor the servants prompted me to change anything in my own domestic arrangements. In return, I admittedly received an honorific title — the Swabian kitchen maid…She no doubt expected me to be someone completely different, more cultivated, learned, obedient…”
(Portrait: Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung [Paul Wolfgang Merkel’sche Familienstiftung], Inventar-Nr. MP 11522a, Kapsel-Nr. 20H4.)
Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus
Paulus continued as Schelling’s nemesis in Würzburg, writing on 20 May 1804:
“Schelling’s mode of teaching has had the absolutely worst influence on students, especially medical students, who have now lost all inclination to comprehend more deeply anything in the more useful and practical subjects. Whence primarily the wish to appoint a different philosopher…” (namely, one who would better represent the Bavarian administration’s understanding of Catholic Enlightenment in education).
(Portrait: lithograph, © Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, UB Graphische Sammlung, Graph. Slg. P_0204; license CC-BY-SA 4.0.)
Wilhelm Schlegel
After visiting Caroline in Würzburg in May 1804 shortly after joining Madame de Staël, Wilhelm Schlegel writes:
“She seemed inclined to erase all the bitterness of memory, and was moved at my departure. Her appearance seemed to me better and healthier than in Berlin, and, of course, she always knows how to dress flatteringly and to arrange her surroundings quite handsomely. She had set up the busts of Goethe and Auguste in a large salon, and had two large orange trees just inside the windows. In the living room I saw the beloved portrait of Auguste again.”
(Portrait: Engraving by G. Zumpe; in Gustav Könnecke, Bilderatlas zur Geschichte der deutschen Nationallitteratur, 2nd ed. [Marburg 1895], 350.)
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel writes to Karoline Paulus in Würzburg on 19 June 1804:
“It is admittedly rather astonishing that you are now living under the same roof as Madam Schelling; but, then again, not all that astonishing, since thorns and thistles, cockles and other foul undergrowth are invariably able to grab a foothold in even the most fertile wheatfield. May God grant that the devil come fetch her soon, and do so with the appropriate pomp and circumstance commensurate with her standing; there will in any case certainly be no lack of stench.”
(Portrait: by Philipp Veit, 1810; Frankfurt a. M., Freies Deutsches Hochstift, Goethe-Museum.)
Dorothea Schlegel
Dorothea Schlegel writes to Karoline Paulus in Würzburg — Caroline’s neighbor — on 3 June 1805, evoking the Schillers’ reference to Caroline as “Madame Lucifer”:
“Bertram…is a zealous Catholic and is studying day and night to learn about a powerful kind of exorcism…The most powerful weapon of all is the so-called devil’s scourge, whose special powers include forcing Satan, the instant it touches him, even if he be disguised as the most beautiful of angels, to turn back into his original, misshapen form, with all his claws and horns and tail etc. Well, slipping this little bundle secretly beneath Madame Lucifer’s most precious parts in an elegant tea circle would no doubt have a quite entertaining effect indeed.”
(Portrait: anonymous pastel; in Briefe von und an Friedrich und Dorothea Schlegel, ed. Josef Körner [Berlin 1926], plate following p. 26.)
Ludwig Ferdinand Huber
Ludwig Ferdinand Huber, the husband of Therese Huber, née Heyne, died on Christmas Eve in 1804. Caroline writes in February 1805 about a dream in which she encounters him:
“I asked him why he had grieved us so, and told him how gladly I would have changed places with him, for, ‘Huber,’ I said, ‘after all, I have more to seek in heaven than you do.’ I was thinking about Auguste, just as she is always quite present for me. He said — ‘if you are serious, then give me your hand’ — I gave him my hand across the table, his was quite warm, which I immediately noticed, since, after all, he was no longer alive. And then I woke up.”
(Portrait: by Dora Stock [1784].)
Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann
This professor in Aschaffenburg was an admirer of both Schelling and Caroline, writing to Caroline in May 1806, shortly before she left Würzburg for more distant Munich in 1806:
“For truly, few could possibly wish your well being as ardently as do I, for my love and affection increases daily, nor could I imagine any greater bliss than to live together with you in the same locale. How easily and gladly would I then be willing to renounce all other company.”
(Anonymous portrait.)