149a. Mother (Johanna Christiane Erdmuthe) Schlegel to Wilhelm Schlegel in Amsterdam: Hannover, 19 April 1795 [*]
Hannover, 19 April 1795
— — My dearest Wilhelm, I recently heard that you are friends with someone [1] whose acquaintance I fear not only will not make you happy, but also may prevent you from being so at least here in Hannover, otherwise I was very hopeful in that regard, since you yourself are quite fondly remembered here. [2] — —
Notes
[*] Source: Waitz (1882), 29–30. Passages Waitz did not include are indicated by “—.” Waitz, ibid., note 2, also points out that Johanna Christiane Erdmuthe Schlegel often signed her letters to Wilhelm as “Mother Schlegel.”
No portrait of “Mother Schlegel” seems to be extant. Even allowing for her age-related laments in coming letters, one should probably not imagine her at the time as having the appearance of a particularly elderly woman. She was born in 1734, hence between 1795 and 1802, when her letters in this correspondence were written, she was between 61 and 68 years old.
Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki’s sketch of himself working on the portrait of own mother, Marie Henriette, née Ayrer (1702–79), when she was ca. 71 years old might reasonably approximate Mother Schlegel’s appearance (or that of a typical bourgeois woman of that age at the time) if one allows for the slight age difference (Von Berlin nach Danzig: Eine Künstlerfahrt im Jahre 1773, von Daniel Chodowiecki. 108 Lichtdrucke nach den Originalen in der Staatl. Akademie der Künste in Berlin, mit erläuterndem Text und einer Einführung von Wolfgang von Oettingen [Leipzig 1923], no. 44):
[1] Caroline. Back.
[2] Wilhelm was a native of Hannover, located ca. 55 km northwest of Braunschweig, where Wilhelm would eventually move after returning to Germany from Amsterdam (Rudolf Koch and Fritz Kredel, Deutschland und angrenzende Gebiete [Leipzig 1937]):
Concerning Caroline’s reputation at the time, see her letter to Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer on 7 June 1794 (letter 145), note 13. Back.
Translation © 2011 Doug Stott