• 224e (was 227a). Dorothea Veit to Wilhelm and Caroline Schlegel in Jena: Berlin, 9 March 1799 [*]
[Berlin] 9 March 1799
|519| Our Henriette certainly knows how to get her head out of a noose, and be it ever so tightly caught. Please be |520| so just, my good friend, and explain to her that you naturally attribute everything involving upbringing far more to her than to me. [1] This time, however, I fear you really are giving all of us too much credit. How in heaven’s name is one to rear a creature that springs forth so fully outfitted and armed and perfect from the head of the divine father? [2] Lucinde is not so much brought up spoiled as not brought up at all.
Well, I have finally dared after all to write a letter myself; how long have I been tormenting myself with my own lack of courage! And now you get to hear everything at once.
My dear Schlegel, my dear, dear Caroline, do come visit us! Please accept the offer Friedrich wrote you about! Could it but genuinely happen, I would feel all over again just how happy I now am! [3] That would be my most beautiful dream, to have us all assembled here, and I completely at your disposal, undividedly devoted to everything I love and admire — that dream would really have come true!
Only please do not think it would be even the smallest inconvenience for me, I have space enough. Do but consider all the reasons Friedrich mentioned to you in that regard; [4] although you will indeed miss some things, there is much to compensate for it as well. And for me — well, let me not even try to describe what it would mean for me. Who knows whether I will even be able to see you properly if you stay with the Ungers! [5] —
If Madame Unger’s answer has left you in any doubt, and if she is looking to be entreated, I certainly hope you will not decline our own requests. I will surely be in my new apartment by April 1; [6] if you can, arrange your trip accordingly; our plan is to meet you in Potsdam, where Schleiermacher currently has business. [7] —
Friedrich will not be coming by to see me today, the wind and weather are keeping him home; [7a] he always sends |521| me his letters open so I can enclose Henriette’s and then send them on. How was I not to read them? But is it not true, dear Caroline! he should not have sent them open? —
Now I am yearning more than ever to see you that I may demonstrate to you all my admiration and my trust. But what sort of half, incomplete nonsense did the wicked Friedrich write to you? And what, regardless of your kind consideration, are you to think of it all? Let me respond to you concerning anything that still might be causing you doubts, ask me about anything — and allow me then to speak with you openly about everything. Might I hope that you will not hold my rather brazen importunity against me? What else could I do, since I did read Friedrich’s letter?
An enormous burden has been lifted from me now that I have dared to write, and I will now be able to meet you with genuine confidence, and when we finally see each other you will not be like a new acquaintance for me, and you, too, will already know me better. If only such were already the case! If only I knew for sure that you were coming!
My dear Schlegel, please be so kind as not to consider it too arrogant of me if I thank you personally for the elegy. [8] Friedrich wrote that I understood it. [9] That is fine and good, but I do not really merit it; it means more to say that I utterly enjoyed it both as a whole and in its individual parts. A completely new sensibility emerged from it for me; I cannot read it enough, and it has given me enormous, genuine pleasure. Henriette is copying it to take with her, fearing she will no longer be here when the fourth issue of Athenaeum arrives even though it has been settled that she will not be leaving before the book fair. [10] Please write us soon that you are coming for sure, and that we |522| will be welcoming you under our humble roof.
Stay well, dear, good friends; go ahead and enjoy a hearty laugh at me for being unable to do anything but tell things exactly as they are; but please be not angry with me for doing so.
Dorothea
Please extend my most tender regards to Auguste. We will be celebrating Friedrich’s birthday here tomorrow and will think about all of you often.
Notes
[*] Was letter 227a, repositioned (but not redated) to accommodate chronologically letters that have been either added or dated earlier (e.g., letter 228, 229). Back.
[1] In her letter to Wilhelm on 2 March 1799 (letter 224a), Henriette Mendelssohn responded to a remark Wilhelm had apparently made in his own letter to her about Lucinde being “spoiled,” assuring him that Dorothea would “know how to defend herself quite well indeed.” See also Friedrich’s letter to Caroline in March 1799 (letter 225) and his remarks on Wilhelm’s insinuation that Lucinde was “merely a spoiled child of Dorothea alone.” Back.
[2] An allusion to the goddess Athena, who allegedly emerged fully formed from the head of Zeus (and, moreover, was his favorite daughter). Here Athena springs forth in full armor from the head of Zeus attended by Apollo on the lyre at left, Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, before Zeus with her hand up, and Ares (Zeus’s son) behind her, also in full armor (Carl Ottfried Müller and Carl Osterley, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, 3rd ed., ed. Friedrich Wieseler [Göttingen 1877], vol. 2, no. 2, plate xxi, no. 227):
[3] Dorothea had been officially divorced from Simon Veit since 11 January 1799. Concerning the divorce, see supplementary appendix 210.1. Back.
[4] See Friedrich’s letter to Caroline on 19 February 1799 (letter 221), his undated letter to her in February 1799 (letter 224), and his two letters to her in early March 1799 (letters 224b, 224c). Back.
[5] Friedrich desperately tried to talk Caroline out of taking lodgings in the Ungers’ summer house in the Tiergarten; see his letter to her in early March 1799 (letter 224c). Back.
[6] Dorothea had already moved into an apartment on Ziegelstrasse. It is uncertain where this new, second apartment was located, or even whether Dorothea ever moved into it. Back.
[7] Schleiermacher was tentatively planning to stay in Potsdam until Easter, which in 1799 fell on 24 March; see Friedrich’s letter to Caroline on 19 February 1799 (letter 221). Back.
[7a] According to Schleiermacher in a letter to Henriette Herz on 12 April 1799, Friedrich was “for all practical purposes” living with Dorothea in the apartment on Ziegelstrasse, where he had visited them (Aus Schleiermacher’s Leben, 1:216; KGA V/3:84; illustration: Johann Georg Pendel, Junges Paar auf einem Sofa, zu einem jungen Mann aufblickend, der gerade das Zimmer betritt [1803]; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur Graph. A1: 2017):
[8] Concerning Wilhelm’s elegy, see Caroline to Friedrich von Hardenberg on 4 February 1799 (letter 219), note 15. Back.
[9] Dorothea is referring to the letter Friedrich wrote to Wilhelm in early March 1799 (Walzel, 408; KFSA 241); for the pertinent text, see Friedrich von Hardenberg’s letter to Caroline on 20 January 1799 (letter 216), note 4. Back.
[10] The Leipzig book fair commenced on the third Sunday (Jubilate) after Easter; with Easter falling on 24 March in 1799, the fair would have begun on 14 April 1799. Back.
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott