• 255. Caroline to Auguste in Dessau: Jena, Monday, 11 November 1799 [*]
[Jena] Monday, 11 November [1799]
|576| My precious, dearest child, so: You must come, and you want to come? Were you but already here, could you but come flying through the air cloaked in thick veils. [1]
I can only write you what is absolutely necessary today. It occurred to us that the Tischbeins might be able to take you as far as Giebichenstein, where we could then pick you up. — — It is simply awful that they are not going by way of Leipzig, where I would prefer to pick you up. [2] Presumably Madam Veit and I will be taking over this job. All the gentlemen’s time is too valuable.
You can well imagine — and please do let them know — how pleased I am concerning Tischbein’s trip to Dresden. For the rest, I am myself simply so busy now that I must close; I have other things I also need to |577| write.
All of us send our love from the bottom of our hearts. I so long for you now, you will be a new acquaintance for me, no longer my little daughter, but a dear sister instead, coming to me from far away. God bless you. [3]
Although Madam Schiller is getting better, she is not yet completely in her right mind. [4] Luise Seidler is going to Gotha. [5]
Notes
[*] Auguste would not return to Jena for another two weeks, on 26 November 1799. Back.
[1] A popular motif with whose iterations Caroline was doubtless familiar from the numerous almanacs, calendars, and anthologies at the time; here two contemporary examples (1801, 1803) (Taschenbuch für 1801, 1803; Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung):
[2] Uncertain reference. While the rest of his family spent the summer of 1799 in Weimar and Jena (including with the Schlegels), Johann Friedrich August Tischbein left Dessau on 16 June 1799 for Karlsbad, southwest of Dresden, meeting with friends along the way in Leipzig and Dresden not least to discuss the possibility of finding more permanent employment in one of those towns; friends in Hamburg were also trying to lure him.
Tischbein returned to Dresden on 7 September 1799, though in the meantime his Leipzig friends had secured him a position as director of the Leipzig Academy for Drawing, Painting, and Architecture. Because their accommodations were not yet ready, however, the family did not move there until January 1800 after spending two weeks in Leipzig itself and then time in Dresden (February–Easter 1800).
Caroline is referring to to Giebichenstein near Halle (ca. 40 km south-southwest of Dessau), where Johann Friedrich Reichardt lived, and in her next paragraph to one of Tischbein’s trips to Dresden presumably to see about employment. Adolf Stoll, Der Maler Joh. Friedrich August Tischbein und seine Familie (Stuttgart 1922), 115–23, does not provide sufficient details in this respect. See Post Karte Durch ganz Deutschland, ed. J. Walch (Augsburg 1795):
[3] Title vignette to August Lafontaine, Die Intrigue (Vienna 1800):
[4] Concerning Charlotte Schiller’s extremely difficult illness after childbirth and her enduring delusional spells (including nervous fever), see Caroline’s letter to Auguste on 28 October 1799 (letter 252), note 16 with Schiller’s letters to Goethe, which date to approximately the same time as Caroline’s letter here, namely, on 8 November and 19 November. Back.
[5] This decision was made after Luise Seidler’s grandmother’s death on 2 November 1799; see the first paragraph of Luise’s memoirs cited in Caroline’s letter to Auguste on 28 October 1799 (letter 252), note 17; concerning the reason Luise was living with her grandmother, see Caroline’s letter to Auguste on 4 November 1799 (letter 253) with note 3 (Post Karte Durch ganz Deutschland, ed. J. Walch [Augsburg 1795]):
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott