98a. Therese Forster to Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring in Pempelfort: Mainz, Saturday, 9 October 1790 [*]
Mainz, Saturday, 9 October 1790
My dear Sömmerring, since Forster is writing to you, let me thank you myself for your kind greeting. We have perhaps come to a misunderstanding through the two-faced character of a third person, whom pride in my sex now prompts me to wish were not a woman or girl. I have probably done you excessive injustice with respect to the matter involving Miss M[ichaelis], since as a woman myself and as her foster mother in this regard I felt obliged resolutely to take her side; primarily, however, because it was only much later that I noticed her inordinate lack of love for the truth.
Although I meant well, now that you have escaped I can, along with you, thank heaven. [1] And so, Sömmerring, a good German handshake! I must, however, protest when you think yourself disregarded by me because of what Lotte told you about me, for that girl doubtless did not speak the truth; [2] and with respect to those instances when I was too brusque or curt in writing or in person in this matter, please accept the sincerity of my desire to ask your pardon. [3] . . .
Notes
[*] Source: Forster’s Briefwechsel mit Sömmerring, 551; Therese Huber Briefe, 1:260.
Therese and Georg Forster had been in Mainz (ca. 30 km southwest of Frankfurt am Main) since 2 October 1788, where he was employed as university librarian; Sömmering was in Pempelfort, just outside Düsseldorf, where he often visited Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (Post Karte Durch ganz Deutschland, ed. J. Walch [Augsburg 1795]):
[1] Therese is referring to what Caroline, in a letter to Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer on 1 March 1791 (letter 100), will refer to as Lotte Michaelis’s aventure with Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring during Lotte’s visit to Mainz in the late summer of 1790.
This matter with Sömmerring, however, was not Therese’s only concern during Lotte’s stay. As she relates to her daughter Therese in a letter on 15 January 1803, she was also worried about Lotte being in Mainz when August von Kotzebue arrived there on 30 November 1790 for a ten-day stay (returning 12 January 1791). Lotte had made Kotzebue’s acquaintance in 1781 in Gotha, where she had been dispatched to remove her from the influence of Pedro Hockel.
See Caroline’s letter to Luise Gotter on 12 January 1781 (letter 21), note 7, and August Kotzebue to an unidentified student in Göttingen on 22 October 1781 (letter 25a). For an account of these events, see supplementary appendix 98a.1. Back.
[2] König. Gros-Britt. Genealogischer Kalender auf das Jahr 1784; Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung:
[3] König. Gros-Britt. Genealogischer Kalender auf das 1779. Jahr; Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung:
Translation © 2011 Doug Stott