268a. Dorothea Veit to Wilhelm Schlegel in Bamberg: Jena, ca. 23 September 1800 [*]
[Jena, ca. 23 September 1800]
Dear Wilhelm, do come quickly to us; we are quite content, and you would certainly enjoy it here yourself. Do consider our suggestion carefully. A pleasant, friendly room, the same sort of bed chamber; open view toward the hills; the activity in the animated Graben, always full of people; but quiet and peaceful in the house itself. [1] You will not need any interim servants; I will get everything you need from your things. [2] Please do not decline, we implore you. [3]
Rose had herself a warm bodice made for the journey. [4] I found the material at Paulsen’s [5] and had it put on your bill.
The two Hardenbergs were here for a couple of days last week. [6] Our Hardenberg was sick, so much so that we have become genuinely worried; he looked quite wretched and is being treated by Hofrath Stark! [7] He is leading a completely méchant life. [8]
He related the sad news to us that Louise Brachmann suddenly became crazy. [9] Imagine the misfortune! Hardenberg maintains it is a merely physical ailment. Last week also, little Brentano also died of madness in Ossmannstädt, though in her case the initial cause was an unhappy love affair. [10] — Sometimes one begins to think that all the otherwise invisible misery is suddenly becoming visible. Pfui!
I was also in Weimar and saw the exhibition of the “19 Hectors,” though for me there were actually 20, since I cannot see why I could not portray a Hector as well as the other nineteen. [11] How funny! I wish you had been there with me, we would have laughed ourselves half to death.
On this occasion I also made the acquaintance of Madam von Wolzogen, who was quite cordial and charming toward me, as was Madam Schiller. [12]
Adieu, I hope you are doing well
Dorothea
Notes
[*] Sources: Dorothea Schlegel und deren Söhne 1:51–52; Wieneke, (1914), 332 (frag.); KFSA 25:184–85. — Dating according to KFSA 25:523. Back.
[1] Germ. Graben, “trench, ditch, moat.” In the early fourteenth century, a city wall was built to improve Jena’s security, enclosing an area approximately 400m x 500m; the wall was approx. 12m high and 2m thick, with three town gates, later complemented by four corner towers, of which three are still at least partially preserved today.
The Graben ran along the outside perimeter, clearly visible in this Jena town map from 1758 by Matthias Seutter (Universität Bern, Universitätsbibliothek):
Here two illustrations of the town, 1572 and ca. 1740, portraying the town walls, towers, and moat before the town proper extended beyond it (Braun-Hogenberg, Iena Thuringiae urbs, cum propter Musas, tum vineta clara et celebris [Jena 1572]; Georg Christoph Kilian, after Matthaeus Merian the Elder, Iena: Eine dero Hohen-Schuel oder Universität halber weitberühmte Statt in Thüringen [ca 1740]):
Here the foot traffic along the northern Graben (Carl Schreiber and Alexander Färber, “Am Fürstengraben 1779,” in Jena von seinem Ursprunge bis zur neuesten Zeit, nach Adrian Beier, Wiedeburg, Spangenberg, Faselius, Zenker u. A. von Carl Schreiber u. Alexander Färber: Mit Kupfern, Karten, Lithographien u. Holzschnitten [Jena 1850], plate following p. 208):
Here an illustration of the promenade along the Graben; the Powder Tower stands at right (Jena und Weimar von alter zu neuer Zeit [Jena 1908], following p. 64):
[2] The suggestion is clearly that Wilhelm move out of Leutragasse 5 when he returns to Jena and into the new apartment into which, judging from the wording here, Friedrich and Dorothea may already have moved. Friedrich states explicitly in his letter to Wilhelm on 30 September 1800 (letter 269a) that they have already moved. Friedrich had remarked to Wilhelm in a letter on 12 September 1800 (Walzel, 439; KFSA 25:176):
We are enormously pleased with the suggestion regarding the apartment, since it is proof that you are finally returning, and then will be living with us for a while yet. Though there are some economic difficulties, e.g., concerning the wood transport.
The larger question, of course, is who — should Wilhelm move out entirely — would then be residing in the house at Leutragasse 5. Wilhelm did not return to Jena until August 1801, and then only for a brief visit, he in the meantime having moved permanently to Berlin. That is, he never moved in with Friedrich and Dorothea in their new (or subsequent) apartment. Back.
[3] In a letter to Clemens Brentano in mid- to late November 1800, Dorothea writes (Wieneke, [1914], 336; KFSA 25:203):
We are, by the way, very, very content; our apartment, which we have been in since October, has a broad, pleasant view of the Graben; when I open my eyes in the morning, I see the sky paint itself with the most beautiful colors, what more can I ask for? especially when I consider the good fortune of not having to climb up the long steps now to get to Friedrich when I need him to sharpen a quill for me . . .
Regarding having to “climb up the long steps”: Shortly after her arrival on 6 October 1799, Dorothea had described the living arrangements in the building at Leutragasse 5 as follows in a letter to Schleiermacher on 11 October 1799 (letter 247c):
we live in a kind of rear edifice, all the windows look out onto the courtyard. I myself live downstairs, one flight up Caroline, then Wilhelm, and finally, in the uppermost story, Friedrich.
The new apartment was apparently near Fichte’s former house at Unterm Markt 2, which afterward was long, and misleadingly, identified as the Romantikerhaus; moreover, Johann Wilhelm Ritter lived two houses away. A more specific localization has not been possible (Peer Kösling, “Die Wohnungen der Gebrüder Schlegel in Jena,” Athenaeum. Jahrbuch der Romantik 8 [1998] 107–8), though the house was owned by Christina Friederike Wilhelmine Bieglein, née Fürstenau, widow of Johann Wolfgang Bieglein, who died on 4 January 1801 (KFSA 25:558n23).
In a letter to Wilhelm on 10 July 1801 (letter 325), Caroline mentions in passing that Dorothea and Friedrich had in early July 1801 moved yet again within this general section of town, this time to a house “a few paces from the previous one.” Back.
[4] The maidservant Caroline had employed earlier and who was now to travel to meet her and Wilhelm in Gotha on their way to Braunschweig. See Dorothea’s letter to Wilhelm on 4 September 1800 (letter 267b), note 2, and Caroline’s letter to Luise Gotter on 18 September 1800 (letter 268). Back.
[5] Friedrich Wilhelm Paulsen (1772–1840), Jena merchant (KFSA 25:524). Back.
[6] Karl von Hardenberg and Friedrich von Hardenberg; this visit is not otherwise attested. Back.
[7] Friedrich von Hardenberg was severely ill with consumption and would die in March of 1801. Back.
[8] Fr. méchant; here Dorothea uses the adjective in a Berlinism in the sense “bad, miserable, wretched” (KFSA 25:524fn8). Back.
[9] Concerning Louise Brachmann’s suicide attempt on 7 September 1800 in Weissenfels, see Louise Brachmann, Auserlesene Dicthungen von Louise Brachmann, 2 vols., ed. Christian Gottfried Schütz (Leipzig 1834), 1:xxix–xxxii:
In 1800, her father’s sister had died in Dresden, where Louise’s brother — who still lives there — was employed at the time. The latter thus now asked her to come stay with him for a time that they might together organize their aunt’s estate, though also that his beloved sister might visit him in his new living circumstances.
Hence, at twenty-three years old, she departed [Weissenfels], full of the most splendid hopes at the prospect of becoming acquainted, at the side of her dear brother, with the magnificent world that was Dresden. Her intellect and emotions — already so richly nourished by the beauty and grandeur of poesy — would now have the opportunity to partake of the lofty enjoyment of all the life, art, and nature that this “German Florence” had to offer. All too quickly, however, a malicious stroke of fate turned all the bliss of her sojourn there into the most excruciating suffering.
A youthful indiscretion, committed out of a lack of knowledge of the world and people, so offended her fragile sense of honor that, given the highly strung nature of her personality and emotions, she immediately plunged into the most profound melancholy. The previously unsullied, peaceful beauty of her inner being, however, was all the more disrupted by this grief insofar as Louise herself, secretly nourishing this grief in her breast, divulged the reason for this offense to no one, not even her brother.
With this smoldering pain residing in her resolutely sealed heart, she returned to her parental home in Weissenfels, where the suffering of her soul soon also attacked her delicate body, rendering her bedridden for six long weeks.
(Accompanying illustration to the poem “Bertha” by Louise Brachmann, Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1820: Der Liebe und Freundschaft gewidmet):
On 7 September 1800, though not yet fully recovered, she asked to leave the room again for the first time. Her anxious father accompanied her out to a corridor in the house’s interior portico. But hardly had she even stepped out onto it than she suddenly, before the very eyes of her father, plunged down into the courtyard from the third-story corridor, where she would surely and immediately have found the death she sought had not the momentum of her fall been checked by a roof jutting out from the lower story, onto which — fortunately — she fell first.
(Residential interior courtyard with 3-story corridors, Paul Ehmig, Das deutsche Haus: sechs Bücher über Entwicklung, Bedingungen, Anlage, Aufbau, Einrichtung und Innenraum [Berlin 1914], vol. 1, part 1, p. 186, plate 149):
Her father gazed down senseless on his unfortunate child. The cry of fear his initial shock at the horrible deed had wrenched from his throat summoned Louise’s mother, who managed to maintain that particular power of comprehension so generally characteristic of her sex in such instances of great and sudden misfortune.
With rare presence of mind, she quickly hurried into the courtyard and picked up her unconscious daughter, who was lying in her own blood. She had suffered extremely dangerous injuries especially to her head, and despite the swift help of physicians and the most assiduous care of her profoundly grieving parents and sister, she nonetheless hovered for several days between life and death.
Her brother, who loved her so dearly and whom a close, valued friend of the unfortunate girl now informed of the reason for Louise’s melancholy — a reason of which the brother was previously utterly unaware — journeyed over to Weissenfells as soon as he received news of this horrific incident, where he feared he might be seeing his dear sister for the last time.
(Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, 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], plate 13):
But after her wounds healed, she recovered remarkably swiftly in both body and mind. The secretly smoldering sufferings of the human soul, much like a storm-heavy atmosphere, are often cooled and assuaged by the outbreak of a violent storm. Louise’s grief, tightly enclosed for so long in the innermost depths of her breast, was finally broken by this despairing deed to which it had driven her. The recovery of her health was accompanied by a more peaceful and calm disposition of soul as well.
(“Ah, nature! Now you, too, will I again find beautiful!,” Frauenzimmer Almanach zum Nutzen und Vergnügen für das Jahr 1813; Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung):
See in any case Louise Brachmann’s warm letter to Wilhelm Schlegel on 4 November 1799 (letter 254a), in which she speaks of her yearning to see the Dresden gallery again, which she had seen earlier as a child, and in which she thanks her “namesake” Louise (Caroline) in the essay “Die Gemählde. Ein Gespräch von W.,” in Athenaeum (1799) 39–151. She was a close friend of Hardenberg’s sister, Sidonie. Back.
[10] Sophie Brentano, sister of Clemens and Bettina Brentano, died on 19 September 1800 while visiting Christoph Martin Wieland and was buried on his estate in Ossmannstedt, northeast of Weimar (Karte des deutschen Reichs, ed. C. Vogel [Gotha 1907], no. 19):
The alleged unhappy love affair is uncertain. According to Wieland himself (letter to Georg Joachim Göschen on 29 September 1800), she contracted nervous fever on 3 September 1800, which rapidly became increasingly serious despite the intervention of a physician. Back.
[11] I.e., for the competition Goethe was holding in Weimar on the theme “Hector’s farewell from Andromache,” for which nineteen artists submitted renderings.
The exhibition ran in Weimar during August and September 1800; references to the exhibition of 1801, under the auspices of the “Weimar Friends of the Arts,” recur in Caroline’s letters to Wilhelm in volume 2.
Concerning this present exhibition, see Goethe’s article “Abschied des Hectors,” Propyläen 3 (1800) no. 2, 115–45. Concerning Hector, see William Smith, A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology, and Geography, 11th ed. (London 1868), 189–90:
Hector, the chief hero of the Trojans in their war with the Greeks, was the eldest son of Priam and Hecuba, the husband of Andromache, and father of Scamandrius. He fought with the bravest of the Greeks, and at length slew Patroculus, the friend of Achilles. The death of his friend roused Achilles to the fight. The other Trojans fled before him into the city. Hector alone remained without the walls, though his parents implored him to return; but when he saw Achilles, his heart failed him, and he took to flight. Thrice did he race round the city, pursued by the swift-footed Achilles, and fell pierced by Achilles’ spear.
The winner among the renderings of Hector’s farewell from Andromache was Johann August Nahl (Johann August Nahl, Hectors Abschied [1800]; Klassik Stiftung Weimar):
[12] Such gestures from prominent women in Weimar were not at all insignificant for Dorothea, who, as everyone knew, not only was a divorced Jewess living in an extramarital relationship with Friedrich Schlegel, but also was closely associated with Caroline, who, as Schiller had related to Goethe (letter 259q), had “followed” a man other than her husband, namely, Schelling, to Bamberg (Frauenzimmer Almanach zum Nutzen u Vergnügen für das Jahr 1798; Inhaltsverzeichnis deutscher Almanache, Theodor Springmann Stiftung):
Translation © 2014 Doug Stott