• 293. Caroline to Wilhelm Schlegel in Berlin: Braunschweig, 12 March 1801
[Braunschweig] Sunday morning [1–2 March 1801]
|51| Yesterday I was at the Viewegs’ — they had already long seen the Tower of Babel and even thought they had told you about it, but apparently it went right past you, you grand soul. [1] They assure me that it is utterly flat ground, and no tower at all, though they do keep talking about M[eyer]’s attack as something quite malicious. [2] Either they do not want to give it to me, or it really is no longer there.
You have presumably read it by now, for in this matter one really can depend only on one’s own judgment. As malicious as it may well be, I cannot convince myself other than that its author will immediately destroy it. The only thing that makes me anxious are personal rencontres. [3] |52| Otherwise you have accustomed me to being Spartan in such matters. If I may offer some advice: Do not speak about this stuff even in intimate circles. It is not so much because of my own fear of aggravating things as simply because it leaves things on a more dignified level.
Please put me at ease soon with regard to your own circumstances, my dear Wilhelm, and, alas, especially with regard to your projects, namely, whether you have not become utterly desperate. I wrote Fiorillo to inform him of the fate of his letters and to console him, but neither did I conceal how tight your time is. [4] It would, of course, be wonderful if two volumes of Shakespeare might appear. [5]
Àpropos, I learned only from your letter that Schleiermacher is working on a translation of Plato. [6] Well, that is certainly good to hear, since now there is hope that I might read him if he can but do a good job with it. —
I finally managed to get Stollberg’s Journeys away from the lady, who is stingier with her books than with her visits; [7] I happened to be visiting the convent this week because of the good weather and met her again with the mother superior. [8]
The Journeys are quite undistinguished, and, their considerable Christian spirit notwithstanding, still extremely Protestant. I will note nothing from the reading except “the hearts of the good can be healed, Homer says.” For I never found that in Homer, only in my own heart. If you can show me where it is in the original Greek, I will certainly send you something nice in return. [9] —
A novel began unfolding here in the house this morning. Dortchen’s genuine, real fiancé appeared and declared he will not budge or waver from her until she promises to marry him. He does not want to surrender the child to her out of the territory (from Hannoverian to Braunschweig); she is being coy and insists in her local dialect: “I cannot stand you anymore.” [10]
And yet she does really still like him, and he is gallant and accuses her of looking like an old woman and insists it |53| is high time for her to return to Ribüttel, since there all the girls are plump and red. [11] They will probably come to an agreement before evening.
Rose is extraordinarily amused by this spectacle. Emma wrote the enclosed piece to you with the help of the secretary, but then — in the manner of all great personages — signed it by herself. She cannot really conceive of you being anywhere except in Ribüttel, where Dortchen comes from. She stood in front of the mirror and said: “I am a little doll,” whence also the theme of her encyclical. Dorothea is indeed probably also a little doll. —
Wiedemann will probably receive 600 rh. for his journey, and everything will be completely settled in that regard very soon. [12]
As utterly alone as I am here, and as painfully aware I am of that, I nonetheless have not the slightest desire to get up and seek some sort of distraction. So, should I, because of mere faith and intention, yet spend money, whatever it may cost, if Philipp were to pick me up here or somewhere nearby? I asked him preferably to come here with his family instead. [13] Nor do I really have the extra energy — the approach of spring seems inclined to coax out of me what little blood I do have left. For the time being, Wiedemann has tried to stem the nosebleed here locally. —
Two weeks from today the theater will reopen. [14] — Schelling saw the second performance of Tancred in Weimar, which most people believe came off much better under Goethe’s direction than did the first under Schiller’s. [15] Even in a larger sense, the whole was allegedly more opulent than Mohammed, [16] the writing unbelievably beautiful, the endings of all the acts, Goethe’s additions, and the French skeleton — according to Schelling’s approximate description — were clothed in Goethe’s own flesh and blood. He puts this Voltaire to music the way Mozart does Schikaneder, though his work is not as gratifying. [17]
|54| Have you received nothing yet from Meyer? [18] — if not, I want to have Schelling remind him. I do not need to ask that you make this matter your priority. That particular real estate will perhaps be getting a new master [19] — I have no idea where they are intending to go with the Grand Duke of Tuscany. [20]
Monday [2 March]
I spent yesterday afternoon quite lonely amid the somber weather here; not idle, as you can imagine, but the whole weight of a child’s Sunday melancholy was on me and was intent on not allowing me to conquer the outbreak of grief.
I studied Fichte’s Announcement, and certainly one could prattle on about it at length, but I will not write you everything I would say in person. [21] Instead, please be so good as to tell me what you think of it. First and foremost, I resolved absolutely to fulfill those two conditions required for partaking of the new “doctrine of science” [22] — similar to the way one should partake of the holy Eucharist only in a fully sober condition — namely, “to put to one side my philosophical concepts acquired from other systems, indeed even ideas from my previous writings on the Wissenschaftslehre generated by the latter.” [23]
You can easily comprehend how much renunciation this will require of me. Accordingly, I do intend at least to a certain extent to keep a sharp eye on just where, for example, he will be examining what he does not want to examine here: “whether for his talented collaborator” etc., and then also whether the content of his letters to Schelling will emerge — and how his idealism will be expanding, whether he will indeed be elevating himself from consciousness and reflection to production, and by which means —
I am certain you know not whether you should laugh about all this |55| or knit your brow. Let me request the former, my dear Wilhelm, and please do tell me much about Fichte; you know that I will not abuse any such information. —
The first issue of the Merkur allegedly contains something naive by Reinhold. [24] — Vieweg gave me Fichte’s piece, also the rest of the Erzählungen in the printed manuscripts by Huber. They are all basically the same; instead of adventures, we have aberrations of the heart, novellas from the land of sick souls. But I am not at all satisfied with my review, it is not sufficiently productive and agreeable. Take a look at it with this in mind. [25]
Your responsibility now would be to deliver a masterpiece to the Erlanger Litteratur-Zeitung such as did Eschenmayer; [26] but do not covet! I am quite sorry I did not have you give me your written word to abstain forthwith from all criticism. Oh, my friend, remind yourself incessantly how short life is, and how nothing exists as genuinely as does a work of art — criticism perishes, physical races are extinguished, systems change, but when the world itself one day incinerates like a scrap of paper, works of art will be the last living sparks to enter into the house of God — only then will there be complete darkness. [27]
Here is the small Lied, but indeed, I really know not yet whether Schelling considers it significant enough to include in the Almanach. I am only sending it here in the interim for you. [28] —
He is engaged in all sorts of studies and is currently practicing, among other things, writing in ancient meter by translating from Hesiod. [29] I wish he could draw on your advice; just now I do not have much faith in his hexameters. —
Tell Tiek when you have the opportunity that Schelling is positively inclined toward him and that he worships his most recent sonnets — and that without the misunderstandings he would quite cordially have taken his part in Jena. [30]
You will be doing Luise a considerable favor if |56| you can have some elegant female friend of yours pick out a kerchief for her soon, perhaps at Link and Schulz, made of pressed gauze or muslin or silk batiste in the latest fashion but costing no more than 5 rh., which they will pay me back here. [31] For the two children, [32] might I ask for the two most attractive silver century medallions you can find as mementos [33] — but you can wait until you come to Jena to bring them. [34] Luise is really hoping she will be able to follow your suggestion, Wiedemann as well. I do not really believe that my mother’s health will prevent it. [35]
Actually I did not want to send this off today, since I am expecting letters from you, but then I will not be able to write until Friday and I know you do like to hear from me — In the future let us arrange it so that your letters arrive here on Thursday and I answer on Friday. Some of what I have to say to you I will save until I hear something from you.
My dear friend, I entreat you, in everything that concerns me allow yourself to be guided only by your own disposition and heart — only you know mine. Stay well and quite contented.
Notes
[1] Concerning the satire Der Thurm zu Babel, see Caroline’s letter to Wilhelm on 27 February 1801 (letter 292), note 8. Back.
[2] Caroline suspected Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer of having had a hand in the anti-Romantic satire Kamäleon; see her letter to Luise Gotter on 23 January 1801 (letter 283). It is uncertain whether she is here implying he also had a hand in Der Thurm zu Babel. Back.
[3] Fr., “encounters, meetings.” Back.
[4] Concerning Wilhelm’s role in the publication of Fiorillo’s Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste von ihrer Wiederauflebung bis auf die neuesten Zeiten, see Caroline’s letter to Wilhelm on 24 February 1801 (letter 290), note 11, and on 27 February 1801 (letter 292). Back.
[5] Concerning the current volume of Shakespeare’s works on which Wilhelm was working, see Caroline’s letter to him on 27 February 1801 (letter 292), note 2. Back.
[6] Friedrich Schlegel was also involved in the project to translate Plato; troubles with the project eventually generated ill feeling between Schleiermacher and Friedrich. Back.
[7] This lady is not otherwise identified.
Friedrich Leopold von Stolberg, Reise in Deutschland, der Schweiz, Italien und Sizilien in den Jahren 1791 und 1792, 4 vols. + supplementary volume of engravings (Königsberg, Leipzig 1794).
Although Caroline remarks later in this letter that she found Stolberg’s travelogue largely “undistinguished,” she and Schelling have obviously discussed the piece earlier and considered it worth reading. After lessons in Italian as a young woman and studies with the circle in Jena reading Dante (see Caroline’s letter to Julie von Studnitz on 28 September 1778 [letter 2]: “I am currently learning Italian, a language that is both quite easy and quite delightful”; and Dorothea Veit’s letter to Schleiermacher on 11 October 1799 [letter 247c]: “During the evening, everyone studies Italian together. Namely, Dante. — The Schlegels are the masters, the rest of us pupils”), Caroline might reasonably have entertained thoughts of journeying to Italy itself.
Such does indeed now become increasingly the case in this correspondence as the relationship between her and Schelling deepens, culminating in their departure from Jena in May 1803 and marriage in June 1803, and Schelling pursues a university position elsewhere that might allow the couple to take time off for a lengthier stay in Italy — up to two or three years according to one account; their plan was to travel there by way of Switzerland.
Stolberg’s four volumes notably included not only considerable travelogue material on Switzerland, Italy, and Sicily, but also a supplementary volume, with which Caroline was doubtless familiar, of copper engravings of Swiss and, especially, Italian and Sicilian sites.
Caroline’s acquaintance with evocative engravings of the sort found in that volume and elsewhere doubtless colored her notion of what one might expect from a visit and certainly from a lengthier stay in Italy, a country already boasting — as also later becomes clear in this correspondence — a “colony” of German travelers and ex-patriot artists, scholars, diplomats, and, not least, wives fleeing divorce custody battles for their children.
For a gallery of the engravings from Stolberg’s supplementary volume, click on the image below:
[8] Caroline mentions visits to the Convent of the Cross in her undated letter to Schelling in February 1801 (letter 292b). The convent was located just outside the Braunschweig Petrithor (Peter’s Gate), and not that far from the Schweinemarkt/Wollmarkt, where Luise Wiedemann and her husband lived. Concerning its location and appearance, see note 1 there. Back.
[9] Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg, Reise in Deutschland, der Schweiz, Italien und Sicilien in den Jahren 1791 und 1792 nebst einem Band Kupfer, 4 vols. (Konigsberg, Leipzig 1794); here 1:176 (nineteenth letter; 21 September 1791):
The constitution of Bern has often elicited extremely differing, contradictory assessments. Whereas some have compared it with the oligarchic constitution of Venice, others exalted it to the heavens. These contradictory assessments, however, have derived perhaps less from the fact that the manner of thinking of the supporters and detractors is genuinely as different as their statements, and instead more from the fact that each person viewed the matter from his own perspective. And we ourselves do not always choose our perspective. Our initial impression of something often determines our assessment. Such is the normal way of viewing things. But our understanding is in this sense much like our health: Although even healthy people can fall ill, that person’s personality or inner nature can help itself because it is noble.
“The hearts of the good can be healed,” Homer says, and so also with their judgment.
The passage occurs in the Iliad, book xv, line 203 (The Iliad of Homer, trans. Arthur S. Way, vol. 2, books xiii–xxiv [London 1888]):
But Iris the swift yet tarried, the Wind-foot spake the word: "Is it even so, O Earth-enfolder, O dark-haired lord? Must I bear this back unto Zeus? — this speech unyielding and stern? Or yet wilt thou turn and repent? — the hearts of the good can turn.
It is of some interest, of course, that Caroline is requesting the Greek, which reads as follows:
στρεπται μεν τε φρενες εσθλων
Stolberg’s rendering of the passage, which Caroline cites exactly, reads: “Die Herzen der Guten sind heilbar,” whereas most translations at the time — German (e.g., “Leicht wenden sich edle Gemüther”) and English (as above) — render the passage using a form of the verb “turn,” or Germ. wenden.
Concerning Auguste’s lessons in Greek from Friedrich Schlegel, see his letter to her in late September 1797 (letter 185b), note 1, et passim in his previous letters to her, in which he variously speaks of her reading Xenophon, Herodotus, and Euripides. Back.
[10] Germ. “ek mach dek nich mehr lien” (“ich mag dich nicht mehr leiden”). Caroline mentions Dortchen’s dialect again in her letter to Wilhelm on 16 March 1801 (letter 301).
Although Dortchen clearly was younger than in the following illustration (see Caroline’s following remarks), the situation doubtless resembles the following (Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Ei, wozu hat man den Mund, als zum Reden! [1786]; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur Uh 4° 47 [60]):
[11] Here a rural couple from the general region of the Duchy of Braunschweig (M. Mühlig, Bauersleute aus dem Herzogthum Braunschweig [1845]):
Modern Ribbesbüttel in Lower Saxony (Caroline spells it Ribüttel; sources at the time also spell it Ribbüttel), a small village at the southern end of the Lüneburg Heath, about twenty kilometers north of Braunschweig, today in the administrative district of Gifhorn (at the time: Lüneburg; Karte des deutschen Reichs, ed. C. Vogel [Gotha 1907], no. 13; illustration: Matthäus Merian, Topographia Braunschweig Lüneburg [Frankfurt 1654], 176):
[12] Luise’s husband, Christian Rudolf Wilhelm Wiedemann, was about to embark on a journey to France for health reasons. Luise and her daughter, Emma, accompanied Caroline back to Jena, where they remained until Wiedemann’s return through Jena in late September 1801; they returned to Braunschweig in early October 1801, after which, incidentally, Luise and Caroline never saw each other again.
See Luise Wiedemann’s memoirs for her account of Wiedemann’s trip to France and hers and Emma’s to Jena. See also the supplementary appendix on Wiedemann’s biography for the account of his trip and return. Back.
[13] Caroline eventually visits Philipp Michaelis in Harburg while Luise and their mother visit friends in Celle. See Luise’s account mentioned above. Caroline’s letters to Wilhelm on 4, 10, and 14 April, and to Schelling on 12 and 16 April (letters 304–8) are postmarked from either Harburg or Hamburg (Post Karte Durch ganz Deutschland, ed. J. Walch [Augsburg 1795]):
[14] The theater in Braunschweig had been closed for the official court mourning of the death of the dowager duchess, Philippine Charlotte; Caroline mentions this situation in her letter to Wilhelm on 27 February 1801 (letter 292); see the explanation in note 13 there. Back.
[15] In her letter to Schelling on 13 February 1801 (letter 286), Caroline mentions that she was reading the story of Tancred anew; see note 11 there and, for the story itself, supplementary appendix 286.1.
Voltaire’s version was Tancrède (1760), which Goethe had translated along with Voltaire’s play Mahomet (1742; which Caroline mentions next). Goethe translated these materials during 1799–1800, and they were then published as Tancrède nach Voltaire (Tübingen 1802); Mahomet nach Voltaire (Tübingen 1802) (illustration after Jean-Michel Moreau [1760]; copper engraving by Louis-Michel Halbou, also after Jean-Michel Moreau [1784]):
Tancred was performed in Weimar under Schiller’s direction on 31 January, and then on 21 February 1801 under Goethe’s direction, the performance Schelling attended (Das Repertoire des Weimarischen Theaters, 38–39). It was repeated on 8 April 1801.
Schiller wrote to Goethe on 26 July 1800 (Correspondence Between Goethe and Schiller 2:324) that “the undertaking will certainly be very advantageous for our dramatic purposes,” the latter of which were in fact to perform material “in the more elevated theatrical style which they were trying to graft on to the German stage” (Paul Emerson Titsworth, “The Attitude of Goethe and Schiller toward French Classic Drama” [PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1911], 53).
Concerning Goethe’s choice of these two plays as translation projects, see David B. Richards , Goethe’s Search for the Muse: Translation and Creativity, German Language and Literature Monographs 7, ed. Wolfgang W. Moelleken (Amsterdam 1971), 52–67. Back.
[16] Goethe’s translation of Voltaire’s Mahomet (see above) had been performed in Weimar on 30 January and 1 and 5 February 1800 (Das Repertoire des Weimarischen Theaters, 35) (frontispieces to Le fanatisme: ou Mahomet le prophète, tragédie [Amsterdam 1743]; Mahomet, treurspel . . . de Voltaire [Amsterdam 1770]):
[17] Mozart’s Zauberflöte (1791) — with Schikaneder’s libretto — had been performed in Weimar just before Tancrède, namely, on 28 January 1801, and then again on 7 February 1801 (Das Repertoire des Weimarischen Theaters, 38–39). Here a 1793 adaptation for “clavier” or pianoforte:
[18] With respect to moving forward with a memorial for Auguste. See Wilhelm’s letter to Goethe in early February 1801 (285a), where he mentions sending drafts of the memorial to Meyer. See also the supplementary appendix on the Auguste and the cemetery in Bocklet and the gallery on Auguste’s memorial. Back.
[19] I.e., Bocklet in Franconia — where Auguste was buried — as a result of military developments in connection with the War of the Second Coalition and the Treaty of Lunéville (see below), which among other things involved the cession of the left bank of the Rhine River to France and was the beginning of the end of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, also known as the Old Empire. Two further steps toward that end are documented in this correspondence in 1803 and 1806. Back.
[20] The Treaty of Lunéville on 9 February 1801 set in motion the dismantling of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
Among other conditions, the treaty ceded the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the French, to be indemnified in Germany — it is to this indemnification that Caroline is here referring. The duchy was transformed into the Kingdom of Etruria. Ferdinand, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, eventually received the Duchy and Electorate of Salzburg as compensation and was made prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire. He had to relinquish Salzburg in December 1805, however, in the Treaty of Pressburg, in compensation for which he was made Duke of Würzburg, prompting Caroline and Schelling’s departure from the university there and their move to Munich in the spring of 1806.
The decisions of the later “final recess” of the deputation charged with sorting out territorial issues (and compensation) (Principal Conclusion of the Extraordinary Imperial Delegation [Reichsdeputationshauptschluss]), the final document for which was issued on 14 March 1803, determinatively influenced Caroline and Schelling’s plans and lives (Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany 1648–1840) [Princeton 1964], 367):
Bavaria received the adjacent bishoprics of Passau and Freising and the Swabian bishopric of Augsburg, as well as the Franconian bishoprics along the Main [River], Bamberg [where Auguste was buried] and Würzburg [where Schelling would receive an appointment in 1803], and in addition many cities and abbeys in Franconia and eastern Swabia. Thereafter Bavaria was no longer a homogeneous “tribal” (Stamm) duchy [in 1806, after yet another territorial change in Würzburg, Schelling received an appointment in Munich].
Leaving in abeyance the exact details of every locale listed and the meaning of the color coding, the following map excerpt of Germany after these changes trenchantly demonstrates the complexity of what happened following Lunéville and the ensuing territorial compensations and secularizations (Central Europe 1803: After the Peace of Lunéville 1801 and the Secularisations 1803, from The Cambridge Modern History Atlas, ed. Sir Adolphus William Ward et al.[London 1913]):
[21] Concerning Fichte’s “Ankündigung” (including its English translation), see Goethe’s letter to Schelling on 1 February 1801 (letter 285b), note 5; Caroline similarly mentions this piece briefly in her letter to Wilhelm on 24 February 1801 (letter 290). Back.
[22] I.e., Fichte’s new version of his Wissenschaftslehre; concerning Fichte’s publication concerns at the moment, see Caroline’s letter to Wilhelm on 18 May 1801 (letter 317), note 29. Back.
[23] Caroline does not cite Fichte’s passage precisely (orthography as in original):
Caroline:
meine aus andern Systemen geschöpfte philosophische Begriffe, ja sogar die aus den bisherigen Schriften über die Wissenschaftslehre von der leztern erzeugte Begriffe, völlig bey Seit zu setzen.
Fichte:
dass man, um dem Studium der angekündigten Darstellung einen bessern Erfolg zu verschaffen, nicht nur, wie sich von selbst versteht, seine aus andern Systemen geschöpfte philosophische Begriffe, sondern auch, die aus den bisherigen Schriften über die Wissenschaftslehre von der leztern erzeugte Begriffe bei’m Studium der neuen Darstellung völlig bei Seite sezte.
Translation from The Philosophical Rupture Between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802), ed. Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood, Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany 2012), 86 (larger context):
Hence, in order to facilitate a more successful study of the announced presentation, it is my hope that while reading this new presentation people will naturally not only put to one side any philosophical concepts they may have acquired from other systems, but also any ideas they might have acquired from my previous writings on the Wissenschaftslehre, to provisionally treat these writings as though they did not exist, and to accept an invitation to a completely new and open inquiry.
See Caroline’s further response to Fichte’s announcement in her letter to Schelling on 1 March 1801 (letter 294). Back.
[24] Karl Leonhard Reinhold, “Der Geist des Zeitalters als Geist der Filosofie,” Der Neue Teutsche Merkur (1801) no. 1, 167–93; the essay consists of “fragments” — thus Reinhold in a footnote on the first page — from his Beiträge zur leichtern Übersicht des Zustandes der Filosofie im Anfang des 19ten Jahrhunderts (Hamburg 1801).
See Schelling to Fichte in Berlin on 24 May 1801, Fichtes und Schellings philosophischer Briefwechsel (1856), 77.
You are probably of the opinion that I treated Reinhold too contemptuously. I admittedly did not make the same distinction as you, nor can I allow for it now that he has begun behaving like a zealot, indeed, like a genuine persecutor rather than merely as a student of Bardili [in the opening footnote of the above essay, Reinhold mentions that Christoph Gottlieb Bardili alone, in the latter’s Grundriss der ersten Logik, gereiniget von den Irrthümmern bisheriger Logiken überhaupt, der Kantischen insbesondere. Keine Kritik, sondern eine Medicina mentis brauchbar besonders für Deutschlands Kritische Philosophie (Stuttgart 1800), had refuted both Kant and Fichte].
Read for yourself, if you can, the aforementioned essay in Der Neue Teutsche Merkur. Its title is “Der Geist der Philosophie der Geist der Zeit.” By the way, I could not possibly express in words to you my admiration for the way, and with what art, you dealt with him. Posterity will view that essay and the act of annihilation as the pinnacle of polemic art during this entire age. My personal and, I might even say: physical antipathy toward him has made it impossible for me to do anything better in this matter.
With the expression “act of annihilation,” Schelling is alluding to Fichte’s settling of accounts with Christian Erhard Schmid (1761–1812), “his Kantian rival at Jena, with whom he had been feuding since 1793” (Anthony J. La Vopa, Fichte. The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762–1799 [Cambridge 2001], 411), in his “Vergleichung des vom Herrn Professor Schmid aufgestellten Systems mit der Wissenschaftslehre” (1795). The “act of annihilation” occurs in Fichte’s conclusion (“A Comparison between Prof. Schmid’s System and the Wissenschaftslehre,” Fichte. Early Philosophical Writings, trans. Daniel Breazeale [Ithaca, London 1988], 319, cited in La Vopa, ibid., 411; illustration: Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, “Die Philosophen” (The philosophers), Illustrationen zu Erasmus’ Lob der Narrheit in sechs Abteilungen [1780]; Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Museums./Signatur DChodowiecki WB 3.31):
I hereby declare that everything that Professor Schmid henceforth has to say concerning any of my philosophical assertions — whether he says it straightforwardly or obliquely, and wherever he says it, whether in philosophical journals and annals, in reviews, in his lectures, or in any other respectable or unrespectable place — I hereby declare to be something which does not exist at all as far as I am concerned. And I declare Professor Schmid himself to be nonexistent as a philosopher so far as I am concerned.
[25] Caroline did not publish anything concerning Ludwig Ferdinand Huber’s Erzählungen, 3 vols. (Braunschweig: Vieweg 1801–2). Back.
[26] Concerning Carl Eschenmayer’s harsh review of Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland’s System der praktischen Heilkunde. Ein Handbuch für akademische Vorlesungen und für den praktischen Gebrauch, vol. 1: Allgemeine Therapeutik (Jena, Leipzig 1800), in the Erlangen Litteratur-Zeitung, see Caroline’s letter to Wilhelm on 27 February 1801 (letter 292), note 12. Back.
[27] See Dorothea Veit’s similar sentiments at the beginning of supplementary appendix 280.2. Back.
[28] This Lied would indeed be published in the Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1802, 241; for the translated text to this piece, see Caroline’s letter to Schelling on 13 February 1801 (letter 286), note 13. Back.
[29] See Caroline’s undated letter to Schelling in late February 1801 (letter 292a), also with note 4 there. Back.
[30] Wilhelm Schlegel had already related Schelling’s praise of Tieck’s sonnets (for the Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1802) to Tieck from Braunschweig on 23 November 1800 (Briefe an Ludwig Tieck 3:240–41), saying that Schelling was in fact “enchanted” by them.
Concerning Tieck’s departure from Jena, see Wilhelm’s letter to Johann Diederich Gries on 22 June 1800 (letter 264a), note 6. Concerning Tieck’s harsh assessment of the personal crises among the Romantics in Jena, see his letter to his sister, Sophie Bernhardi, and her husband, August Ferdinand Bernhardi, on 6 December 1799 (letter 257c). Back.
[31] In 1779, “Link and Schulz” are listed as respected Berlin merchants who did not, however, actually have a retail presence there except in the form of shipping, and who instead frequented trade fairs in Braunschweig itself, then also Danzig, Frankfurt an der Oder and am Main, Leipzig, and other locales, where they sold foreign goods at a good profit (Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin und Potsdam und aller daselbst befindlicher Merkwürdigkeiten etc., vol. 1 [Berlin 1779], 354). Their firm was located at that time on the Breite Straße “in the house of Daume,” just across a canal from where Wilhelm would soon be residing (ibid., vol. 1, Grundriss der Königl. Residenzstädte Berlin und Potsdam im Jahre 1786 von neuen zusammengetragen und gestochen durch D. F. Sotzmann):
“Kerchiefs” of the sort Caroline mentions here were neck or shoulder kerchiefs (Fr. fichu) generally made of delicate, sheer and lightweight cotton material such as muslin, batiste (as Caroline mentions), or also embroidered lace or voile. They were generally square and then folded over into a triangular form before the piece was fixed (wrapped) around the neck and tucked into the decolletage. The following example has a border decoration of delicate whitework (information and photos courtesy of Sabine Schierhoff and Kerstin Klotsche):
The following is made of cotton batiste but without embroidery:
[32] Emma and August Ferdinand Wiedemann. Back.
[33] I.e., commemorating the turn of the century 1800–1801 (not 1799–1800). Such medallions could be worn as pendants as in the following illustration (Almanach, Der neuesten Moden [Vienna 1795]):
[34] Caroline is still not anticipating Wilhelm staying in Berlin as long as he did without journeying to Jena; he did not return to Jena until 11 August 1801 (Rudolf Koch and Fritz Kredel, Deutschland und angrenzende Gebiete [Leipzig 1937]):
[35] Uncertain allusion; possibly that Luise and her children accompany Caroline back to Jena, as did happen. Back.
Translation © 2014 Doug Stott