381d. Therese Huber to Schelling in Würzburg: Stuttgart, November 1803 [*]
[Stuttgart, November 1803] [1]
Let me thank you for your letter, which once again wholly corresponds to the understanding I have come to have of you. It genuinely was that understanding that yet bestowed on our comprehensive relationships an element of truth that in so many other respects, albeit not involving you yourself, those relationships could not have. [2] Nor will our mutual straightforwardness be in the least disrupted, nor should it be, by the fact that you view and judge the end of those relationships, to the extent they were indeed comprehensive, differently than do I myself. [3]
To your last letter I owe primarily a satisfactory explanation of your previous one, which I found to be unnaturally emprunté, [4] and with an insidious element I found puzzling. Although I was not incorrect in those assumptions, I am quite gratified to see now that the reason for them was not such that you yourself might be discredited in the eyes of someone who respected you.
I as yet know nothing specific about my future place of residence. [5] Although there is no dearth of possibilities in that regard, sufficient reasons for making a choice are still lacking.
Stay well. Please do also accept our gratitude for the affection you showed our children, and please also accept our sincere — this word, here and today, must be taken in a sense that is quite true — wishes for your happiness. [6]
Notes
[*] Sources: Albert Leitzmann, “Aus Karolinens Lebenskreisen. Dokumente und Notizen,” Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde N.F. 5 (1913), 1. Hälfte, 126–27; Therese Huber Briefe 1:445. This document is actually a letter draft. See below concerning yet another draft on the same page that seems to have accompanied it. Back.
[1] Dating in concurrence with Leitzmann, “Aus Karolinens Lebenskreisen,” 126 (“final weeks of 1803), and Therese Huber Briefe 1:755. Leitzmann suggests that Therese’s husband, Ludwig Ferdinand Huber, had already moved to Ulm to continue work on the Allgemeine Zeitung there (see below). Back.
[2] Leitzmann, “Aus Karolinens Lebenskreisen,” 126, remarks concerning the relationship between the two couples:
The initial reunion of the two couples in Stuttgart in June 1803 [see Caroline’s letter to Luise Wiedemann on 19 June 1803 (letter 380)] was followed in July, when the Schellings were in Cannstadt, by further personal contact, and in August by a visit with Schelling’s parents in Murrhardt, about which Therese writes to her daughter Therese on 3 September 1803 [letter 380h]. Back.
[3] The “end of those relationships” involved Caroline’s alleged intrigues against Ludwig Ferdinand Huber’s attempts to secure a position in either Munich or Würzburg. See Therese’s letter to her daughter Therese on 17 September 1803 (letter 381a), note 1. Back.
[4] Fr., “awkward, artificial, contrived.” Back.
[5] Therese and Ludwig Ferdinand Huber had not yet determined where they would be relocating. Johann Friedrich Cotta’s Allgemeine Zeitung had been prohibited in Württemberg, and Cotta himself did not decide until 4 November 1803 to move operations from Stuttgart to Ulm. Therese and the couple’s children did not follow her husband, who was the newspaper’s editor, to Ulm until late March 1804 (Post Karte Durch ganz Deutschland, ed. J. Walch [Augsburg 1795]):
[6] Yet another letter draft or copy in Therese’s handwriting, intended for Schelling’s parents, Joseph Friedrich and Gottliebin Schelling, was done on the same page as the draft of this present letter. For the text of that letter, which concerns Therese’s relationship with Caroline, see supplementary appendix 381d.1. Back.
Translation © 2017 Doug Stott