• 397. Caroline to Carl Joseph Windischmann in Aschaffenburg: Würzburg, 28 September 1805
[Würzburg] 28 September [1805]
The Jahrbücher did not arrive until today after being en route for 15 days. [1] I am sealing this copy up in haste according to Schelling’s request so that it get to the postal service at the proper time. I will also keep my promise concerning the poem; [2] the unrest here just now, which is considerable, has simply gotten me out of the mood to attend to such things. [3] We will probably be vacating our apartment [4] — and preferably this entire locale. In the meantime, stay well along with your dear wife, the twins, and the three little girls — let us thus say: the “triplets.” [5]
C. S.
Notes
[1] The first issue of Schelling and Adalbert Friedrich Marcus’s Jahrbücher der Medicin als Wissenschaft, which Schelling had promised to send to Windischmann but could not even get himself; he had written to Windischmann three days earlier (Plitt 2:74):
I am utterly disconsolate at not yet being able to send you the first issue of the Jahrbücher, which two weeks ago they promised would go out with the very next postal coach. But yesterday it still did not arrive, and it seems my patience is to be tested through ever increasing degrees. My hope is now that the copies will arrive next Friday, and if such indeed be the case, you will receive yours with the riding post on Saturday.
Concerning the periodical, see Caroline’s letter to Anna Maria Windischmann on 2 December 1804 (letter 388a), note 2. Back.
[2] Presumably Heinz Widerporst’s Epicurean Confession of Faith. Back.
[3] I.e., the unrest concerning military developments associated with the Third Coalition during August and September 1805 and the arrival in Würzburg on 12 September 1805 of the Munich court of Prince Elector Maximilian, who had fled Munich before the advancing Austrians; the court and administration requisitioned not only administrative building and the residence castle, but also private residences. See, however, Luise Wiedemann’s letter to Caroline on 4 September 1805 (letter 396), note 3. Back.
[4] The Schellings did not have to vacate, though they did have to accommodate two officers in their apartment for three weeks; see the pertinent section in the supplementary appendix on the Schellings’s residence in Würzburg. Back.
[5] Concerning the Windischmann’s twins, see Schelling’s letter to Windischmann on 27 August 1805 (letter 395e), note 8.
The “three little girls,” who were triplets only figuratively, thus seem to have been the twin Anna Maria Franziska along with her elder sisters Karolina (1797–1813) and Wilhelmine († 1832), though establishing consistent dates for these children is difficult. Sämtliche Briefe an Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Kritische Ausgabe, vol. 2: 1805–1809, ed. Rebekka Horlacher and Daniel Tröhler (Zürich 2010), 641–42, adduces a third girl, Katharina Margaretha Walburga, who allegedly was born in 1803 but died in 1804. Or are these dates incorrect, and is Caroline referring to her as the third of the “triplets.”
The Windischmanns seem in any case to have had several children, perhaps several close in age (Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, Häussliche Glückseligkeit [1788]; Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Museums./Signatur DChodowiecki AB 3.766):
Translation © 2017 Doug Stott