Rahel Varnhagen
Encyclopedia
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
s in Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She is the subject of a celebrated biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (1958) written by Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
. Arendt cherished Varnhagen as her "closest friend, though she ha[d] been dead for some hundred years." The asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
100029 Varnhagen
100029 Varnhagen
100029 Varnhagen is an asteroid. It was discovered by Freimut Börngen and Lutz D. Schmadel on October 10, 1990. Its provisional designation was 1990 TQ10. It was named after the married couple Rahel Varnhagen and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense....
is named in her honour
Meanings of asteroid names
This is a list of named minor planets , with links to the Wikipedia articles on the people, places, characters and concepts that they are named for.-See also:*List of minor planets*List of minor planets named after people...
.
Life and works
Rahel Levin was born in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. Her father, a wealthy jeweler, was a strong-willed man who ruled his family despotically. She became very intimate with Dorothea and Henriette, the daughters of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah is indebted...
. Together with them she knew Henriette Herz
Henriette Herz
Henriette Herz née De Lemos is best known for the "salonnieres" or literary salons that she started with a group of emancipated Jews in Prussia....
, with whom she later became most intimately associated, moving in the same intellectual sphere. Her home became the meeting-place of men like Schlegel, Schelling, Steffens
Henrik Steffens
Henrik Steffens , was a Norwegian-born Danish philosopher, scientist, and poet.He was born at Stavanger, Norway. At the age of fourteen he went with his parents to Copenhagen, where he studied theology and natural science...
, Schack
Adolf Friedrich von Schack
Adolf Friedrich, Graf von Schack was a German poet and historian of literature.-Background:He was born at Brüsewitz near Schwerin. Having studied jurisprudence at the universities of Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin, he entered the Mecklenburg state service and was subsequently attached to the...
, Schleiermacher, Alexander
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
and Wilhelm von Humboldt
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt was a German philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of Humboldt Universität. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice...
, Motte Fouqué
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué
Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué was a German writer of the romantic style.-Biography:He was born at Brandenburg an der Havel, of a family of French Huguenot origin, as evidenced in his family name...
, Baron Brückmann, Ludwig Tieck
Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...
, Jean Paul
Jean Paul
Jean Paul , born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories.-Life and work:...
, and Friedrich Gentz. During a visit to Carlsbad
Karlovy Vary
Karlovy Vary is a spa city situated in western Bohemia, Czech Republic, on the confluence of the rivers Ohře and Teplá, approximately west of Prague . It is named after King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370...
in 1795 she was introduced to Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, whom she again saw in 1815, at Frankfurt am Main.
After the death of her father in 1806 she lived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, and Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. This period was one of misfortune for Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
; Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
was reduced to a small kingdom and her king was in exile. Secret societies were formed in every part of the country with the object of throwing off the tyranny of Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
. Levin herself belonged to one of these societies.
In 1814 she married, in Berlin, the biographer Karl August Varnhagen von Ense
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense was a German biographer, diplomat and soldier.-Biography:He was born at Düsseldorf, with siblings including Rosa Maria Varnhagen. He studied medicine in Berlin, but spent more time on philosophy and literature, which he later studied more thoroughly at Halle and...
, after converting
Religious conversion
Religious conversion is the adoption of a new religion that differs from the convert's previous religion. Changing from one denomination to another within the same religion is usually described as reaffiliation rather than conversion.People convert to a different religion for various reasons,...
to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
- this also made her sister-in-law to the poet Rosa Maria Assing
Rosa Maria Assing
Rosa Maria Antonetta Paulina Assing nee Varnhagen, was a German lyric poet, prose-writer, educator, translator and silhouette artist. She was the elder sister of Karl August Varnhagen, the sister-in-law of Rahel Levin, and the mother of Ottilie and Ludmilla Assing...
. At the time of their marriage, her husband, who had fought in the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n army against the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, belonged to the Prussian diplomatic corps
Diplomatic corps
The diplomatic corps or corps diplomatique is the collective body of foreign diplomats accredited to a particular country or body.The diplomatic corps may, in certain contexts, refer to the collection of accredited heads of mission who represent their countries in another state or country...
, and their house at Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
became the meeting-place of the Prussian delegates to the Congress of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
. She accompanied her husband in 1815 to Vienna, and in 1816 to Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
, where he was Prussian representative. After 1819 she again lived in Berlin, where Varnhagen had taken up his residence after having been retired from his diplomatic position.
Though never the author of a major book, Rahel Varnhagen is remembered both for the intensity and variety of her correspondence. Six thousand letters have survived, out of an estimated ten thousand letters written by her in the course of her lifetime. A few of her essays were published in Das Morgenblatt, Das Schweizerische Museum, and Der Gesellschafter; in 1830, her Denkblätter einer Berlinerin was published in Berlin. Her husband, Karl August, edited and published her correspondence in the twenty years following her death. Her correspondence with David Veit
David Veit
-Life:His father Joseph Veit was a banker and his brother Simon Veit was the husband of Moses Mendelssohn's daughter Dorothea Schlegel, making David uncle to the painter Philipp Veit. During David Veit's time as a student he began a correspondence with Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, in which Veit also...
and with Karl August was published in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, in 1861 and 1874–1875 respectively.
Relations with Judaism
According to the Jewish EncyclopediaJewish Encyclopedia
The Jewish Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...
(1906), "Rahel always showed the greatest interest in her former coreligionists
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, endeavoring by word and deed to better their position, especially during the anti-Semitic outburst in Germany
Hep-Hep riots
The Hep-Hep riots were early 19th century pogroms against German Jews. The antisemitic communal violence began on August 2, 1819 in Würzburg and soon reached as far as regions of Denmark, Poland, Latvia and Bohemia. Many Jews were killed and much Jewish property was destroyed.-Historical...
in 1819. On the day of her funeral Varnhagen sent a considerable sum of money to the Jewish poor of Berlin."
Amos Elon
Amos Elon
-Biography:Amos Elon was born in Vienna. He immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1933. He studied law and history in Israel and England. He was married to Beth Elon, a New York-born literary agent, with whom he had one daughter, Danae. In the 1990s, Elon began to spend much of his time in Italy...
wrote about Rahel Varnhagen in his 2002 book The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933:
She hated her Jewish background and was convinced it had poisoned her life. For much of her adult life she was what would later be called self-hatingSelf-hating JewSelf-hating Jew is a term used to allege that a Jewish person holds antisemitic beliefs or engages in antisemitic actions. The concept gained widespread currency after Theodor Lessing's 1930 book Der Jüdische Selbsthass ; the term became "something of a key term of opprobrium in and beyond Cold...
. Her overriding desire was to free herself from the shackles of her birth; since, as she thought, she had been "pushed out of the world" by her origins, she was determined to escape them. She never really succeeded. In 1810, she changed her family name to Robert... And in 1814, after her mother died, she converted. But her origins continued to haunt her even on her deathbed. ... She considered her origins "a curse, a slow bleeding to death." ... The idea that as a Jew she was always required to be exceptional - and go on proving it all the time - was repugnant to her. "How wretched it is always to have legitimize myself! That is why it is so disgusting to be a Jew."
Rahel's husband published an account of her deathbed scene, which Amos Elon
Amos Elon
-Biography:Amos Elon was born in Vienna. He immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1933. He studied law and history in Israel and England. He was married to Beth Elon, a New York-born literary agent, with whom he had one daughter, Danae. In the 1990s, Elon began to spend much of his time in Italy...
described as "stylized and possibly overdramatised", including her alleged last words:
What a history! A fugitive from Egypt and Palestine, here I am and find help, love, fostering in you people. With real rapture I think of those origins of mine and this whole nexus of destiny, through which the oldest memories of the human race stand side by side with the latest developments ... The thing which all my life seemed to me the greatest shame, which was the misery and misfortune of my life—having been born a Jewess—this I should on no account now wish to have missed.
The poet Ludwig Robert
Ludwig Robert
Ludwig Robert born 1778, died 1832. He was born into a well-off Jewish family, a brother of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense. He wrote plays, including the tragedy Die Macht der Verhältnisse which deals with the position of Jews in society....
was her brother, and she corresponded extensively with him; her sister Rosa was married to Karel Asser, Ludmilla Assing
Ludmilla Assing
Rosa Ludmilla Assing was a German writer, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Achim Lothar and Talora. Her mother Rosa Maria Assing was an author and her sister Ottilie Assing a feminist activist....
and Ottilie Assing
Ottilie assing
Ottilie Davida Assing was a 19th century German feminist, freethinker, and abolitionist. Born in Hamburg, she was the eldest daughter of a prominent Jewish physician, David Assur, who converted to Christianity upon marriage and changed his name to Assing...
were her nieces-in-law.