Völker, Martin A.

GEBUNDEN SIND DIE FLÜGEL DER GEDANKEN LOUISE BRACHMANN (1777-1822) Supplement to An Encyclopedia of German Women Writers

2006 0-7734-5533-7
Louise Brachmann is an almost-forgotten Romantic figure, friend of Sidonie von Hardenberg, sister of the major 19th-century German writer Novalis. Schiller published some of her poems. Several of her family and friends died while she was still in her twenties, and she was forced to make a living by writing. Unhappy love affairs, poor reception of her work, and uncertainties in daily life led her eventually to drown herself. Her stories, poems, and death exemplify German Romanticism. Her sufferings were widely discussed together with her radical ideas about the role of women in society and support for Greek independence. This edition brings together works that are critical of Enlightenment views on nature, God, and death. It is an important reflection of the crisis of cultural values at the beginning of the 19th century, when established views on the family, the state and the power of reason were being questioned, and the editor provides a critical assessment of Brachmann’s importance within that context.