Elizabeth Catharina von Arnim 1785 - 1859
Elizabeth Catharina von Arnim 1785-1859 Known as Bettina von Arnim, she was closely related to the German writers Clemens Brentano and Ludwig Achim von Arnim: the first was her brother, the second her husband. Her daughter Gisela von Arnim became a writer as well.
From 1991 until 31 December 2001, her portrait was printed on the German 5-DM bill.
Bettina von Arnim was a passionate friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig von Beethoven, Margaret Fuller and Robert Wesselhoeft. Arnim was an advocate of homeopathy and sought homeopathic treatment for her daughter from Karl Ferdinand Kuchler,
Bettina von Arnim lived next door to Margaret Fuller and Robert Wesselhoeft when she was in America, and became part of the swirling social circle of homeopathic supporters there. Herbert George Wells had an affair with Elizabeth von Arnim who lived next door to the famous homeopath Robert Wesselhoeft when she lived in America.:
Margaret Fuller was an active supporter of homeopathy and at the centre of a social circle glittered with homeopaths and their supporters, including Caroline Wells Healey Dall, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Moncure Daniel Conway, Mercy Bisbee Jackson, Carolina Maria Seymour Severance, the Wesselhoeft family, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Mary Gove Nichols, Mary Baker Eddy and Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis.
Margaret Fuller was also part of the intelligentsia who gathered around James T Fields, one of America’s most famous publisher of American writers, and a partner in Ticknor and Fields, had a bookstore known as Parnassus Corner on Old Corner.
His literary salon was packed with the influential people of the time, including Louisa May Alcott, John Greenleaf Whittier, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, James Russell Lowell, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Julia Ward Howe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Mark Twain, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Bret Harte, Bayard Taylor, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edwin Booth, and Nathaniel Parker Willis, who described Parnassus Corner as ‘the hub in which every spoke of the radiating wheel of Boston intellect had a socket.. ‘
Margaret Fuller would also have known all of the homeopaths and homeopathic supporters who frequented Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s Foreign Library: Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Susan B Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, Josephine S Griffing, Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimke Sisters, William Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, Theodore Parker, Clemence Lozier, Charlotte Denman Lozier, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Julia Ward Howe, William Lloyd Garrison, Hamilton Wilcox, Emily Howard Jennings Stowe, Susan B Anthony, Clara Barton, Phoebe Ann (Coffin) Hanaford, Moncure Daniel Conway, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sarah Orne Jewett, the Houghtons, George Palmer Putnam, William Cullen Bryant, William Ellery Channing, Ellery Channing, George and Sophia Ripley, Orestes Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, John Sullivan Dwight, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, Ednah Dow Cheney, the Bartlett’s, the Wesselhoefts, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, Hamilton Wilcox, Emily Howard Jennings Stowe, and many others.
Margaret Fuller’s younger sister Ellen Fuller married Ellery Channing. Margaret Fuller also knew homeopaths Christopher M Weld, James Garth Wilkinson and Robert Wesselhoeft.
Minna Wesselhoeft and Margaret Fuller were the two translators of the Correspondence of Fraulein Gunderode and Bettina von Arnim 1861.
Bettina von Arnim also knew Theodore Parker, who interviewed her in Berlin:
I gave the letter to the porter.
Presently she came; said she did not speak English. I went in. Saw a gentleman there rather vulgar-looking, from forty-five to fifty (his name I did not catch in the introduction), with a blue coat and metal buttons, a great patch of court-plaster on his forehead. They were sitting, or had been, on a little sofa, at a table, taking coffee; I also took a cup.
Soon we talked about Mrs. Edward Robinson and Dr. R., who, she said, looked like a Menschenfresser (ogre). Mrs. R. was very geistreick; she wondered at the union; asked if Mrs. Robinson was happy in America,—if Robinson had a great renown? still insisting that he was a Menschenfresser. I told her in explanation of the marriage that all of that class loved women, and so must have a wife.
She said, “He is tyrannisch”; asked if the men did not tyrannize over the women in America? I told her no, but the tyranny was on the other side. She showed me a letter from Mrs. L. M. Child, and her “Letters from New York,” which she said she should not read; she could not read English with pleasure, and now reads almost nothing.
She has many letters from all parts; was pleased when I told her that her books were much read in America. I told her also of Karoline von Gunderode. She showed me a great mass of criticisms in a scrap-book, of which she complained that they did not understand her,—though they all were favorable notices.
She had ‘forgotten’ Margaret Fuller (though she remembered her at length), and the books, but had never read them. She showed me a volume of her letters, just printed but not published; her earliest letters, when she was but fifteen. The volume Clemens Brentano’s Lauberkranze, etc., Charlottenburg bei Egbert Baier, 1844) contains letters that passed between her and her brother. She dedicates it to Prince Waldemar, sends a copy to the King, of course to the Censure,—for it may be prohibited! Another volume is to follow.
She said she once printed a book that was forbidden,—suppressed! and another book has met with much hostility from the ministers, who have tried to pass a law that shall yet crush it; but this the King refuses to sanction. She spoke with great freedom about the King; told me that at Aachen in a certain company some one proposed the King’s health,—the company hissed down the proposal, and threw the man out of the window!
She thinks him a tyrant; spoke of the affairs of Silesia; said that 70,000 men were there suffering for want, almost in a state of famishing. Still there was bread enough in the land, but the rich landholders crushed the people, and the King did them no good. He was religious; built a cathedral that cost a million thalers, and served God in that way.
She read me four or five pages of a book that she is publishing about Silesia, in which she says that the Bible speaks of two Paradises; one is Yenseits, the other is certainly not the Province of Silesia. (Frederick II called Silesia his Paradise.)
Then she tells how the serpent has come in; the Schlangenmutter (namely, the Government), and the Schlangenbrud (namely, the officials); that the Menschenmutter has eaten the apple, and hence the Menschenbrud are in a sad condition. The serpent has deceived them there; they eat neither of the Tree of Life nor the Tree of Knowledge; the rich keep them from one, the Government from the other. They are like to be obliged to come upon the Schlangenbrud for their diet! How the Government will welcome such a book it is not difficult to see.
She had complained there is no courage in Deutschland. I told her if the men lacked it she had enough; that she had the courage of a Jewish prophet, and the inspiration of a Christian apostle. She said she was not Christian, but heathen; she prayed to Jupiter. I told her that was nothing; there was but one God, whose name was neither Jupiter nor Jehovah; and He took each true prayer.
Then she said she was no Christian. I asked, “Have you no respect for Christ?” “None for his person, for he had done more harm to the world than any other man.” But that was not his fault; for many years his name has been a Beil (axe) with which the bigots have beheaded the liberals; a name in virtue of which the worst tyranny has been carried on.
I found, however, that for the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and for all the great doctrines of religion she had the greatest respect. I told her there was, to my thinking, but one religion; that was being good and doing good. She said Yes; but doing good was not vulgar charity, but lifting up the fallen, and helping forward the Entwickelung der Menscheit (Development of Man).
I stayed an hour and a half, and a most animated time we had. Her English is about as bad as my German. Yet she had the exceeding generosity to try to talk English.
Bettina Brentano von Arnim (the Countess of Arnim) 1785 - 1859 born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was a German writer and novelist, was a writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual artist, an illustrator, patron of young talent and a social activist.
She was the archetype of the Romantic era’s zeitgeist, and the crux of many creative relationships of canonical artistic figures. Bettina is best known for the company she kept. She had deep friendships with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ludwig von Beethoven and tried to foster an artistic union between them.
Many leading composers of the time, such as Robert Alexander Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johanna Kinkel and Johannes Brahms, admired her for her spirit and her talents. Her composition style was unconventional, in that it molded and melded her favorite features of the old—folk music and historic themes—with unusual harmonies, phrase lengths and improvisations that became synonymous with the music of the time.
Bettina von Arnim was closely related to the German writers Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim: the first was her brother, the second her husband. Her daughter Gisela von Arnim became a prominent writer as well.
Bettina was born in Frankfurt, Germany on April 4, 1785 into a large family of an Italian merchant. Her grandmother Sophie von La Roche was a novelist and her brother was Clemens Brentano, the great poet known for his lyric poems, libretto and singspiel. He was a mentor and protector to her, and influenced her to read poetry of the time, especially Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In 1811 she married Achim von Arnim, the renowned Romantic poet. They settled in Berlin and had seven children. Achim von Arnim died in 1831, but Bettina maintained an active public life. She wrote, inspired and published until January 20, 1859 when she died surrounded by her children.
From 1991 until 31 December 2001, her portrait was printed on the German 5-DM bill.
The years of 1806-08, she was integral to gathering the folk songs for Des Knaben Wunderhorn by Gustav Mahler, the collaborative work of her brother and her future husband, Achim von Arnim. This piece became a touchstone of the Romantic musical and poetic style.
From 1808 to 1809 she studied voice, composition and piano in Munich under Peter von Winter and Sebastian Bopp. She published her first song under the pseudonym Beans Beor. Bettina sang briefly in the Berliner Singakademie and composed settings of Hellenistic poems by Amalie von Helvig (niece of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).
It was thought that she had stopped composing due to her domestic duties after her 1811 marriage, but several more art songs have been recovered and have been published in Werke und Briefe. Another notable fact is that she was the first composer to set the poet Hölderlin’s work to song.
She was a muse to the progressives of Prussia. She was linked to the socialist movement and was an advocate for the oppressed Jewish community. She published two politically dissident works but she evaded chastisement because of her friendship with the King of Prussia.
After the 1831 death of her husband, Bettina continued her dedication to the creative community. She published a collection of seven songs as a public sign of support for Prussian Music Director, Gaspare Spontini, who was under a great deal of duress.
A great love of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s work and friendship, which began when she was 21 and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 58, stayed with her over the breadth of her life. Bettina’s Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (literally: “Exchange of letters with a child”) was a published volume of letters between her and the renowned author which portrayed a mutual romance. However, the originals of these letters were discovered after her death.
Some commentators claim that her published versions were significantly edited to bolster the appearance of an intimate relationship and that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s own letters to her were much more formal and impersonal than the versions Bettina had published. However, a close comparison of the letters indicates this claim is not justified.
His letters to her were similar in style and content to what she published, although she added fictional portions indicating his support for Tyrolean rebels with whom Bettina sympathized. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe could not have expressed such support because the Duke for whom he worked was part of a Napoleonic alliance that included Bavaria, which was suppressing the rebels.
The life of Bettina von Arnim, particularly her relationship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was explored at length by the Franco-Czech author Milan Kundera in his novel Immortality. Closely tied to the main theme of his book, Milan Kundera interpreted Bettina as attempting to achieve lasting fame through her promotion of and relation to great men.
However, it is not disputed that thirteen letters to her from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe have been found as has been one to her from Ludwig von Beethoven. The text of the found letter from Ludwig von Beethoven is identical to what she published.
In 2002, the Beethoven Journal, published by the American Beethoven Society, included an article that claimed that Bettina was Ludwig von Beethoven’s famous Immortal Beloved. Bettina had published three letters she claimed to have received from Ludwig von Beethoven. Only one has been found and it was identical to what she had published.
In the found letter, Ludwig von Beethoven acknowledged receiving two letters from Bettina and begged her to write to him again “soon and often”. He also wrote that he had carried one of her letters around with him the whole summer and that it made him “often supremely happy”. In closing the letter, he addressed her in the intimate German “du-form”, which so far as is known, he never used in his letters to any woman except to the Immortal Beloved.
If another of the three letters from Ludwig von Beethoven that Bettina published is genuine, it would conclusively prove that she was his Immortal Beloved.
The failed 1847 German settlement of Bettina in Texas was named by its progressive, idealistic founders for Bettina von Arnim. It was located near the join of Elm Creek and the Llano River, and lasted only a year, disbanding in 1848. There is no trace of the Bettina community, other than the later prominence of two of its founders, Gustav Schleicher (later a U.S. congressman and namesake of Schleicher County) and Ferdinand Herff, who in 1854 became the first surgeon to use anesthesia in Texas.
Bettina von Arnim was the 7th child of Maximmilliane von La Roche Bretano. She was tutored by her grandmother, the authoress Sophie von La Roche, and she became part of her older brother Clemens Brentano’s Romantic Circle, where she met her husband Achim von Arnim, Karoline von Gunderode and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Bettina von Arnim did not begin writing until her husband’s death in 1831, when she began to write extensively, of her friendships, of her political views and her poetry. Bettina von Arnim also wrote fairy tales.
Bettina von Arnim undertook relief work during the Cholera epidemic in 1831 and wrote in support of many political causes, for the emancipation of the Jews, in support of Polish freedom fighters, for the Silesian weavers - for which she was arrested, and in support of the imprisoned radicals after the German Revolution in 1848.
Bettina von Arnim dropped the aristocratic ‘von’ from her surname. Arnim also held a renowned salon, through which she knew Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz, the brothers Grimm (who dedicated their fairy tale collection to her), Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx.
Of interest:
Christian and Ingrid von Arnim translated some correspondence of Rudolf Steiner and his wife 1901 - 1925
Ludwig Achim (or Joachim) von Arnim 1781 – 1831 was a German poet and novelist born in Berlin.
Arnim was descended from a Prussian noble family. His father was Joachim Erdmann von Arnim (1741-1804), associated with the Prussian court and, among other roles, active as the Director of the Berlin theater. His mother, Amalia Carlonia Labes (1761-1781), died immediately after Arnim’s birth.
Arnim spent his childhood with a grandmother in Berlin. He went on to study law and natural science at Halle and Göttingen, though he inclined from the first towards literature. His early writings included numerous articles for scientific magazines.
He went on to travel through Europe with his brother, Carl Otto Ludwig, from 1801 to 1804. He published the important romantic Zeitung für Einsiedler (Newspaper for Hermits) in Heidelberg in 1808.
Arnim was influenced by the earlier writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Herder, from which he learned to appreciate the beauties of German traditional legends and folk songs. Forming a collection of these, published the result (1806-1808), in collaboration with Clemens Brentano under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn. He married Brentano’s sister Bettina in 1811, who won wide recognition as a writer in her own right, and his daughter Gisela (one of five children) became a writer as well.
He lived in Berlin from 1809, worked on Heinrich von Kleist’s paper there and founded the political union “Deutsche Tischgesellschaft“. From October 1813 to February 1814 he was publisher of the Berlin paper The Prussian Correspondent.
He remained connected with the Prussian patriots (Adam Heinrich Muller, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, Heinrich von Kleist.) He moved in 1814 to his family home, Schloss Wiepersdorf, were he remained until his death by heart attack in 1831. His output, published in newspapers, magazines and almanacs as well as self-contained books, included novels, dramas, stories, poems and journalistic works.
Following his death, his library was taken over by the Weimar court library. He is considered one of the most important representatives of German romanticism.
Achim von Arnim, who also conducted experiments with the Volta column on his eyeball and
tongue, stopped before the boundary of physical destruction. He used far weaker currents than his physicist colleague; furthermore he refused to perform Johann Wilhelm Ritter’s extreme experiments on his own eyeball. In his review of Johann Wilhelm Ritter’s Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse eines jungen Physikers he complained about the latter’s lack of “Ehrfurcht vor dem eignen Körper“ (reverence for his own body)…These were heroic acts at the beginning of a chain of self-experiments that, every now and
then, ended tragically – as was seen in Johann Wilhelm Ritter’s case. Johann Wilhelm Ritter pushed the self-experiment to the extreme.Most romantics, such as Achim von Arnim, Kleist, and Clemens Brentano went down another path. Despite their life-long interest, they turned away from the “Experiment im Glase” (experiment in vitro). Instead they searched for the romantic concept of a unity of nature
and mind by means of an “Experiment im Kopfe” (experiment in the head): They turned to poetry… By means of his body, Achim von Arnim argued, man is provided with the empfindlichste Elektroskop (most sensitive electroscope)
Achim von Arnim German folklorist, published Des Knaben Wunderhorn, setting the stage for the work of the Brothers Grimm.
Achim von Arnim was born in Berlin of an aristocratic Prussian family. He studied science and law at the universities of Halle and Göttingen but soon turned his attention to literature. After becoming acquainted with the poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Clemens Brentano, Arnim traveled extensively through western Europe and England.
He then settled in Heidelberg, where he, Clemens Brentano, and the poet Johann Josef von Gorres formed the Heidelberg group of the German romantic school and founded a literary journal, Zeitung für Einsiedler (Newspaper for Hermits).
Between 1805 and 1808 Arnim and Clemens Brentano compiled Des KnabenWunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), the best-known collection of German folk songs. It consisted chiefly of actual folk poetry, although many of the verses were revised or even composed by the editors. The naive “folk” tone, however, was maintained throughout.
Arnim’s personal lyric output was augmented in 1806 by his volume of war songs for use by the Prussian army. In 1808 he moved to Berlin, where he rejoined Clemens Brentano and began a series of stories and dramas on historical subjects. In 1809 Arnim published his novel Grafin Dolores “for the instruction and amusement of impoverished young ladies.”
In 1811 Arnim married Bettina Brentano, a writer of the romantic school and the sister of Clemens Brentano. At an early age she had become a close friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and her lively exchange of letters with him was published in 1835 as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child).
In 1813 Arnim became a captain in the Prussian army and fought in the war against Napoleon. He was also an editor of the patriotic newspaper Der Rheinische Merkur. His unfinished novel, Die Kronenwachter (1817; The Crown Guardians), concerns the mystical influence of undiscovered royal blood and a secret society on the life of a young adventurer.
Arnim later became a gentleman farmer in Wiepersdorf, Brandenburg, where he died on Jan. 21, 1831.
Bettina von Arnim continued her literary work after her husband’s death. She wrote polemical treatises for such liberal causes as the rights of workers and women. Her most famous political work was her declaration of principles, Dies Buch gehort dem Konig (1843; This Book Belongs to the King). She died on Jan. 20, 1859.
Clemens Brentano, or Klemens Brentano 1778 – 1842 was a German poet and novelist. He was born in Ehrenbreitstein, near Koblenz, Germany.
His sister was Bettina von Arnim, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s correspondent.
His father’s family was of Italian descent. He studied in Halle and Jena, afterwards residing at Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin.
He was close to Wieland, Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Fichte and Tieck.
From 1798 to 1800 Clemens Brentano lived in Jena, the first center of the romantic movement.
In 1801, he moved to Göttingen, and became a friend of Achim von Arnim. He married Sophie Mereau on 29 October 1803. In 1804, he moved to Heidelberg and worked with Arnim on Zeitungen für Einsiedler and Des Knaben Wunderhorn. After his wife Sophie died in 1806 he married a second time in 1807 to Auguste Busmann. In the years between 1808 and 1818, he lived mostly in Berlin, and from 1819 to 1824 in Dülmen, Westphalia.
In 1818, weary of his somewhat restless and unsettled life, he returned to the practice of the Catholic faith and withdrew to the monastery of Dülmen, where he lived for some years in strict seclusion.
He took on there the position of secretary to the Catholic visionary nun, the Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, of whom it was said that, during the last 12 years of her life, she could eat no food except Holy Communion, nor take any drink except water, subsisting entirely on the Holy Eucharist. It was claimed that from 1802 until her death, she bore the wounds of the Crown of Thorns, and from 1812, the full stigmata, including a cross over her heart and the wound from the lance.
Clemens Brentano made her acquaintance, was converted to the strong faith, and remained at the foot of the stigmatist’s bed copying her dictation without embellishment from 1818-1824. When she died, he prepared an index of the visions and revelations from her journal, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (published 1833). One of these visions made known by Clemens Brentano later resulted in supposed identification of the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus by Abbé Julien Gouyet, a French priest, during 1881.
The latter part of his life he spent in Regensburg, Frankfurt and Munich, actively engaged in Catholic propaganda. Clemens Brentano assisted Achim von Arnim, his brother in law, in the collection of folk-songs forming Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805-1808), which Gustav Mahler drew upon for his song cycle. He died in Aschaffenburg.
Clemens Brentano, whose early writings were published under the pseudonym Maria, belonged to the Heidelberg group of German romantic writers, and his works are marked by excess of fantastic imagery and by abrupt, bizarre modes of expression.
His first published writings were Satiren und poetische Spiele (1800), and a romance Godwi oder Das steinerne Bild der Mutter (1801); of his dramas the best are Ponce de Leon (1804), Victoria (1817) and Die Grundung Prags (1815).
On the whole his finest work is the collection of Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (published posthumously in 1852); his short stories, and more especially the charming Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1838), which has been translated into English, were very popular.
Clemens Brentano’s collected works, edited by his brother Christian, appeared at Frankfurt in 9 vols. (1851-1855). Selections have been edited by JB Diel (1873), M Koch (1892), and J Dohmke (1893). See JB Diel and William Kreiten, Klemens Brentano (2 vols, 1877-1878), the introduction to Koch’s edition, and R Steig, A. von Arnim und K. Brentano (1894).
Gisela von Arnim 1827 – 1889 was a German writer, mainly of fairy tales.
Gisela was the youngest child of Achim von Arnim and Bettina von Arnim. She was not formally educated, being taught only by her sisters.
In her youth she read fairy tales and Romantic poetry, especially the works of Wilhelm Hauff, and began to write fairy tales herself.
With her sisters she started the “Kaffeter circle”, first a group for young women and later a full literary salon also including men (honorary members included Hans Christian Andersen and Emmanuel Geibel).
In 1859, she married Germanist and art historian Herman Grimm, a son of Wilhelm Grimm.
Sue :: Sep.03.2008 :: European History :: No Comments »