[In the following essay, Waldstein notes that Varnhagen's letters reflect a constant renegotiation and reconstruction of Varnhagen's identity. Waldstein claims that these shifting identities reveal Varnhagen's various identities—woman, German, Jew, writer—without depicting a unified, traditional sense of self.]

In German literary history Rahel Varnhagen has been known primarily for the many letters she wrote and for her role as the leading salonière in Berlin at the turn of the last century. Her letters have been described as having a literary quality, and her conversational skills have been praised as being superior. That she was a cultural figure of great importance was recognized during her own time and cannot be denied today. Literary critics are now even arguing that Varnhagen, among other romantic women writers, is the source of a female literary tradition in Germany that has only recently been discovered.¹ Nonetheless, a tension pervades her letters that reflects a never-ending struggle with herself and others for self-definition and identity construction.

Because she was generally held in high esteem, many women aspired to emulate her model. At the same time, her expressions of feeling appealed to the margins; because she was a Jew and a woman, she struck a cord in Jewish and gentile women alike. Varnhagen is viewed today as a complex study in the dilemmas that face culturally active women: Is it possible to forge an identity in a social/cultural environment in which one is both included and excluded? And further, what is the relationship between creative production and the degree of success with which one is able to define an identity under such circumstances?

Reflective of her struggle with identity is the fact that Varnhagen changed her name twice during her life. Her given name was Rahel Levin. By 1810 both her parents had died, and she changed her name to Rahel Robert, following the example of her brother Ludwig. Shortly before her marriage to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense in 1814 she converted to Christianity and changed her first name to Antonie Friederike. With marriage, she acquired the surname von Varnhagen.²

Rahel Varnhagen was born in Berlin in 1771. Her father was, professionally, a prominent jewelry merchant and, privately, a “moody autocrat.”³ In general, her life at home, where she stayed until she was 37 years old, was difficult. As a woman in her mid-forties she identifies the neglect and pain she experienced in her youth and describes how she blamed herself for it in silence:

Angeschrieen, überschrieen, beseitigt, unberücksichtigt, die ganze lange Jugend durch; das andere mag ich gar nicht einmal nennen. Gott selbst hörte mich nicht. Er wollte es so: und ich habe mich auch schon längere Zeit unterworfen. […] Ich schwieg in meiner Jugend, in meinem Reichtum, und dachte, es müßte so sein. Hielt ewig mich für ungraziös, und das so intim, so gewiß, daß ich's nicht einmal sagte […].⁴

Nonetheless, this home was the place where she first experienced sociability. Her father enjoyed entertaining visitors, and Rahel grew up in a house that was often filled with guests.

In the 1790's, during the period of her first salon (1790-1806), Varnhagen was “mak[ing] herself into a person of intellectual competence” (Hertz, 1986, p. 276). She lived at home with her mother and brothers and hired tutors to improve her mathematical and language skills. She spent the summers at spas and in the winter invited people to her attic apartment in the center of Berlin, whereby she continued her education. The combination of tutelage and social conversation formed the basis of her “learning” during these years.

The German romantic salon of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provided the women of the bourgeoisie, intelligentsia, and the aristocracy a channel through which to let their political, artistic, and personal voices be heard with much more poignancy than had been the case in previous centuries. While the institution of the salon itself first appeared as early as the fourteenth century in Italy⁵ and then flourished in seventeenth-century France, the cultural transition from the Enlightenment to the German Romantic Period provided, at the turn of the nineteenth century, the elements for a distinctly different kind of salon. Here classes and genders were quite mixed (with the exception of the lower middle and working classes). Guests from a variety of professions, ranging from government officials to writers and other artists, met to discuss the political and social issues of the day, the latest developments in the world of art, and personal concerns.⁶ Women hosted all of these salons.

Salon culture appeared and flourished in “pre-industrial European cities where there was peace, prosperity, a tiny intelligentsia, an absence of meritocratic intellectual institutions, an intellectually motivated and urbanized nobility, and where wealthy women's intellects were valued by themselves and others” (Hertz, 1986, p. 276). This milieu set the stage for the establishment of the salon culture that existed in Berlin at the turn of the century. In Berlin alone sixteen salons existed between 1780 and 1806, and Rahel Varnhagen's was the most famous one.⁷ The success of her salon, which was at its peak around 1796, must be attributed to Varnhagen's intelligence and social skills. She was able to attract a group of guests who were or would later constitute some of Germany's most intellectually prominent figures. She offered her guests romantic Geselligkeit. Aristocrats, artists, military men, diplomats, professors, and literary women created “harmonische Kommunikation.”⁸

The Varnhagen salon came to a standstill in 1806, when French troops occupied Berlin. Varnhagen left Berlin on several occasions, often for extended periods, and finally returned in 1819, at which point she had been married (and baptized) for five years. She, together with her husband, opened her second salon upon their return, and it lasted until 1832. The names of a few of the guests in attendance at both salons will suffice to give evidence of the diversity and prominence of her social gatherings: the philosopher and student of Hegel, Eduard Gans; the classical philologist Friedrich August Wolf; the historian Leopold Ranke; the Prussian general Wilhelm von Willisen; Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia and his lover Pauline Wiesel; Heinrich Heine; Achim and Bettine von Arnim; Clemens Brentano; Jean Paul; Ludwig Tieck; Adelbert von Chamisso; Friedrich von Fouqué; Alexander von Humboldt; Friedrich Schleiermacher; Johann Gottlieb Fichte; Friedrich Schlegel; Friedrich Gentz; and noblemen such as Gustav von Brinkmann and Wilhelm von Burgsdorff.

Rahel Varnhagen's salon was the exemplary romantic salon, from which younger salonières, such as Bettine von Arnim, benefited. The hosting of a salon allowed Varnhagen to express herself creatively in a personal, i.e. conversational, form, while simultaneously challenging the traditional domestic image of women. In her home she could combine the personal, the political, and the artistic. While not underestimating this important role, it is important to note that the impulse for the creation of a romantically defined democratic spirit and for the destruction of hierarchy in the private and public spheres (through the institution of the salon) was quite one-sided. Everyone attended Rahel Varnhagen's salon, but someone like Prince Louis Ferdinand would never invite Varnhagen to his social gatherings. Her cultural position as a salonière reflects her social position as a Jewish woman: “Ihre [Varnhagens] gesellschaftliche Position ist nicht gleich, sondern ungeklärt, exotisch und schief; darin liegt ihr Privileg.”⁹

Although Rahel Varnhagen was born into an assimilated Jewish family, she did not continue this tradition. Instead of marrying a man with a similar background, she remained single until the age of 43, cultivated friendships with gentiles, sometimes to the dismay of her family, and then finally converted to Christianity in order to marry Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. She willingly distanced herself from her religious and cultural heritage without being able to assimilate, at least through marriage, for quite a long time. This placed her at the fringe of two cultures. Assimilation was a difficult process, and the tension it produced manifested itself in conflicted expressions of identity. These persisted throughout her life. The most explicit (and often-cited) remark was, in fact, made on her deathbed to her husband. It is worth repeating here in its full context for the purpose of emphasizing not only the positive attitude toward Judaism, despite her conversion of many years, but also the simultaneous positive valuation of Christianity.

[…] “Welche Geschichte!—rief sie mit tiefer Bewegung aus—, eine aus Agypten und Palästina Geflüchtete bin ich hier, und find Hülfe, Liebe und Pflege von euch! Dir, lieber August, war ich zugesandt, durch diese Führung Gottes, und du mir! Mit erhabenem Entzücken denk' ich an diesen meinen Ursprung und diesen ganzen Zusammenhang des Geschickes, durch welches die ältesten Erinnerungen des Menschengeschlechts mit der neuesten Lage der Dinge, die weitesten Zeit- und Raumfernen verbunden sind. Was so lange Zeit meines Lebens mir die größte Schmach, das herbste Leid und Unglück war, eine Jüdin geboren zu sein, um keinen Preis möcht' ich das jetzt missen. Wird es mir nicht eben so mit diesen Krankheitsleiden gehen, so werd' ich einst nicht eben so mich freudig an ihnen erheben, sie um keinen Preis missen wollen? O lieber August, welche tröstliche Einsicht, welch bedeutendes Gleichniß! Auf diesem Wege wollen wir fortgehen!” Und darauf sagte sie unter vielen Thränen: Lieber August, mein Herz ist im Innersten erquickt; ich habe an Jesus gedacht, und über sein Leiden geweint; ich habe gefühlt, zum erstenmal es so gefühlt, daß er mein Bruder ist […].¹⁰

In addition to her conflicted religious sentiments, Varnhagen's attitude toward her position as a woman in a predominantly male culture also exhibits internal strife. She is quite aware of the social injustices inflicted upon women and articulates the dire consequences that await those who resist fulfilling the social expectations of them, in their attempt to define themselves:

Es ist Menschenkunde, wenn sich die Leute einbilden, unser [der Frauen] Geist sei anders und zu andern Bedürfnissen konstituiert, und wir könnten zum Exempel ganz von des Mannes oder Sohns Existenz mitzehren. Diese Forderung entsteht nur aus der Voraussetzung, daß ein Weib in ihrer ganzen Seele nichts Höheres kennte als grade die Forderungen und Ansprüche ihres Mannes in der Welt; oder die Gaben und Wünsche ihrer Kinder: dann wäre jede Ehe, schon bloß als solche, der höchste menschliche Zustand; so aber ist es nicht; und man liebt, hegt, pflegt wohl die Wünsche der Seinigen […] aber erfüllen, erholen, uns ausruhen, zu fernerer Tätigkeit, und Tragen, können die uns nicht; oder auf unser ganzes Leben hinaus stärken und kräftigen. Dies ist der Grund des vielen Frivolen, was man bei Weibren sieht, und zu sehen glaubt: sie haben der beklatschten Regel nach gar keinen Raum für ihre eigene Füße, müssen sie nur immer dahin setzen, wo der Mann eben stand, und stehen will; und sehen mit ihren Augen die ganze bewegte Welt wie etwa einer, der wie ein Baum mit Wurzeln in der Erde verzaubert wäre; jeder Versuch, jeder Wunsch, den unnatürlichen Zustand zu lösen, wird Frivolität genannt; oder noch für strafwürdiges Benehmen gehalten.¹¹

Despite such astute observations, Varnhagen avoids identifying herself with other women on the basis of shared gender-determined problems. She admired many women,¹² and her intimate friendships with Pauline Wiesel and Rebekka Friedländer implicitly reflect some kind of solidarity as the result of perceived similarities in their social situations. But the issue of gender is not explicitly addressed. Moreover, Varnhagen is anxious to distinguish herself from most other women, especially when they readily identify themselves with her. In a letter to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, in which she bemoans the fact that she hasn't any good friends to see her through difficult times, she writes:

Die Frauen, die ich sehe, bringen mich ganz herunter, physisch. Meine Nerven. Sie spannen mir die Gedanken so ab. Sie sind so erstaunlich matt, beinah unklug aus Zusammenhanglosigkeit. Und nehmen die Parallele von sich zu mir so gewiß an, daß nur aus dem Zimmer laufen mich retten kann.¹³

She goes on to mention one woman, in particular, who sought her support the previous day because of a “catastrophe” she was facing. Varnhagen, who must have felt the aversion toward this woman she described earlier in the letter, writes Karl August that she responded like a man: “[…] auf meinem Sopha findet sie [die Frau] Trost, Rath, Zusprechen; kurz, eine Freundin. Gerührt war ich nicht. Auch nicht schmeichlend, aber thätig; und sehr wie ein Mann.”¹⁴ While understanding many of the problems that faced the women of her time, Varnhagen does not want to be exclusively identified with them as a group. To some extent, especially given the above remark, this must be interpreted as an unwillingness to give up that part of her-self which is male-identified and which grants her a sense of inclusion and acceptance, despite her disadvantaged status as a woman.

That Varnhagen recognized the paradoxes that characterized so many aspects of her life and identity is made abundantly clear by the following statement in a letter to the novelist and close friend Rebekka Friedländer:

Was mir noch lieb ist: ist, daß ich mich kennen gelernt habe. […] Aus der Welt hat mich Geburt gestoßen, Glück nicht eingelassen, oder herunter; ich halte mich ewig an meines Herzens Kraft, und an was mein Geist mir zeigt. Dies ist der mir von der Natur angezeigte Kreis; und in dem bin ich mächtig und die Andern nichtig.

Wäre ich nur über gewaltsamen Tod, cachot, Operationen und Blindheit weg. Dann stünd mir der Tod—die Welt offen.—Es ist alles, wie es ist; das heißt ‘anders’.¹⁵

Through the recognition of her marginality she is able to articulate the need for and find inner strength. Her “heart” and her “intellect” are the indispensable components of her character. Through them she identifies herself in such a way as to resist the danger of self-effacement and rejection which could result from the internalization of the deeply ingrained societal attitudes toward women and Jews. She even goes one step further by transforming what would appear to be a defensive position into an offensive one. Varnhagen declares herself to be powerful over others in her self-assertion. Through the process of recognizing and verbalizing her marginality, she defines for herself a position of privilege.

Central to this construction of self is the romantic concept of Geselligkeit. That sociability, in the sense of free and equal exchange between the individual and a community, was a determining factor throughout much of her life becomes clear when one looks at the forms Varnhagen chose with which to communicate: salon conversation and volumes upon volumes of letters. The sociable character of communal conversation is obvious. The letter, too, has this quality, especially the letter of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During the Romantic period, and also somewhat earlier, letters were often written with a larger audience in mind than merely the person to whom the letter was addressed. At salon gatherings, for example, letters were frequently read aloud and discussed, or occasionally they were even written at the salon itself to other guests and formed the basis for an ensuing discussion. Outside of the salon, letters were sometimes written with instructions to read them to third parties. Among Rahel Varnhagen's letters one finds a mix of such “public” and more private letters.

Whether in the salon or in the letter, dialogue between two people or conversation among many marked Varnhagen's mode of expression. “Ja, ja, Redlichkeit ist das Wort, das ich meine; die und Verstand, die bahnen manchen Weg. Redlichkeit ist Wahrheit; und nur ein Narr liebt sie nicht […].”¹⁶ She excelled at the art of conversation. Grillparzer remarked that he had never heard anyone talk better,¹⁷ and her husband, after her death, recalls being struck by the beauty of her speech when he first met her:

Was mich […] am überraschendsten traf, war die klangvolle, weiche, aus der innersten Seele heraustönende Stimme, und das wunderbarste Sprechen, das mir noch vorgekommen war. In leichten, anspruchslosen Äußerungen der eigenthümlichsten Geistesart und Laune verbanden sich Naivetät und Witz, Schärfe und Lieblichkeit, und allem war zugleich eine tiefe Wahrheit wie von Eisen eingegossen […].

(Buch des Andenkens, I, pp. 5-6)

The corollary of this skill at talking is the ability to listen, since dialogue/conversation involves initiating the discussion of a topic, listening to the partner(s), and responding. In this area, too, Rahel Varnhagen seems to have surpassed her contemporaries. She encouraged conversational participation by others through her sympathetic and sensitive listening. Her salon was so popular, at least in part, because it provided an attractive opportunity for others to speak. As Liliane Weissberg points out, at least one salon guest, Heinrich Heine, knew how to cherish the silence Varnhagen provided “for the sake of others.”¹⁸

In her writing Varnhagen simulates conversation. Again, this involves both writing and “listening.” At times the letters are intimate, such as when she is writing to lovers or close friends. At others they are intellectual and analytic in their discussions of books and topics of interest to both parties. Regardless of the content, however, they always evoke an air of spontaneity and encourage response. Her style is marked by incorrect or peculiar grammar and orthographic inconsistencies which lend her language a sense of immediacy.

Although Varnhagen often complains of not having learned German properly (Western Yiddish was her native language), she also gives voice to the motivation and value of her creative, defiant impulses. As she explains to her friend David Veit, who liked to correct the letters he received from Varnhagen for public readings:

Glauben Sie, ich denke nicht dran, wenn ich Ihnen schreibe, wie Sie gleich, indem Sie's lesen, ohne gar zu wollen, die Perioden zurecht setzen, die ich verdrehe? und alles in Ordnung bringen? aber um mir Gerechtigkeit widerfahren zu lassen: manchmal weiß ich's selbst, daß sie nicht recht sind, aber ich lasse sie, um einen gewissen Ausdruck hinein zu bringen, und ihnen eine Physionomie zu geben, die ich gern will, daß sie haben sollen, um die Sache so zu geben, wie ich sie nehme.¹⁹

Veit, in fact, does respond in the way that Varnhagen would like him to, despite his initial tendency to “correct” her writing. For example, in trying to explain to himself the reason for the consistent incorrect spelling of French words in one of Varnhagen's letters to him, he writes to her:

[…] Sie haben ein beständiges Bestreben, sich alles was Sie lesen und sehen und hören […] eigen zu machen. Vermöge diesem allgemeinen Bestreben denken Sie die Wörter einer fremden Sprache ganz in Ihrer eignen, machen diese fremden Wörter zu Bestandtheilen Ihrer eignen Sprache, die Sie denn auch eben so denken müssen, wie Sie deutsch denken, und ganz ebenso, mit der nämlichen Orthographie.²⁰

He comes to understand that her style reflects the subjective authenticity toward which she is aspiring in her writing.

Veit is also directly affected in his own letter-writing, perhaps unknowingly, by Varnhagen's conversational prowess. As Weissberg's careful interpretation of the Veit/Varnhagen correspondence brings to light, Varnhagen turns “anti-pedagogy into the pedagogy of conversation itself.”²¹ She uses his corrections of her letters to pose further questions and insists that he respond to her letters/questions one after the other. This manipulative maneuver is yet another example of how Varnhagen both asks questions and states new ideas, both creates silence through the posing of questions and encourages response from her correspondent, both listens and speaks in her letters.

Varnhagen's style is filled with metaphor and neologism. The abundant use of these rhetorical devices further enhances her conversational mode. The function of both is to give new or added meaning to something that is already established or familiar, without naming that which is being replaced. The articulation of new concepts or thought processes is therefore a response to a silence about that which we know. Varnhagen “listens” through this implicit silence and simultaneously “talks” through the actual use of the metaphor or neologism.

That her written “conversations” in the form of letters have to do with listening as well as speaking is evidenced by Varnhagen's own perceptive analysis of her ability to draw language out of others. After a visit from the writer Karoline Fouqué, with whose husband Rahel Varnhagen had been corresponding, she writes to her husband, Karl August: “Mir geht's sonderbar; sonst werden die Autoren besucht; ich bin ein elender Leser, und die Schreibenden suchen mich auf.—Wahrhaftig, ich glaube, ich verstehe die Kunst zu schweigen; mit der Feder, wie manche geschickt mit dem Maule!—”²² On the one hand, she seems to be impressed by the power she ironically wields over writers through the creation of “silence”. On the other, she expresses uneasiness about being relegated to the sphere of “merely” reading/listening. Despite the contradictions in this statement and despite her “odd” feelings about her roles as reader and writer, Varnhagen emits an aura of strength, not self-effacement, through her penetrating self-analysis.²³ She, in fact, is also a writer, not only an “elender Leser.” Her writing of silence encourages others to write and speak. She is simultaneously speaking and listening through her writing, and thereby doing the ultimate in furthering genuine communication.

Varnhagen's language is not monadic, but a spontaneous expression of varied and sometimes opposing voices. Such opposition and contradiction create a momentary silence that can be interpreted as Varnhagen's listening and waiting for a response from the reader. Such language simultaneously has the ability to criticize itself and others constructively. All of this creates a sense of evolution. As Bakhtin claims of the novel, dialogue “inserts […] an indeterminacy, a certain semantic open-endedness, a living contact with unfinished, still evolving contemporary reality (the open-ended present).”²⁴

The contradictions, however, also reveal an element of tension. Neither language nor silence can ultimately express that which she wants to say about herself, and yet she must talk, even in her letters, if she is to construct a viable self: “Da Schweigen tausend anderem Schweigen so ähnlich ist, als sich die Worte sind, die nichts von dem ausdrücken, was in mir vorgeht, so will ich wieder reden.”²⁵ But can language be used to represent or construct the self, without destroying authenticity? As she comments on her own writing: “Oft les' ich in diesem Buche; und dann ist mir, als wär' ich todt […].”²⁶ It is significant that she writes this in her “Schreibbuche”, where there is no conversational partner, and not as part of a correspondence. In the same entry Varnhagen goes on to distinguish between simply writing about herself and her experiences and exchanging ideas and feelings with someone else. She prefers the conversational mode over the monologic one and finds it to be most authentic and productive in working through her feelings of being an outsider. In her epistolary exchange with others Varnhagen often emphasizes the ways in which she is different from her correspondent. Through this distinction she defines herself. The dynamic is not, however, one of opposition, but is perhaps best described as one of obversion. The correspondents form counterparts of one another through their dialogue. Varnhagen's correspondences with David Veit and Pauline Wiesel exemplify this particularly well.

In her correspondence with Veit, a quite successfully assimilated Jew, he is the teacher of socially acceptable writing, and of behavior in general. While maintaining that he is encouraging her emancipation through writing, he laboriously corrects her letters so that they will comply with contemporary literary conventions. He is in actuality trying to teach her how to adapt. Varnhagen consistently defies the standards he defines for her. Upon Veit's suggestion that she learn to write correctly through concentrated reading, Varnhagen responds:

Nun will ich Ihnen genau sagen was ich von meinem unrichtigen Schreiben weiß, ohne mich im geringsten entschuldigen zu wollen […]. Ich mag mir wirklich noch so viel vornehmen auf die Orthographie Acht geben, während ich lese, so geschieht's fast niemals, und bring' ich es einmal gleich anfangs beim Lesen dahin, so les' ich gar nicht, sondern sehe nun nur wieder wie die Worte geschrieben sind; das werd' ich gar bald überdrüssig und lese wieder; […]. Es ist wahr, daß ich immer an das Wesentliche denke […].²⁷

Her language is indeed her own, as Veit describes it in the preceding letter.²⁸ His attempts at “educating” her fail. If anything, she is able to convince him of the appropriateness of her style of writing. Ironically enough, the articulation of her aesthetic and linguistic philosophy occurs as the result of the exchange that takes place between the two of them. Varnhagen seeks Veit out as an epistolary partner over a period of nearly twenty years. She depends on a position contrary to her own and, in this case, one that is more socially/culturally accepted for the verbalization of her own ideas.

This expression of her-self is again ridden with internal friction. Reading these letters, one often gets the impression that Varnhagen is speaking from a position of strength. That is, she in some ways becomes the teacher in the relationship through her insistence upon an unique identity which she defines against the backdrop of that which Veit stands for, the successfully assimilated Jew.²⁹ She uses her excluded status to create a positive image of herself. The duplicity (in the sense of doubleness, without the implication of deceit) she employs and represents in this description is best stated in the following letter to Veit, where she is praising her own qualities as a friend:

Vermag es, wie doppelt organisiert ihm [einem Menschen, i. e. Veit] meine Seele zu leihen, und habe die gewaltige Kraft, mich zu verdoppeln ohne mich zu verwirren. Ich bin so einzig, als die größte Erscheinung dieser Erde. Der größte Künstler, Philosoph, oder Dichter, ist nicht über mir. Wir sind vom selben Element. Im selben Rang, und gehören zusammen. Und der den andern ausschließen wollte, schließt nur sich aus. Mir aber war das Leben angewiesen; und ich blieb im Keim, bis zu meinem Jahrhundert, und bin von außen ganz verschüttet, drum sag' ich's selbst. Damit ein Abbild die Existenz beschließt. Auch ist der Schmerz, wie ich ihn kenne, auch ein Leben; und ich denke, ich bin eins von den Gebilden, die die Menschheit werfen soll, und dann nicht mehr braucht, und nicht mehr kann. Mich kann niemand trösten: solch weisen Mann giebt's nicht: ich bin mein Trost; nun giebt es noch das Glück! das ist aber wie beleidigt von mir; und ich fühle auch, ich beleidige es. Das Glück definir' ich Ihnen ein andermal. So ungefähr steht's mit mir. Lebten Sie in Einer Stadt mit mir, Sie hätten einen unendlichen Genuß! Sie können sich das ewige Erblühen meines Lebens gar nicht denken.³⁰

Segments of this letter have often been cited. I, too, have quoted less than half of it but have included enough context to show how Varnhagen is genuinely duplicitous. She believes this to be a positive quality and part of an endless process that defines her life. Yet she does not deny the problems that such a definition includes. This passage reveals Varnhagen's acute awareness of being both included and excluded. She is as great as any cultural figure, and yet she is different. It is also clear that she perceives this characteristic of difference as imposed upon her, and she must therefore confer the value of greatness upon herself by redefining the term. She does not feel assimilated in the way that Veit appears to be comfortable with his social position, but her articulation of this difference provides the impetus for the high valuation of her own intellect and her ability to be a good friend, rather than for making an argument about the degree to which she has (not) assimilated into German culture. Dialogue is the channel through which Varnhagen identifies qualities that neither diametrically oppose nor submit to Veit's standards, but rather go beyond them.

Rahel Varnhagen's correspondence of at least 25 years with her friend Pauline Wiesel exhibits a quite different posturing by Varnhagen in her struggle with identity construction. Here she portrays herself, in contrast to Wiesel, as someone who cannot quite sever herself from social expectations. “Ich [Varnhagen] bin nicht brouilliert mit der Gesellschaft, ich lebe noch darin. Unzufrieden bin ich mit ihr, weil ich nicht Stand, nicht Namen habe und auch keine Herzen finde, die mir das ersetzen; aber die Gesellschaft sucht mich noch, ich sie.”³¹ Wiesel, who demonstrated her rejection of German bourgeois society by first being the lover of Prince Louis Ferdinand until his death in 1806, then living alternately with various men and women, and finally dying in poverty, had, in Varnhagen's opinion, the ability to “live everything,” rather than just “think” it.³² In this more traditional situating of herself Varnhagen is also able to find virtue. Again, the discussion of the conflict between rejecting or adapting to society is not resolved. Instead, it provides the basis for outlining a kind of friendship that would transcend both rebellion and conformity. In 1818 Varnhagen writes to Wiesel:

[…] einzig bildete uns beide die Natur […]. Eine hätte die Natur aus uns beiden machen sollen. Solche, wie Sie, hätte mein Nachdenken, meine Vorsicht, meine Vernünftigkeit haben müssen! Solche, wie ich, Ihren Lebensmut und Ihre Schönheit. Sonst haben wir vollkommen, was eine begabte Menschennatur beglücken kann. Sinn, Sinne, Verstand, Laune, empfindliches Herz, Kunst- und Natursinn—das heißt auf unsere Sprache, “wir lieben Grünes”.—³³

The correspondences with Veit and Wiesel are just two examples of how Varnhagen uses an exchange of ideas with others to define the many facets of her complicated self. Throughout both correspondences, the point of comparison/contrast is social inclusion/exclusion, from which Varnhagen then attempts to define her-self.

In her conflicted struggle for self-affirmation, conversation (oral or written exchange) becomes a kind of “psychoanalytic discourse.”³⁴ At the same time she is skeptical of language per se and recognizes its limits. She understands that traditional language is a barrier and yet essential to the self-definition of someone on the margin. She therefore experiments with language. “Unsere Sprache ist unser gelebtes Leben; ich habe mir meines selbst erfunden, ich konnte also weniger Gebrauch, als viele andere, von den einmal fertigen Phrasen machen, darum sind meine oft holperig und in allerlei fehlerhaft, aber immer echt.”³⁵ She attempts to remain true to herself without giving up communication with others. In order to live, to have an identity, she must create a language that not only reflects, but is her life. And this language, because of her position on the margin, must be one that is conducive both to self-reflection and dialogue with others.

Rahel Varnhagen therefore writes what ultimately amounted to nearly ten volumes of letters, the written counterpart of the salon conversations she valued for the same reasons. Because of the generally high literary quality of these letters, in conjunction with the quantity, at a time when letter-writing had become an activity that straddled the private and public spheres, one wonders why Varnhagen never published her writings (with the exception of a few excerpts from her letters and diaries) during her life. While she often intended her letters to be read and discussed by others and toyed with the idea of publishing longer sections of some correspondences, she chose to remain “silent.” But, again, it is a silence that paradoxically speaks. Since Varnhagen began writing, she has enjoyed a reading audience, despite the fact that she did not publish her works.

Shortly after Rahel Varnhagen's death in 1833, her husband Karl August began compiling the three-volume edition of his wife's letters. He edited them heavily and disguised some of the correspondents and persons mentioned, but nonetheless made her a “published author,” accessible to a larger readership. Rahel: Ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde (1834) was the inspiration for contemporary and following generations of women who could so readily identify with this literary woman who herself had not had any models. Charlotte Stieglitz, Henriette Feuerbach, Fanny Lewald, and Malwida von Meysenbug are some of the more culturally prominent women who specifically mention Varnhagen's impact on them. As more of her letters were published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, more women struggling with their positions as outsiders of one kind or another in their own societies found a precursor in Varnhagen. Hedwig Dohm, Ellen Key, Silvia Bovenschen, and Christa Wolf are a few examples.³⁶ Readers, generations and centuries later, appear to find their voices through the reception of Varnhagen's letters. Her ability to provoke conversation is indeed remarkable.

Despite Varnhagen's sometimes grandiose statements about herself, she, and others, have also described her(self) in terms of that which she was not. In a diary entry she writes:

Ich habe keine Grazie; und nicht einmal die, einzusehen, woran das liegt; außerdem, daß ich nicht hübsch bin, habe ich auch keine innere Grazie. […] Ich kann es gar nicht einsehen, woran es liegt, da ich mich doch oft überaus unschuldig finde; lebendig und beweglich bin […]. Ich bin nicht so unglücklich, als man denken sollte, wenn ich mir dies recht überlege: Im Gegenteil, dieses Denken macht mich sehr ruhig.³⁷

Similarly, in a letter to Fouqué she writes in 1809: “Mit dem schärfsten Bewußtsein über mich selbst. Mit der Meinung, daß ich eine Königin (keine regierende) oder eine Mutter sein müßte: erlebe ich, daß ich grade nichts bin. Keine Tochter, keine Schwester, keine Geliebte, keine Frau, keine Bürgerin einmal.”³⁸ In the wake of some recent French psychoanalytic and feminist criticism, such statements by Varnhagen have been interpreted as woman's expression of her lack of identity, her “Nicht-Ich.” According to Marlis Gerhardt, for example, who draws heavily upon Lacan, a non-identity is all that Varnhagen can possess, since man has determined the categories with which identity is constructed: morality, autonomy, freedom of the will, subjectivity. Gerhardt concludes that Varnhagen's “Ich ist der patriarchalischen Denkordnung gegenüber ignorant und bleibt bis zuletzt resistent” (Gerhardt, p. 61). While it is clear that Varnhagen resists patriarchal structures, one must conclude, in contrast to Gerhardt, that she neither ignores, nor is ignorant of them. Note how her negative comments about herself in the above passages are tempered by the painful process of becoming self-conscious. “Ich bin ein Meister im Verzweifeln, und nun leb' ich erst ruhig.”³⁹

It is precisely the astute awareness of her sometimes privileged, sometimes disadvantaged, sometimes excluded position in or outside of German, patriarchal, bourgeois structures that allows her to resist them through the conflicted creation of an authentic identity: a woman who does not entirely fulfill society's expectations of women; a Jew who has converted to Christianity but does not (want to) escape her Jewish heritage; a writer who writes in an alternative discourse, questions the adequacy of language, who does not publish, and is nonetheless admired for and values her own communicative skills. The complexity and contradiction that mark so much of what Varnhagen wrote in fact constitute the identity she establishes for herself. To deny her this identity is to ignore the poignant consciousness she developed of her particular social situation. Moreover, it is an identity that includes others because it derives from the exchange of ideas and feelings with others. It is not “ein denkender Alleingang, eine Privatphilosophie” or “Selbstausschluß,” as Gerhardt contends (Gerhardt, p. 41). It is true that Varnhagen, as a Jewish woman, had few, if any, models or external standards from which to establish an identity. Nonetheless, she used her social, personal, and cultural environment to create a sense of self that subverts traditional notions of identity. She dared to give expression to her polyphonous, but not always harmonious, self. This is how she survived—and sometimes even thrived.

Notes

1. Frederiksen, 1980, pp. 83-108.

2. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to her as Rahel Varnhagen.

3. Hertz, 1986, p. 276.

4. Letter to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, 11 September 1815, V, 4, Konrad Feilchenfeldt et al. (eds.), 1983, pp. 329-30.

5. See Bähtz, 1970, p. 43.

6. For a more detailed discussion of the German romantic salon and, in particular, the Berlin salon of this period, see respectively, Waldstein, 1988, pp. 18-32, Hertz, 1978, pp. 97-108, and Hertz, 1988.

7. Hertz, 1986, p. 275.

8. Henn-Schmölders, 1979, p. 59.

9. Gerhardt, 1986, p. 44.

10. Buch des Andenkens, [Konrad] Feilchenfeldt et al., p. 43. While Varnhagen von Ense is known as an excellent chronicler, one must read this account of his wife's words with some caution, since we know that he heavily edited the letters and diary entries in these volumes.

11. Letter to Rose Levin, 22 January 1819, Behrens, 1981, pp. 239-40.

12. See Goodman, 1980, pp. 134-35.

13. Letter to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, 5 November 1808, Buch des Andenkens, I, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 359.

14. Letter to August Varnhagen von Ense, 5 November 1808, Buch des Andenkens, I, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 360.

15. Letter to Rebekka Friedländer, 19 September 1807, Buch des Andenkens, I, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 321.

16. Letter to David Veit, May 1795. Quoted by Kemp, “Rahel: Eine Tagung in Turin,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung (11./12. Mai 1986), p. 51.

17. For the exact quotation, see Behrens, p. 170.

18. Weissberg, 1985, pp. 158-59.

19. Letter to David Veit, 27 January 1794 (the letter was begun on January 25), Vol. VII, 1, Feilchenfeldt, et al., pp. 138-39.

20. Letter to Rahel Varnhagen, 11 November 1793, VII, 1, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 50.

21. Weissberg, p. 167.

22. Letter to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, 19 March 1810, Buch des Andenkens, I, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 468.

23. Comp. Weissberg, p. 167.

24. M. M. Bakhtin, 1981, p. 7.

25. Letter to Karl von Finckenstein, 8 January 1799, Aus Rahel's Herzensleben, VIII, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 93.

26. Buch des Andenkens, I, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 280.

27. Letter to David Veit, 18 November 1793, VII, 1, Feilchenfeldt, et al., pp. 58-59.

28. Letter to Rahel Varnhagen, 11 November 1793, VII, 1, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 50.

29. For a more detailed analysis of Varnhagen's “pedagogy of conversation” in her correspondence with Veit, see Weissberg, pp. 166-67.

30. Letter to David Veit, 16 February 1805, Buch des Andenkens, I, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 266.

31. Letter to Pauline Wiesel, 20 April 1811, Atzenbeck, 1926, p. 152.

32. Letter to Pauline Wiesel, 12 March 1810, Atzenbeck, p. 141.

33. Letter to Pauline Wiesel, 23 April 1818, Atzenbeck, p. 183.

34. Weissberg, p. 171.

35. This quotation appears in an article by Marianne Schuller, “‘Unsere Sprache ist unser gelebtes Leben’: Randbemerkungen zur Schreibweise Rahel Varnhagens,” in Feilchenfeldt, et al., X, p. 48.

36. For a detailed analysis of how Rahel Varnhagen influenced women writers of the nineteenth century, which set the stage for further impact in the twentieth, see Goodman, pp. 125-53.

37. Quoted by Gerhardt, pp. 48-49.

38. Letter to Fouqué, 26 July 1809, Buch des Andenkens, I, Feilchenfeldt, et al., p. 436.

39. Letter to Pauline Wiesel, 2 March 1825, Behrens, p. 240.

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