SOURCE: Tatlock, Lynne. “The Young Germans in Praise of Famous Women: Ambivalent Advocates.” German Life and Letters 39, no. 3 (April 1986): 193-209.

[In the following essay, Tatlock analyzes how Young Germany—a collective of writers who advocated women's emancipation in the 1830s—celebrated Varnhagen and her contemporaries Bettina von Arnim and Charlotte Stieglitz.]

That in the 1830's the group of writers known as Young Germany admired Rahel Varnhagen, Bettina von Arnim, and Charlotte Stieglitz is well known and has long been seen as consonant with their alleged interest in the emancipation of women. Recently Wulf Wülfing has examined the tendency of Young Germany to mythologize them and remarks that while the Young Germans may idealize Rahel, Bettina, and Charlotte they seem to despise women in general. He suggests that we need to consider whether or not this demonstrates their inability to comprehend woman ‘wie sie wirklich ist’. However, this question goes beyond the scope of Wülfing's paper and remains unanswered.¹ The Young German reception of these three famous women is ambivalent and invites a closer look.

In 1839 Karl Gutzkow enthused:

Wer einst die organische Entwickelung unserer neuen Literatur zeichnen will, darf den Sieg nicht verschweigen, den drei durch Gedanken, ein Gedicht und eine That ausgezeichnete Frauen über die Gemüter gewannen. … Wie durch eine göttliche Verabredung ergänzen sich diese drei großen Gestalten; drei Parzen, die den Faden der neuern Literatur … anlegten, spannen, abschnitten.²

Gutzkow was not alone in his ardent praise of them. In the second half of the 1830's book reviews, essays and literary works which paid tribute to the trio were published by Gustav Kühne and Theodor Mundt as well. The Young Germans' enthusiasm was a response to Charlotte Stieglitz' suicide in December of 1834 and three seminal books: the revised edition of Rahel's letters, Rahel, ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde (1834), Bettina von Arnim's Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835), and Mundt's Charlotte Stieglitz, ein Denkmal (1835). Although their interest in these three women was part of an international phenomenon, the Young Germans were their most ardent advocates and in part responsible for the fact that observers abroad did take notice of them. In fact the enthusiasm of these men set them apart from some of their male contemporaries such as Wolfgang Menzel.³ While the works to be considered here would never have been written had the Young Germans not admired these women to some degree, the very writings which testify to the Young Germans' interest and adulation are, as we shall see, double-edged.

The Young Germans' ambivalence toward women in general has not gone completely unnoticed. Several twentieth-century women scholars have been quick to notice the contradictions in the Young Germans' attitudes. Already in 1926 E. M. Butler remarked that Heinrich Laube's interest in Saint-Simonism seemed to have more to do with his desire to improve men's sex lives than emancipating women.⁴ Renate Möhrmann has pointed out, in two works which explore the beginnings of the women's movement in the Germany of the ‘Vormärz’,⁵ the limited insight and interest of the Young Germans in the emancipation of women. Furthermore, Kay Goodman has focused briefly on the Young Germans' reception of Rahel's letters, maintaining that Rahel was ‘immediately ghettoized’ by the Young Germans, ‘as something nonliterary, representing a peculiar or outstanding act on the part of a woman’.⁶ Patricia Ryan Paulsell, Marsha Meyer and Dagmar C. G. Lorenz have examined the Young Germans' literary works and found them replete with clichés about women which by their very existence deny women's rights.⁷

These studies should have begun to erode the timeworn dictum that the Young Germans favoured the emancipation of women, but assumptions hallowed by time die hard. Jost Hermand, for example, affirms these in his widely circulating anthology of Young German texts simply by entitling a section ‘Als Anwälte der Frau’.⁸ The Young Germans' ardent praise of Bettina, Rahel, and Charlotte itself seems to be continuing evidence of their sympathy with women's issues in general. The following close examination of essays and literary works written in the 1830's by the so-called Young Germans (principally Gutzkow, Kühne and Mundt) is intended to expose and analyze the contradictions which colour their reception of their three distinguished female contemporaries. Whereas Wülfing's chief interest in the Young Germans' reception of Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte was the process of myth-making, our focus will be instead the question which he raises but leaves unanswered: what does their reception of Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte reveal about their attitude toward women in general and the question of the emancipation of women?

The Young Germans seem first and foremost to have reacted to Rahel, Bettina, and Charlotte as to celebrities. Kühne characterized their impact on the literary world:

Mit dem Erscheinen von Bettinens Selbstbekenntnissen und Briefen an Goethe schien Rahel für einige unserer deutschen Frauen auf eine Zeit lang in den Hintergrund getreten zu sein. … Eine Parteiung war eingetreten, man erklärte sich für Rahel oder für Bettinen, es kam in den Cirkeln deutscher Geselligkeit zu ganz bestimmten Controversen und es gab Kreise, die der einen oder der andern Erscheinung entschieden und ausschließlich huldigten.⁹

The Young Germans and others did not respond so enthusiastically to the historical personalities, however, but rather to the literary personae presented to the public. Although the three books had a biographical basis and were introduced to the world as such, they had all been subjected to careful editing: Rahel by Varnhagen who, according to Hannah Arendt, played down Rahel's Jewishness and embellished her connections to élite circles;¹⁰ Bettina by herself—she actually fabricated some of the letters; and Charlotte by Theodor Mundt who was probably in love with the real Charlotte and certainly enamoured of the Charlotte he created in his book. Despite the fact that the real women were known to them, the Young Germans perhaps understandably quickly lost sight of the historical women in the face of the public literary image that had been created. Significantly, this image seems ultimately to occupy the Young Germans more than the intellectual and literary value of the books.

The fact that Rahel and Charlotte were dead of course facilitated a substitution of the literary personality for the historical one. Bettina, however, survived to belie the image of the madcap child of her Briefwechsel; indeed the historical figure, just turned fifty and the mother of seven children, could be seen daily in Berlin. Nevertheless—and certainly encouraged by Bettina's self-presentation in the Briefwechsel—the Young Germans tended to persist in lionizing precisely the ‘Elfenkind’ and ignoring the historical Bettina. In an interview with Bettina from the year 1837, one which conjures up modern-day interviews with film stars, Gutzkow attempts with a flourish of gallantry to preserve the ‘elf’ from the ravages of time: ‘Ein Wesen, das in seiner Jugend ein Elfenkind war, kann im Alter nur eine Zauberin, eine Norne werden. Und so traf ich sie.’¹¹ Here, where Gutzkow strives to preserve the fiction even in the face of biological ageing, we see the power of the literary image, a mechanism which operates in the Young German reception of Rahel and Charlotte as well. Indeed, once a literary fiction has been created, the temptation to take it a step further, even to mythologize, is already there. We might even conclude that Gutzkow's ridiculous statement quoted above about the deed, the poem and the idea should not be judged too harshly; after all, who could blame these Young Germans for succumbing to the charm of fiction? However, the creation, proliferation and acceptance of such fictions is, as we shall see, itself problematic.

Gutzkow's characterization of Rahel, Bettina, and Charlotte as ‘drei Parzen’ is one among many comparisons with historical, legendary, and mythical women which the Young Germans make as they attempt to articulate the importance of their three female contemporaries. Kühne hails Rahel as a prophetess, a saint, a vestal virgin.¹² Bettina is for Mundt ‘die Sibylle der romantischen Literaturperiode’¹³ and for Kühne ‘das Käthchen unsers Jahrhunderts’, ‘eine jungfräuliche Nixe des Rheins’, a mixture of Mignon and Philine.¹⁴ Charlotte reminds Mundt also of Goethe's female characters. He compares her first attempt at suicide as an adolescent with Ottilie's sacrificial death in Die Wahlverwandtschaften.¹⁵ He also associates her with Iphigenie and wonders why she could not have been spared like her Greek sister (p. 313). Kühne's essay portrays Charlotte as a celestial being, her husband's guardian spirit. Her suicide is likened, with what almost seems to be a note of approval, to that of the Indian wife who follows her dead husband onto the funeral pyre:

Nimmt man dazu die Idee von der freien Selbständigkeit des Weibes … so stellt es sich als ein fast märchenhaft erscheinendes Ereigniß hin, daß in unserer Zeit ein Weib den Opfertod für den Gatten erwählt, nachdem ihre Liebe zu ihm sich an Rettungsmitteln verarmt fühlte … Seele für Seele, Leben für Leben, ist ein Einsatz, den nur das Weib zu thun vermag … Charlottens Liebe grenzt an die Treue der indischen Frauen, die ruhig in die Flammen steigen, sobald sie den Gatten todt wissen.¹⁶

Gutzkow recalls another self-sacrificing woman in connection with Charlotte, namely the daughter of the ‘Meier’ in Der arme Heinrich.¹⁷ Mundt sees Charlotte as love incarnate: ‘Es war die Hoheit der Liebe selbst, die in weiblicher Schönheit in die irdische Erscheinung getreten, um beglückend, versöhnend, vermittelnd, segnend zu walten, in einer Welt voll Egoismus, Kälte, Eigennutz und niedrigen Antrieben’ (p. 57).

Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte are considered to incorporate the spirit of the age and in that sense are important to the Young Germans more as mirrors of the times than in and of themselves. Rahel is, for example, said to have personally suffered the labour pains of the transitional period in which she lived¹⁸ and is portrayed as a sort of seismograph of the times: ‘Rahel war … ein mitempfindender Nerv der Zeit; alles zitterte in ihr an und nach’.¹⁹ Similarly, Charlotte's tragedy is viewed by all three Young Germans as symptomatic and representative of the ‘Zerrissenheit’ of intellectual Germany. In Bettina they see the embodiment of a coming age in which the deed will reign supreme.²⁰ While such comparisons do, as Wülfing has maintained, lend a mythical aura to them, we should recognize that in every case Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte are placed safely in a ready-made mythology where they are limited to the roles women have traditionally played, i.e. they are the sustainers and representatives of male culture.

As Wülfing has pointed out, the use of these women's first names detached them from any historical grounding and furthered the tendency to mythologize.²¹ However, it also gave them virtually the status of three mascots. Whereas male historical personalities have been seen as imbued with and incorporating the spirit of their age, the thought of effusing mawkishly over the accomplishments of Gotthold, Wolfgang, and Friedrich, for example, is grotesque.

Even when the Young Germans seem to present the historical personalities their descriptions are stylized. We read, for example, that all three had a ‘zarte, weiße Hand’. Kühne says of Rahel: ‘… aber es mochte ein guter Moment sein, als sie vor mir stand mit dem blassen Gesicht, dem dunkeltiefen Auge, dem schwarzen Gewande und der nachlässigen Haltung ihrer nach vorn zusammengeschlagenen kleinen schneeweißen Hände.’²² Gutzkow ends an article on Bettina with the observation: ‘Bettina hat eine Hand, so weiß, zart gepflegt und magnetisch, daß sie nie aufhören wird, Lippen anzuziehen.’²³ Significantly, Gutzkow's essay even refers to the ‘zarte, weiße Hand’ of an abstraction: ‘Die Rückhaltsgedanken des im Leben Ueblichen und Hergebrachten entschlummerten unbewußt, wenn das Große und Erhabene sein Auge aufschlug und die zarte, weiße Hand ausstreckte’ (pp. 218-29). Here Gutzkow seems to have unwittingly revealed that ‘die zarten, weißen Hände’ are merely conventional synecdochical references to men's goddesses. More disturbing is perhaps Mundt's sketch of his beloved Charlotte Stieglitz, who of course also has a delicate white hand:

Dann die stolzen Rubine der Lippen, die, schwellend und gesangvoll um eine glänzende Perlenreihe der Zähne geschmiegt, einen leise verschmähenden Zug nicht verläugnen, welcher der Ausdruck ist eines unendlich keuschen und reinen Edelsinns, unbeschreiblich verletzbar durch jede unlautere Härte der Welt. Ueberall sonst die reinste Schönheitslinie, holdes Oval der Wangen mit sanften Grübchen, das frischeste und gesättigtste Incarnat, und eine stets blühende rosarothe Gesichtsfarbe … [Die] kleine schneeweiße Hand legte sie oft sinnend an die Schläfe, oder griff damit nach ihrem Herzen, wann sie, was nicht selten war, Herzklopfen hatte.

(pp. 58-59)

This totally conventional physical description raises doubts about Mundt's perception of his subject who, after all, was a close friend. It is finally with disbelief that we read his all too hackneyed depiction of Charlotte's ‘schönen, schneeweißen Glieder’ when her body is found (p. 309). Kühne's and Gutzkow's sketches are equally stylized and hollow. Kühne waxes eloquent on the subject of Charlotte, ‘diese Blume der Frauenschöne, diese dunkelfarbene Rose der Weiblichkeit’.²⁴ Gutzkow describes Bettina's hair: ‘Schönes, schwarzes, ich möchte sagen, römisch-katholisches Haar’.²⁵ Even when the Young Germans purport to describe the physical appearance of precisely the historical women, they do not progress beyond empty clichés.

The glorification of these three women by the Young Germans becomes particularly questionable when viewed in relation to the issue of the emancipation of women. Praising particular women to the extent of putting them on a pedestal, indeed turning them into legends in their own time, is, as has often been demonstrated by feminist critics, scarcely indicative of an interest in the rights of women, let alone admiration of the sex in general. As Marina Wagner, for example, has shown in her work on the cult of the Virgin Mary, it can simply be the obverse of misogyny.²⁶ Furthermore, mythologizing women tends to divert attention from current social and political issues relevant to them. The Young Germans' bias against women surfaces quickly: whereas Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte are seen on the one hand as truly remarkable and exceptions to the norm, they are, even in their triumph, confined to typical female roles. While they become the fates, the muses, of the age, they and women in general are banned from a creative role in literature. Significantly, in an attempt at gallantry, Kühne declared:

Wer die geistige Bedeutsamkeit der deutschen Frauen versteht, wer sie als das Bindemittel und als das anregende Princip der Geister kennt, fühlt einen Nerv seines eigensten Wesens durchschnitten, wenn ein Wesen solcher Art [Charlotte] früher, als es gesollt, endet. Man muß, um dies zu fühlen, den geheimen Quellen nachgegangen sein, aus denen deutsche Männer schöpften, um den Ertrag hinauszuführen an den lauten Tag der Literatur.²⁷

Still more telling is that each of the essays praising Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte becomes in turn the occasion for speculation on the nature of woman, and woman does not emerge from it to advantage. For example, after he has praised Rahel as the women whose idea changed the epoch, we learn from Gutzkow that women, even Rahel, are, after all, never creative thinkers:

Da der Geist der Frauen nie schöpferisch wird, so kann ihre höchste Bildung immer nur eine unglaubliche Steigerung der Empfänglichkeit sein … Ich sprach Bettina und fand, daß sie mit Sonnenstrahlen spinnt, daß sie aus Klängen Häuser baut. So war auch Rahel nur groß im Anknüpfen, Ausspinnen und Ausbauen dessen, was die Schöpfungskraft der Männer beiseite liegen läßt.

(p. 73)

Furthermore, Gutzkow's Wally notes: ‘Man hat so wenig in [Rahels] Buche, und doch glaubt man, wenn man es zuschlägt, alles zu haben. Darin seh' ich recht, wie nur die Männer imstande sind zu produzieren auch Gedanken.’ Nor is the brilliant Bettina able to produce new ideas. Wally remarks: ‘Bettina!—Spielerei—alte Gedanken; nur klassische neue Formen.’²⁸ In fact Gutzkow sees Bettina as a mere medium on which Goethe's genius makes its mark: ‘Goethe wirkte auf sie wie ein kräftiger Bogenstrich auf Sand, dessen Klangfigur sie wurde’ (p. 74). Kühne comments on Bettina's intellectual life: ‘Nur als Angehörige weiß sie sich in der Welt. Das ist die weibliche Vorbedingung für ihr geistiges Dasein.’²⁹ Gutzkow denies Charlotte's literary talent: ‘Charlotten die Produktion anzurathen, war jedenfalls ein Mißgriff, der sich aus der Freude entschuldigen läßt, wenn man so viel Liebe, Zartheit und Unschuld für die Literatur hätte erobern … können’ (p. 112). Furthermore, he comments on her suicide fixation with a patronizing air: ‘… die Frauen sind seltsam. Ihre kleine Welt beherrscht sie ganz’ (p. 111).

Not only do the Young Germans display a lack of respect for the intellectual abilities of the very women they praise, but they point out character flaws, which they maintain are typically female. In Mundt's essay on Rahel, for example, we read:

Bei diesen großen Eigenschaften, die auf das Allgemeine gerichtet sind, fehlen auch die weiblichen Einseitigkeiten nicht. Auf die äußere Lebensform, Anstand, Kleidung, Sitte, feine Welt, herrscht, in Beurtheilung und Begünstigung Anderer, nach Frauen Art, große Rücksicht vor (I, 170). Im zu harten Urtheil über die Stäel bestätigt sich die Erfahrung, daß eine bedeutende Frau der anderen nicht Gerechtigkeit widerfahren lassen kann.³⁰

Kühne agrees with Mundt: ‘Und neben der Liebenswürdigkeit verrieth [Rahel] hierin auch die Schwäche der weiblichen Natur, ihr Urtheil von persönlichen Eindrücken bestimmen zu lassen.’³¹

We are also privy to deliberations on the relative ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ of these figures and on just what constitutes masculinity and femininity. Kühne notes for example:

Das echte Weib kennt das nicht, was man Egoismus nennt … Das weibliche Gemüth verlangt immer einen Hintergrund, vor dem es sich auf das Proscenium der Lebensbühne hinauswagt; die weibliche Seele muß glauben, sie muß wissen, daß ein schützender Mantel sich um ihr Dasein breitet. So hatte sich auch Rahel dies Bild von der Liebe Gottes gemacht, die sie sich wie einen himmelweiten Mantel um ihr Leben dachte, während sie auf der Saumecke still hingekauert lag … Rahel war weniger zu Menschen, weit mehr im Verhältnisse zu Gott eine echt weibliche Natur. In der gläubigen Zuversicht, in der unbegrenzten Hingebung lag ihre religiöse Weiblichkeit … Der Mann ist auch in der Religiosität ein Wesen anderer Art.³²

Thus Kühne reduces Rahel's often cited mystical vision to an image of women's dependency in general. Of Bettina Kühne observed: ‘Ist das Weib eine relative Kraft im Leben, ist es wesentlich, ihrer uranfänglichen Bestimmung zufolge, die sich anschmiegende Hälfte des geschaffenen Menschen, so hat die Weiblichkeit in Bettinen einen Triumpf gefeiert’.³³

The highest compliment that one can pay these women is, so it seems, that they are ‘männlich’.³⁴ Kühne claims:

Charlotte war eine so reich begabte Natur, daß sie fast mit männlicher Geisteskraft die Poesie zum Gegenstande aller ihrer Wünsche, Liebe und Achtung hätte machen können. Und doch war das Weib in ihr vorherrschend; ihr allezeit reger, forschender Geist war doch nur eine anempfindende hingegebene Liebe.³⁵

Mundt compares Rahel's confessions to those of ‘großer und viel vollbringender Männer’.³⁶ Kühne informs us: ‘Diese Schärfe des Bewußtseins ist es nur aber was Rahel's ganzem Wesen den Charakter der Männlichkeit zu geben scheint.’³⁷ Gutzkow writes of Charlotte: ‘Sie war soviel als Resignation und Opfertod und drückte sich in der männlichen, energischen Frau nicht phantastisch, sondern bürgerlich und wirtschaftlich aus’ (p. 110-11). Ultimately, however, the authors assure us that their idols are indeed ‘feminine’. What may have seemed initially to be dynamic figures are suddenly reduced to passive, naive creatures who flourish in the domestic sphere. Gutzkow confines Charlotte to the limited world of the women of her day:

Man sieht hier eines jener schönen weiblichen Wesen, die uns zum Glück noch oft begegnen: nicht originell, nicht begünstigt von der Natur, etwas ernst, schwer und nachsinnend im Begreifen: nicht einmal besonders arrondirt in den weiten Gebieten des Wissensnötigen … und aus tiefster Naivetät zuweilen dialektische Momente spendend, die der Debatte eine neue Wendung geben.

(p. 112)

Mundt, who has just spoken of Charlotte's ability to act ‘mit männlicher Sicherheit und Scharfblick’, describes her ‘liebliche, furchtsame Mädchenhaftigkeit’ which shows itself in her superstition and fear of harmless beetles (p. 61). Furthermore, when describing Charlotte's sensitivity, Mundt cannot resist noting with an air of superiority: ‘Wer, wie ich, ziemlich eiserne Nerven hat, wird sich nicht leicht in solche jenseitsenteilende Zustände versetzen können’ (p. 63). It is especially ironic that he should dwell on the hypersensitivity of the opposite sex, inasmuch as one popular theme of male writers of the 1830's was their own delicate psychological state, their ‘Zerrissenheit’. Mundt himself had treated this in Moderne Lebenswirren (1834). Kühne's discussion takes an interesting turn when he maintains that one should not consider unconventional women ‘unweiblich’. Femininity, he ventures, should not be confused with limitation and servitude. Readers may well think that Kühne has struck a blow in favour of women, but he concludes:

Freilich ist es der schönste Zug der Frauenklugheit, scheinbar dienerisch sich anschmiegend ihre Herrschaft zu üben, die man ihr nicht einräumt, wenn ihre Hand offen und dreist nach dem Scepter greift. Nur wenn sie nicht herrschen will und nicht zu herrschen scheint, herrscht die Frau wirklich.³⁸

For this reason Kühne ultimately declares Rahel the more feminine and by implication the better woman. Another Young German, Heinrich Laube, takes a different tack in his discussion of Rahel and Bettina by considering the appropriateness of their respective books for the female public: ‘Darum sind [Rahels] Briefe, diese hastig, suchend, ungraziös stylisirten Briefe, in denen mehr als Seelengrazie, nämlich Seelengröße fluthet, darum sind sie nicht für Frauen.’ Bettina's carefree style, on the other hand, should charm women.³⁹

Gutzkow, Kühne and Mundt also seem to feel compelled to inform their readers about the domestic abilities of their subjects. After nearly fifty pages of discussion of Rahel's letters, Mundt decides that it is time to speak of Rahel the housewife:

Es ist indeß auch nicht zu vergessen, wie Rahel in milder Frauensitte zugleich durch sinniges Schaffen und Pflichterfüllen im Kreise des Hauses gegen alles geistige Überwogen sich eine wohlthuende Begränzung zu gewinnen verstand. Sie bewegte sich thätig und fürsorglich in allen häuslichen und geselligen Geschäften. …⁴⁰

Thereafter Mundt notes that Rahel loved children. He also does not fail to remark that Charlotte was fond of children despite the fact that she was not eager to have any of her own (p. 301). Kühne compares Bettina and Rahel: ‘Und in den Räumen ihrer [Bettinas] Häuslichkeit läßt sich das Weibliche vermissen, während sich im Gegentheil auch das geübteste Auge von der Anmuth, die in Rahel's häuslichen Räumen zu herrschen pflegte, überrascht fand.’⁴¹ Similarly, Mundt praises Charlotte's devotion to her domestic duties:

Und dabei war sie zugleich die eifrigste und musterhafteste Hausfrau, die sich nur erst nach Besorgung der Wirtschaftsrepublik das Recht zugestand, der Gelehrtenrepublik anzugehören, und sie betrieb alle dahin einschlagenden Verrichtungen wie spielend mit besonderer Geschichtlichkeit, und hier nicht ohne Zugrundlegung wohlausstudirter Theorie, da sie auf ihre genau Kenntniß des Kochbuchs in ihrer scherzhaften Weise nicht minder stolz that, und mit Recht, als auf die Lessings oder aller deutschen Klassiker zusammengenommen.

(p. 66)

The Young Germans grant women an additional area of specialization and excellence, namely love. Mundt asserts: ‘Denn was der Fleiß in der Schule nicht erwirbt, was die kargen prosaischen Verhältnisse des Lebens nicht begünstigen, vermittelt sich in der weiblichen Bildung, die auf etwas außerordentliches sich angewiesen fühlte, am glückbringendsten durch die Liebe’ (p. 2). Furthermore, he maintains: ‘Das Weibesherz ist ein offener Liebestempel’ (p. 55). Kühne states dramatically: ‘Nur ein Weib kann sich zu Tode lieben’.⁴² Bettina's passion for Goethe confirmed this notion of women's capacity to love and was a source of endless fascination for the Young Germans. Mundt described Bettina as ‘das von herzinniger Liebe gequälte Kind’ and envisaged her delighting the ageing Goethe with her gypsy's dance.⁴³ Gutzkow wrote of a ‘Genialisierung der Herzen’ which Bettina's letters would bring about (p. 74). Rahel's unhappy love affairs become a topic of interest in Kühne's essay. Indeed Rahel, the loving woman, often takes precedence over Rahel, the so-called thinker. Kühne calls Rahel ‘eine Herzenströsterin’, a capacity which her own ‘wundgestochene[s] Herz’ has given her. He further points out how she is able to rescue the troubled Alexander Marwitz and declares: ‘… hier feiert die Weiblichkeit ihre höchsten, seltensten Triumphe’.⁴⁴ Charlotte in particular is, despite her ‘scharfen Verstand’, stylized as a model of the infinite capacity of the woman in love to sacrifice herself for the sake of the object of that love. Mundt, for example, calls her a ‘seltene Gelegenheitsdichterin der Liebe’ (p. 50).

But do these young men actually value the love they so praise, do these loving women offer models which they can emulate? In fact they believe that this is woman's business, something at which women excel because of social restrictions which bar them from other activities. Mundt says as much when he characterizes Charlotte's attachment to her poet-husband as sublimation of her own vague poetic longings:

Der Frauen Schicksal ist es, und nicht immer zu ihrem Heil, daß sie statt des Allgemeinen an das Individuelle, statt der Idee an die einzelne Erscheinung, gefesselt werden. … Die Kraft der Dichtung, die ihr aus den wunderbar schönen Augen blitzte … ging auf Einmal ächt weiblich in die Liebe zu einem Dichter über. Die Idee wird dem Weibe zur Person, und darum liebt sie inniger und gewaltiger, als je ein Mann es vermag. … Der Drang zu den Wissenschaften, zu den Künsten, zu den freien Bewegungen des öffentlichen Lebens, wenn ihm zu entsprechen durch die Umstände oder die soziale Gesittung versagt ist, setzt sich in der Mädchenbrust in die Liebe zu einem Gelehrten, zu einem Künstler, zu einem Helden um.

(p. 9)

This is certainly a shrewd observation and doubtless true of many women—we recall Mundt's contemporary George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72), set in the 1830s, in which Dorothea attempts in vain to satisfy her intellectual aspirations by marrying Mr. Casaubon. However, Mundt seems not to think that women's destiny could be otherwise. More importantly, his pronouncement brings home to us the fact that love is perhaps not valued all that highly. Kühne actually observes:

Der Mann, das lehrt der Tag, kann leben ohne Liebe, ohne Heiligkeit, ohne Gottesbewußtsein … Wo das Weib längst allen Werth verloren, kann der Mann noch Geltung haben … Das Weib ist ohne Liebe, ohne Gottesbewußtsein, ohne stille Sättigung der liebsten Herzenswünsche—ein Nichts.⁴⁵

Even as Charlotte, Bettina and Rahel are praised for their affectionate natures, love—the area in which they reign supreme—is trivialized by the belief that it is mere compensation for the inaccessibility to them of the political sphere, which, after all, was a man's world.

The Young Germans also tend to link these three women to a major contemporary philosophical concern, the Saint-Simonist programme of emancipation of the flesh. In fact they see in the lives and writings of Rahel, Bettina, and Charlotte an admonition to realize the reconciliation of matter and spirit. Rahel in particular was generally thought to have been directly influenced by Saint-Simonist ideas regarding emancipation of women and of the flesh. Mundt, for example, notes her critique of Christian asceticism: ‘An die weltzerstörende, die Materie ertödtende Richtung des Christenthums scheint sie zu denken, wenn (I, 263) sie sagt, daß diese Religion, angewandt auf Leben und Staat, verkehrt und Jahrtausende hemmend gewirkt habe’.⁴⁶ The Young Germans praise Bettina's book as a celebration of the senses, a joyful affirmation of God in nature. Kühne declares, for example: ‘Nie ist die Sinnlichkeit herrlicher vergeistigt, nie die Seele als die Seligkeit des Leiblichen, der Geist als der Aether der Materie reiner und tiefer erklärt und gedeutet, als in der Religion Bettinens.’⁴⁷ In Charlotte Stieglitz, ein Denkmal Mundt maintains that Charlotte's tragedy may be traced to a tragic split between body and spirit. Charlotte had never learned to enjoy physical pleasure:

Nur nach einer Seite hin trennte sich ihre Lebensanschauung öfter in eine Spaltung, die ihr manchen kecken Genuß des Daseins raubte, manche fröhliche Lichtseite der Existenz verfinsterte. Dies war die aus früheren Jugendrichtungen zuweilen wiederkehrende Stimmung, den Körper nur als den Kerker der Seele anzusehn, und das frische starkerhaltende Gefühl der Einheit von Leib und Geist, worin die Lust aller Lebensbewegung ruht, verloren zu geben.

(p. 313)

Kühne, following Mundt's lead, also characterizes Charlotte's tragedy in terms of a love which had become over-spiritualized: ‘Charlotte mußte bald erbangen, daß sie einem Poeten zu eigen geworden; daß sie Frau geworden, daran dachte sie nicht mehr, oder hat es nie erfahren.’⁴⁸ The Young Germans' affirmation of emancipation of the flesh in these essays should not, however, be perceived as evidence of their support for the emancipation of women or even of their insight into women's issues—in fact Gutzkow himself later carefully disassociated himself from such causes.⁴⁹ Instead, it merely brings the lives of three famous women in line with a philosophical revolution, a new Hellenism, as Kühne called it, which was essentially a male vision. Already in 1843 Louise Otto-Peters pointed out the confusion of issues:

Man wende mir nicht ein: es hätten für Frauen sich Anwälte gefunden: diejenigen, welche das Wort ‘Emanzipation der Frauen’ neben der ‘Emanzipation des Fleisches’ ausriefen, haben nicht mit Erröten und Indignation solche Beschützer von sich gewiesen und wenigstens jede deutsche Frau schlägt vor dem schamlosen Bild der ‘femme libre’ der St Simonisten die Augen nieder. Dieser Ruf für Emanzipation der Frauen war beinahe das Extrem von dem, was die Frauen selbst Emanzipation nennen— … Gott behüte uns vor unseren Freunden, mit unsern Feinden wollen wir schon fertig werden!⁵⁰

The Young Germans' advocation of the emancipation of the flesh merely indicated a new emphasis on the sensual and a rejection of Christian asceticism, not an examination, critique and redefinition of women's social and political roles which could have led to true emancipation of women. However, because of the traditional association of the female with the body as opposed to the male with the mind, liberation of the flesh (free love) and liberation of women were thus mistakenly considered to be virtually the same question.⁵¹ Women as the representatives of ‘Fleisch’ also assumed a greater importance in the minds of men searching for images for a new emphasis on sensuousness, women such as Rahel and Bettina being particularly useful as they could be portrayed as the ‘Religionsstifterinnen’, as the patron saints, of this new belief. Mundt's praise of Bettina reveals this tendency:

Es muß allerdings für einen Trost erachtet werden, daß in unserer heilsarmen Zeit eine Natur, wie Bettina lebt … in der so Vieles, was der Menschheit verloren gegangen, sich in persönlicher Blüthe erhalten und so Vieles, was wir um jeden Preis wieder erringen müssen, bereits zu Fleisch und Blut geworden.⁵²

Charlotte's tragedy, on the other hand, could serve as a warning of what could happen should this synthesis of spirit and flesh fail to take place, when woman is not true to her nature. Here once again women are confined to the representational and the erotic.

The interpretation of Charlotte's suicide in terms of a fatal separation of spirit and flesh raises most poignantly the issue of the Young Germans' sexually biased reception of these three famous women. Here, where the historical act precedes the literary phenomenon, we see clearly the way in which a woman is remade to suit the needs and prejudices of male contemporaries. We can also recognize that the Young Germans at best only dimly perceived the cultural significance for women of Charlotte's misguided suicide and hence that they were not addressing themselves to such issues when considering Charlotte's sad fate.

Approximately two months after Charlotte's suicide Gutzkow's first pronouncement on the event appeared in the Phönix. By mistakenly referring to Charlotte as Karoline (did he have Karoline von Günderode in mind?), he has already detached her from her historical grounding. In this first article there is the suggestion that this is the stuff of which literature is made: ‘Wer das Genie Göthe's besäße … könnte hier ein unsterbliches Seitenstück zum Werther geben.’⁵³ Later, after his own Wally, die Zweiflerin has appeared, he confesses: ‘Wie sehr dies alles auf gährende und dichterische Gemüther einwirkte, wird man begreifen, wenn ich eingestehe, daß ich den Roman Wally, die Zweiflerin, nicht geschrieben hätte, ohne den Tod der Stieglitz’ (p. 76).

Charlotte Stieglitz, ein Denkmal, Mundt's sentimental monument to Charlotte, appeared two months after Wally. Thereupon Gutzkow revised his Phönix essay for the Deutsche Revue, and Kühne wrote an extended piece on Charlotte which appeared in his Weibliche und männliche Charaktere. Although Kühne knew Charlotte personally and was present at her burial, the essay for the most part concerns itself with Mundt's presentation of her in the Denkmal.

We have already noted that the historical Charlotte recedes behind the stylized descriptions and the comparisons with legendary and literary figures. However, all three men believe that her suicide constitutes a ‘Kulturtragödie’, that it is a commentary on the times.

The modern reader tends to see their mention of a ‘Kulturtragödie’ as a reference to the position of women at the time. However, a closer look reveals that this is not what they meant. Instead they are referring to Heinrich Stieglitz: the poetic nature which is unable to create. Heinrich's difficulties, they believed, reflected the general state of affairs in the German-speaking world of the ‘Vormärz’ which constantly lamented its ‘Epigonentum’. Kühne declared: ‘… dieser deutsche Poetenjammer hat das Weib getödtet. Es trägt hier Niemand die Schuld’.⁵⁴ Charlotte, although a mere woman, explains Gutzkow, ‘stand auf der Höhe, sein Unglück zu begreifen’.⁵⁵ Mundt's discussion of Charlotte comes more closely to grips with the social position of women at the time. Nevertheless, his insights dissolve into vague generalities and ultimately miss the mark. Indeed, like Gutzkow and Kühne, Mundt merely portrays Charlotte as one of the many ‘Zerrissene’ of the age. He points out the tragic effect on her of the inadequacies of an all too imperfect world: ‘Und dann zehrte die durch und durch von ihr mitempfundene Unruhe und befriedigungslose Pein der ganzen Zeit an ihr, die uns Alle aus dem Gleichgewicht schüttelt!’ (p. 314). However, the specific imperfections of the world are not delineated. He asks: ‘Wird es uns nicht gemahnen, einen tiefen Blick in unser sociales Leben, in unsere verirrten und unnatürlichen Einrichtungen, in die Zustände unserer Ehen, unserer Liebe, unserer Freundschaft zu werfen?’ (p. 311). Yet the only problem he has identified is the philosophical one of body and spirit. Thus his questioning of the institution of marriage seems merely to be in line with Saint-Simonist thinking.

It was the deed itself which ultimately fascinated the Young Germans and placed Charlotte among Gutzkow's ‘drei Parzen.’ The Young Germans admired her resolve in an epoch which saw itself incorporated in Hamlet, yet longed for the heroism of the Napoleonic era. Gutzkow's first article on Charlotte begins with the following exhortation:

Heraus aus deinem Schneckenhause, du deutscher Gallert, Volk genannt! Heraus aus deinen ohnmächtigen Zweideutigkeiten, du lederhäutiger Eunuch! Was wollt Ihr mit Moral, mit dem Stolz auf Eure gesunde, rothbäckige, lächelnde Vernunft? Wie weit kommt Ihr mit Eurem Achselzucken, Eurer Prüderie, und Eurer sittlichen Trägheit … ?⁵⁶

This sentiment is ultimately taken up into his statement about the idea, the book and the deed which opened our discussion. The fact that a mere woman should possess the fortitude to carry out such an act, misconceived though it might have been, is seen as a reproach to men.

In her parting letter Charlotte made it clear that she was committing suicide in order to inspire her husband to new poetic heights. To modern readers her so-called sacrifice seems at once ridiculous, piteous and terrifying. What assumptions did in fact stand behind such a deed and what were their significance for women? Charlotte had apparently accepted the romantic view that the poet was an exceptional being, that art was itself the highest goal for which one could strive, and that suffering led to creativity. Furthermore, she believed in the romantic ideal of absolute and perfect love which would express itself in women as self-sacrifice. The ‘Kulturtragödie’ to which the Young Germans remain blind is her total acceptance of and adherence to the opinions and values of the cultural élite of her age, which, finally, oppressed and repressed women. While the Young Germans were certainly not unaware of the ambiguity of her suicide, they fell victim to their own notions of heroism, sacrifice and female love which they saw embodied in this desperate act.

The fact that the praise of Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte is accompanied by discourse on the nature of the sexes, regardless of the attitude conveyed, should be recognized as an indication that new ideas were in the air, ideas which obviously were disturbing if not threatening. These were certainly not lost on the Young Germans' contemporaries, whose arguments for male supremacy range from the ridiculous to the vicious. In 1839 Hermann Marggraff, for example, maintained of men and women:

Produktion setzt Aktivität voraus; eigentlich aktiv ist schon bei dem Zeugungsakt nur der Mann und jede Produktion ist aus einem Zeugungsakt hervorgegangen. Das männliche Geschlecht macht in der Kindheit weibliche Bildungsstufen durch, die Stimme des Knaben ist Sopran, er erscheint in gewissen Jahren fast geschlechtslos, das Mädchen nie, das Weib ist daher immer einseitig, es begreift nur sich, nur seine Gefühle …⁵⁷

The Young Germans' attitudes are by comparison complex, less overtly misogynist, and precisely for this reason subject to misinterpretation.

Veneration of Bettina, Rahel and Charlotte seems to have been a fashion among the so-called liberals in an age which tended toward the cult of stars.⁵⁸ According to Laube, those who belonged to the young, liberal generation had perforce to extol the worth of these women: ‘So sind Rahel und Bettina gerade zu Probirsteine geworden, aus den Urtheilen über sie können wir mit Leichtigkeit Stellung und Werth der Urtheilenden erkennen.’⁵⁹ Yet there is perhaps a greater need to examine the opinions of so-called liberals, for liberally-minded readers tend to accept such views in toto as progressive. Indeed by virtue of their praise of famous women, writings like the essays of Gutzkow, Mundt and Kühne seem at first glance to overcome preconceived notions about women. However, as we have seen, they ultimately perpetuate clichés about them, and thus they do not encourage readers to rethink their views, let alone to set up alternative models which point to change and to the future.

Whereas we cannot demand of the Young Germans a twentieth-century consciousness, we must recognize that their enthusiastic reception of Rahel, Bettina and Charlotte does not advocate or affirm the emancipation of women. Mythologizing certain women while disparaging or underestimating the sex in general is merely a continuation of hundreds of years of the history of the inequitable relationship of the sexes in Western culture and thus at best puts these men on the periphery of any truly emancipatory movement. Their essays in praise of famous women constitute not only a failure to speculate on the social and historical origins of sexual stereotypes but a failure to see these ‘special’ women not as accidents of nature but as phenomena pointing to the new. Indeed the Young Germans fail not merely, as Wülfing suggests, to perceive ‘die Frau, wie sie wirklich ist’, but, more importantly, to provide the occasion for envisaging ‘die Frau, wie sie sein könnte’.

Notes

1. Wulf Wülfing, ‘Zur Mythisierung der Frau im Jungen Deutschland’, ZfdPh [Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie], 99 (1980), 558-81.

2. Karl Gutzkow, ‘Rahel, Bettina, die Stieglitz’, in Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Heinrich Hubert Houben, XII, Leipzig n.d., p. 71. Further references to this essay will be noted in the body of the text.

3. Gutzkow takes Menzel to task for his attitude toward these women in an article which he wrote for the subsequently banned Deutsche Revue. Karl Gutzkow and Ludolf Wienbarg, Die deutsche Revue, ed. J. Dresch., Berlin 1904, pp. 29-31.

4. E. M. Butler, The Saint-Simonian Religion in Germany: A Study of the Young German Movement, (originally 1926) New York 1968, pp. 176-79.

5. Renate Möhrmann, Die andere Frau: Emanzipationsansätze deutscher Schriftstellerinnen im Vorfeld der Achtundvierziger-Revolution, Stuttgart 1972; Renate Möhrmann (ed.), Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormärz: Texte und Dokumente, Stuttgart 1978.

6. Kay Goodman, ‘The Impact of Rahel Varnhagen on Women in the Nineteenth Century’, in Marianne Burkhard (ed.), Gestaltet und Gestaltend: Frauen in der deutschen Literatur (Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 10), Amsterdam 1980, pp. 125-54; here p. 129.

7. Margaret Ryan Paulsell, ‘The Relationship of “Young Germany” to Questions of Women's Rights’, Diss., University of Michigan 1976; Marsha Meyer, ‘Wally, die Zweiflerin and Madonna: A Discussion of Sex-Socialization in the Nineteenth Century’, in Beyond the Eternal Feminine: Critical Essays on Women and German, Literature, ed. Susan L. Cocalis and Kay Goodman, Stuttgart 1982, pp. 135-58; Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, ‘Weibliche Rollenmodelle bei Autoren des “Jungen Deutschland” und des “Biedermeier”’, in Marianne Burkhard, op. cit., pp. 155-84.

8. Jost Hermand (ed.), Das Junge Deutschland: Texte und Dokumente, 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1976.

9. Gustav Kühne, ‘Rahel’, in Männliche und weibliche Charaktere, Leipzig 1838, I, p. 77.

10. Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: Lebensgeschichte einer deutschen Jüdin aus der Romantik, Munich 1959, p. 9.

11. Karl Gutzkow, ‘Ein Besuch bei Bettinen’, in Ausgewählte Werke, ed. cit., VIII, p. 114. Heinrich Laube seems to do exactly the opposite in his essay on Bettina. He declares that the child is now a matron and describes a chance encounter with her: ‘Eine kleine ungefaßte Gestalt … in ein farbloses graues Kleid gehüllt, das traurig braune Umschlagetuch war schief zusammengezogen um die Schultern, und das geälterte blasse Antlitz sah freudlos unter dem verblichenen Hute hervor’ (Heinrich Laube, ‘Bettina’, in Moderne Charakteristiken, Mannheim 1835, II, p. 177). Wülfing believes that in this passage Laube makes an ironic comment on the tendency of his contemporaries to mythologize this woman (‘Mythisierung’, p. 574). While the passage certainly lends itself to this interpretation, scrutiny of its context suggests that Laube is not really talking about the historical Bettina here either. In the essay he has just described the magic of Bettina's work which evokes a world permeated by the divine. Then he laments: ‘O, wie sollten wir sie einander danken, diese Entschädigungen, denn die Außenwelt ist starr und unerbitterlich’ (Laube, p. 176). The paragraph smacks unmistakably of the ‘Weltschmerz’ of the post-romantic era. Is not Laube perhaps less concerned with the historical Bettina than with the shortcomings of the real world which the aging Bettina represents?

12. Gustav Kühne, ‘Charaktere aus Rahel's Umgang’, Männliche und weibliche Charaktere, ed. cit., II, pp. 230-31, 221 respectively.

13. Theodor Mundt, Geschichte der Literatur der Gegenwart. Vorlesungen, Berlin 1842, p. 317.

14. Gustav Kühne, ‘Bettina’, in Weibliche und männliche Charaktere, ed. cit., I, pp. 55, 66, 58 respectively.

15. Theodor Mundt, Charlotte Stieglitz, ein Denkmal, Berlin 1835, p. 20. Further references to this work will appear in the body of the text.

16. Gustav Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, in Männliche und weibliche Charaktere, ed. cit., I, pp. 117, 138, 147-48 respectively.

17. Karl Gutzkow, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, in Ausgewählte Werke, ed. cit., VIII, p. 107.

18. Mundt, ‘Rahel und ihre Zeit’, in Charaktere und Situationen, Wismar 1837, I, p. 220.

19. Mundt, Geschichte der Literatur der Gegenwart, ed. cit., pp. 316-17.

20. Ibid., p. 330.

21. Wülfing, ‘Mythisierung’, p. 563.

22. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, p. 118.

23. Gutzkow, ‘Ein Besuch bei Bettinen’, p. 116.

24. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, p. 118.

25. Gutzkow, ‘Ein Besuch bei Bettinen’, p. 115.

26. Marina Wagner, Alone of all her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, New York 1976.

27. Kühne, ‘Rahel’, p. 113.

28. Karl Gutzkow, Wally, die Zweiflerin: Studienausgabe mit Dokumenten, ed. Günter Heinz, Stuttgart 1979, p. 101.

29. Gustav Kühne, ‘Betinne und die Günderode’, Portraits und Silhouetten, Part I, Hanover 1843, p. 118.

30. Mundt, ‘Rahel und ihre Zeit’, p. 265. It is particularly ironic that Mundt claims that women are hypercritical of one another since in precisely these years Mundt was writing articles for his Zodiacus which reveal him to be petty, vituperative, and irascible. This was also true of Kühne and Gutzkow, the latter remaining to the end of his life an acerbic critic of practically everybody.

31. Kühne, ‘Rahel’, pp. 113-14.

32. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, pp. 134-35.

33. Kühne, ‘Rahel’, p. 84.

34. Louise Otto-Peters (1819-95), whom Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres calls the mother of the women's movement in Germany, lamented in 1876: ‘Wir hoffen, daß wenn die Zukunft den Frauen die gleichen Rechte wie den Männern und Entwicklung und Vervollkommung ihrer Anlagen und auf uneingeschränkte Betätigung derselben gewährt haben wird, sehr wohl was einstens “Ausnahme” war, sich verallgemeinern kann und dann das Beiwort “männlich” nicht mehr als das höchste Lob für weibliche Charakterstärke und Tatkraft gilt.’ Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres (ed.), Die Anfänge der deutschen Frauenbewegung: Louise Otto-Peters, Frankfurt a.M. 1983, p. 243. Wülfing also briefly notes that the Young Germans tend to judge women in terms of men (Wulf Wülfing, Junges Deutschland: Texte-Kontexte, Abbildungen, Kommentar, Munich 1978, p. 163).

35. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, p. 137.

36. Mundt, ‘Rahel und ihre Zeit’, p. 224.

37. Kühne, ‘Rahel’, p. 84.

38. Ibid., pp. 86-7, 88-9, and 102 respectively.

39. Laube, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, IV, Stuttgart 1840, pp. 206-07.

40. Mundt, ‘Rahel und ihre Zeit’, pp. 267-68.

41. Kühne, ‘Rahel’, p. 85.

42. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, p. 136.

43. Mundt, Geschichte der Literatur der Gegenwart, pp. 317-18.

44. Kühne, ‘Rahel’, pp. 103, 105, and 107 respectively.

45. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, pp. 135-36.

46. Mundt, ‘Rahel und ihre Zeit’, pp. 246-47. Goodman repeatedly points out the independence of Rahel's thought which did indeed contain an explosive message for women. She suggests that Rahel's enthusiasm for Saint-Simonism indicates that she had not given up hope that the status quo might be altered (Goodman, p. 142).

47. Kühne, ‘Bettina’, p. 63.

48. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, p. 132.

49. ‘Die junge Literatur soll von der Emanzipation der Frauen gesprochen haben, da sie doch nur von der Emanzipation der Liebe sprach’ (Gutzkow, Die deutsche Revue, p. 30).

50. Joeres, Louise Otto-Peters, pp. 71-2.

51. Möhrmann has pointed out the Young Germans' failure to address vital women's issues: ‘Solange nirgendwo geklärt war, wovon die “femme libre” eigentlich leben und die potentiellen Früchte der “freien Wahlumarmung” ernähren sollte, blieb ein solches Konzept untauglich zur Reform. Moralische Freizügigkeit ließ sich [der Ansicht der feministischen Schriftstellerinnen des Vormärz nach] nur auf der Grundlage ökonomischer Unabhängigkeit verwirklichen’ (Möhrmann, Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormärz, p. 5). Möhrmann attacks Mundt's Madonna, which she finds particularly deceptive, as it might appear to advocate the emancipation of women: ‘Was Mundt unter Frauenbefreiung versteht, konzentriert sich in erster Linie auf die Saint-Simonistische Forderung nach “der Wiedereinsetzung des Fleisches”. Sein Idealbild verkörpert daher eine Frau wie Maria, die im “richtigen” Moment ihre Prüderie über Bord wirft und dem Drang ihrer Sinne nachgibt. Genau betrachtet, bedeutet dies eher eine frohe Botschaft für Studenten, Kandidaten und andere Junggesellen als gerade für die Frau' (Möhrmann, Die andere Frau, p. 71).

52. Mundt, Geschichte der Literatur der Gegenwart, p. 319.

53. Karl Gutzkow, ‘Cypressen für Karoline Stieglitz’, Phönix. Frühlings-Zeitung für Deutschland. Literatur-Blatt, 25. 2. 1835, 189.

54. Kühne, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, p. 143.

55. Gutzkow, ‘Charlotte Stieglitz’, p. 108.

56. Gutzkow, ‘Cypressen für Karoline Stieglitz’, loc. cit.

57. Hermann Marggraff, Deutschland's jüngste Literatur und Kulturepoche, Leipzig 1839, pp. 167-68.

58. Friedrich Sengle, Biedermeierzeit: Deutsche Literatur im Spannungsfeld zwischen Restauration und Revolution 1815-1848, I, Stuttgart 1971, p. 70.

59. Laube, ‘Bettina’, p. 173.