Caroline Schelling

Caroline Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling

Caroline Schelling, née Michaelis, widowed Böhmer, divorced Schlegel (2 September 1763 – 7 September 1809), was a noted German intellectual. She was one of the so-called Universitätsmamsellen, a group of five academically active women during the 18th and 19th centuries, daughters of academics at Göttingen University, alongside Meta Forkel-Liebeskind, Therese Huber, Philippine Engelhard, and Dorothea Schlözer.

Biography

She was born at Göttingen in, the daughter of the orientalist Johann David Michaelis. Her father taught at the progressive University of Göttingen. His daughter was educated by private tutors and himself.In 1784 she married a district medical officer Johann Böhmer, and the couple moved to Clausthal in the Harz. After his death, in 1788 she tried to live financially independent. Together with their only surviving daughter she moved to Göttingen, then Marburg, and 1792 settled in Mainz.[1]

In Mainz Schelling became of a members of the intellectual circle around Georg Forster, who had married her childhood friend Therese Huber. Forster was a explorer, journalist and revolutionary. When Mainz was occupied by the French revolutionary army during the French Revolutionary Wars, she moved into his house. Mainz was declared a republic, aligned with France (see Republic of Mainz). But Prussian troops recaptured Mains,[2] and in account of her political opinions she was imprisonment.[3] In light of her pregnancy from a liaison Schelling asked friends and family for help. She was released and August Wilhelm Schlegel arranged for her to give birth under an assumed name in Lucka near Leipzig.[4]

Schelling and Schlegel married in 1796 and she moved to Jena where he had received a professorship. Their house became a meeting place the young literary and intellectual elite, which were later associated with German Romanticism. His brother Friedrich Schlegel and his wife Dorothea Veit moved in. The couple was at the centre of the Jena Romanticism. Schelling got involved in the literary projects of her husband and his brother. She is credited with contributing to many of the 300 reviews her husband published in the Jena Allgemeine Literaturzeitung between 1796 and 1799.[5]

In 1803 she divorced Schlegel and married the young philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Her husband was at the center of romantic natural philosophy. The couple moved to Würzburg, but were maligned by gossip. In 1806 the couple moved to Munich where her husband received a professorship and was bestowed by honours for his work.[6]

Between 1805 and 1807 Schelling published several reviews in her own name and assisted her husband in his reviews which shaped the romantic literature and literary taste. She also engaged in extensive correspondence with numerous romantics. Having suffered from poor health for some time she died in 1809 from dysentery.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn (2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 674. ISBN 9781474255981.
  2. ↑ Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn (2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 674. ISBN 9781474255981.
  3. ↑ Wikisource Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Schelling, Karoline". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  4. ↑ Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn (2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 674. ISBN 9781474255981.
  5. ↑ Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn (2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 674. ISBN 9781474255981.
  6. ↑ Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn (2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 674. ISBN 9781474255981.
  7. ↑ Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn (2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 674. ISBN 9781474255981.

References

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Schelling, Karoline". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This work in turn cites:
    • G. Waltz, Caroline: Briefe an ihre Geschwister, etc. (2 vols., 1871)
    • G. Waltz, Caroline und ihre Freunde (1882)
    • J. Janssen, Eine Kulturdame und ihre Freunde, Zeit und Lebensbilder (1885)
    • Mrs. A. Sidgwick, Caroline Schlegel and her Friends (London, 1899)
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