Caroline Schlegel-Schelling

Among the women of the Romantic era, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling (1763-1809) was one of the most fascinating personalities. Friedrich Schlegel referred to her as a "politically erotic nature." By the side of Georg Forster, she experienced the Mainz Republic, and as the wife of August Wilhelm Schlegel, she witnessed the early Romantic period in Jena. Her home became a literary center, hosting figures such as Novalis, Brentano, Tieck, Tischbein, Friedrich Schlegel, Goethe, and Fichte, as well as the young philosopher Schelling, whom she married in 1803. Her surviving letters testify to an extraordinary life that was both contradictory and filled with unfulfilled desires. Sigrid Damm has selected the most beautiful letters of Caroline Schlegel-Schelling and sensitively and sympathetically crafts a portrait of a woman who managed to shape her life within historically imposed narrow confines, refusing to conform from an early age.