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Femininity and the Salon

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The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy

Part of the book series: Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism ((PHGI))

Abstract

This chapter concerns Salon Culture and its role as a distributor of philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, marking the importance of the mostly unacknowledged contribution by female thinkers. The salon presents the space between private and profession in which the participants could try out new roles and change old ones. Thus, the establishment of sentimental circles such as the Tugendbund around Henriette Herz, the extensive net of communication and representation established by Rahel Varnhagen, the opportunity to publish under either pseudonyms or hidden behind a male editorship used by writers such as Dorothea Schlegel may all count as first attempts to form a role as salient members of an enlightened community—to not only be seen, but to be able to see themselves. But it is foremost the salon which thus became an important stage for individual character development, enabling women to make their new role visible. And with that, the salon also contributed to a new understanding of the various roles as German citizens.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In a way, I end up arguing against Lokke who holds that “an idealist and spiritualized understanding of the woman artist’s role in historical process made this emancipatory movement [from the self-destructive emotional excess of Staël’sCorinne to the inspired artistic freedom of Sand’s Consuelo] possible.” It is no question that the artistic transformation of these processes in writing constitute a form of ‘spiritualization’. However, taking the salon into consideration changes this idealized picture and highlights the social reality of this process of ‘emancipation’. Just a few paragraphs later Lokke herself also highlights the individualistic streak of the male conceptions of Bildungs—and Künstlerroman of the same period—so, we are still on shared ground here: the ‘spiritualization’ should then be understood much less as a retraction from the public, but as a deeper understanding of it, encompassing a heightened awareness of political and historical forces as well. See Kari Lokke, Tracing Women’s Romanticism: Gender, History, and Transcendence (London: Routledge, 2004).

  2. 2.

    This is Becker-Cantarino’s main contention: the salon did not, in the end, change society so that it became more accepting of female agents, but it did help some salonnières to improve their respective position (Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Schriftstellerinnen der Romantik: Epoche—Werke—Wirkung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000), 197).

  3. 3.

    Schleiermacher calls the salon the “little stage” (kleine Bühne), see Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Versuch einer Theorie des geselligen Betragens (1799/1800), ed. Hermann Nohl, in Schleiermacher, Werke, Auswahl in vier Bänden, ed. Otto Braun, Vol. 2 (Leipzig 1913), 1–32, here 26. See also Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Die Berliner Salons: Mit historisch- literarischen Spaziergängen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000, 15). Hannah Arendt (in her biography Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess, ed. Liliane Weissberg, trans., Richard and Clara Winston (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) (from the 1st ed. 1957), here 127–128) seems to relate to this in her assessment of the new ‘players’ in German society of the early nineteenth century, the Jew and the actor.

  4. 4.

    However, a study with more breadth on the international aspect of the Salon culture is Europa—ein Salon? Beiträge zur Internationalität des literarischen Salons, ed., Roberto Simanowski, Horst Turk, and Thomas Schmidt (Göttingen: 1999), and Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch, Europäische Salons. Höhepunkte einer versunkenen weiblichen Kultur (München: Artemis&Winkler, 1992).

  5. 5.

    See Manuel Bauer, “Geselligkeit in‚ sehr gemischten Kreisen‘. Der literarische Salon der Romantik” in Romantische Frauen. Die Frau als Autorin und als Motiv von der Romantik bis zur romantic Fantasie, Europa—ein Salon? Beiträge zur Internationalität des literarischen Salons, ed., Thomas Le Blanc and Bettina Twrsnick (Schriftenreihe und Materialien der Phantastischen Bibliothek Wetzlar, Bd. 105) (Wetzlar, 2011): 178–189, at 180. Interesting is also his later reference to the tight connections between the Berlin Salons and the Jenaer Frühromantik, the famous group around the brothers Schlegel and their rather unconventional partners. The utopia of individual perfection through harmonious exchange with friends lived in both circles, and, as Bauer puts it, still fascinates us (see p. 187).

  6. 6.

    These media also supported the shift in interests and helped the newly discovered values of individualism, personality cult, culture of intellect (Geisteskultur), and Bildung as a development of the whole person as a cultured and politically autonomous agent. Wilhelmy-Dollinger calls diaries, letters, and the salon accordingly “media of individual self-realization” (op. cit., 8). That Madame de Staël’s assessment of it in her massively influential On Germany is to be taken with caution goes without saying, as the pointed contemporaneous replies to it already make abundantly clear (see Becker-Cantarino 2000, op., cit., 187).

  7. 7.

    See Ruth Whittle, Gender, Canon, and Literary History. The Changing Place of Nineteenth-Century German Woman Writers (1835–1918) (Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter, 2013), Chapter 2, where Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, Geselligkeit. Sitten und Gebräuche der europäischen Welt 1789–1900 (Stuttgart: 1909) is mentioned. For the salons in Berlin cf., 79–93, 197–202, 339–352. Whittle discusses mainly Gervinus, Vilmar, and Gottschell. The English reception started off on a better foot, see the first book-length publication on the issue by Bertha Meyer, Salon Sketches. Biographical Studies of Berlin Salons of the Emancipation (New York: 1938). It is true that scholarship was also rich in the late nineteenth century up to the 1930s. I contest, however, that the prevalent perception of scholarship from that period is dominated by the male scholars who were still reading during the 1940s and 1950s. Unfortunately, the Nazi indoctrination lasted much longer than is generally admitted.

  8. 8.

    Margaretmary Daley, Women of Letters. A Study of Self and Genre in the Personal Writings of Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, and Bettina von Arnim (Rochester: Camden House, 1998), 106.

  9. 9.

    Arendt’s biography of Rahel Varnhagen should always be read together with Deborah Hertz’ and Seyla Benhabib’s critical assessments (“The Pariah and her Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Biography of Rahel Varnhagen”, Political Theory 23.1 (1995), 5–24, and D.H., Deborah, Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin (New Haven, London: 1988). (Revised edition of: The Literary Salon in Berlin, 1780–1806: The Social History of an Intellectual Institution. Phil. Diss. University of Minnesota 1979, Ann Arbor, Michigan: 1979), and her “Salonnières and Literary Women in Late Eighteenth Century Berlin”, in: New German Critique 14 (1978), 97–108).

  10. 10.

    See, for instance, German Women in the 19thCentury, ed., John Fout (New York, 1984); Berlin zwischen 1789 und 1848. Facette einer Epoche, ed. Barbara Volkmann (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1981); “Der Geist muß Freiheit genießen…!” Studien zu Werk und Bildungsprogramm Bettine von Arnims, ed. Walter Schmitz and Sybille von Steinsdorff (Berlin: Saint Albin, 1989), Silvia Bovenschen, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit: Exemplarische Untersuchungen zu kulturgeschichtlichen und literarischen Präsentationsformen des Weiblichen (Frankfurt/Main: 1979), Rahel Levin Varnhagen. Die Wiederentdeckung einer Schriftstellerin, ed. Barbara Hahn, Ursula Isselstein (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1987), and in general the works in particular by Barbara Hahn, Konstanze Bäumer, and Konrad Feilchenfeldt.

  11. 11.

    Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Becker-Cantarino, Whittle, among others. For the discussion in Germany in the 1990s see for instance Peter Seibert, Der literarische Salon: Literatur und Geselligkeit zwischen Aufklärung und Vormärz (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993); and Salons der Romantik. Beiträge eines Wiepersdorfer Kolloquiums zu Theorie und Geschichte des Salons, ed., Hartwig Schulz (Berlin, New York: 1997).

  12. 12.

    First published under Petra Wilhelmy, Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert (1780–1914) (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1989) (=Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin, Vol. 73). Ten years later, the study (without the extensive Bibliography and the ‘catalogue of salonnières’) appeared in second edition as Die Berliner Salons. Mit kulturhistorischen Spaziergängen (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2000), here, 5.

  13. 13.

    As Wilhelmy-Dollinger stresses (op. cit., 2), this requires change from the female side (the hunger for education and proper participation in public affairs) as well as the male side (the longing for a more humane and encompassing semi-public sphere that offered reprieve from the strict rules of professional life). In his book on Early Romanticism, Frühromantik. Epoche—Werk—Wirkung (München: Beck, 2000), Pikulik survives mostly without even mentioning the female contributors (nor researchers). Whether the salon had any influence on Romantic theory “cannot be proven, or has at least to far not been thoroughly investigated” (Pikulik, ibid., 65), even though both have a common “social-historical denominator: that they—in contrast to the mainly bourgeois tradition—elevate and revalue the role of the woman” (ibid., but without reference to Wilhelmy-Dollinger’s work).

  14. 14.

    Anonymously published in the renowed Berlinisches Archiv der Zeit und ihres Geschmacks. Schleiermacher’s authorship was only rediscovered in 1909. For more of Schleiermacher’s influence on the theory of the salon Becker-Cantarino (2000), op. cit., 189, and, less skeptical, Andreas Arndt, “Geselligkeit und Gesellschaft”, in Salons der Romantik. Beiträge eines Wiepersdorfer Kolloquiums zu Theorie und Geschichte des Salons, ed. Hartwig Schultz (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1997), 45–61, here 47. Arndt’s comparison of Schiller’sAesthetic Education with Schleiermacher’s text is most instructive (see 54–58), in that he reconstructs the Enlightenment basis in both of their argumentation. We should, of course, also consider the fact that many ideas Schleiermacher deals with here are also included in his Ethics, for instance §§100–8 (version 1812/13), which discusses Sociability as the medium in which genuine exchange is possible (Schleiermacher Werke 2, 293–294, and Konrad Feilchenfeldt, “Rahel Varnhagens ‘Geselligkeit’ aus der Sicht Varnhagens”, in: Schultz, op. cit., 147–169, here 160–165).

  15. 15.

    Rahel Bibliothek (Rahel Varnhagen, Gesammelte Werke, ed. K. Feilchenfeldt, U. Schweikert, R. Steiner (München: Matthes & Seitz, 1983), Vol 10, 253).

  16. 16.

    Becker-Cantario (2000), op. cit., 189 observes that even though Schleiermacher was good friends with central figures of the salon, his piece remained anonymous and left “no traces in the letters of the time”. This may very well be true. However, the piece itself mentions the salon rather explicitly for it to be just some “attempt of grounding a society of individuals on an ethical foundation” (190). As Stefan Nienhaus, Gechichte der deutschen Tischgesellschaft (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003) argues, Schleiermacher’s treatise is somewhat visible in the statutes of the Tischgesellschaft and similar societies. That nobody outright cited Schleiermacher does not necessarily indicate that people were not aware of him. It was rather a common usage of the time, as lamentable as this is for historians (see ibid., 41).

    By the way: Schleiermacher, in contrast to many others (here it is Friederike Helene Unger), does not lose his head over the predominance of Jewish salonnières. “Daß junge Gelehrte und Elegants die hiesigen großen jüdischen Häuser fleißig besuchen, ist sehr natürlich, denn es sind bei weitem die reichsten bürgerlichen Familien hier, fast die einzigen, die ein öffentliches Haus halten, und bei denen man wegen ihrer ausgebreiteten Verbindungen in allen Längern Fremde von allen Ständen antrifft. Wer also auf eine recht ungenierte Art gute Gesellschaft sehen will, läßt sich in solchen Häusern einführen, wo natürlich jeder Mensch von Talenten, wenn es auch nur gesellige Talente sind, gern gesehen wird und sich auch gewiß amüsiert, weil die jüdiscchen Frauen—die Männer werden zu früh in den Handel gestürzt—sehr gebildet sind, von allem zu sprechen wissen und gewöhnlich eine oder die andere schöne Kunst in einem hohen Grade besitzen” (Henriette Herz, Ihr Leben und ihre Zeit, ed. Hans Landsberg (Weimar: Kiepenheuer 1913/reprint Frankfurt: Klotz, 2000), 15). It is marvelous how diplomatically Schleiermacher covers all bases of concern and then explains them in a reasonable way: (a) these are the only open houses, (b) they offer all sorts of important connections (also for business people), but also (c) high-class relaxation, and may be led by women, but that is (d) just because the men are busy making money.

  17. 17.

    “Jeder Mensch hat als endliches Wesen seine bestimmte Sphäre, innerhalb der er allein denken und handeln, und also sich auch mittheilen kann. Die Sphäre des Einen ist nicht völlig die des Andern, so gewiß er nicht selbst der andre ist, und jeder—dies geht durch alle Mitglieder einer Gesellschaft hindurch—hat in der einen etwas, was nicht in der andern liegt.” (Schleiermacher 1799, in Landsberg, op. cit., 171).

  18. 18.

    See also his “Brouillon zur Ethik”, 34. Stunde, in: Werke 2, 59–60.

  19. 19.

    Aus Schleiermachers Tagebuch, in: Werke 2, xxv, here xxvii.

  20. 20.

    Werke 2, here 3–4, my translation. “Ein Zustand der diese beiden [Sphären des privaten und öffentlichen] ergänzt, der die Sphäre eines Individui in die Lage bringt, dass sie von den Sphären Anderer so mannigfaltig als möglich durchschnitten werde, und jeder seiner eigenen Grenzpunkte ihm die Aussicht in eine andere und fremde Welt gewähre, so daß alle Erscheinungen der Menschheit ihm nach und nach bekannt, und auch die fremdesten Gemüter und Verhältnisse ihm befreundett und gleichsam nachbarlich werden können. Diese Aufgabe wird durch den freien Umgang vernünftiger sich untereinander bildender Menschen gelöst.”

  21. 21.

    See also Arndt (1997), op. cit., 54–56. Although we lack proof that Schleiermacher knew Schiller’s work, it had been famous enough in his time to assume some influence.

  22. 22.

    Although the Germans strained to break themselves free of their fascination with their neighbor, not even avoiding the term salon could—surprisingly—achieve this aim. Quite the opposite, since they ended up comparing “their” salonnières with the French counter pieces, calling Franziska/Fanny von Arnstein the “Madame de Staël of Vienna”, Rahel Varnhagen as the secret Lespinasse, and Henriette Herz as Madame Récamier (Henriette Herz, Ihr Leben und ihre Zeit, ed. Hans Landsberg (Weimar: Kiepenheuer 1913/reprint Frankfurt: Klotz, 2000), 35). The ‘Ur-salon’ led by the Marquise de Rambouillet (Wilhelmy-Dollinger, op. cit., 25–27), by the way, matches the ideals of the early nineteenth century exactly: spirit and personality ranked above nobility, and the discussion was expected to foster reason and ‘urbanité’, sophistication and inner nobility. Some salons in France might be more focused on the courting of the aristocracy, but that holds true for some German salons as well—the difference is in the respective detail of each salon, not in the nationality.

  23. 23.

    Barbara Hahn, “Der Mythos vom Salon. ‘Rahels Dachstube’ als historische Fiktion”, in Salons der Romantik. Beiträge eines Wiepersdorfer Kolloquiums zu Theorie und Geschichte des Salons, ed., Hartwig Schultz (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1997), 213–234, here 232.

  24. 24.

    Wilhelmy-Dollinger, op. cit., 30, who also notes that the term really only settled when its institution was degenerating—and the term salon became a symbol of longing and remembrance.

  25. 25.

    See also, Becker-Cantarino’s concise summary of it in Becker-Cantarino (2000), op. cit., 191.

  26. 26.

    Wilhelmy-Dollingerop. cit., 2: schöngeistig or political, centered around a mostly female, inspiring person. For Wilhelmy-Dollinger, these “echte Salons” were quasi-public institutions, which were discussed in public media (newspapers, journals), as well as in memoirs and letters of its constituents.

  27. 27.

    Hartwig Schultz, Unsre Lieb aber ist außerkohren Die Geschichte der Geschwister Clemens und Bettine Brentano (Frankfurt/Main: Insel Verlag, 2004), 266. “Es gehörte zum Prinzip des literarischen Salons, dass formelle Einladungen nicht ausgesprochen oder verschickt wurden.”

  28. 28.

    Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, Denkwürdigkeiten und vermischte Schriften, Bd. 4, 2. Aufl. (Leipzig 1843), 636. “Sie hörte in ihrer Jugend Schmeicheleien von Lessing, in späterer Zeit von Herder, dann standen Frau von Genlis, der Fürst von Ligne und Goethe mit ihr im freundlichsten Verkehr.”

  29. 29.

    See Ruth Whittle, Gender, Canon, and Literary History. The Changing Place of Nineteenth-Century German Woman Writers (1835–1918) (Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter, 2013), 62.

  30. 30.

    Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess, ed., Liliane Weissberg, trans., Richard and Clara Winston (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) (from the 1st ed. 1957), 108, letter to R. Friedländer from 28 March 1808.

  31. 31.

    Becker-Cantarino (2000), op. cit., 192. See also Landsberg op. cit., 18, who observes that the need of the Jewish salonnières to shine necessitated the marginalization of male Jews, with the exception of artists such as Michael Beer and Giacomo Meyerbeer.

  32. 32.

    Schleiermacher, Versuch, 11–12. It should be noted, though, that this restriction somewhat clashes with the next requirement, namely, that sociability is aimed at the “whole human being” (den ganzen Menschen, ibid., 13). Only from the standpoint of the ideal society (and the ideal human being) are both aspects not mutually exclusive.

  33. 33.

    But speaking of physical place: The center of the Salon was without question Berlin, but there were also important circles in Weimar, Dresden, Heidelberg, and Jena—all, quite incidentally, also centers of German Romanticism. Some of these circles moved with their hosts, and as such we see a version of the salon pop up around the Schlegels in Italy, or the Tiecks wherever they went. See Ina Hundt, “Geselligkeit im Kreise von Dorothea und Friedrich Schlegel in Paris in den Jahren 1802–1804”, in Hartwig Schultz, ed., Salons der Romantik. Beiträge eines Wiepersdorfer Kolloquiums zu Theorie und Geschichte des Salons (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1997), 83–133, here 83–85.

  34. 34.

    Benhabib, “The Pariah and her Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Biography of Rahel Varnhagen”, Political Theory 23.1 (1995), 5–24, here 17.

  35. 35.

    Wilhelmy-Dollinger (2000), op. cit., 44–45: his translations as a starting point for assimilation, the open sociability (Geselligkeit) of his house as a model for the later salon. Mendelssohn was not only Dorothea Schlegel’s father, but also the mentor of Sara von Grotthuß, and introduced her to Shaftesbury’s works, see her Briefe an Goethe, ed. L. Geiger, in: Goethe Jahrbuch 14 (1893), 27–142, here 52.

  36. 36.

    “The Jewish salon, the recurrently dreamed idyll of a mixed society, was the product of a chance constellation in an era of social transition. The Jews became stop-gaps between a declining and an as yet not stabilized social group: the nobility and the actors; both stood outside the bourgeois society—like the Jews—and both were accustomed to playing a part, to represent something, to expressing themselves, to displaying ‘what they were’ rather than ‘showing what they had’; in the Jewish houses of homeless middle class intellectuals they found solid ground and an echo which they could not hope to find anywhere else. In the loosened framework of conventions of this period Jews were socially acceptable in the same way as actors: the nobility reassured both that they were socially acceptable.” (Arendt, op. cit., 127, see also Benhabib, op. cit., 17)

  37. 37.

    After all, the 1812 decree of emancipation suffered from the get-go from unequal realization and too many ‘exceptions’, but it was positively killed by 1815.

  38. 38.

    Wilhelmy-Dollinger (2000), op. cit., 77.

  39. 39.

    Who described the hype around his persona as the hare who is encircled by the hunter in ever closer circles, see Landsberg, op. cit., 24 (citing a letter to Otto from 1800).

  40. 40.

    Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess, op. cit., 177.

  41. 41.

    Schultz (2004), op. cit., 265, notes that Bettine does not exhibit any anti-Semitic tendencies, and keeps visiting the Berlin Salons of Jewish women such as Sara Levy and Fanny Lewald. On Bettina’s attitudes toward Jewish citizens see also Bäumer/Schultz (1995, 129–136).

  42. 42.

    See Seibert (1993, 164). Interesting account overall on the difference between first and second salon, the more consumerist nature of the second, p. 165. We should also take Hahn’s criticism to heart, namely that Dachstube is not only Rahel’s romanticized memory, but that of many contemporary researchers as well. However, as Hahn seems to overlook in the final pages that Rahel calls her memory one that cannot easily be taken seriously—given the somber note of all her memories, this only indicates her intent to color this memory in a particular—romantic—way. See Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Briefwechsel mit Pauline Wiesel, ed., Barbara Hahn (München: C.H. Beck, 1997), esp., 233–234.

  43. 43.

    Wilhelmy-Dollinger (2000, 11).

  44. 44.

    Wilhelmy-Dollinger (2000, 17), see also her “Die Berliner Salons und der Verein der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen zu Berlin”. In Profession ohne Tradition. 125 Jahre Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen, ed. by the Berlinische Galerie […] in cooperation with the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen, Berlin: 1992, 339–352.

  45. 45.

    Landsberg, op. cit., 24, citing a letter to Gustav von Brinckmann, Mai 1800. See also Hahn (1997).

  46. 46.

    “Rahel acquired to the point of mastery the art of representing her own life: the point was not to tell the truth, but to display herself; not always to say the same thing to everyone, but to each what was appropriate for him” (Arendt, op. cit., 173).

  47. 47.

    See Wilhelmy-Dollinger (2000, 85).

  48. 48.

    The Mignon-parallel that was also used to characterize Bettina. In her correspondence with Pauline Wiesel, Rahel (Ralle) and Pauline (Pölle) referenced their preferences of the natural life as “loving green things”—note that this is a highly romanticized version of nature. Heidi Thomann Tewarson, Rahel Levin Varnhagen. The Life and Work of a German Jewish Intellectual (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 106.

  49. 49.

    See Wilhelmy-Dollinger, op. cit., 85; Daley, Women of Letters. A Study of Self and Genre in the Personal Writings of Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, and Bettina von Arnim, op. cit., 49; Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Briefwechsel mit Pauline Wiesel, ed., Barbara Hahn (München: C.H. Beck, 1997), 213–223.

  50. 50.

    Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Briefwechsel mit Pauline Wiesel, ed. Barbara Hahn (München: C.H. Beck, 1997).

  51. 51.

    See Wilhelmy-Dollinger, op. cit., 108.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 113.

  53. 53.

    During the Napoleonic wars, in particular 1813/14, most salons were on halt, anyways.

  54. 54.

    When she married, she had to take up a Christian surname. Rahel chose Friederike Antonie Varnhagen von Ense, signing all letters like this ever since. However, for her old friends, she remained “Rahel”: “The stroke ‘R’ remains my coat of arms”, cit. in Tewarson, Rahel Levin Varnhagen. The Life and Work of a German Jewish Intellectual, op. cit., 139.

  55. 55.

    See Wilhelmy-Dollinger, op. cit., 140.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., 14.

  57. 57.

    See Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess, op. cit., with some rather unfair charges; Whittle, Gender, Canon, and Literary History, op. cit.; Tewarson, Rahel Levin Varnhagen. The Life and Work of a German Jewish Intellectual, op. cit.; Konrad Feilchenfeldt, “Rahel Varnhagens ‘Geselligkeit’ aus der Sicht Varnhagens”, in Schultz, op. cit.,, 147–169, here 147; and Hahn (2004, 553) with better judgment (also informed by findings in the library of Krakow) on the issue.

  58. 58.

    See Hahn (2004, 553–555), calling it a collective, ongoing effort. Hahn (1997, 102): the letters as an echoing structure (Echostruktur).

  59. 59.

    Rahel Bibliothek I, foreword.

  60. 60.

    Rahel Bibliothek I, 208.

  61. 61.

    The letters have been rediscovered in the 1980s, and the scholarly interest arose again when the lost collection Varnhagen reappeared in Krakow (see Becker-Cantarino op. cit., 161).

  62. 62.

    See Endnote 9.

  63. 63.

    Curiously, Arendt claims not to write objective history, but rather to offer an account of “how Rahel herself” would have written about it (Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess, op cit., xv–xvi). See also Benhabib, op. cit., 8–10.

  64. 64.

    Who, together with Fichte was one of the rejuvenators of the Freimaurergesellschaft.

  65. 65.

    Eine “geschlossene Gesellschaft… wo man zusammenkommt, um sich Aufsätze vorzulesen, schöne Schriftstellerische Werke zu beherzigen, literarische Neuigkeiten mitzutheilen u.s.w. ” (Landsberg, op. cit., 252, letter to his sister from 22 October 1797).

  66. 66.

    See in particular Manuel Bauer, Schlegel und Schleiermacher. Frühromantische Kunstkritik und Hermeneutik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011).

  67. 67.

    “Arnim ist der Stifter einer Eßgsellschaft, welche sich die christlich-deutsche nennt und keine Juden, keine Franzosen und keine Philister duldet. Ich habe neulich auch darin gegessen, und es geht recht animisch darin zu” (cited in Landsberg, op. cit., 17).

  68. 68.

    See in particular Stefan Nienhaus, Gechichte der deutschen Tischgesellschaft (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003). Nienhaus situates the Tischgesellschaft as a “private public space” and concentrates on its political implications, not without also touching on the importance of wit and satire—but also the chauvinism and questionable nationalism of such Vereine.

  69. 69.

    See ibid., 34–35.

  70. 70.

    https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/berlin-salons-late-eighteenth-to-early-twentieth-century%20. It should also be noted that Levy supported her great-nephew Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in his rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach, as Wilhelmy-Dollinger also points out that Sara Levy and the (at this point quite elderly) Henriette Herz were sources of inspiration of the feminist and salonnière Fanny Lewald.

  71. 71.

    Particularly noteworthy is her hilarious report of Madame de Staël’s entrance in Bethmann-Schaaf’s salon in Frankfurt, dressed as “Corinna” (i.e. the heroine of her most famous novel), in an obviously tight dress that she—“unfortunately”, as Bettina slyly notices—gathers in the front, not the back, so that the guests are treated to a good look on her thighs when she descends four flights of stairs to greet the other guests. That Bettina also gets into an argument with Frau Rath concerning who—de Staël or she, Bettina—are more apt philosophical partners for Goethe, gives Bettina the opportunity to once more advance on Goethe himself: if he really just ‘plays’ with her as with a doll, she asks him in the ‘letter’/novel, thus, in combination with the aforementioned, unflattering description of her rival, cementing her position as an infatuated equal (see Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (Berlin: Aufbau, 1986), 200–203).

  72. 72.

    Konstanze Bäumer and Hartwig Schultz, Bettina von Arnim (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), 124–125.

  73. 73.

    See Carola Stern, “Ich möchte mir Flügel wünschen.” Das Leben der Dorothea Schlegel (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1990); Irina Hundt, “Geselligkeit im Kreise von Dorothea und Friedrich Schlegel”, in Salons der Romantik. Beiträge eines Wiepersdorfer Kolloquiums zu Theorie und Geschichte des Salons, ed., Hartwig Schultz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 83–133, here 102, 132, also Becker-Cantarino, “‘Feminismus’ und ‘Emanzipation’? Zum Geschlechterdiskurs in der deutschen Romantik am Beispiel der Lucinde und ihrer Rezeption” in: Schultz, op. cit., 21–44, and Anne Pollok, “On Self-Formation through Writing and Sociability:Henriette Herz, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Dorothea Schlegel, Bettina von Arnim”, in Women and Philosophy in 18th Century Germany, ed., Corey W. Dyck (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2020).

  74. 74.

    Arndt (1997), op. cit., 50, citing from Schleiermacher’s notes.

References

  • Hahn, Barbara. “Der Mythos vom Salon: ‘Rahels Dachstube’ als historische Fiktion,” in Salons in der Romantik, Hartwig Schultz ed. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), pp. 213–34.

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  • “Rahel Varnhagen,” in New History of German Literature, David E. Wellbery et al. eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 551–55.

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    Anne Pollok

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Pollok, A. (2020). Femininity and the Salon. In: Millán Brusslan, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53567-4_6

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