Caroline Rudolphi

Caroline Rudolphi (* August 24, 1753 probably in Magdeburg, † April 15, 1811 in Heidelberg; Complete name: Carolina Christiana Louisa Rudolphi ) was a German educator, poet, writer and formed a social center for many contemporaries.

Life

Caroline Rudolphi grew up in poverty in Potsdam. The father died early. From 1763 she had to work out a living for herself and her mother with the production of handicrafts. She was educated largely self-taught. She wrote poems, fables and songs. As a poet, she was discovered and promoted by the Royal Prussian Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt. He set to music a number of her poems and published a first collection. 1778 took over Caroline Rudolphi the education of five daughters of the family of Röpert in Troll Hagen.

Four of the girls accompanied her when she went to Trittau 1783. Thus, the basis for a private education institution was laid. In the summer of 1784 she moved to Werder and Bill (Hamburg ) Hamm and took her brother Ludwig as a male tutor with. After his death, the doctor of physics and astronomer Johann Friedrich Benz Berg was responsible for some time for science teaching.

In a few years Caroline Rudolphi boarding blossomed into a widely known institute for girls' education. She was a close friend of Elise Reimarus and belonged to the circle around the family Sieveking and Reimarus. Your institute has been a meeting place of personalities such as Matthias Claudius, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Carl Leonhard Reinhold and Jens Baggesen.

1803 she moved to Heidelberg with some of her students. There she continued her successful work continues as an educator and also established here as a nice center. Among her guests were the protagonists of the Heidelberg Romanticism, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano and his wife, Sophie Mereau, and Frederick Creuzer and Ludwig Tieck were among the visitors. With Brentano she remained after his departure from Heidelberg in contact because she had his step- daughter, Hulda Mereau, taken after the death of his mother in her care.

A close relationship maintained Caroline Rudolphi also to the family of Johann Heinrich Voss, classicist, translator of Homer and pugnacious opponent of the Romantics. His wife, Ernestine Voss, one of her girlfriends, and the youngest son, Abraham Voss tutor was, for some time in their institute and later gave its Written estate out.

After her death in 1811 took over Emilie Heins, a longtime student and assistant, the management of the boarding school, she was continuing with her older sister until the 1830s. The reputation of the institution as a philanthropist was maintained until the end.

Work

With three volumes of poetry, which appeared in 1781, 1787 and 1796, Caroline Rudolphi made ​​a name as a poet. From 1805 she devoted herself as a writer to the issue of female education and the role of women in society. In their two-volume epistolary novel paintings of female education (1807 ), she developed her concept of education.

In the tradition of Jean -Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, she followed the principle of natural education and pleaded for the free development of the natural forces of the child. One of their main teaching methods was the Socratic dialogue, the questioning -developing conversation, with whom she nicknamed " female Socrates " earned. In several anonymously authored articles in the Journal for German women written by German women who are assigned to Rudolphi, they did not provide the traditional female role as wife and mother while in question, but argued for the equal entitlement of women to education.

Posthumously published 1835, the estate of Caroline Written Rudolphi. Your paintings of female education learned to 1857 three more runs. An early poem, the "Ode to God," was set to music in 1835 by Johann Heinrich Tobler and introduced later as a country song municipality in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden.

Works

• Poems by Caroline Christiane Louise Rudolphi. Ed. and m. some Melod. begl. v. Johann Friederich Reichardt. Berlin 1781 (2nd edition Wolfenbüttel 1787).
• Poems by Caroline Christiane Louise Rudolphi. Second Collection. There are a few tunes. Edited by Joachim Heinrich Campe. Braunschweig 1787.
• New collection of poems by Caroline Rudolphi. Leipzig, 1796.
• The Caroline Rudolphi all poems. New edition, Vienna and Prague 1805.
• Letters on female education. [ anonymous ] In: Journal for German women of German women written. 1 (1805 ). H. 5, pp. 9-50; H. 7, pp. 46-82; H. 8, pp. 1-43 [ 1st - 16th Letter, reprint in: paintings of female education (1807 ) ].
• Is also friendship among women? [sign: . Helena S.]. In: Journal for German women of German women written. 1 (1805 ). H. 8, pp. 54-66. [ Reprint in: Written estate of Caroline Rudolphi. Edited by Abraham Voss. Heidelberg 1835. Pp. 67-80. ]
• Femininity. A conversation. [sign: . Helena S. ( author of the Letters on female education in the first Jahrg )]: written Journal for German women of German women in. 2 (1806 ). H. 5, pp. 15-34.
• Paintings of female education. 2 vols Heidelberg 1807 ( 2nd edition 1815, 3rd edition 1838, 4th edition 1857; Translations: Haarlem 1807, Stockholm 1811).
• Written estate of Caroline Rudolphi. Edited by Abraham Voss. Heidelberg 1835.