Dorothea von Schlegel

Friederike Dorothea Schlegel, born Brendel Mendelssohn, ( born October 24, 1764 in Berlin, † August 3, 1839 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a literary critic and writer of romance, girlfriend and later wife of Friedrich Schlegel. The daughter of the Jewish Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn was one of the most prominent Jewish women who converted to Christianity in 1800.

Life

Brendel Mendelssohn was born on October 24, 1764, the second daughter of Moses Mendelssohn and Fromet.

In 1778, at age 14, she became engaged to his ten-year old businessman Simon Veit, she on 30 April 1783 at the age of 18 years, married. They had four sons, of whom two survived: Jonas Veit and Philipp Veit, who later became the founders of the Nazarene painter Community. In the salon of her friend Henriette Herz she met in July 1797 the young Friedrich Schlegel know. Then she divorced on January 11, 1799 by a rabbinical court, in which they undertook not to marry again, not to be baptized, and not to move their children to convert to Christianity.

Then she lived freely and openly together with Friedrich Schlegel. She moved with him, his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel and his wife Caroline to Jena where with Novalis, Tieck and Schelling a center of literary Romanticism established to make a living and working community. Friedrich Schlegel for that time scandalous novel Lucinda is a Programmatic into expanded presentation of their life together.

1804 took place in Paris you convert to Protestantism and the marriage with Friedrich Schlegel. 1808 she moved to Cologne again religion, this time together with Friedrich Schlegel by over to Catholicism - what Schlegel Protestant family who disapproved of this change of religion, made them responsible. The daughter of prominent Jewish representative of enlightenment and tolerance was now convinced together with her ​​second husband, the fact that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church and tried to recruit proselytes among their friends and in their family, followed by her two sons baptized catholic. After twenty years of residence in Vienna, where Schlegel held the position of a royal secretary, she moved, after his death, to her son Philipp Veit to Frankfurt, who was director of the Städel Art Institute there.

Her grave is located at Frankfurt 's main cemetery, in Won B, grave number 180

For her first novel Florentin were Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Franz Sternbalds walks of Tieck models. They also undertook translations from French (including Madame de Staël's Corinne, and the memories of Margaret of Valois ) and wrote literary criticism works.

Honors

According to her of Dorothea Schlegel square is named in Berlin.

Works

• Review of works by Ramdohr, angels and Parny, D. ( Dorothea ) Schlegel, in: Athenaeum Vol III, 2 piece. In 1800. (P. 238-266 )
• Florentin, Lübeck and Leipzig 1801
• Talking about the recent novels of the French women in Europe (Journal, edited by Friedrich Schlegel )
• History of Merlin the Magician, Leipzig 1804