Elise Reimarus

Elise Reimarus (actually Margaretha Elisabeth Reimarus; born January 22, 1735 in Hamburg, † September 2, 1805 same place ) was a German writer, teacher, translator and Salonnière in the Age of Enlightenment.

Life

Elise Reimarus was the daughter of Johanna Friederike and Hermann Samuel Reimarus, among other things, with works on the instincts of animals and the natural religion ( Memoirs of the principal truths of natural religion 1754), as well as the completion and publication of the work of his father Johann Albert Fabricius, Dio Cassius, became famous. The older brother Elise was Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus, who later as a physician, philosopher, and leader of his father's work further made ​​his name. Elise Reimarus was considered one of the most educated women of Hamburg and was already temporarily in an exchange of letters with the most important figures of the Enlightenment, such as Moses Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Carl Leonhard Reinhold. The poet and educator Caroline Rudolphi was one of her girlfriends.

Elise Reimarus went public with translations from English and French, as well as his own works. At times, she stood as a salon lady in front of the taught - Reimarus social circle in Hamburg, which can be regarded as one of the forerunners of the great salons of romance. Your active participation in the philosophical and literary debates of the Enlightenment it was " perhaps the most significant [n ] woman personality of the German Enlightenment " are used to. Elise Reimarus refused many marriage proposals and remained unmarried all her life.

Works (selection)

• Individual poems: " Bey of the tomb of the Lord A [ ugust ] G [ Ottfried ] S [ chwalb ], from a girlfriend in Hamburg"; Hamburg Correspondent " 28, February 15, 1777
• " The Shepherd and the world way; from the Gay. " Small Children's Library, ed Campe, Vol 5, 1780, 78-80.
• " Spring comes with all his treasures " ( in Oehlke, Lessing and his time, Vol 2, 1919, 573 )

• Jean -François Marmontel: The Friendship on the sample. In 1769.
• Voltaire: Zayre. A tragedy in five acts.