Luise Hensel

Luise Hensel ( born March 30, 1798 in Linum in Brandenburg, † December 18, 1876 in Paderborn, Germany ) was a religious poet.

• 2.1 Example

Life

Maria Luise Hensel, the sister of the painter Wilhelm Hensel and sister Fanny Hensel composer, born Mendelssohn, sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn, was on 30 March 1798 in Linum (Brandenburg), the daughter of the pastor Ludwig Hensel and his wife Johanna Albertina consolation born. They moved to the father's death over with her mother in 1809 to Berlin. After she had been " secretly with God a pact " closed at the age of 14 years and has long been mentally and emotionally according to the search for the truth, she converted on December 7, 1818 from the Lutheran to the Catholic faith with the placement of the Catholic creed Probst Johann Ambrosius pigeon.

The romantic poet Clemens Brentano and the composer Ludwig Berger were joined her at this time in love. However, these feelings were not reciprocated by her for reasons of faith. However, they contributed substantially to the inner transformation of Brentano. As he wrote in 1817 to his brother Christian over 20 sent to him songs Luise: " These songs have first broken the bark over my heart, through them I am melted into tears, and so I count them my most sacred in its truth and simplicity, which I flocked in life from human sources. "

Wilhelm Müller was also unhappy in love with Luise Hensel. This unrequited love is reflected in the two cycles of songs set to music by Franz Schubert found The Beautiful Miller and winter travel. However, Luise Hensel's love was Protestant childhood friend Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, Bismarck as the teacher and friend of the Centre enjoyed high reputation later. However, their religious feelings interfered with the relationship and took her as a convert in a spiritual crisis.

The circumstances led Luise Hensel 1819, to leave Berlin. She entered as a shareholder in the service of the Princess Mimi Salm- Reifferscheidt Herb Home and Dyck and held first on in Munster and then in Dusseldorf. In Münster, she was under the influence of educators Bernhard Heinrich Overberg and in Dusseldorf finally put them on March 6, 1820 at the Jesuit priest Henry deserts from the vow of virginity.

From 1821 was Luise Hensel shareholder of Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg - Stolberg widow and teacher and educator of her daughters Maria Theresa, Amalie and Pauline. She remained on the Stolberg 's Good Sondermühlen at Melle until 1823., Where they brought their religious development to completion. With her ​​foster son Rudolf Roch from Berlin, the child of her sister who died, she moved to the Westphalian Wiedenbrück to leave him there to teach the "good Wiedenbrücker boys' school ." Here she led until 1825 a quiet and mild active life. They made ​​friends with the stigmatized nun Anne Catherine Emmerich from Dülmen, used it and sighted after her death in 1824 her estate. This subheading also traveled Brentano, Luise and the nun portrayed. The decades-long friendship with Brentano was for the poet occasion, Luise Hensel to transfer the sighting of his literary estate and the task of bringing his work after his death to the public.

Every year, she lived for a few weeks at Castle Knippenburg, which had acquired their friend Carl Friedrich Devens, District Administrator and a member of the Westphalian county council in 1821. Stays on the moated castle along the Emscher inspired them to their known prayer I'm tired, go to rest, and the poem Knippenburg:

Grey towers and seriously up a castle, from corridors and ancient trees, it opens the friendly hospitable gate stately rooms to the house. And the myrtle and the laurel grows green rushes and oranges blow in the wind, and maches kind word is exchanged on the green, fragrant lime. However, on the terrace, garden and parking does not rest poetic essence, it sounds the word by heart and marrow the word of eternal life. For if the bell of the tower rings out high above the silent chapel, then the speech of the mouth has died as the creek fleeing wave!

A lifelong pilgrimage

Another important acquaintance from the time with Brentano and Emmerich in Westphalia was Apollonia Diepenbrock Bocholt. Together summarized the girlfriends the decision to be charitable activities, but without joining a religious order. They traveled to Koblenz, where she worked as volunteers helped 1825/1826 in the newly established Civil Hospital, a former convent. Diepenbrock then went the other way; Hensel led by now to a life full of privation as a pilgrim, to Koblenz in special mills and boarding school for girls in Marienberg in Boppard, interrupted from 1827 to 1833 through its educational activities at St. Leonhard- pin in Aachen. Here she taught, inter alia, the later founder of the Order of the " Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus " Clara Fey and later founder of the Order of the "Poor Sisters of St. Francis " Franziska shear Four. In Aachen she was the marriage proposal of the physician Dr. Clemens August Alertz - of the Pope Pius IX later personal physician. - Again led to a severe test of their religious attitude. From 1833 to 1837 she lived in Berlin and Dresden, then to 1840 in Stift Neuburg in the house of the wife of Johann Friedrich Heinrich Schlosser. 1841 she moved to Cologne, where he founded a charitable circle, the arms wreath. So she was in contact with the family of businessman William Bartman, a board member at the Cologne Dombauverein, the orphaned niece and his two nephews looked for a governess for his in the same year. 1842 to the end of 1849, she ran the household in the house at the Haymarket Bartmanschen 76 and moved up the children. In 1853 she went to Wiedenbrück and lived there intermittently until 1872. Afterwards they eventually moved to be near her student from Aachen times Pauline von Mallinckrodt to Paderborn. She died on 18 December 1876 at Westphalenhof and was buried in the East Cemetery in Paderborn, near the chapel.

Works

Your "Poems ", first united with poems of her sister Lucy (. Edited by Kletke, Berl 1858), is recorded mainly by the Spirit milder, more intimate and wistful piety; their evening song I'm tired, go to rest one of the pearls of German religious poetry. A complete collection of " songs " (edited by Schlüter, Paderborn 1869, 6th edition 1886) was followed by: "Letters of the poet Louise H. " (ibid. 1878).

Example

I am weary (1817 )

I'm tired, go to rest, Close to both little eyes; Father, let your eyes Be over my bed! Did I wrong today ' done, See ' it, dear God, not in! Your grace ' and the blood of Jesus Power so all the damage good. Far from me is hatred and envy, me in love and goodness. Let me behold your size, only for you, O God, confide. All who are related to me, God, let rest in your hands! All people, big and small, If you have ordered. Help the poor in distress, was also gracious to us in death. Grant us peace, spell the war. Yours is the last victory. Sick heart send Ruh ', Wet eyes close to; Let stand at the moon in the sky And the silent world besehn!