Emilie von Berlepsch: Difference between revisions

Berlepsch was born in [[Gotha]] in 1755. Her parents were {{Interlanguage link multi|Carl Georg August von Oppel|de}} and his wife Amalie. When her father died, her mother remarried, and she was looked after by an uncle and given a good private education. She published some poetry and then a book of protest because Switzerland was invaded in 1798 by the French.<ref name=odnb/>

She married {{Interlanguage link multi|Friedrich Ludwig von Berlepsch|de}} when she was sixteen and had three children with him. The marriage ended in divorce in 1787.<ref name="Dawson2002">{{cite book|author=Ruth P. Dawson|title=The Contested Quill: Literature by Women in Germany, 1770–1800|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=avvD_na7DUEC&pg=PA259|year=2002|publisher=University of Delaware Press|isbn=978-0-87413-762-0|pages=259–260}}</ref> Her ex-husband married Anna Dorothea Helene Siever, who had been her maid, after the divorce. By this time Berlepsch's writing was being regarded as more than amateur and aspiring to art. She is said to have "set her cap", unsuccessfully, at [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]].<ref name="Boyle2003"/>

She left Switzerland in protest at the French invasion of the country and swore never to set foot in it again while it was occupied. She went to visit Scotland in 1799 and 1800. She had already met the polyglot Reverend James Macdonald in Germany who was acquainted with C. M. Wieland and J. G. Herder. Macdonald was an enthusiast for improving relations between Scotland and Germany. The vicar in [[Fife]] became Berlepsch's chosen host. He looked after her and took her on tours of Scotland; some of her time was spent in Edinburgh and some in the Highlands. Berlepsch wrote a four volume account titled ''Caledonia'', in German, which described Scotland, including the remote highlands,<ref name="Dawson2011">Ruth P. Dawson, “Navigating Gender: Georg Forster in the Pacific and Emilie von Berlepsch in Scotland.“ In: ''Weimar Classicism'', ed. David Gallagher. Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011. 39-64.</ref> and discussed women writers publishing in English.<ref name="Boyle2003">{{cite book|author=Nicholas Boyle|title=Goethe: Revolution and renunciation, 1790-1803|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kgo0k_jtsxYC&pg=PA451|year=2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-925751-5|pages=451–}}</ref>

In her writing Berlepsch deals particularly with the subject of [[women's rights]], a topic she first raised in 1791 in a journal article innocuously titled "Some Characteristics and Principles Necessary for Happiness in Marriage," in which she ponders the pervasiveness of misogyny and the costs of women's conventional submissiveness.<ref>Ruth P. Dawson: “'And This Shield is called—Self-Reliance,' Emerging Feminist Consciousness in the Late Eighteenth Century.“ In: ''German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, A Social and Literary History'', ed. Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1986. 157-74157–74.</ref> She described herself as "fighting against the prejudice that wants to grant women neither a will of their own nor the courage to express it".<ref name="Dawson2002"/> She talks about routine misogyny that cannot be handled by submissiveness.<ref name="Dawson2002"/> She argues that women are given neither rights nor the opportunity to complain; women are not, by their nature, prisoners of their emotions and men are not natural tyrants. She wanted an end to misogyny but she believed that men retained supremacy.<ref name="Dawson2002"/> She discussed various writers for German readers including particularly [[Mary Wollstonecraft]].<ref name="Dawson2011"/> She notes her own role in raising women's issues for the first time in German.<ref name=odnb/>

==Published Worksworks==

[[Category:Disease18th-relatedcentury deathsGerman in Germanywriters]]