Caroline de la Motte Fouqué 

Caroline de la Motte Fouqué was a German Novelist and Essayist. She was born on 7th October 1773 in Nennhausen, Brandenburg, Germany and died on 20th July 1831 in Nennhausen, aged 57.

“Letters as to the Purpose and Tendency of Female Culture” (1811)
“Letters on Greek Mythology” (1812)
“Beytrag zur Geschichte der Zeit” (Contribution to the History of Time) (1830)

1773: Caroline de la Motte Fouqué was born as Caroline Philippine von Briest on 7th October 1773 in Nenhausen, Brandenburg, Germany. She grew up on the family’s Nennhausen estate. Her father was Philipp Friedrich August Wilhelm von Briest who had been an officer in the Prussian army and her mother was Caroline Wilhelmine Zinkow (or Zinnow). She had a younger brother called August Jakob Friedrich who died aged one years old. After her mother’s death, her father remarried to Marie Friederike Helene von Luck and they went on to have two more children. The family home was often visited by prominent authors from Berlin.

1798: She had married Friedrich Ehrenreich Adolf Ludwig Rochus von Rochow a young rich army officer, who possessed an estate nearby but it ended due to his gambling habits and she returned home to her father with her two sons and an illegitimate daughter. None of her work written at the time has been published.

1799: Her husband Friedrich dies by suicide.

1803: She remarries to the writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouque and they have one daughter together, Marie Luise Caroline.

1804: Her husband retires from the army due to poor health and they all live at the Nennhausen estate.

1806: She publishes her first book “Drei Mährchen” (Three Fairy Tales) under the pseudonym “Serena”.

1807: She publishes “Roderich” and often describes herself thereafter as the “author of the Roderich novels” rather than publishing under her own name.

1810: She publishes “Die Frau des Falkensteins” (Falkenstein’s Wife).

1811: She publishes “Briefe über Zweck und Tendenz weiblicher Kultur“ (Letters as to the Purpose and Tendency of Female Culture).

1812: She publishes “Letters on Greek Mythology” and “Magie der Natur” (Magic of Nature).

1814: She publishes “Die Spanier und der Freiwillige in Paris” (The Spaniards and the Volunteer in Paris) and “Feodora”.

1821: She publishes “Die Blinde Führerin” (The Blind Guide) and “Briefe über Berlin” (Letters about Berlin).

1822: Death of her father. She publishes “Vergangenheit und Gegenwart” (Past and Present).

1823: She publishes “Die Vertriebenen” (The Displaced).

1824: She publishes “Neueste Gesammelte Erzählungen” (Latest Collected Stories)

1826: She publishes “Die Frauen in der Grossen Welt. Bildungsbuch beim Eintritt in das Gesellige Leben” (Woman in the Wider World. Education on Entering Social Life).

1830: She publishes what many consider her most important work “Beytrag zur Geschichte der Zeit” (Contribution to the History of Time).

Caroline de la Motte Fouqué died on 20th July 1831 in Nennhausen, Germany. Her letters and some essays were published in 1833 entitled “The Writing Table, or Old Times and New”. 

Although she was a prolific writer the critic E.T.A. Hoffman described her as “boring” and the “writer of bad novels”. Her work has been criticised for abandoning her own ideas and imitating those of her husband in style in the hope that she would share his popularity. Indeed, some poems in her books such as “Frau des Falkenstein” (Falkenstein’s Wife) were actually written by her husband.

List of works by Caroline de la Motte Fouqué