Caroline Schlegel-Shelling 

Caroline Schlegel-Shelling was married to two of the great Romantic intellectuals of her day and friend to many more but was also known as a great translator and critic in her own right. She was born on 2nd September 1763 in Göttingen, Germany and died on 7th September 1809 in Maulbronn, Germany, aged 46.  

She is credited with contributing to many of the 300 reviews her husband published in the Jena “Allgemeine Literaturzeitung” newspaper between 1796 and 1799 and also translated many works of William Shakespeare into German which were published under her husband’s name due to conventions of the time.

1763: Caroline Albertine Dorothea Michaelis was born on 2nd September in Göttingen, Germany. She was the daughter of Johann David Michaelis who was a professor of Bible studies and Hebrew at Göttingen University. She was educated by her father and a variety of private tutors.

1764: The family moves into a house at Prinzenstrasse.

1777: She attends the boarding school of Sarah Elisabeth Schläger in Gotha.

1778: She is known as a great letter writer and her first correspondence begins at the age of fifteen. She mentions Goethe and his novel“The Sorrows of Young Werther” and constantly refers to him throughout her life.

1782: She becomes engaged to Franz Wilhelm Böhmer at the instigation of her family. He is the recently appointed head of the Surgical and Hospital Clinic in Göttingen. 

1783: Johann Wolfgang Goethe visits the family home but she misses him.

1784: In June she marries Franz, the son of lawyer Georg Ludwig Böhmner. Her husband obtains a job as a town and mining physician in Clausthal and they move there.

1785: Her daughter Philippina Augusta (always known as Auguste) is born on 28th April. 

1787: Her second daughter Sophie Therese (Röschen) is born on 23rd April.

1788: Her husband dies on 4th February and she moves back to her mother’s in Göttingen with Auguste where Franz’s medical library is auctioned. Her son Franz Wilhelm Böhmer is born on 20th July.

1789: Sophie Therese (Röschen) Böhmer dies in Marburg on 17th December. Local people accuse her brother Fritz Michaelis of contributing to her death through poor treatment.

1790: She, her sister Lotte and Auguste visit Therese and Georg Forster in Mainz. Therese is an old school friend. She rejects a proposal of marriage from Herr von Breitenstein.

1791: She rejects marriage proposals from Josias Friedrich Löffler and probably August Wilhelm Schlegel.

1792: She moves to Mainz to live with Therese and Georg Forster. Georg is a journalist and revolutionary and passionate supporter of the French Revolution. Mainz becomes a republic during the French Revolutionary Wars but in July it is recaptured by the Prussians. In August Goethe visits the Forsters and meets Caroline. She tries to flee Mainz but is arrested on suspicion that she is Georg’s wife who was seen as a rebel leader. In October the French occupy the town once more under General Adam Philippe de Custine.

1793: In February she realises she is pregnant by the French lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Dubois de Crancé. Mainz is declared a republic and she leaves the town with Auguste and heads towards Gotha. However, the traveling partners Caroline, Meta Forkel, and Sophia Magdalena Wedekind are captured and taken to the fortress Königstein. She contemplates suicide should her pregnancy become known and August Willhelm Schlegel, a friend from school days, manages to smuggle poison in to her. After an appeal to the King of Prussia by her brother Philipp she and her daughter are released in July after being transferred to Kronenberg. They travel to Leipzig with Schlegel who has arranged for her to give birth under an assumed name in nearby Lucka. They lodge in a house provided by the publisher Georg Joachim Göschen who describes her as his stepsister. Caroline gives birth on 3rd November to a son Wilhelm Julius Krantz. (named after foster parents).

1794: In January Caroline and Auguste leave Lucka leaving her son behind and travel to Gotha. She learns that the Hannoverian University Board of Trustees have forbidden her from staying in Göttingen.

1795: She lives with her mother and sister Luise in Braunchschweig. In April her son dies in Lucka. She considers emigrating to America with Schlegel.

1796: In January her review of Madame de Genlis’s “Les Chevaliers du Cygnea” appears in the “Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung”. On 1st July she marries August Wilhelm Schlegel in St. Catherine’s church Braunschweig. They move to Jena where her new husband has obtained a professorship at the University. Her husband’s bother Friedrich Schlegel and his wife Dorothea move in with them. The house becomes a meeting place for the German Romantics and they meet Friedrich von Schiller and Goethe in Jena. In December they meet Johann Gottfried Herder in Weimar and her review of Marianne Ehrmann’s “Amaliens Feierstunden” appears in the “Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung”.”

1797: In February, June, July and October she publishes several reviews in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung including of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder‘s “Herzensergiessungen eines Kunstliebenden Klosterbruders” (Outpourings of an Art-Loving Monk). Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) visits the house.

1798: She publishes many more reviews in the newspaper throughout the year and reviews Jean de La Fontaine’s novels in the first edition of the Schlegel brother’s journal “Athenaeum”. In May she meets Friedrich Schelling in Jena for the first time who has been appointed professor of philosophy (extraordinarius) at the university. In August, August Wilhelm Schlegel is also appointed professor extraordinarius. She attends the premiere of the first part of Schiller’s “Wallenstein” trilogy in the newly renovated theatre in Weimar with Schlegel and Shelling. As her husband has to remain in Weimar Shelling accompanies her home in her carriage.

1799: She and Auguste and Schlegel see the performance of Schiller’s “Die Piccolomini” in Weimar. In March the second edition of the “Athenaeum” appears with her descriptions of the paintings of Raphael. In April she and August Wilhelm Schlegel see Schiller’s “Wallensteins Tod” in Weimar. In May Schelling begins taking his meals at her house. Ludwig Tieck stays with them for two weeks in July and meets Novalis. Friedrich Schlegel realises Caroline is separated from her husband in the Autumn and in October Johanne Fichte, the wife of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte notices the romantic relationship between Caroline and Schelling.

1800: In March she is dangerously ill but recovers after several weeks. She is apparently cured by Schelling use of the controversial healing methods of john Brown the Scottish Physician. In May she moves to Bamberg with August and Shelling but they cannot find a house and move on to Bocklet. On 1st July Auguste falls ill and dies of dysentery there on 12th July. After the burial in Bocklet Schelling is accused of killing her with his new medicine.

1801: Her husband August Wilhelm is engaged in a liaison with Sophie Berhardi, the sister of Ludwig Tieck in Berlin. In April she meets her mother in Celle. Back in Jena she is visited by Wilhelm von Humboldt and reads Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s “Sonnenklarer Bericht” (A Crystal Clear Report Concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand) which she finds amusing and Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “Sermons” which she is impressed with.

1802: In January Caroline, Schelling and Julie Gottter see the premiere of August Wilhelm Schlegel’s play “Ion” in Weimar and are seated in Goethe’s box. In September Schelling visits Goethe in Weimar as a friend to discuss the Schlegel’s divorce. In November a divorce petition is sent to Duke Karl August. In December both Caroline and August Wilhelm are summoned to appear before the High Consistory in Weimar.

1803: In January she is told she does not have to appear personally but then in February they are both told that they must. Goethe intervenes and they are finally granted a divorce in May. On 26th June Schelling’s father performs the marriage ceremony for Caroline and Schelling in the Church of St. Januarius in Murrhardt. After a hiking tour in Württemberg they leave for Munich in August but Shelling learns of his appointment in Würzburg on the way. In November they move into rooms at the University of Würzburg.

1804: In June Friedrich Hölderlin visits the couple in Würzburg. In December Schelling offers the “Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung” reviews from an anonymous hand. i.e. Caroline.

1805: She publishes several reviews in her own name and helps her husband in his own. 

1806: Würzburg is governed by Tuscany rather than Bavaria as a result of the Treaty of Pressburg of 26 December 1805 and all Protestant professors fear for their jobs. In March Schelling refuses to take the oath of allegiance to the new regime and receives an ovation from the student body. In May Caroline is in one of the ninety carriages in the procession to celebrate the new ruler but gets out halfway. She announces an auction in the local newspaper of all their household items which takes place on the 17th. They then move to Munich where Schelling receives an official appointment at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

1807: In October Schelling delivers the keynote address at the Academy “On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature”. Caroline, as a woman, is only allowed to view it from a private gallery. In December a demonstration of physics experiments with Francesco Campetti is arranged for Madame de Staël.

1808: Her mother dies in Kiel on 5th February. In June Caroline and Schelling see the Frenchman André-Jacques Garnerin fly a hydrogen balloon over Munich.

1809: In August Caroline and Schelling visit his parents in Maulbronn where his father is the headmaster at the monastery school. On September 4th Schelling calls for the local doctor as Caroline is unwell after a walking tour. He asks his brother Karl, also a physician, to visit. On 6th September she seemed to be rallying and was “light and cheerful”.

Caroline Schlegel-Shelling died at 3 a.m. of dysentery on 7th September 1809 in Maulbronn, Germany and was buried in Maulbronn churchyard close to a wall.

Caroline Schlegel-Schelling’s grew up in Göttingen, the daughter of Johann David Michaelis, who was a prominent orientalist at the university there. She was introduced to the principles of the Enlightenment as a young girl and believed in progress, the perfectibility of the universe and individual liberty. This helped her become an independent woman in later life.

During her time in Mainz during the French Revolutionary Wars, she became part of an intellectual circle around the explorer, journalist and revolutionary Georg Forster and took on more radical political opinions She became a vocal supporter of the short-lived Republic of Mainz, which aligned itself with France. Her revolutionary stance led to her imprisonment when Prussian troops recaptured the city. 

After leaving imprisonment with the help of the German literary critic August Wilhelm Schlegel she eventually married him and they settled in the town of Jena in Germany and both became major participants in the flourishing of German Romanticism. The ideas and important personalities in this group helped shaped her mature thought and literary criticism. Her translations, particularly of works by William Shakespeare, were crucial to the development of Romantic aesthetic theory. 

In Jena she met other writers and thinkers such as Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, and Friedrich Schleiermacher, who collectively placed “the self at the centre stage of their thinking,” based on the ides of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a professor at the university there. Also major influences on her were her brother-in-law Friedrich Schlegel and the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling who would eventually become her third husband. He reinforced her views on the “self” and nature and brought her into close contact with proponents of German Idealism and Naturphilosophie. Her creative mind helped influenced the group’s direction and tried to play down the overbearing influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, two literary giants, who were also in the town at the time. Schiller himself nicknamed her “Dame Lucifer” due to her sharp wit and critical nature. 

In later life she was influenced by the writings of Henri de Saint-Simon the French political, economic and socialist theorist and businessman. She saw in his philosophy a chance for social improvement and “the beautification of the earth”. 

While she did not publish major philosophical works in her own name, her role as an intellectual partner, critic, and central organising figure in Jena, often holding literary events in her own house and writing extensively to other people, meant she held a significant influence on German Romanticism. Figures such as the philosophers Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the poet Novalis, were particularly influenced by the ideas discussed at her soirees and she was part of Goethe’s inner circle and kept up a correspondence with both Goethe and Shiller when away from the town.

Everything that is currently known about Caroline can be found in great detail at the marvellous website compiled by Douglas W Scott of the USA. This is an ongoing resource. https://www.carolineschelling.com/

I can also whole heartedly recommend “Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self” (2022) by Andrea Wulf which brings Caroline to life in a stunning way.