Dresden

Dresden is not considered as a literary city; rather, it is primarily known for its landscapes and as a centre of art and culture. Currently there are only a few research articles dealing with Dresden’s literary scene in the 18th and 19th centuries. Looking at the narrow research base, one sees a clear emphasis on the male figures of Dresden. Ludwig Tieck, Heinrich von Kleist and Carl August Böttiger may be mentioned as best known examples. But even in this area one still finds research desiderata. Only limited research has been done into the biographies and literary work of many male authors who lived in Dresden – cases in point are Johann Friedrich Kind, Karl Gottfried Theodor Winkler and Ernst von der Malsburg.

A look at the correspondence and memoirs of the eight female authors selected paints, however, a different picture – to date, one seemingly unknown to the research. Just in the period from 1815 into the 1820s, a large number of female authors lived in Dresden, partly permanently and partly only for a shorter time. They wrote pieces there and were members of such literary circles as the “Dresdner Lieder-Kreis”, at whose centre stood the presentation of one’s own works. Both men and women were admitted. Thus, the “Dresdner Lieder-Kreis” also served as contact headquarters for authors, and it especially supported the establishment and extension of literary women’s networking structures. One of the members was Helmina von Chézy, who lived in Dresden since October, 1817. For a few years, she took a conspicuously central position in Dresden’s literary milieu. In her autobiography she names and describes her regional contacts with female writers such as Fanny Tarnow, Henriette Emilie Hübner, Amalie Curtius, Philippine von Calenberg, Karoline Pierson, Wilhelmine Gensicken, Wilhelmine Spazier, Wilhelmine von Gersdorf, Pauline von Brochowska and Therese aus dem Winckel. This circle was complemented by repeated stays of the authors Amalie von Voigt, Charlotte von Ahlefeldt, Louise Brachmann, Wilhelmine Lorenz, Agnes Franz and Elise von Hohenhausen, with whom Helmina von Chézy also kept epistolary contact. She describes the literary women living in the city on the Elbe as “interesting and gifted inhabitants of Dresden” and “excellent women” who “were kind to poetry”, and she speaks of “the many gifted female poets, who arduously and heroically broke loose from unharmonious unions […] ” (Chézy, Helmina von: Unvergessen. Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben von Helmina von Chézy. Band 2. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus 1858, S. 234–235).

The observations of the female authors in Dresden and Helmina von Chézy’s contact with them can be placed in the period from ca. 1815 to 1825. Both caesuras are marked by personnel changes: the “Dresdner Lieder-Kreis” was founded in 1815, using the “Dresdner Abend-Zeitung” as the publication medium for communicating its literary-aesthetic program and thereby gaining attractiveness. In the middle of the 1820s, however, this popularity again decreased. Several members of the “Lieder-Kreis” and friends of Helmina von Chézy’s were already deceased, e.g. Louise Brachmann (†1822), Wilhelmine Gensicken (†1822), Ernst von der Malsburg (†1824) and Otto Heinrich von Loeben (†1825). Some authors also left Dresden due to these deaths, such as Philippine von Calenberg. Helmina von Chézy herself left the city on the Elbe in 1823.

(trans. Pedro Kauffmann Amaral)