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Maximiliane

Maximiliane Brentano (May 1756 – 19 November 1793) was a German woman who is notable for her friendship to the young Goethe and as the mother of the writers Clemens Brentano and Bettina von Arnim.

Family and early life

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Maximiliane Euphrosine von La Roche was born in Mainz in May 1756.[a] Her mother was the author Sophie von La Roche (née Gutermann von Gutershofen) and her father was Georg Michael Frank von La Roche [de], an adopted and probably illegitimate son of Count Anton Heinrich Friedrich von Stadion [de], a high ranking court official working for the Elector of Mainz.[7][8][9] She was baptised as a Catholic; the godparents were Maria Maximiliana von Stadion [de], the daughter of Stadion, and Euphrosyne Unold, Sophie's grandmother.[6][10][11][12] Maximiliane was the oldest daughter among eight children, five of whom reached adulthood.[13][14] While her father was Catholic, her mother was a Protestant and did not convert to Catholicism after her marriage.[14]

 
Stadioner Hof, Mainz

In Mainz, the family lived in the Stadioner Hof [de] palace.[15] After Stadion's 1761 retirement, they accompanied him and moved to Schloss Warthausen with his family.[15] From 1765, Maximiliane and her sister were educated in Strasbourg, at the boarding school of the St Barbara convent.[14] When Stadion died in 1768, relations between his legitimate sons and La Roche were strained, and the family moved on to live in the Stadionsches Schloss [de], a castle in Bönnigheim, where Maximiliane's father had inherited a position from Stadion.[16] In 1771, he became Geheimer Rat at the court of the Electorate of Trier, serving Archbishop-Elector Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, and the La Roche family moved to Ehrenbreitstein [de].[7][17] Maximiliane also returned from Strasbourg to her family.[14]

 
Wieland arrives for the sentimentalist congress, 1868. Maximiliane follows her mother down the stairs.

In the same year, Sophie von La Roche published her first novel, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim [de] ('The Story of Miss von Sternheim'), quickly making her famous.[18] The La Roche residence became a literary salon known for Empfindsamkeit ('sentimentalism').[2][19][1] Visitors included the poet Johann Georg Jacobi and his brother, the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, the educational reformer Johann Bernhard Basedow, the poet and theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater and the authors Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse, Franz Michael Leuchsenring and Johann Heinrich Merck.[20][14] The young Maximiliane was gracious and charming and popular with the visitors; Johann Georg Jacobi considered her as a potential bride.[2][21][22] Another visitor was Sophie's former fiancé, the author Christoph Martin Wieland, who described Maximiliane as la petite Sylphide aux yeux noirs ('the little Sylph with black eyes').[23][24] According to a letter written by Sophie von la Roche to Lavater after 1791, the dean of St. Leonhard, Frankfurt, Damian Friedrich Dumeiz, an old family friend, had already in 1771 arranged a later marriage between Maximiliane and his nephew von Strauß; however, this was cancelled for political reasons after Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal, who later became Elector of Mainz, heard about it.[25][26][27]

In 1772, the young poet and lawyer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited the La Roche family in Ehrenbreitstein, where he met 16 year old Maximiliane (generally known as "Maxe") and fell in love with her.[28][29] Goethe described her later in his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit: "[H]is eldest daughter ... was nothing else but amiable. She was rather short than tall of stature, and delicately built, her figure was free and graceful, her eyes very black, while nothing could be conceived purer and more blooming than her complexion."[30] Goethe had shortly before spent (some time) in Wetzlar, where he had been in love with Charlotte Buff and a friend of her fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner. (Jerusalem suicide?). Werther.

 
Maximiliane and her parents

Marriage and children

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In 1773, acting on behalf of Sophie von La Roche, Dean Dumeiz arranged a potential marriage for Maximiliane.[14] The groom was Peter Anton Brentano [de], an Italian-born merchant who had moved to Frankfurt at the age of 18.[31] Brentano was widowed after the 1770 death of his first wife Maria Josepha Walpurga Brentano-Gnosso (known as Paula) and already had five children.[32][14] Agreement on the marriage was reached before 20 December and the engagement was made public on 26 December 1773.[33] The couple wer married on 9 January 1774 in Ehrenbreitstein.[29]


Died in Frankfurt.

She had twelve children. The oldest was Georg

(early children all born in Ehrenbreitstein)

Grandchild Franz Brentano via Christian Brentano

Legacy

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Werthers Lotte and black eyes. Bettina later found letters from Goethe to Sophie about Maxe.

Notes

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  1. ^ Some sources give her birthday as 3 May,[1][2] 4 May[3][4] or 31 May.[5] The baptism register of the St Emmeran Church [de] in Mainz gives a date of 4 May 1756.[6]

References

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  1. ^ a b Krämer 1994.
  2. ^ a b c Hock 2006.
  3. ^ Hessische Biografie.
  4. ^ Steiger 1982, p. 684.
  5. ^ Schultz 2001, p. 13.
  6. ^ a b Church records 1756.
  7. ^ a b Irmer 1883.
  8. ^ Strohmeyr 2010, p. 22.
  9. ^ Schultz 2001, p. 32.
  10. ^ Brentano 1940, p. 64.
  11. ^ Häntzschel 1982.
  12. ^ Bach 1924, pp. 107–108.
  13. ^ Strohmeyr 2010, pp. 23–24.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Becker-Cantarino et al. 2019, p. 86.
  15. ^ a b Strohmeyr 2010, p. 24.
  16. ^ Strohmeyr 2010, p. 26.
  17. ^ Strohmeyr 2010, p. 30.
  18. ^ Strohmeyr 2010, pp. 27–30.
  19. ^ Strohmeyr 2010, pp. 30–31.
  20. ^ Strohmeyr 2010, p. 31.
  21. ^ Martin 1874, p. 12.
  22. ^ Jacoby 1881.
  23. ^ Michel 1938, p. 397.
  24. ^ Wieland 1894, p. 96.
  25. ^ Bach 1924, pp. 123–126.
  26. ^ Bräuning 1910, pp. 126–128.
  27. ^ Steiger 1982, p. 483.
  28. ^ Schmitz-Scholeman 2018.
  29. ^ a b Strohmeyr 2010, p. 33.
  30. ^ Goethe 1848, p. 488.
  31. ^ Schultz 2001, p. 25.
  32. ^ Schultz 2001, p. 28.
  33. ^ Bräuning 1910.

Sources

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