Marie Luise Auguste Petersen (31 July 1816 – 30 June 1859) was a German author famous for her fairy tale Princess Ilse.
Petersen came from a well off family of pharmacists in Frankfurt (Oder). Her grandfather, the "university pharmacist" Friedrich Petersen had since 1780 worked at the apothecary "Zur Goldenen Kugel." His second son, Karl later took over the business, marrying Wilhelmine (née Dionysius), and Marie Petersen was the first child of this union.
Shortly after her birth, Petersen developed a chronically deformed spinal curvature, and orthopedic institutions in Berlin were unable to correct the condition. Upon the death of Petersen's mother in 1834, her father sold his pharmacy in order to devote himself to the care and upbringing of his children. He remarried, and his second wife, Amalie, transformed the household into one of the most musical in Frankfurt. Marie lived modestly and withdrawn and received a well-rounded education, earning her the esteem of her contemporaries.
Because of her illness, Marie rarely left her hometown. In 1851, she made one journey in the Harz mountains, the catalyst for her literary activity. A travel letter she had sent to a relative under the title Prinzessin Ilse was published anonymously in 1852 as A Fairy Tale from the Harz Mountains. The story was widely successful, but Petersen's identity as the author only appeared in the twelfth edition, this time published with an additional tale. It was also translated into both English and French.
Marie did not live to see the great success of her two stories. She died in 1859 after a slight inflammation proved too much for her weak body.
Franz Brümmer: Lexikon der deutschen Dichter und Prosaisten vom Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart. Reclam, Leipzig 1913, p.261.
Elisabeth Friedrichs: Die deutschsprachigen Schriftstellerinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Ein Lexikon. Metzler, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN3-476-00456-2, (Repertorien zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte 9), p.232.
Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm, also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie, and the editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He was the older brother of Wilhelm Grimm, of the literary duo the Brothers Grimm.
Wilhelm Adolf Schmidt was a German historian.
Princess Ilse is the name of a popular tourist destination in the Ilse valley near the town of Ilsenburg in the Harz Mountains of central Germany. The spot was named after the River Ilse, which rises on the highest mountain in the Harz, the legendary Brocken, and flows through the romantic Ilse valley to Ilsenburg.
Ilse Schwidetzky was a German anthropologist. She was the daughter of Georg and Susanne Schwidetzky. Susanne Schwidetzky, who studied math at the University of Berlin around 1900, died in 1911 of tuberculosis. Georg Schwidetzky studied law and had a successful political career which ended with World War I. The family moved to Leipzig, where Georg Schwidetzky worked for Die Deutsche Bücherei, roughly equivalent to the Library of Congress. Ilse Schwidetzky had three siblings, Eva, Walter, and Georg. She is related to Oscar Schwidetzky, who invented the ace bandage and was the first non-MD admitted to the American Medical Association.
Clara Bertha Friederike von Bülow was a German writer of short stories, comedies and farces.
Johann Erich Biester was a German philosopher. With Friedrich Nicolai and Friedrich Gedike, he formed what was known as the 'Triumvirate' of late Enlightenment Berlin.
Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt was a German pharmacist and chemist who wielded great influence on the improvement of science education for pharmacists. He also made numerous contributions in the fields of industrial and agricultural chemistry.
Karl Günther Ernst Felix Becker was a German art historian, best known today for the project Thieme-Becker.
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Georg Goldberg was a German copper and steel engraver of Jewish descent.
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Helene Adler was a German Jewish educator, writer, and poet.
Clara Steinitz was a German novelist, feuilletonist, and translator from English, French, Italian, and Norwegian.
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