Therese Forster

Last updated

Therese Forster
Therese Forster in 1805, painted by Ludovike Simanowiz.png
Portrait by Ludovike Simanowiz, [1] 1805
Born(1786-08-10)10 August 1786
Vilnius, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Died3 June 1862(1862-06-03) (aged 75)
Albisheim, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Confederation
NationalityGerman
Other names
  • Röschen Forster
  • Röse Forster
(childhood nicknames)
Occupations
  • Educator
  • governess
Known forEditor of her father's complete works
Parents
Family

Marie Therese Forster (10 August 1786 – 3 June 1862) was a German educator, writer, correspondent and editor. Born in Vilnius in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to Georg Forster and his wife Therese, she spent her early childhood in Mainz. Her father was active in the revolutionary Republic of Mainz, and she and her mother fled the city in late 1792. After her father's death, she was raised by her mother and stepfather Ludwig Ferdinand Huber. From 1801 to 1805, Forster lived with Dutch-Swiss writer Isabelle de Charrière and collaborated with her on an epistolary novel. Until 1826, she worked as a teacher and educator, first at Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg's school in Hofwil and then for several upper-class families. After her mother's 1829 death, she lived with family and educated her nieces and nephews. From 1840, she collaborated with Georg Gottfried Gervinus on the first complete edition of her father's works, which were published by Brockhaus in 1843. Therese Forster spent her later years with her niece and died in Albisheim aged 75.

Contents

Early life and family

Therese Forster, who was called Röse or Röschen ('little rose') as a child, [2] was born in Vilnius as the first child of Georg Forster (1754–1794), who held the Chair of Natural History at Vilnius University, and his wife Therese, the daughter of Göttingen classicist Heyne. Four days after her birth, her parents wrote to their friend Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, the mother mentioning that she was "only a girl", the father commenting that he did not care until the time when she would become a woman. [3] She was baptised "Marie Therese" as a Protestant on 20 August 1786. [4] Georg Forster planned to educate his favourite daughter himself, and for that reason decided she should not learn Polish or French until she was seven, so no domestic servants or strangers could have a negative influence on her education. [5] In 1787, her father was offered to accompany a Russian expedition to the Pacific, which provided an opportunity to leave Poland. However, the expedition was shelved while the family was staying in Göttingen, and in 1788 Georg Forster became head librarian in Mainz instead. [6] Röschen was inoculated against smallpox in 1790 by Sömmerring; to the great protest of her father this happened during his absence. [7] The earliest memories of Röschen were of playing with Auguste, the daughter of Caroline Böhmer, and Sophie, the daughter of physician Georg von Wedekind  [ de ], [8] and of the graves of her siblings who died in infancy in 1791 and 1792. [9] In October 1792, French revolutionary troops under General Custine captured Mainz, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Mainz, in which Georg Forster came to play a major role. [10] The mother then left Mainz in December 1792 together with Therese and her sister Clara, first going to Strasbourg [11] and in January 1793 to Neuchâtel. She was hoping to divorce Georg and marry her lover Ludwig Ferdinand Huber, and it was planned that Therese as her father's favourite would live with him after the divorce. [12] [13] In November 1793, Georg managed to come to Travers to stay with his wife and children and Huber for a few days. [14] This was the last time that Therese met her father, who died in Paris when she was seven years old, on 10 January 1794. [15] This meeting in Travers was the basis for the 1988 DEFA film Treffen in Travers , with Röschen played by Susanne Bormann  [ de; fr; ru ]. [16]

On the right: 22-24 rue du Temple, Bole, where the Huber family lived. Temple de Bole.jpg
On the right: 22-24 rue du Temple, Bôle, where the Huber family lived.

Her mother married Huber on 10 April 1794 [18] and the family moved to Bôle near Neuchâtel in June 1794. The family started to speak French, a native language of Ludwig Huber, [19] who had grown up bilingual as son of a German father and a French mother. [20] Their life in rural Bôle was difficult financially, as there was no fixed income, but both Forster [21] and her mother described this as the happiest time in their lives. They had contact with Isabelle de Charrière, who lived in nearby Colombier, and her friend Benjamin Constant. [22]

In 1798, Ludwig Ferdinand Huber found employment in Germany again as editor of Johann Friedrich Cotta's newspaper Neueste Weltkunde, which became the Allgemeine Zeitung . Therese Huber and the children moved to Tübingen in May 1798 and then to Stuttgart in September 1798. [23] They lived there until moving to Ulm in 1804, where Ludwig Huber died unexpectedly in December 1804. [24]

Life with de Charrière

Le Pontet manor, Colombier Manoir Le Pontet.jpg
Le Pontet manor, Colombier

In July 1801, at the age of 15, Forster was sent to live with the family friend, writer Isabelle de Charrière at her Le Pontet mansion in Colombier, in order to obtain the necessary skills for a future employment as a governess. [25] The arrangement was mutually beneficial, with Forster receiving education and de Charrière enjoying the presence of a young person. [26] In 1802, they collaborated on de Charrière's epistolary novel Lettres d’Emilie à son père, [27] [28] a work that appeared in a German translation by her stepfather L. F. Huber in 1803 as Briefe der Prinzessinn Emilie von *** an ihren Vater. [29] This was in some sense a pedagogical project, and Therese was meant to write her own German translation and compare it with her stepfather's. [28] The French original was not published until 1981, when it was included in the edition of de Charrière's complete works. [30] [31] While Forster was in Colombier, a potential marriage to Benjamin Constant was proposed by her family, but Constant declined. [32] An inquiry by August von Kotzebue for Forster's hand was rejected in 1804, [33] by both mother and daughter, [34] and the potential interest of Johann Gotthard Reinhold  [ de; nl ] was not reciprocated by the "reserved" Therese. [35] When de Charrière died in December 1805, Forster and Henriette L'Hardy were with her and announced her death to her friends, and Forster forwarded her final letter to Constant. [36] In her protectress' will, Therese was given 70 louis and souvenirs including the coffee maker they had used for breakfast. [37] She was later probably involved in the handling of de Charrière's literary estate, [38] and the manuscript of de Charrière's Victoire ou la vertu sans bruit was found among Therese Huber's papers. [39]

Work as an educator

Therese Forster lived with her mother for a while in 1806 until she found a position with Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg at his Hofwil school where she worked from November 1807 to July 1809, [3] succeeding Cécile Wildermeth as educator of the von Fellenberg children and of her half-brother Victor Aimé Huber. [40] [41] Forster read with the children and taught them history, geography, and mathematics. [40] For her own training in education, she read the report of theologian and pedagogue Johann Ludwig Ewald  [ de ] about von Fellenberg's joint school project with Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. [42] However, she resigned in 1808, [43] as she was unhappy with her employer's restrictive principles and felt that her own work was not appreciated enough. [42] From 1809 to 1810, she worked in Linschoten, Kingdom of Holland, to educate the children of Paul Strick van Linschoten  [ de; nl ], [44] a position that her mother had already secured for her when she had started in Hofwil. [42] Subsequently she worked from 1811 to 1821 for the family of Carl Friedrich von Goldbeck in Berlin. From 1821 to 1826 she worked in Arnstadt and educated the children of Johann Carl Günther, Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, the brother of the ruling Prince Günther Friedrich Carl I  [ de ]. [44] [45] [47]

Correspondence with her mother and return to her family

Therese Huber, silhouette by Luise Duttenhofer Therese Huber silhouette.jpg
Therese Huber, silhouette by Luise Duttenhofer

Therese Forster lived apart from her mother from 1801 to 1826, and they continually stayed in contact by writing letters, most of them in French. [48] Around 400 letters of Therese Huber to her daughter [20] and 8 from Therese Forster to her mother are known. [48] Letters were written every two weeks at first, changing to every four weeks at a later time. [3] While the mother's earlier letters were intended to be part of the daughter's education, the focus shifted to career advice and interest in the daughter's work as an educator. In later letters, the mother treated her daughter as more of an equal and also accepted some of her advice. [49] Therese Huber's letters, which included some memories of Georg Forster with explicit instructions to preserve these letters, in essence declared Therese Forster as the literary executor of her parents. [50] [49]

In 1826, Forster returned to her mother in Augsburg and lived with her until her mother's 1829 death, [51] helping to educate the children of her sister Claire, who had married Swiss forestry administrator Gottlieb von Greyerz  [ de ]. [52] She moved with them to Bayreuth in 1829. After her half-sister Luise von Herder had died in 1831, she moved in with the latter's husband, administrator Emil von Herder  [ de ], to educate their children Adele and Ferdinand von Herder, living with the family in Augsburg and Erlangen. [51]

Editor of her father's works

Title page of Volume I of Therese Forster's 1843 edition of Georg Forster's works Georg Forster's sammtliche Schriften, Erster Band.jpg
Title page of Volume I of Therese Forster's 1843 edition of Georg Forster's works

Georg Gottfried Gervinus, one of the Göttingen Seven, approached Therese Forster in 1839/40 and suggested an edition of her father's complete works, to be published by Brockhaus in Leipzig, with a biographic introduction by Gervinus. [53] [54] Forster was hoping for a well-designed and well-typeset edition selling a large number of affordable copies. Guided by her brother-in-law Emil von Herder, who assisted her in the review of her father's manuscripts, [55] she asked for an unusually high degree of insight into the sales and promotion. Gervinus helped to mediate the negotiations, and Forster signed the publishing contract in July 1841: essentially, any net profit after the production costs should be split evenly between her and the publisher. Heinrich Brockhaus was not expecting a profit and tried to cut costs by doing without illustrations. However, her father's Erinnerungen aus dem Jahr 1790 (Memories from the year 1790) had been written as descriptions of etchings by Daniel Chodowiecki, so Forster and Gervinus insisted on their inclusion. At a cost to Forster of 250 gulden, she had lithographic reproductions made by Munich-based artist Peter Herwegen  [ de ], printed in 1100 copies each. [56] The nine-volume edition, titled Georg Forster’s sämmtliche Schriften  [ de ], appeared in 1843 and remained the prevailing edition of Georg Forster's works for more than a century. [57] It included the first printing of the 1793 Darstellung der Revolution in Mainz (Account of the revolution in Mainz). [58] Some works were omitted, either because Forster and Gervinus could not find them, as was the case with Georg Forster's essay defending Friedrich Schiller, [59] [60] or deliberately like some of the English language letters in the context of A Voyage Round the World and scientific works like the Latin Characteres generum plantarum . [61] Of the translations, only Sakuntala was included. [62] Many of the letters were reprinted as in the original edition by Therese Huber, who had altered some of her first husband's letters. [63] The edition had not yet sold enough of its 1000 copies to be profitable by 1845, and Brockhaus refused to print an addendum with unpublished letters of Georg Forster to Johann Gottfried Herder and to Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring that Forster had recently found. [64] The publishing contract was dissolved in 1855. [54]

List of volumes

Georg Forster's sämmtliche Schriften. Herausgegeben von dessen Tochter und begleitet mit einer Charakteristik Forster's von G. G. Gervinus. In neun Bänden. (Georg Forster's complete works. Edited by his daughter and accompanied by a characterisation of Forster by G. G. Gervinus. In nine volumes)

Final years and death

When her niece Adele von Herder married medical doctor Wilhelm Kuby  [ de ], Forster followed the family to Albisheim and lived with them in Freinsheim for the last few years of her life. [51] [65] She died from pneumonia on 3 June 1862 [65] in the parish house of Albisheim, which incidentally had belonged to the Republic of Mainz in 1793. [57] She was buried in Albisheim on 5 June 1862. [66]

Forster's journals and other writings are preserved together with the Greyerz family archives in the Burgerbibliothek of Berne. [67]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Forster</span> German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist, and revolutionary

Johann George Adam Forster, also known as Georg Forster, was a German geographer, naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific. His report of that journey, A Voyage Round the World, contributed significantly to the ethnology of the people of Polynesia and remains a respected work. As a result of the report, Forster, who was admitted to the Royal Society at the early age of twenty-two, came to be considered one of the founders of modern scientific travel literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Schelling</span> German writer and intellectual (1763–1809)

Caroline Schelling, née Michaelis, widowed Böhmer, divorced Schlegel, was a noted German intellectual. She was one of the so-called Universitätsmamsellen, a group of five academically active women during the 18th and 19th centuries, daughters of academics at Göttingen University, alongside Meta Forkel-Liebeskind, Therese Huber, Philippine Engelhard, and Dorothea Schlözer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Gottfried Gervinus</span> 19th-century German historian and politician

Georg Gottfried Gervinus was a German literary and political historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabelle de Charrière</span> Dutch writer

Isabelle de Charrière, known as Belle van Zuylen in the Netherlands, née Isabella Agneta Elisabeth van Tuyll van Serooskerken, and [Madame] Isabelle de Charrière elsewhere, was a Dutch and Swiss writer of the Enlightenment who lived the latter half of her life in Colombier, Neuchâtel. She is now best known for her letters and novels, although she also wrote pamphlets, music and plays. She took a keen interest in the society and politics of her age, and her work around the time of the French Revolution is regarded as being of particular interest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ida, Countess von Hahn-Hahn</span> German author

Countess Ida von Hahn-Hahn was a German author from a wealthy family who lost their fortune because of her father's eccentric spending. She defied convention by living with Adolf von Bystram unmarried for 21 years. Her writings about the German aristocracy were greatly favored by the general public of her time. Ida von Hahn-Hahn often wrote about the tragedies of the soul and was influenced by the French novelist George Sand. She "was an indefatigable campaigner for the emancipation of women" and her writings include many strong female characters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ludwig Ferdinand Huber</span> German writer and translator (1764–1804)

Ludwig Ferdinand Huber or Louis Ferdinand Huber was a German translator, diplomat, playwright, literary critic, and journalist. Born in Paris, Huber was the son of the Bavarian-born writer and translator Michael Huber and his French wife Anna Louise, née l'Epine. He grew up bilingual in French and German after his parents moved to Leipzig when he was two years old. He lacked a classical education but read voraciously and was well versed in modern languages, and started publishing translations from French and English at an early age. He also translated plays that were performed in theatres all over Germany. In the early 1780s, Huber became friends with the jurist Christian Gottfried Körner, his fiancée Minna Stock, and her older sister Dora Stock, whom he later promised to marry. Together, the friends wrote in admiration to the poet Friedrich Schiller and successfully invited him to come to Leipzig. Körner and Minna were married in 1785 and lived in Dresden, where they were joined by Dora, Schiller, and finally Huber, who shared a house with Schiller.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Therese Huber</span> German author (1764–1829)

Therese Huber was a German author. She was one of the so-called Universitätsmamsellen, a group of five academically active women during the mid-18th and early 19th centuries. The group consisted of daughters of academics at Göttingen University; Huber was noteworthy among them, alongside Meta Forkel-Liebeskind, Caroline Schelling, Philippine Engelhard, and Dorothea Schlözer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josephine Lang</span> German composer

Josephine Caroline Lang was a German composer. Josephine Lang was the daughter of Theobald Lang, a violinist, and Regina Hitzelberger, opera singer. Her mother taught young Josephine how to play piano, and from age five it became apparent that Josephine was possessed with great potential as a composer. As early as age eleven Josephine started giving piano lessons herself. Through her godfather, Joseph Stieler, Josephine was exposed to some of the greatest artists of her time. Both Felix Mendelssohn and Ferdinand Hiller went to great lengths to ensure that Lang learned the proper theory for song-writing, and used their connections to publish Lang's music. Even Robert Schumann published a song of Josephine's in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1838.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Princess Agnes of Anhalt-Dessau</span> Duchess of Saxe-Altenburg from 1853 to 1897

Princess Agnes of Anhalt-Dessau was the eldest daughter of Leopold IV, Duke of Anhalt by his wife Princess Frederica of Prussia. She was a member of the House of Ascania, and by her marriage to Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, Duchess consort of Saxe-Altenburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catharina Elisabeth Goethe</span> Mother of Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1731–1808)

Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, born Catharina Elisabeth Textor, was the mother of German playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his sister Cornelia Schlosser. She was also known by the nickname Frau Aja and the title Frau Rat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adolf Schrödter</span> German painter and illustrator

Adolf Schrödter or Adolph Schroedter was a German painter and graphic artist; associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of German comics.

Henriette Marie Françoise L'Hardy was the lady's companion from the Principality of Neuchâtel of the countess Sophie von Dönhoff, the Prussian lady-in-waiting and a morganatic spouse by bigamy to King Frederick William II of Prussia. She made a self-portrait.

Karoline von Woltmann, née Stosch was a German author who also wrote under the pseudonym Luise Berg. She was regarded by her contemporaries as "the German Genlis".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabelle Morel</span> Swiss writer and translator

Isabelle Morel was a French-speaking Swiss writer, translator and woman of letters who was most notable for her novel Louise et Albert.

<i>Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände</i> German literary journal, 1807 to 1865

The Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände was a German cultural and literary journal that existed from 1807 to 1865. It appeared daily until 1851, when it was changed to a weekly journal. The Morgenblatt was published by Cotta in Tübingen and later in Stuttgart, and was the most important German literary and cultural journal of its time.

<i>Resolution</i> (Wilson novel) 2016 historical novel

Resolution is a 2016 historical novel by English writer A. N. Wilson. It is a fictionalised account of the life of the 18th century German naturalist, writer and revolutionary George Forster. Main aspects of Forster's life covered by the novel include his participation in the second voyage of James Cook, his marriage to Therese Heyne and his experiences in the French Revolution as a protagonist of the Republic of Mainz. The book is based on historical sources including the journals of Cook and of Forster's father Reinhold as well as Forster's works, but includes also some invented figures and deliberately deviates from some historical facts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Herloßsohn</span> German author, journalist and encyclopaedist

Carl Herloßsohn or Karl Herloßsohn was a German author, journalist and encyclopaedist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire von Greyerz</span> German papercutting artist (1789–1839)

Clara von Greyerz was a German papercutting artist. She was born in Mainz, the daughter of world traveller Georg Forster and his wife Therese. Her father became a revolutionary in the Republic of Mainz from 1792 until his death in 1794, while her mother lived in the Neuchâtel area with her lover and eventual husband Ludwig Ferdinand Huber. The family moved to Tübingen, Stuttgart and Ulm, where her stepfather died in December 1804, when she was already engaged to the forester Gottlieb von Greyerz. They married in 1805, living in Stoffenried, Günzburg, Augsburg and Bayreuth, and had ten children between 1806 and 1832. In Augsburg, von Greyerz became acquainted with Hortense de Beauharnais, and her children played with Hortense's son, the future Napoleon III of France. Von Greyerz was known for her papercuts, some of which she swapped with fellow artist Luise Duttenhofer. In 1836, she visited Hortense at Arenenberg and published a report of her experiences there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert von Hügel</span>

Baron Ernest Albert von Hügel, was a Royal Württemberg Chamberlain and Royal Cavalry Captain who was Lord of Eschenau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Huber (writer)</span> German writer (1727–1804)

Michael Huber was a German writer, translator and art expert. Born in Bavaria, he moved to Paris as a young man, where he probably worked as a language teacher. In the 1750s, he became a contributor to a French literary journal presenting foreign literature and started translating; his successful translations of the works of the Swiss poet Salomon Gessner into French were instrumental in popularising Gessner's works outside German-speaking areas. Huber also published an anthology of German poetry in French, with an introduction that separated German literary history into four distinct eras and was also translated into German.

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Heuser (2008), p. 57.
  2. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 223.
  3. 1 2 3 Heuser 1996, p. 134.
  4. ↑ Huber 2020, p. 576.
  5. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 201.
  6. ↑ Thomas & Berghof 2000, pp. xx–xxi.
  7. ↑ Harpprecht 1990, p. 456.
  8. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 273.
  9. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 274.
  10. ↑ Thomas & Berghof 2000, p. xxi.
  11. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 310.
  12. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 319.
  13. ↑ Heuser 2001, p. 112.
  14. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 338.
  15. ↑ Uhlig 2004, p. 342.
  16. ↑ DEFA Stiftung 1989.
  17. ↑ Huber 2020, p. 293.
  18. ↑ Geiger 1901, p. 91.
  19. ↑ Geiger 1901, p. 94.
  20. 1 2 Huber 2020, p. 452.
  21. ↑ Hahn & Fischer 1993, p. 28.
  22. ↑ Wulbusch 2012, p. 18.
  23. ↑ Huber 2020, p. 760.
  24. ↑ Wulbusch 2012, pp. 18–19.
  25. ↑ Heuser 2008, p. 44.
  26. ↑ Godet 1906, pp. 339–340.
  27. ↑ Letzter 1998, p. 186.
  28. 1 2 de Charrière 1981, p. 405.
  29. ↑ de Charrière 1803.
  30. ↑ Heuser 1997, p. 178.
  31. ↑ de Charrière 1981.
  32. ↑ Godet 1906, pp. 369.
  33. ↑ Geiger 1901, p. 140.
  34. ↑ Heuser 1996, p. 144.
  35. ↑ Heuser 1996, p. 145.
  36. ↑ Godet 1906, pp. 374–375.
  37. ↑ Godet 1906, p. 380.
  38. ↑ Heuser 2008, p. 55.
  39. ↑ Heuser 1997, p. 179.
  40. 1 2 Wittwer Hesse 2002, p. 93.
  41. ↑ Wulbusch 2012, p. 20.
  42. 1 2 3 Wittwer Hesse 2002, p. 94.
  43. ↑ Heuser 1996, p. 141.
  44. 1 2 Huber 2020, p. 654.
  45. ↑ Huber 2011, pp. 1408–1409.
  46. ↑ Heuser 1996, pp. 134–135.
  47. ↑ An earlier source claims that she was working for writer and theologian Philipp Karl Christian Sondershausen  [ de ]. [46]
  48. 1 2 Heuser 1996, p. 131.
  49. 1 2 Heuser 1996, p. 146.
  50. ↑ Heuser 2001, pp. 113–114.
  51. 1 2 3 Heuser 1996, p. 135.
  52. ↑ Geiger 1901, p. 376.
  53. ↑ Jäger 1982, p. 74.
  54. 1 2 Dippel 2001, p. 236.
  55. ↑ Wulbusch 2012, p. 64.
  56. ↑ Jäger 1982, p. 76.
  57. 1 2 Uhlig 2004, p. 345.
  58. ↑ Scheel 1989, p. 301.
  59. ↑ Steiner 1963, p. 444.
  60. ↑ Saine 1972, pp. 75–76.
  61. ↑ Forster & Gervinus 1843, p. vii.
  62. ↑ Steiner 1963, p. 499.
  63. ↑ Steiner 1977, p. 113.
  64. ↑ Jäger 1982, p. 80.
  65. 1 2 Seemann 1862, p. 188.
  66. ↑ Kantzenbach 1989, p. 143.
  67. ↑ Wittwer Hesse 1994, p. 519.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.