Karoline Von Gunderode

Personal

Vocation

Notable

Traits

German poet. Karoline was described as beautiful, gentle and shy. She and her friend discussed society’s discrimination against women. One way to escape such limitations was education, which Karoline acquired by indefatigable reading. She was soon as knowledgeable as the best-educated of her time. Karoline concerned herself with literature, philosophy, far-eastern and Norse mythology, chemistry, geography, history of religion, physiognomy, Latin and prosody. She also wrote dramas, poetry, and above all letters. Because of an eye ailment Karoline suffered her life long from severe headaches and wrote on green paper to spare her eyes. . Karoline was unable to come to terms with the prescribed feminine role and, ahead of her time, observed: “Masculinity and femininity, as they are usually understood, are obstacles to humanity.” She suffered severely under the limitations of these roles. She wrote dramas in which strong, heroic women usually played a central role. In her works she criticized the ideals of bourgeois society and its traditional gender roles. Under the male pseudonym Tian she published "Gedichte und Phantasien" (Poems and Fantasies), a work consisting of lyrical-epic poems, dramatic fragments and prose pieces. The high point of her poetic creativity is "Die Idee der Erde" (The Idea of the Earth). Here she develops the principle of “the splendid,” by which she understands the process of becoming one with nature. In 1804 von Günderrode met the philologist and archeologist Georg Friedrich Creuzer. Although he was married, Creuzer and von Günderrode developed a relationship. Creuzer asked his wife for a divorce, which she agreed to, although Creuzer suffered depression and anxiety from the public scandal resulting from his divorce and relationship with von Günderrode. Under the stress and anxiety from the scandal Creuzer became ill. Von Günderrode believed that Creuzer was not going to survive, and decided that she wanted to die with Creuzer, so on 26 July 1806, in Winkel (Rheingau), at age 26, she killed herself with a dagger. In an unfortunate twist of fate, Creuzer recovered from his illness. Link to Wikipedia biography