Adele Schopenhauer. Unbekanntes aus ihrem Nachlass in Weimar by Claudia Häfner and Francesca Fabbri

Abstract

Reviewed by: Adele Schopenhauer. Unbekanntes aus ihrem Nachlass in Weimar by Claudia Häfner and Francesca Fabbri Waltraud Maierhofer Claudia Häfner and Francesca Fabbri. Adele Schopenhauer. Unbekanntes aus ihrem Nachlass in Weimar. Weimar: Weimarer Verlagsgesellschaft, 2019. 96 pp. The high-quality book to be introduced here is on the title page termed an "Ausstellungsbuch," an exhibition book. It accompanied the Fall 2019 exhibition on Adele Schopenhauer (1797–1849), "Weil ich so individuell bin," in the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar, the first exhibit to be dedicated solely to this artist and writer. Francesca Fabbri, a fellow of the Weimar Klassik Stiftung, researched holdings in Weimar collections and identified more letters, manuscripts, and anonymous publications and artworks than previously established. The exhibition was curated by Fabbri in collaboration with Weimar Klassik researcher Claudia Häfner and accompanied by several lectures. To readers of the Goethe Yearbook, Adele Schopenhauer is known for her artistic cutouts and arabesques as well as her writings, among them poems, fairy tales, an autobiographical novel and diaries. During her lifetime and throughout the nineteenth century, she was overshadowed by her mother, the writer and salonnière Johanna Schopenhauer, and her brother, the philosopher Arthur. Among the pictures are a miniature painting of Goethe's garden house on a phial, eminent examples of Adeles Scherenschnitte, illustrations of the gospel, drawings in her reading diary, an 1843 watercolor drawing attributed to Allwina Frommann of the Berlin house with Adele who visited Frommann, the female owner of the house, and the student Wolfgang Maximilian von Goethe, each in separate quarters, as well as letters and diaries. Also included are Walter von [End Page 386] Goethe's obituary in the Allgemeine Zeitung and a complete transcript of the 1852 gift agreement between Schopenhauer's heiress Sibylle MertensSchaaffhausen and the state of Weimar with a list of all items and their valuations. The latter documents her considerable library. The illustrations are predominantly in color and of the highest quality, making it a pleasure to explore the richness and detail of the miniatures, arabesques, and cutouts and of her precise handwriting. The book is more than a richly illustrated catalogue of the exhibited objects and an overview of her estate in the Weimar archives. The chapters by coauthors Häfner and Fabbri provide an overview of her complex biography and creative efforts, survey research, and editions of her works, as well as Adele's representation in literary and filmic works, marking open research questions. Schopenhauer's correspondence with Goethe regarding his efforts of collecting art and antiquities, her collaboration with his grandson Walter on an opera, the editing of her mother's literary estate, and the collaborative and mentoring nature of her friendships with creative women such as Ottilie von Goethe and Annette von DrosteHülshoff are just a few aspects of her interests and connections explored in this book. Throughout their essays, Häfner and Fabbri point out new discoveries such as Adele's "silent" contributions to works by her mother or her reviews of literary and artistic works published in German papers while she lived in Italy during the last years of her life. The book also contains a substantial bibliography and will be of interest to anyone studying and researching creative women in the nineteenth century. Waltraud Maierhofer University of Iowa Copyright © 2021 Goethe Society of North America