Edgar Jaffé and Else von Richthofen in the Mirror of Newly Found Letters

Abstract

Political historians have dealt mostly and critically with Edgar Jaffé's participation in the Bavarian Revolution of 1918/19, and only peripherally with his achievements as economist, publisher and editor. Among social scientists Edgar Jaffé (1866-1921), is still known, if mainly as a name, as editor, linked with the names of Max Weber and Werner Sombart, of the leading social science journal of its time, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. Among cultural historians and students of literature, in particular, he became known through his marriage to Else von Richthofen (1874-1973) in 1902. The couple were seen as figures of fact and fiction in the antinomic world inhabited by Max and Marianne Weber, Otto and Frieda Gross, and D.H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen. Else v. Richthofen was mythologized as 'a muse of the critical intelligence of our century', in contrast to her sister Frieda Lawrence as 'a muse of the erotic imagination'. Newly discovered letters and documents let Else and Edgar speak with their own voices more clearly than could be heard previously. I aim to present a more coherent and balanced account than has been feasible up until now.