Freundschaft und Politik in bewegten Zeiten: Betty Paoli und Adalbert Stifter 1848

Abstract

When the Revolution of 1848 got out of hand in Vienna, Adalbert Stifter asked his friend and colleague Betty Paoli (1814–1894) to come to Linz with him, but Paoli instead left for Germany and retired to Zerbst in Anhalt. There she wrote her first contributions for the Austrian newspaper Die Presse (founded in 1848): four open letters for the feuilleton, titled "German letters." The addressees of these texts, which reflected Paoli's poetic and political positions, were Stifter, the writer Hieronymus Lorm (Heinrich Landesmann), and an unnamed friend. In the article the four letters are used to demonstrate the paths Betty Paoli and her fellow writers—Adalbert Stifter in particular—followed after the Revolution of 1848.