Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Briefwechsel mit Pauline Wiesel (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 153 employ the term "contract" for a thinker whose point is to replace the theory ofcontract with the alternative ofa fusion theory to describe the constitution of civil society (pp. 131ff.) proves equally problematic. If the conceptual framework ofliberalism allows Smith to view Spinoza in terms of a modem liberal who speaks to the current predicament of contemporary liberal Judaism, such a framework, paradoxically, seems to obfuscate an approach that would do more justice to the challenge of Spinoza's own thought. Willi Goetschel Department of German Columbia University Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Briefwechsel mit Pauline Wiesel, edited by Barbara Hahn and Birgit Borsold. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997. 767 pp. Rahel Levin Varnhagen: Briefwechsel mit Pauline Wiesel is part of Barbara Hahn and Ursula Isselstein's Edition Rahel Levin Varnhagen, the ambitious project to publish Rahel Levin Varnhagen's correspondences and other writings after her estate became accessible. The enterprise datesback morethan ten years ago. Levin Varnhagen's letters and diaries reveal not only the emotions -of a woman intellectual at a time of major social change, they constitute a major contribution to the development of the postEnlightenment German-Jewish discourse. They reveal the mindset of an exceptional Jewish woman, a pioneer in the history ofemancipation and assimilation, and a witness ofa decisive period in Central European history: the Napoleonic occupation, the Wars of Liberation, the Restoration, and the early phases of "modem" antisemitism. The editor notes that prior to 1984 it had not been obvious to the scholars undertaking the new edition that the Levin Varnhagen holdings of the Cracow Jagiellonian library by far exceeded what had been published prior to that date. Moreover, Hahn writes, earlier publications of Levin Varnhagen's work consisted of selected texts that mirrored the expectations ofa given period and hence were of little scholarly value. For example, the most influential publication of Levin Varnhagen's writings, Rahel: Ein Buch des Andenkens fir ihre Freunde (1833/4), contained only Rahel Levin Varnhagen's letters to certain individuals in chronological order. The responses and stimuli motivating her writing remained concealed. The same is true for later publications. Thus a comprehensive picture of the relationships and activities of this woman intellectual who like few others studied and commented on the world around her could not emerge. In her correspondence with Pauline Wiesel, whom she termed her most important and best friend, Rahel Levin Varnhagen reveals her private self and her wishes and desires with greater immediacy than in her representational letters to her aristocratic friends or "great" men. How strongly she felt about her correspondence with Pauline 154 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 Wiesel as well as the person is revealed by the fact that she mentions no other correspondence in her will of 1816: Levin Varnhagen asks her husband, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, to return Wiesel's letters to the writer along with a personal note. Wiesel's letters were not returned; rather, in an attempt to compile as complete a record of his wife's writings, Varnhagen asked Wiesel to forward Levin Varnhagen's letters to him. Yet, Hahn maintains, he was highly selective when publishing this portion of Rahel Levin Varnhagen's correspondence. In the afterword Hahn discusses problems she encountered in her work with the Wiesel/Levin Varnhagen correspondence in an attempt to reconstruct what happened to Wiesel's manuscripts and the letters she received. Hahn speculates whether along with Wiesel's letters to Rahel these documents are apt to bring about a revision of Wiesel's image as the "mistress of great men." To establish a more accurate picture, Hahn traces Wiesel's biography, contrasting facts with myths surrounding Wiesel, who is traditionally configured as a paragon ofbeauty and sensuality. The biographical sketch hints at reasons for the affinity between Levin Varnhagen, a Jewish-born woman and socialite who eventually took baptism to marry a Christian considerably younger than herself, and Wiesel, the precocious child of a CatholicProtestant marriage who led an eccentric life that left her vulnerable and socially marginalized despite her marriages. Different in family background, religion, and childhood experiences, both women experienced a life in extremis. Their letters reveal how uncharted the territories...