Weimar Heteroclassicism: Wilhelm von Humboldt, Caroline von Wolzogen, and the Aesthetics of Gender

Abstract

This article argues that Wilhelm von Humboldt’s two essays on gender published in early issues of Schiller’s Die Horen lay out a ‘heteroclassical’ aesthetics that provides for exuberant literary and cultural participation by women in the project of Weimar Classicism. In Caroline von Wolzogen’s novel Agnes von Lilien we see Humboldt’s heteroclassical aesthetics at work as the heroine of the novel resolutely withstands pressure to renounce the object of her desire in a manner which instantiates a female mode of aesthetic autonomy.