The Forgotten Young Hegelian

Bettina-Brentano von Arnim by unknown artist

This article is in a series on women who have been erased from the history of philosophy. The series is titled “Discovering the Women at the Heart of Philosophy.”

Bettina-Brentano von Arnim (1785–1859) is one of the best-known female German writers of the early nineteenth century, credited with initiating a distinctive tradition of women’s writing in Germany. Associated with Heidelberg and Berlin Romanticism, as well as the Young Hegelians, Brentano-von Arnim was a multi-talented editor, poet, composer, artist, and epistolary writer. She was also a social activist and theorist who advocated for the alleviation of poverty, enfranchisement of Jews, and abolition of the death penalty.

Brentano-von Arnim’s significant intellectual, artistic and political work is often overshadowed by her connections. In particular, she is often associated with her famous brother, the writer Clemens Brentano, her friends Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karoline von Günderrode, and luminaries as diverse as Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, Karl Marx, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and Beethoven (she may have been the addressee of Beethoven’s famous “immortal beloved” letter). This is unfortunate, since Brentano-von Arnim’s writings provided important contributions to the development of nineteenth-century literature and political theory. Among other things, she originated a genre-defying literary style, a concept of female genius, and a theory that the state is responsible for criminal behavior in its citizens.

Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano was born in 1785 to a noble family in Frankfurt, the seventh of twelve children from her father’s second marriage (she also had eight half-siblings). Brentano-von Arnim’s mother died when she was eight, after which she spent several years in a Catholic convent until her father died in 1797. After that, she lived with her maternal grandmother, the famous writer Sophie von La Roche. At La Roche’s salons, the young Brentano-von Arnim met famous literary figures, musicians, and politicians, and was exposed to progressive—even revolutionary—ideas, including ones about women’s education, art, and politics.

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Brentano-von Arnim was part of the “Heidelberg Circle”—a group of writers including Achim von Arnim; her brother Clemens and his wife Sophie Mereau; the Brothers Grimm; the influential mythologist Friedrich Creuzer; the poet, dramatist, and philosopher Karoline von Günderrode; and others. Although seldom credited, she assisted Clemens and Achim in collecting the folk songs for their text Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805–1808).

In 1811, Bettina married the writer Achim von Arnim and settled in Berlin. They had seven children between 1812 and 1827. The work of being a mother and wife seems to have taken up Brentano-von Arnim’s energies during this period, as it was only after Achim’s death in 1831 that she began her career as a writer. Around this time, Brentano-von Arnim also lost three other people who were instrumental in her intellectual development: Goethe died in 1832, her friend Rahel Varnhagen in 1833, and Friedrich Schleiermacher in 1834.

Brentano-von Arnim’s major writings fall into two categories: a series of “epistolary novels” based on her correspondence with Goethe and his mother Katharina Elisabeth Goethe, Günderrode, and Clemens, and political writings calling for social reform. She also wrote fairy tales, stories, diaries, and letters, which have been gathered into at least four editions of her collected works.

The first of Brentano-von Arnim’s publications, Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child, was also her most famous. Published in 1835, the book is only loosely based on Brentano-von Arnim’s correspondence with Goethe and his mother between 1807 and 1811. Her numerous modifications of the letters confused readers, and for years the book was harshly criticized for being unfaithful to their correspondence and she was lambasted as a self-aggrandizing woman hungry for fame. Unfortunately, this uncharitable interpretation continues to shape attitudes towards Brentano-von Arnim and her work. Notably, Milan Kundera’s 1988 novel Immortality depicts her as scheming for a place in posterity by shaping the reception of Goethe’s writings.

However, to read Brentano-von Arnim as interested primarily in her own fame misses the point of Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child. This book, like her other epistolary novels, describes and models Brentano-von Arnim’s ideas about language, music, love, the possibility of female genius (a radical idea at the time), and the social construction of the self. For Brentano-von Arnim, an individual becomes who she is and learns about herself through interactions with others, while simultaneously influencing their self-development and self-awareness. All Brentano-von Arnim’s epistolary novels explore this development in interactions with important people in her life, especially Goethe, Goethe’s mother, Günderrode, and Clemens.

The second of Brentano-von Arnim’s epistolary works, Günderode, was published in 1840 and has been hailed as a model of Romantic ideals of symphilosophy (i.e., doing philosophy together) and “Bildung” (cultivation or self-development), in a way that subverts masculine norms of authorial authority. This book, and the account of female friendship it illustrates, was an influence on American Transcendentalism, primarily through Margaret Fuller, the editor of the Transcendentalist journal The Dial. Fuller translated Günderode into English in 1861.

While modeling Brentano-von Arnim’s understanding of the social development of the self and articulating a radical account of music and language, Günderode outlines an ideal new religion, which Brentano-von Arnim argued should replace Christianity. She called this new faith a “Schwebereligion” (“floating religion”). This religion would have no dogmas, be based on an individual’s personal relationship to nature and “spirit,” involve sharing life experiences with others, and require action against social injustices. The fruits of Brentano-von Arnim’s friendship with Schleiermacher can be seen in some aspects of this Schwebereligion: Brentano-von Arnim and Schleiermacher shared a commitment to struggle against injustice and to a non-dogmatic religion that came from the heart.

In addition to their claims about music, language, love, sociability and selfhood, Brentano-von Arnim’s epistolary works present a rumination on time and an ideal of non-exploitative relationships between human beings, and between human beings and nature, that are important for her political thought. For Brentano-von Arnim, the world must be understood in its historical development, while nature provides the model for successful systems of governance, which should avoid domination and oppression and operate in the interests of all a nation’s people.

Combined with Brentano-von Arnim’s critiques of established religion (especially Christianity), these characteristics suggest why her writings were influential among the Young Hegelians (also known as Left Hegelians). This group of political radicals, like Brentano-von Arnim, were active in Berlin in the 1830s and 1840s, and she knew many of them personally, including the brothers Bruno and Edgar Bauer, David Strauss, and Karl Marx. Others, such as Max Stirner, Eduard Meyen and Arnold Ruge, wrote reviews, letters, and articles celebrating some aspects of Brentano-von Arnim’s political thought while criticizing others.

The first and most widely-read of Brentano-von Arnim’s political works, This Book Belongs to the King (often translated as The King’s Book), was published in 1843 and dedicated to the new king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Brentano-von Arnim’s friendship with the King allowed her to articulate political critiques that would have been suppressed by censors had they been written by anyone else. The book stars a version of Goethe’s mother, with the nickname was Frau Rat (“Mrs. Councilor”), who gives political advice to various rulers. Through Frau Rat, the book demands the alleviation of poverty and the full emancipation of Jews. Brentano-von Arnim also advances the claim that criminal behavior is caused by injustice, poverty, and the stifling moral education of institutionalized religion—for which the state is responsible: “The State sows, and is alone responsible for the crimes that result.”

Despite her advocacy of political and social reform, and even explicit support for communism, Brentano-von Arnim remained a monarchist. Her ideal government was led by a Volkskönig, or “People’s King,” who would rule benevolently for the sake of his subjects. This provided a point of divergence with the Young Hegelians, who gradually de-emphasized the role of religion as the ultimate seat of power and focused instead on secular reform, culminating in Marx’s identification of capital as the mechanism of the subjugation of the working class.

In 1852 Brentano-von Arnim published a follow-up to This Book Belongs to the King called Conversations with Demons, in which a “demon” (a manifestation of Brentano-von Arnim) whispers to a sleeping king, urging social reforms. However, by this time Brentano-von Arnim was out of favor with the King, and Conversations with Demons did not have much impact.

Brentano-von Arnim’s other political writings also did not receive the same attention as her earlier work. In 1844, she gathered information on the living conditions of the poor, especially weavers in Silesia (an area now mainly in western Poland but then part of Prussia). When, in the same year, the Silesian weavers revolted, Brentano-von Arnim’s very public investigations were thought to have helped incite the revolt; consequently, she shelved the project. Her unfinished notes were published in 1962 as Das Armenbuch (The Poor Book) and are notable for their modern techniques of gathering statistics and interviews.

Photo of Bettinavon Armin

In light of the recognition of Brentano-von Arnim’s work by the Young Hegelians and her association with the Silesian Weavers’ Uprising, it is remarkable that her political writings are so rarely considered in work on the development of Communism. Her contributions to the development of Romantic theories of selfhood, sociability, symphilosophy, genius, gender, and genre are similarly neglected in mainstream philosophy, despite their originality and importance (although this is beginning to change). Brentano-von Arnim’s lively, genre-defying writing style, strong representations of female genius, and sustained reflections on friendship, language, and music are only the most obvious of her contributions to nineteenth-century literature, politics, and philosophy.

Anna Ezekiel is a feminist historian of philosophy and translator working on post-Kantian German thought. She has translated the writings of eight historical women philosophers, including excerpts from Brentano-von Arnim’s Günderode, for the forthcoming Oxford University Press volume Women Philosophers of the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition, edited by Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar. Her translations of Karoline von Günderrode’s work are available as Poetic Fragments (SUNY Press, 2016) and Philosophical Fragments (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).