There is more praise than art in this portrait. Sainte-Beuve would have given us a very different delineation. The original of the picture is a woman who, after the publication of her letters under the title Caroline, was known, as if she had been a queen, only by this, her Christian name. It simplified matters, too, to designate her thus, for she had had so many surnames that it was difficult to know by which to call her. She was a daughter of the well-known German philologist, Michaelis; her first husband was a Dr. Böhmer; after his death she married A. W. Schlegel, and her third husband was Schelling. These two last marriages placed her in the centre of the Romantic circle, which seems naturally to group itself round her. She was its own special muse. Grier, the gifted translator of Calderon and Ariosto, says of her that she is by far the cleverest woman he has known. Steffens and Wilhelm von Humboldt use similar expressions. A. W. Schlegel writes of several of his essays, that they are "in part the work of a highly gifted woman, who possessed all the qualifications of a successful author, but whose ambition did not lie in that direction." Schelling writes at the time of her death: "Even had she not been to me what she was, I should mourn the human being, should lament that this intellectual paragon no longer exists, this rare woman, who to masculine strength of soul and the keenest intellect united the tenderest, most womanly, most loving heart. We shall never see her like again." Her portrait is very striking—fascinating, refined, roguish, and yet tender. She is quite in Leonardo's style. Dorothea is far less complex.
Caroline was born in 1763, and was twenty-one at the time of her first marriage. A. W. Schlegel made her acquaintance whilst he was a student at Göttingen, and fell in love with her, but she refused to marry him. Intercourse between them was broken off for a time, but was carried on by correspondence while Schlegel was at Amsterdam, where he went as a tutor in 1791. Here various amorous episodes, amongst them one serious love affair, threw Caroline for a time into the shade. Meanwhile, she was entangling herself in a net of the strangest relations. In 1799 she had gone to Mainz, where she lived in the house of Georg Forster, Humboldt's teacher, a man equally distinguished as a scientist and an author. When this gifted and admirable, but far too sanguine man, embarked on revolutionary enterprises and attempted to extend French republicanism to the Rhine districts, Caroline enthusiastically aided and abetted him. She was in communication with the members of the Republican Club in Mainz, and she was unjustly suspected of communicating with the enemy through her brother-in-law, G. Böhmer, who was Custine's secretary. When Mainz was reconquered by the German troops, she was arrested, and spent several months in barbarous imprisonment, sharing a room with seven other people. From prison she wrote to A. W. Schlegel for assistance.
Her position was even worse than it appeared to be. In Mainz, in desperation at the disappointment of her dearest hopes (she had expected that the manly, energetic Tatter would offer her his hand), she had thrown herself into the arms of her adorer for the moment, a Frenchman, and the results of this connection would inevitably compromise her for ever, if she were not freed from prison in time. Schlegel's influence and her own brother's unremitting endeavours procured her release. With quiet chivalry August Wilhelm placed Caroline, now forsaken by all her other friends, under the protection of his younger brother, Friedrich. It was in these singularly unpropitious circumstances that Friedrich made her acquaintance. He was by no means prepossessed in her favour, in fact, was inclined to look upon her with contempt; yet this is how he writes: "I had certainly not expected simplicity and a positively divine truthfulness.... She made a profound impression upon me. I longed to be in a position to win her confidence and friendship; but the moment she showed some return of the feeling I saw very clearly that the bare attempt would lead to the most painful struggles, and that if a friendship between us were possible at all, it could only be the fruit of much that was unjustifiable.... Thenceforward every selfish desire was abandoned. The relation in which I stood to her was perfectly innocent and simple. In my behaviour there was the reverence of a son, the candour of a brother, the frankness of a child, and the unobtrusiveness of a stranger."[7]
In 1796 A. W. Schlegel married his somewhat deeply compromised friend. Her circle soon included all the leading men of the day. She was in constant intercourse with Goethe, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, and Hardenberg. This was the time of Goethe's intimate connection with the young school. It was in the process of formation, and its members held their first meetings at Jena. Caroline breakfasts with Goethe, dines with Fichte, and is soon only too inseparable from Schelling.
The following extract from one of her letters to Schelling (March 1, 1801) affords an example of the vigour and the subtlety of this remarkable woman's criticism: "You surely do not expect me, dearest friend, to enlighten you as to the compass of Fichte's mind, though you almost express yourself as if you did. It has always seemed to me as if, in spite of his incomparable reasoning powers, the soundness of his deductions, his lucidity and accuracy, his direct intuition of the Ego, and his discoverer's enthusiasm—as if in spite of all this he were limited. My explanation of the matter is, that the divine spark is lacking in him; and if you have broken through a circle from which he has not been able to escape, I believe that you have done it not so much as the philosopher—don't scold me if I am using the word wrongly—but rather because there is poetry in you and none in him. Poetical inspiration led you directly to productiveness; keenness of apprehension led him to knowledge. He has light, the clearest and brightest, but you have warmth as well; and light can only illuminate, while warmth produces. Now, have I not seen all this cleverly?—just as one sees a boundless landscape through a keyhole."
In another letter we find an amusing reference to Hegel, which shows us that philosopher in a novel light: "Hegel is playing the beau and general gallant" (Hegel macht den Galanten und allgemeinen Cicisbeo).[8]
Caroline shares enthusiastically in all the efforts of the Romantic School; she revises, reviews anonymously, writes herself, influences other writers directly and indirectly. She is obliged to expend that politico-revolutionary ardour, of which she possesses a far larger share than the men, on literary skirmishes and intrigues. We find her, for instance, writing an anonymous and tolerably sharp review of Schlegel's Ion; Schlegel replies, also anonymously, criticising her criticism; then Caroline calls Schelling to her assistance, and he, acting as her champion, falls upon Schlegel still more heavily in a third anonymous article, written in an extremely polished manner—at the same time writing privately to him that he hopes he will not take it amiss. It is to Caroline that the misunderstanding and final rupture between Schiller and Schlegel is due; she sets the brothers against the poet by her extremely witty but unfair mockery of his style; Schiller, on his side, cannot be acquitted of having treated them with considerable haughtiness at the beginning of their literary career. His name for Caroline is "Dame Lucifer."
Caroline's worst side was displayed in her small-minded hatred of poor Dorothea Veit, whom she positively persecuted. This hatred disturbed the beautiful relation between August Wilhelm and Friedrich, who were intimate friends as well as brothers. At one time it threatened to separate them altogether. Observe the way in which she speaks of Dorothea: "Friedrich was present at the performance of Alarkos, and immediately afterwards got into a post-chaise and set off for France, where it is his intention to be married in republican fashion. Under Robespierre, drowning in the Loire went by the name of noces republicaines; such a wedding for one half of the couple I should not object to."
Her best qualities were called forth by her daughter, that remarkable child, Auguste Böhmer, whose name, although she died at the age of fifteen, has a place in the history of German literature. All who read this child's criticism of Friedrich or of Dorothea, or her rhymed letters to Tieck and Schleiermacher, are astounded by her precociousness. Her death was a turning-point in Caroline's life. Schelling, who very possibly had been first attracted by the daughter, drew nearer to the mother in her sudden and sad bereavement. He was then quite young, labouring ardently at his earliest works, glowing with passion, sparkling with genius, the favourite of Goethe. Caroline and he had a great common sorrow and need of consolation. Their feeling for each other soon assumed the character of passionate love. The publication by the unscrupulous opponents of the Romanticists of a pamphlet in which it was asserted that Schelling, with his crazy Naturphilosophie and the treatment he had recommended, had shortened the child's life, only drew them closer together. The charge was a pure fabrication. It was in his reply to this pamphlet that Schelling made use of the violent language quoted in the introduction to Lassalle's Capital and Labour. Caroline's relations with Schlegel had long been of the coldest; he and she lived in different towns. Had she been of a jealous disposition, she would have found abundant cause for complaint. After his separation from Caroline, Schlegel formed a connection with Tieck's sister, Sophie Bernhardi, who divorced her husband for his sake. His last attempt at marriage, with the daughter of Paulus, the rationalist, was not a success, and ended in a divorce.
When Schelling and Caroline had become so indispensable to each other that it was necessary to break the tie which bound her to Schlegel, the latter, with perfect chivalry, gave his consent. Writing of the divorce, Caroline says: "We broke a tie which neither of us had ever considered permanently binding."[9] Her new marriage was a perfectly happy one.