WIf you have ever heard her name, you will surely associate it with the labels “German Sappho” or “gifted impromptu poet”. But Anna Louisa Karsch, who was born three hundred years ago, had much more to offer. This is now shown in a large exhibition, which no coincidence shows the Gleimhaus in Halberstadt. Here are the largest parts of her estate, alone around a thousand affectionate letters that circulated between Karschin in Berlin and the head of the household, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim. In addition, the richest collection of her portraits is preserved here, not least the first stone poet bust ever.
Objects from this inventory are included in the permanent exhibition with wine-red banners. This makes sense because almost all of the people Karsch addressed in letters and poems are already in the house’s Temple of Friendship, the most complete portrait gallery of Goethe’s time. Gleim was a fanatical collector and networker; without his protective zeal, the Karschin would have remained a quickly dying meteor.
The “Karschin” in criticism
In her day, however, she was a socialite. Her ability to spontaneously forge a poem on given occasions or to conjure up a meaningful poem from a few final rhyming words was legendary. The legend, of course, came from men because it fitted so nicely into the Rousseauist picture of nature unspoiled by culture and civilization. Herder and Sulzer, for example, speak of natural sensations and rich poetic imagination. And in the “Letters concerning the latest literature” the “extreme ability to rhyme” is recognized, but at the same time more knowledge of rules and literary education is recommended. If Karshin were prepared “to compose less and to test more”, it says condescendingly, one would not have to read so “many mediocre, dull and bad” poems in her “Auserlesene Poems” (1764). The disgruntled poetess took Lessing for the anonymous reviewer. When she then heard that it was Moses Mendelssohn, she added ironically: “The deified did not do me so much honor, I was deeply under his criticism”.
Assertive even as a child: Anna Louisa Dürbach as a girl, beheading a plant, etching by Johann Wilhelm Meil, 1763
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Image: Gleimhaus Halberstadt
The exhibition does away with such judgments about the original natural talent. A particularly beautiful copper engraving of “Anne Louise Dürbach, future Karschin”, who was born in Lower Silesia, serves at first glance the Arcadian Rococo myth of the poor cowherdess. But if you take a closer look, you can see that the boy in the boat, Johann Christoph Grafe, is handing the girl a book with his arm outstretched longingly. The excellent exhibition catalog reconstructs an astonishing list of readings from letters and documents, which constantly increases from youth through the unhappy years of marriage to the rise as a Berlin poet and the first professional writer in Germany.
Stylizations, foreign and own
Of course, with many autofictional poems, Karshin herself also used the stylizations that others designed of her. This applies in particular to “Belloisen’s curriculum vitae”, which is usually printed in a short version. The exhibition now also shows the reproduction of “Belle Louise’s” own handwriting, which comprises 209 instead of 46 verses and can also be found in a new edition of the “Letters and Poems” presented by the catalog editor Ute Pott. The cuts probably go back to the daughter Caroline Luise von Klencke, who also became a poet – as well as her daughter Helmina von Chézy, who is one of the earliest journalists and correspondents (from Paris) ever.
This remarkable family tree of women writers is reflected in the exhibition through portraits and works. There is also a lot else to discover in the Gleimhaus, particularly the traces of tears in letters that are surrounded by the manuscript. In the first letter, Karschin addressed the master of the house as her “brother in Apollo”. Later she asks if her “briefflein” will please not only him and his friends, but also the “following wave”. After visiting this beautiful exhibition in Halberstadt, you can expect a positive response.
Suddenly a poet!? Anna Louisa Karsch – life and work. In the Gleimhaus, Halberstadt; until April 30, 2023. The catalog (Wallstein Verlag) costs 24 euros.
