SOURCE: Goodman, Kay. “Poesis and Praxis in Rahel Varnhagen's Letters.” New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies 27 (fall 1982): 123-39.

In the following essay, Goodman focuses on Varnhagen's letters, as well as those of her contemporary and friend Bettina von Arnim.

When German feminists trace their literary and cultural roots, they usually begin with the romantic women living around 1800. It was the time of the great Berlin salons and the new romantic liaisons, and both of these phenomena challenged a strictly domestic image of women.¹ The aura of sexual liberation in the lives of Caroline (Michaelis-Böhmer-Schlegel) Schelling and Dorothea (Mendelssohn-Veit) Schlegel draws the most colorful attention, but a more profound admiration generally accompanies the regard for Rahel Varnhagen and Bettina von Arnim.² When letters by these women first appeared in the 1830's, they excited, outraged, or simply puzzled readers; but even then their peculiar effect on...