SOURCE: Weissberg, Liliane. “Turns of Emancipation: On Rahel Varnhagen's Letters.” Cultural Critique 21 (spring 1992): 219-38.

In the following essay, Weissberg speculates that Varnhagen's letters offer a unique epistolary form that develops around ideas of emancipation and derives from Varnhagen's perspective as a Jewish female.

I

Emancipation, the “deliverance from bondage or controlling influence,”¹ is a term that has its origin in the Roman family and describes not just the liberation of slaves but also the freeing of children from paternal power. It developed into a political term associated with contracts and laws and with the declaration of civil rights, and its use is highly charged ideologically. The eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, does not list the term; the American Webster's dictionary, on the other hand, refers to its own country's history by listing Lincoln's proclamation. The German Brockhaus deflects attention away from German history and cites...