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Rahel Antonie Friederike Varnhagen (), née Levin, later Robert (19 May 1771 – 7 March 1833),〔Heidi Thomann Tewarson, ''Rahel Varnhagen'' (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988)〕 was a German writer who hosted one of the most prominent salons in Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She is the subject of a celebrated biography, ''Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess'' (1958), written by Hannah Arendt.〔Hannah Arendt (1958): ''(Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess )''〕 Arendt cherished Varnhagen as her "closest friend, though she ha() been dead for some hundred years". The asteroid 100029 Varnhagen is named in her honour. ==Life and works== Rahel Levin was born in Berlin to a Jewish family. Her father, a wealthy jeweler, was a strong-willed man who ruled his family despotically. She became very intimate with Dorothea and Henriette, the daughters of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Together with them she knew Henriette Herz, with whom she later became most intimately associated, moving in the same intellectual sphere. Her home became the meeting-place of men like Schlegel, Schelling, Steffens, Schack, Schleiermacher, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Motte Fouqué, Baron Brückmann, Ludwig Tieck, Jean Paul, and Friedrich Gentz. During a visit to Carlsbad in 1795 she was introduced to Goethe, whom she again saw in 1815, at Frankfurt am Main. After 1806 she lived in Paris, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Prague, and Dresden. This period was one of misfortune for Germany; Prussia was reduced to a small kingdom and its king was in exile. Secret societies were formed in every part of the country with the object of throwing off the tyranny of Napoleon. Levin herself belonged to one of these societies. In 1814 she married, in Berlin, the biographer Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, after converting to Christianity—this also made her sister-in-law to the poet Rosa Maria Assing. At the time of their marriage, her husband, who had fought in the Austrian army against the French, belonged to the Prussian diplomatic corps, and their house at Vienna became the meeting-place of the Prussian delegates to the Congress of Vienna. She accompanied her husband in 1815 to Vienna, and in 1816 to Karlsruhe, where he was Prussian representative. After 1819 she again lived in Berlin, where Varnhagen had taken up his residence after having been retired from his diplomatic position. Though never the author of a major book, Rahel Varnhagen is remembered both for the intensity and variety of her correspondence. Six thousand letters have survived, out of an estimated ten thousand letters written by her in the course of her lifetime.〔Elon, 2003, ''The Pity Of It All'', pp. 78–79.〕 A few of her essays were published in ''Das Morgenblatt'', ''Das Schweizerische Museum,'' and ''Der Gesellschafter;'' in 1830, her ''Denkblätter einer Berlinerin'' was published in Berlin. Her husband, Karl August, edited and published her correspondence in the twenty years following her death. Her correspondence with David Veit and with Karl August was published in Leipzig, in 1861 and 1874–1875 respectively. Rahel Varnhagen died in Berlin in 1833. Her grave is located in the Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I Berlin-Kreuzberg. Her husband published two memorial volumes after her death containing selections from her work: ''Rahel, ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde'' (Rahel, a memorial book for her friends; 3 vols., 1834; new ed., 1903) and ''Galerie von Bildnissen aus Rahels Umgang'' (Gallery of portraits from Rahel's circle; 2 vols., 1836). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rahel Varnhagen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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