In August 1804 Günderrode met the Heidelberg professor and philologist Friedrich Creuzer, who was part of the circle of her acquaintance Friedrich Carl von Savigny. This meeting developed into a relationship that was both difficult and complex as Creuzer was already married. Of the correspondence between Günderrode and Creuzer, it is, with few exceptions, almost entirely Creuzer’s letters that have survived. Günderrode’s letters were likely destroyed because she received a letter from Creuzer ending the relationship on the day that she would go on to take her own life.

Creuzer’s letters indicate how he vacillated in the relationship, but they also speak to creative attempts to finding ways of keeping the relationship secret and of sharing mutual intellectual interests (above all for the Classical world). The letters are increasingly written in Greek letters in German (and only in these sections is the informal and familiar second-person pronoun ‘Du’ used). Equally, code names are used: Günderrode is “the friend”, Creuzer “the pious one”, or later “Eusebio”. In the letter written in October 1805, Creuzer writes of the adventurous plan to flee to Russia (“Alexandria”) with Günderrode. In the later letter, written only in Greek script, Creuzer praises Günderrode’s poetic prowess.