Günderrode first became part of literary history as a character, as one of the two correspondents in Bettina (née Brentano) von Arnim’s Die Günderode (1840), the main theme of which is the friendship between the two women. This finds expression in a correspondence which has at its heart mutual understanding and reciprocal creativity. The title page of the first edition can be seen in the display case here, which includes a handwritten addition by Bettina von Arnim. The extent to which Die Günderode conforms to reality has long been the subject of scholarly attention. Looking at the letters between Bettina Brentano and her future husband Achim von Arnim reveals, however, that consideration was given after Günderrode’s death to the question of what it means to know another person completely, and what can be understood by friendship: “The gentle, blue gaze of poor Günderrode meets me more surely now that she can no longer speak, she looks more freely, and with less reticence, out into the world […] We could not give her enough to bind her here, we could not sing brightly enough to extinguish the Furies’ torch of ill-fated passion, alien to her. I say we and yet I didn’t mean much to her, although I was good to her.”