The first case is called ‘Youth and Family’.

Karoline von Günderrode was born in the city of Karlsruhe in 1780 and was the oldest child of a patrician family, indeed an important family of the ‘Alten-Limpurger Ganerbschaft’, which was an alliance of patrician families in the free imperial city of Frankfurt am Main.

Günderrode’s father Hektor von Günderrode was a court councillor at the court in Karlsruhe, and was, like his father, legally trained. Following the early death of her husband in 1786, Günderrode’s mother, Louise, moved to Hanau, along with her six children. Three of Günderrode’s four sisters died before reaching adulthood.

The first of the three letters on display in this case demonstrates that Günderrode was well-integrated in her family. This letter must have been written after 1797 and it features the handwriting of her mother, Louise, and two of her sisters, Wilhelmine and Amalie. Whilst Louise gives a factual report about social events, illnesses and deaths within the family, the two sisters write in a playful tone. They write with mock outrage, accusing their sister of having neglected them. Wilhelmine writes – you can see her handwriting indicated by the brackets on the left hand side of the letter – that she is almost angry with Günderrode for being so 'godlessly lazy', and says how much she longs for a letter from her sister. Amalie, who is two years younger than Wilhelmine, adds that Günderrode is probably enjoying herself too much to think of her poor sister, but notes that Günderrode’s apparently long-lost copy of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, has suddenly turned up. Through this we learn that Werther, which was published in a revised edition in 1787, was clearly important for Günderrode.

Now we can turn to the second letter. In 1797, Günderrode entered the Cronstetten-Hynspergische Damenstift, which offered accommodation for unmarried women of the alliance of patrician families that Günderrode was a part of. The building of the Damenstift was just around the corner, on the Roßmarkt here in Frankfurt. But Günderrode certainly did not live an isolated life in the Damenstift. In her time, the once strict rules of the Damenstift had become more lenient, which meant that Günderrode could attend the theatre or go to visit friends and family elsewhere. As the letter here reveals, Günderrode’s maternal grandmother, Luise, was, however, concerned about Günderrode’s honour, which could well by compromised by her roaming the streets of Frankfurt at night. Individual honour is also equated with family honour. Luise’s letter is replete with religious language as well as language concerning honour, virtue, and integrity – and this points to the Lutheran piety of the Günderrode family.

In the third letter, written in 1801, we bear witness to a dispute with the estate manager Hoim, who was responsible for the property of Günderrode’s widowed mother. In this instance, the twenty-one-year-old Karoline von Günderrode represented the collective interests of her sisters – against those of their mother. The relationship between the sisters and their mother had cooled somewhat by around 1800. Hoim insinuates in the letter that an acquaintance of the Günderrodes, Sophie Blum, had interfered and tried to distance the sisters from their mother. Karoline von Günderrode emphatically rejects this suggestion in her letter.