Dr. Joanna Raisbeck is a lecturer in German at the University of Oxford, where she teaches German language and literature. She was awarded the inaugural Klaus Heyne-Preis by the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt in 2021, and in 2022 received the Novalis-Preis from the International Novalis Society and the Friedrich-Schiller-Jena Universität. Both prizes were for her doctoral dissertation, ‘Poetic Metaphysics in Karoline von Günderrode’, which will be published by the end of 2022.

I wrote my doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford on Karoline von Günderrode and poetic metaphysics in her work. I came across Günderrode for the first time when studying for my BA, when I was working on female German writers around 1800. I was particularly taken with the aesthetic beauty of Günderrode’s late poems from the collection ‘Melete’. The prose text ‘Geschichte eines Braminen’ also made an impression upon me, as it contains a wealth of philosophical reflections on virtue ethics and on the relationship between the individual and (divinised) nature. In particular, I was fascinated by Günderrode’s marked literary and philosophical ambition and was less interested in the sensational aspects of her life that have shaped the reception of her work.

In the five cases of the exhibition, you can find documents relating to Günderrode’s life and work. The first two cases concern her youth, family, and what life was like for Frankfurt patrician families, and the three further cases offer a glimpse into the range of Günderrode’s literary and philosophical work.

You can listen to short introductions to each of the five cases (in English and in German) through the media guide. QR-Codes and numbers that take you to the media guide can be found on the cases themselves.