The fourth case is concerned with Günderrode’s ‘Philosophical Studies’.

Günderrode was fascinated by the philosophy of her time. We can trace her interest in the philosophy of German Idealism back to reading practices within the Günderrode family. Around 1800, Günderrode and her mother Louise were reading Die Bestimmung des Menschen [The Destination of Man] by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Günderrode made notes on the individual chapters. She also wrote longer, autodidactic studies of Idealist philosophy together with her friend Susanne von Heyden. The entries in her private study books demonstrate her keen interest in Kant, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, and Spinoza.

In 1800, Günderrode undertook intensive studies of Kantian philosophy, without reading Kant’s works themselves. Instead, she studied textbooks on Kantian philosophy which were written by the Berlin-based philosopher – and Kantian – Johann Gottfried Kiesewetter. You can see the Kantian studies to the left here, which bear the title ‘Reine allgemeine Logik/ersten Theils, erste Hälfte’ [Pure general logic/the first half of the first part].

To the immediate right you can see a later manuscript with Günderrode’s excerpts from Frans Hemsterhuis’s philosophical dialogue about poetry and sculpture, Simon ou les facultés de l’âme [Simon, or the faculties of the soul]. Günderrode initially copied the French original – in Latin script, so it’s easy to read – but switched to translating the French into German herself at the end of the first page. The German is written in a cursive script, not in a Latin script.

A further exhibit, which you can see at the bottom of the case, shows how Günderrode would independently work through philosophical concepts. It is a letter from around 1804, addressed to Claudine Piautaz, who was an important member of the Brentano household in Frankfurt.

This letter also demonstrates how, for Günderrode, philosophy and literature interact with one another and are intricately connected. After a lament about how her source of creativity has become parched, she then refers to notions derive from Kantian epistemology, namely, to the idea that sensory knowledge is not possible without the properties of space and time. It also becomes clear that Günderrode is sceptical about the precepts of a strict virtue ethic, specifically one that denies the innate goodness of the individual.

This letter is Romantic through and through, because it mixes forms and themes: alongside a lyrical description of a rain-swept landscape, we can find philosophical thoughts on epistemology and virtue ethics, and the letter closes with an early version of the poem Der Trauernde und die Elfen [The Mourning Man and the Sprites], later published in Gedichte und Phantasien [Poems and Fantasies] in 1804.