Schiller's only surviving letter to Sophie La Roche
Autograph letter signed ("F. Schiller").
4to. 3 pp. on bifolium.
€ 48,000.00
Schiller's only surviving letter to Sophie La Roche, who on 17 December 1796 had written to him about the deep impression which his poem "Die Klage des Ceres" had made upon her. The "grief of her motherly heart" of which Schiller speaks in his sensitive answer alludes to Sophie's son Franz Wilhelm, who had passed away six years earlier. Sophie had written to Schiller about him: "Möge Ihnen der Himmel in jedem Moment Ihres Lebens [...] die süße Wehmuth lohnen, mit welcher ich jetzo an das Grab meines Frantz - und an die Pflanzen denke, welche über seiner Hülle wachsen".
Schiller's poem "Die Klage des Ceres", written in June 1796, focuses on the sufferings of Ceres after Pluto abducts to the underworld her daughter Proserpina.
The German salonnière Sophie von La Roche, who was well acquainted with Johann Bernhard Basedow, Goethe, Wilhelm Heinse, the Jacobi brothers, Johann Caspar Lavater, Christoph Martin Wieland, and many more noted personages of the age, is considered the first German woman to have lived as a professional writer. Every two years since 2010, the city of Offenbach awards a "Sophie von La Roche Prize for Equal Rights for Women".
Browning and staining; small tears and paper flaws professionally restored (no loss to text save for two letters in the lower middle fold).
Published in: Schillers Briefe. Mit geschichtlichen Erläuterungen. Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik Schillers als Mensch, Dichter und Denker und ein nothwendiges Supplement zu dessen Werken. Bd. 2. 1. Abteilung (Berlin, 1853), pp. 486f.
