Anna Louisa Karsch
Karsch, Anna Louisa (Tierschtiegel nr. Crossen/ Oder, 1722-91, Berlin), née Durbach or Dürbach, was twice married, in 1738 and 1749. The name of her first husband was Hirsekorn, of the second Karsch. Both marriages ended in separation. ‘Die Karschin’, as she was called, had little formal education, but read voraciously. She began to write poetry, and some of her poems were published during the Seven Years War. She was taken up by a Baron von Kottwitz and sent to Berlin, where she was helped by K. W. Ramler, G. E. Lessing, and M. Mendelssohn, who regarded her as a natural, untutored poetess (Naturdichterin). Her poems were published in 1764 by J. W. L. Gleim; another volume, Neue Gedichte, followed in 1772. Open and affectionate by nature, she had a striking facility in expressing her emotions in conventional terms. The appellation ‘deutsche Sappho’, given her by Gleim, has done a disservice to a small but genuine talent.
In acknowledgement of her enthusiastic support of the Prussian cause during the Seven Years War (see Siebenjähriger Krieg), Friedrich II, der Große, received her in audience in 1763, but the promised reward was not forthcoming until 1789 when Friedrich Wilhelm II built her a house. Always struggling to eke out a living, she wrote much occasional poetry to order. Commenting on her physiognomy, J. C. Lavater drew particular attention to her cool, searching intelligence; in the last decades of the 20th c. his views have been substantiated on the sounder basis of her correspondence, impressive in both bulk and quality, from which she emerges as a highly perceptive and shrewd observer of her time, and as a remarkable woman of humble station, whose personal life and motherhood were riddled with hardship. A substantial part of her letters is addressed to Gleim, for whom she developed a deep love which she mistakenly believed to be mutual.
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