Annette Elisabeth Freiin von Droste-Hülshoff

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Droste-Hülshoff, Annette, Freiin von (Hülshoff nr. Münster, Westphalia, 1797-1848, Meersburg/Lake Constance), who, with aristocratic prodigality, was christened Anna Elisabeth Franziska Adolfine Wilhelmina Luisa Maria, came of an old Westphalian Roman Catholic family, and was born in the castle which her ancestors had occupied for 400 years. A sense of tradition, both spiritual and aristocratic, never left her, and its presence makes her originality the more striking. She received a good education from private tutors, at the same time living the life of seclusion inevitable for a woman of her class in a country where great houses were scattered and communications poor. Though in delicate health, she spent much time out of doors, becoming a careful observer of landscape, birds, insects, and plants.

Her interest in poetry was early stimulated by A. M. A. Sprickmann, once a friend of G. A. Bürger. In 1814 she began a two-act romantic verse tragedy (Bertha) which remained a fragment of some 2, 000 lines. Other early writings were the epic poem Walter, completed in 1818, and Ledwina, an unfinished novel written in 1824, of which some fifty pages were posthumously published. In 1820 while on a visit to cousins, she fell simultaneously in love with two men, A. von Arnswaldt and H. Straube, but neither relationship lasted. Towards the end of that year she began to write for her grandmother a cycle of devotional poems reflecting the ecclesiastical calendar. Das geistliche Jahr, published posthumously in 1851, at first proceeded rapidly then came to a halt and was resumed in 1839. The 72 poems of confessional character reflect not only piety but also a conscientious struggle with doubt. In 1826 Annette von Droste's father died, and she and her mother moved to a more modest, though still substantial, residence, the Rüschhaus, situated between Hülshoff and Münster.

After writing nothing for some years, between 1828 and 1838 she produced three epic poems, Das Hospiz auf dem großen St Bernhard, Des Arztes Vermächtnis, and Die Schlacht am Loener Bruch. All three were published in her first collection of poems (Gedichte) in 1838. Annette's elder sister Jenny married Baron J. von Laßberg in 1834, and at their house at Eppishausen in Switzerland (Thurgau) Annette and her mother made a long stay in 1835-6. After her return to the Rüschhaus she met in 1837 Levin Schücking, then 22, with whom she fell in love.

In 1841 Annette von Droste, whose health was giving cause for concern, went on a long visit to her sister, whose husband Laßberg had bought the castle of Meersburg in 1838. Schücking was there too, and these proved her happiest months, as well as her most productive, for she wrote at this time most of the landscape and nature poems (including the Heidebilder) which are the most remarkable feature of the new volume (Gedichte) published in 1844. The Novelle Die Judenbuche was written between 1837 and 1841, and published in 1842. She continued to reside at Meersburg on account of her poor health, at the time believed to be caused by tuberculosis, though it is now thought that its origins may have been nervous; but in 1842, and again in 1845, she returned for a time to her Westphalian home, which she finally left in September 1846. The marriage of Schücking in 1843 to Luise von Gall is thought to have accelerated the decline in her health, and in the last two years of her life (1846-8) she wrote nothing more.

The unpublished poetry of the years before, containing some of her most moving poems, appeared posthumously in 1860 as Letzte Gaben.

In 1840 Annette von Droste wrote a one-act comedy, Perdu, oder: Dichter, Verleger und Blaustrümpfe, in which the ‘poet’ is modelled on Freiligrath, the critic (Rezensent) and ‘part-time poet’ on Schücking, and the ‘blue-stocking’ (Blaustrumpf von Stande), Anna Freiin von Thielen, is the authoress herself, who withdraws her manuscript as soon as she senses that the publisher is only interested in business.

To call Annette von Droste the greatest German woman poet, as is often done, is not to do justice to the strength and originality of her poetry. Many of her poems of reflection or observation show a bitter-sweet sense of transience, a keen and accurate vision, and a remarkable power in the choice and manipulation of words.

Her reputation as a writer of fiction depends on Die Judenbuche, an outstanding 19th-c. Novelle. She wrote brilliantly of her native Westphalia. According to her own comments, she did not complete her novel Bei uns zu Lande auf dem Lande because she was unable to prevent the characters resembling members of her own family. In 1845 Bilder aus Westfalen appeared anonymously under the title Westfälische Schilderungen aus einer westfälischen Feder in the Historisch-Politische Blätter. These sketches of Westphalia describe the differing mental and physical types found in the districts of Sauerland, Paderborn, and Münsterland. They are shrewd and bold, so much so that they could not appear under her name. But they are also written with the same empathy as Die Judenbuche, which resulted from her studies for this work; both works show the remarkable nuances of wit and irony which balance, but never obscure, the humanity of Annette von Droste's mature style.

Sämtliche Werke historisch-kritische Ausgabe, 4 vols., ed. K. Schulte-Kemminghausen, appeared 1925-30 and Historischkṛitische Ausgabe, ed. W. Woesler et al. from 1978.