Sophie von La Roche

La Roche, Sophie von (Kaufbeuren, 1731-1807, Offenbach/Main), née Sophie Gutermann, was brought up in Augsburg, and as a girl paid frequent visits to Biberach, where her cousin C. M. Wieland fell in love with her. In 1754 she was married to Georg von La Roche, an illegitimate son of Count Stadion (1691-1768), whose family estates La Roche supervised until 1771. When in 1766 Frau von La Roche's daughters were sent to boarding school at Strasburg, the mother extricated herself from a crisis of desolation by writing a novel, the Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, which was published by Wieland in 1771. In that year La Roche received an administrative appointment from the Electoral Archbishop of Trier, for which the family moved to Ehrenbreitstein opposite Koblenz. Here Goethe visited them in 1772 on his return from Wetzlar and was attracted by the younger daughter Maximiliane (above). La Roche retired in 1780 (he died in 1788), and Frau von La Roche spent her old age at Speyer and Offenbach, with visits to her daughters and travels to Switzerland, France, Holland and England, which she recorded in a number of volumes (1787-93). She wrote several other novels, but none equalled the success of Fräulein von Sternheim. Their titles include Rosaliens Briefe an ihre Freundin, a collection of letters, educative in purpose (1779-81), Geschichte von Miss Lony (1789), Rosalie von Cleberg auf dem Lande (1791), Schönes Bild der Resignation (1795, against the background of the post-revolutionary period), and Fanny und Julie (1801-02). Her collection of stories appeared as Moralische Erzählungen (1782-4, 1786, and 1788). Her urge to educate and advise younger women about the art of living also found an outlet in the periodical Pomona. Für Teutschlands Töchter (1783-4), which she planned and edited herself, the first woman in her country to do so. Wieland, whom she visited in 1799, edited her autobiography, Melusinens Sommer-Abende (1806), which was followed by Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben in the year of her death.

Sophie La Roche. Ihre Briefe an die Gräfin Elise zu Solms-Laubach 1787-1807 appeared in 1965, and the selection Ich bin mehr Herz als Kopf, ed. M. Maurer, in 1983.