Permanent series: Women of German History - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1994 - 80 Pfennig

Rahel Varnhagen was born on May 26, 1771, as the eldest daughter of wealthy Jewish jeweler Markus Levin. As a woman and as a Jew she was denied equal access to society. Rahel knew how to make the painful feeling of being excluded productive in an extraordinary way. Her intelligence, alertness, and quick-witted nature, as well as a natural talent for shaping and controlling communicative processes, became the gift of attracting and nurturing important scholars, scholars, and artists of the time in a humanistic and enlightened sense. The circle of friends, whom she received at about twenty in her "Dachstube" in Berlin, has many important names: Friedrich Gentz, the Humboldt brothers, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, Clemens Brentano and his sister Bettina, Kleist, Fouqué, Jean Paul and Heine are just a few of them. Rank and rank were not the yardstick by which Rachel received and treated her guests, but spirit and humane education. The circle that formed in their salon was accordingly mixed, and its composition can be considered a reflex of the earnest attempt to constitute a humane and educated society, albeit on a very small scale, through the constant effort to communicate meaningfully. Rahel maintained a lively and sometimes passionate correspondence with most of his close friends. The letter as fundamentally dialogical literary form documents Rahel's constant struggle for self-exploration and self-expression in dealing with the greats of the times. Rahel Varnhagen has gained historical significance as she became the paradigm of the personality development of the woman, which developed in the course of self-assurance and intellectual cultivation to a mentally equal partner of the man. As a letter writer, Rahel is considered one of the few great women writers in Germany, as hostess of her two salons she contributed significantly to the renewal and transformation of the social reality of her time. (Text: Dag-Stefan Rittmeister, German Department of the University of Bonn)