January Meme: An historical moment in need of more publicity

[selenak]

lirazel asked me about a fascinating historical person or moment which deserves to be better known. A previous reply to a similar question was Fritz Bauer, but there are plenty more, and I'm happy to supply, going for a moment involving a person this time. Well, two, but E.T.A. Hoffmann isn't exactly unknown. (To recapitulate the barest essentials about Hoffmann important for this entry: German poet/composer/jurist; if you haven't read anything of his, think Edgar Allen Poe decades before there was Poe. They also shared an addiction and steady employment problem. Chances are that if you're into opera, you might now, if not Hoffmann's own opera Undine, then Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes de Hoffmann, in which he's a main character, though the libretto isn't based on Hoffmann's life but on various of his short stories. If you're into ballet, you're familiar with Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, which again is based on a novella by Hoffmann. Like most writers not just of his age, Hoffmann couldn't live from his writings, and certainly not from his compositions, so he intermittently worked as a civil servant and jurist for the Prussian state, which is highly relevant to the story I'm about to tell.

On the other hand, hardly anyone today knows who Helmina von Chezy was. Like Hoffmann, she was a Prussian born at the eve of Frederick the Great's reign. Unlike him, she already had a very unorthodox background. Her parents were divorced, she was partly raised by her grandmother who was one of the rare female writers to publish in the German states; Helmina herself wrote her first novel at age 14. She married with sixteen but got divorced within the year. Then, after her mother had died, she went to Paris in 1801. Here it's important to remember the political situation at the time: France is ruled by Napoleon as Emperor, the HRE has been officially dissolved, several German states are de facto clientele states of France. Not Prussia, but Prussia is about to face major humiliation in 1806 by being repeatedly defeated in battle. Helmina worked as a correspondent for various German newspapers, published and edited French Miscelleana, and promptly ran afoul of Napoleonic censorship because of her critical attitude. On the bright side, she also befriended the Schlegels while in Paris, had an affair with Adalbert von Chamisso (with whom she also published a French-to-German translation of August Wilhelm Schlegel's Parisian lectures), and met her second husband, orientalist Wilhelm von Chezy, whom she married in 1805, a marriage which produced several children. However, it wasn't happy, either, so she separated from him as well and given the censorship trouble dodging her, she returned to the German states. During the wars against Napoleon and afterwards, Helmina, like many a Prussian woman, volunteered as a nurse in the military hospitals for the wounded. Where was horrified to find that the medical conditions were horrible and the care of the Prussian state for the wounded and crippled veterans even once the wars had been won practically non existent. Unlike most, however, Helmina von Chezy the journalist decided to do something about it in 1816 and wrote an open indignant letter to Prussian general and army reformer von Gneisenau. The result, however, wasn't an improvement in hospital conditions but Helmina von Chezy getting sued by the Berliner Invaliden-Prüfungskomission for slander of the Prussian army. In a first trial, she was condemned to a year in prison, to bearing the costs for the trial and to pay the sum of 500 Taler as an additional punishment.

Helmine von Chezy went the next higher judical institution, which was the Kammergericht in Berlin, headed, you guessed it, by none other than E.T.A. Hoffmann. Hoffmann looked at the case, and concluded she should be fully acquitted, with the state bearing her expenses. This, however, was not cool with the Prussian Attorney General. She'd insulted the army! She should shut up! So he demanded yet another retrial, and in due course the case arrived at Hoffmann's doorstep again. Who, see above, really needed the job. But he still thought Chezy was right, and decided in her favor. By then, the publicity was such that the state capitulated, she was free and recompensed, and the hospital conditions even improved a little.

The reminde rof Helmine von Chezy's life is more depressing; she remained one of the few freelance female writers and even wrote the libretto for a Weber opera, but fell out with one of her sons, and when the other, her favourite, died, the one she had argued with who was also a writer made it impossible for her to get another job as a journalist since he was already employed at the journals she had old contacts with. She ended up near blind, destitute and only living from a small pension from a charity for male and female writers. Weber, who had collaborated with her on an opera, in a letter once described her as a "good writer, but an insufferable woman". But even her enemies did not doubt she had the courage of her convictions, and stood by them in two of the most policed states of the era (France and Prussia). She persisted, and in one remarkable moment of history, because the man who could make a decision on this wasn't just a remarkable writer and an alcoholic but also someone who wanted to see justice done, she prevailed.

The other days

Comments

[lirazel]

Oh wow! I haven't ever heard of her, but what a fascinating, fascinating life! It doesn't look like there's an English-language biography of her, which is such a shame because I'd love to read one. Thanks for introducing me to this interesting woman!

[watervole]

Reminds me of Florence Nightingale, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale - she was nursing in the Crimean War (1854), but she had a good idea of the conditions before she set out.

She was also far more fortunate. The Press picked her up as a heroine. Her reports on the death rate of wounded soldiers were listened to. As a direct result, they built a pre-fabricated hospital and shipped it out. The new hospital had a death rate of of 10% of the one Nightingale worked at.

She (although she's not well know for it), was one of the people who pushed for improved sanitation in India and the UK. A law requiring all new houses to be connected to sewers was partly due to her influence. (and the statistics she used - she was an early adopter of statistics for disease)

[lokifan]

Wowww! This is fascinating.