Sophie Mereau-Brentano (1770–1806)

Sophie Mereau-Brentano, née Schubart, was born to a middle-class family in Altenburg, central Germany, and received an exceptionally broad education for a girl of her era. She learned Spanish, French, English, and Italian at a young age. In 1793, she married Karl Mereau, a lawyer, and moved with him to Jena. The couple had two children. Through her husband, Sophie met Friedrich Schiller, who encouraged her writing and treated her as a protégé. She published her first novel, Das Blüthenalter der Empfindung (The Flowering of Sensation) in 1794. Sophie was unhappy in her marriage and in 1801 obtained a divorce in Saxe-Weimar. She was one of the first women in Germany to support herself by her writing. Besides editing three literary journals and publishing her poetry, essays, novels, and stories, she also translated works from other languages into German. She frequented the Weimar court theater and acted in private amateur performances. Her second novel, Amanda und Eduard, appeared in 1803. In 1802, she married writer Clemens Brentano when she became pregnant with their son, and added his surname. This marriage was turbulent, in part because Sophie continued to rebel against her role as a woman in 18th-century society, and the couple spent time apart. She cared passionately about the freedom and equality ideals of the French Revolution and the American War of Independence. Sophie became pregnant again in 1806 and died from a hemorrhage following childbirth at age 36. Today she is considered an important figure in German Classism and Romanticism.