Fanny Lewald

Fanny Lewald (March 21, 1811 – August 5, 1889), German author, was born at Königsberg in East Prussia, of Jewish parentage.

When seventeen years of age she embraced Christianity, and after travelling in Germany, France and Italy, settled in 1845 at Berlin. Here, in 1854, she married the author, Adolf Wilhelm Theodor Stahr (1805–1876), and removed after his death in 1876 to Dresden, where she resided, engaged in literary work, until her death.

Fanny Lewald is less remarkable for her writings, which are mostly sober, matter-of-fact works, though displaying considerable talent and culture, than for her championship of womens' rights, a question which she was practically the first German woman to take up, and for her scathing satire on the sentimentalism of the Gräfin Hahn Hahn. This authoress she ruthlessly attacked in the exquisite parody (Diogena, Roman von Iduna Griffin H...-H... (2nd ed., 1847).

Among the best known of her novels are:

• Klementine (1842)
• Prinz Louis Ferdinand (1849; 2nd ed., 1859)
• Das Mädchen von Hela (1860)
• Von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht (8 vols, 1863–1865)
• Benvenuto (1875), and Stella (1883)
• English by B Marshall, 1884)

Of her writings in defence of the emancipation of women Osterbriefe für die Frauen (1863) and Für und wider die Frauen (1870) are conspicuous. Her autobiography, Meine Lebensgeschichte (6 vols, 1861–1862), is brightly written and affords interesting glimpses of the literary life of her time.

A selection of her works was published under the title Gesammelte Schriften in 12 vols (1870–1874). Cf. K Frenzel, Erinnerungen und Stromungen (1890).

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.