Беттина фон Арним: Жизнь и творчество немецкой писательницы эпохи романтизма.

19th century German writer
the German born artist

Bettina von Arnim (the Countess of Arnim) (4 April 178520 January 1859), born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was a German writer and novelist. Bettina (or Bettine) Brentano was a writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual artist, an illustrator, patron of young talent, and a social activist. She was the archetype of the Romantic era's zeitgeist and the crux of many creative relationships of canonical artistic figures. Best known for the company she kept, she numbered among her closest friends Goethe, Beethoven, Schleiermacher, and Pückler and tried to foster artistic agreement among them. Many leading composers of the time, including Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johanna Kinkel, and Johannes Brahms, admired her spirit and talents. As a composer, von Arnim's style was unconventional, molding and melding favorite folk melodies and historical themes with innovative harmonies, phrase lengths, and improvisations that became synonymous with the music of the era. She was closely related to the German writers Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim: the first was her brother, the second her husband. Her daughter Gisela von Arnim became a prominent writer as well. Her nephews, via her brother Christian, were Franz and Lujo Brentano.

Bettina von Arnim was born at Frankfurt am Main, into the large Brentano family of an Italian merchants. Her grandmother, Sophie von La Roche, was a novelist, and her brother was Clemens Brentano, the great poet known for his lyric poems, libretti, and Singspiele. He was a mentor and protector to her and inspired her to read the poetry of the time, especially Goethe. From an early age Bettina was called 'the kobold' by her brothers and sisters, a nickname that she maintained later on in Berlin society. After being educated at an Ursulines convent school in Fritzlar from 1794 to 1797, Bettina lived for a while with her grandmother at Offenbach am Main and from 1803 to 1806 with her brother in law, Friedrich von Savigny, the famous jurist, at Marburg. In 1807 at Weimar Bettina made the acquaintance of Goethe, for whom she entertained a significant passion, which the poet did not requite, though he entered into correspondence with her. Their friendship came to an abrupt end in 1811, owing to Bettina's behaviour with Goethe's wife. In 1810, Bettina visited Vienna, staying at the home of her half brother Franz Brentano and his wife Antonie. It was at this time she met Beethoven. She later claimed to have been instrumental in arranging the first meeting of Beethoven and Goethe at Teplitz in 1812, and published a letter supposedly written by Beethoven describing how while walking with Goethe, he had refused to step aside for visiting dignitaries while Goethe bowed an incident that became famous, though the "greatest likelihood is that Bettina made it up". In 1811, Bettina married Achim von Arnim, the renowned Romantic poet and member of the notable Arnim family. The couple settled first at the Wiepersdorf castle, and then in Berlin. They had seven children. Achim died in 1831, but Bettina maintained an active public life. Her passion for Goethe revived, and in 1835, after lengthy discussions with the writer and landscape gardener Hermann von Pückler Muskau, she published her book Goethe's Correspondence with a Child (Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde), which purported to be a correspondence between herself and the poet. She continued to write, inspire, and publish until 20 January 1859, when she died in Berlin, aged 73, surrounded by her children. Her grave is in the Wiepersdorf churchyard. Bettina sang briefly in the Berliner Singakademie and composed settings of Hellenistic poems by Amalie von Helvig. Though domestic duties connected to her 1811 marriage to von Arnim diminished her productivity, several art songs from the period have been recovered and have been published in Werke und Briefe. Von Arnim was the first composer to set the poet Hölderlin's work to music. She was a muse to the progressives of Prussia, linked to the socialist movement and an advocate for the oppressed Jewish community. She published two politically dissident works but evaded chastisement because of her friendship with the King of Prussia. After the 1831 death of her husband, Bettina continued her dedication to the creative community. She published a collection of seven songs in public support of Prussian music director Gaspare Spontini, under duress at the time.

Bunzel, Wolfgang,ed. : Bettine von Arnim: Letzte Liebe. Das unbekannte Briefbuch. Berlin 2019. Arnim's letters to her friend Julius Döring. Renate Moering, ed., Achim von Arnim – Bettine Brentano verh. von Arnim: Briefwechsel. 3 vols. Complete edition after the original manuscripts with commentary, Reichert, Wiesbaden 2019. Gajek, Enid and Bernhard Gajek, eds., Bettine von Arnim, Hermann von Pückler Muskau, »Die Leidenschaft ist der Schlüssel zur Welt«. Briefwechsel 1832–1844 (“Passion is the key to the world.” Correspondence 1832–1844), with commentary, Cotta, Stuttgart 2001,

The German American settlement of Bettina in the state of Texas was founded in 1847, and named by its progressive, idealistic founders after Bettina von Arnim. Located near the juncture of Elm Creek and the Llano River, it lasted only a year. No trace of the Bettina community survives, though two of its three founders subsequently became prominent: Gustav Schleicher, later a U. S. congressman and namesake of Schleicher County, and Dr. Ferdinand Ludwig Herff, who in 1854 became the first surgeon to use anesthesia in Texas. The community's third founder was Hermann Spiess. Part of von Arnim's design for a colossal statue of Goethe, executed in marble by the sculptor Carl Johann Steinhäuser (1813–1878), was displayed in the museum at Weimar in 1911. From 1991 until 31 December 2001, her portrait was on the German 5 Deutsche Mark bill. Her friendship with Robert Schumann featured in Andrew Crumey's 2004 novel Mobius Dick. She is also mentioned in Crumey's 2023 novel Beethoven's Assassins. In 2006, the German government turned Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf, the estate of the von Arnims, into a literary institute.