Wallstein Verlag GmbH Rahel: Ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde

For the first time in the until today unpublished last version: a monumental autobiography in letters, the incessant conversation and self-talk of radical self-thinker Rahel Levin Varnhagen. Rahel Levin Varnhagen, the great Jewish salonière from Berlin, maintained a lively, often passionate exchange of letters with a variety of friends, acquaintances and guests of her salon for years, in which people of different stands and worldviews meet. Her letters still captivate today by immediacy and spontaneity and are testimonies of her attachment to many mind-greats of the time, including Clemens and Bettina Brentano, Jean Paul, Kleist, the brothers Schlegel and Humboldt, Tieck, Schleiermacher, Heine and many others. Together with their records, they form the opus magnum of this fascinating woman. Already the first two editions of this work, shortly before and soon after Rahel Levin's death by her husband Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, found great reverberation. Subsequently, Varnhagen prepared a considerably expanded version for publication - a project that was never realized. Barbara Hahn has now undertaken to reconstruct the extensive edition according to the manuscript of the Varnhagen Collection (Krakow). The almost 1600 letters and records are opened by an afterword of the editor, a commented directory of letter partners, a letter directory as well as a detailed person and work register. In an introductory essay, Brigitte Kronauer introduces the life and work of one of the most significant women of the 19th century.