Sara Grotthuis

Sara Grotthuis, born Sara Meyer, also known as Sophie Leopoldine Wilhelmine Baroness von Grotthuis and as Sara Wulff by her first marriage (1763 – 11 December 1828), was one of the most well-known "salonnières" (salon hostesses and patrons of the arts) of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Berlin.

Sara Grotthuis
Born	Sara Meyer 1763 Berlin
Died	(1828-12-11)11 December 1828 Berlin
Other names	Sophie Leopoldine Wilhelmine Baroness von Grotthuis Sara Wulff

Biography

Sara Grotthuis was born Sara Meyer in Berlin in 1763 as the eldest daughter of the Orthodox Jewish banker Aaron Moses Meyer and his wife Rösel.^[1] Through her mother, Sara was the great-granddaughter of Veitel Heine Ephraim, who served Friedrich the Great as a "Münzjude" or mint master.^[2] She was the cousin of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense.

The well-known Jewish scholar and Enlightenment thinker Moses Mendelssohn, a close friend of the family, was consulted on Sara's education and upbringing.^[1] Sara was noted as being bright and talented in languages.^[3]

In 1778 at the age of 15, Sara was married to the older Jewish businessman Liebmann Wulff. Her parents were in favor of the marriage, and the ceremony was performed by Moses Mendelssohn. It was an unhappy marriage, one that distressed the young Sara.^[4] After her husband Wulff died in 1787, Sara moved back in with her parents. She converted to Christianity in 1788. She may have converted back to Judaism for a time, but she was a converted Protestant Christian by the time of her second marriage.^[5][3][4]

In 1797, she married the Livonian Baron Ferdinand Dietrich von Grotthuis, a land owner and officer in the Prussian army. The couple lived in Berlin, and Sara led one of the most important literary salons of the time and exchanged letters with Goethe.

After the Prussian army's 1806 loss to Napoleon, the Grotthuis couple lost all of their property and fell into poverty. They lived in Oranienburg, where Baron Grotthuis took on a position as a postman.^[3] Sara Grotthuis died in Berlin on 11 December 1828.^[6]

Literary Salon

Alongside other salonnières Henriette Herz and Rahel Varnhagen, Sara Grotthuis led one of the most influential literary salons in Berlin around 1800.^[7] Her guests included not only diplomats, writers, and actors but also members of the Prussian nobility like Prince Louis Ferdinand.^[3]

Her salon gained influence through her friendship with Johann Wolfgang Goethe, of whom she was a long-time admirer. As a thirteen-year-old, Sara would steal away from family in the evenings to read Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, which a young love interest had sent to her.^[8] Moses Mendelssohn, a close friend of the Meyer family, disapproved of Werther and considered Goethe a bad influence on youth. He threw Sara's copy of Werther out a window.^[8] Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, another friend of the family and an admirer of Goethe, gave her another copy.^[9][4] She met Goethe in 1795 at a spa in Karlsbad, far before any of the other Berlin salonnières.^[6] Their friendship thus also predated the Goethe-cult created by the brothers August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel.

She maintained correspondence with Goethe for years.^[5][10][11] Goethe sent her unpublished manuscripts to be read in her salon, and sometimes he sent actors to read them, such as the famous actor couple Amalie Wolff-Malcolmi and Pius Alexander Wolff.^[12] Grotthuis for her part connected Goethe with certain important figures including Prince Karl Joseph von Ligne, among others.

In addition to Goethe, Grotthuis counted Lessing, Herder, and Prince Karl Joseph von Ligne among her friends. Rahel Varnhagen's husband Karl August Varnhagen von Ense wrote of Sara Grotthuis: "She was flattered by Lessing in her youth and later by Herder, and then she became friends with Frau von Genlis, the Prince of Ligne and Goethe."^[13]

Sara Grotthuis' salon ended – like the first salon of her cousin Rahel von Varnhagen – with the Prussian defeat in 1806 and the resulting impoverishment of the Grotthuis family.

References

1. Collins, James B.; Taylor, Karen L. (2008-04-15). Early Modern Europe: Issues and Interpretations. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781405152075.
2. Gotthard Deutsch, M. Seligsohn. "EPHRAIM, VEITEL-HEINE". Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
3. Hertz, Deborah Sadie (2005-01-01). Jewish High Society In Old Regime Berlin. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815629559.
4. Wilhelmy, Petra (1989-01-01). Der Berliner Salon im 19. Jahrhundert (1780-1914) (in German). Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110853964.
5. Mendelsohn, Ezra (1997-01-30). Studies in Contemporary Jewry: Volume XII: Literary Strategies: Jewish Texts and Contexts. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195354683.
6. Hahn, Barbara. "Sophie Von Grotthuss". Jewish Women's Archive Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
7. Lowenstein, Steven M. (1994-06-02). The Berlin Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family and Crisis, 1770-1830. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195359428.
8. Meyer, Michael A. (1979-01-01). The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824. Wayne State University Press. p. 85. ISBN 0814314708.
9. Gaus, Detlef. Geselligkeit und Gesellige: Bildung, Bürgertum und bildungsbürgerliche Kultur um 1800. Weimar, Stuttgart: Verlag J.B. Metzler, 1998, p. 135.
10. Naimark-Goldberg, Natalie. "Reading and Modernization: The Experience of Jewish Women in Berlin Around 1800". Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues. 15 (1). ISSN 1565-5288.
11. Hahn, Barbara (2005-01-01). The Jewess Pallas Athena: This Too a Theory of Modernity. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691116148.
12. Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Petra (2000-01-01). Die Berliner Salons: mit historisch-literarischen Spaziergängen (in German). Walter de Gruyter. p. 78. ISBN 9783110164145.
13. Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Petra. Die Berliner Salons. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, p. 77. The German reads: „Sie hörte in ihrer Jugend Schmeicheleien von Lessing, in späterer Zeit von Herder, dann standen Frau von Genlis, der Fürst von Ligne und Goethe mit ihr im freundschaftlichen Verkehr.“