Page "Johanna Schopenhauer" Paragraph 8

In Weimar Johanna Schopenhauer made a name as an authoress.

She was the first German woman writer to publish books without making use of a pseudonym.

During a little more than a decade, from the late 1810s to the early 1830s, her literary production turned her into the most famous woman author in Germany.

In 1831 her writings received a second edition at Brockhaus ' publishing house: the collected oevres filled no less than 24 volumes.

Nothing, however, could compensate for those financial setbacks ; under the guise of health issues, Johanna and Adele Schopenhauer, being no longer able to maintain their lifestyle in Weimar, moved to Bonn.

In the middle 1830s their situation would deteriorate further as Johanna's fame decayed.

Almost without resources, Johanna wrote to the Duke of Weimar a letter in which she narrated her current plight.

The Duke, in acknowledgment to the once so fêted writer, conceded her, in 1837, a small pension and invited her, and also Adele, to live in Jena.

In there Johanna died the following year.

She left incomplete the manuscript of a last work, her autobiography, whose contents narrate her early life until Arthur's birth.