“Affairs of the Mind: The Salon and Jewish Women Writers” will present current scholarship on the subject of literary salons and German-Jewish women writers in the late 18th and early 19th century. The symposium will focus on three women authors and will position them within Romantic literary movement as they strived to live Romantic philosophy through their conversations and writing. Renata Fuchs will discuss Rahel Levin Varnhagen’s immediate reception as a public figure. Deborah Hertz will present on Henriette Herz’s identity as Jew and German. And May Mergenthaler will talk about sun figures in Dorothea Veit’s Florentin.
Renata Fuchs: “Should a Woman Write Books; or Should She Refrain from Writing?”: The Immediate Reception of Rahel Levin Varnhagen
Deborah Hertz: Henriette Herz as Jew, Henriette Herz as German: Identity, Conversion, Friendship
May Mergenthaler: Light Black, White Light: Sun Figures in Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and Dorothea Veit’s Florentin
