Luise Hensel

A hand-drawn portrait of Luise Hensel.

Luise Hensel (30 March 1798 – 18 December 1876) was a German teacher and religious poet, who influenced the romantic style of her friend and fellow poet, Clemens Brentano.

Life

Luise Hensel was the sister of Wilhelm Hensel and the sister-in-law of his wife and composer Fanny. She was born on March 30, 1798. Her father, Johann, was a Lutheran minister at Linum, a small town in the Margravate of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia. After the death of her father, in 1809, Luise's mother with her son and three daughters returned to her hometown, Berlin. Luise attended the high school (Realschule), now the Elisabethschule, where she showed extraordinary talent.

Around 1816, she met the poet Clemens Brentano, who called her "the angel in the wilderness". Hensel influenced the romantic style of Brentano quite significantly; Brentano wrote the following to his brother in 1817: "These songs (referring to twenty songs sent to him by Hensel) at first broke my heart, causing me to burst into tears, their truth and simplicity striking me as the holiest that man could produce." Like Brentano, the composer Ludwig Berger held an unrequited love for Hensel.

Another author, Wilhelm Müller, was also unlucky in love with Hensel. The story of this unfulfilled love is recorded in two works composed by Franz Schubert, the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (English: The pretty mill-girl) and Winterreise (English: Winter Journey). The love of another man, casual friend Ludwig von Gerlach, who would later become a teacher of Otto von Bismarck, led to Hensel enjoying a high place within the Centre Party, a powerful political party in Germany at the time. This conflicted with her religious feelings, and on 8 December 1818, in the Hedwigskirche, Berlin she joined the Catholic Church.

These circumstances weighed heavily on Hensel, and in 1819, she left Berlin. She entered into the service of Princess Mimi Salm-Reifferscheidt-Krautheim, traveling first to Münster, and eventually to Düsseldorf. In Münster, under the influence of religious teacher Bernhard Overberg, her convictions deepened. Later, on March 6, 1820, she took a vow of virginity.

For a number of years, she was companion to the Princess Salm of Munster. In 1821, she took a job as a teacher for the widow of the poet Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg in the town of Sondermühlen, where she stayed until 1823. While there she came to the end of her religious development, and decided to take her foster son and move. They moved to the small Westphalian town of Wiedenbrück, where she enrolled him in the local boys' school. They lived a quiet life in the town until the year 1827.

She began teaching at Saint Leonard's Academy in Aachen, where she taught for six years, teaching, among others, the eventual founder of the "Sisters of the Poor Children of Jesus," Clara Fey. In 1826, Pauline Mallinckrodt, foundress of the Sisters of Christian Charity, became one of Luise's students. In 1833 Luise returned to Berlin to care for her aged mother.

Her religious convictions were once again tested by love, this time in the form of a marriage proposal from a doctor, Clemens August Alertz, who would later become the personal physician to Pope Pius IX. She continued to teach, and writing religious poems, moving several times. She spent her last years in Paderborn with her former pupil Pauline Mallinckrodt, at the convent of the Sisters of Christian Charity, where she died on December 18, 1876, at the age of 78.

Works

Her "Gedichte" (English: Poems), which include some work by her sister, Wilhelmine, were published in 1858, and show a wistful piety on the part of Hensel, a prime example of German religious poetry. Two more books, compilations of her songs and poems, were published: "Lieder" (English: Songs) in 1869, and her last work, "Briefe der Dichterin Luise H." (English: Letters of the poet Luise H.), posthumously in 1878. Catherine Winkworth translated Immer muss ich wieder lesem as Ever Would I fain be Reading. One of her most well-known poems, "Müde bin ich" (English: I am tired), appears below in its original German, and an English translation. A looser English translation of this by Frances Ridley Havergal is entitled Now the Light Has Gone Away.

Müde bin ich

Original German

Müde bin ich

Müde bin ich, geh' zur Ruh',

Schließe beide Äuglein zu;

Vater, laß die Augen dein

Über meinem Bette sein!

Hab' ich Unrecht heut' gethan,

Sieh' es, lieber Gott, nicht an!

Deine Gnad' und Jesu Blut

Machen allen Schaden gut.

Alle, die mir sind verwandt,

Gott, laß ruh'n in deiner Hand!

Alle Menschen, groß und klein,

Sollen dir befohlen sein.

Kranken Herzen sende Ruh',

Nasse Augen schließe zu;

Laß den Mond am Himmel steh'n

Und die stille Welt beseh'n!

English Translation

I am tired

I am tired, go to bed,

Close both little eyes;

Father, let your eyes

Be over my bed!

If I have done wrong today,

Don't look at it, beloved God!

Your mercy and Jesus’ blood

Turn all damage into good.

All those who are close to me,

God, let them rest in your hand!

Let all people, small and large,

Be under your protection.

Send rest to sick hearts,

Let teary eyes be closed;

Let the moon stand in the sky

And look upon the quiet world!

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Luise Hensel — Poetess and convert; born at Linum, 30 March, 1798; died. at Paderborn, 18 December, 1876. Her father was Johann Hensel, Lutheran parson at Linum in the Mark of Brandenburg. After the father's death in 1809, the mother with her son and three daughters returned to her birthplace, Berlin, where the family dwelt, at first in somewhat needy circumstances. Luise attended the high school (Realschule), now the Elisabethschule, showing extraordinary talent. In consequence of the religious teaching there, she conceived doubts as to the truth of the Lutheran creed. When she was about to be confirmed (on 31 March, 1813), she made the following compact with God: "that by this act I only embrace Christianity in general and renew the covenant of my baptism, but that I in no way agree to bind myself to any creed concerning which I am not convinced as to whether or not it is the Church established by Christ". The political events in 1813 inspired several fervid patriotic poems. Three years later she for the first time made the acquaintance of a Catholic, Klemens Brentano. It was the poet himself who during the "Storm and Stress" period was the first to profit by this intercourse; he became once more a devout Catholic and accordingly he justly called his friend "the angel in the wilderness". Luise's gradual approach to the Catholic Church ended in her conversion, which came about, without creating the slightest sensation, on 8 December, 1818, in the Hedwigskirche, Berlin. Her subsequent career was like a perpetual journey. She left Berlin and became companion to the Princess Salm in Münster and Düsseldorf. Then (in 1820) she undertook the education of the three youngest daughters of Count von Stolberg, holding the same relation to her nephew in Wiedenbrück (Westphalia) in 1823; then, after a short sojourn in Coblenz and on the Marienberg near Boppard, she took the position of head teacher of the St. Leonard's Academy for girls at Aachen, which she held for six years. She was obliged to give up this abundantly blest activity owing to ill health and returned to her brother's pleasant home in Berlin, where she nursed her aging mother until the death of the latter in 1835. Then began another period of wandering activity in educational fields: in the seminary at Neuburg (1840-41), in Cologne (1841-50), then again in Wiedenbrück. Finally she settled in the convent of the Society of the Daughters of Christian Love at Paderborn, where the foundress, Pauline von Malinckrodt, a former pupil of hers, had set aside a home for her. There she passed the twilight of her pious life in peaceful retirement, without becoming a member of the order.

Her poetic works consist of more or less religious verses composed for special occasions. They were published in various places. Unfortunately her modesty would not admit of a complete edition of her writings. The most just and impartial judgment on her muse has been passed by R. M. Meyer in his "Deutsche Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts" (1906, p. 79). "In her pious humility she compares herself in one place to an ugly little vase in which beautiful flowers have been put: God's special grace; it was preeminently by His grace that every prayer became a poem to her, and each poem a prayer. The result was a rich bouquet of pious songs, the impressive simplicity of which reminds one of the old songs of the Church. She wrote with little care, scribbling her verses on scraps of paper. But thousands and tens of thousands found edification in those simple prayers, a tribute denied to the admirable, spiritual poems of her friend Klemens." The most important edition of her poems is that by C. Schlüter (Paderborn, 1869), several times reprinted.

ROSENTHAL in Konvertitenbilder; REINKENS (Old Catholic Bishop), Luise Hensel und ihre Lieder (Bonn, 1877), partisan in tone, as is also IDEM, in Allgem. deutsche Biog.; BARTSCHER, Der innere Lebensgang der Dichterin Luise Hensel nach den Aufzeichnungen in ihren Tagebüchern (Paderborn, 1882); KEITER, Zeitgenössische Kath. Dichter Deutschlands (Paderborn, 1884); BINDER, Ein Lebensbild nach gedructken und ungedruckten Quellen (Freiburg im Br., 1885); DIEL, Clemens Brentano (Freiburg im Br., 1878), especially Vol. II.

External links

• Online-Biography of Luise Hensel
• Works by Luise Hensel at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)