ABSTRACT

“JUST FOR ME”: BOURGEOIS VALUES AND ROMANTIC COURTSHIP IN THE 1855 TRAVEL DIARY OF MARIE VON BONIN

by Margaret Estelle Breidenbaugh

This thesis considers the origins of the embourgeoisement of the mid-nineteenth-century German aristocracy through the lens of the summer 1855 travel diary of twenty-year-old Landedelfräulein (country noble maiden) Marie von Bonin, the oldest daughter of Maria Keller and landowner and politician Gustav von Bonin. Scholars of German history have often contended that the influence of middle-class values on German nobles originated with print culture and socio-political movements. While this thesis neither contradicts, nor focuses on these claims, it examines the ways that the lived experiences of everyday people also gave birth to middle-class values. Focusing on the themes of Heimat (home), travel and education, and romantic courtship, this thesis concludes that Marie’s bourgeois views were not revolutionary; rather, they exemplified the influence of middle-class values on the mid-nineteenth century German aristocracy.

“JUST FOR ME”: BOURGEOIS VALUES AND ROMANTIC COURTSHIP IN THE 1855 TRAVEL DIARY OF MARIE VON BONIN

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of History

by

Margaret E. Breidenbaugh

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2018

Advisor: Erik Jensen

Reader: Steven Conn

Reader: Nicole Thesz

© Margaret Estelle Breidenbaugh 2018

“JUST FOR ME”: BOURGEOIS VALUES AND ROMANTIC COURTSHIP IN THE 1855 TRAVEL DIARY OF MARIE VON BONIN

by

Margaret E. Breidenbaugh

has been approved for publication by

The College of Arts and Science

and

The Department of History

______Advisor: Erik Jensen

______Reader: Steven Conn

______Reader: Nicole Thesz

Table of Contents

List of Figures iv

Dedication v

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Marie in Place: The Landedelfräulein on Heimat, Heimweh, and the Spa Town 16

Chapter 2 Marie in Motion: Thrills, Contentment, Subversion, and the Bildungsreise 30

Chapter 3 Marie in Love: Female Agency in Romantic Courtship 48

Epilogue 69

Bibliography 73

Appendix 1––A Note on Translation 80

Appendix 2––Glossary 81

Appendix 3––Bonin Ahnentafeln 82

iii List of Figures Fig. 1. Max von Kracht (attributed), inscribed leaf, July 9, 1855 64

iv Dedication In memory of Stanley Planton (1947-2017)

v Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Miami University Department of History for supporting this project. I am especially grateful to Wietse de Boer (Department Chair) and Daniel Prior (Director of Graduate Studies) for their guidance. I am also indebted to Amanda McVety for her candid critiques of early chapter drafts. Thank you to Steven Conn (History) and Nicole Thesz (Department of German, Russian, Asian, and Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures) for serving as additional readers. The biggest thank you of all goes to my academic adviser Erik Jensen, a mentor who believed in the unique character of my project from our first meeting in the spring of 2015.

I would also like to thank public history faculty, Helen Sheumaker and Nishani Frazier, who showed me that it is possible to write meaningfully about interesting people without sacrificing argument. Thank you to Jacky Johnson, Bill Modrow, Justin Bridges, and Elizabeth Maurer, of Walter Havighurst Special Collections and Archives, who gave me many opportunities to grow as an archivist and challenged my thinking about research and writing. Thank you to Lisa Munro, my online #ShutUpAndWrite mentor. I could not have written this thesis without the guidance and support of the Howe Writing Center’s manager, Kate Francis.

Thank you to the many researchers, archivists, and curators I met in Germany during J-Term 2017. Everyone was eager to help me. I am especially indebted to Gudrun Schäfer (Village Councilwoman, Brettin), Antonia Beran (Director, Kreismuseum Jerichower Land-Genthin), Ulrich and Susanne Freund (descendants of Marie von Bonin’s brother, Giesbert), the staff at the Grüner Baum Hotel and Restaurant in Brettin, and my Airbnb hosts in Switzerland, Mallorca, and Germany.

I cannot find adequate words to express my thanks to Erin, Hannah, and Heather, my fellow 2018 graduates. Thank you for being incredible colleagues, scholars, critics, and friends. To the class of 2017: thank you for welcoming me in 2015 as an honorary part of your cohort. Special thanks to Zach Golder for speaking German with me. Thank you to my officemates, Leigh Winstead (‘17), Hannah Blubaugh (‘18), and Austin Hall (‘19), for academic and emotional support.

To the family of Stan Planton––Margie, David (Lori), and Ben (Isabel): I want you to know that Stan believed in an earlier version of this project, a historical fiction novel. His passionate dedication to reading and critiquing my manuscript, and his expert research suggestions, inspired me to give the project new life as a thesis.

To Janis Tremain and Kenneth Breidenbaugh: Mom and Dad, thank you for raising me in an environment filled with research and writing. Between genealogy and “cemeterying” with Mom and watching Dad work on his MFA and PhD in the history of art, I basically couldn’t not follow this path (double negative, I know). To Nate and Heather, the best and most supportive siblings I could ever hope for (dangling participle). To my spouse, Ryan Bland, for putting up with long days, nights, and weekends and barely seeing each other (no Oxford comma), cooking basically all meals, doing the dishes and laundry, and being proud of me anyway. I don’t think I will ever be able to make it up to you.

vi Introduction

On December 20, 1858, late in the afternoon, Garrison Chaplain Krauss, a representative of the German evangelical church in the Prussian capital, visited Gustav von Bonin’s apartment on Friedrichsstraße in Berlin. The chaplain was there to perform the baptism of Gustav’s infant granddaughter, Maria Johanna Frieda Auguste von Kracht. The child’s given names derived from three living women and one recently deceased, her mother Marie. More than a dozen close family members were gathered to witness the venerable ceremony. The names of these Taufzeugen (sponsors) were recorded in a register book. The first name to appear in this book belonged to Johanne Kohlbach, the infant’s great-grandmother. Next were the infant’s grandfather Gustav and grandfather Kracht, a lieutenant. Also in attendance were two of Gustav’s brothers, his maiden sister Auguste, and his daughter Frieda. The second half of the sponsor list included the infant’s great-uncle Keller, cousin Johanne Pieschel, great-aunt Schulze, uncle and great-aunt Kracht, a Mrs. von Werthern and last, another lieutenant––how could it be anyone but the infant’s father, Max von Kracht? ––whose given name and surname fell victim to an ink smudge.1 Two aspects of the infant von Kracht’s baptismal record strike me as significant. First, the order in which the Taufzeugen appear suggests a hierarchy of relatives important to the Bonin–Kracht noble family alliance. Johanne Kohlbach and Gustav von Bonin’s respective first and second positions on this sponsor list demonstrate that they played key roles in the infant’s life, a reflection, I would argue, of their devotion to the late Marie. Second, while in most cases no more than three sponsors attended nineteenth-century German evangelical baptismal ceremonies, fourteen people watched as the infant von Kracht received God’s blessing from the chaplain. The high number of sponsors demonstrates that these aristocratic families could afford and were willing to pay additional fees to have the church accept more than the maximum number of sponsors.2 It also suggests that there was something unusual about this baptism.

1 “Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558-1898,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ ark:/61903/1:1:NP89-2YM : November 28, 2014), Maria Johanna Frieda Auguste Von Kracht, December 20, 1858; citing ; FHL microfilm 477,850. 2 Families had to pay the church 6 Groschen per sponsor in excess of three. Handbuch über die Religions- Kirchen-, geistlichen und Unterrichts-Angelegenheiten im Königreiche Preußen, 687, https://books.google.com/books?id=DWtDAAAAcAAJ. A later publication also specified the maximum of three sponsors. Das Sakrament der Taufe, 261, https://books.google.com/books?id=oVUPAAAAQAAJ.

1 The obvious anomaly was the absence of the child’s mother, Marie. Although death in childbed was not uncommon in mid-nineteenth-century Germany, the loss of a twenty-three- year-old daughter, sister, wife, and mother would devastate any family. Still, despite Marie’s early death, nothing about her life was atypical. The present thesis asserts that she was in fact quite the opposite––an everyday German woman. What is unusual about Marie is that she left behind a 144-page diary chronicling her travel experiences from late May to mid-August 1855. On the morning of May 30 of that year, Marie and members of her immediate and extended family climbed aboard a wagon in Brettin, their home village fifty miles west of Berlin, riding to the train station in nearby Genthin. Next, they traveled nearly five hundred miles southwest––a thirteen-hour journey by train––stopping in Paris for nine days to enjoy the recently-opened Exposition Universelle des produits de l’Agriculture, de l’Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris (Paris Universal Exposition of Agricultural Products, Industry and Fine Arts), an exciting spectacle by Marie’s accounting. But the larger purpose of the family’s summer travels was recuperation; after a five-day visit with various aunts, uncles, and cousins in the region of Hamm sixty miles northeast of Cologne, Marie and her family spent a month each in the spa towns of Bad Ems (near Coblenz) and Bad Soden (near Frankfort). On August 14, seventy-six days after leaving Brettin, Marie returned home. For the present-day reader, what does Marie’s diary reveal about her life, her family, and the German noble class? This thesis considers the origins of the embourgeoisement of the mid- nineteenth-century German aristocracy through the lens of the summer 1855 travel diary of twenty-year-old Landedelfräulein (country noble maiden) Marie von Bonin, the oldest daughter of Maria Keller and landowner and politician Gustav von Bonin. Scholars of German history have often contended that the influence of middle-class values on German nobles originated with print culture and socio-political movements. While this thesis neither contradicts, nor focuses on these claims, it examines the ways that the lived experiences of everyday people also gave birth to middle-class values. Focusing on the themes of Heimat (home), travel and education, and romantic courtship, this thesis concludes that Marie’s bourgeois views were not revolutionary; rather, they exemplified the influence of middle-class values on the mid-nineteenth century German aristocracy. Chapter One argues that despite recent scholars’ views that Heimat existed in many guises, for Marie there was only one true Heimat, her home village of Brettin. Chapter Two, which focuses on nineteenth-century German women’s experiences of travel and

2 education, argues that scholars’ division of these women on the move into the categories of traveler, tourist, and journeyer discounts the nuanced experience of individual women’s mobility. It also considers the ways Marie used public travel spaces as de facto classrooms. Chapter Three, which details the story of Marie and Max’s courtship, contends that the love marriage movement did not simply originate with published works of prominent feminist writers, and socio-political movements, as scholars claimed; it was also the experiences of everyday Germans who, working together with allies in their family and social circles, convinced Prussian fathers, and the Prussian state, that people should be free to marry the person of their choosing. Marie’s perceptions of Heimat, travel and education, and romantic courtship were not revolutionary, and yet her understanding of them over time illustrates that everyday nineteenth-century Germans were the very people who advanced the causes of women’s education and marriage for love. And, I conclude, they did so in the name of Heimat; for all of Marie’s adventures abroad, the lessons of which she carried with her, it seems to me that marriage to Max in Brettin, her Heimat, brought Marie’s brief life the greatest joy.

Origins of the Marie von Bonin Project Before I knew about the December 1858 baptism, the noble Bonin family, or Marie’s diary, I was a genealogist in search of my own family’s history. The Breitenbachs (and generations later, Breidenbaughs) were one of many German families who arrived in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century; I had the church parish records to prove such was the case. But no one in the family had been able to determine from where exactly we originated. I knew that if I wanted to locate our Heimat, I would need to learn German. First, I taught myself to read nineteenth-century Gothic handwriting and typesetting, attending lectures and working through Brigham Young University’s online German script tutorial (an invaluable free resource).3 I eventually located the Breitenbach Heimaten––the twin villages of Lützelhausen and Großenhausen in Hessen––and an archivist there sent me scans of original documents. I had found my ancestral home. In the process, I also discovered that deciphering German documents is genuinely enjoyable. Vital records were a practical starting point, but I wanted to read something that told a

3 “German Script Tutorial - Introduction,” Brigham Young University, accessed June 29, 2018, https://script.byu.edu/Pages/German/en/intro.aspx.

3 story. Late December 2013, I was perusing eBay when a small diary caught my eye. The seller, “Koclint,” could not read German and therefore his auction listing provided little information, but a handful of pictures of select pages gave me enough to start a rough translation. The year was 1855; an anonymous traveler (Marie’s name appeared nowhere on these pages) was on their way from Genthin to Paris and did not want to part ways with someone named Ida. Intrigued, I had to know how the story ended. I placed a bid and waited. Glued to my computer, I watched with glee as the countdown ticked down to zero and I realized that no one had outbid me. The excitement of the diary arriving in the mail over, now the real work began. The process of unearthing Marie’s identity was one of misreadings and roadblocks. I had no real plan because I had no formal history background, but my learn-by-doing methodology eventually yielded significant results. Once I realized that a single reference to a Marie was not the Holy Virgin Mary (surrounding text, religious in nature, threw me off track) but the author signing their work, I believed for the first time that I could find her and tell her story. Searching Google Books for “Marie” plus “Brettin” (mentioned in the final entry) plus “Kracht” (the name of a mysterious man spotted on a train on the penultimate page of the diary) led me to a genealogical text titled Geschichte des hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin bis zum Jahre 1863 (History of the Lower Pomeranian Family von Bonin to the Year 1863): “Maria Johanna Elisabeth was born the 16th of December 1834 and started out life in her parents’ house, later educated at a Pension in Altenburg,” began a brief passage in a longer entry for a Gustav von Bonin: “[T]he 1st of October 1856 she married a Lieutenant in the 8th Infantry-Regiment (later promoted to the 2nd Garde-Regiment), Max von Kracht (b. 1833), but died the 13th of November 1858, eleven days after her first child labor, of a stroke.”4 There she was, Maria, the oldest daughter of a highly-decorated military and political figure. She married the mysterious man from the train, but her story did not have a happy ending. Marie’s was not a separate entry in this book, but a tiny portion of her father’s lengthy biography. By the time of publication of the 1906 edition of Justus Perthes’ Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Adeligen Häuser (Gotha Genealogical Pocket Book of Noble

4 Udo von Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin bis zum Jahre 1863 (Berlin: R. v. Decker, 1864), 219, https://books.google.com/books?id=qClVNNU0llIC.

4 Houses), another genealogical text, Marie’s name had disappeared from Gustav’s family tree altogether.5 Whatever became of her legacy, surely in life she mattered to someone. This thesis is an attempt to make sense of the life of Marie von Bonin, a Landedelfräulein who reached maturity at a time when the German noble class was obsessed with bourgeois values. The mid-nineteenth century saw a proliferation of European women claiming public spaces as travelers, students and educators, writers, and more, and many of these women identified as feminists. Marie certainly embodied qualities of the traveler, educator, and writer, but as someone who passionately loved home (i.e., the domestic sphere) and rarely wrote about women’s experiences, she came across as anything but a textbook feminist. Marie defied simplistic categorization. Although recent scholarship characterized nineteenth-century German noblewomen as isolated, rigid, ahistorical, even passive figures, Marie lived multiple, congruent, fluid identities, and her travel diary evidences change over time and of her own making. Marie’s travels were both an opportunity for self-education and participation in a clandestine courtship. Her own decisions, and not just those of her father as recent scholarship would suggest was the case for unmarried noble maidens, punctuated her brief life. It was during the period of embourgeoisement of European aristocracy that Marie, caught between upper-class marital expectations and middle-class women’s advocacy for freedoms within the domestic sphere, defied the wishes of her father by courting with and then marrying Max von Kracht. Marie’s was a life of her own choosing.

Separate Spheres While honeymooning with her husband Philip in the Vatican City in 1841, Marie Nathusius, a devout Christian missionary and prolific travel writer, found herself alone a good deal of the time. When Philip was not reading aloud to her from the Bible, he was out with companions, sometimes gone for hours: “Ph. [Philip] went to look for W. and stayed out so long, it grew dark, I grew anxious.” When he returned, their moods could not agree; they spent an awkward evening at the theater.6 Marie remarked that, despite Philip’s best efforts, she could not

5 Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Adeligen Häuser (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1909), 112. Perthes mentioned Gisbert (Giesbert), Gustav Bogislav (Gustav), and Anna Friederike Wilhelmine (Anna) but did not include Marie, Frieda, or Olga. See also Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Adeligen Häuser (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1906), 421. Marie appears in the record of Maximilian Karl Heinrich von Kracht, as does a daughter (November 4, 1858–September 21, 1859, no name given). 6 Marie Nathusius, Tagebuch einer Reise nach der Provence, Italien und der Schweiz: aus dem Nachlasse (Halle: Fricke, 1860), 163.

5 go where she pleased: “P. rang to ask whether we could enter the garden; overhead, men in black robes looked out of the window and said, ladies may not enter.”7 Marie wrote nothing more on the incident and did not seem to lament her restricted position. At the same time, her diary was published posthumously. (I wonder what, if anything, her family chose to redact.) According to this hardly anomalous example, early to mid-nineteenth-century German women were portrayed as lacking the autonomy to determine where they could go, or what they could say and to whom. Such restrictions of movement between public and private spaces––the so-called “separate spheres” ––were, so it would seem, just the way of the world. Mid-nineteenth century German publications reveal rather unflattering characterizations of women. J. Meyer’s 1848 encyclopedia included an article on the “disposition of the sexes,” which claimed that “[t]he male is in preference individual, the female, universal.” Male individuality equaled “self-confidence, independence, power and energy, completeness, antagonism,” while female universality meant “dependence, uncertainty, sacrifice, sympathy.”8 For Meyer it was only natural that men belonged in the productive world and women the domestic one. According to Georg Gottfried Gervinus’ Einleitung in die Geschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century, 1853) these opposites were complements rather than a source of tension: “[T]he woman of today. . . is removed from the common bustle of life, because she is not concerned with a sense of status, does not suffer the degradation of lowly occupations.”9 Gervinus painted the world as hostile; women were better suited for the friendly atmosphere of home. He was not alone in his assessment of the woman’s natural place. Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl’s Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer deutschen Sozial-Politik (Natural History of the People on the Basis of a German Social Policy, 1854) claimed that “[t]he state [der Staat] is masculine gender, and the social groups. . . are generis neutrius: what about women? They should remain in the ‘family. . .’ which, after all, reflects its predominantly feminine character already in the gender of the

7 Nathusius, 99. 8 J. Meyer, Das grosse Conversations-Lexicon, Part 1, Vol. 12 (Hildburghausen, 1848), 742, quoted in Karin Hausen, “Family and Role-Division: The Polarisation of Sexual Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century – an Aspect of the Dissociation of Work and Family Life,” trans. Cathleen Catt, in Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee, eds., The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 54, footnote 7. 9 G. G. Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtkunst, 4th ed., Vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1853), 302, quoted in Hausen, 64. Hausen translated this passage.

6 noun.”10 These male-authored publications––an encyclopedia, a general history, and a social history––demonstrate the prevalence of the mid-nineteenth century notion that women were biologically inferior. Women should be glad, these authors claimed, to stay at home, the sphere in which they would surely feel most comfortable. What is missing in these texts is the fact that many women were busy producing their own knowledge. I will return to these problematic notions in my analysis of Marie’s travel writing.

Historiography Heimat, travel and education, and romantic courtship in nineteenth-century Germany are the subjects of differing quantities of literature. There is a wealth of scholarship on Heimat in German history. Authors of these works produced numerous theories and definitions of Heimat. They examined it as a physical and metaphorical place, readily accepting Heimat’s complexity. The literature of travel and education frequently intersected with that of gender history. Scholars defined German people’s travel identities (including gender) by the degree to which and the reasons Germans were mobile, with members of the aristocracy generally enjoying the most mobility. Scholarship on the history of German women’s education overlapped with that on German women’s travel, to the extent that travelers wrote about the educational facets of their own movements. Scholars examined women’s education from the perspectives of institutional history, the relative power of the so-called “separate spheres,” and the influence of girls’ literature. The history of nineteenth-century German courtship hid in plain sight in select literature of nineteenth-century German nobility, notably in the context of women negotiating their roles in public and private spaces. Unlike marriage, courtship did not begin at end at easily definable moments in time; rather, it was a ritual process intended to result in marriage. Definitions of when and where courtship began and ended are therefore retrojections. This historiography begins with two scholars whose work influenced my conclusions about romantic courtship, as well as Heimat, travel, and education. Next I explore additional scholars of the latter three subject areas. The dearth of literature on nineteenth-century German courtship presents an opportunity for scholars to develop a new body of literature.

10 Patricia Herminghouse, “The Ladies’ Auxiliary of German Literature: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Quest for a National Literary History,” Gender and Germanness: Cultural Productions of Nation, ed. Herminghouse and Magda Mueller (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1997), 148, footnote 13.

7 “‘Woman’s destiny is to be a wife, housekeeper and mother,’” or so asserted eighteenth- century educational tracts German historian Karin Hausen cited in her watershed essay, “Die Polarisierung der ‘Geschlechtscharaktere:’ Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und Familienleben” (“Family Role and Division: The Polarisation of Sexual Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century,” 1976).11 Hausen––whose research touched on women’s experiences of Heimat, travel (mobility), education, and marriage––sought to identify changes to the qualitative meaning of Geschlechtscharaktere (sexual stereotypes) over time, and questioned to what degree these stereotypes stemmed from reality. She lamented that the social structures of public and private life robbed women of agency. Hausen’s primary sources included published definitions of man, woman, marriage, and family from the early seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. These definitions claimed a biological basis for the division of the sexes and even suggested a degree of predestination. While earlier sources differentiated men and women by social sphere, by the end of the eighteenth century, virtues defined sex differentiation; men were “worthy,” while women were modest, resigned, and tactful.12 While the quality of difference shifted over time, Hausen’s evidence demonstrates that the existence of difference continued to privilege the male sex.13 Christa Diemel’s Adelige Frauen im bürgerlichen Jahrhundert: Hofdamen, Stiftsdamen, Salondamen, 1800-1870 (Noblewomen in the Bourgeois Century: Courtly Ladies, Canonesses, and Salonnières, 1800-1870, 1998) also intersects with the subjects of Heimat, travel and education, and romantic courtship. Although Diemel’s analysis did not engage explicitly with Heimat, it is implicit in the sense that family dynamics and the social rules of public and private spaces reflected German attitudes about home. These attitudes changed over time; with modernization came more liberal definitions of what it meant to be a domestic noblewoman.14 For Diemel, the responsibility for children’s education also changed over time; between the late eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries, it morphed from one of domestic nannies, governesses, and private tutors to one of formal, brick-and-mortar schools.15 The fact that women could teach

11 Hausen, “Family and Role-Division,” 60. 12 Hausen, 51-52, 55-57. 13 J. Meyer, Das grosse Conversations-Lexicon, Part 1, Vol. 12 (Hildburghausen, 1848), 742, quoted in Hausen, 54. 14 While Diemel did not discuss Heimat literature, that mid-nineteenth-century popular print culture lionized Heimat as a rural space seemed at odds with modernization. 15 Christa Diemel, Adelige Frauen im bürgerlichen Jahrhundert: Hofdamen, Stiftsdamen, Salondamen, 1800-1870 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1998), 18-26, 56-66.

8 in girls’ schools positively impacted their mobility in those cases, yet women still had few prospects beyond courtship, marriage, and the bearing of children. One happy side effect of the embourgeoisement of aristocratic values was the popularity of romantic courtship. For Diemel, the so-called Frauenideale (ideals of womanhood), which included the Landedelfrau (country noblewoman) and the höfische Dame (courtly lady), shaped these aspects and more of everyday aristocratic German women’s lives. The Landedelfrau modeled moral values for her children, and though she managed finances on her husband’s estate, she also deferred to his authority. The höfische Dame, by contrast, embodied worldly mental and aesthetic qualities such as etiquette and strong conversational ability in French which, by ironic contrast, her limited education reinforced.16

Heimat Mack Walker’s German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648- 1871 (1971), a seminal work about Heimat, argued that “the home town ought to be understood as it lived, in its own terms;” the history of German home towns was ultimately one of individuality..17 Walker cautioned the reader that a risk of writing the histories of many small places was the temptation to generalize communities rather than celebrate their anomalies. Walker defined three separate “political environments” active in Germany from its early modern history to unification in 1871: rural nobles and peasants, so-called “movers and doers,” and “hometownsmen.”18 He argued that stability or mobility defined each environment in part. Rural nobles and peasants, and movers and doers, enjoyed the most mobility. The former pairing shared the countryside, with nobles functioning as the ruling minority. Movers and doers originated from cities and moved to other large, urban areas. Hometownsmen, by contrast, tended to be born and die in one place. Mobility was not possible for them because fellow hometownsmen saw ambition outside the community as a negative trait, and full community

16 Diemel, 15-16. 17 Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate, 1648-1871 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1971), 4. 18 For discussions of urban Heimat (albeit in post-war and post-modern contexts), see Gregory F. Schroeder, “Ties of Urban Heimat: West German Cities and Their Wartime Evacuees in the 1950s,” German Studies Review 27, no 2. (May 2004), 307-24, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1433084. See also “Urban Heimat: City-Spaces – History – Post/Modernity,” in Heimat: At the Intersection of Memory and Space, ed. Friederike Eigler and Jens Kugele (Walter de Gruyter: Berlin, 2012).

9 membership tended not to be transferable. Social tenets differed by town, so hometownsmen who developed poor reputations could not easily move elsewhere.19 Celia Applegate’s A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (1990) argued that historical change of the Heimat concept followed shifting hierarchies of belonging and identity from hometown to territory to nation and then back to hometown, as individuals’ spheres of reference enlarged in the face of modernization and then collapsed in again with the rise of Heimatvereine (local heritage societies). To contextualize these hierarchies, Applegate began with a concise history of the word Heimat, a concept dependent on socio-cultural factors. Heimat was “the place to which one finally returned: the homeland,” the inverse of city life. In the 1850s, local identity experienced a resurgence in popularity; devotion to one’s Heimat did not necessarily mean devotion to Prussian culture or, later, the culture of the German Empire writ large.20 Alon Confino’s The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918 (1997) argued that national identity had its origins in collective memory.21 Nationhood was the result “of collective negotiation and exchange” among a given nation’s divergent memories.22 He argued that the tensions among these constructs gave rise to both national and “local-national” memory and, asking how the nation survived these tensions, posited that one method was the projection of memory onto shared symbols, for example, Heimat iconography appearing on postcards and other ephemera. The uniform appearance of this iconography helped provincial people conceptualize the otherwise impersonal nation.23 Confino saw nationhood in terms of fluid dichotomies, both an “attachment to a [single] defined territory” and a universal trend toward national identity; it was both a longing for and a rejection of the past, in the pursuit of an idealized version of it.24 Peter Blickle’s Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (2002) put forth the first comprehensive theory of Heimat. Blickle argued that literary, feminist, and philosophical approaches to modernity, identity, femininity, landscapes, and childhood

19 Walker, “Walls, Webs, and Citizens,” in German Home Towns, 108-42. 20 Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley: University of California, 1990), 4-9, 13, 31. Direct quotation on page 9. 21 Sedan Day––a now-defunct national holiday celebrating Prussia’s victory over Napoleon III in 1870. 22 Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Wuerttemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871- 1918 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 7. 23 Confino, xii, 7-11. Direct quotation on page 7. 24 Confino, 3.

10 innocence could reveal new conclusions not possible when examining individual facets of Heimat history. He posited that Heimat was not an either/or, but a mixture of emotional- intellectual (identity) and physical (geographic) experience. For Blickle, gender impacted experience of Heimat. Although the sexes were compelled to cooperate based on traditionally defined gender roles, men made up the rules that dictated women’s provincial lives. Given the feminine associations with physical space and landscape, Heimat at once evoked qualities of the natural world associated with women in contemporary literature and deprived women of mobility.25

Travel “Travel, like culture, offers an imaginative freedom not as a rule available in modern [nineteenth-century] social life,” observed James Buzard in his book, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918 (1993).26 For Buzard, travelers saw their identity as a way of distinguishing themselves from the tourist. Often this distinction was gendered: men were “authentic” travelers while women were “mere” tourists who needed to be “taught” how to travel. In Buzard’s view, nineteenth-century European society viewed the male traveler as more capable of understanding the relationship among traveler, destination, and process of getting there. Nevertheless, women “infiltrated” the public sphere of travel.27 Beth Muellner’s essay, “Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers on the Railroad” (2012), challenged Buzard’s argument that nineteenth-century German society believed men traveled for knowledge and contemplation while women traveled for leisure and socialization.28 Muellner argued that German women travel writers felt pressured to perform socially acceptable behaviors, such as idle conversation among their peers. They combined diversion with conversation and reverie with work, the latter being observation of and writing about the

25 Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), ix-xi, 4-17. Direct quotation on page 9. For discussion of gender roles and Heimat, see Blickle, 62, 83. 26 James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 81. 27 Buzard, 139-48. 28 Buzard, 153, in Beth Muellner, “Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers on the Railroad,” in Trains, Literature, and Culture: Reading/Writing the Rails, ed. Steven D. Spalding and Benjamin Fraser (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 31.

11 experiences of women.29 Their writing was modest so as not to arouse suspicion about any behaviors or thoughts that would contradict such modesty. Muellner contended that women writers’ intended meanings perhaps have more to tell us about women’s lived experiences than any assumed empirical truth. Emma Robinson-Tomsett, author of Women, Travel and Identity: Journeys by Rail and Sea, 1870-1940 (2013), argued that women travelers were not passengers––passive figures who played no role in determining their times of departure, destinations, or modes of travel––but “journeyers” who actively constructed their own itineraries.30 The active part of traveling was 31 central to these women’s sense of mobility. Women journeyers maintained their connections with home via “replication” of familiar social hierarchies in self-contained environments, maintaining fixed identities such as mother, wife, sister, or friend, while incorporating temporary ones such as diarist, “tourist-traveller,” and “modern woman.”32 Previous scholarship on women travelers focused on paid staff but ignored the paying customer, and privileged the experiences of prominent feminists while marginalizing everyday women who traveled as immigrants, teachers, missionaries, or for health or leisure.33 Robinson-Tomsett analyzed the first-hand accounts of nearly fifty women journeyers, underscoring the agency of these ordinary women who forged their own travel itineraries and identities and wrote about their experiences.

Education Citation of Reinhild von Capitaine’s Unser Liebes Stift: 267 Jahre Mädchenerziehung im Magdalenenstift in Altenburg/Thürigen (Our Beloved School: 267 Years of Girls’ Education at the Magdalenenstift in Altenburg/Thuringia, 2005) subverts the norm of historiographic standards in academic writing. Unser Liebes Stift is a work of Heimatforschung (research on local history), and Capitaine is not an academic. However, the written contributions of Heimatforscher (local historians) are critical to the German remembrance of local people, places, and events, including women’s experiences, especially considering frequent omission of the

29 Beth Muellner, 32. 30 Emma Robinson-Tomsett, Women, Travel and Identity: Journeys by Rail and Sea, 1870-1940 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), 7. 31 Robinson-Tomsett, 2. 32 Robinson-Tomsett, 14. 33 Robinson-Tomsett, 8.

12 latter from much of German historiography.34 Unser Liebes Stift did not have a traditional historical argument; Capitaine did not connect her narrative to any larger social or political history. Instead she recounted the experiences of individual female provosts and students, citing a multitude of unpublished letters and diaries.35 The essay collection Challenging Separate Spheres: Female Bildung in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Germany (2007), edited by Marjanne Goozé, considered tensions between the private selves and public, performative selves of bourgeois, upper-class, and working-class women. Common themes among essays in Challenging Separate Spheres included agency, identity, and––significant to the present analysis––self-education. For Goozé the separate spheres concept was problematic because it grouped all women into one category, ignoring class, race, and religion.36 Jennifer Drake Askey’s Good Girls, Good Germans: Girls’ Education and Emotional Nationalism in Wilhelminian Germany (2013) examined the impact of conservative Mädchenliteratur (literature for girls) on German girls. The female characters in Mädchenliteratur modeled behavior appropriate for girls, whose social standing existed below that of their fathers and future husbands. Askey noted that during the second half of nineteenth century, Germany witnessed rapid, parallel developments in public institutions for women’s education and the publication of Mädchenliteratur and education manuals. Girls’ school curricula and pedagogical texts both promoted what Askey called “emotional nationalism;” that is, they sought to indoctrinate in girls the belief that emotional and domestic roles in the family were their national duty. Earlier scholars largely ignored literature written for and about girls, which included publications that promoted awareness of art, literature, music, and German history. Askey was critical of scholarly analysis of the “separate spheres,” which she felt

34 For an example of scholarly citation of Capitaine’s work, see Rudolph von Thadden, Trieglaff: Balancing Church and Politics in a Pomeranian World, 1807-1948, trans. Stephen Barlau (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 98. Thadden’s history of Trieglaff, Pomerania (now Trzygłów, Poland) cited Capitaine’s discussion of the tenure of the Magdalenen-Stift’s female provost who presided over the school during the abolishment of feudalism. Thadden used Capitaine’s narrative to illustrate the point that lineage became increasingly less important in the negotiation of Pomeranians’ social standing and professional positions. (Hildegard von Thadden encountered when someone recommended her for the position of provost at the Magdalenen-Stift in 1908; she did not qualify because she could not prove she was of pure noble. Thadden did not make it clear whether he was descended from the provost.) 35 Reinhild von Capitaine, Unser Liebes Stift: 267 Jahre Mädchenerziehung im Magdalenenstift in Altenburg/Thüringen (Altenburg: S. Sell Heimat-Verlag, 2005). 36 Cathy Davidson and Jessamyn Hatcher’s “No More Separate Spheres!” (2002), in Challenging Separate Spheres: Female Bildung in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Germany, ed. Marjanne Goozé (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), 12.

13 discounted the responsibility women bore in public settings; women were representatives of their families’ social stations, religious values, and educational achievements. Askey argued that because education outside of the home was a public pursuit, women’s education was at odds with the stigma of women in the public sphere.37

Organization This thesis is divided into three chapters, each of which examines Marie von Bonin’s summer 1855 travels in different contexts. Chapter One, “Marie in Place: The Landedelfräulein on Heimat, Heimweh, and the Spa Town,” considers the relationship Marie had to her hometown, Brettin, in the contexts of identity, homesickness, and other rural places. Chapter Two, “Marie in Motion: Thrills, Contentment, Subversion, and the Bildungsreise,” sets Marie’s summer trip against the backdrops of nineteenth-century German women’s travel and educational experiences. Chapter Three, “Marie in Love: Female Agency in Romantic Courtship,” examines Marie and Max’s courtship in the contexts of Prussian marriage laws, letter-writing practices, and the peripheral roles family and friends played in courtship. Back matter includes a note on translation, transcription, and orthography; a glossary of frequently used German terms; and, because noble genealogy is a complicated affair, Ahnentafeln (family history charts) for two marriage alliances: Krippähn–Kohlbach (Marie’s mother’s lineage), von Plettenberg–von Bonin (her father’s lineage). These Ahnentafeln privilege maternal lines to foreground women’s roles in Marie’s family. Although Marie did not write as a feminist, the fact that she was a young woman navigating a world the laws of which men wrote and which they interpreted necessitates examination of gender for a fuller understanding of her lived experiences. What sort of writer was Marie? While there is little doubt that her travel account is true (countless hours gleaning published genealogies, travel guides, and other sources pertaining to Marie’s life reveal few exaggerations and no outright inaccuracies), Marie wrote in novelistic fashion. From the first page, she set up the tension that she did not wish to go to Paris. Throughout the diary, she referred to a man known only as “the most beloved” who, auxiliary evidence proves, was Max von Kracht, her secret lover.38 By the end of the trip, after much

37 Jennifer Drake Askey, Good Girls, Good Germans: Girls’ Education and Emotional Nationalism in Wilhelminian Germany (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2013), ix-x, 1-9. 38 Marie von Bonin, diary, July 10, 1855, private collection of the author. See also Bonin, July 15, 1855; August 12, 1855.

14 anxiety about missing Brettin, and some moments of conflict with her father and an uncle over Max’s intentions, Marie finally returned home, closing her narrative with an original poem (I examine the poem in Chapter One). Marie must have been an avid reader to understand how to craft so deliberate a story arc. What books inspired her style and subject matter? While she left no reading list behind, I am guessing that she read Mädchenliteratur, which promoted life choices appropriate for young German women: love of nation, marriage, and childbearing. These values mattered to Marie. She deeply loved her Heimat. Not long after her family’s summer 1855 travels, Marie married Max von Kracht, a spouse of her choosing. A year and a half into their marriage, a daughter, Maria Johanna Frieda Auguste von Kracht was born. The child, like her mother, did not live long. On September 21, 1859, without Marie there to comfort her, the child took her final breath.

15 Chapter One

Marie in Place: The Landedelfräulein on Heimat, Heimweh, and the Spa Town

Scant records of Brettin’s early history have survived. The Archbishops Peter I and Albrecht III of Magdeburg first mentioned “Brettyn” in a fourteenth-century feudal estate Lehnbuch (record book).1 A late eighteenth-century topographical survey remarked that the village boasted “a feudal estate and a windmill. . . and, including 7 residences and the estate, comprise[d] 32 fireplaces, for which there are 4 resident farmers, 3 sharecroppers and 8 cottagers.” Counting farmland, meadows, gardens, and woods, Brettin totaled 1,806 Morgen,2 of which 43.5% belonged to the estate.3 Around the turn of the nineteenth century, Swiss geologist and travel diarist Jean-André de Luc wrote of the village, “The hills here are not very high; but, on ascending them, I had a view of the whole of this vast space.”4 De Luc’s view included the late seventeenth-century manor, home to the von Werder family from the fifteenth century until their financial ruin in the 1830s. At a bank sale, Gustav von Bonin bought the manor in 1834, the year of his daughter Marie’s birth. Over time Gustav made modifications to the dwelling but left the many acres of meadows and gardens untouched. Today the house is gone. In 1945, Soviet troops forcibly removed Elsa von Bonin, Marie’s niece and inheritor of the estate, as part of the post-Second World War Bodenreform (agrarian reform) that mandated seizure of all East German land tracts larger than 100 hectares. In the 1960s the estate was demolished, after falling into disrepair.5 On a mid-August evening in 1855, two miles southwest of the family estate in Brettin, twenty-year-old Marie von Bonin disembarked a train at the station in the town of Genthin.

1 Gustav Hertel, ed., Die ältesten Lehnbücher der Magdeburgischen Erzbischöfe (Halle: Otto Hendel, 1883), 90, 201, 333, https://archive.org/details/dieltestenlehnb00gergoog. I do not provide analysis here because much of this volume is written in a mixture of German, Latin, and German words with Latin endings. I leave it to scholars of Latin to make what they will of relevant passages. 2 Herbert Arthur Klein, The Science of Measurement: A Historical Survey (New York: Dover Publications, 1988), 76. First published 1974 by Simon and Schuster (New York) as The World of Measurements: Masterpieces, Mysteries and Muddles of Metrology. Page references are to the 1988 edition. By today’s standards of measurement, the German Morgen ranged from 2500 to 3600 square meters depending on the region. 3 Johann Ludwig Heineccius, Ausführliche topographische Beschreibung des Herzogthums Magdeburg und der Grafschaft Mansfeld, Magdeburgischen Antheils (Berlin: Georg Jakob Decker, 1785), 258, https://books.google.com/books?id=s8tcAAAAcAAJ. 4 Jean André de Luc, Geological Travels in Some Parts of France, Switzerland, and Germany (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1813), 1:361. See especially §834. The translator of this volume from French into English is unknown. 5 Hans-Jürgen Wodtke, “Bodenreform im Landkreis Jerichow II,” MOZ.de, 27 September 2015, https://www.moz.de/landkreise/havelland/rathenow/rathenow-artikel/dg/0/1/1424779/. 100 hectares equal about 250 acres.

16 Marie’s father, paternal aunt, and siblings waited on the platform to greet Marie, her grandmother Johanne, and a woman named Minna. For Marie, this was a happy reunion: “I was glad to be home again now,” she recalled in her diary later that evening, “after I had dwelt for so long in strange places.” Marie and members of her immediate and extended family had spent two and a half months in Paris and various parts of the Prussian countryside, and now the trip had ended. At home in her own room, surrounded by flowers that her younger sister Frieda picked to celebrate her return, Marie felt relieved to see the familiar sights of “Brettin’s expanse,” her beloved Heimat.6 What images entered Marie’s mind, and found their way into her diary, as she returned to the family estate on that mid-August evening? Perhaps she thought of the people who evoked memories of home. Her paternal aunt Auguste––though not among those waiting at the station–– had stepped in to care for Marie and her siblings after the death of their mother, Maria Keller, in 1849. Their father Gustav’s maiden sister devoted her adult life to her numerous nieces and nephews; Auguste spent seven years raising the children of three of her brothers and became custodian of Gustav’s estate––and mother figure to his children––in 1850.7 Scholarship on Heimat has contended that it resonated in everything from people to rural places apart from home to the broad concept of anti-modernization. This chapter argues two main points. First, Marie’s understanding of Heimat was narrower. While other rural places echoed certain characteristics of Heimat, for Marie there was only one true Heimat, Brettin (and, by extension, the people in it). Second, as a product of her childhood home Marie saw herself as a Landedelfräulein. Her identity as a country noble maiden grew out of her physical location in provincial Prussia and the values associated with Heimat, which included respect for landholdings, tradition, and ancestry.8 Scholar of German nobility Christa Diemel wrote extensively about the so-called Landedelfrau who managed her husband’s estate and yet was subservient to him.9 While Diemel and Heimat scholars made important contributions to our understanding of home and women’s domestic and public roles in nineteenth-century Germany,

6 M. Bonin, diary, August 14, 1855. This direct quotation is found in the second line (“Kehr wieder nach Brettin zurück.”) of an original poem Marie penned in her diary. While a more literal translation would be “Return to Brettin,” in the context of a full English translation, the more poetic “Brettin’s expanse” allowed me to respect Marie’s original rhyme scheme and meter. 7 U. Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin, 183. 8 Christa Diemel, Adelige Frauen im bürgerlichen Jahrhundert, 18. Diemel argued that these were the values associated with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German noble family. 9 Diemel, 15-16.

17 in all cases these scholars overlooked the importance of Landedelfräulein to the story of Heimat. Perhaps the reason is that most references to this figure appear in works of popular fiction. No longer in school but not yet a wife and mother, the Landedelfräulein felt great societal pressure to fulfill her womanly duties: to marry, produce male heirs, and become a Landedelfrau. The Landedelfräulein, who typically made her introduction to courtly society between the ages of sixteen and eighteen and married between her twenty-third and twenty-sixth year, was a product of her childhood Heimat, and her life experiences such as education, travel, and courtship complicated her understanding of home.10 While worldly experiences such as travel, education, and courtship seemed to contradict the more conservative notion of Heimat, I argue that they in fact reinforced Marie’s love of home. These concepts exemplified the embourgeoisement of the nineteenth-century German aristocracy. To contextualize Marie’s perspective on home as expressed in her 1855 travel diary, this chapter begins with the relative utility of Landedelfräulein to describe the real-life Marie von Bonin. Next, analysis of the concept of Heimweh (homesickness) demonstrates that, even for an independent young woman like Marie, home was central to identity and was a powerful source of physical and emotional comfort.11 Finally, this chapter considers what evidence Marie’s diary presents for the notion that geographic places beyond home town did not in fact function as Heimat as scholars claimed, and suggests that the notion of surrogate Heimaten as a coping mechanism in the face of Heimweh was, at least in Marie’s case, untrue.

Marie, the Landedelfräulein If fate had given me a personality that is content with the close-knit world of Heimat, . . . I could have been living a blissful life in the quiet forest in beautiful Wasgau with Helene––but we parted ways: ––I would deny myself the brilliant career that has presented itself to me, if I could make a poor Landedelfräulein my wife for the sake of youthful inclination!12

10 Sheila Patel, Adeliges Familienleben, weibliche Schreibpraxis: Die Tagebücher der Maria Esterházy-Galántha (1809-1861) (Frankfurt: Campus, 2015), 59. See also Diemel, 38. 11 For discussion of the importance of locality, see Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials, 63-87. Although love of home was not unique to German society, the popularity of so-called Heimatvereine (local heritage societies) in the latter half of the nineteenth century signaled a resurgence in personal identification with locality and not just nation or state. 12 “Hätte mir das Schicksal einen Sinn verliehen, der mit der engen Welt der Heimath zufrieden ist, hätt’ ich nimmer die verlockenden Stimmen des Ruhms gehört, sprach er endlich mit gepresstem Ton vor sich hin, ich würde auf der

18 This excerpt from Eduard Ziehen’s 1853 novella, Ein deutscher Edelmann (A German Nobleman) tells the story of a man for whom the country noble maiden signified impulsive boyishness and the simplicity of provincial life; the protagonist both loved and pitied Helene. Although Ziehen painted a vivid portrait of the German nobleman’s romantic regrets, he did not explain the so-called Landedelfräulein on her own terms. Did she think of herself in the same pathetic manner as did the protagonist who also pitied himself, did she possess more forward- thinking ideas about her potential roles in the world, or did she love her world for what it was? Ziehen and other authors wrote the fictive Landedelfräulein’s relationship with Heimat in different ways. Some depicted home as an escape from modernity, whereas others framed home as a veritable prison. In all fictive examples I have examined, authors wrote the Landedelfräulein as a helpless girl whose only wish was to be married to a man of equal or higher social station. She was an object lesson for her reader; often she had an extramarital affair and had to suffer dire consequences. This country noble maiden fulfilled a literary trope, and she reinforced the allure of what scholar of nineteenth-century German education Jennifer Askey called “emotional nationalism;” that is, it was the duty of a young German woman to marry, produce heirs, and remain loyal to her Heimat (and later her husband’s Heimat) at any cost, whatever her personal relationship with home. To validate herself according to these expectations, she had to become a Landedelfrau.13 A notable second example of the Landedelfräulein is found in Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest (1895). Fontane’s central character, “[d]ie arme Effi” (poor Effi), was a seventeen-year- old Landedelfräulein who, outside of her loveless marriage to a thirty-eight-year-old baron, had an affair. When the baron discovered Effi’s secret correspondence with her lover, he divorced her and later killed her lover in a duel. Effi’s parents disowned her, feeling her affair had damaged their name. Effi suffered from depression and, reuniting with her parents, returned to her Heimat. Some literary critics have read Effi’s untimely death as punishment for marital

stillen Waldhöhe im schönen Wasgau ein seliges Leben mit Helene haben führen können––so aber gehen unsere Wege aus einander:––ich würde mir die glänzende Laufbahn, die sich mir öffnet, selbst verschließen, wenn ich um einer Jugendneigung willen ein armes Landedelfräulein zu meiner Gattin erwählte!” Eduard Ziehen, “Ein deutscher Edelmann,” Der Erzähler: Ein Unterhaltungsblatt für Jedermann 18, no. 72 (September 7, 1853): 286, https://books.google.com/books?id=OHxEAAAAcAAJ. 13 Diemel, Adelige Frauen im bürgerlichen Jahrhundert, 47, 50. Diemel wrote that German courtly society introduced young girls to potential suitors as early as six years old, and that noble children typically obeyed their family’s directives in choice of partner. For a discussion of “emotional nationalism,” see Askey, Good Girls, Good Germans, 1-27.

19 transgressions, while others simply read it as tragedy. Pertinent to the present work, to unburden herself of guilt and to reconnect with her parents, Effi returned to her childhood Heimat.14 A much more recent work of historical fiction, Cornelia Wusowski’s Friedrich der Große: Der einsame König (Frederick the Great: The Lonely King, 2016) situated the Landedelfräulein in the eighteenth-century context. In a passage recounting the emotional suffering of Sophie von Pannwitz, who was having an affair with Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, the young country maiden lamented, “There is no point in talking with my parents about the prince, . . . a prince is out of reach for a Landedelfräulein.”15 In this example, the Landedelfräulein, lamenting the apparently irreconcilable difference between a royal (court) man and a country (Heimat) maiden, pitied herself. Even contemporary portrayals of the country noble maiden painted a grim picture of her fate. Much like Fontane’s Effi, Sophie saw her parents, especially her father, as representatives of her childhood Heimat. In Sophie’s case, they were immovable in the matter of her interest in a prince. In short, if we read Heimat as an authoritarian patriarchal space, then the fictive Landedelfräulein was Heimat’s prisoner. Like fictive Effi Briest and Sophie von Pannwitz, real-life Marie von Bonin was born into the noble class. She grew up in rural Prussia on a Gutsherrschaft (East Prussian estate lordship system that was abolished in 1850) estate, a part of the German country noble world that valued Heimat in the forms of land holdings, tradition, and ancestry. Like Effi and Sophie, Marie had a lover. Although neither she nor her lover were married at the time, Marie’s relationship with Max von Kracht was kept secret from her disapproving father. Like Effi, Marie enjoyed the freedom that travel afforded––she was no prisoner to the domestic sphere––but she also suffered from Heimweh (homesickness). To cope with Heimweh, Marie sought comfort in thoughts of Heimat and the people who reminded her of home. Her permanent identity as a Landedelfräulein influenced how her writing expressed these thoughts. In Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a western suburb of Paris, she wrote of a walk with her cousin, Johanne, “[W]e talked about home and about my Idchen, whom I think about so much.”16 Marie’s permanent identity as a daughter of the Gutsherrschaft countryside

14 Charlotte Woodford, “Fontane, Effi Briest,” in Landmarks in the German Novel (1), edited by Peter Hutchinson (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), 83-98. 15 “Sophie überlegte: ‘Es hat keinen Zweck, dass ich mit meinen Eltern über den Prinzen spreche, sie denken ähnlich wie Sie, Madame: ein Prinz ist unerreichbar für ein Landedelfräulein.’” Cornelia Wusowski, chap. 6 in Friedrich der Große: Der einsame König (Munich: Dotbooks, 2016), https://books.google.com/books?id=6sAkDQAAQBAJ. 16 M. Bonin, diary, June 9, 1855.

20 dictated much of her thinking about home. She grew up in a landholding system where, by the mid-nineteenth century, the more quotidian aspects of household management belonged to the noble wife––a former Landedelfräulein and now Landedelfrau––whose only prospects, so it would seem, were marriage and childrearing in the provinces.17 (The Landedelfräulein Bonin, despite her love of home, was determined to overcome certain aspects of the Gutsherrschaft mentality. Namely, she did not want her father to choose a spouse for her as was the custom.) Could Marie defy the nineteenth-century Landedelfräulein trope? As a courtly maiden traveler, could she live a life of her own choosing and cope with the temporary absence of her home? A final strategy Marie employed to combat homesickness was to write about the beauty of the natural world. This tactic, though artfully wrought, was no substitute for Heimat and familiar people. In Baden-Baden Marie wrote, “How very lovely it is by this landscape where, in the background, one always sees the Black Forest, whose dark coloration forms a beautiful contrast with the fresh greenery of the hardwood and even with the silver fir, which now finds itself in its shining moment because it has fresh, green buds.”18 Despite such ebullient characterizations of the natural world, the Black Forest could not provide the comforts of home. Marie suffered from homesickness throughout the family trip.

Homesickness The term Heimweh apparently first appeared in a 1569 report on a Swiss soldier who, it was believed, died of homesickness.19 A century later, Heimweh was the subject of Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer’s “De Nostalgia, oder Heimwehe” (On Nostalgia, or Homesickness, 1688). The introduction to Hofer’s work, which coined the term nostalgia, featured a case of Heimweh in which the sufferer bore resemblance to the nineteenth-century Landedelfräulein: “[A] certain country girl. . . lay prostrate without consciousness or movement for several days. Finally, . . . she came back to herself. . . immediately homesickness took hold of her; . . . ‘Ich will heim; Ich will heim’ [I want to go home].” The girl had been traveling; her family had money. Hofer wrote that a few days after the girl’s return home, she made a full recovery. Important to this analysis, Hofer asserted “that the subjects of this state [Heimweh] are

17 Eve Rosenhaft, “Gender,” in Germany, 1800-1870, ed. Jonathan Sperber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 215. 18 M. Bonin, diary, June 2, 1855. 19 Ina-Maria Greverus, Der territoriale Mensch: ein literaturanthropologischer Versuch zum Heimatphänomen (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1972), 112.

21 principally young people and adolescents sent to foreign regions.”20 A Landedelfräulein from a well-off family left home, exhibited signs of homesickness, and on her return recovered without medical treatment. A century and a half after the appearance of Hofer’s dissertation on nostalgia, German- speaking people still considered Heimweh to be an illness, but unlike the case of the seventeenth- century country girl’s miraculous healing, nineteenth-century Heimweh sufferers ingested a variety of substances to treat their numerous symptoms. Baron Clemens Maria Franz von Bönninghausen’s Der homöopathische Hausarzt in kurzen therapeutischen Diagnosen (The Homeopathic Domestic Physician in Brief Therapeutic Diagnoses, 1853) suggested three remedies for Heimweh, depending on the sufferer’s symptoms: 1. [Capsicum annuum for] homesickness with facial redness and insomnia. –– moodiness and touchiness; chill with hot face and thirst; headache brought on by movement; stomach pain after eating; dysenteriform diarrhea with rectal tenesmus; heavy coughing day and night; tendency to breathe deeply; reluctance to move. –– phlegmatic constitution. 2. [Quicksilver for] homesickness with nightly anxiety and perspiration. –– . . . 3. [Phosphoric acid for] homesickness with emaciation, somnolence and premature perspiration.21 Many of the symptoms Bönninghausen described, such as diarrhea, might indicate a more serious illness such as dysentery. Others, such as insomnia and deep breathing, could stem from any number of psychological issues or simply the wear and tear of constant travel. The recommended prescriptions, which included capsicum annuum (hot pepper oil) and quicksilver (mercury), must have produced an array of side effects.22

20 Carolyn Kiser Anspach, “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688,” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 2, no. 6 (1934): 382-3, http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/stable/44437799. 21 “Caps. Heimweh mit Gesichtsröthe und Schlaflosigkeit. –– Launigkeit und Uebelnehmigkeit; Frost mit Gesichshitze und Durst; Kopfweh zum Zerspringen bei Bewegung; nach dem Essen Brennen im Magen; ruhrartige Durchfälle mit Stuhlzwang; Abends und Nachts heftiger Husten; Neigung zum Tiefathmen; Scheu von Bewegung. – – Pflegmatische Konstitution. . . . Merc. Heimweh mit nächtlicher Angst und Schweitz. ––. . . Phosph. ac. Heimweh mit Abzehrung, Schlafsucht und Frühschweitz.” Clemens Maria Franz von Bönninghausen, Der homöopathische Hausarzt in kurzen therapeutischen Diagnosen (Münster: Friedrich Regensberg, 1853), 8, https://books.google.com/books?id=mBQ4AAAAMAAJ. 22Sources differ as to the severity of side effects associated with mercury. While homeopathic medicine recommends ingesting it in small quantities, other sources warn that mercury can be fatal in swallowed.

22 Marie von Bonin suffered from a symptom described in Bönninghausen’s first category of Heimweh, “headache brought on by movement.”23 On the first night of her 1855 travels, she wrote, “as the day progressed, to be frank, I had seen enough, since the ride in the train had affected me, and I had a strong headache.” The nearly two-hundred-mile route from Genthin to Guntershausen took thirteen hours, which circumstance Marie noted was “no small thing.” For her, the solution was to dine (although she did not indicate whether she ingested any remedies such as those Bönninghausen would recommend) and to find sleep quickly, “with thoughts of my far away loved ones.”24 It seems Marie’s method of coping with the loss of home was more in the same camp as Hofer’s 1688 Landedelfräulein who protested, “I want to go home.” Perhaps mere thoughts of home, and the people who for Marie symbolized Heimat, were in her case enough to cure a headache. The start to Marie’s first day of travel had been emotionally difficult. At Genthin Station, she looked out of the window of her family’s train car and watched her grandmother, a representative of Heimat, disappear: “Good Großmama [Grandmama] was so emotional as we left her, alas, all goodbyes are sad indeed, but hopefully our Wiedersehen [reunion] will be joyful and not too far off.” While a reunion would be the panacea, Heimweh was the present circumstance. Marie’s misgivings about this trip aside, there were also meteorological factors over which she had no control: “we had to say our goodbyes in Genthin in haste because of the sudden rain.” Marie had to accept the fact that the unpredictability of nature and the punctuality of train schedules worked in concert to separate her from the people and places she loved. For the moment, she chose to resign herself to the “fate, which takes me away from here.”25 Her father Gustav had organized this trip, and now father and daughter sat together in the same train car. What could this Landedelfräulein do but accept that yet one more event in her life was out of her control? In a week, they would be in Paris, where Marie would see the Universal Exposition, but also where she would experience even more Heimweh due to the greater distance from home. “The country was for the most part very pretty,” wrote Marie during her travels through France, “this foreign land, where I felt lonely.”26 As she crossed the Rhine, she wrote of relinquishing comfort: “Then we crossed the Rhine River, we left the familiar ground and soil,

23 Bönninghausen, 8. 24 M. Bonin, diary, May 30, 1855. 25 M. Bonin, May 30, 1855. 26 M. Bonin, June 4, 1855.

23 and we were in France.”27 More than “soil” she left behind people, including friend Ida and suitor Max. Though surrounded by family throughout the trip, people who at least some of the time evoked thoughts of home, much of the time Marie felt isolated: “Much, so much, do I think about You, my dear Idchen, if only You were with us, my darling.”28 The presence of family could not soothe the pain of the absence of Ida. Marie felt homesick in Paris, and it seemed the only solution was to connect with her close friend: “I wrote to my beloved, sweet Idchen, which was a great joy and reassurance for me.”29 For Marie, Ida was often Heimweh’s most potent remedy. Marie longed to return to Brettin, the only Heimat, where she felt more at ease: “This last evening had been an uncomfortable one, and I was glad that I could finally rest. And so, the last (day) night that we experienced in Paris passed, and tomorrow we expect to continue on to Heimath, or at least get closer to it.”30 Marie’s language suggested a clear, if unsurprising dichotomy: if travel meant “foreign” and “lonely,” then “Heimath” meant familiar, connected, and self-certain. Marie’s sense of Heimat––and Heimweh––grew out of a notion particular, though not unique, to the nineteenth-century German world: landscape and identity were interdependent. Marie’s identity as a daughter from her Heimat of Brettin inspired reflection on her past: “[T]oo bad that when one is a child,” she penned on the morning of June 13 as her family rode a wagon out of Cologne, “one never realizes how nice childhood is and that it will never return.”31 Perhaps the mother-child connection to Heimat was made more painful by the death of her mother, Maria Keller, when Marie was––at fourteen––still a child. Marie’s grief over losing a parent is evocative of Peter Blickle’s observation that the interdependency between landscape and identity mimicked the bond between mother and unborn child.32To lose proximity to Heimat meant to relinquish, at least for the duration of the trip, a primordial piece of Marie’s “daughterness.” All the same she was in mourning about the end of the first portion of the family trip: “Will you ever see Paris again?” Marie wrote of the wagon ride out of Cologne: “The answer is, probably not. . . . [T]he realization of seeing something for the last time is always

27 M. Bonin, June 3, 1855. 28 M. Bonin, May 31, 1855. Idchen is the diminutive form of Ida. 29 M. Bonin, June 5, 1855. 30 M. Bonin, June 12, 1855. 31 M. Bonin, diary, June 13, 1855. 32 Blickle, Heimat, 114. See also Blickle, 85-86. Childhood, nature, and the countryside were imbued with femininity. See also Blickle, 88. In some late eighteenth-century literary sources, Heimat represented a womb.

24 possessed of some strange and disquieting quality. It seems a closed chapter in one’s life.” But she looked to her future with hope: “I was delighted that Heimath was getting closer, and along with it the people who interest us, and who also care for us.”33 A great deal of the trip remained. Brettin would have to wait another two months.

Spa Towns and the Provincial Countryside “She has grown so accustomed to the quiet spa in Savoy that she loves it as her second home,” wrote Lucian Herbert of Marie Bonaparte-Wyse in his 1865 literary sketch, “Schwalbach.”34 Irish-born Marie, who married a Frenchman in 1850 at the age of twenty-one, found herself single again by 1853, at which time she established Savoy’s literary salon. Her social-intellectual activities there lasted ten years.35 This decade-long relationship with a spa town made it, for Marie Bonaparte-Wyse, a zweite Heimat (second home). Marie von Bonin, by contrast, felt no such Heimat connection with the spa towns of Bad Ems and Bad Soden. She only stayed a month in each of these places, and more importantly acknowledged just one Heimat, Brettin. Although Ems and Soden provided Heimat-like comforts––familiar people, routines, and quietude––spa towns visited for part of a summer were most certainly not home. Marie spent most the summer of 1855 in the Prussian countryside, not an unusual pursuit for the upper classes in Germany: “About the end of May the annual migration begins,” noted an 1856 English travel guide to Germany on the Kurzeit (bath season) phenomenon: “[I]n June the whole respectable population of Germany may be said to be in motion; July is usually the height of the season; . . . There is but little fluctuation till the end of August.”36 After nine nights in the noisy French capital, about which Marie noted “Pariser [Parisians] go to sleep late, but also wake up late,” in Prussia the Bonins returned to the slower, quieter rhythms of provincial life.37 After a four-day detour through Kamen, Heeren, Heide,

33 M. Bonin, June 13, 1855. 34 “Sie hat sich an das stille Bad von Savoyen so gewöhnt, daß sie es lieb hat wie ihre zweite Heimat.” Lucian Herbert, “Schwalbach,” in Erheiterungen. Eine Hausbibliothek zur Unterhaltung und Belehrung für Leser aller Stände, ed. Otfrid Mylius (Stuttgart: Verlag der Erheiterungen, 1865), 37:252, https://books.google.com/books?id=jFJEAAAAcAAJ. 35 Daniel Coit Gilman, Harry Thurston Peck, and Frank Moore Colby, eds., The New International Encyclopædia, Vol. 3 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1902), s.v. “Lætitia Marie Wyse Bonaparte,” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015053670397. 36 John Murray, ed., A Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland, 11th ed. (London: John Murray, 1856), 219, https://books.google.com/books?id=aP8HAAAAQAAJ. 37 M. Bonin, diary, June 8, 1855.

25 Bögge, and Hamm, small towns in which the Bonins visited with extended family, Marie prepared to settle into the routine of spa cures, afternoon walks, and writing in her journal. The day after leaving Paris and traveling through Cologne, the touring party dispersed. Marie’s uncle Herrmann, cousin Johanne, and their au pair “hurried home” (“eilte der Heimath zu”) to Altenplathow near Brettin, while Marie, her sister Frieda, and her father Gustav traveled northeast to Kamen.38 Once there, they waited in vain for a wagon from Marie’s uncle Fritz. Eventually two aunts gave them a ride to Fritz and his wife Lina’s home in Heeren: “It is so cozy and nice here,” Marie mused: “[T]he great warmth, which takes us in, does us good, especially since we have come from a dreary, heartless foreign land.”39 Although Marie did not idealize pre-modernity to the exclusion of industrialization and urbanity as Blickle argued was a component of conceptualization of Heimat, Marie’s biting words did reflect a preference for Heimat and Heimat-like places.40 She felt more relaxed in the Prussian countryside, surrounded by a “lovely view of meadows and woods. . . . [H]ow much more freely one breathes here than in the cramped rooms of a large city.” Heeren’s warmth and vastness––qualities of Heimat–– comforted homesick Marie. The morning of June 15, Marie, Frieda, and Gustav rode to Heide, where they reunited with the youngest Bonin sibling, Anna. Back in Heeren, they collected Fritz and Lina’s daughter, Bertchen, before traveling to Bögge to visit “old Uncle Quadt. . . . The evening ended with musicieren [playing music] and chatting.”41 The next day, Marie and Gustav rode northeast to Hamm, where father and daughter said farewell. Marie’s grandmother and an uncle met her there. From Hamm, the trio rode nearly one hundred miles south to Ems, where for a month they would “take the waters.” There were so many changes in the traveling party in so few days; Marie missed home. The one thing that remained constant was the absence of Brettin.42 “I was overjoyed that we had reached the destination of our trip,” wrote Marie of the ride from Hamm to Ems. “In the meantime, I must confess, I have become a little tired from the

38 M. Bonin, June 14, 1855. That Marie referred to Altenplathow as Heimat may have reflected the fact that her maiden aunt Auguste, who raised the Bonin children, made her home there before becoming custodian of Gustav’s estate in Brettin. 39 M. Bonin, June 15, 1855. 40 Blickle, Heimat, 17. 41 M. Bonin, diary, June 15, 1855. 42 The names of these historical villages are different today. Heeren is now known as Heeren-Werve, Heide as Alte Heide, and Bögge as Nordbögge.

26 journey, especially this nomadic life.”43 For the next twenty-seven days, the Bonins settled into the routine of long walks and spa cures. Dr. Rudolf von Ibell, Ems’ Badearzt (spa doctor), visited with the Bonins regularly and gave them unknown prescriptions, though Marie gave no indication of the precise purpose of his visits.44 This would be a monotonous month: “[T]he traveling is now ended, we have arrived on the premises, and so the travelogue’s purpose is fulfilled by a description of this little spot.”45 There was nothing more for Marie to say about Ems. This portion of the trip was neither active travel nor the true comfort of Heimat. On her third day in Ems, Max appeared. (I will go into greater detail about their visits in Chapter Three.) He visited frequently for the better part of three weeks. Time spent in the company of her lover quelled Marie’s Heimweh. At the same time, she must have known that, should the couple marry, Max’s Heimat would become hers; Brettin would then be even more of a childhood memory than what she indicated as her family departed Cologne. By the end of the Bonins’ month-long stay in Ems, Marie had grown so accustomed to its sights that she felt sorry to have to depart: “[F]or the last time I sat on the balcony, surrounded by these beautiful mountains. . . . I shouted a last goodbye to them in spirit; they seemed like old friends of mine.” Not to be confused with Heimweh, Marie mourned that soon she and Max would have to part ways: “[T]hey [the mountains] had indeed been witnesses to my happiness, and, before that, to my yearnings for the beloved ones far away in the dear Heimath.”46 For Marie, Max’s unexpected visit was a ray of light in the otherwise dull yet comfortable routine of provincial spa town life. In the end, she missed her family and the ultimate Heimat, Brettin, most of all. Three days of travel by train and boat punctuated the end of life in Bad Ems and the start of life in Bad Soden. In this second spa town, the Bonin family engaged the services of another private physician, likely Rudolph Kolb.47 Marie felt virtually no Heimat connection there. Soden did not hold the same allure and comfort as Ems: “As sad, rainy, and gloomy as it was outside, so was it also in our little room. . . . Our chief occupation, especially Mine, was to write letters and to read.”48 Although Heimweh occupied an ever-greater part of Marie’s consciousness,

43 M. Bonin, diary, June 17, 1855. 44 M. Bonin, June 18, 1855. 45 M. Bonin, June 19, 1855. 46 M. Bonin, July 12, 1855. 47 M. Bonin, July 15, 1855; July 21, 1855. See also Joachim Kromer, Bad Soden am Taunus: Leben aus den Quellen (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1990), 393. Kolb’s post at Bad Soden began in 1855. 48 M. Bonin, diary, July 21, 1855.

27 Max’s love for her also preoccupied her mind: “Two letters that arrived this week. . . were the bright rays of sunlight which descended upon the darkness of our dwelling.”49 (I will also address these letters in Chapter Three.) The “darkness” to which Marie referred was the ennui she felt having been away from Brettin for nearly two months. Compared with her more cheerful attitude toward Ems, Soden held little appeal. But neither place could touch the love she felt for her one true home: “I looked forward to our imminent return to the beloved Heimath,” she wrote on August 12.50 As was the case at the start of the family trip, Marie’s resolve to appear glad sustained her. Home drew nearer.

Conclusions The promise of returning home gave Marie hope: “I alternated between writing and looking at the pretty countryside,” Marie recalled of the ride from Halle to Marburg, “and felt completely blithe, since the train indeed went toward home.”51 As night fell on this next to last day of the Bonin family trip, Marie suffered from insomnia: “Above Großmama, Morpheus had eaten from his cornucopia, but sleep did not want to come to me.”52 Perhaps Bönninghausen or Dr. von Ibell would have diagnosed Marie with Heimweh––insomnia was symptomatic of homesickness, after all––but for Marie this sleeplessness owed itself to the excitement she felt as the train closed in on Genthin. Brettin was a just a short wagon ride away. Marie closed her travel diary with an original verse, which evokes her deep love of Heimat: At journey’s end, turn homeward, Glance Sweep back toward Brettin’s expanse, Look not for joy in far off places, In Heimat’s heavens shine its stars’ bright traces.53

49 M. Bonin, July 21, 1855. 50 M. Bonin, August 12, 1855. 51 M. Bonin, August 13, 1855. 52 M. Bonin, August 13, 1855. 53 “Doch wende heimwärts Dich mein Blick / Kehr wieder nach Brettin zurück, / Such nicht das Glück in weiter Ferne / Am Heimaths–Himmel glänzen seine Sterne.” M. Bonin, August 14, 1855. Mine is a poetic rather than literal translation. I chose instead to respect meter and rhyme scheme; “Doch wende heimwärts ich den Blick / Wenn spät die Sonne sank / Dann zieht gar lockend mich zurück / Der Abendglocke Klang.” Bertha (van der Velde) Richter, “Das liebe Thal,” in Deutschlands Dichterinnen: in chronologischer Folge, ed. Abraham Voss (Düsseldorf: Vossmann and Schmidt, 1847), 455-6, https://books.google.com/books?id=30Y7AAAAcAAJ. Marie’s poem may have drawn its inspiration from the fifth stanza of Richter’s 1847 poem, the title of which translates to “The Beloved Valley.”

28 That she ended her diary where it began, with the subject of home, demonstrates the degree to which Brettin signified the most important parts of Marie’s world: the homeplace, family, and both personal and shared memories. It would be all too easy to take Marie to task for writing her summer travel account in novelistic fashion; she opened with a point of tension, her begrudging role in the family trip to Paris and her father’s dislike of her suitor Max, and closed with the triumphant return home as signified in poetic form. It seems fitting to close with Marie’s penultimate reflection on the significance of her travels in the summer of 1855: “It is nice to get to know foreign countries and regions, and in my memory the journey will live with me for a long time, and I will still think back on some beautiful hours that I experienced.”54

54 M. Bonin, diary, August 14, 1855.

29 Chapter 2

Marie in Motion: Thrills, Contentment, Subversion, and the Bildungsreise

“Let us imagine a poor Touristin [female tourist], scarcely noticed by others, but listening, seeing, making note of things even more so for her own benefit,” observed an anonymous German essayist in the July 1, 1860 edition of Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser (Morning Paper for Learned Readers), concluding that “she truly believes she can never see and learn too much.” Unlike James Buzard’s nineteenth-century “mere” tourist, often a woman who used travel time to socialize and not to write, the Touristin was “scarcely noticed by others” and therefore could not have been talkative.1 She was too busy chronicling her observations, a defiant act that escaped the notice of her peers. At the same time, she had “an excitable conscience, and even if she were more tired and hungry, she would sooner die in the pursuit [of knowledge] than deny looking at something worth seeing.”2 The nineteenth-century female traveler––for whom a formal (male) Bildungsreise (educational trip) was taboo––had little interest in idle chatter; rather, she used her travel diary to make note of what she learned by observation. For her, travel was exhausting yet exhilarating, delightful, educational, and subversive. Of the Touristin and the “mere” tourist, Marie von Bonin was more the former. Like the Touristin, she seemed to spend much more of her time watching than actively participating. At times the act of observation was overwhelming. On June 8, 1855, Marie wrote in her diary, “I have seen too much in a short time to be able to describe anything exactly.” She and her family had just visited the Louvre, and they made a valiant effort to see as much of it as possible. Marie clarified her purpose in writing: “And it is also not the aim of a diary; indeed, I am not writing it for others, but just for me.” This was Marie’s thesis statement. The act of writing was self- indulgent, serving as it did an intellectual purpose among others: “[The diary] should, in later

1 “To contemporaries, women, who did indeed make up an important part of [Thomas] Cook’s clientele, represented a major variety of the ‘typical Cook tourist’, since the tours were seen as ‘protecting’ the tourist against all possible intrusions––even against eventualities demanding a ‘traveller’s’ independence and resourcefulness.” Buzard, The Beaten Track, 58. For discussion of women tourists, see Buzard, The Beaten Track,139-52. Buzard said little about women travelers. C.f. Muellner, “Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers on the Railroad,” 31. 2 “Nehmen wir an, eine arme Touristin, kaum von andern bemerkt, aber selbst dafür desto mehr hörend, sehend, notirend, . . . weil sie ernstlich glaubt, nie zu viel sehen und lernen zu können. . . . [D]ie Touristin hat ein reizbares Gewissen, und wäre sie noch viel müder und hungriger, sie würde eher im Berufe sterben, als etwas Sehenswerthes nicht sehen wollen.” “Correspondenz-Nachrichten. Von der Elbe, Juni. Hamburg und Dresden,” in Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser 54, no. 27 (July 1, 1860): 642-5, https://books.google.com/books?id=97ccAQAAMAAJ. Direct quotation on 643.

30 pages, remind me again of all the wonders that I saw on this trip and, in order to have a guide, I am writing down some notes here that will bring the whole thing to mind again.”3 Marie lamented that the museum’s galleries of painting were “so expansive that, in the short time we had to that end, we could only very hastily pass through.”4 Although she would not remember everything, Marie found travel enjoyable; it was both tiring and exciting. She found moments throughout the Parisian leg of her summer away from home to deviate from norms of behavior for young female travelers––perhaps a combination of reaction to the trip and conscious decision beforehand––and most significantly, to educate herself beyond her one year of formal studies at the Magdalenen-Stift girls’ school in Altenburg. What sort of traveler was Marie? As the historiography of travel analyzed in the introduction to the present work demonstrates, scholars saw the “mere” tourist, “authentic” traveler, and “journeyer” as separate entities with different aims. According to these scholars’ analyses, the tourist craved popular sites; the traveler, out-of-the-way places; and the journeyer, the making of her own itinerary. In the case of Marie, at least, these identities were interchangeable and her exhibition of associated behaviors depended entirely on circumstance. Like the tourist Marie enjoyed guided excursions, whether on foot or from the comfort of a wagon. Like the traveler she waxed poetic about the melancholic qualities of architectural ruins, which “remind one how fleeting all the grandeurs of the world are.”5 Like the journeyer she sometimes preferred to wander aimlessly, a subversive act subtle enough that her family would barely notice her minor deviations from the itinerary. What sort of travel diary was Marie’s? Is it plausible or useful to view it as an authentic example of a Bildungsreisebuch (educational travel account)? It does not seem that Marie set out on this trip with particular educational aims as did those for whom the Bildungsreise was an extension of formal studies. Bildungsreisen were traditionally the purview of young, upper-class men who went on these trips as a rite of passage following the completion of school and entrance into manhood. While the present work does not dispute that women could also go on authentic Bildungsreisen and about them write accounts, there are three reasons not to read Marie’s diary in this manner. First, most examples of formal Bildungsreisen involved traveling with a

3 M. Bonin, diary, June 8, 1855. 4 M. Bonin, June 8, 1855. 5 M. Bonin, May 30, 1855.

31 classmate or mentor, whereas Marie traveled with family. Second, Bildungsreisende (those individuals who embarked on educational trips) typically completed a summer-long project, whereas Marie’s father intended a summer focused on leisure and health. Third, the aforementioned themes of exhaustion and exhilaration, delight, and subversion, together with self-education, demonstrate that Marie’s travel writing had a more dynamic purpose than that of the Bildungsreisebuch. Her travels were––by her own design––not just about intellectual stimulation, but also enjoyment, the thrill of constant movement, and the satisfaction of deviating from socially acceptable behaviors for young noble women in motion. This is not to say that these reasons existed in isolation; intersections among them demonstrate the complexity of Marie’s thinking and writing. This chapter takes as a starting point the work of scholars of nineteenth-century German women’s travels and education, two broad themes that help to make sense of connections among experiences that were entertaining, tiring, thrilling, and deviating. Individual sections examine Marie’s travels in the contexts of delight, exhaustion and exhilaration, subversion, and self- education. This chapter contextualizes Marie’s “Bildungsreise moment” in the larger history of German women’s education, paying close attention to the ways pedagogues sought to oppress young girls’ educational opportunities. It also considers Marie’s limited education compared with that of her father and siblings. Finally, I reflect on the complexity of Marie’s travels and self-education, and ask whether it matters if her summer in Paris and the Prussian countryside were indeed a Bildungsreise. Because Marie defies simple categorization as a traveler, tourist, or journeyer, I contend that it is more useful to refer to her as a “country noble maiden in motion,” that is, a real-life Landedelfräulein who, by contrast with the Heimat-bound literary trope explored in Chapter One, was rarely at rest during her summer of travel. Travel experiences were a notable contrast to her daily life in rural, static places. The present work analyzes Marie’s travel experiences according to four themes found throughout her writing: exhaustion and exhilaration, delight, subversion, and self-education. Marie’s diary functioned in part as a de facto Bildungsreisebuch; on guided tours she took notes as would a student, writing down what interested her, making critical observations, and drawing her own conclusions.

32 Marie in Motion Between late May and mid-August 1855, Marie traveled with reluctance. This was not a summer plan of her choosing. Despite the less-than-ideal situation, she experienced moments that were thrilling and enjoyable, and found ways to make these moments educational and even rebellious. On the first day of the trip, the Bonins traveled nearly 150 miles. In Eisenach, they stepped off the train, meandered, and waited for the next train to take them farther. Of her time in Eisenach, Marie most enjoyed seeing Wartburg Castle, “an imposanter [imposing] place high on top of a hill overgrown with beautiful greenery. . . . [W]ith true delight, I took advantage of our wait on the train to keep looking at the Wartburg Castle, to admire it.” Marie and her family arrived “dead tired” in Guntershausen, 143 miles southwest of Brettin, at ten o’clock in the evening: “we had spent 13 hours in this state on the train.”6 Her fatigue was understandable. She had no desire to continue to Paris, yet she decided to “make an effort to be cheerful, or at least to appear so,” since her father went to the trouble of planning this trip. Despite her dissatisfaction with her circumstances, Marie adapted easily to most any situation, taking advantage of even the most tiring or oppressive moments to make her own decisions, no matter how small, or to learn something she missed by only attending one year of school. Her diary shows again and again that, no matter the situation at hand, Marie took the proactive high ground and could adapt to most any unpleasant situation. She had plans for herself, and no one––not even her father Gustav who disapproved of her choice of suitor––was going to stand in her way.

Exhaustion/Exhilaration Travel took its toll on Marie, yet it also invigorated her. It was a visceral experience: tiring, hurried, confusing, staggering. These feelings often inspired in her a sense of urgency and attentiveness to the unique places and works of art she saw in Paris and elsewhere. Not a person to complain needlessly, Marie put her best foot forward and acclimated to her father’s travel plans. Still, the act of long-distance travel came with its own sort of intensity. More so than wagons, trains––essentially new technology in 1855––were noisy, fast, and dirty. On the first day of the family trip, between Genthin and Magdeburg, Marie wrote that the family’s train car “reeked terribly… it is so much nicer when a gentleman does not smoke.”7 But the noxious

6 M. Bonin, May 30, 1855. 7 M. Bonin, May 30, 1855. See also John Murray, A hand-book for travellers on the continent (1856), 208. “The Germans seldom travel in the 1st class carriages, the 2nd class being very good. The English who object to smoking

33 habits of others were a minor issue. Later that evening, safely arrived in Guntershausen, Marie suffered a terrible headache––could the cause have been Heimweh? ––and wished to go to bed. Fortunately for Marie she seldom felt unwell, and good thing; in Paris the Bonins were in constant motion, often on foot along tree-lined walkways or up hillsides in a blazing summer heat. Tours of the Exposition Universelle were the highlight of Paris. This world exposition, which opened two weeks before the Bonins visited, was the first of its kind to feature both industrial objects and fine art concurrently. There were two main buildings, Le Palais de l’Industrie (The Palace of Industry) and Le Palais des Beaux-Arts (The Palace of Fine Arts). Marie was not prepared for all that awaited her in the former building: “I must confess that I was almost blinded by all of the grandeur spread before my eyes.” The building itself was massive, with iron columns and “colossal semicircular windows.” But she was disappointed that much of the space was still under construction: “Unfortunately there was a lot that was not yet finished; it was still being wrought. The hammering, chiseling, and commotion lent deafening confusion to the whole thing.”8 Marie felt overwhelmed by this exhibit space, both what was present and what was underway. She also felt overcome with emotion: “Soon we turned our steps to the left, where, from a distance, the Prussian eagle glowed for us against the light.” (I would argue that this passage from Marie’s diary displayed, to borrow Jennifer Askey’s terminology, a sense of emotional nationalism. Marie’s personification of the symbol of her Heimatland [home country] illustrates the mid-nineteenth century’s fascination with romanticizing the nation.9 Marie’s probable reading of Mädchenliteratur meant she learned from a young age to love her Germanness.) She continued: “[L]a Prusse was completely finished, and all was arranged extremely tastefully.”10 Marie’s use of the French word for Prussia was a nice touch; through its inclusion, she not only connected with her Germanic roots, but also demonstrated she was capable of acculturation. This example challenges Buzard’s argument that women were typically “mere” tourists. Naturally, much of the industrial exhibit hall space was devoted to France. Marie especially enjoyed the silk

must resort to the 1st class.” It is noteworthy that the Bonins, a noble family who readily paid for luxuries such as extra baptismal sponsors and exclusive luncheons with hotel proprietors, may have ridden second class. 8 M. Bonin, diary, June 5, 1855. 9 For discussion of Heimat iconography, see Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor, 9. Though Confino’s analysis focused on Germany post-unification in 1871, his argument that symbols facilitated Germans’ understanding of the nation could apply to a broader period given the power of national symbols that predate unification (as the Marie example shows). 10 M. Bonin, diary, June 5, 1855.

34 from Lyon, as well as jewelry, lace, and embroidery, but four hours into their visit, the family had only viewed a portion of the building: “For today we had seen enough,” Marie concluded; “we were very tired since looking and admiring has such an effect.”11 It was impossible to see so much in so short a time without feeling both exhilarated and exhausted. Despite enjoying herself in Paris, Marie missed La Prusse––Heimat, Brettin––and felt she belonged there. In addition to walking several miles each day in the summer heat, the family took many day trips by wagon, arriving to a staggering amount of walking, standing, and looking. At Versailles, Marie noted that they “wandered through many painting and Sculpturen [sculpture] galleries, all of which I cannot possibly list or mention, since there were too many of them, and we were flying through, which Uncle [Herrmann] so keenly urged.”12 Marie’s uncle often played the part of timekeeper during the family’s summer travels. From Marie’s perspective he never seemed to tire of controlling the schedule. On June 11, almost two weeks into the family trip, the Bonins visited Le Palais de l’Industrie for a second and final time. Marie lamented saying goodbye to this place, and she was tired: “I would have gladly stayed at the Exposition, although I could barely stand anymore.” At the same time, like the fictive Touristin who introduced this chapter, Marie was hungry to see and learn everything possible: “[I]t was the last time that we would glimpse this world exposition, since day after tomorrow we wanted to leave Paris. When one is in a place for the last time, one would like to look at everything quite keenly once more, which I did, too.” Taking charge of the narrative, Marie added: “Still, before I have forgotten myself, I am indeed in the Palais de l’Industrie, and just want to say my farewell to this fairy palace, as I will never enter it again. Return then, my thoughts, and do not lose yourself there in things that do not belong here.”13 This place––this moment, Marie knew––was not hers to keep.

Delight As Marie and her family raced across the Prussian countryside to Paris by train, she took copious notes on the things she saw out of the window of her family’s private compartment: villages, mountainous regions, and dilapidated places. Beautiful things dazzled Marie; they were worth recording. Marie’s desire to write down not only what she saw on her ride toward Paris,

11 M. Bonin, June 5, 1855. 12 M. Bonin, June 10, 1855. 13 M. Bonin, June 11, 1855.

35 but also how sights inspired her thinking, makes it tempting to label her an “authentic” traveler. For example, on the second day of the trip Marie wrote, “I was quite charmed by Marburg, it is situated so romantically, and the entire area is incredibly beautiful. . . . When I see something so lovely, I always so regret that I alone see it and the others who are far away do not see it with me.”14 In moments such as this, what Marie saw as a Landedelfräulein in motion allowed her to conceptualize far away people. In Paris, Marie also exhibited characteristics of the “mere” tourist who simply enjoyed popular spectacles. She wrote that at the Palais de l’Industrie she saw wonderful things inlaid with Mosaick and Perlemutter [mother of pearl], all furniture; e.g., charming little writing desks, and a superber large table, the feet of which were Bronze, the glazed tile was charming, inlaid with all sorts of pure, beautiful flowers. There were also superbe enchanting glass pieces and porcelain table Service. Marvelous Bronze Sachen [things], like candelabras, mirrors, etc. A host of grand pianos, Pianino’s and organs. Magnificent rugs, furnishings, draperies and wallpapers. Gorgeous white embroidery, among other things, a white embroidered dress, which the Empress Eugénie commissioned for the Empress of Austria. Because Marie’s behavior exemplified characteristics of both the “authentic” traveler and the “mere” tourist, it is more useful to focus on her experience of delight, which engaged sight, sound, movement, and speech in the forms of theatrical spectacles, beautiful views, people- watching, and talking while actively traveling. I will consider each of these in turn. Marie encountered theatrical spectacles not only in the obvious sense (a few staged productions) but also in the forms of guided tours and the movement of elaborate water fountains. On a tour of the Panthéon, Marie found the crypt especially intriguing: “[T]here is a very clear and strong echo, which sounds almost sinister. The tour guide struck with force against a door and it rang like enormer [enormous] gunfire, which one had to hear to believe it.”15 The final resting place of France’s great men interested Marie, and the crypt’s thunderous echo was entertaining, but a day trip to Versailles promised even more impressive sights. Walking the expansive grounds of the palace, Marie and her family stopped near a large fountain, the Bassin de Neptune, sensing something exciting was about to happen: “[A] great

14 M. Bonin, May 31, 1855. 15 M. Bonin, June 7, 1855.

36 quantity of people had gathered,” she wrote, adding, “With difficulty we even acquired some chairs to sit upon.” The spectacle left quite an impression on Marie: “All of a sudden, as if by a magic word, an immeasurable mass of water jets, in all sizes and shapes, grew in height. . . . Wherever one’s eyes wandered over these rather grand projections, streams of water could be seen in various configurations, climbing and falling. . . . Because this [performance] consumirt [consumes] such an enormous amount of water, the display came to last only a few minutes, it appeared all the more so as magical because it disappeared again just as quickly.”16 Versailles was a popular tourist site to be sure, yet Marie’s vivid descriptions of its fountains surpassed what one would expect from a “mere” tourist. They contained significant details about the fountains’ architectural features, including numbers of columns, estimated heights of water streams, and likenesses of Greek gods and other mythological figures. A talkative tourist could not possibly notice such elaborate information. Marie, so taken with this spectacle, was determined not to forget a single detail. A day trip to St. Germain on June 9 impressed a different variety of delight upon Marie, the observation of beautiful views, or what Germans call Sehenswertes (from sehen, ‘to see’ and wert, ‘worthy’): “Our ride did not last long,” she remarked––a nice change of pace for this Landedelfräulein who was in near constant motion: “[W]e soon arrived in Saint-Germain and made our way direct [directly] to the Pavillon de Henri IV where there is a Restauration [restaurant], and where we are now set up in a lovely private room from where we took in an especially charming view during our Diner.17 The view out the window was magnificent.”18 The Bonins must have been staying on the east side of the hotel, which overlooked the Seine River and the Place du Château d’Eau (today the Place de la République). The hill was elevated enough that Marie could also partake in people-watching, an activity she greatly enjoyed. Marie’s delight was real; people-watching often betrayed Marie’s sense of humor. She wrote of tour through Paris, “To ride in such an Omlibus19 is entirely comical and entertaining, because an everlasting change takes place; a few step in, others step out, and one sees in a short time a wide range of personalities. The Conducteur’s little bell is in almost incessant motion.”20

16 M. Bonin, June 10, 1855. 17 French, dinner or supper. 18 M. Bonin, diary, June 9, 1855. 19 Marie meant Omnibus. This horse-drawn conveyance could accommodate around six to eight people comfortably. 20 M. Bonin, diary, June 7, 1855.

37 That Marie wrote of “seeing” personalities suggests she did not necessarily interact with her fellow passengers. As the tone of her diary suggests, her greatest delight much of the time was observation. People-watching did not always turn out as expected. One evening in Paris, shortly before nine o’clock, Marie joined the crowds of people waiting to see Empress Eugénie and Emperor Napoléon III on their way to the theater: “Of course we hoped for the chance to catch sight of the imperial couple, but, alas, this hope came to nothing,” Marie lamented. At last a royal carriage drove by, but it was carrying the King of Portugal, on his way to the opéra comique.21 Marie also enjoyed chatting with her family while in motion. Her laughter betrayed her enjoyment of strangers, and her understanding of their conversation demonstrated that she possessed knowledge of the French language prior to this trip. Being conversant in French was an expectation for noble maidens who, if they did not learn it in school, might pick it up at home from a private tutor or family member. Riding back to Paris from the Saint Germain day trip she remarked that “a lady and likely her son” listened to their conversations. Marie wrote that one of the pair “finally said half as loud to their neighbors: Qu’elle est joli la langue allemande,22 I had to laugh spontaneously, and would like to have started a Conversation with this lady. . . however I was too timid to address her.”23 Marie’s delight did not revolve entirely around silent observation. She enjoyed and felt comfortable speaking with people she already knew, namely her family.

Self-Education “[D]omesticity remains the supreme cardinal virtue of German women. For the hearth is the right, honorary seat of women; the woman must be educated through and for the house; the family is her proper world.”24 So claimed Dr. J. Scheinert in Die Erziehung des Volkes durch die Schule (The Education of the Nation at School, 1845), a book that he apparently plagiarized from J. Willm’s The Education of the People: A Practical Treatise (1843): “‘[I]t has been largely pillaged, both in France and Germany,’” lamented the preface to a later edition of Willm’s book. Die Erziehung des Volkes “‘has stolen almost every sentence of his work, without citing his

21 M. Bonin, June 8, 1855. 22 “Quelle est jolie la langue allemande.” (“How pretty the German language is.”) 23 M. Bonin, diary, June 9, 1855. 24 J. Scheinert, “Die Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechtes,” in Die Erziehung des Volkes durch die Schule, Vol. 1 (Königsberg: Bornträger, 1845), 227, https://books.google.com/books?id=JClNAAAAcAAJ.

38 name even once.’”25 Although Willm accused Scheinert of committing intellectual theft, the fact that Scheinert may have attempted to import educational principles from the British Isles to sell Germans on his stifling views on girls’ education makes this volume worthy of attention. Whereas Willm had almost nothing to say on the subject of girls, Scheinert did not believe that girls and education belonged together. He concluded that girls were too difficult to teach and incapable of learning what schools offered their pupils. For him the sexes were fundamentally different: “Woman has acumen and penetrating intellect, man profundity and reason––the theoretical side of the mind––; [she] is cunning and clever, the man wise, a quality which, on the basis of reason, outranks [the former].” Scheinert’s hierarchical thinking did not end with intellectual differences. He also believed that women were too sensual to think pure thoughts, and that they were doomed to forget everything they learned in school; it was more fitting for women to become wives and mothers.26 By implication, Scheinert argued that women’s sensuality went to waste if it were not used for the reproduction of male heirs. It is hardly surprising that separate girls’ schools existed in the nineteenth-century German educational environment, one where male pedagogues saw girls as incapable, emotional, crafty, and troublesome. Friedrich Fröbel’s Kindergarten program, little more liberal than Scheinert’s in the realm of educating girls (for those truly were Scheinert’s ideas), promoted social inclusiveness. Fröbel believed that children should be taught in public settings to make them aware of their part in a larger civic body.27 He wanted to include children from all social backgrounds together. The Prussian government, disagreeing with this aspect of Fröbel’s model, banned Kindergartens in 1851. Prussian government officials worried that allowing children of different backgrounds to intermingle and form their own alliances apart from the biological family would threaten the family’s authority over child rearing.28 Under Fröbel’s model all children played with the same toys, “a promising step. . . towards promoting a greater degree of gender equality in education,”

25 J. P. Nichol, preface to J. Willm, The Education of the People: A Practical Treatise on the Means of Extending Its Sphere and Improving Its Character (Glasgow: William Lang, 1847), iii-iv, https://books.google.com/books?id=5bA2AAAAMAAJ. 26 Scheinert, Die Erziehung des Volkes durch die Schule, 244-7. Direct quote on 244. 27 Ann Taylor Allen, “Gardens of Children, Gardens of God: Kindergartens and Day-Care Centers in Nineteenth- Century Germany,” Journal of Social History Vol. 19, no. 3 (1986): 436, in Richter, Domesticating the Public, 32. 28 Manfred Berger, Henriette Schrader-Breymann: Leben und Wirken einer Pionierin der Mädchenbildung und des Kindergartens (Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel, 1999), 25-26, in Richter, Domesticating the Public, 34.

39 but his programming clearly favored boys.29 Fröbel categorized boys’ activities as “work” and “exploration,” which took them farther and farther from the domestic sphere as they advanced in their education. Fröbel referred to girls’ activities as “life,” which focused on domestic tasks.30 His model for girls skipped over the end of Kindergarten to the late teens when girls were eligible to apprentice with a Kindergarten teacher. Despite this large gap in his educational plan, his program was one of the earliest to offer women a path to white-collar work in the public sphere. Although the members of Prussian government felt women were intellectually unqualified to deliver Fröbel’s ambitious program, women adapted his Kindergarten model to suit their own educational aims. They made changes to subject matter and modes of instruction to complement what they felt girls needed in an educational program.31 Over the course of two generations, the Bonin family took part in a variety of educational opportunities including private tutoring, public schools, and notable private institutes for women and men. There was nothing domestic about Marie’s travels; borrowing Fröbel’s dichotomy, Marie’s travel experiences seemed like “work” and “exploration,” to Fröbel’s mind masculine activities. But unlike Fröbel’s Kindergarten boys, Marie did not find herself growing more distant from the domestic sphere; she returned to her Heimat and eventually married. By the same token, although Fröbel thought of girls’ activities as “life,” which focused on domestic tasks, it is not difficult to imagine that life took on new meaning for Marie as she chronicled her travels.32 Such meaning gave her even more reason to treat her summer travels as a de facto Bildungsreise, the best educational option for the least educated person in her family. Marie’s father, Gustav Bonin (1797-1878), lived with his parents until age nine, when his father sent him to study with a pastor in Wendisch-Lüchow, which he did for four years. Next, he attended a formal school in Gollnow. At fifteen he enrolled in the Friedrich-Werdersche Gymnasium in Berlin. After voluntary military service in the Pomeranian Hussar Regiment during the Napoleonic Wars (Gustav fought at Waterloo and was captured at Versailles) he continued his studies in Berlin, Göttingen, and Nassau. After completing his formal education, Gustav went on a four-month walking tour through the south of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy

29 Richter, Domesticating the Public, 31. 30 Richter, 32. 31 Richter, 31-36. 32 Richter, 32.

40 with Ernst von Bodelschwingh, a fellow future Prussian Minister of Finance.33 This latter opportunity was clearly Gustav’s Bildungsreise. Marie’s mother Maria Keller (1814-1849) was born to Gotthilf Ferdinand Keller, a merchant, and Johanne Rosine Kohlbach. Maria Keller’s father died when she was three years old.34 In 1818 Johanne married Carl Friedrich Pieschel and moved to his estate.35 Maria Keller married Gustav von Bonin in 1832, when she was approximately eighteen years old.36 With the arrival of their first child Marie, two and a half years later, Maria Keller’s own educational pursuits, whatever they might have been, could not easily remain a priority. It was sons, not daughters, upon which noble family continuation depended. Maria Keller and Gustav Bonin’s first male progeny, Giesbert (1841-1913), began his studies at the Herrnhut Institution in Niesky.37 From the spring of 1855 to 1857, he attended the prestigious Landesschule Pforta in Naumburg.38 (During the summer of 1855 he was on break: “I was roused from my reveries by the arrival of Giesbert,” recalled Marie. “We enjoyed seeing the dear boy again. . . . Giesbert had much to tell us about Schulpforta, but Weimar came too quickly for us and we had to part.”)39 After attending the Landesschule Pforta, Giesbert spent at least seven more years in various schools across Germany.40 His younger brother, Gustav Bogislav (1843- 1905), also began his formal education at the Herrnhut Institute. At age thirteen, he joined the Cadetten-Corps in Potsdam.41 Unfortunately, no other known sources speak to young Gustav’s education.

33 Udo von Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin bis zum Jahre 1863 (Berlin: R. v. Decker, 1864), 216-9, https://books.google.com/books?id=qClVNNU0llIC. See also Mathias Tullner, “Gustav Carl Giesbert Heinrich Wilhelm Gebhard von Bonin,” Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon, accessed June 5, 2018, http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/mbl/Biografien/0621.htm. 34 “Orte: Altenplathow bei Genthin (1911-1918),” Familienverband der Familie v. Treskow, accessed October 14, 2017, http://www.treskowpage.com/03_orte/03_orte_altenplathow.html. No author or direct sources are apparent. Though a problematic source for academic research, Bonin and related family researchers often cite this webpage. A future archival visit to Germany will incorporate an attempt to verify or dispute this rumor. 35 For details of Gustav Bonin and Maria Keller’s marriage, see U. Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin, 217-9. For details of Johanne Kohlbach and Gotthilf Keller’s marriage, see Ausgewählte Ahnentafeln der EDDA, 1:267, 304. Carl von Pieschel died on January 31, 1855, four months before the Bonin family trip. 36 U. Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin, 219. 37 Mareike Vorsatz, “Giesbert Gustav Boguslaw Karl von Bonin,” Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon, last updated February 1, 2005, http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/mbl/Biografien/0729.htm. 38 Petra Mücke, email message to author, 21 June 2018. Mücke, academic librarian at Landesschule Pforta, confirmed Giesbert’s dates of attendance at Landesschule Pforta. 39 M. Bonin, diary, May 30, 1855. 40 U. Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin, 247. 41 U. Bonin, 247-8.

41 Records for Marie’s education are just as sparse. It is not known whether she attended school before age fifteen. In 1850, she moved away to Altenburg to attend the Magdalenen-Stift, only staying through the spring of 1851. German girls generally did not go to school past age sixteen. Marie’s younger sister, Frieda (1839–1891?), also enrolled at the Magdalenen-Stift in 1850.42 Because she was just eleven years old, she was able to stay in school for a number of years.43 In the spring of 1855, she earned the distinction of der Vergoldeten Rose (the Gilded Rose), an honor reserved for young women who attended the Stift a minimum of five years.44 (She completed her studies just in time for the Bonin family trip.) Anna, Marie’s youngest sibling, was born in 1848. Of the Bonin sisters, she enjoyed the earliest start to her education. The provost at the Magdalenen-Stift, Elisabeth Gräfin von Zedlitz- Trützschler, took Anna under her wing: “[S]ince I was so little when I arrived at the Stift, she showed more care and interest in me than in all the others,” wrote Anna in her 1912 memoir, confessing that the reason she began her studies so young was her “wild” behavior. Apparently, Gustav’s sister could not control her.45 Elizabeth had a calming effect on Anna, who recalled afternoons spent in the provost’s parlor doing handicrafts and listening to recitations of novels and Elisabeth’s own poetry. Elisabeth served her pupils afternoon tea; Anna felt that she treated the girls as adults. Like her older sister Frieda, Anna completed the requisite five years of study to earn the Vergoldeten Rose.46 Although Marie’s formal studies lasted just one year, she used her family’s long days in Paris and other urban places to educate herself further. She took a special interest in French and German history, architecture, and foreign languages including French and English. Although the German private educational system expected noble maidens to learn French for social purposes,

42 Genealogisches Taschenbuch der freiherrlichen Häuser (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1930), 120. 43 Diemel, Adelige Frauen im bürgerlichen Jahrhundert, 56-66. The decision to attending school for longer periods was a difficult choice for noble girls’ families. On the one hand, provosts allowed their students to travel. Conversely, single young ladies at Stiften did not have as positive a reputation as married women, the latter of whom were doing their civic duty by managing a household and raising children. For a discussion of German girls and duty to nation, see Askey, Good Girls, Good Germans, 5. 44 Capitaine, Unser Liebes Stift, 128. 45 Anna Zedlitz-Neukirch, Aus frohen Jugendtagen (Stuttgart: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1912), 31. 46 Zedlitz-Neukirch, quoted in Capitaine, Unser Liebes Stift, 130. Capitaine did not indicate which pages he cited. See also U. Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin, 219. A sixth Bonin sibling, Olga Caroline Giesbertha, was born in 1837 and died in 1840. For a discussion of the subversive nature of afternoon needlework activities in girls’ schools, see Governess: A Repertory of Female Education (London: Darton, 1855), 294. https://books.google.com/books?id=W7cEAAAAQAAJ.

42 Marie applied her knowledge of this language to an intellectual pursuit. She also wanted to understand the processes skilled craftsmen used to create their wares. People, places, and objects––tour guides, cities, buildings, works of art, and more––were her unwitting players in this summer school of her own making. Tour guides functioned as de facto teachers in Marie’s version of the Bildungsreise, granting her access to knowledge she would never have gained in the domestic sphere alone. In Baden-Baden on the fifth day of the Bonin family trip, an early twelfth-century castle overlooking the Black Forest was Marie’s classroom: “[W]e took the path to the old castle. . . . I have never seen more superb ruins. . . . Now we climbed around inside the old walls and looked at the largest chambers, where earlier the Margraves of Baden had dwelt, and where now trees and grass grow. These old walls, which are already so very decayed, were the only witnesses of the past.”47 Marie had an intense interest in historical knowledge and possessed a keen awareness of her connection to the deep past. Here her personification of the castle indicates she also appreciated the value of subjective experience. Marie made similar observations about Strasbourg, which the family reached later that same day. She wrote that Strasbourg Cathedral “makes a magnificent, beautiful impression.” It was not just the cathedral, but also its architect that intrigued Marie: “We. . . went into the house where Erwin von Steinbach, the master builder of this gorgeous cathedral, had lived. Legend has it that his daughter, Sabina, helped him draw up the plans for the cathedral.”48 Here Marie’s fascination with history intertwined with the experiences of a historical woman. While the subject of women’s experiences was a common thread in other women diarists’ writing, it was a rarity for Marie, whose subject matter rarely intersected with that of published feminist writers who were her contemporaries.49 More fascinating for Marie even than women’s experiences were things she could not see at home, not only Strasbourg Cathedral but also the Madeleine Church in Paris, which she saw on a guided tour a few days later: “This church has the form of a Greek temple. A Corinthian portico runs around the building, and a mighty stairway leads to the vestibule.”50 In most cases of

47 M. Bonin, diary, June 3, 1855. 48 M. Bonin, June 3, 1855. 49 For further discussion of women writing about women, see Muellner, “Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers on the Railroad,” 32. 50 M. Bonin, diary, June 6, 1855.

43 building tours, Marie made copious notes about various architectural features. She possessed a keen awareness of those features that distinguished one architectural style from another, and she frequently made comparisons among these. This was the case with her experience at Nôtre Dame de Paris, in her words, “a great monument to Gothic architecture.” Marie’s observations about this structure demonstrated her attention to details of shifts in architectural styles: “Although this work comprises many centuries, its Hauptfaçade [main façade] sustains the character of unification throughout.” At the same time, she was critical of more recent modifications to the structure: “The vast expanse of the nave. . . make[s] a fantastic impression, which is admittedly somewhat disturbed by various modern Ornamente. – The interior of the Notre Dame51 did not please me as much as that of the Strasbourg Cathedral.”52 Marie applied her knowledge of Strasbourg Cathedral as a comparison with Nôtre Dame, and the former won her greatest admiration. At the Hôtel des Invalides, Marie toured the final resting place of Napoléon Bonaparte: “Vis à vis the entrance, a magnificent high altar is built. . . . A Marmortreppe [marble staircase] behind the high altar leads down into the Krypta [crypt]; a Bronzethür [bronze door] leads to the crypt itself.” Marie took note of not only the crypt’s arrangement and building materials but also the inscription chiseled above its entrance, “the words of the Emperor, ‘Je désire que mes cendres reposent sur les bords de la Seine, au milieu de ce peuple français que j’ai tant aimé.’”53 She did not include a German translation, so it is logical to assume she knew enough of the language that she would be able to look back on this moment later and still understand the text. The inclusion of examples of French language outside the context of speech indicates Marie used it for reasons beyond social expectations for women; these were intellectual applications of French. Marie also had a strong interest in learning the process of skilled craftsmanship, the highlight for her being what she observed at the Manufacture des Gobelins in Paris: “The workrooms are quite worth seeing, as well as the halls in which a host of lovely tapestries are being exhibited. . . . The creation of these refined tapestries is exceedingly laborious; for a rather

51 Marie consistently spelled Nôtre Dame without a carat. 52 M. Bonin, diary, June 7, 1855. 53 M. Bonin, June 6, 1855; “I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine among the people of France whom I so much loved.” Karine Huguenaud, trans., “Les Invalides, The Military Museum and Tomb of Napoleon,” Fondation Napoléon, accessed June 16, 2018, https://www.napoleon.org/en/magazine/places/les-invalides-the-military- museum-and-tomb-of-napoleon/.

44 large tableau, a worker needs 5 years, if he works from morning until night.” It was not just the technical ability required to produce these tapestries that impressed Marie. On a subjective note, she admired their appearance: “The work is wonderful; it is all made in the style of oil paintings.”54 This last remark also betrayed prior knowledge of fine arts technique and style. Paris made a fantastic classroom for Marie, and not just its ruins, cathedrals, and monuments. After dark, her self-education continued: “In the Champs-Élysées an active life prevails, we were especially drawn in by the chantant [singing] cafés. It was quite entertaining to see and to hear how. . . songstresses let their voices ring out through the night. . . . We amused ourselves listening for a moment at two such places; the singing was dreadful.”55 opera houses, hotels, late-night cafés, and throngs of people in motion caught her attention and found their way onto the pages of her diary. These spectacles showed her the real, modern-day Paris not found on guided tours.

Subversion Traveling through foreign places thrust Marie into a world of strength and independence, traits that, in the eyes of nineteenth-century and earlier Germans according to Karin Hausen, excluded women.56 Marie’s travel diary subverted the existence of the “separate spheres” that barred women from participation in public life. While nightlife in Paris excited Marie, her subversive moments often came during the day. Quiet moments on trains allowed Marie opportunities to express in writing opinions and observations she wished to keep to herself but did not wish to forget. Not a “journeyer” in Robinson-Tomsett’s sense of the word, Marie preferred “micro-subversions” of social norms for women, deviations so small and subtle that they would go unnoticed. Marie chose to view this trip not of her making as her own. She decided to “appear glad” rather than reveal her disdain for the excursion to her father who planned it.57 If she could not construct her itinerary as could Robinson-Tomsett’s “journeyer,” at least she could select her mood, which she did frequently and from the start: “At 5 o’clock in the morning, we made our way to the station in Guntershausen,” Marie wrote on day two, “and since the train was not yet

54 M. Bonin, June 6, 1855. 55 M. Bonin, June 10, 1855. 56 For an exhaustive list of character traits, see Karin Hausen, “Family and Role-Division,” 55-56. 57 M. Bonin, diary, May 30, 1855.

45 here when we arrived, we walked a little in the beautiful sunshine and saw Guntershausen & its gorgeous surroundings in the light of day.”58 Meandering through this remote train station not far from Brettin gave Marie solitude within (or independence from) her touring party, and the opportunity to sidestep the authority of her father to enjoy a temporary absence of deadlines and destinations. Later that same day, while walking the grounds of Heidelberg Castle, Marie’s father returned to the base of the castle, which gave Marie some much needed space to work out her emotions: “Since the rain had abated, Papa went down to fetch the others, and I found myself alone here, high in the air, alone with my God and my [feelings of] love. I felt so happy up here, I strode along the cliff’s edge, and felt so sure.” Gustav would bring the rest of the touring party back soon, so Marie had limited time to confront her romantic feelings for Max von Kracht: “I felt. . . so light, as if I could fly away, far away to him, to whose name I pronounced, for the first time now, complete, unending longing.”59 If she spoke her feelings out loud––knowing full well that Gustav would soon return to the top of the castle with her sister Frieda, uncle Herrmann, cousin Johanne, and their au pair––Marie must have acted quickly. Using this moment of solitude (with which her father entrusted her) to proclaim her love for the very man he disdained was perhaps Marie’s greatest act of subversion apart from secret letter writing, about which we shall learn in the following chapter.

Conclusions It was not only Marie’s subversive nature, but also her experiences of fatigue and electrification, pleasure and education, that complicated her travels. While scholars of nineteenth-century travel used such categories as “authentic” traveler, “mere” tourist, and “journeyer” to describe people in motion, often dividing people’s experiences by gender or class, and while their analyses of these perceived distinct travel identities were a useful starting point, to view Marie as either a traveler or tourist or journeyer does not capture the richness of her adventures. We must turn to her travel diary, the only known primary source written in her own hand, to discern what people, places, and sensations shaped Marie’s understanding of her connection to the larger world.

58 M. Bonin, May 31, 1855. 59 M. Bonin, May 31, 1855.

46 On the final day of the Bonin family’s stay in Paris, Marie awoke at four o’clock in the morning, drank coffee at five, and boarded a wagon by six. She came to wonder whether this would be her final goodbye to France’s capital.60 Marie loved this city, and although she only spent nine nights there she mourned leaving it. The next leg of the trip would move at a snail’s pace. After five days of brief visits with extended family in remote Prussian villages, the Bonins spent twenty-six nights in Bad Ems and, after a small hiccup in travel accommodations, twenty- nine nights in Bad Soden, where monotony ruled the day. But it was in Ems where a visit from Max changed the course of Marie’s emotional state. For the better part of three weeks, the couple was practically inseparable. A year later, Marie and Max were married in Berlin. A child followed in the first week of November 1858. Eleven days later, everything grew dark.61

60 M. Bonin, June 13, 1855. 61 U. Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin, 219. Bonin’s work claimed that Marie died November 13, 1858, eleven days after giving birth. Cf. Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der adeligen Häuser, (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1906), 7:[435] 421, http://digital.ub.uni- duesseldorf.de/ihd/periodical/pageview/8238907.

47 Chapter Three

Marie in Love: Female Agency in Romantic Courtship

August 12, 1855, was Max von Kracht’s twenty-second birthday. On Marie’s last night in Bad Soden, she wished nothing more than to be in his company: “If only I could hurry to him on the wings of love, and speak to him of how much I love him. However, distance separates us, and I remain unable to send him lines of love, therefore I can only speak my wishes to the air.” Two days away from her return to Brettin and in constant motion, it was not possible for Marie to maintain contact with Max as she had in previous months of stagnant spa town life. Because Marie’s father Gustav denounced the courtship, Marie had to exercise caution in his presence. In June and July however, with Gustav back home––and with the assistance of Marie’s close friend Ida who was a prolific letter writer, and grandmother Johanne as chaperone on numerous visits between Marie and Max––the lovers enjoyed frequent and close contact. As the end of the trip neared, Marie’s resolve was stronger than ever: “I do not have many wishes,” she wrote on Max’s birthday: “God willing, they are already coming true.”1 The greatest barrier to Marie’s personal happiness was to be sure her father, but this fact did not keep her from working with and through Ida and Johanne to maintain contact with Max. This final chapter argues that Marie’s quiet decision-making throughout her courtship with Max exemplified early to mid-nineteenth-century liberalization of women’s roles in German noble courtship and marriage. It was not just courting women but also their female compatriots (relatives and friends) who were instrumental in creating an environment in which courtship could in fact succeed. While nineteenth-century German women writers such as Luise Dittmar spoke up about the oppressive nature of the courting woman’s role in marriage, there were just as many women writers such as Luise Büchner who believed marriage remained a woman’s greatest social currency. This chapter examines changes to church- and state-based marriage laws and shifts in public attitudes toward courtship and marriage, through the lenses of those laws, as well as published conduct literature and the marriages of multiple generations of Bonins and Krachts. 1820s and 1830s church legal code and the example of the morganatic (inter-class) marriages of Marie and Max’s parents illustrate that, starting as early as the 1820s, the lived experiences of everyday women, their suitors, and their female compatriots were just as much

1 M. Bonin, diary, August 12, 1855.

48 the real marriage movement. Not always bold or conspicuous, the unassuming courtships and love marriages between people of differing or like classes, and supporting roles female friends and family played in the courtship process, quietly paved the way for women and men to marry partners of their choosing. Nineteenth-century German marriage, as a contractual agreement, required the consent of multiple parties. As a rule, churches were the ultimate authority in validating these marriages. A church law book titled Praktisches Evangelisches Kirchenrecht (Practical Evangelical Church Law, 1827) stated that parental consent was also mandatory to validate German evangelical marriages.2 Another such law handbook published in 1831 elaborated this rule. The mother’s consent was considered secondary to that of the father, and only taken into primary consideration if the father were deceased. If both parents of the betrothed were deceased, the church sought the grandparents’ consent. If the parents did not wish for the marriage to take place, they had to state their case to the church, which would then weigh the seriousness and validity of any objections. Once the ceremony ended, fathers could only invalidate the marriages of grown daughters with family consensus, and any requests for invalidation had to be made within six months of the marriage, even if the marriage were morganatic.3 Morganatic marriage was also known as “left- handed marriage,” so-called because it was said that the husband offered his left rather than his right hand to the bride, a sign of an oath that did not necessarily merit being kept.4 In most cases “polite” German society considered morganatic alliances “indisputably notorious” because they compromised the social status of the husband and any progeny.5 The morganatic marriages of both Marie von Bonin and Max von Kracht’s parents support my argument that by the first half of the nineteenth century, love marriages in Germany were already becoming increasingly possible. Max’s parents, Maximilian August von Kracht (1803-1862) and Friederike Mathilde Schultze (1812-1892), were married in 1830. Maximilian August descended from an Uradel (ancient noble) family, while Friederike Mathilde was the

2 Johann Gottlieb Ziehnert, ed., Praktisches Evangelisches Kirchenrecht, mit besonderer Hinsicht auf Sachsen, Preußen und andere evangelische Länder, für Prediger, angehende Superintendenten und Juristen, (Meissen: Friedrich Wilhelm Goedsche, 1827), 2:313-4, https://books.google.com/books?id=bwdFAAAAcAAJ. 3 Gustav Alexander Bielitz, Handbuch des Preußischen Kirchenrechts (Leipzig: August Lehnhold, 1831), 161-5, 181, https://books.google.com/books?id=ysxEAAAAcAAJ. 4 Albert Montefiore Hyamson, A Dictionary of English Phrases: Phraseological Allusions, Catchwords [. . .]. (London: Routledge, 1922), 219, https://books.google.com/books?id=o7NZAAAAMAAJ. 5 Aemilius Ludwig Richter and Robert Schneider, eds., Kritische Jahrbücher für deutsche Rechtswissenschaft, 5th ed. (Leipzig: Bernh. Tauchnitz, 1841), 9:1098-102, https://books.google.com/books?id=rHtkAAAAcAAJ. Direct quotation on 1099.

49 daughter of a merchant, Carl Gottlob Nathannel [sic] Schultze. As their marriage record shows, the couple had their parents’ permission to wed.6 Marie’s parents, Maria Keller and Gustav Bonin, were married in 1834. Maria was the only daughter of a deceased merchant, Gotthilf Keller, and his wife, Johanne Kohlbach. (By implication Johanne, a widow, gave direct consent for her daughter to marry; she was used to exercising power regarding courtship and marriage. We will see shortly that Max also respected this power of hers.) Gustav, on the other hand, was Uradel. Because his father Gustav Ferdinand Bogislav von Bonin (1773-1837) was still living at the time of Maria and Gustav’s marriage, Gustav Ferdinand must have given his consent.7 As the marriages of Marie and Max’s parents demonstrate, nineteenth-century German lovers and members of their social circles could convince parents––usually fathers and sometimes at the urging of grandmothers––to let them wed partners of their own choosing. Despite the growing acceptance of love marriages, money and social status remained important factors. In these cases, marriages were arranged. German noble society introduced its maidens to potential suitors as early as six years old, and noble children rarely disobeyed their family’s directives regarding choice of partner.8 Published German women writers began criticizing arranged marriage as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Feminist and journalist Luise Dittmar’s Das Wesen der Ehe (The Nature of Matrimony, 1849) criticized marriage for financial gain, although she characterized the practice as inevitable, conceding that at least men had the luxury of marrying for love. (This problematic supposition allowed that men such as Marie and Max’s fathers could marry partners of their choosing, but it did not consider that Marie and Max’s mothers might just as easily have married for love. We cannot know Friederike Schultze and Maria Keller’s feelings toward their husbands in the absence of documentary evidence to this point.) While Luise felt that romantic love was personal, she emphasized that “family as a social entity” represented the interests of the state and its marriage laws; marriage was equally a social and economic contract.9 In 1852, Luise’s cynical assessment of marriage became Prussian law. All applicants for marriage had to prove their ability to support a family. They also had to have a good reputation

6 Maximilian August Von Kracht, in Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1971 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Film Number: 71207. 7 U. Bonin, Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin, 182. 8 Diemel, Adelige Frauen im bürgerliche Jahrhundert, 47, 50. 9 Richter, Domesticating the Public, 99-100.

50 in their community (which circumstance Mack Walker’s German Home Towns explored in depth). To this end, government officials were almost as complicit in preventing marriages as were community members in hometowns. All one had to do to put a stop to a marriage was utter a negative word about one party or the other to a man serving the local or state government, and the union would not be allowed to take place. On the other hand, this law did not insist that both applicants belong to the same social class.10 Luise Büchner’s Die Frauen und ihr Beruf (Women and Their Work, 1855), which characterized marriage as woman’s ultimate destiny, seemed to echo the 1852 marriage law. This Luise felt that because unmarried women were not part of a family unit, they could not support their communities to the same extent as could married women, the latter of whose contributions included, as Daniela Richter noted, reproduction, childrearing, and household management.11 For Luise a woman’s only source of power was her looks; without them marriage, and therefore the ability to support her community, would not follow. Despite this depiction of women as passive figures, Luise was critical of women’s dependence on men. She herself must have been aware of the public’s discomfort with a contradictory position on women’s roles; the first edition of Die Frauen appeared anonymously.12 Despite the 1852 Prussian law, restricting marriage to those with a positive reputation and means to support a family, the protestations of nobles who had already chosen suitors for their daughters began to lose power. If a good reputation and financial security irrespective of social status were the new priority, left-handed marriages, this would suggest, had become less taboo. As the nineteenth century progressed, marriage unions based on sexual intercourse, child-rearing, and running a household––for Luise Büchner a woman’s destiny and for twentieth-century scholar Karin Hausen lamentable––lost foothold in German society. Such was the eventual fate of supposed religious and economic duties. As early as 1827, even the German evangelical church saw marriage as a contractual and consensual union based on love.13 Nineteenth-century German nobility had its own class-based requirements for marriage which, in combination with the restrictive 1852 Prussian marriage law, would have made it more

10 Walker, German Home Towns, 396. 11 Richter, Domesticating the Public, 102. 12 Richter, 103. See also Cordelia Scharpf, Luise Büchner: A Nineteenth-Century Evolutionary Feminist (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008), 59. Subsequent editions appeared, and Büchner’s name was associated with Die Frauen starting in 1856. 13 Hausen, “Family and Role-Division,” 58-59.

51 difficult for couples to wed without the consent of fathers. For a nobleman to be eligible for marriage to a noblewoman, he must prove in most cases a nobility dating to eight generations and, of course, must have both reputation and financial means.14 Max von Kracht’s family, Uradel from west of the Elbe, were ennobled in the twelfth century, some two hundred years before the Bonin family.15 In terms of occupation, Max earned the rank of Second Lieutenant in the 8th Regiment of the Prussian army in 1852, which meant he could support a family in accordance with the new marriage law.16 However, despite meeting these stringent qualifications, Marie’s travel diary made it clear that her father Gustav objected to Max as a suitor. Whatever his reasons, for the duration of the Bonin family trip, Gustav could not be moved. With the help of Marie’s grandmother Johanne and Marie’s friend Ida, Marie and Max courted in secret. Regardless of the obstacle of Gustav’s disapproval, someone succeeded in changing Gustav’s mind. On August 12, 1856, he gave the German evangelical church written consent to the marriage, and was the first parent of the couple to do so.17 Max’s father gave consent on August 22. On October 1, Marie and Max were married in Brettin.18 The secretive nature of the couple’s courtship, together with Johanne and Ida’s support, is the subject of this chapter. Methodology requisite to an analysis of the courtship explores emotional states, the writing of letters, and physical movement, and as well considers how intricate relationships among such factors affected the logistics of Marie and Max’s courtship. Excerpts from mid-nineteenth-century German letter-writing manuals demonstrate that in courtship, written correspondence played a salient role. The bulk of this chapter considers the impact Ida and Johanne as supportive players had on Marie and Max’s courtship and marriage and, most significantly, Marie’s own personal experience of courtship. As this final section will show, vagueness and yearning, optimism and silence, and trepidation were key factors in shaping Marie and Max’s courting. The lovers’ controversial yet unassuming behavior not only hid in

14 For discussion of generational requirements, see Diemel, Adelige Frauen im bürgerliche Jahrhundert. 15 Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der adeligen Häuser: der in Deutschland eingeborene Adel (Uradel), 7th edition (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1906), 415, http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/periodical/pageview/8238901. 16 “Maximilian Carl v. Kracht,” in Offizier-Stammliste des Leib-Grenadier-Regiments König Friedrich Wilhelm III (1. Brandenburgischen) Nr. 8, ed. Hugo Clemens Constantin Ludwig Eduard Kroll (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1899), 485-6, https://books.google.com/books?id=fMkOAAAAYAAJ. 17 Cite marriage record in Google Drive. Need to consult with Chicago Manual expert on genealogical records. 18 “Deutschland Heiraten, 1558-1929,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JHVW- HN1 : 11 February 2018), Maximilian Karl Von Kracht and Johanne Elisabeth Von Bonin, 01 Oct 1856; citing Milatary [sic] Records, Frankfurt Am Oder Stadt, Brandenburg, Prussia; FHL microfilm 71,207.

52 plain sight of “polite” society, but also progressed unabated and mostly without Gustav’s knowledge. Fortunately for the couple, between late summer 1855 and autumn 1856, someone won Gustav over to the bourgeois cause of marriage for love.

Material Evidence and Chronologies: Letters, Locations, and Attitudes A targeted reading of Marie’s diary reveals three distinct, related chronologies: dates of letters Marie and others wrote and received; the physical locations of Marie, Max, Johanne, Gustav, and others throughout the summer of 1855; and––perhaps most tantalizing––Marie’s attitudes toward and awareness of Max’s and her own emotions. Typing search terms into my electronic transcription of Marie’s diary revealed relevant passages. Overlaying the resulting chronologies, I reconstructed three and a half months of Marie and Max’s courtship, which ostensibly began before the Bonin family trip. It is likely that Marie was aware of Max’s affections prior to the initial May 30 diary entry, in which case for Marie the trip was not about wooing Max. I contend that Marie had two plans. First, she would seek her father’s approval of Max as suitor. Failing that, she would hatch secret plans for a future she believed her father could only denounce. In the case of the correspondence, I searched for “geschrieben” (wrote) and “Brief” (letter), returning dozens of search results. Of these, a handful related to Marie and Max’s courtship. Marie stayed busy in written pursuit of her lover: “There is not a day gone by that I have not written 1–2 letters,” Marie noted on July 21, six days after parting ways with Max and arriving in Bad Soden.19 Her diary refers to ten individual letters and several more (which are impossible to quantify). While she did not transcribe any of their contents, she did summarize their significance and name their authors. Between May and August, letters sent among Marie, Ida, Max, and Johanne reveal a secretive plan to join Marie and Max in marriage. To determine the location of people––an essential component of Marie and Max’s courtship––I searched my electronic transcription for individual names: “Großmama,” Ida and “Idchen,” and “Papa” and “Papachen.” Although Marie avoided using Max’s name in her writing, she referred to him well over a hundred times in pronoun form: “I have yet to say a word of thanks to him since His arrival;”20 “ihm dem Heisgeliebten” (“him, the most beloved”);21 etc.

19 M. Bonin, diary, July 21, 1855. 20 M. Bonin, June 27, 1855. 21 M. Bonin, July 15, 1855.

53 Her thoughts about Max were everywhere. Many specific moments in Marie’s diary revealed where people throughout the family trip were located. Notably on June 16, Gustav returned home to Brettin. (Presumably he remained there for the rest of the family trip since he sent a letter from Brettin on July 3, and was at the local train station to greet his family upon their return August 14.) His absence from most of the family trip was just as crucial as Johanne’s presence, to the success of Marie and Max’s courtship. Attitudes toward courtship are revealed in the veiled tone of Marie’s writing: “To me it was as if I had to call out one last farewell to you,” she lamented on June 3, only the fifth day of the trip: “Yet thoughts know no limits or barriers, and so they will arrive in B[erlin] and R[ummelsburg] with the same rapidity, and from there I will also be remembered [by Max and Ida] with the same immense love.”22 Her anxiety did not stem from wondering where Max stood; his “same immense love” was already known to her. Marie’s greatest obstacle during the summer of 1855 was Gustav’s denouncement of her plans for life with a spouse of her own choosing. The practice of letter writing; the appearance and disappearance of Max, Johanne, and Gustav; the constant absence of Ida; and finally, Marie’s awareness of Max’s love worked in concert to support/allow the secret courtship. How these individuals reflected or rejected social norms of nineteenth-century German noble family dynamics further clarifies why the courtship succeeded.

Courtly Co-Conspirators Marie’s family and Ida served as the nexus of her lived experiences in mid-nineteenth- century Prussia. Ida functioned as confidante and accomplice during the courtship with Max. Ida could sidestep social conventions without immediate consequence since she was not family. Johanne exerted significant influence over matters of her noble family, contradicting historian of German nobility Christa Diemel’s assessment that the reach of extended familial influence was automatically limited. Marie found herself caught between those who would help or hinder her efforts to court and marry Max von Kracht. Gustav possessed rank and wealth; he projected ultimate familial authority which, over time, became entangled with outward affection, as Marie’s descriptions of him––and his eventual consent to the marriage––demonstrate. These

22 M. Bonin, June 3, 1855.

54 people in Marie’s close circles fulfilled their respective parts, willing or otherwise, in the courtship and marriage of Marie’s own choosing. That Gustav eventually changed his mind about his oldest daughter’s suitor suggests and possibly enlarges the significance of the role each person in Marie and Max’s social circles played.

Ida Details of Ida’s life are not known. Marie did not write Ida’s surname anywhere in her diary, though why should she? There must have been only one Ida in her life, and she occupied a place of importance. Marie only recorded that Ida lived in Rummelsburg, a southeastern exclave of Berlin, but wrote nothing about her parents, her childhood, education, or marital status. It is unlikely that she and Marie met at the Magdalenen-Stift girls’ school; no pupils or teachers named Ida were associated with the school in the years Marie and her sisters attended.23 Despite Ida’s lack of biography, she played a salient role in the courtship of Marie and Max. While Diemel did not address the supporting role of female friendship in the courtship process, I contend that without Ida, Marie and Max could not have stayed in such frequent contact. Ida’s summer 1855 correspondence with Marie began near the end of May and continued well into July, by which time Marie and Max had met multiple times––and in person––and without Gustav’s knowledge. Ida knew of these meetings and even helped to orchestrate some by mail. Frequent meetings between Ida and Max in Rummelsburg, during which Marie was often the topic of conversation, also played a part in bringing the couple closer to their hopes of marriage.24 Marie often wrote of her love for Ida and for Max in the same breath. Nowhere was this the case more than on June 3 in Baden-Baden, where Marie could not seem to shake feelings of loneliness: “The country is for the most part very pretty, yet, despite all of that, my thoughts are indeed a great deal with my Idchen. . . I thought about her quite vividly, and in spirit have sent to her, and to him [Max], many 1000 greetings from this foreign land.”25 For Marie this may have been insurance against her father deducing that she loved Max to the extent that she did. If

23 For lists of students and pupils, see G. Besser, appendices, Beiträge zur Geschichte des freiadeligen Magdalenen- Stifts zu Altenburg im Herzogtum Sachsen-Altenburg (Altenburg: Oskar Bonde, 1892). 24 Future research will explore Ida and Max’s relationship. 25 M. Bonin, diary, June 3, 1855.

55 Gustav were to read the diary, he would see that Marie also loved her dearest friend Ida and would think nothing of the girls’ friendly affections. Ida penned a letter to Marie around the date of the Bonin family’s departure from Brettin. On June 8, Marie received her close friend’s “word of caution;” Ida’s letter was intended for Marie’s eye only: “[S]ince Frieda and [Cousin] Johanne were in the room, I stuck the letter in my pocket, where it most certainly was dismissed.” What was on Ida’s mind is, without reading her actual letter, lost. Marie’s reactions to the letter reveal a missive companion, a poem Max wrote on a “rose-colored insert.”26 The poem was code for Max’s romantic intentions, and the fact that Ida enclosed it in one of her own letters demonstrates the risk she was willing to take to ensure the lovers could communicate remotely when Gustav’s physical presence made Max’s impossible. Gustav was still with the traveling party when the letter and secret poem arrived––he would return home to Brettin the following week––and so Ida’s discretion was necessary in the event that he somehow got hold of her letter and its poem companion. No one else in Marie’s life, not even members of her own family, went to such lengths to assist the lovers in courting. Finally alone, Marie set her mind to penning a response, although anything she might write to Ida seemed inadequate: “[W]hen there is such distance between two people, so is this writing indeed only a surrogate; therefore one must commit one’s thoughts and feelings to paper.”27 Marie was grateful for Ida’s selfless and daring act and loved her as earlier passages of the diary indicated. A smuggled poem was only the beginning of Ida’s intervention on the lovers’ behalf. With Gustav returning to Brettin the following week, Ida decided to help the couple arrange a meeting. She wrote again to Marie, who observed: “This dear letter was really the first ray of light in the dark of the present time, indeed I should first expect him [Max] here at the end of the week.” She did not have to wait quite so long; Max arrived that very afternoon. By this time Marie had become aware that he loved her “rapturously.” Max did not tell her so himself; Ida’s letter of June 26 relayed the message. Max did not wish for Marie to speak of her feelings in return, perhaps as a precaution considering Gustav’s disapproval. Fortunately, Ida was a willing and eager messenger.28

26 M. Bonin, June 8, 1855. 27 M. Bonin, June 9, 1855. 28 M. Bonin, June 26, 1855.

56 Marie did not hear from Ida again until mid-July, but suffering her close friend’s temporary silence was worth the wait: How great was my elation as I just now read the dear, long letter from my darling Ida. . . and I discovered. . . that which I had hardly allowed myself to get my hopes up about, and that which, through a miracle, now found itself in my hands. How thankful I was about all of this. . . and how I looked forward to the next day. . . since I. . . read the letter from him. . . . Within it I found confirmed all that my Idchen so often wrote to me.29 The passage makes no direct references to Max or to marriage, but surely Marie could only have meant that Max told Ida he planned to ask for Marie’s hand in marriage. Marie’s description of Ida’s letter was necessarily vague.30 She continued to fear her father would learn of her feelings for Max. Gustav’s return to Brettin meant he would be waiting for her at the end of the family trip, and even at home there was always the chance that he would happen upon her travel diary. Words and phrases such as “elation,” “get my hopes up,” and “miracle” in the entry evoked positive connotations, and yet were vague enough not to arouse suspicion should Gustav read them. By shifting the focus of the entry away from her lover and toward her closest friend, Marie made it difficult for others to guess the meaning of her written account. In the process, she also credited Ida for her supporting role as close friend and intermediary. Though Ida was not immediate or extended family, both categories of people important in the planning of noble-class marriages, her indirect role made it possible for the lovers to stay in contact during the summer months of 1855.

Johanne Rumors suggest that Marie’s grandmother was born out of wedlock to a prince and his mistress.31 If true then estrangement from her birth father––and therefore his surname, title, and landholdings––meant she could only legitimate herself through marriage. She married twice. Her first husband, Marie’s maternal grandfather, Gotthilf Keller, was a merchant. He died in December 1817, early in the marriage. Johanne quickly moved on. She and factory owner Carl

29 M. Bonin, July 21, 1855. 30 For a discussion of women writing “modestly,” see Muellner, “Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers on the Railroad,” 32. 31 “Orte: Altenplathow bei Genthin (1911-1918),” Familienverband der Familie v. Treskow, accessed October 14, 2017, http://www.treskowpage.com/03_orte/03_orte_altenplathow.html. The father was supposedly Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Lüneburg-Oels (1771–1815).

57 Friedrich Pieschel announced their engagement mid-August 1818 and were married in October of the same year.32 No known records speak to Johanne’s personal satisfaction in either marriage, though it can be reasoned she enjoyed the financial and social benefits of marriage to Carl. His chicory plant was quite successful, his employees admired him, and his work with poor children through a school his uncle founded earned him the admiration of neighbors.33 Two decades into their marriage, King Friedrich IV of Prussia titled Carl (now von) Pieschel for his contributions to economic development in the village of Altenplathow near Brettin.34 Although Johanne’s children with Gotthilf remained members of the merchant class, from 1840 to Carl’s death in January 1855, Johanne enjoyed the social benefits of marriage to a member of the noble class. Just how much of Johanne’s own experience in courtship and marriage influenced her opinion of Marie’s courtship with Max von Kracht we cannot know, but Marie’s writing makes it clear that she and her grandmother were close. On the first day of the Bonin family’s summer trip, they had to depart from Genthin quickly because of the sudden rain, a departure that, for Johanne, was emotional. (Perhaps it was the newness of widowhood. Carl died in January of that year.) Grandmother and granddaughter were not apart for long. On June 16, Johanne reunited with her family in the town of Hamm. She arrived by Coupé35 to collect her granddaughters Marie and Frieda from her son-in-law Gustav who had returned to Brettin. Marie remarked that “our traveling party had already hurried off;” her uncle Herrmann and cousin Johanne returned to Altenplathow with their au pair. Moments later a train arrived to transport Gustav. The arrival of Johanne and departure of Gustav signaled a crucial shift in the power dynamic surrounding Marie and Max’s courtship. Johanne’s position as the elder of the Bonin family, together with wealth acquired through marriage to Carl (who funded purchase of the Bonin family estate) gave her immense influence over her family’s affairs. Marie’s uncle Karl, Johanne’s son, joined the traveling party in Hamm. Marie wrote that some days her uncle Karl was intoxicated; he therefore was in no position to make decisions about travel itineraries or

32 Engagement announcement for Carl Pieschel and Johanne Keller Kohlbach, “Verlobungs- und Heiraths- Anzeigen,” Berlinische Nachrichten Von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen, no. 101 (August 22, 1818), https://books.google.com/books?id=ulNNAAAAcAAJ. 33 Obituary for Carl von Pieschel, Magdeburgische Zeitung, no. 27, February 2, 1855. See also John Kreutzmann, “Carl Friedrich von (seit 1840) Pieschel,“ in Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon, accessed June 5, 2018, http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/mbl/Biografien/0007.htm. 34 Genealogisch-Diplomatisches Jahrbuch für den Preußischen Staat und zunächst für dessen Adel und die höheren Stände überhaupt (Berlin: Carl Heymann, 1841), 1:112. See also Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadeligen Häuser, 13th ed. (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1919), 615. 35 French, horse-drawn carriage.

58 anything else of importance. Another relative, Minna, joined the family later in the summer, although Marie did not make clear just when Minna arrived or who she was, and gave no indication that Minna held any authority. Johanne not only made decisions about travel but also commanded the respect of her family. If by the end of the day Johanne felt tired, Marie made every effort not to disturb her, and when Marie felt distraught after a lengthy visit with Max ended, she did everything in her power not to let her sadness show: “I want to endeavor to appear glad, since it is indeed my duty to cheer up Großmamachen, and not to make her feel dismal through my sadness.”36 Marie loved her grandmother and showed deference. In Ems, Johanne and her son Karl gave the couple space by walking ahead during a long promenade: “I could talk with him completely undisturbed,” Marie wrote.37 Promenades were a standard part of courtship, as was the necessity that someone observe the couple’s interaction at all times, dinners, too. Johanne enjoyed meals with the couple and the rest of the Bonin family still on the trip, a sign of her approval of the couple’s romantic involvement. To take Marie’s diary at face value, Johanne had no negative words to say about her granddaughter’s suitor. In Gustav’s absence Johanne received an important letter. The sender was Max, an indication he acknowledged Johanne’s familial authority and perhaps denied Gustav’s. The diary does not spell out the letter’s contents, but it is plausible that Max wrote to Johanne to ask her advice about approaching Gustav for Marie’s hand. Communicating about marriage proposals by mail during this period––and even mailing the proposals themselves––was accepted practice. Letter-writing manuals such as Otto Friedrich Rammler’s Universal-Briefsteller oder Musterbuch (Universal Guide to Letter Writing or Book of Examples, 1848) recommended that suitors send Bewerbungsschreiben (letters of application) to “parents and other people who have significant influence over the beloved and must therefore be in agreement with them.” Such letters should not only express sincere affection for the person the suitor wished to marry, but also “clear up all objections that might possibly arise.”38 Whatever Gustav’s complaints about Max, a letter of application to Johanne––who by all accounts approved of the young lieutenant–– would likely yield more favorable results.

36 M. Bonin, diary, July 15, 1855. 37 M. Bonin, June 30, 1855. 38 Wilhelm Hoffmann, ed., Otto Friedrich Rammler’s Universal-Briefsteller oder Musterbuch zur Abfassung aller in den allgemeinen und freundschaftlichen Lebensverhältnissen, sowie im Geschäftsleben vorkommenden Briefe, Documente und Aufsätze, 18th ed. (Leipzig: Otto Wigand: 1848), 291, https://books.google.com/books?id=MZFCAAAAcAAJ.

59 On the final day of the Bonin family travels, the abrupt appearance of Max must have surprised Johanne nearly as much as it did Marie: “All of a sudden Großmama says, ‘There is Mr. v. Kracht,’” Marie recalled. Theirs was mostly a pleasant reunion. The family, together with Max, traveled to the home of Marie’s uncle Friedrich and aunt Johanne von Schnehen in Magdeburg. Johanne (who was Johanne Kohlbach and Carl von Pieschel’s daughter) seemed to approve of Max, too.39 Marie, grandmother, and aunt enjoyed their time with him: “[W]e prattled away for probably a half an hour,” Marie recalled in her diary. But her uncle was not so kind to Max, who “found himself not so à son aise [at ease]” with Friedrich. The surprise visit at an end, the family headed toward Brettin. Max rode with them to the Magdeburg station, and on the train as far as Burg, despite the unfortunate fact that “Uncle made dumb remarks again.” But Johanne and Marie were not deterred. At home Gustav would learn that Max had visited with the family, “which would no doubt result in a struggle,” but with Johanne’s unwavering support, if not outright insistence, Marie and Max would find a way to enjoy a future of their own making.40

Marie and Max “I keep many of my ideas to myself when they concern certain matters; Yes [sic] many are my thoughts which I kept hidden even from myself,” wrote Marie in Heidelberg on day two of her travels.41 Ambiguous remarks punctuated a good portion of Marie’s written chronicle, and she had all reason to remain cautious. Her father’s disapproval of Max meant Marie could not be too careful with words. If Gustav were to read her diary––as nineteenth-century parents often did to ensure their children wrote about morally and socially acceptable subjects––he would find no direct mention of Max until the diary’s penultimate page. How Marie wrote about courtship changed throughout her chronicle. Between Genthin and Paris, descriptions of her relationship were vague and full of yearning. In Ems, she wrote relatively little because she and Max were busy courting actively in person, and what she did write contained numerous silences. A day trip to Koblenz with Max on July 9 changed her outlook. From that day to almost the trip’s end, her tone shifted from one of quiet, ambiguous longing to an attitude of grateful optimism. As long as her father remained in Brettin, Marie felt

39 There are three Johannes in this story: Johanne Kohlbach, Marie’s grandmother; Johanne (Pieschel) von Schnehen, Marie’s aunt; and Johanne (von) Keller, Marie’s cousin. 40 M. Bonin, diary, August 14, 1855. 41 M. Bonin, May 31, 1855.

60 free to acknowledge her desires. On the day she returned home, she grew anxious about how her father would react to the knowledge that she had spent time in Max’s company. Thus her final diary entry resonates with trepidation. Such attitudinal changes reveal not only the degree to which Marie was sensitive to how outside views could make or break the likelihood of marriage, but also how keenly aware she was that without Gustav’s consent no marriage could take place. To gain her father’s consent to marry the young lieutenant, someone would need to convince Gustav that Max was of good reputation and could clearly support a family. As the contents of mid-nineteenth-century letter-writing manuals suggested, much of the work toward this goal took place by mail.

Genthin to Paris: Ambiguous Longing Although Marie was clear about her genuine love for her “Papachen,” brief moments away from Gustav allowed her to work through the realization that she was in love with a man her father would prefer she not marry. The necessity that Gustav consent to marriage to Max was a profound obstacle to Marie’s joy, but mid-nineteenth-century letter-writing manuals suggested happiness should not be a woman’s priority: “I must refer myself entirely to the discretion of my father,” lamented a fictive Fräulein in J. Williams and H. Döring’s The English-German Letter- Writer (1839), “whatever pain it may cost me.”42 As later clandestine meetings with her lover demonstrate, Marie was not as submissive as Williams and Döring’s invented woman. Until Marie and Max could court in person in Ems, Marie’s vivid imagination in Baden- Baden would have to suffice: “Pondering, I stood at the open window and looked out in the dark, into the crowded spaces, and thought about him, I would like to have sung: Your breaths, which You gently surround me with, oh, greet him a thousand times.”43 An attitude of vague hopelessness punctuated much of the first weeks of her travels. Of an evening at the opera in Paris, Marie wrote, “With each opening of the door, I hoped to see him walk in, yet it was mostly in vain. . . . I scrutinized the audience, especially the men.”44 Such feelings of isolation followed Marie in her sleep: “I dreamed this night so vividly of him and my Idchen, but as I awaken this

42 J. Williams and H. Döring, The English-German Letter-Writer or a Series of exquisite Letters and other Compositions relative to Private- and Commercial-Correspondence (Jena: Fr. Mauke, 1839), 84, https://books.google.com/books?id=KalCAAAAcAAJ. 43 M. Bonin, diary, June 2, 1855. 44 M. Bonin, June 6, 1855.

61 morning and find myself in Paris, so far from him, I am seized with twice the longing.”45 In the constant presence of her father, Marie could not escape the fact that, should she be so fortunate to receive a marriage proposal, all Gustav had to do to put a stop to the union was deny consent. The Prussian evangelical church would support Gustav’s decision, and that would be the end of the matter. The secret poem from Max altered Marie’s opinion of the family trip, which until this moment otherwise kept the lovers apart. She wrote, “[I]t was the first time that I held something written by his hand in my hands.” For Marie, Max’s hand-copied lines of the poem by Carl Friedrich Kretschmann were a “conscious poem with a beating heart.”46 That so intimate a communication arrived in Paris on the ninth day of the trip suggests that Max’s courtship with Marie predated her departure from Brettin. Her reaction to the poem shows no intention of relinquishing her future to a father’s plans: “I was indescribably delighted by both letter and poem, and could hardly part from them,” Marie wrote. “I would like to have looked at them forever. . . . I had no time to think of sleep; the elation had undone me too much.”47

Bad Ems: Silent Optimism During the family’s brief stay in Heeren mid-June, Marie articulated her frustrations with keeping her romantic feelings pent up around her father––“how fortunate indeed one would feel to live here [in Heeren], since the longings of the heart need not be concealed”––but she did not allow anxiety about the present to derail her hopes for the future: “I am indescribably looking forward to Ems, since I will see him there again,” she wrote.48 Gustav, who was back home in Brettin, remained unaware that his family was busy orchestrating a secret courtship. Max arrived in Bad Ems on June 24, much sooner than a recent letter from Ida indicated: “I see everything in a friendlier, brighter light since He is here. . . . How I would like to make some time with him, without being disturbed; indeed, this is a thing of impossibility, since everyone is always around, or so near to us that I am always thinking, every word can be heard,” Marie lamented, “and so sometimes I can hardly come to answer him.” Max also expressed little in the way of his feelings for Marie. While he shared with Ida that he loved Marie “rapturously,”

45 M. Bonin, June 7, 1855. 46 M. Bonin, June 8, 1855. 47 M. Bonin, June 8, 1855. 48 M. Bonin, June 15, 1855.

62 his behavior echoed that of an anonymous suitor as characterized in Rammler’s Universal Guide to Letter-Writing. As the suitor, Rammler wrote, “[T]oday I take refuge in writing to tell you what I must tell you and yet can not [sic] say aloud. Do you not suspect what it is, my dear Louise? I love you, that’s it.”49 True to the rules of nineteenth-century courtship, Marie wrote that Max would not condone her wish to speak her feelings of love to him: “He has not allowed me to say it yet, we are obliged to silence, and may only speak with glances.”50 The couple’s courtship unfolded largely on paper to conform with social norms, yet it also took place in secret to avoid Gustav’s consternation about their intentions. “Today we stayed behind the others some of the time, and I could tell him that I wrote to Papa, and that I notified him of his presence,” Marie wrote on June 27. No letter-writing manuals included sample letters from hopeful daughters to disapproving fathers, and so Marie’s missive to Gustav was uncharted territory. Too bad for Marie that her father had a poor opinion of the young lieutenant; Max’s deferential treatment of Marie bespoke his gentlemanly upbringing: “It is touching, how anxious He is around me, and how He hurries to fulfill even the smallest of my wishes. – Alas, he is indeed very good, and has such a noble disposition, and rightfully deserves that one has so deeply and truly loved him.” Max made sacrifices to be in Marie’s company: “[H]e is so far from Heimath, here in this strange place where He knows so few people, where He is alone so many hours of the day,” she wrote. “He has done all of this for my sake.”51

Between July 1 and July 9, days Marie predicted would be “[a] beautiful time,” her pen fell silent.52 Max spent the better part of three weeks in Marie’s company, during which time the couple’s courtship naturally progressed. An inscribed leaf memorialized an intimate day trip to Koblenz (Fig. 1): “In memory of the 9th of July 1855 when we were in the garden of the Hôtel belle vue and at Stolzenfels [Castle].”53

49 “Geständniß der Liebe an ein Mädchen, mit dem man schon länger bekannt ist,” in Hoffmann, Otto Friedrich Rammler’s Universal-Briefsteller, 292. 50 M. Bonin, diary, June 26, 1855. 51 M. Bonin, June 27, 1855. 52 M. Bonin, June 26, 1855. 53 Maximilian von Kracht (attributed), inscribed dried leaf, July 9, 1855, private collection of the author.

63

Fig. 1. Max von Kracht (attributed), inscribed leaf, July 9, 1855, private collection of the author.

Though the scribe did not sign their work, nearby entries in Marie’s travel diary, which recount several days spent in the company of “the most beloved,” almost certainly prove it was Max. While the details of what transpired at both garden and castle are lost, that Marie kept this leaf accords the leaf and its writer a place of importance in the memorialization of her travels. Marie’s silence finally ended. She wrote, “I have spent a considerable amount of time with him, my most beloved. The days since He has been here have. . . quickly passed. Just like a beautiful dream, they have faded away.”54 Max had not yet departed, and yet Marie was already in mourning: “All happiness and all joy on the earth have but a short duration, and so then I want to

54 M. Bonin, diary, July 10, 1855.

64 be satisfied with this savored time, and appreciative of all that is afforded me. . . . He was gone (today he had, as on the past few days, had dinner with us). . . . and I caught myself crying over my thoughts.” By the same token, Marie looked forward to the future with great optimism: “[M]y heart was calm, since He had hastened to this place to be with me, and I still had the welcome prospect to travel with him to Soden.”55 The couple had plans. On July 13, Max spent the entire day with Marie. On a steamboat ride to Biebrich, he showed her his diary. A profoundly intimate gesture, Max watched as Marie read his words. She wrote of the experience, “I did not read with much interest, and I unfortunately did not retain much from it. Yet I hope that He will give me more to read later on, and because of this hope, I have kept no diary from Ems.”56 On July 15, after nearly three weeks of frequent visits together, Max accompanied Marie and her family to the train station.57 Marie chose to be optimistic: “I should be cheerful, or appear as such, though I am so sad. . . . It does my heart good to be so loved by him, and this love shall also make me strong enough to endure this separation with patience, and to encounter the future with a firm step.”58 This “firm step” was surely pressure on Gustav to consent to the marriage. Two letters arrived on July 19, one from Max to Johanne and the other from Max to Marie. It seems that Max hand delivered them: “He quickly flew through in front of the promenade again, and on my walk I was more supremely mirthful and serene than Soden had ever seen me,” wrote Marie. The letter confirmed for Marie what Ida had written to her: “There is no deeper, more precious soul than this, His, and no warmer, more devoted love than what He feels for me! . . . [H]ow thankful I am to Heaven for this love. Indeed, I also love him so intimately and truly, and the time will indeed come when I can tell him.”59 It is important to keep in mind that the couple was still bound to the social expectation that they court by letter. The impassioned tone of Marie’s writing suggests Max’s letter was the proposal. The whereabouts of the letter are not known, but a sample letter of proposal from an 1848 letter-writing manual approximates what Max’s letter may have entailed:

55 M. Bonin, July 12, 1855. 56 M. Bonin, July 13, 1855. More research needs to be done on the act of sharing diary entries as part of courtship. 57 This passage in Marie’s diary is not clear to me. She might have been in Frankfort, but the family apparently made a number of trips back and forth between Frankfort and Soden. 58 M. Bonin, July 15, 1855. 59 M. Bonin, July 21, 1855.

65 I live only for you, think only of you, only truly feel well with you. . . . [M]y only desire is to win your heart and your hand. You know me and my circumstances exactly, you must be aware of whether you can love me and live happily with me or not, so you decide, dear Louise, whether I should ask your father for your hand or not. Whatever your decision may be, rest assured that I will never cease to be Your most faithful admirer.60 It is noteworthy that this sample letter suggests the male suitor should defer to the maiden’s wishes, and that he should not pursue an answer from the father without her consent. Such rules of courtship gave the maiden a certain amount of control over at least her courtship if not her marriage. Although fathers had the final legal say in marriage consent, Marie’s reaction to Max’s letter demonstrates that she was not fazed by Gustav’s low opinion of her suitor: “When one kindred spirit finds another, there is no other option and he cannot resist,” she wrote. Marie would not accept her father’s dismissal of Max.61

Toward Home: Trepidation “The surprise was quite immense, and unfortunately the joy throughout me was diminished by the thought that always imposed itself on me. Just what will Papa say about this?” Marie could not shake the reality that she faced an uphill battle convincing her father to consent to her marrying Max. And what of Max’s father? Though Marie never mentioned the senior Maximilian von Kracht, the couple would require his consent, too. Unfortunately for Marie, Gustav was not the only Bonin–Keller family member who disapproved of Max. In Magdeburg, the couple visited with extended family: “Onkel [Uncle Schnehen] arrived, and now everything seemed somehow quite cold and prim; I was dumbstruck. Before he came it was so nice.”62 Marie did not indicate what her uncle said to make Max uncomfortable, but if Friedrich had any influence over Gustav, he could give Gustav reason to believe the couple should not wed. Friedrich did not let up on Max, even as the Bonins and the young lieutenant traveled together toward Brettin. Marie wrote that Max did not wish to draw attention to himself, especially as the train neared Genthin. Perhaps Friedrich’s comments were benign, but they were anxiety- inducing enough for Marie to take note. With the exceptions of grandmother Johanne and Ida, it

60 Hoffmann, Otto Friedrich Rammler’s Universal-Briefsteller, 292. 61 M. Bonin, diary, July 21, 1855. 62 M. Bonin, August 14, 1855.

66 seems Marie would have preferred it if no one were around the couple: “It was completely sinister to me, the number of acquaintances that regrettably appeared. Finally, the train whistled and I was on the move, and we had indeed now escaped observation. My heart felt lighter to me, yet it still beat greatly at the thought that now tomorrow Papa is to learn that He will have been in M. [Magdeburg].”63 It seemed that Friedrich had every intention of speaking ill of his niece’s suitor. If Gustav and his brother-in-law were in agreement, there might not be a wedding. Despite familial obstacles Marie chose to take matters of courtship into her own hands: “I promised him [Max] that in the morning, straight away, I would tell Papa that He was there.” At the same time, Marie recognized that such a conversation “would no doubt result in a struggle before I could even bring it up.” She would prefer to face her father’s displeasure head on than to take her chances with whatever Friedrich might say to discourage the couple’s plans. Though he did not live in the same community as his niece and her lover, should Friedrich utter a negative word about Max, it might be potent enough gossip to derail the marriage plans. Ultimately Marie chose to remain optimistic. She wanted to savor these final moments of being in Max’s presence: “I often looked out in order to see him once more, yet that was in vain. . . . Soon the train pulled away and, with it, He, yet I was calmer this time as the train disappeared from our view.”64

Conclusions While no details of Marie and Max’s wedding survive, it is clear that the ceremony took place, and that Gustav and Max’s father both gave their consent. We may never know what factors influenced the Bonin patriarch’s change of heart, but the fact of Gustav’s consent supports my argument that it was not only published feminist authors and socio-political movements, but also everyday couples who were the face of the marriage revolution. Liberalization of marriage laws demonstrates that as early as the 1820s the Prussian evangelical church was at least tolerant of love marriages, even morganatic ones such as Gustav’s 1834 marriage to Maria Keller. As love marriages gained acceptance particularly among fathers, the conservative face of marriage as an economic institution lost ground. The Landedelfräulein Marie von Bonin stood up to her father’s opposition to a courtship with Max von Kracht, and she

63 M. Bonin, August 14, 1855. 64 M. Bonin, August 14, 1855.

67 had assistance. Her close friend Ida and grandmother Johanne helped to coordinate meetings, send letters, and chaperone appropriate contact between the lovers. While gender did not play a conspicuous role in Marie’s travel account, I contend that it is no coincidence that two women advocated for a marriage that two men, Gustav and Friedrich, wished to prevent. I maintain that the notion of “separate spheres” held sway over mid- nineteenth-century Germans’ lives, yet the decisiveness of women in Marie’s intimate circles shows that women could break through such perceived dichotomy to affect positive change. Marie, Ida, and Johanne’s proactive approaches to courtship illustrate that German women possessed the capability, despite oppressive legal and social precedents, to forge their own destinies.

68 Epilogue

Saturday the 7th of January, 2018, 12:30 a.m.––The estate, which faced southeast and overlooked the widest segment of the Altkanal, is no longer there. In its place, on private property, is a tiny cluster of pine trees. There I stood at the road and faced the ghost of the house where, 162 years ago, Frieda placed flowers in Marie’s room to welcome her sister back home. What surprised me the most, in both Brettin and Altenplathow, was how new everything is; almost all of the houses are stucco, drab yellow and orange. Older houses that remain––only one structure dates to the seventeenth century––are in a sorry state, abandoned. A scant few historical markers remind one that this place survived feudalism and later communism, to say nothing of national socialism, all circumstances the locals would rather forget. People who lived in the houses now gone are the stuff of legend. Only older people remember who they were and what they did to impact their community. Much of what remains lies in ruin, trapped behind private gates or walls.1 During the first two weeks of 2017, I traveled to Germany in pursuit of Marie von Bonin. My schedule was ambitious, and it yielded many wonderful surprises. A layover in Zurich on New Year’s Day meant I had time to attend a church service. The pastor talked about the refugee crisis in Europe and the meaning of Heimat; Europeans ought to be welcoming to everyone. That evening I caught another flight to Mallorca, and the following morning I had time to walk out to the ocean so I could stick my hand in the water (I was wearing winter boots because of the cold that awaited me back on the continent). My flight out of Mallorca took me to Leipzig-Halle, and from there I traveled by train to Wernigerode, where I spent the next four days scanning primary documents. On Twelfth Night (January 6) I stumbled upon a Christkindlmarkt (Christmas market) and stayed long enough to enjoy a Glühwein (spiced wine) and people-watching. Days six through nine I spent in Brettin, with really no plan. I only knew that if I wanted to understand why Marie loved her home so much, I had to see it in person. Saturday the 7th of January, 2018, 2:57 p.m.––Gudrun Schäfer, a town council member Brettin, walked with me to the village cemetery. Guarding the sacred plot were the bells from the old church, now gone. Gudrun walked in circles. Where can the family be? I noticed some older stones beyond a green gate. We found the entrance and, after struggling against the opening,

1 Italicized passages are excerpted from my own travel diary, which I kept December 31, 2016 to January 13, 2017.

69 walked through. The first stone to catch my eye belonged to Elsa, Marie’s niece. Then Giesbert! Her brother. Then a fat tabby cat––his name is Mietse, Gudrun told me––came over to greet us. Then––“Da ist die Marie! Da ist sie! (There is Marie! There she is!)” I kissed my fingertips and touched them to her stone. “Ach, wie süß! (Ah, how sweet!)” said Gudrun. She offered me her arms and held me while I audibly cried. “Ich bin endlich hier! (I am finally here!)” I said, blinking back tears. I took a couple photos of Marie’s stone. To her left, the little baby. I began to cry again (actually I never stopped). Gudrun took a picture of me kneeling between Marie’s parents. Before I left the cemetery, I picked a leaf from a large tree that has grown out of Marie’s final resting place. Marie, you were real. I will never forget Gudrun’s hospitality. Sunday, the 8th of January 8, 11:13 a.m.––I am in the restaurant of Grüner Baum, where I am staying here in Brettin. I am packed and have all of my things with me. The view from my table is two gentle curves in the canal, still frozen over and covered with snow. Alles was ich angesehen habe ist eine echte Sehenswürdigkeit! (Everything that I have seen is a true sight to behold!) I had enough time to walk back to the cemetery. I could not remember how far it was but then I saw the old church bells again. I strong-armed the green gate open and walked directly to Marie. I used a shovel leaning against her tree to gently scrape the ice from her stone. I began to recite the poem she composed for her diary, but I stumbled over her words. (I memorized the verse the night before.) Then I got the idea to record a video of sharing it with her. No mistakes this time. I leaned over her stone, one more kiss, and vowed to return soon. I think Gudrun’s kindness taught me what it was that connected Marie with Brettin. As Marie wrote in her diary, to be in Heimat was to surround oneself with “the people who interest me, as well as our collective experiences.”2 Gudrun certainly fascinated me––her love for Brettin permeated every word she spoke––and she and I shared something special in the Brettin cemetery. I had been searching for Marie since January 2013, and Gudrun was a willing participant in my emotional response to finding her. It is fitting that Marie was buried in Brettin and not elsewhere with Max’s family. I have argued that Marie did not see other places as Heimat. At the same time, home was not merely a geographic space. Heimat was synonymous with the people who lived and made memories there. The present thesis project has argued, in the simplest of terms, that Marie von Bonin was an everyday German woman. She was a Landedelfräulein who loved her Heimat, had a thirst for

2 M. Bonin, diary, June 13, 1855.

70 knowledge, and wanted a life with the man she loved. These were not revolutionary ideas, and yet Marie’s understanding of them over time, and the lengths to which she and her family went to help her achieve a life of happiness, demonstrate that everyday nineteenth-century Germans were just as much the source of the embourgeoisement of the German aristocracy as were examples of nineteenth-century print culture. Marie’s story, and my involvement in it, does not end here. I plan to translate the current thesis project into German. An archivist in Genthin knows of publishers in the region that would be potentially interested in Marie’s story. I also plan additional research on Bonin women. I would like to produce a history of Prussia from the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries centered around these women’s perspectives. Finally, I plan to write a biography of Marie’s father, Gustav. His career intersected with important moments in Prussian history, including annexation of Posen, the abolishment of Kindergartens, and changes to marriage laws. It would be enlightening to know just how much of an official role Gustav played in determining what women including his own daughter, Marie, should be allowed to achieve.

Max After Marie’s death, Max vacated their Lindenstraße apartment in Berlin. I have not been able to determine who cared for the couple’s daughter in the absence of a mother. Max spent the next three years on Friedrichsstraße, then Schiffbauerdamm, also in Berlin. In October 1862, he remarried. He and Countess Hedwig Molly Antoinette von Luckner were to have a child the following year, but their son was stillborn. Hedwig survived the childbirth, and yet Max found himself surrounded by grief once more. He stayed in his home with Hedwig on Ziethenplatz until 1866.3 In a strange turn of events, Max then moved into the same property that Marie’s father occupied from 1851 to 1852, a few doors down from one of Max’s previous residences on Friedrichsstraße. By the 1860s Gustav was likely back in Brettin. Max moved perhaps four more times within Berlin. His name appears in address books there through 1875, so it is conceivable that he relocated to Potsdam by the following year. He died in Potsdam on February 6, 1882, at the age of forty-eight.

3 “The Berlin Telephone and Address Directories,” Digitale Bibliothek Berlin, https://digital.zlb.de/viewer/cms/82/, s.v. “Bonin” and “Kracht.”

71 Marie’s story is not atypical––she was an everyday Landedelfräulein––but among known travel accounts from the perspective of German nobles, her story possesses singular qualities. Relatively few known accounts of nineteenth-century German aristocratic life told from the female perspective or from the point of view of such a young person survive. Marie wrote a detailed account of her life during the summer months of 1855, with no shortage of insights about nineteenth-century courtship, a subject warranting further research. Her writing style was never short on vivid descriptions of people and places. Still, it left spaces to insert my own exhaustive genealogical research, the perspectives of published contemporaries of Marie’s world, and the assertions of present-day scholars. Taking these sources together I hope that I have written a discussion of Marie worthy of her memory and somehow true to her hopes for her own life.

72 Bibliography

Archives and Museums

Archiv und Bibliothek der Landesschule Pforta. 06628 Schulpforte, Germany. https://www.landesschule-pforta.de/de/geschichte/bibliothek.php. Petra Mücke, Academic Librarian: [email protected].

Kreismuseum Jerichower Land. Mützelstraße 22, 39307 Genthin, Germany. https://www.lkjl.de/de/kreismuseum.html. Antonia Beran, Museum Director: [email protected].

Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Magdeburg. Brückstraße 2, 39114 Magdeburg, Germany. https://landesarchiv.sachsen-anhalt.de/.

Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Magdeburg, Standort Wernigerode. Lindenallee 21 (Orangerie), 38855 Wernigerode, Germany. https://landesarchiv.sachsen- anhalt.de/landesarchiv/standorte/wernigerode/.

Landesarchiv Thüringen - Staatsarchiv Altenburg. Schloss 7, 04600 Altenburg, Germany. http://www.archive-in-thueringen.de/.

Books and Articles

Anspach, Carolyn Kiser. “Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia by Johannes Hofer, 1688.” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 2, no. 6 (1934): 376-91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44437799.

Besser, G. Beiträge zur Geschichte des freiadeligen Magdalenen-Stifts zu Altenburg im Herzogtum Sachsen-Altenburg. Altenburg: Oskar Bonde, 1892.

Bielitz, Gustav Alexander. Handbuch des Preußischen Kirchenrechts. Leipzig: August Lehnhold, 1831. https://books.google.com/books?id=ysxEAAAAcAAJ.

Bönninghausen, Clemens Maria Franz von. Der homöopathische Hausarzt in kurzen therapeutischen Diagnosen. Münster: Friedrich Regensberg, 1853. https://books.google.com/books?id=mBQ4AAAAMAAJ.

“Correspondenz-Nachrichten. Von der Elbe, Juni. Hamburg und Dresden.” In Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser 54, no. 27 (July 1, 1860): 642-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=97ccAQAAMAAJ.

Governess: A Repertory of Female Education. London: Darton and Company, 1855. https://books.google.com/books?id=W7cEAAAAQAAJ.

73 Heineccius, Johann Ludwig. Ausführliche topographische Beschreibung des Herzogthums Magdeburg und der Grafschaft Mansfeld, Magdeburgischen Antheils. Berlin: Georg Jakob Decker, 1785. https://books.google.com/books?id=s8tcAAAAcAAJ.

Herbert, Lucian. “Schwalbach.” In Erheiterungen. Eine Hausbibliothek zur Unterhaltung und Belehrung für Leser aller Stände 37, edited by Otfrid Mylius, 241-56. Stuttgart: Verlag der Erheiterungen, 1865. https://books.google.com/books?id=jFJEAAAAcAAJ.

Hertel, Gustav, ed. Die ältesten Lehnbücher der Magdeburgischen Erzbischöfe. Halle: Otto Hendel, 1883. https://archive.org/details/dieltestenlehnb00gergoog.

Hoffmann, Wilhelm, ed. Otto Friedrich Rammler’s Universal-Briefsteller oder Musterbuch zur Abfassung aller in den allgemeinen und freundschaftlichen Lebensverhältnissen, sowie im Geschäftsleben vorkommenden Briefe, Documente und Aufsätze. 18th ed. Leipzig: Otto Wigand: 1848. https://books.google.com/books?id=MZFCAAAAcAAJ.

Luc, Jean André de. Geological Travels in Some Parts of France, Switzerland, and Germany. Vol. 1. London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1813. https://books.google.com/books?id=_1FkAAAAMAAJ.

Murray, John, ed. A Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland. 11th ed. London: John Murray, 1856. https://books.google.com/books?id=aP8HAAAAQAAJ.

Nathusius, Marie. Tagebuch einer Reise nach der Provence, Italien und der Schweiz: aus dem Nachlasse. Halle: Fricke, 1860.

Richter, Aemilius Ludwig, and Robert Schneider, eds. Kritische Jahrbücher für deutsche Rechtswissenschaft. 5th ed. Vol. 9. Leipzig: Bernh. Tauchnitz, 1841. https://books.google.com/books?id=rHtkAAAAcAAJ.

Richter, Bertha (van der Velde). “Das liebe Thal.” In Deutschlands Dichterinnen: in chronologischer Folge, edited by Abraham Voss, 455-6. Düsseldorf: Vossmann and Schmidt, 1847. https://books.google.com/books?id=30Y7AAAAcAAJ.

Scheinert, J. Die Erziehung des Volkes durch die Schule. Vol. 1. Königsberg: Bornträger, 1845. https://books.google.com/books?id=JClNAAAAcAAJ.

Williams, J., and H. Döring. The English-German Letter-Writer or a Series of exquisite Letters and other Compositions relative to Private- and Commercial-Correspondence. Jena: Fr. Mauke, 1839. https://books.google.com/books?id=KalCAAAAcAAJ.

Willm, J. The Education of the People: A Practical Treatise on the Means of Extending Its Sphere and Improving Its Character. Glasgow: William Lang, 1847. https://books.google.com/books?id=5bA2AAAAMAAJ.

74 Wusowski, Cornelia. Friedrich der Große: Der einsame König. Munich: Dotbooks, 2016.

Zedlitz-Neukirch, Anna (von Bonin) von. Aus frohen Jugendtagen. Stuttgart: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1912.

Ziehen, Eduard. “Ein deutscher Edelmann.” Der Erzähler: Ein Unterhaltungsblatt für Jedermann 18, no. 72 (September 7, 1853): 285-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=OHxEAAAAcAAJ.

Ziehnert, Johann Gottlieb, ed. Praktisches Evangelisches Kirchenrecht, mit besonderer Hinsicht auf Sachsen, Preußen und andere evangelische Länder, für Prediger, angehende Superintendenten und Juristen. Vol. 2. Meissen: Friedrich Wilhelm Goedsche, 1827. https://books.google.com/books?id=bwdFAAAAcAAJ.

Genealogies and Vital Records

Bonin, Udo von. Geschichte des Hinterpommerschen Geschlechtes von Bonin bis zum Jahre 1863. Berlin: R. v. Decker, 1864. https://books.google.com/books?id=qClVNNU0llIC.

Engagement announcement for Johanne Keller Kohlbach and Carl Pieschel. “Verlobungs- und Heiraths-Anzeigen.” Berlinische Nachrichten Von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen. No. 101. August 22, 1818.

Evangelische Kirche, Garnisongemeinde, Berlin, Germany. Database with images. “Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558-1898.” FamilySearch.org. Entry for Maria Johanna Frieda Auguste Von Kracht, December 20, 1858. FamilySearch [https://familysearch.org]. Accessed November 28, 2014. Citing Birth and Baptismal Records, FHL microfilm 477,850.

Death of Johanna Elisabeth Maria Von Bonin Von Kracht. Berlin, November 13, 1858. “Deutschland Tote und Beerdigungen, 1582-1958.” FamilySearch [https://familysearch.org]. Accessed July 8, 2018. Citing Death and Burial Records, FHL microfilm 70,704.

Marriage of Johanne Elisabeth Von Bonin and Maximilian Karl Von Kracht. Brettin, October 1, 1856. “Deutschland Heiraten, 1558-1929.” FamilySearch [https://familysearch.org]. Accessed February 11, 2018. Citing Milatary [sic] Records, FHL microfilm 71,207. Frankfurt Am Oder Stadt, Brandenburg, Germany.

Marriage of Johanne Rosine Kohlbach and Carl Friedrich Pieschel. Magdeburg, October 24, 1818. “Saxony, Prussia, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1760-1890.” Ancestry [https://ancestry.com/]. Accessed July 1, 2018. Citing Marriage Records, film 1336013. Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Magdeburg, Germany.

75 Genealogisch-Diplomatisches Jahrbuch für den Preußischen Staat und zunächst für dessen Adel und die höheren Stände überhaupt. Berlin: Carl Heymann, 1841. http://www.mdz-nbn- resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10013266-3.

Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der adeligen Häuser: der in Deutschland eingeborene Adel (Uradel), 7th edition. Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1906. http://digital.ub.uni- duesseldorf.de/ihd/periodical/titleinfo/8237545.

Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der adeligen Häuser: der in Deutschland eingeborene Adel (Uradel). Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1909.

Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der adeligen Häuser: der in Deutschland eingeborene Adel (Uradel). Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1912.

Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der briefadeligen Häuser, 13th ed. Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1919.

Koerner, Bernhard, ed. Genealogisches Handbuch bürgerlicher Familien, 6th ed. Berlin: Bruer, 1898, s.v. marriage of Marie Johanne Charlotte Kohlbach and Karl Friedrich Gustav Rudolph Schwechten.

Kroll, Hugo Clemens Constantin Ludwig Eduard, ed. Offizier-Stammliste des Leib-Grenadier- Regiments Konig Friedrich Wilhelm III (1. Brandenburgischen) Nr. 8. Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, 1899.

Obituary for Carl von Pieschel. Magdeburgische Zeitung. No. 27. February 2, 1855.

Online Articles and Research Tools

“Script Tutorials - Paleography.” Brigham Young University Department of History and the Center for Family History and Genealogy. Accessed June 29, 2018. https://script.byu.edu/Pages/home.aspx.

Huguenaud, Karine. “Les Invalides, The Military Museum and Tomb of Napoleon,” Fondation Napoléon. Accessed June 16, 2018. https://www.napoleon.org/en/magazine/places/les- invalides-the-military-museum-and-tomb-of-napoleon/.

Peiffer, T. J. “‘As the Crow Flies’ Distance Calculator.” http://tjpeiffer.com/crowflies.html.

Wodtke, Hans-Jürgen. “Bodenreform im Landkreis Jerichow II.” MOZ.de. September 27, 2015. https://www.moz.de/landkreise/havelland/rathenow/rathenow-artikel/dg/0/1/1424779/.

Reference Works

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76 “Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm.” Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. http://woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi- bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=DWB.

Fahrenkrüger, Johann Anton. Nathan Bailey’s Dictionary, English-German and German- English, Englisch-Deutsches und Deutsch-Englisches Wörterbuch, 2 Vols. Leipzig: Friedrich Frommann, 1801.

Hyamson, Albert Montefiore. A Dictionary of English Phrases: Phraseological Allusions, Catchwords, Stereotyped Modes of Speech and Metaphors, Nicknames, sobriquets, Derivations from Personal Names, etc. London: Routledge and Sons, 1922. https://books.google.com/books?id=o7NZAAAAMAAJ.

Kreutzmann, John. “Carl Friedrich von (seit 1840) Pieschel.” In Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon. Accessed June 5, 2018. http://www.uni- magdeburg.de/mbl/Biografien/0007.htm.

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Vorsatz, Mareike. “Giesbert Gustav Boguslaw Karl von Bonin.” In Magdeburger Biographisches Lexikon. Last updated February 1, 2005. http://www.uni- magdeburg.de/mbl/Biografien/0729.htm.

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Unpublished Materials

Bonin, Marie von. Diary. 1855. Private collection of the author.

Kracht, Maximilian von (attributed). Inscribed dried leaf. July 9, 1855. Private collection of the author.

79 Appendix 1

Notes on Translation, Transcription, and Orthography

Unless indicated in footnotes, all translations are my own. These include several excerpts from Marie von Bonin’s diary––which I have translated in full and intend to publish later––as well as passages from several published books and articles contemporary to Marie’s life. I have transcribed select few untranslated passages exactly as they appear in Marie’s diary (and often include my English translation in the text in parentheses or brackets). Some spellings she used differ from modern German, notably that of the phoneme [t], which she wrote as th (modern spelling convention drops the h), e.g. Heimath. All instances of ß (Eszett, or double S) are retained; ß is pronounced as [s]. I have retained Marie’s few errors, which I notate with [sic]. In cases of both translations and transcriptions, I have also retained Marie’s emphases on select words by displaying these in italics. All remaining errors are my own.

80 Appendix 2

Glossary of German Terms

Badearzt––spa doctor Bildungsreise––educational trip Bildungsreisebuch––educational travel account Bildungsreisende––one who traveled for educational purposes Frauenideale––German ideals of womanhood Fremde––foreign places Geschlechtscharaktere––sexual stereotypes Gutsbesitzer––estate landowner Gutsherrschaft––estate lordship system in East Prussia (abolished in 1850) Heimat––home; people, places, things, events, ideas associated with home; the memory of home Heimweh––homesickness höfische Dame––courtly lady höfisches Fräulein––courtly maiden Kurzeit––bath season Landedelfrau––country noblewoman Landedelfräulein––country maiden Mädchenliteratur––popular literature for girls Pension––German private school Stift––German private, ecclesiastical school Uradel––ancient nobility

81 Appendix 3

Ahnentafeln (Genealogies)

Krippähn–Kohlbach (Marie von Bonin’s Maternal Lineage) 1. Marie (Johanne) Rosine Krippähn (1764–1817) a. Marriage to Friedrich Gottfried Kohlbach; children: i. [Grandmama] Johanne Rosine Kohlbach (1791–1861) 1. Marriage (1812) to Gotthilf Ferdinand Keller (1781–1817); children: a. [Uncle Herrmann] Ferdinand Wilhelm Herrmann (von) Keller (1813–1885) b. [Mama] Maria Keller (1814–1849) i. Marriage (1832) to Gustav Carl Giesbert Heinrich Wilhelm Gebhard von Bonin (1797– 1878); children: 1. Marie von Bonin (1834–1858) a. Marriage (1856) to Maximilian Karl Heinrich von Kracht (1833– 1882); children: i. Maria Johanna Frieda Auguste von Kracht (1858–1859) 2. Olga Caroline Giesbertha von Bonin (1837–1840) 3. [Frieda] Frieda Louise Rosalie von Bonin (1839–?) 4. [Giesbert] Giesbert Bogislav Carl Gustav von Bonin (1841–1913) 5. Gustav Bogislav von Bonin (1843–?) 6. [Annchen] Anna von Bonin (1848–?) 2. Marriage (1818) to Carl Friedrich (von) Pieschel (1779–1855); children: a. [Uncle Karl] Karl Friedrich August (von) Pieschel (1821–1906)

82 b. [Aunt Schnehen] Johanne Elisabeth Rosalie (von) Pieschel (1823–1902) c. [Uncle August] August (von) Pieschel (1825–1887) d. [Uncle Willy] Friedrich Wilhelm (von) Pieschel (1827–1854) ii. Carl Friedrich Kohlbach (1793–1878) von Plettenberg–von Bonin (Marie von Bonin’s Paternal Lineage) 1. Anna Elisabeth Adolphine Caroline Freiin von Plettenberg (1776–1843) a. Marriage to Gustav Ferdinand Bogislav von Bonin (1773–1837); children: i. [Papa] Gustav Carl Giesbert Heinrich Wilhelm Gebhard von Bonin (1797–1878) ii. [Aunt Auguste] Auguste Louise Friedrike Wilhelmine von Bonin (1799–1873) iii. Emma von Bonin (1801–1803) iv. Adolph Ferdinand Albert Carl Friedrich Leopold von Bonin (1803–?) v. Herrmann August Ludwig Georg Heinrich von Bonin (1808–1859) vi. Albert Carl Wilhelm Julius von Bonin (1809–?)

83