I. Introduction: Of works and names

Rahel Levin Varnhagen's and Hegel's lifetimes were almost exactly contemporaneous: Levin Varnhagen was born in Berlin in 1771, just one year after Hegel, and died in 1833, only two years after him.Footnote ¹ Unsurprisingly, the shared temporal background does not negate vast differences between the lives and works of the two. The contrast starts with their education and ends with their fame: Levin Varnhagen of course is much less well-known than Hegel. Unlike her brothers, she had to study privately and was—being a woman—not allowed to graduate. As a passionate reader, she published excerpts of her readings which testify to her intense self-education.Footnote ² She read the philosophers of the Enlightenment,Footnote ³ the authors of the German Romanticism, and she adored Goethe. In a letter to Karl August Varnhagen in 1808 (published in 1812 in the Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände), she wrote that Goethe's works had accompanied her throughout her life, and her writings bear witness to this.Footnote ⁴

A more subtle dissimilarity to Hegel, however, lies in the structure of their writing: Levin Varnhagen did not publish books, rather, her writing appeared in journals and as collection of letters. She kept correspondence with nearly 300 individuals, her estate comprises around 6,000 letters. Her work is, as Barbara Hahn has put it, ‘a network’.Footnote ⁵ And yet, it will be argued here that it is also much more. New editions that comprise several volumes demonstrate the outstanding written output of the romantic author. Nevertheless, gaps remain in the editions, for Levin's main occupation was socialising and oral communication, which can only be handed down with difficulty.Footnote ⁶ Barbara Hahn is therefore to be agreed with and at the same time contradicted when she writes that Levin Varnhagen is an author ‘without a work’ (Hahn Reference Hahn1990b: 11). And yet, it is precisely her writings that show her to be the thinker she was. So how can these texts be read and interpreted when they are understood as part of a ‘work’ that is not strictly speaking a work, when it is a philosophical practice that did not lead to a philosophical system and came from an educated woman who could never study? In comparing the author and her texts today with the male philosophers of the time, there is a danger of disregarding the historically conditioned differences, and of once again turning female writing once again into an ‘other’ (to speak with Simone de Beauvoir).

As a woman and a Jew, she suffered from multiple layers of discrimination. In the words of Hannah Arendt, Levin Varnhagen was ‘a shlemihl: not rich, not beautiful and Jewish.’ (RV: 337) She stayed unmarried for what was then an unusually long period of time. Before she married Karl August Varnhagen in 1814, she converted to Protestantism.Footnote ⁷ As a salonnière she was well-known during her lifetime—also by Hegel, who visited her salon in Berlin in the 1820sFootnote ⁸—but had been almost forgotten after her death until Hannah Arendt wrote her acclaimed biography Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewish Woman. Arendt's biography of Levin Varnhagen (much later and for legal reasons formally called ‘Habilitation’ within the German pension system; RV: 938) has a similar complicated history of publication, as have the works of Levin Varnhagen themselves. A typescript written in Berlin in 1933 (the so called ‘Berliner Fassung’) was finally edited by Barbara Hahn in 2021. Arendt had left the typescript with Karl Jaspers, when she had to flee Germany the same year. Arendt kept on working on the seminal biography in her exile in Paris and finished it in 1938, relying only on her notes from the 1930s. However, it was only published as a British edition in 1958, a German one in 1959, and as an American one in 1974. The book is a milestone that made Levin Varnhagen much more popular. In the 1970s the Varnhagen Collection was rediscovered in Kraków and the manuscripts could be read again—but that was after Arendt's time.Footnote ⁹

Not only the sources and publication history of Varnhagen's works carried problems: the romantic author's name did and does as well. Compared for example to the name ‘Hegel’, ‘Levin Varnhagen’ presents both historically and in today's scientific research several issues that concern women's names, particularly in connection with Jewish/converted women. They have ‘twice incorrect name[s]’,Footnote ¹⁰ as Barbara Hahn has put it. For this paper, I follow the scholar's suggestion in her recent edition of Arendt's book:

I prefer the complicated double surname over the still very often read ‘Rahel’, especially when asymmetrically her husband is called ‘Varnhagen’ (as Isselstein does in TA). But of course, one has to admit, ‘Rahel Levin Varnhagen’ remains somehow long-winded.

This paper collects some passages of Levin Varnhagen's thinking. It aims to contextualize Levin Varnhagen's non-conventional philosophical writing within German Romanticism. The writings in question here consist of bound diary notebooks as well as of loose sheets. They are to be found in boxes in Krakow's Jagiellonian Library, where the manuscripts were sent from Berlin during the Second World War so that they were safe.

This paper follows Levin Varnhagen's quest for and definition of truth by re-reading her diaries as philosophical texts. By thematizing the possibilities of critical female thought by a (Jewish) woman of the early 19th century and the restrictions in education and publishing such women faced, the paper addresses furthermore intersectional questions of gender and religion. The discussion is structured as follows: in the next, second part, the different genres used by Levin Varnhagen are presented. The third part collects aphorisms on mind, reason, religion and truth, in order to introduce the author's philosophical thinking. This motivates the analysis in the fourth and last part, wherein Levin Varnhagen's anthropological fragments are connected with more specific remarks on gender and writing.

II. Reading and Writing Genres

As has already been made clear Levin Varnhagen's work involves various challenges for readers: firstly, the extension of her writing; secondly, the selection and editions by her husband after her death; thirdly, the challenges of an edition project at the end of the 20^th century, when only few scholarsFootnote ¹¹ were interested in these texts; and fourthly, even less money was available for the project. These facts form in combination demanding requirements for today's academic discussion. The economic aspect of the challenges (i.e. the lack of money) led to an excellent edition which literally spanned decades, but a digital edition which would advance research is still a desideratum. It is a remarkable fact that not enough German funding could be secured for such a central project within German Romanticism (Hahn Reference Hahn2011: 14f.). Only Italian-American institutional ties made this sophisticated edition possible.Footnote ¹² The editors attached great importance to the completeness of the published texts. Due to this focus and to Levin Varnhagen's extensive writing process, there are different genres interspersed throughout; bits of diaries, philosophical aphorisms, translations, oral sourcesFootnote ¹³ and parts of letters, combining to build a sort of literary potpourri. This mix is even more demanding in the edited loose sheets, wherein the status of the individual passages of text invokes philological and philosophical challenges. Traces of Levin Varnhagen's thinking can be found in both her so-called diaries and her letters. They are written in German and French, the language sometimes changes in the middle of sentences.Footnote ¹⁴

As Isselstein (TA: 943f.) has worked out, Levin Varnhagen seems to have interchanged the genre characteristics of diary and letter. In order to write a chronological diary, she needed an epistolary partner. Personal and intimate writing is found almost exclusively in her correspondence with letters. The so-called ‘diaries’, on the other hand, are not filled with the personal, but with reflections of the author. Her diaries comprise 13 booklets, labelled A to N by Karl August Varnhagen, and presumably beginning in 1795. Five of the books are provided with autograph tables of contents. Rahel Levin Varnhagen herself called the diary-like bundle ‘sheets of thought’ (‘Denkblätter’, TA: 945).Footnote ¹⁵ Varnhagen wrote to Friedrich Genz in 1830: ‘With the first courier you will receive two printed booklets from me; wherein all the aphorisms are from me; called: from “Denkblätter[n] einer Berlinerin”.’ (R: vol. 5: 360) Isselstein compares Varnhagen's text volumes with Lichtenberg's Sudelbücher (TA: 945), with the difference that Varnhagen dated the entries and thus connected them to her life story.

‘Diary’ G consists mainly of enriched reading notes reflecting on the writings of Novalis and Schleiermacher. These books deviate from classical diaries in that they are characterised by a way of writing that is unconventional in terms of their genre and yet typical of Romanticism; they do not only explore the self in an unconventional manner, but vary between aphorisms, personal reflections, problem-oriented sketches and apodictic definitions concerning anthropology and society. Here, Barbara Hahn's observation applies: with Varnhagen's work, one gets ‘to the edges of the canon of literature, into unknown territories, into a space in between’ (Hahn Reference Hahn1990b: 11). On the basis of the literary-historical and -scholarly classification, processes of (non-)canonization can also be observed in Levin Varnhagen. In this respect, the scientific readings of the next few years will also provide an interesting object of observation for scholars, both in literary studies and in philosophy.

In these ‘sheets of thought’, Levin Varnhagen shows herself to be a keen observer and thinker. Truth and honesty are shaped in opposition to lies or an act of dissembling (with metaphorical ‘masks’ for example (TA: 302), but also form a basis for conceptualising the process of thinking itself. Therefore, truth is both a starting point (as in being true) and the objective of thinking (as in ‘we would always have to be true’, TA: 302). According to Levin Varnhagen, truth leads to the real quality of things and towards understanding (‘Truth is the ever more precise insight into the true composition of things’, TA: 434): thinking truth is an epistemic process.Footnote ¹⁶

In reflecting on her own writing, Varnhagen emphasises the importance of orality in her writing: ‘Namely, I never like to write a speech, but I want to write conversations as they happen alive in people, and only through will, and art—if you want—like a herbarium, according to an order that is dead’ (R: vol. 5: 366).Footnote ¹⁷ In doing so, she also assumes that her (written) conversations are artful. ‘But even my conversations are not without art; that is, without judgement of myself, without arrangement’ (ibid.).

Admittedly, the scope of these aphorisms is limited. Nevertheless, I propose to read them as philosophical thoughts and an important contribution to the popular romantic fragments—or as she calls them in her own writing, but also in that of others: aphorisms. The thirteen diaries consist of 90% aphorisms; according to Isselstein (TA: 971), around 80% of the loose sheets are aphorisms too. The conceptual distinction between ‘fragment’ and ‘aphorism’ cannot be made clearly in Levin Varnhagen's work. She also referred to Novalis’ ‘fragments’ as ‘aphorisms’, although research always speaks of ‘fragments’ within the context of his work. As much as she appreciated him and received his works positively, she was also critical of his texts, as she wrote for example: ‘To understand Novalis's aphorisms [Aphorismen], one must have extraordinarily many ideas [Einfälle]: and to be expert at handling them. It's not possible otherwise. But I like to read what I want now; however many ideas I have, if it is plausible and pleasing it seems to me as if only a few simple truths were presented, and the same thing always said: that is particularly true of the diverse and witty [Geistreichen] elements of Novalis’ (TA: 278).Footnote ¹⁸ The linguistic variation of a truth that is always the same is seen as a deficit (‘Defizit’, ibid.) by Levin Varnhagen.Footnote ¹⁹ But her critical remarks are not only directed against Novalis; she notices repetitive elements in the works of other philosophers as well: ‘Every mind [Alle Geister] here received just one topic. Fichte, Goethe, Rousseau, St: [sic; Louis-Claude Saint-] Martin[,] Jean Paul everyone, everyone who says something good: says the same thing: sheer variations on the simple topic devised in the highest wit’ (TA: 279). While she values the works of these thinkers and writers very much, she criticises a gesture of repetition that she recognises in their texts. To further explain her critique, she uses a metaphor of the card game and chess: ‘I feel that I, and we, am poor, when this becomes clear to me: it is like a game, of cards, or chess: few set conditions and the greatest most endless combinations’ (TA: 279).Footnote ²⁰ The significance of these contemplations is difficult to pin down; but they definitely indicate a well-read person and an alert mind. This process did not stop at a passive reflection but left behind manifold traces. Her counter-proposal is interesting because it emphasises the importance of erring and aims at love as a central concept: ‘Only when we err; that means taking an invented combination, or a combination produced for us by nature, for something absolute, immutable, and to be satisfied about it; namely loving it, then we feel rich […] this love in us is a possession we do not at all recognize, and a skill which we do not, like that of the thinking mind [des verständigen Geistes], only make here: it is made’ (TA: 279).Footnote ²¹ Now, this concept of love is by no means—as one might assume at first glance—to be understood as contradictory to reason. Quite the opposite is the case: ‘Understanding [Verstand], in all variations seeks us out only the endearing[,] that which is aligned with reason, order, and context; in short[,] objects of love’ (ibid.). Understanding and love are thus interconnected in epistemic processes.

As a passionate reader,Footnote ²² Levin Varnhagen made excerpts for instance of the Athenäum fragments (A. W. Schlegel, F. Schlegel and F. Schleiermacher) for her album [Stammbuch] (TA: 453; 870), or of Hegels Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817). She was enthusiastic about it and wrote to her brother: ‘Splendid. Nearly every line an irrefutable definition. I'm marking it up and writing next to it’ (R: vol. 5: 136). By reading these excerpts, not only the intellectual debate but Levin Varnhagen's sense of humour become perceptible, for example when she notes on Hegel's argumentation: ‘not so dumb. […] Also not so dumb’ (TA: 544). Humour must have connected Levin Varnhagen to Hegel, for she records an anecdote in 1825 in which Hegel made a witty remark in a conversation about the role of men in marriage: ‘Frau von Helvig, faced with the objection to her assertion that men, too, very often have a hard time in marriage, not just women, who actually wholly dominated, cried out with zeal: ‘Oh, a husband dominated by his wife, he is not even worthy to give orders in his own house!’ But, Hegel coolly objected, is he still worthy enough to be given orders?—This humorous turn of phrase made us laugh quite a bit’ (R: vol. 4: 529). Such anecdotes transfer the oral speech of the salon into writing, they give an idea of what was discussed there and how, and yet they are only excerpts from conversations.

In another part of the diaries (and printed in Rahel. Ein Buch des Andenkens as well)Footnote ²³ she quotes the philosopher: ‘Hegel says: ‘If you want to live you must serve; if you want to be free you must die.’ I love those words that are a quintessence [Inbegriff] […]’ (TA: 333; R: vol. 6: 105f.). In Levin Varnhagen's own thinking and writing, the term „quintessence’ [Inbegriff] shows her appreciation of Hegel's philosophy. She uses it in reflecting on Kant's works too: ‘Kant a quintessence: like all definitions’ (TA: 525). In her reading of Hegel, she defines ‘quintessence’ (Inbegriff) as something that includes the whole family of thoughts (die ganze Gedankenfamilie) (TA: 333; R: vol. 6: 105f.).

In her reflection on the concept of freedom, Varnhagen was guided by Ancillon and Spinoza, on whom she read in Jacobi's work Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn. In 1824 she notes: ‘There is a free, open route to arrive at the chained will [Willen]—willing [Wollen]; that of reason, where one must be true: and instead of setting out on this path, they call the will free’ (TA: 142). Varnhagen thus relies here on reason and on a ‘path’ that must be travelled—in other words, a practical philosophy that sets itself apart from theoretical constructs as free will. In this respect, she agrees with Spinoza's practical philosophy.

III. Mind, reason, religion and truth

As the genres and the material components of the loose sheets demonstrate, there is obviously no systematic philosophy to be found in Levin Varnhagen's writings; it consists of scattered fragments.Footnote ²⁴ This fragmentary, aphoristic way of writing is not due to a lack of knowledge or education, but shows a critical attitude towards (also philosophical) system-building. This is explicitly stated in a reading note on Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin in which Levin Varnhagen remarks:

The fact that Levin Varnhagen herself did not write any philosophical treatises (how could she?) therefore cannot only be attributed to her lack of university education but is based on her scepticism towards elaborated philosophic systems. Rather, she followed Fichte by reading, and Goethe in her literarized philosophy.Footnote ²⁶ In doing so, she transferred the reading traces of philosophical systems (such as Fichte's) into a philosophical practice of her own without wanting to imitate them. Her writing of this praxis transcends genre boundaries. And she used her own metaphors to describe this transformation process. The metaphor of the building is often found in Levin's work; (topical) buildings must stand on solid ground, but—as seen here with philosophical systems—must not constrict those who reside in and think in them.

Levin Varnhagen read Schleiermacher's Reden über die Religion [On Religion], made excerpts and commented on it. Some of them were affirmative (‘he says: religion has nothing to do with the knowledge of science. Good! But this [knowledge] has to do with religion’, (TA: 273), some challenging (‘What is here—on this side—the infinite? Out of here with language!’, ibid.)Footnote ²⁷ or rather harshly (‘Very bad here!’, TA: 275). The discussion of Schleiermacher's Reden über die Religion does not only consist of reading and the production of excerpts, rather— almost like the written conversation she was aiming for —comments are made and her own thinking is placed next to that of the theologian.Footnote ²⁸ I call this process and its written traces philosophical practice. In very brief remarks, she also criticizes when Schleiermacher seems to stray from the subject of religion and rather writes about the ‘Weltgeist’ (TA: 274). However, one searches in vain for concrete references to Schelling or Hegel at this point; for this the notes are too strongly keyword-like and not elaborated upon enough. But on Schleiermacher's explanations on baptism she notes: ‘very good and brave’ (TA: 277). In her own aphorisms the complex of religion is combined with thoughts on the philosophy of mind. For Levin Varnhagen, religion can only mean ‘need, question: need to re-relate ourselves; answer gives reason; which always decides what's fact: it is one with fact; it alone realizes it. What confusion! After so many centuries of language study’ (TA: 325). Religion has the status of a need, but only a need. Reason can preside over facts, not religion. In her thinking, religion can be subdivided into ‘religion’ and ‘positive religion’:

The semantics of the term ‘positive religion’ is narrower than ‘religion’, which has a broader meaning and is informed by everything that man knows and includes the totality of human insight. Besides offering a general description of religion, Levin Varnhagen comments also on Judaism and antisemitism.Footnote ³⁰ The period of ‘Hochromantik’ in particular was characterized by strong antisemitic tendencies. Famous authors actively countered the socio-political efforts to give the Jews in Prussia rights (keyword: the Edikt of 1812),Footnote ³¹ as Beiser (Reference Beiser, Forster and Steiner2020) showed.Footnote ³² Levin Varnhagen's considerations are based on her individual observations but transferred into general phrases, for example: ‘People say the Jews are strange: and people at least laugh about them often. That comes from their terrible situation in the European world: which so contrasts with their primal history.—But why a person needs to laugh about something like that is something I always ask myself’ (TA: 465). Her thoughts on religion and Judaism in particular therefore contain both philosophical and political meanings: the first are general definitions, and the latter show a critical aspect in the way society was treating members of different religions differently.

In contrast, her definitions of ‘mind’ and ‘reason’ are more general. Not the heart or will/intention can grasp a sense of future, only the mind: ‘The heart—the will—comprehends no future: spirit—judgment—cancels it and makes it present. He alone is free, autonomous, oriented towards the unknown. The latter bound to something given firmly in advance’ (TA: 406).Footnote ³³ Although this passage alludes to Hegel, no direct reference is made explicit in Levin Varnhagen's work at this point. The entries before and after are written with a longer time lag (also the once in Rahel. Ein Buch des Andenkens). As the list of names in the register of the Tagebücher und Aufzeichnungen shows, Levin Varnhagen often refers to other Romantic thinkers with whom she was in intellectual exchange. However, these are not always mentioned by name in the aphorisms, so that it can be assumed that she was philosophising independently.

According to Levin Varnhagen, reason functions like an instrument:

‘Spirit seeks out relations: the understanding comprehends and dismantles that which delivers spirit to it’ (TA: 324). The mind contains the substance for thinking, yet it is reason which is able to analyse the substance and convey it as thoughts and terms, a reading of this passage might suggest. It is the mind itself which offers guidance and gives instructions for human actions:

Reason provides rules and offers solutions in response to irrational phenomena such as wonders. On these grounds, Levin Varnhagen analyses reactions on irrationalities and describes the functioning of reason itself. This view offers a reflection of a practice and a practice of reflection at the same time. Thinking and practising are mutually dependent.

In another very lucid passage, Levin Varnhagen connects mind and substance in a metaphorical picture of chemistry:

The connection between mind and substance has its foundation in nature. The ‘intellectual chemistry’ is less a science but a practice, which has to be repeated and renewed. The mind in its ethereal form needs to be combined with substance. Furthermore, the ‘goodwill’ of rediscovering the connection between the material and non-material is a self-repeating task—a very modern thought, anticipating parts of materialism and yet linguistically combining it with biblical speaking of the prophet's vision and the promise of an envisioned eternal life connected with substance, the complete body.

A philosophical theme to which Levin Varnhagen returns again and again is truth. Truth is bound to the absoluteness of being. She asks: ‘What is truth? The nearer something comprehended relates to absolute being, the truer it is.’ (TA: 455) Truth as a concept is a dependent entity, relative to the absolute of being it can be gradually increased when approximating the absolute of being. Thinking truth reveals the true being of things: ‘Truth is the knowledge of the true composition of things and finding their ever more precise relation to each other. It can therefore never be destroyed; only to evade, and that makes a detour to harm; and to going back […].’ (TA: 478) As an indestructible entity, truth is at the same time out of reach and within the realm of active thought. By exploring the true composition of things, truth can be recognized and reached. In her aphoristic style, Levin Varnhagen defines truth as an activity, not a simple state of mind. Therefore, philosophy designates the process of active thinking in her argumentation. Her own writing can be understood as work and as steps towards a description of truth.

A basis for philosophical reflection and practice is her scepticism of language. For example, she writes:

It is not possible to reach the true things by means of language; only the properties of things can be captured in language. And these properties, too, must always be thought of anew in the approach to an absolute that makes the properties possible in the first place: ‘[…] yes, we must say central quality[,] to think something approaching an absolute, quality-granting thing.’ (ibid.). Speech and human communication as a whole is thus based on a thinking of the absolute that cannot be achieved, but which at least makes the properties of things conceivable and thus allows an approach to things. This reflection on language leads to an eschatological turn—only temporarily would one have to come to terms with these linguistic inadequacies. Consolation comes from religion. But hope can only be found in thinking (‘Zauberschlag des Denkens’), in surrender [Ergebung] or in play [Spiel] (ibid.).

IV. Humankind, gender and writing

In a summary of this incomplete collection of some components of Levin Varnhagen's thinking, aspects of her anthropological thinking in terms of gender and writing should be mentioned.Footnote ³⁵ The loose sheets contain general thoughts on humanity and being human, for example: ‘All people were once one person. The worst consequence of the committed error is to have forgotten this, and need to believe; we unjustly suffer capriciously. The deeper origin, that of the possibility of error, we must leave to a higher insight’ (TA: 408). Here, being human is thought of as a continuity that is established by the possibility of looking back to this first state and starting point. This historical, phylogenetic perspective functions as a way to explain aspects such as human suffering, but even if humans fail by forgetting this fact, Levin Varnhagen proposes to see an advantage in this failure, in being mistaken. She argues rather that human error enable insight. Being human connects all humans and surpasses temporal boundaries. With the productive turn of the error, the practical significance of philosophy is once again emphasized—philosophizing is conceived as an activity in Levin Varnhagen's case.

Within this anthropological constant, the author distinguishes between the (historical) genders. In analogy to her thinking of religion there seems to be a general philosophical level and a more personal and political one concerning gender—both levels are intertwined and overlapping. At first, the poet seems like a figure above gendering. With regard to writing, she states: ‘A poet is a person in whom all strings are bent upon which experience is struck, and then they must sound; but where they are not!’ (TA: 447). The poet as a metaphorical instrument needs transfer from experience into poetry. Furthermore, Levin Varnhagen compares the poetic style of writing with a fruit: ‘A style is only good when, like the skin in a fruit, it has grown from a deeply internal organization’ (TA: 328). Only the combination of the outside, the skin of the metaphorical fruit, with the inside, and the process of growing, makes for good style. But the use of metaphors such as instruments or fruits has limits. In regard to the boundaries of language Levin Varnhagen writes: ‘The best that can be said is in fact only that which expresses best what cannot be said’ (TA: 457). Language and therefore also poetry convey an ultimate inexpressibility and Levin Varnhagen paradoxically uses language to reflect this fact. These are examples of her more general thinking about language and writing but when it comes to her own writing, gender and judgement get involved:

‘Anyone who speaks through printed words enters as a judg[e]ing [being] among judges[.] I knew this well as I handed my pages over to the press. Often, and since time immemorial, one wants to assign a nasty interpretation to this act on the part of women [Weibern], and try to prevent them from it through every kind of taming speech. But the most human quality in the human being can only be dissuaded of such a thing—as man or woman—if he or she wants to be relegated to a lower class. This quality is having judgment; an inviolable right to exercise it: to judge. […] I gladly let myself be judged by the public; even as a child I yearned for the next day to come so that everything just and unjust weighing on my spirit could come to light!’ (TA: 458).

As a retrospective, Levin Varnhagen gives insight in her own process of publication in journals and the negative feedback she and women in general often received. The passage shows her resilience in regard to (male) strategies to limit and discriminate against female authors. But judging texts for their quality is for Levin Varnhagen characteristic of humans, not just of men or women. In expressing her own will to judge and to have her writings judged, she stands up both for herself as an individual writer and for female writers in general. By exposing discriminatory effects she acts as an early feminist, refusing to play a role dictated by others. Nowadays, her texts can be (re-)read and judged by different standards. There is yet much to be discovered, especially in her philosophical writings, the observations and analyses of an underestimated mind. Originated in the context of a network and in constant correspondence with letter partners, Levin Varnhagen's writings offer a set of philosophical thoughts of her own. These treasures are especially found in the loose sheets, wherein Levin Varnhagen also makes it clear at one point that she did not necessarily reveal her thoughts in company: ‘In society’, she once wrote, ‘not a single word that I mean, and they think I was there! Because they are also not there’ (TA: 482). The fact that her philosophising was seen as a practice that was largely oral and in collaboration with others, and whose writing is fragmentary without systematic result, always reveals inherent gaps. But in addition to the roles of salonnière and letter writer, it is these short texts that will enable Levin Varnhagen to be read more strongly as an important thinker of Romanticism in the future. The diaries will provide a lot of material for scientific analysis.

Finally, in addition to the systematic perspective, the role Levin Varnhagen played for future generations should be pursued on the diachronic level, because it can hardly be overestimated as the following quote showsf. Ottilie von Goethe (1796–1872) wrote to Anna Jameson (1797–1860) in 1839:

Thus, Levin Varnhagen became a role model for the generations of (not only female) writers and thinkers who followed her. It is time she was read more closely.