Charlotte von Kalb

Charlotte Sophia Juliana von Kalb (25 July 1761 – 12 May 1843) was a German writer who associated with poets Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin and Jean Paul.

Life Charlotte Sophia Juliana, Baroness Marshal of Ostheim, was born in Saal an der Saale in 1761. She was characterized as neurotic in her youth. on 25 October 1783. He was a veteran of France's involvement with the American War of Independence.

Her marriage was an unhappy one as her husband was devoted to his career and they only spent their winters together. Kalb was more than just a socialite and was said to have been asked to pass on Goethe's ideas about the development of animals' skulls to Professor Johann Herder. The idea was that skulls developed from vertebrae, an idea that is now discredited. Schiller married in 1790.

In 1796, Charlotte von Kalb began a correspondence with another German Romantic writer, Jean Paul. The primary interest was intellectual, but Jean Paul was flattered and arranged to travel to Weimar to meet her in person. Even then, their letters were initially cool, although Jean Paul was said to be "magnetic", and he admired not only Kalb's eyes but also "her soul". Her letters to Jean Paul were later published, containing their entreaties of love. Jean Paul was in two minds but he decided that she was "too titanic, too heroic". They did not marry, as Jean Paul might have indicated he hoped. During her lifetime, Kalb was judged unfavourably by other women, but she "fascinated nearly all the men she ever knew".