Emilie von Berlepsch

Dorothea Friderika Aemilia von Berlepsch (née von Oppel; 26 November 1755 – 27 July 1830), known as Emilie von Berlepsch, was a German traveller and author. She is regarded as an early writer about women's rights in Germany.

Life Berlepsch was born in Gotha in 1755. Her parents were and his wife Amalie. When her father died, her mother remarried, and she was looked after by an uncle and given a good private education. She published some poetry and then a book of protest because Switzerland was invaded in 1798 by the French. Her ex-husband married Anna Dorothea Helene Siever, who had been her maid, after the divorce. By this time Berlepsch's writing was being regarded as more than amateur and aspiring to art. She is said to have "set her cap", unsuccessfully, at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. and discussed women writers publishing in English.

Macdonald's affection for Berlepsch did not extend to marriage, and Berlepsch was disappointed. She returned to Germany and married again. Her second marriage was to August Heinrich Harmes who was not of noble birth. They lived at Lake Zurich until 1817.

In her writing Berlepsch deals particularly with the subject of women's rights, a topic she first raised in 1791 in a journal article innocuously titled "Some Characteristics and Principles Necessary for Happiness in Marriage," in which she ponders the pervasiveness of misogyny and the costs of women's conventional submissiveness. She described herself as "fighting against the prejudice that wants to grant women neither a will of their own nor the courage to express it". Sammlung Kleiner Schriften und Poesian Erster Theil [Collection of Short prose and Poems., pt. 1], 1787. "Einige zum Glück der Ehe nothwendige Eigenschaften und Grundsätze" [Some Characteristics and Principles Necessary for Happiness in Marriage], in Der Teutsche Merkur 1791. Sommerstunden [Summer Hours], 1794. Einige Bemerkungen zur richtigen Beurtheilung der erzwungen Schwitzer-Revolution und Mallet du Pans Geschichte derselben [Some Remarks About the Correct Evaluation of the Forced Swiss Revolution and of mallet du Pan's History of It], 1799. Caledonia, 4 volumes, 1802–1804.