Sophie Albrecht

Johanne Sophie Dorothea Albrecht (née Baumer; December 1756, Erfurt – 16 November 1840, Hamburg) was a German actress and writer. She played leading roles in plays by Friedrich Schiller, who was a good friend of hers. She wrote poetry, novels, and prose, and was married to the doctor and writer Johann Friedrich Ernst Albrecht.

Actress Albrecht's first performance as an actress was in an amateur production of Christian Felix Weiße's Romeo and Juliet with great success in her hometown of Erfurt. Her debut as a professional actress happened in 1782, with the Grossmann troupe. The troupe did performances in Frankfurt and Mainz. A year later, she met Friedrich Schiller and played Luise Miller in his first performance of Kabale und Liebe. Sophie Albrecht and Friedrich Schiller had similar interests and became close friends.

Works Poetry In Reval, Albrecht's poems were first published in a literary anthology edited by her husband. Although Sophie never did find popularity among male literary establishments, she did have a strong network of women on whom she relied to write about female relations. Her works drew attention to the importance of female friends in her life. Sophie dedicated her first two volumes of poetry (1781; 1785) to women friends. She wrote a love poem for fellow actress, Catharina Felicitas Abt, whom Albrecht never met and who had recently died. The poem was entitled An dem Grabe der Madame Abt in Göttingen den 19ten August 1784 (At the grave of Madame Abt in Göttingen the 19th of August 1784).

Sophie Albrecht wrote about love, but not in its tranquility. Ruth P. Dawson describes Sophie saying, "Sophie Albrecht glorified love but could find no way to embed it in positive social narratives, connecting it instead directly and indirectly with death, and particularly, suicide". Her work is often described as melancholy with sorrow or regret as underlying themes. Another analysis of Sophie Albrecht's works by Mary Helen Dupree explains: "she channels her experience of loss and death into opportunities for self-exploration, resistance to social norms, and artistic productivity."

In 1808, Albrecht published Romantische Dichtungen aus der ältern christlichen Kirche (Romantic Literature from the Early Christian Church); unlike The Polite Ghost, it did not display Gothic themes.

Later life Albrecht used writing as a source of income after her divorce, although her ex-husband did help sustain her until his death from typhus in 1814. She spent the next quarter century in poverty, and at the age of 80 had begun writing cookbooks to earn money. Sophie Albrecht died at the age of 82. In 1841 a friend published a collection of Albrecht's poems to pay for a gravestone.

Sophie Albrecht was the first eighteenth-century German woman poet to have her works published during her lifetime.

Selected works From An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers Ehstländische Blumenlese für das Jahr 1779 [Estonian Anthology for the Year 1779] Sophie contributed several poems (1779) Gedichte und Schauspiele. [Poems and Plays] 1781 Aramena; eine syrische Geschichte, ganz für unsre Zeiten umbearbeite, after a novel by Anton Ulrich Duke of Braunschweig, 3 parts (1783–1787) Gedichte und prosaische Aufsätze, 2. Th. [Poems and Prose Essays, Part Two] (1785) Gedichte und prosaische Aufsätze, 3. Th. [Poems and Prose Essays, Part Three] 1791 Antrittsrede bei Eröffnunng des Nationaltheaters in Altona am 1. Sept. 1796 [Welcoming Address at the Opening of the National Theater in Altona on 1 Sept. 1796] (1796) Legenden [Legends] (1797; also under the title Das höfliche Gespenst [The Polite Ghost] Graumännchen, oder die Burg Rabenbuhl; eine Geistergeschichte [Graumännchen, or Castle Rabenbuhl; a Ghost Story] (1799) Legenden aus den Zeiten der Wunder und Erscheinungen [Legends from the Times of Miracles and Apparitions] (1800) With J.F.E. Albrecht Erzählungen [Tales] (1801) Der Kummer verschmähter Liebe; als Declamationsstück m. musikalischer Begleitung des Claviers oder Fortepianos bearbeitet [The Pain of Reject Love; for Declamation with Musical Accompaniment on the Piano or Fortepiano] (1801) Ida von Duba, das Mädchen im Walde; eine romantische Geschichte aus den grauenvollen Tagen der Vorwelt [Ida von Duba, the Girl in the Forest; a Romantic Story from the Dreadful Days of the Past] (1805) Romantische Dichtungen aus der ältern christ lichen Kirche [Romantic Literature from the Early Christian Church] (1808) Erfurter Kochbuch für die bürgerliche Küche [Thuringian Cookbook from the Bourgeois Kitchen] (1839) Anthologie aus den Poesien von Sophie Albrecht, erwählt und herausgegeben von Fr. Clemens (1841)