author
Johanna Schopenhauer
1766–1838
A lively German novelist, memoirist, and travel writer, she was one of the best-known women authors in early 19th-century Germany. Her life moved from merchant-class Danzig to the literary world of Weimar, where her salon became a meeting place for major cultural figures.
1 Audiobook
Reise durch England und Schottland
by Johanna Schopenhauer
About the author
Born in Danzig in 1766, Johanna Schopenhauer grew up in a prosperous merchant family and later married the businessman Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer. She was the mother of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and the writer Adele Schopenhauer, but she also built a literary reputation very much her own.
After being widowed, she settled in Weimar, where she became known for hosting a salon that welcomed leading writers and artists of the day. She published novels, essays, memoirs, and travel writing, and contemporary sources describe her as the first German woman to publish books without a pseudonym.
Her writing was admired for its readability and sharp social observation, and in the 1820s she was widely popular in Germany. Although she is sometimes remembered mainly through her famous son, her own career shows a writer who helped open public literary life to women and left a vivid record of her era.