author
Johanna Schopenhauer
1766–1838
A lively voice of early 19th-century German literature, she turned sharp observation and wide experience into novels, essays, and travel writing. She is also remembered for the celebrated Weimar salon that brought writers, artists, and thinkers together.
1 Audiobook
Reise durch England und Schottland
by Johanna Schopenhauer
About the author
Born in Danzig in 1766 as Johanna Trosiener, she later married the merchant Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and became the mother of Arthur Schopenhauer and Adele Schopenhauer. After years shaped by family travel and social life, she built an independent literary career at a time when that was still unusual for women.
She is best known as a German writer and salon host in Weimar, where her gatherings became part of the city’s cultural life. Her work included novels, essays, memoir-like writing, and travel books, and readers valued her for a style that was vivid, observant, and approachable.
Her life was marked by both literary success and personal difficulty, but she kept writing for decades. She died in Jena in 1838, and her reputation endures not only through her connection to a famous family, but through her own place in German literary history.