Marie Petersen

Born in Frankfurt (Oder) in 1816, Marie Luise Auguste Petersen was a German writer known above all for Princess Ilse, a fairy tale set in the Harz Mountains. Reliable reference sources identify her as the daughter of a well-off family of pharmacists, and note that she received a strong education.

Sources also describe her as living with a serious spinal condition from childhood, which shaped a quiet and withdrawn life. Even so, she earned respect among her contemporaries and developed a reputation for sensitive, imaginative writing.

Petersen died in 1859, still in her early forties. Though she is not widely known today, Princess Ilse kept her name alive through later editions and translations, and remains the work most closely associated with her.