Adele Schopenhauer (1797–1849)

Luise Adelaide Lavinia Schopenhauer, known as Adele, was born in Hamburg, Germany, to Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, a businessman, and his wife Johanna, a writer and the hostess of a literary salon. She and her older brother Arthur Schopenhauer, who grew up to be a famous philosopher, were raised in Weimar among the artists, writers, and scholars who frequented their household. She became a close friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and of his daughter-in-law Ottilie von Goethe. She was a writer from an early age. She and her mother lost all their money in a bank collapse in 1819, and moved to Bonn and later to Jena. Their financial troubles caused a rupture with her brother than never healed. She published her mother's memoirs after her death, as well as her own short stories, poems, and novels, including Anna (1845), some of which appeared under pseudonyms. She was also known as a papercut artist. In the last three years of her life, knowing she was seriously ill, she traveled in Italy and studied art before returning to Germany to die in the home of her intimate friend Sibylle Mertens.