Louise von Gall

Louise von Gall (19 September 1815, Darmstadt – 16 March 1855, Augsburg) was a nineteenth-century German bluestocking novelist and social critic. Her two novels and other works went against the traditions of German literature, addressing the new problems created by the technological and economic developments of her times. Life Johanna Udalrike Louise Gerhardine Freiin von Gall was the posthumous daughter of Hessian General Ludwig Friedrich Christian Wilhelm Philipp von Gall. Her mother, Friedrike (née von Müller), who had lost three brothers and her husband within a few years, raised Louise in Darmstadt. As an only child, Louise was the focus of her widowed mother's attention: "Ich war nun ihr Alles, ihr Einziges, Erstes und Letztes". She studied Byron and Shakespeare and was tutored in English, French and Italian; then at the age of fifteen boarded at a school in the Schenkendorfstraße in Mannheim. With her mother, Louise von Gall made several trips to Vienna at the age of 25 to train in singing. She found she was not confident with larger audiences, but met an editor who published her first works under her pen name "Louis Leo". She was devastated by her mother's sudden death the following year. Shortly afterwards, she traveled through Hungary, a trip she later drew on for her novel Gegen den Strom. On her return to Darmstadt, she became friends with Ida and Ferdinand Freiligrath, an established writer who was to go on to become a business partner of Karl Marx. They spent the summer of 1842 together in Sankt Goar, where the Freiligrath's circle included German writers and the American author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Many expected a romance to blossom between von Gall and Longfellow; while it did not, "he was tempted".