10 - “In love and fidelity, your Emma”: Emma Herwegh

Summary

At first glance, it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast between two women: on the one hand Minna, born into poverty, poorly educated, but always striving to maintain her bourgeois reputation; then on the other hand Emma Herwegh, upper-class, possessed of a broad education, and with a lively interest in politics. But there were even more matters in which they diverged. Back in 1849, Richard’s politically motivated activities had cost Minna everything that she valued: her social position, financial security, reputation, and prestige. As a result, she regarded any involvement in politics as synonymous with ruin. Emma embodied the very opposite. She was convinced that action and political engagement could give meaning to her life and help her to rise above the sterile atmosphere of her well-off family. Material possessions themselves were unimportant to her.

This list of contrasting characteristics could be continued at will. And yet we also find commonalities between these two women that inculcated a sense of solidarity in Minna and Emma, culminating in friendship. Both were artistically active in their younger days. Minna had been a successful actor for several years, while Emma was excellent at drawing, dabbled in composition in her youth, and wrote elegant prose. What united them most of all was the fact that they both lived with men who had broken with social conventions and embarked upon extraordinary lives. Just like Minna, Emma too had encountered mortal danger at least once in her life. During the revolutionary uprisings of 1848, Emma and her husband Georg had hidden variously in a wheatfield and in a granary in order to evade enemy troops hunting for them. Under threat of arrest and possible execution, they managed to escape by disguising themselves as peasants. Back in 1839, Minna and Richard had crawled on their stomachs across the border from Russia to East Prussia while fleeing their creditors; they soon afterwards endured a stormy sea voyage that left them in fear of their lives. Both women also had to cope with infidelity on the part of their famous husbands, and were forced to do so in the public eye on account of the open scandals that resulted.