The Troubled Friendship of Clemens Brentano and Rahel Levin in the Shadow of the Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft*

Abstract

This article reconstructs the friendship between the Romantic author Clemens Brentano and the Jewish salonnière Rahel Levin, and explores her motivations for maintaining a friendship with him in spite of his public and private attacks on contemporary Jews, including her. Through analysis of his 1811 speech at the Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft and the letters they exchanged, the article shows how limited Levin’s options were for balancing her identity as a Jew with her social and intellectual ambitions.