Intimate communication: Bettina Brentano, Rahel Levin Varnhagen and Karoline von Günderrode
The Where Love Happens research project culminates in an exhibition at the German Romanticism Museum in Frankfurt.
In the Romantic era, intimacy is inextricably linked to communication. Proximity brings about understanding, and understanding leads to intimacy. But it is precisely intimacy that presents communication with particular challenges. The demands, impositions and sensitivities that come with it make communication vulnerable to misunderstandings. Where it succeeds, however, it is experienced as love.
With Bettina Brentano, Rahel Levin Varnhagen and Karoline von Günderrode, the exhibition focuses on three of the most important authors of the Romantic era. In their own way, all three search for the ideal of total intimacy in their writing. Using selected letters, literary works and objects, the exhibition shows scenes of the success and failure of this search. At the same time, it presents the linguistic strategies and innovations with which the authors responded to the difficulties of highly personal communication. Their literary work thus becomes a stage on which the drama of intimacy can be experienced. The exhibition is curated by Alexander Knopf (Heidelberg/Copenhagen), Frederike Middelhoff (Frankfurt am Main) and Joanna Raisbeck (Oxford).
The exhibition is presented in three consecutive chapters:
- 31 January – 6 March: Bettina Brentano
- 13 March – 11 April: Rahel Levin Varnhagen
- 17 April – 1 June: Karoline von Günderrode
The exhibition is generously supported by the Velux Foundation, the University of Copenhagen, the Dr. Marschner Foundation and the Cronstett and Hynsperg Evangelical Foundation.
Opening event: Thursday, 30 January 2025 at 18:00.
Read more (In German)