Helmina von Chézy

She is known for writing the libretto for Carl Maria von Weber's opera Euryanthe (1823) and the play Rosamunde, for which Franz Schubert composed incidental music.

After she had openly criticised the miserable conditions in the field, she was accused of libel, but was acquitted by the Berlin Kammergericht court under presiding judge E. T. A. Hoffmann.

In 1828/29, her son Max left to live with his father in Paris, which was a grievous blow, exceeded by the message of her husband's death in 1832 and the loss of her annual alimony payment.

Nevertheless, during the 1848 March Revolution she met exiled poet Georg Herwegh in Strasbourg and encouraged him to fight for democracy in nonviolence and by the waiver of radical actions.

Unsuccessfully trying to find another employment as a journalist in order to earn a bare living, she finally retired to Geneva, where she received a modest pension by an artists' charitable foundation.

She was by now nearly blind and dependent on care by her niece Bertha Borngräber, who also recorded her memoirs which were revised by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense.