Luise Hensel

Her father, Johann, was a Lutheran minister at Linum, a small town in the Margravate of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia.

Hensel influenced the romantic style of Brentano quite significantly; Brentano wrote the following to his brother in 1817: "These songs (referring to twenty songs sent to him by Hensel) at first broke my heart, causing me to burst into tears, their truth and simplicity striking me as the holiest that man could produce.

In 1821, she took a job as a teacher for the widow of the poet Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg in the town of Sondermühlen, where she stayed until 1823.

Her religious convictions were once again tested by love, this time in the form of a marriage proposal from a doctor, Clemens August Alertz, who would later become the personal physician to Pope Pius IX.

She spent her last years in Paderborn with her former pupil Pauline Mallinckrodt, at the convent of the Sisters of Christian Charity, where she died on December 18, 1876, at the age of 78.

Her "Gedichte" (English: Poems), which include some work by her sister, Wilhelmine, were published in 1858, and show a wistful piety on the part of Hensel, a prime example of German religious poetry.