These visitors included the poets Goethe and Johann Georg Jacobi, both of whom fell in love with Maximiliane, who was described as graceful and charming.

She is remembered as part of the inspiration for Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, where the dark eyes of the female protagonist Lotte are based on hers, and through the writings of her children.

[12] In 1771, he became a high-ranking official as Geheimrat at the court of the Electorate of Trier, serving Archbishop-Elector Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, and the La Roche family moved to Ehrenbreitstein [de].

[17][10] The young Maximiliane was gracious and charming and popular with the visitors; Johann Georg Jacobi considered her as a potential bride.

[18] Another visitor was Sophie's former fiancé, the author Christoph Martin Wieland, who described Maximiliane as la petite Sylphide aux yeux noirs ('the little sylph with black eyes').

[21] In 1772, the young poet and lawyer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited the La Roche family in Ehrenbreitstein, where he met the 16-year-old Maximiliane (generally known as "Maxe") and fell in love with her.

She was rather short than tall of stature, and delicately built, her figure was free and graceful, her eyes very black, while nothing could be conceived purer and more blooming than her complexion.

[32][28] A portrait painting of her between her parents, Georg Michael Frank von La Roche with Wife and Daughter by Anton Wilhelm Tischbein was a copy probably made for her on the occasion of her wedding.

[41] Probably in order to make life easier for their mother, Sophie and Clemens were sent to Koblenz in 1784, where they lived unhappily with their childless aunt Luise Möhn, who was married to a violent drinker.

[42][43] The fourth child was Kunigunde Brentano [de], who married the legal scholar Friedrich Carl von Savigny.

[47] The next child was born in Frankfurt, in the Haus zum Goldenen Kopf: the daughter Elisabeth Brentano, usually called Bettina or Bettine.

[50] Ludovica Brentano [de] (1787–1854), known as Lulu, the eighth child, married the businessman Karl Jordis, who became the court banker of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.

[51] Her younger sister Meline Brentano (1788–1861) married Georg Friedrich von Guaita [de], who became the first Catholic mayor of Frankfurt since the Reformation.

[63] She later used letters and memories in her fictionalised Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde ('Goethe's correspondence with a child', 1835), where she also wrote about her mother, a "great beauty" that appears "as in a dream".