Sophie Hasenclever

In her parents' house at Flinger Steinweg (today Schadowstraße) 54, the painters of the Düsseldorf school of painting, writers and composers socialised, including Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who lived in the neighbourhood for several years.

For the two decades after the birth of her children, Sophie Hasenclever did not appear in public as a poet, but devoted herself to family life, which corresponded to the social expectations of married women.

From the 1870s onwards, Sophie Hasenclever published, among others, the novelette, Aus der Kriegszeit 1870-71 (From the War of 1870–71) and the poetry collection Rheinische Lieder (Rhenish Songs), which were widely acclaimed.

In 1875, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Michelangelo's birth, she presented a translation of his entire poetic oeuvre, which she had worked on for a full decade and which is still not outdated today.

In addition to nature hymns and poems critical of civilisation, in which she warned against advancing industrialisation, there were variations on love, loneliness and death.

In the two-volume edition of her Novellen und Märchen published in 1884, which she dedicated to the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller, she thematised above all crisis and conflict situations in which people have to prove themselves.

She wrote the text for Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's Athalia, which was performed privately at the court of Karl Anton, Prince of Hohenzollern, who resided in Düsseldorf at the time.

The composer Ferdinand Hiller added to his cantata for solos, choir and orchestra Nala und Damayanti [de] is based on Hasenclever's adaptation of this Indian story.