Ulrike von Levetzow

She was born in Leipzig in Saxony, the daughter of the ducal Mecklenburg-Schwerin chamberlain and later Hofmarschall Joachim Otto Ulrich von Levetzow and his wife Amalie.

The poet, then 72, was so carried away with her wit and beauty that he thought for a time of marrying her and urged Grand Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach to ask for her hand in his name.

Rejected, he left for Thuringia and addressed to her the poems which he afterward called Trilogie der Leidenschaft.

She remained unmarried all her life and died at the age of 95 at Třebívlice Castle in Bohemia, which she inherited after the death of her mother.

Goethe's infatuation with Ulrike is the subject of Martin Walser's novel A Man in Love, published in 2008.