SOURCE: Baldwin, Claire. “Questioning the ‘Jewish Question’: Poetic Philosophy and Politics in Conversations with Demons.” In Bettina Brentano-von Arnim: Gender and Politics, edited by Elke P. Frederiksen and Katherine R. Goodman, pp. 213-43. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Baldwin discusses Arnim's efforts on behalf of Germany's Jewish population in obtaining social and political freedom.

In Bettina Brentano-von Arnim's famous letter of 1839 to Friedrich Karl Savigny, she includes among her political concerns the discrimination against Jews in Germany; she wishes to dedicate a “romantic heroes' fire” (ein romantisches Heldenfeuer) to them (Köln 5: 318). Her informed interest in the status of Jews in Germany can be traced throughout her literary opus as well as in her letters. In Goethe's Correspondence with a Child (Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde) (1835), Günderode (Die Günderode) (1840), and Clemens Brentano's Spring Wreath (Clemens Brentanos Frühlingskranz) (1844) passages that are primarily...