Caroline von Wolzogen e la Kleinöffentlichkeit. Strategie autoriali di esistenza tra anonimato e relazionalità

This contribution aims to account for the role of the writer Caroline von Wolzogen in the sociocultural context of the Weimar Classicism. Specifically, an attempt will be made to focus on the writer’s choice to publish the first part of her most successful novel, Agnes von Lilien (1798), under anonymity, and how this choice influenced the reception of the novel, which was initially attributed to both Goethe and Schiller. An attempt will therefore be made to thematise this choice in relation to the context of dense relationships in which the author inserted herself – the context of the salons, characterised by a semi-public dimension, or Kleinöffentlichkeit – in order to fully understand the value of the “existence strategy” that the use of anonymity could represent for women writers. The ultimate aim of this investigation will also be to restore the value of testimony, of a marginal and thus privileged point of view, of Caroline von Wolzogen’s biographical and editorial parabola on a founding epoch for German and European literature such as that of the years around 1800.