Sophie von La Roche
born Dec. 6, 1731, Kaufbeuern,
Bavaria [Germany]
died Feb. 18, 1807, Offenbach, Hesse
German writer whose first and most
important work, Geschichte des Fräuleins
von Sternheim (1771; History of Lady
Sophia Sternheim), was the first German
novel written by a woman and is
considered to be among the best works
from the period in which English novels,
particularly those of Samuel Richardson,
had great influence on many German
writers.
She was engaged to her close friend
and cousin, the well-known writer
Christoph Martin Wieland, but the
betrothal was dissolved, and in 1754 she
married G.M. Franck von La Roche. She
was to become the grandmother of Bettina
von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, both
associated with the Romantic movement.
From 1771 she maintained a literary
salon in Ehrenbreitstein to which the
young J.W. von Goethe belonged. In that
year Wieland edited and published her
first novel. Both its insistent
didacticism and its partially epistolary
form follow English models, but it also
is related to the new phase of fiction
introduced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
novel La Nouvelle Héloïse; in La Roche’s
novel, passion begins to take a place
beside rational morality and virtue.
Fräulein von Sternheim’s melancholy
moods and the “confessional” aspect lent
to the novel by its letter form won it
fame. This, like all La Roche’s works,
is imbued with the rational spirit of
the Enlightenment and shows her interest
in economic and social problems,
including women’s education.
