Charlotte von Lengefeld

Charlotte Luise Antoinette von Schiller, born Charlotte von Lengefeld (22 November 1766 – 9 July 1826) was the wife of German poet Friedrich Schiller.

Lengefeld was born in Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, to an upper-class family, and given an education appropriate to a life at the ducal court of Weimar. Though her father, who died when she was a young girl, had been a forest administrator, in her young adulthood she was introduced to the literary circles of Weimar. She became friendly with Charlotte von Stein, who was at the center of the circle of Weimar Classicism as a friend of Schiller and sometime mistress of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Stein confided in her throughout her complex relationship with Goethe.

Her first love was a soldier, but after her family's opposition the engagement was dropped.

Lengefeld first met Schiller, then a little-known and impoverished poet, in 1785, through her older sister Caroline and her cousin Wilhelm von Wolzogen, who later became Caroline's second husband. They began a correspondence in 1788, and, aided by the Lengefelds, Schiller took up residence near Rudolstadt shortly thereafter. He seems to have made his affections clear to her that year, though they were confirmed to each by Caroline the following summer; Schiller wrote to Charlotte in August, 1789: "Am I to hope that Caroline read in your soul and answered from your heart what I did not dare to confess? Oh how hard it has been for me to keep this secret which I was obliged to do from the beginning of our acquaintance."

The precise nature of Schiller's relationship to the two sisters has been disputed. In Caroline's later novel Agnes von Lilien, two women both pursue a relationship with a young baron, and critics have debated whether to understand the novel's love triangle as a reflection of Caroline, Charlotte, and Schiller (more recent critics are less inclined to do so). The letters later published from Schiller's correspondence with Charlotte are both deeply affectionate and literate; according to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lengefeld's admiration for Schiller's early work, particularly "The Artists," was important to their courtship. They married on 20 February 1790.

...
Wikipedia