Luise Hensel

Luise Hensel (March 30, 1798 to December 18, 1876) was a German religious author and poet.

Luise Hensel, the sister of Wilhelm Hensel and the sister-in-law of the composer Fanny Mendelssohn was born on March 30, 1798 in the small town of Linum in the Margravate of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia. After the death of her father in 1809, she moved to Berlin with her mother. Eventually, while living in Berlin, she joined the Roman Catholic Church.

Also, around this time, two men, the author Clemens Brentano and the composer Ludwig Berger, shared an unrequited love for Hensel. However, Hensel still influenced the romantic style of Brentano quite significantly; Brentano wrote the following to his brother in 1817: "These songs (referring to twenty songs sent to him by Hensel) at first broke my heart, causing me to burst into tears, their truth and simplicity striking me as the holiest that man could produce."

Another author, Wilhelm Müller, was also unlucky in love with Hensel. The story of this unfulfilled love is recorded in two works composed by Franz Schubert, the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin (English: The pretty mill-girl) and Winterreise (English: Winter Journey). The love of another man, casual friend Ludwig von Gerlach, who would later become a teacher of Otto von Bismarck, led to Hensel enjoying a high place within the Centre Party, a powerful political party in Germany at the time. This conflicted with her religious feelings, however, and in an emotional crisis, she joined the Catholic Church.

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