Sophie von La Roche

Sophie von La Roche
Marie Sophie von La Roche
Born	(1730-12-06)6 December 1730 Kaufbeuren
Died	18 February 1807(1807-02-18) (aged 76) Offenbach am Main
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	German
Genre	Epistolary novel, autobiography, periodical literature
Literary movement	Enlightenment, Empfindsamkeit
Spouse	Georg Michael Franck von La Roche (1753–1788)
Children	8
Relatives	Clemens Brentano (grandson) Bettina von Arnim (granddaughter)

Maria Sophie von La Roche (née Gutermann von Gutershofen) (6 December 1730 – 18 February 1807) was a German novelist.

Sophie von La Roche was born in Kaufbeuren, present-day Germany, the oldest child of the doctor Georg Friedrich Gutermann and his wife, Regina Barbara. Gutermann was originally from Biberach. La Roche spent the majority of her childhood in Augsburg, under strict Pietist upbringing, and made frequent visits to Biberach. There she became the friend of Christoph Martin Wieland, and became engaged to him. In 1753, however, she married Georg von La Roche—completely surprising to her fiancé Wieland, who at the time lived in Switzerland.

Georg von La Roche was an illegitimate son of Count Friedrich von Stadion-Warthausen and a dancer, Catharina La Roche. Stadion-Warthausen took custody of the boy and provided for his education as a secretary. Of the couple's eight children, five survived past childhood: Maximiliane (1756–1793), Fritz (born 1757), Luise (born 1759), Carl (1766–1839) and Franz Wilhelm (1768–1791).

From 1761 to 1768, Sophie La Roche was a lady of the court at her father-in-law's castle Warthausen, near Biberach (where Sophie and Wieland encountered each other once again). There was a comprehensive library (1,440 volumes, 550 works) at the castle, which is today mostly at the Bohemian castle Kozel near Pilsen. She composed letter correspondence in court-sanctioned French and accompanied the Count often to his country estate in Bönnigheim. Through the Count's will, La Roche's husband was appointed as supervisor of the Bönningheim estates. La Roche followed her husband there in 1770, and it was there that she completed—on the advice of a parson friend—the novel she had already begun at Warthausen, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim. [History of Fräulein von Sternheim]. The novel was published by Wieland in 1771.

Georg von La Roche supervised the Stadion-Warthausen estates until 1771, when he became privy councillor of the Electoral Archbishop of Trier. The career change prompted a move for the family to Ehrenbreitstein. La Roche held a literary salon in their home in the borough of Koblenz, one that Goethe mentions in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Among the habitués were Johann Bernhard Basedow, Wilhelm Heinse, the Jacobi brothers, and Johann Kaspar Lavater. She became friends with Johann Heinrich Jung and introduced him to his second wife, Maria Salome von Saint George.