Aston, Luise (1814–1871)

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Aston, Luise (1814–1871)

German author and feminist pioneer. Name variations: Louisa. Born Luise Hoche on November 26, 1814, in Gröningen near Halberstadt into a conservative Lutheran family; died in obscurity on December 21, 1871, in Wangen-Allgäu, in southern Germany; daughter of Johann Gottried Hoche (a Lutheran minister and church official); twice married Samuel Aston (an English industrialist); married Eduard Meier (a physician from Bremen), in 1850.

Became a well-known and controversial spokes-woman for women's rights in her verse and novels (early 1840s); brief moment of fame during ill-fated revolution (1848), when her writings were much discussed; fleetingly served as editor of a radical journal; like other German revolutionaries, was unable to reach a broadly based audience and quickly faded from the spotlight after the suppression of the revolution (1849).

Born in 1814 into a traditional, conservative family, Luise Hoche Aston grew up in a period of harsh political and intellectual repression. To combat this atmosphere, much of her generation was attracted to radical ideas, including liberalism, nationalism, and—for women—the idea of female equality. A prolific, but often undisciplined writer, Aston produced a number of books of verse and novels written in the highly emotional style of pre-1848 German Romanticism. In her private life, too, Luise was a romantic, often allowing her heart to dominate her intellect. She quickly decided to marry an English industrialist, Samuel Aston, whom she met in Magdeburg; the marriage, however, was a failure. Some time later, she and Samuel were reconciled and married a second time; and, again, the union resulted in failure. Aston was somewhat more successful in her writings, in which conflicting human emotions could be tamed by the writer's wishes, and unsatisfactory endings were set aside for perfect ones. Her 1846 cycle of poems, Wilde Rosen (Wild Roses), made Aston famous for their exuberantly emotional eroticism.

After divorcing her husband a second time in 1846, Aston decided a move to Berlin would advance her career as a writer and advocate of women's rights. Her radical views and unconventional (to conservatives) behavior quickly brought her to the attention of the authorities of the highly efficient Prussian police state. Threatened with prison, she left Berlin but returned when that city erupted into revolutionary violence in the spring of 1848. Indeed, the year 1848 was the high point of Aston's life. For part of the year, she participated as a nurse in the military campaign against Denmark in the disputed provinces of Schleswig-Holstein. Upon her return to Berlin, Aston became a leading member of the revolutionary faction led by a fascinating demagogue and rabble rouser Friedrich Wilhelm Held. For a brief time in 1848, she edited a journal, Der Freischärler für Kunst und Soziales Leben and wrote most of the articles.

By the closing weeks of 1848, Held had been abandoned by his disillusioned disciples and the revolution collapsed. Luise Aston was expelled from Berlin by the police, her revolutionary dream of a united and democratic Germany having gone up in smoke. In 1850, she again married, this time to a physician from Bremen, Eduard Meier. Although she continued to write, and published a poetry cycle in 1850, her reputation both as a writer and political activist declined drastically in Otto von Bismarck's conservative regime. Largely forgotten by her contemporaries, and virtually unknown to the new generation of Socialists and feminists, Aston died in Wangen-Allgäu on December 21, 1871, the year of Bismarck's triumphant unification of Germany into a conservative and Prussian-dominated Reich.