Karoline Stahl (4 November 1776 – 1 April 1837) was a German writer and educator. As a governess in

Livonia Livonia ( liv, Līvõmō, et, Liivimaa, fi, Liivinmaa, German and Scandinavian languages: ', archaic German: ''Liefland'', nl, Lijfland, Latvian and lt, Livonija, pl, Inflanty, archaic English: ''Livland'', ''Liwlandia''; russian: Ли ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

, and Germany for several decades, she developed didactic tales for juvenile audiences. Her works were highly regarded by the

Grimms GRIMMS was an English pop rock, comedy and poetry group, originally formed as a merger of The Scaffold with core members of the Bonzo Dog Band and the Liverpool Scene for two concerts in 1971 at the suggestion of John Gorman. The band's ...

, who referred to her collections in their 1857 edition and incorporated her story ''Thankless Dwarf'' into their 1837 edition.

Biography

Karoline Stahl was born on 4 November 1776 in Olengof,

in the family of a district court secretary. She was a teacher in

Dorpat Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern Europe, Northern Europe, European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres ...

and after her marriage in 1808, she went abroad and lived for some time in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

and

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

. There also she worked as a teacher. In 1816, she published her first book ''Fables, Fairy Tales'' and ''Stories for Children'' which are mainly moralizing and educational in nature. The book included a work that was later revised by Wilhelm Grimm and which today is one of the most famous German fairy tales ''White and Rose''. In 1817, Stahl tried her hand at poetry by publishing a collection of poems entitled Romantische Dichtungen. In addition, from 1816 to 1820, she contributed to several local newspapers, among which was Friedrich Wilhelm Hubitz's periodical Der Gesellschafter. Having been widowed, in 1820, Stahl returned to the Russian Empire and worked as an educator in Dorpat, Pskov and Belarus. From that time on, she became predominantly a children's writer. Her fairy tales for children and stories for young people, published partly abroad, partly in Riga and Dorpat, gained great fame and enjoyed considerable success among young readers in the first half of the 19th century. In 1828, Stahl again left for Germany, where she worked as a governess and returned only shortly before her death. She died on 1 April 1837 in the city of Dorpat.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stahl, Karoline 1776 births 1837 deaths 18th-century German women writers 19th-century German women writers Writers from Gdańsk Baltic-German people