Olga Marie Pauline Plümacher (née Hünerwadel; 27 May 1839 – 1895) was a Russian-born Swiss-American philosopher and scholar. She engaged with the philosophies of the German philosophers

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

and

Eduard von Hartmann Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, was a German philosopher, independent scholar and author of ''Philosophy of the Unconscious'' (1869). His notable ideas include the theory of the Unconscious and a pessimistic interpretation of the "best of all ...

, and published three books which contributed to the

pessimism controversy The pessimism controversy or pessimism dispute (german: Pessimismusstreit) is a largely forgotten intellectual controversy that occurred in Germany, starting in the 1860s and ending around the beginning of the First World War. Philosophers who t ...

in Germany. Her book on the history of

philosophical pessimism Philosophical pessimism is a family of philosophical views that assign a negative value to life or existence. Philosophical pessimists commonly argue that the world contains an Empiricism, empirical prevalence of pains over pleasures, that existe ...

, ''Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart'' ("Pessimism in the Past and Present") was influential on

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

and

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

Biography

Plümacher was born in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, Russia on 27 May 1839. She was the daughter of Gottlieb Samuel and Adelheid Hünderwadel (his cousin). The family moved to Switzerland where her father managed a steel plant and later retired to Zürich, where Plümacher grew up. She married a German sea captain, Eugene Hermann Plümacher, who later worked as U.S. Consul to Venezuela; they had two children. Plümacher had no formal university education. Plümacher was friends with a former classmate who was the mother of the German playwright

Frank Wedekind Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (July 24, 1864 – March 9, 1918) was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the de ...

and introduced him to the philosophies of

and

, of whom Plümacher was a devotee; she has been described as Wedekind's "philosophical aunt". Plümacher later emigrated with her family to the United States and lived in

Beersheba Springs, Tennessee Beersheba Springs is a town in Grundy County, Tennessee, Grundy County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 477 at the 2010 census. A resort town in the 19th century, Beersheba Springs was the summer home of author Mary Noailles Murfree. ...

, where she published three books in Germany that engaged with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann: ''Der Kampf um's Unbewusste'' ("The Battle for the Unconscious"), ''Zwei Individualisten der Schopenhauer'schen Schule'' ("Two Individualists of the Schopenhauer School"), and ''Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart'' ("Pessimism in the Past and Present"). These works made Plümacher a significant figure within the

in Germany. ''Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart'' was influential on

, whose personal copy he annotated throughout. Plümacher also published several articles on psychology, philosophy and metaphysics in several German journals. Additionally, she published an article on Von Hartmann in English, in the Oxford journal ''

Mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

''. Plümacher died in Tennessee, in 1895.

Legacy

first read ''Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart'' around 1938; his intense interest in the book led him to heavily annotate it throughout and add in blank pages for additional notes. Plümacher has been compared to

Agnes Taubert Agnes Marie Constanze von Hartmann (; 7 January 1844 – 8 May 1877) was a German writer and philosopher, known for her 1873 book ''Pessimism and Its Opponents'' and its contribution to the pessimism controversy in Germany. Biography Taubert wa ...

, another largely forgotten German female philosopher who also played large part in the pessimism controversy, as well as the German-American philosopher Amelie J. Hathaway. Rolf Kieser, a professor of German at the

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...

, published a biography of Plümacher in 1990, ''Olga Plümacher-Hünerwadel, eine gelehrte Frau des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts''. Plümacher was included in the 2022 issue of the ''

British Journal for the History of Philosophy The ''British Journal for the History of Philosophy'' (BJHP) is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, publishing articles on the history of philosophy. It is widely regarded as one of the l ...

'', titled "Lost Voices: Women in Philosophy 1870-1970".

Selected publications

Articles

Books

* '' Der Kampf um's Unbewusste'' (''The Struggle for the Subconscious''; 1881) * '' Zwei Individualisten der Schopenhauer'schen Schule'' (''Two Individualists from the Schopenhauer School''; 1881) * '' Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart'' (''Pessimism in the Past and Present''; 1883)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Plumacher, Olga 1839 births 1895 deaths 19th-century American philosophers 19th-century American women writers 19th-century Swiss philosophers 19th-century Swiss women writers American women philosophers Philosophers of pessimism Swiss women philosophers Writers from Saint Petersburg Writers from Zürich