A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Hahn-Hahn, Ida Maria Louisa Frederica Gustava, Countess of
HAHN-HAHN, IDA MARIA LOUISA FREDERICA GUSTAVA, COUNTESS OF.
This lady is the daughter of the Count Von Hahn-Hahn, an officer in the service of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She was born at Tressow, in that duchy, in the year 1806, and married in 1826 another German count of the same name as her other, belonging to a collateral branch of the same family. This marriage not proving a happy one, the countess sued for a divorce, which she obtained in 1829. The natural current of her affections being thus checked, and turned inward, it is not surprising that she should have sought solace in mental activity, and given expression to her inward experiences and strong passionate emotions in literature. At first she wrote only poetry, three volumes of which were published from 1835 to 1837. After that period, however, she became known as a novelist of great and varied imagination, and strong graphic powers of description. Her pictures of aristocratic life in Germany were so new and fresh, and withal so pervaded by a constantly abiding sense of individuality, that we seem to read in every page the author's own thoughts and experiences. These works were poured forth with marvellous rapidity, "The Countess Faustina," "Ulrick," "Sigismund Forster," and "Cecil," were quickly translated into English, and became highly popular with a class of readers, who prefer the exciting, the romantic, and the imaginative to that which is pure and elevating in moral teaching. The Countess Hahn-Hahn has travelled much, and aridly described what she has seen, and thought, in her works entitled, "Beyond the Mountains," "Letters on a Journey," "A Northern Tour," Reminiscences of France," Oriental Letters," and "From Babylon to Jerusalem," in which last work we may read the inward process of her change of faith to Roman Catholicism, a religion which she seems to have embraced with all the fervour of her ardent nature. It was early predicted that she would end her life in a convent, and the fulfilment of this prophecy appears very likely.