Minna Herzlieb


Christiane Friederike Wilhelmine "Minna " Herzlieb was a German foster-daughter of the publisher Karl Ernst Friedrich Frommann.

Life

Her father was a superintendent in her birthplace of Züllichau, Lower Silesia. Orphaned in infancy, she was brought up in the house of the publisher Karl Ernst Friedrich Frommann in Jena. In 1807 she came to Weimar, where she met Goethe, who presented her some sonnets. He also made her one of the models for "Ottilie" in his "Elective Affinities".
In 1821 she married professor Karl Wilhelm Walch but it was not a love match and may have contributed to her mental breakdown and death in a mental hospital in Görlitz in 1865.