page_title: Emilie von Berlepsch
section_title: Writing
hierarchical_section_title: Emilie von Berlepsch / Writing
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of the book Caledonia by German writer Emilie von Berlepsch. Deutsch: Deckblatt des Romans Caledonia der deutschen Autorin Emilie von Berlepsch.
context_page_description: Dorothea Friderika Aemilia von Berlepsch, known as Emilie von Berlepsch, was a German traveller and author. She is regarded as an early writer about women's rights in Germany.
context_section_description: Berlepsch's book Caledonia included early translations and reviews of Robert Burns. Her translations are credited with encouraging an acceptance and appreciation of Burns's work. There were numerous reviews in German newspapers and journals after Berlepsch's translations were published.
  In her writing Berlepsch deals particularly with the subject of women's rights, a topic she first raised in 1791 in a journal article innocuously titled "Some Characteristics and Principles Necessary for Happiness in Marriage," in which she ponders the pervasiveness of misogyny and the costs of women's conventional submissiveness. She described herself as "fighting against the prejudice that wants to grant women neither a will of their own nor the courage to express it". She talks about routine misogyny that cannot be handled by submissiveness. She argues that women are given neither rights nor the opportunity to complain; women are not, by their nature, prisoners of their emotions and men are not natural tyrants. She wanted an end to misogyny but she believed that men retained supremacy. She discussed various writers for German readers including particularly Mary Wollstonecraft. She notes her own role in raising women's issues for the first time in German.
  Berlepsch died in Lauenburg in 1830.
caption: The title-page of Caledonia, Hamburg, 1802
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