Malwida von Meysenbug

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Malwida von Meysenbug (October 28, 1816, Kassel - April 23, 1903, Rome) was a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. She also met the French writer Romain Rolland in Rome in 1890, and is the author of Memories of an Idealist. She published the first volume anonymously in 1869.

Her father Carl Rivalier descended from a family of French Huguenots, and received the title of Baron of Meysenbug from Wilhelm I of Hessen-Kassel. The ninth of ten children, Malwida broke with her family because of her political convictions. Two of her brothers made brilliant careers, one as a minister of state in Austria, and the other as Minister of the Karlsruhe. Malwida, however, refused to appeal to her family and lived first by joining a free community in Hamburg, and then by immigrating in 1852 to England where she lived of teaching and translating works. There, she met the Republicans Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc and Gottfried Kinkel, all political refugees.

In 1862 Malwida went to Italy with Olga Herzen, the daughter of Alexander Herzen, known as the "father of Russian socialism" (she was teaching his daughters) and resided there. Olga Herzen married Gabriel Monod in 1873 and established herself in France, but Malwida's poor health impeded her from joining her.

Malwida then introduced most of Nietzsche's friends to him, including Helene von Druskowitz. She invited Paul Rée and Nietzsche in Sorrento, a town which overlooks the bay of Naples, in the autumn of 1877. There, Rée wrote The Origins of Moral Sensations.

Malwida von Meysenburg is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.