Therese Forster

Marie Therese Forster (10 August 1786 – 3 June 1862) was a German educator, writer, correspondent and editor. Born in Vilnius in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to Georg Forster and his wife Therese, she spent her early childhood in Mainz. Her father was active in the revolutionary Republic of Mainz, and she and her mother fled the city in late 1792. After her father's death, she was raised by her mother and stepfather Ludwig Ferdinand Huber. From 1801 to 1805, Forster lived with Dutch-Swiss writer Isabelle de Charrière and collaborated with her on an epistolary novel. Until 1826, she worked as a teacher and educator, first at Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg's school in Hofwil and then for several upper-class families. After her mother's 1829 death, she lived with family and educated her nieces and nephews. From 1840, she collaborated with Georg Gottfried Gervinus on the first complete edition of her father's works, which were published by Brockhaus in 1843. Therese Forster spent her later years with her niece and died in Albisheim aged 75. Early life and family Therese Forster, who was called or ('little rose') as a child, was born in Vilnius as the first child of Georg Forster (1754–1794), who held the Chair of Natural History at Vilnius University, and his wife Therese, the daughter of Göttingen classicist Heyne. Four days after her birth, her parents wrote to their friend Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, the mother mentioning that she was "only a girl", the father commenting that he did not care until the time when she would become a woman. She was baptised "Marie Therese" as a Protestant on 20 August 1786. Georg Forster planned to educate his favourite daughter himself, and for that reason decided she should not learn Polish or French until she was seven, so no domestic servants or strangers could have a negative influence on her education. In 1787, her father was offered to accompany a Russian expedition to the Pacific, which provided an opportunity to leave Poland. However, the expedition was shelved while the family was staying in Göttingen, and in 1788 Georg Forster became head librarian in Mainz instead. Röschen was inoculated against smallpox in 1790 by Sömmerring; to the great protest of her father this happened during his absence. The earliest memories of Röschen were of playing with Auguste, the daughter of Caroline Böhmer, and Sophie, the daughter of physician , and of the graves of her siblings who died in infancy in 1791 and 1792.