Sophie von La Roche

Marie Sophie von La Roche (née Gutermann von Gutershofen; 6 December 1730 – 18 February 1807) was a German novelist. She is considered the first financially independent female professional writer in Germany. Biography Sophie von La Roche was born in Kaufbeuren, present-day Germany, the oldest child of the doctor Georg Friedrich Gutermann and his wife, Regina Barbara Gutermann (née Unold). Gutermann was originally from Biberach. La Roche spent the majority of her childhood in Augsburg, under strict Pietist upbringing, and made frequent visits to Biberach. There she became the friend of Christoph Martin Wieland, and became engaged to him. In 1753, however, she married Georg Michael Anton Frank Maria von La Roche—completely surprising to her fiancé Wieland, who at the time lived in Switzerland. Georg von La Roche was an illegitimate son of Count Friedrich von Stadion-Warthausen and a dancer, Catharina La Roche. Stadion-Warthausen took custody of the boy and provided for his education as a secretary. Georg and Sophie had eight children, five survived past childhood: Maximiliane (1756–1793), Fritz (born 1757), Luise (born 1759), Carl (1766–1839) and Franz Wilhelm (1768–1791). From 1761 to 1768, Sophie La Roche was a lady of the court at her father-in-law's castle Warthausen, near Biberach (where Sophie and Wieland encountered each other once again). There was a comprehensive library (1,440 volumes, 550 works) at the castle, which is today mostly at the Bohemian castle Kozel near Pilsen. She composed letter correspondence in court-sanctioned French and accompanied the Count often to his country estate in Bönnigheim. Through the Count's will, La Roche's husband was appointed as supervisor of the Bönningheim estates. La Roche followed her husband there in 1770, and it was there that she completed—on the advice of a parson friend—the novel she had already begun at Warthausen, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (History of Fräulein von Sternheim). The novel was published by Wieland in 1771.