The Roman Holiday of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel

Abstract

These are the last lines in Fanny Mendelssohn’s diary prior to her leaving Berlin with her husband Wilhelm Hensel, the Prussian court painter, and her nine-year-old son, Sebastian. An Italian journey had been Fanny’s life-long desire. Her brother, Felix, who was given all the moral and material support by his upper middle-class family, had traveled extensively abroad, including a tour of Italy in 1830-1831. But while Fanny had been given equal opportunities in her education at home, travel on one’s own for a female member of a “proper” family was out of the question. Her father, Abraham, in a much cited letter of July 16, 1820 to Fanny when she was fifteen years old wrote: “Perhaps for him (Felix) music will become a profession, while for you it will always be an ornament and can and should never become the ground bass of your being and doing.”  In a later letter, when Fanny was 23 years old, he preached: “You should pull yourself together, and collect yourself; you should educate yourself more seriously and assiduously towards your real goal, that of a housewife, the only profession for a girl.” Clearly Abraham saw no point in breaking the “no travel” convention on behalf of his daughter, destined to marry and have