Hahn-Hahn, IDA, COUNTESS

Hahn-Hahn, IDA, COUNTESS, authoress of a great number of German romances dealing with aristocratic circles of life, conventional in style and often sentimental in feeling, and of numerous books of travel, was born at Tressow, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 22d June 1805. At the age of twenty-one she married a relative; but the union was dissolved three years later. She thereupon travelled much in Europe and the East. In 1850, weary of her restless life, she embraced Roman Catholicism, and in 1852 entered a convent at Angers. Her later writings are strongly marked by ultramontane views. The best known of her novels are Gräfin Faustine, Ulrich, and Clelia Conti. Her style was cleverly satirised in Fanny Lewald's Diogena (1847). A collection of her early romances in 21 vols. appeared at Berlin in 1851. She died at Mainz, 12th January 1880.