Rahel, the wife of Varnhagen (q.v.) von Ense, a woman of great intellectual abilities and wide intellectual sympathies, might almost be called the foster-mother of German genius. Her name was RAHEL ANTONIE FREDERIEKE LEVIN; she was a Jewess by birth, a sister of the poet Ludwig Levin (afterwards Robert-Tarnow), and she was born in Berlin on 19th May 1771. The first half of her life was spent in various towns of Germany, in Paris, and in Prague. Her first love having been killed in battle against Napoleon's army, Rahel became a Christian and married (in 1814) Varnhagen von Ense. Her house in Berlin was a gathering-place for men of genius—philosophers, poets, artists, and writers. She herself was greatly influenced when a girl by the writings of W. von Humboldt and F. Schlegel, and especially by Goethe, whom she called her god; and she in her turn recognised and encouraged the genius of Jean Paul, Tieck, De la Motte Fouqué, F. von Gentz, Fichte, Hegel, Gans, Heine, Thiers, Benjamin Constant, and others, but especially the writers of the Romantic school. Into the patriotic struggle against Napoleon she threw herself heart and soul. She died in Berlin on 7th March 1833. Her husband published a collection of her writings and letters as Rahel (1833), and three years later another collection. See also her correspondence with Veit (1861) and with Varnhagen (1875); and books on her by Schmidt-Weissenfels (1857), Assing (1877), and Mrs Jennings (1876).