Johanna Kinkel

Johanna Kinkel (8 July 1810 – 15 November 1858), born Maria Johanna Mockel, was a German composer, writer, pedagogue, and revolutionary. Biography Kinkel was born in Bonn to Catholic parents Marianna and Peter Joseph Mockel, a school teacher at the Bonner Lycée. She composed her first musical work, “The Bird Cantata” (“Die Vogelkantate”), op. 1, in 1829 for her musical society in Bonn and the work was published in 1838 by Trautwein. She spent a few years living and composing in Berlin, where she attended salons and formed friendships with women such as Bettina von Arnim and Fanny Hensel. She maintained a career as a published composer and writer as well as a music pedagogue throughout her life. In 1832, Johanna Mockel married the 29 year old music and bookseller Johann Paul Matthieux. The marriage quickly turned restrictive and abusive as Matthieux forbade his young wife from any activity beyond her domestic duties and tyrannized her to her psychological limits. In 1840, she was divorced from the Cologne bookseller Matthieux. Her second marriage, in 1843, was to the German poet Gottfried Kinkel, with whom she had four children. Following the 1848 Revolutions she was forced to aband