HENSEL, LUISE. — German poetess, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, born at Linum in Brandenburg on 30 March 1798, died at Paderborn on 18 December 1876.
She converted to Catholicism in 1818 after an adolescence marked by precocious intelligence and mystical impulses. Having left Berlin (where her mother, widowed in 1809, had moved with her children, and where Clemens Brentano had vainly fallen in love with her, dedicating some of his finest verses to her), she spent much of her life between Münster and the Rhineland as a governess and nurse in noble households. Many of her lieder, almost all of religious content, became popular even before the author’s name was known, thanks to the sincere faith that permeates them (e.g., Sursum corda 1, Abendgebet, Beim Lesen der heiligen Schrift). A complete edition was edited by H. Cardauns (Ratisbona 1923).