Schelling was born at
Göttingen in 1763, the daughter of orientalist
Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791), who taught at the progressive
University of Göttingen. She was educated by private tutors and by her father. In 1784, she married a district medical officer and son of lawyer (1715–1797), Johann Franz Wilhelm Böhmer (1754–1788), and the couple moved to
Clausthal in the
Harz. After his death in 1788, she tried to live financially independently. Together with their only surviving daughter she moved to Göttingen in 1788, where she entered into close relations to the poet
Gottfried August Bürger and the critic of the Romantic school,
August Wilhelm Schlegel. In Mainz, Schelling joined the intellectual circle around
Georg Forster, who had married her childhood friend
Therese Huber. Forster was an explorer, journalist, and revolutionary. When Mainz was occupied by the French during the
French Revolutionary Wars, she moved into Forster's house. Mainz was declared a republic, aligned with France (see
Republic of Mainz). But when Prussian troops recaptured Mainz (22 July 1793), Schelling was pregnant and asked friends and family for help. She was released and
August Schlegel arranged for her to give birth under an assumed name in
Lucka near
Leipzig. Schelling and August Schlegel married in 1796, and she moved to
Jena, where he had received a professorship. Their house became a meeting place for the young literary and intellectual elite later associated with
German Romanticism. His brother
Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich's wife
Dorothea Veit moved in. They were at the centre of
Jena Romanticism. Schelling was involved in the literary projects of her husband and his brother. She is credited with contributing to many of the 300 reviews her husband published in the Jena
Allgemeine Literaturzeitung between 1796 and 1799. In 1803, she divorced Schlegel and married the young philosopher
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Her new husband was at the center of Romantic
natural philosophy. The couple moved to
Würzburg, but were maligned by gossip. In 1806, they moved to
Munich, where Friedrich Schelling received a professorship and was honored for his work. From 1805 to 1807, Schelling published several reviews in her own name and assisted her husband in his reviews, which shaped Romantic literature and literary taste. She also engaged in extensive correspondence with numerous Romantics. Having suffered poor health for some time, she died of
dysentery in 1809 in
Maulbronn. ==References==