Rahel, wife of Varnhagen von Ense, born in Berlin, of Jewish parentage; was a woman of "rare gifts, worth, and true genius, and equal to the highest thoughts of her century," and lived in intimate relation with all the intellectual lights of Germany at the time; worshipped at the shrine of Goethe, and was the foster-mother of German genius generally in her day; she did nothing of a literary kind herself; all that remains of her gifts in that line are her Letters, published by her husband on her death, which letters, however, are intensively subjective, and reveal the state rather of her feelings than the thoughts of her mind (1771-1833).