Maria von Herbert

Baroness Maria Regina von Herbert (born 6 September 1769 in Klagenfurt; died 23 May 1803 ) was a sister of, an Austrian patron and white-lead paint manufacturer. She is best known for her letters to Immanuel Kant.

Life
Maria "Miza" (or "Mitza") von Herbert was a daughter of industrial pioneer and Maria Anna née Fux (1749–1779). She was raised in the Herbertstöckl, the mansion house of the Herberts at St. Veiter Ring in Klagenfurt, and bought the Stückler Stöckl in Klagenfurt St. Martin in March 1802, a little more than a year before her disappearance. She was a member of a circle of people from Klagenfurt and vicinity around her brother Franz Paul von Herbert who shared anti-monarchist views, a background of Freemasonry, and an interest in Kantian philosophy. Her brother was acquainted with major protagonists of the intellectual life of the German-speaking world. Maria von Herbert probably had a liaison with Ignaz von Dreer zu Thurnhub (1762–1842), another member of the Herbert circle. This "friend", as she calls him in her letters, turned away from her after she told him about an earlier relationship to another man. After that, she was unable to give her life a new purpose, or meaning, which led her to write her first letter to Kant in 1791. There we find: "[I]f I hadn't read so much of your work I would certainly have taken my own life by now." She asks Kant "for help, for solace, or counsel to prepare [her] for death". Kant replies in a lengthy letter whose draft survived. Two more letters by Maria von Herbert followed, written at the beginning of 1793 and 1794 respectively. Although Kant announced another letter to her in his correspondence with Karl Leonhard Reinhold in May 1793, Maria von Herbert received no other letter by him. On 23 May 1803, the day of her disappearance, she gave a déjeuner at the Stückler Stöckl. She left her guests under some pretence and, probably on the same day, took her own life, as announced in letters she left to her intimates. Her body was never found. As became publicly known only in 2016 through an exhibition at the University of Klagenfurt, she left behind an illegitimate son.

Correspondence
To date, only four letters are known by Maria von Herbert, which, although orthographically weak – as most women's writing at that time – are marked by philosophical stringency and eloquence. Her three letters to Kant raise several philosophical issues concerning friendship, objectification, the Kantian distinction between lying (saying something that is not true) and reticence (saying not all that is true), and suicide. The fourth letter is from 1800 and addressed to, her brother's closest friend. She asks Erhard to visit her brother, who was then struck with apathy and suffering from ill health, or to get him to Berlin under some pretense. She feared that he will take his own life – which eventually he did in 1811, eight years after her own voluntary death.