The teapot was served, just as such a society required. Mademoiselle Ackermann presided over this on the sofa, allowing the oldest ones of us to alternate assuming the role of hostess under her supervision; the others gathered around the table or stood and walked about the room, laughing and chatting as they wished; anything seemly was permitted as if it were really a company of ladies invited for convivial entertainment; only speaking German was and continued to be highly deprecated.
[ . . . ]
[What to the “businessman and scholar turned grey in work and honorary posts”] was his academic times, is to me, though it almost sounds ridiculous, that societé des jeunes dames. Of course, back then I was still at least ten years short of the age at which parents let their sons enroll in university, but my sex always walks ahead of the male counterpart by ten years. [ . . . ]
That societé will and must always remain valuable in my memory because it opened up to me a new, rich source of joy; through it, I was taken both out of the narrow restricted circle of family life and out of my overly extended world of ideas, and into the most cheerful, sociable contact with girls my age, and yet I always came back from our lively youthful activities with enjoyment not stunted vis-à-vis all those things that had been dear to me from earliest childhood. [ . . . ]
[The merchant’s daughter wishes to become a painter.]
[At the age of ten, Johanna felt the desire to become a painter.]
A consoling thought [ . . . ] arose in my soul then, I considered that no one is a born master, and that consequently even Angelika [Kaufmann] would not have become one without any lessons. I would like to learn; what others are able to do cannot remain impossible for me, and I wish to become a woman painter, a second Angelika Kaufmann; this decision was anchored more firmly in my mind with every passing day; after much contemplation, I also thought to have finally found the way to make the realization of that decision possible.
The time approached when my father intended to meet up, as arranged, with his Russian trading partners in Leipzig, when I finally plucked up some courage, revealing my wish to my parents at a moment I thought rather opportune. More heartfelt, more warmly than I had ever asked for anything, trembling, passionate, hardly capable of uttering my words comprehensibly, I implored my father to take me with him, to bring me from Leipzig to Berlin, apprenticing me formally there to Chodowiecki, the greatest painter who in my view existed in the world, but definitely in Germany at least. [ . . . ]
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