But these apostrophes helped create legends, which often have resulted in a somewhat skewed image of her. She was also not at the center of the group known as the Sentimental Circle Empfindsamer Kreis , which was already starting to break up by the time Caroline moved to the city in , where she stayed for only nine years, until her death. Even when she married Hereditary Prince Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt in , she preferred to live at the royal residence in Bouxwiller Elsass and visited her spouse only when required.
Unlike her husband β who exhibited Prussian correctness to the point of pettiness, was religious if not superstitious, but who was first and foremost a soldier β Caroline was interested in music and the hunt and especially in sciences and cultural pursuits. She raised her eight children with love and care, and seeking advantageous marriages for her daughters was her most important concern in her final years. She spent hours reading nearly every day of her life.
Equally important to her was corresponding with other select people about what she read. Caroline regularly procured these writings from her Frankfurt bookseller; she defended him when he was put into jail for doing so.
Only one of these catalogs D-DS Hs , a thick, bound book, has a significant title :. The foreword contains a description of the six cabinets and their contents in Bouxwiller Palace. The most comprehensive section by far contains French works, followed by those in German and English.
There is a lot of room for additions, though apparently thicker and somewhat darker pages were inserted later with new acquisitions until At the end are some music items, particularly operas, but those only list the items that were already in Bouxwiller. For the additions after β unfortunately we do not know when exactly β an extra catalog was started, and probably by the same writer to judge by the handwriting D-DS Hs It contains, arranged by genre, the music that was presumably performed in Darmstadt when Caroline resided there.
