Louise Victorine Ackermann

November 30, 2012

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On this date in 1813, Louise Victorine Ackermann (nee Choquet) was born in France. Her father educated her in the philosophy of the Encyclopedists. While studying German in Berlin, she met Paul Ackermann, a German pastor who had lost his faith, and married him in 1843. They had two happy years before his death. She moved to Nice and wrote highly regarded stories and poems, Contes (1855) and Contes et Poesies (1863). Her home in Paris later became a hub for major writers. "She was the most decidedly Agnostic of them all," wrote freethought historian Joseph McCabe. Mme. Ackermann is best-known for Poesies (1874), which contains powerful, somber verses against human suffering. She also wrote Pensees d'un solitaire (1883), which included a short autobiography. Her tombstone was inscribed with her agnostic verse. D. 1890.

“[Religions] impose antiquated and narrow beliefs which are entirely unsuitable for a being who knows nothing and can affirm nothing.”

— Pensees d'une solitaire, 1903 ed. Cited by Joseph McCabe, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists

Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor - www.ffrf.org