Background
Von Meysenbug was born at Kassel, Hesse. Her father Carl Rivalier descended from a family of French Huguenots, and received the title of Baron of Meysenbug from William I of Hesse-Kassel.
Von Meysenbug was born at Kassel, Hesse. Her father Carl Rivalier descended from a family of French Huguenots, and received the title of Baron of Meysenbug from William I of Hesse-Kassel.
The ninth of ten children, she broke with her family because of her political convictions. Von Meysenbug, however, refused to appeal to her family and lived first by joining a free community in Hamburg, and then by immigrating in 1852 to England where she lived by teaching and translating works. There, she met the republicans Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, and Gottfried Kinkel, all political refugees.
The young Carl Schurz also became acquainted with her there.
Olga Herzen married Gabriel Monod in 1873 and established herself in France, but Malwida"s poor health obstructed her from joining her. She invited Paul Rée and Nietzsche to Sorrento, a town which overlooks the bay of Naples, in the autumn of 1876.
There, Rée wrote The Origins of Moral Sensations, and Nietzsche began Human, All Too Human.
In 1862 von Meysenbug went to Italy with Olga Herzen, the daughter of Alexander Herzen, known as the "father of Russian socialism" (and whose daughters she taught) and resided there.