The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Hahn-Hahn, Ida Marie Luise Sophie Friederike Gustave

HAHN-HAHN, Ida Marie Loise Sophie Friederike Gustave, countess, a German authoress, born at Tressow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, June 22, 1805. Her father, Count Karl Friedrich von Hahn-Neuhaus (born 1782), was a theatrical enthusiast, who, after devoting his whole life and fortune to the stage, was compelled in his old age to support himself by managing a provincial company, and died in poverty at Altona, May 21, 1857. At the age of 21 she was married to her cousin, Count Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Hahn-Hahn, from whom she was divorced in 1829. Between 1835 and 1837 she published three volumes of verse, followed by a series of novels, such as Gräfin Faustine, Ulrich, Sigismund Forster, and Cecil. In 1839 she submitted to a dangerous operation on the eye, which for a time threatened to deprive her of sight; and to divert her mind she went to the East, recording her adventures in the Orientalische Briefe (3 vols., 1844). In 1850 she embraced the Roman Catholic faith, giving an account of her conversion in Von Babylon nach Jerusalem (1851). In 1852, wearied with the world, she entered the mother house of the order of the Good Shepherd at Angers. She afterward took up her residence at Mentz, where she devoted herself to the reformation of outcasts of her own sex, and wrote several works, among which are: Bilder aus der Geschichte der Kirche (3 vols., 1856-'64); Peregrina (1864); and Eudoxia (1868).