Emma Herwegh (born Emma Siegmund: 10 May 1817 – 24 March 1904) was a German salonnière and letter writer who participated in the 1848 uprisings, undertaking at least one secret quasi-diplomatic mission on behalf of the . She is known to posterity in particular, partly because she married the poet and activist Georg Herwegh, and partly because she was an exceptionally prolific letter writer. Life Provenance and early years Emma Charlotte Siegmund was born in Berlin or, more probably, Magdeburg. Sources differ. Johann Gottfried Siegmund (1792-1865), her father, was a prominent and successful Berlin silk merchant. He came from an old Jewish family, but had himself committed to Protestantism. Emma grew up in a prosperous home: Lucas Schönlein, their family doctor, was also the family doctor of the king, whose palatial city residence was close by. She was the middle sister of three. There was also a brother, Gustav August Siegmund (1815-1902) who would grow up to become a Berlin physician and minor politician. She enjoyed a first-class education, through which she mastered three foreign languages (French, Polish and Italian). Musically gifted, she composed, painted, translated, enjoyed theater and wrote poetry. Despite the liberal open atmosphere of the parental home, where various prominent Berliners were regular visitors, and despite plenty of animated conversations with friends, the diaries she kept as an adolescent indicate that she felt acutely constrained by the dull and conventional "bourgeois" life which she led: Mornings nothing, afternoons nothing and evenings not a lot ... Saturday some hours with Valentini [her Italian teacher], dull lesson about a [long since forgotten] play ... Exhausted - evening boat trip - whist party. Ennui. Potato salad. As a young woman she evinced a certain tomboyishness. A phrase reproduced in several sources indicates that she "often violated the conventions of her time: she rode like the devil, shot with pistol, on holiday in 1841 swam in the sea off Helgoland, smoked, and took an interest in gymnastics". When she was thirteen her political consciousness was engaged by the 1830 French revolution, and slightly closer to home, two years later, the "Hambach Festival". She also drew inspiration from the Polish liberation movement. Because of her friendship with Emilia Sczaniecka, twelve years her senior, it is evident from their correspondence that she was unusually well informed about the Polish situation in the aftermath of successive partitions of Polish territory between Russia and Prussia.