On this date in 1813, Louise-Victorine Ackermann (née Choquet) was born in Paris. Her atheist father educated her in the philosophy of the Encyclopédistes. 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 became a hub for major writers.
“She was the most decidedly Agnostic of them all,” wrote freethought historian Joseph McCabe. Other scholars think she was closer to being an atheist, judging from her verse. Ackermann is best-known for Poesies (1874), which contains powerful, somber verses about human suffering. She also wrote Pensees d’un solitaire (1883), which included a short autobiography. D. 1890.
