If One Were To Imagine a study called “The Women of the George Circle,” who would be among the cast of characters? Given the Master’s gender preferences, the cast would not be large. One might include several women by virtue of their proximity to prominent disciples: Hanna Wolfskehl, Erika Wolters, Fine von Kahler — the last intimate with both Friedrich Gundolf and Ernst Kantorowicz. But these women, however lively, had rather little independent intellectual profile. One might consider as well two women George knew and for whom he showed respect: Georg Simmel’s wife Gertrud, who wrote books on philosophical and social problems, and Margarete Susman, the prolific literary and cultural critic. Yet even these two were too far apart from George to be counted as more than distant relations. Which leaves the big three: Sabine Lepsius, Edith Landmann, and Gertrud Kantorowicz. In terms of their relationships to George, Lepsius was probably the closest (at least until about 1912) and Landmann the one who was most like a Jünger in writing on behalf of the cause, but Kantorowicz was probably the woman the Master loved best.

Gertrud Kantorowicz was born into a milieu of luxury in Posen in 1876 as the daughter of the senior partner of one of the city’s largest manufacturing enterprises in a leading industry — alcoholic beverages. Wonderfully evocative memoirs written by her niece describe the younger Gertrud:

Drawn to the intellectual life, Kantorowicz was one of the first German women to obtain a PhD in the Humanities, in art history. While studying in Berlin she fell under the spell of Georg Simmel. Openly, she was Simmel’s disciple and assistant; clandestinely, she was his mistress.