Considering the nineteenth-century socio-political discourse, Johanna Kinkel’s biography is extraordinary. Kinkel’s persistent fight for a divorce from her first husband, her conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism, her second marriage with the Protestant theologian and later revolutionary Gottfried Kinkel, and her escape to and exile in London bear witness to her strong and emancipated personality. Her own involvement in socio-politics through journalistic activities, her leadership of the Maikäferbund, her constant juggling of family, household, and the public domain, and her directorship of the Bonner Gesangverein reveal her democratic and proactive mindset. Finally, her broad artistic affinity surfaces in her composition, teaching, and writing.

While Kinkel’s musical engagement, considered in isolation, is a relatively common nineteenth-century phenomenon, the combination of all biographical facets of Kinkel’s is astonishing. The nineteenth-century print media testify to a great number of Lieder composed by women, many of whom have long been forgotten: Charlotte Bauer (dates unknown), Isabella Behr (dates unkown), Jeanette Bürde (1799–?), Fanny Hensel, Marie Hinrichs, Marie König (1831–1859), Elise Müller (1782–1849), Elise Schmezer, Clara Schumann, Bettina von Arnim, Ingeborg von Bronsart (1849–1913), Charlotte von Bülow, Wilhelmine von Schwertzell, to name but a few. Likewise, women writers were not uncommon. Such salon gatherings as Kinkel’s Maikäferbund in Poppelsdorf were a fashionable phenomenon throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and across the length and breadth of Europe. Some examples of salonnières are Ingeborg von Bronsart, Marie d’Agoult (1805–1876), Fanny Hensel, Jessie Hillebrand (1827–1905), Malla Silfverstolpe (1782–1861), Bettina von Arnim, and Elisabeth von Staegemann (1761–1835). In terms of teaching, Kinkel herself took precise record of her impression of the job market for music teachers in her memoirs and her Briefe aus London. Both documents reveal that Kinkel was one of many who tried to make a living from teaching and that the job market was extremely competitive in both Berlin and London. It is the combination and nature of all those activities that grant Kinkel an extraordinary standing within her own context. Kinkel was a woman of her own time with regard to her socio-cultural restrictions and her national views, but her biography also reflects her quite progressive mindset in terms of gender roles and socio-cultural conventions.