Rahel Varnhagen von Ense , born Rahel Levin, called Rahel Robert or Robert-Tornow since the years 1790, baptized Friedericke Antonie in 1814, is a écrivaine German of the time of the Romantisme, born the May 19th 1771 and deceased the March 7th 1833 with Berlin.

Rahel Varnhagen is born in 1771 in an Jewish family in Berlin, oldest daughter of the tradesman Markus Levin and his wife Chaie Levin. After several unhappy relations, it Marie with the writer, historian and diplomatic Karl August Varnhagen von Ense the September 27th 1814 and converts with the Christianisme. Rahel Varnhagen is especially known for its literary living rooms which are attended by writers, scientists, politicians and aristocrats, like Jean Paul, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, Eduard Gans, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Alexander von Humboldt, Friedrich of the Mound-Fouqué, of the family members Mendelssohn, the duke Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, the prince Louis Ferdinand and its amante Pauline Wiesel.

The Varnhagen couple returns visit to Goethe to Weimar several times.

The literary work of Rahel Varnhagen is composed especially of its newspapers and the hundreds of letters which were published after its death in 1833 by her husband and later by his niece Ludmilla Assing.

The Varnhagen collection is today in Staatsbibliothek of Berlin, the manuscripts in Biblioteka Jagiellonska with Cracow because they were transported in Silesia during the Second world war and were thus in Polish territory thereafter.