Caroline Medon

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Caroline Medon (born Caroline Wilhelmine Richter; January 3, 1802 – June 6, 1882) was a German opera singer and stage actress who became known as the lover of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

She was born in Frankfurt and moved to Berlin around 1819 to sing as a chorister at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. There she met Schopenhauer, probably in 1820 or early 1821, and their relationship lasted about ten years. Schopenhauer, famous for being a lifelong bachelor, doubted her motives, and they never married.

Around 1820 she used the name Medon, taken from Louis Medon, the man believed to be the father of her first child, Johann Wilhelm Adolf Medon (who died young). Her second son, Gustav Medon (1823–1905), was born in 1823 but was rejected by Schopenhauer, who had left for Italy; Gustav was born about ten months after his departure. A third pregnancy in 1826 ended in a miscarriage, and she left her engagement at the Berlin Opera. She later became a singer at Königsstädtisches Theater.

In 1858 she reached out to Schopenhauer again, and in February 1859 he included her in his will, leaving 5,000 Prussian thalers on the condition that the money not go to Carl or Medon heirs.

She also knitted a hand-woven “rose carpet,” which Schopenhauer’s estate administrator thought was a gift from Schopenhauer’s sister.

Caroline Medon died in Berlin on June 6, 1882. She was buried at Evangelischen Sophien-Friedhof II in Berlin on June 8, 1892.