Olga Plümacher

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Olga Marie Pauline Plümacher (born Hünerwadel; 27 May 1839 – around 15 June 1895) was a Russian-born Swiss-American philosopher who wrote in German under the name O. Plümacher. She engaged with the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann and published three books that played a role in the German pessimism controversy. Her most influential work, Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Pessimism in the Past and Present), influenced Friedrich Nietzsche and Samuel Beckett.

Olga was born in Tsaritsyn in the Russian Empire to Gottlieb Samuel Hünerwadel, a former officer who had worked in France, and his cousin Adelheid Hünerwadel. She grew up in Switzerland after her family moved there, and she received no formal university education. She married Eugene Hermann Plümacher, who later served as U.S. Consul to Venezuela, and they had two children. The family moved to the United States and settled in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee. In 1877 she returned with her children to Switzerland for their education, staying there for about ten years. There she renewed her friendship with Emilie Kammerer and introduced Frank Wedekind to Schopenhauer and Hartmann; Wedekind would later call her his “philosophical aunt.”

In Germany she published three books of philosophy—Der Kampf um's Unbewusste, Zwei Individualisten der Schopenhauer'schen Schule, and Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart—under the initials O. Plümacher, so she was often treated as a man in discussions. Besides her books, she wrote articles on psychology, philosophy, and metaphysics, including an English piece on von Hartmann for Mind. She died around 15 June 1895 in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, and was buried in Armfield Cemetery.

Becoming known mainly through her writings, Plümacher is now recognized as a significant, though overlooked, 19th-century philosopher. Her work has been the subject of later biographies and discussions in scholarly sources, and she has been highlighted in recent explorations of women’s contributions to philosophy.