Christiana Mariana von Ziegler (née Romanus, 1695-1760) was born into a wealthy bourgeois family in Leipzig and married into the lower nobility. Having lost two husbands and two children at a young age, she moved back into her family home and began to write. A financially independent woman, she hosted a salon in her Leipzig home which was attended by many of the leading literary and musical figures of the time, including J.S. Bach. Ziegler wrote the libretti for nine of Bach’s cantatas, one of which is featured in this volume. Her works included both poetry and prose, and in 1730 she became the only female member of Gottsched’s literary society “Deutsche Gesellschaft.” In 1733 she was named “poeta laureata” by the University of Wittenberg. The fact that a woman had been awarded these intellectual honors drew fierce criticism from many of her contemporaries. In her 1739 poem, Das männliche Geschlechte, im Namen einiger Frauenzimmer besungen [The Male Sex, Praised in the Name of Some Women], Ziegler reflects on the gender roles of her time and their public and private implications.