This is the first publication of the documents pertaining to the divorce proceedings leading to the dissolution of the unhappy second marriage of Elisabeth Keller (1787-1864), the mother of the Swiss novelist and poet Gottfried Keller. They provide hitherto largely undocumented insights into the writer's formative years and make it imperative to challenge a number of unfounded and exaggerated claimes made notably by Adolf Muschg in his influential essay "Gottfried Keller" (1977) and Gerhard Kaiser in his ambitious interpretation of Keller's oeuvre "Das gedichtete Leben" (1981), both suggesting that Keller's mother was pathologically possessive and deprived her son of his independence and his capacity for achieving personal happiness.