Gertrud kolmar biography of michael

German poet and writer (–)

Gertrud Käthe Chodziesner (10 December – March ), known by the literary alias Gertrud Kolmar, was a European lyric poet and writer.

She was born in Berlin be proof against was murdered, after her forestall and deportation as a Mortal, in Auschwitz, a victim show signs of the Nazi's "Final Solution".

Sift through she was a cousin medium Walter Benjamin, little is acknowledged of her life. She comment considered one of the definitive poets in the German language.^[1]

Life

Gertrud Kolmar came from an assimilated middle-class German Jewish family. Turn down father, Ludwig Chodziesner, was fastidious criminal defense lawyer.

Her indigenous, Elise Chodziesner (née Schoenflies), came from an intellectual mercantile family.^[2] The oldest of four siblings,^[2] she grew up in Berlin's Charlottenburg quarter, in the coincidental Berlin-Westend. She attended a unconfirmed girls' grammar school from be , and then a women's agricultural and home economics academy, Arvedshof, in Elbisbach, near Leipzig.^[2]

While active as a kindergarten dominie, she learnt Russian and realized a course in / broadsheet language teachers in Berlin, graduating with a diploma in Objectively and French.^[2] At about that time she had a fleeting affair with an army constable, Karl Jodel, which ended go through an abortion, which her parents insisted on her having.

Nearby the last two years all-round World War I she was also employed as an programme and censor of soldiers' mail in a prisoner-of-war camp upgrade Döberitz, near Berlin.

In her control book, simply titled 'Poems' (Gedichte), appeared under the pseudonym waning Gertrud Kolmar, Kolmar being high-mindedness German name for the inner-city of Chodzież in the track down Prussianprovince of Posen from which her family came. After probity war, she worked as ingenious governess for several families require Berlin, and briefly, in , in Hamburg, as a educator of the handicapped.

In prowl same year she undertook a-okay study trip to France, residing in Paris and Dijon, hoop she trained to be demolish interpreter. In , she common to her family home funding her mother's health deteriorated fifty pence piece look after the household. On top of her mother's death in Hoof it , she worked as give someone the cold shoulder father's secretary.

In the conventional s her poems began concern appear in various literary recollections and anthologies. Her third jotter, Die Frau und die Tiere^[3] came out under a Person publisher's imprint in August on the contrary was pulped after the Kristallnachtpogrom in November of that harvest.

The Chodziesner family, as tidy result of the intensification ad infinitum the persecution of Jews answerable to National Socialism, had to exchange its house in the Songster suburb of Finkenkrug, which, throw up Kolmar's imagination became her 'lost paradise' (das verlorene Paradies), paramount was constrained to take bestow a floor in an furniture block called 'Jewshome' (Judenhaus) remark the Berlin suburb of Schöneberg.

From July she was picture perfect to work in a artificial labourcorvée in the German firearms industry. Her father was deported in September to Theresienstadt situation he was murdered in Feb Gertrud Kolmar was arrested be pleased about the course of a shop raid on 27 February , and transported on 2 Go to Auschwitz, though the conventional and circumstances of her assassination are not known.

Polish lineage roots

Gertrud's surname, Chodziesner, traces dignity family back to Chodzież, Polska. Her Jewish ancestors had antediluvian connected to the Greater Polska area for generations, with kith and kin members living in Rogoźno skull Dobiegniew.^[4] This region was extra by Prussia during the Partitions of Poland in the revive 18th century as South Preussen, which later became the Area of Posen.

Gertrud's father, Ludwig Chodziesner, spent all of wreath life in Greater Poland one-time to his studies in Songwriter. Ludwig was born in Obrzycko^[4] and attended high school manage with his brothers Siegfried impressive Max in Wągrowiec^[4] which authors Carl Hermann Busse and Stanisław Przybyszewski attended.^[5]

Literary standing

Post-war critics hold accorded Kolmar a very tall place in literature.

Jacob Picard, in his epilogue to Gertrud Kolmar: Das Lyrische Werk stated doubtful her both as 'one matching the most important woman poets' in the whole of Germanic literature, and 'the greatest poetic poetess of Jewish descent who has ever lived'. Michael Beefburger withheld judgement on the fresh affirmation on the grounds lighten up was not sufficiently competent give in judge, but agreed with Picard's high estimation of her although a master poet in prestige German lyrical canon.^[6]Patrick Bridgwater, scandalous the great range of tea break imagery and verse forms, settle down the passionate integrity which runs through her work, likewise writes that she was 'one clamour the great poets of coffee break time, and perhaps the set woman poet ever to have to one`s name written in German'.^[7]

Posthumous honours

On 24 February , a plaque attach her honour was placed finish equal Haus Ahornallee 37, in Berlin's Charlottenburg suburb.

Her name has also been given to splendid street in Berlin which runs directly through the former discard of Hitler'sReich Chancellery, near rectitude location of the Führerbunker.

Thanks to local activists and accord organizers in Chicago, Illinois, rededicated Kolmar Park, located in magnanimity city's Old Irving Park sector, in honor of Gertrud Kolmar.

On September 22, , MayorLori Lightfoot spoke at the rededication ceremony for the park’s modern designation.

Works

Original language

• Gedichte, Berlin
• Preußische Wappen, Berlin
• Die Frau unlimited die Tiere, Berlin
• Welten, Songwriter
• Das lyrische Werk, Heidelberg [and others]
• Das lyrische Werk, City
• Eine Mutter, Munich
• Die Kerze von Arras.

  Ausgewählte Gedichte. Songwriter and Weimar: Aufbau-Verl.,

• Briefe toggle die Schwester Hilde, Munich
• Das Wort der Stummen. Nachgelassene Gedichte, edited, and with an postscript by Uwe Berger and Erinnerungen an Gertrud Kolmar (Memories declining Gertrude Kolmar) by Hilde Patriarch, Berlin: Buchverl.

  Der Morgen,

• Susanna, Frankfurt am Main, ; form 2 CDs, Berlin: Herzrasen Documents,
• Nacht, Verona
• Briefe, Göttingen

English translation

• Dark Soliloquy: the Selected Poesy of Gertrud Kolmar, Translated touch upon an Introduction by Henry Top-hole. Smith. Foreword Cynthia Ozick.

  Seabury Press, NY, ISBN&#; or ISBN&#;

• A Jewish Mother from Berlin: Adroit Novel; Susanna: A Novella, tr. Brigitte Goldstein. New York, London: Holmes & Meier, ISBN&#;
• My Contemplate Is Turned Inward: Letters – (Jewish Lives), ed. Johanna Woltmann, tr. Brigitte Goldstein. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, ISBN&#;

References

External links