Catherina Godwin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leo Putz: Catherina Godwin (title of the magazine Jugend, No. 22/1913)

Catherina Godwin , actually Emmie Studemund de Vargas (born May 12, 1884 in Strasbourg , † May 27, 1958 in Baden-Baden ) was a German writer and journalist .

Life

Childhood and family

Catherina Godwin was born under the name Emmie Clara Studemund on May 12, 1884 in Strasbourg. She was the younger of two daughters of the classical philologist Wilhelm Studemund (1843-1889) and his second wife Marie Wurster (1858-1941). The chemist Casimir Wurster (1854–1913) was her uncle.

Emmie Studemund grew up in Strasbourg and Breslau. On November 23, 1905, she married the Colombian doctor and later university professor Jorge Vargas Suárez (1874-1935). However, the marriage failed after less than two years, and Vargas-Suárez returned to Colombia. The marriage did not end in divorce, and his wife signed letters and documents with Emmy de Vargas for life .

Literary early days in Munich

Catherina Godwin's first work, Encounters with Mir , Hyperionverlag, Munich 1910

In 1908 Emmie de Vargas Studemund moved to Munich and began an artistic training as a painter. In 1909 she met the publisher Hans von Weber , who immediately decided to publish her first work, Encounters with Mir , a collection of literary sketches that deal with her love and other life events. The book was published under the pseudonym Catherina Godwin and was a considerable success in intellectual circles, both highly praised and panned by critics. Several reviewers compared the author with the Austrian author Peter Altenberg .

In addition to her revealing writing style and sharp mind, Catherina Godwin's beauty and her platinum-blonde hair in particular caused a stir and quickly made her known in the Schwabing bohemian community. One of only two known pictures by the author, a portrait drawing by Leo Putz , adorned the cover of the magazine Jugend in 1913 . Catherina Godwin maintained contact with many prominent figures in literary and artistic life, including the families of Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann as well as Gustav Meyrink , Artur Kutscher , Hans Ludwig Held , Roda Roda , Bruno Frank , Frank Wedekind , Kasimir Edschmid , but above all Carl Georg von Maassen (1880–1940), with whom she had a lifelong friendship. Erich Mühsam , who temporarily lived in the same house as the author, recalls in his apolitical memories :

"Women who frequented our society as personalities of their own worth, such as the brilliant and beautiful Catherina Godwin, could truly compete in intelligence and critical eye with many men of resounding names."

- Erich Mühsam : Non-political memories. Chapter 20: Fairgrounds of the Mind. Berlin, Vossische Zeitung 1927–1929.

In 1912, Catherina Godwin's second book, Das nackte Herz, was published . For the most part, it was viewed favorably by the critics. As a result, Catherina Godwin was able to firmly establish herself in literary life as a writer of short stories, essays and reviews. Her contributions have appeared in art, culture and literature magazines such as Jugend , Simplicissimus , Das Forum and März as well as in numerous daily newspapers. When the forum in the war year 1915 at the instigation of the Kgl. Bayer. War Ministry had to stop its publication, Catherina Godwin and 40 other prominent signatories in the Berlin weekly Die Aktion expressed solidarity with the publisher Wilhelm Herzog .

From 1917 Catherina Godwin ran a kind of literary salon in which the Schwabing literary bohemian frequented.

The twenties

In the 1920s, Catherina Godwin was a recognized author beyond the German-speaking world. 1920 published her third book, The woman in the circle , again in the meantime to Kurt Wolff subrogated Hyperion Publishing . In the following years she published articles in Italian, Slovenian and Polish. In 1924 Sándor Márai translated her novel Die Brendor AG into Hungarian. Her fashion columns, literary reviews, time-critical essays and short stories appeared in Simplicissimus , in Zwiebelfisch , in Scherl's Magazin , in the Güldenkammer , in Jugend , in March , in the Uhu , in the Weisse Blätter , in the Bunte Chest , in the Zwinger , in the Styl as well in the frivolous-erotic magazine Der Reigen . Further books by Catherina Godwin were published from 1922 to 1927 in quick succession by various publishers. Her last book, The Hotel of Fulfillment , was published by Ullstein in 1927 with a print run of 130,000. In addition, she used her financial independence for extensive trips abroad. She reported from Yugoslavia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Holland, Belgium, Spain and Morocco for large papers such as the Frankfurter Zeitung, the Münchner Neue Nachrichten and the Berliner Tagblatt. Photographs from her trip to Tenerife in 1925 found their way into scientific literature. Catherina Godwin's last major publication, the novella Hyazinth , appeared in Velhagen & Klasing's monthly magazine in 1929 . At the beginning of the 1930s the author disappeared completely from the literary business, after 1931 no new publications by her were known.

From 1921 to 1933, Catherina Godwin was a member of the Association of German Writers and, together with Georg Hirschfeld and Arthur Ernst Rutra, continuously worked on the Gau board; From 1924 she was also a board member of the PEN Center in Munich, founded in the previous year, and of the Union mondiale de la femme (Geneva). In 1925 she was one of ten women to sign, together with Käthe Kollwitz , Helene Stöcker , Luise Dumont and Lou Andreas-Salomé, in a memorandum against § 267 initiated by Magnus Hirschfeld on behalf of the scientific-humanitarian committee of his Institute for Sexology and addressed to the Reich Ministry of Justice "Fornication among men". In 1927 she was appointed to the literary advisory board of the city of Munich, founded at the instigation of Thomas Mann, which was responsible for the promotion of literature in the state capital Munich as well as the annual award of the poet's prize of the state capital Munich .

Nazi period and end of career

In the literary advisory board , to which Thomas Mann , Emil Preetorius and Hans von Gumppenberg as well as the later NSDAP party members Peter Dörfler , Hans Ludwig Held and Wilhelm Weigand belonged, the influence of the National Socialists made itself felt more and more strongly as in all areas of life. Catherina Godwin was uncritical about this. She voted for Hans Carossa (1928), Willy Seidel (1929), Hans Brandenburg (1930), Josef Magnus Wehner (1931) and Gottfried Kölwel (1932 - but Ruth Schaumann received the prize ). After Thomas Mann's resignation, the literary advisory board voted in 1933 for the model Nazi Hans Zöberlein , after which the advisory board was dissolved.

In 1933, Catherina Godwin joined the NSDAP (membership number 1,981,138). In mid-1935 she was reported from Gestapo circles as a corrosive author because of her encounters with me , her friendship with Jewish families and her connection with Ullstein-Verlag . Marie Amelie von Godin, as chairwoman of the women's group in the Protection Association of German Writers, then traveled to Berlin and was able to avert a publication ban, but had to stop her involvement shortly afterwards as she was denounced herself. Catherina Godwin was now preparing to emigrate to Mexico, but was unable to provide the necessary financial resources. Her writing activity had meanwhile come to a complete standstill and she was forgotten. The German national literary historian Adolf Bartels stated in his History of German Literature in 1928 that he lacked the life data of Catherina Godwin. From 1937, he classified her among the Jewish authors.

In 1937, Catherina Godwin gave up her Munich apartment at Elisabethstrasse 11 , moved into a boarding house a few houses away and stored her property with a forwarding agency. Most of the time, however, she stayed with her mother in Baden-Baden. When she died in 1941, she took over their apartment and gave up the pension room. In the course of the bombing of Munich, she was completely bombed out and lost her possessions, including most of her manuscripts.

In the course of the denazification in front of the Baden-Baden Spruchkammer, many informants issued her exonerating certificates, including Amelie von Godin, Sophie von Pechmann, Hans Ludwig Held, Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm and the papal secret chamberlain Ludwig Graf von Treuberg. The Baden-Baden native Magda Mayer testified that Ms. de Vargas was the only one of her acquaintances who stood by her and her Jewish husband during the difficult times. The Nazi opponent Charlotte Behrendt stated that Ms. de Vargas had "gathered Jews and protected them from being accessed by the Gestapo". The Baden-Baden Spruchkammer classified her as a follower without any further atonement .

After the war, Catherina Godwin joined the Association of South-West German Authors. V. joined, but did not resume your literary work. She died on May 27, 1958 at the age of 74 in the Baden-Baden City Hospital.

Reception and afterlife

Catherina Godwin's work was not reprinted after 1945 and is only occasionally taken into account in the context of literary and cultural history works.

Catherina Godwin was received very differently by contemporary critics. In 1919 Kasimir Edschmid put them in line with Ricarda Huch , Else Lasker-Schüler and Annette Kolb . Her sponsor Franz Blei set a monument for her in his Great Bestiary of Modern Literature in 1922 . The literary critic Guido K. Brand assesses her work in retrospect in 1933:

“Katarina Godwin played a role in Munich circles for a while. Encounters with Mir caused a sensation in 1910, because behind a cerebral imagination they reveal a liberating eroticism. In her novellas Das nackte Herz , 1912, The Guest from the Yellow Room , 1922, and House of Cards , 1923, she is stronger because she has the drive to compress. Her novels The woman in the circle , the tenants from the fourth floor , the Brendor A.-G . didn't keep what the beginning promised. "

- Guido K. Brand

In an article published in 1916, Bruno Saaler, a psychoanalyst in Magnus Hirschfeld's environment, dealt with Catherina Godwin. On the basis of her first two books, he diagnosed the author with psychosexual infantilism and warned of the harmful consequences of reading it for immature youth.

Works

Book publications

  • Encounters with me. Munich, Hyperion-Verlag Hans von Weber, 1910. 8 °. 108 p. (Special edition in 100 numbered copies on Aldwych handmade paper, bound in black calf leather by Carl Sonntag Jr. - 4th edition 1917 by Hyperion-Verlag Berlin: VA (55 numbered copies) on handmade paper bound in leather) .
  • The bare heart. Munich, Albert Langen 1912. Kl.-8 °, 174 pp.
  • The woman in a circle. Munich, Hyperionverlag 1920. Kl.-8 °, 233 pp.
  • The guest from the yellow room. Novella. Munich, Musarion Verlag 1922. Kl.-8 °, 121 pp.
  • Money hunter. Contemporary novel. Berlin, Scherl 1923. Kl.-8 °, 139 pp.
  • Houses of cards. Six episodes of a lost love game. Compilation of previous publications. Berlin, Scherl 1923. Class-8 °. 78 pp.
  • Brendor AG. Berlin, Ullstein Verlag 1923. 251 pp.
  • The tenant from the 4th floor. The scary novel of a house. Berlin, Ullstein Verlag 1923. 234 pp.
  • The stairs. Leipzig, Reclam-Verlag 1924. 189 pp.
  • The next table. Compilation of previous publications. Waldorf Library, 16 pages and two illustrations, around 1926.
  • The hotel of fulfillment. Berlin, Ullstein Verlag 1927. 255 pp.
  • Hyacinth. Novella. Monthly Issues No. 43, Bielefeld, Velhagen & Klasing 1929. 9 pp.
  • The yellow cap. Novella. Munich, Schirmer / Mosel, no year 43 p.
  • The vicious woman in marriage. In: Agnes Eszterházy (ed.): The vicious woman. Writings on female sexuality. Vienna, Verlag für Kulturforschung 1930; New edition Ullstein 1989, pp. 167-184.

Essays

  • What makes sense in the new art in: Karl Wollf (ed.), Der Zwinger , magazine for world view, theater and art. Year 1920, issue 7.
  • The Eternal War in: March , 1914, Volume 8.
  • The resurrection of the popular ideal in: March , 1915, Volume 9.
  • The holy motif in: March , year 1915, volume 9.
  • The poet and the war in: Wilhelm Herzog (ed.), Das Forum , second year, issue 11, March 1915.
  • The symbol on the stage in: Theater newspaper of the state theaters of Munich , year 1920, No. 32.
  • About modern dance in: Theater newspaper of the state theaters of Munich , born in 1920, No. 33.
  • Pose - Tempo - Mode in: Styl , born 1922, issue 4.
  • The letter in: Styl , year 1922, issue 5.
  • The fashionable line in: Jugend , 28th year 1923, issue 22.

Translations

  • Mario Andreis: Viaggio di Nozze, Vicenza 1929. First publication: “Honeymoon”, March issue 7/1913.
  • Sándor Márai: A Brendor Rt, Kassa / Kosice 1924, Globus. First publication: "Die Brendor AG", Ullstein 1923.

Research literature on Catherina Godwin

  • Monika Dimpfl: Encounters with Me: Catherina Godwin. Bayerischer Rundfunk, November 4, 1990. Radio manuscript, 21 pp.
  • Andreas Schüler: Catherina Godwin on the Wortwelle blog, wortwelle.com, 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Andreas student: Catherina Godwin. Again and again me and me. In: Wortwelle Blog. Retrieved January 30, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Monika Dimpfl: Encounters with Me. Catherina Godwin . Radio manuscript, Munich 1990, 21 pp.
  3. ↑ Austrian National Library: ANNO-Neues_Wiener_Journal-19100720-4. In: anno.onb.ac.at. Retrieved March 7, 2016 .
  4. ^ Heinrich Jost in: Der Bücherwurm , Volume 1, Issue 10, October 1910, p. XIII.
  5. ^ Leo Putz: Katharina Godwin. Pastel chalk on cardboard. Jugend, vol. 18, 1913, issue 22, p. 625.
  6. ↑ The literature . Monthly for friends of literature 28, 1925, p. 453.
  7. ↑ A Brendor Rt , cash, 1924th
  8. ↑ Kathleen M. Condray: Women Writers of the Journal "Jugend" 1919-1940 , Lewiston 2003.
  9. ^ Carla Müller-Feyen: Committed journalism: Wilhelm Herzog and the forum 1914–1929; Current affairs and contemporaries in the mirror of a non-conformist magazine , Frankfurt am Main, 1996.
  10. ↑ Irene Guenther, Nazi chic? - Fashioning women in the Third Reich. , Oxford 2004.
  11. ↑ Dance. Illustrated monthly 1, 12, 1920.
  12. ^ Archive for the history of the book industry 21, 1980, p. Cix.
  13. ↑ Kirsten Gabriele Schrick, Munich as a City of Culture: Documentation of a cultural-historical debate from 1781 to 1945 , Vienna 1994.
  14. ↑ Dirk Heisserer: Glimmering glimmers of hope. In: nzz.ch. February 16, 2010, accessed October 14, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Ludwig Hollweck, Munich in the twenties: Between tradition and progress , Hugendubel, Munich 1982.
  16. ^ Adolf Bartels: History of German Literature , Leipzig 1928, p. 95.9.
  17. ↑ Adold Bartels: History of German Literature , Avenarius, Berlin 1943, p 744, respectively.
  18. ↑ Kasimir Edschmid: The double-headed nymph. Essays on literature and the present. With a few exceptions, it was written in December nineteen nineteen. Berlin, Paul Cassirer 1920.
  19. ↑ Franz Blei: The Great Bestiary of Modern Literature. Berlin, Rowohlt 1922, p. 34
  20. ↑ Becoming and changing. A history of German literature from 1880 to the present day . Kurt Wolff Verlag, Berlin 1933, p. 513.
  21. ↑ Bruno Saaler: About psychosexual infantilism, the Freudian doctrine and Catherina Godwin . Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik, Vol. III, pp. 214–223.
personal data
SURNAME Godwin, Catherina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vargas, Emmy Studemund de (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 1958
Place of death Baden-Baden