Alice B. Toklas

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Alice B. Toklas 1949
photograph by Carl van Vechten , from the Van Vechten Collection of the Library of Congress

Alice Babette Toklas (born April 30, 1877 in San Francisco , † March 7, 1967 in Paris ) was an American author. She was the secretary and partner of the writer and art collector Gertrude Stein .

Life

Alice B. Toklas came from a middle-class Jewish family from California . She received her education in public schools and the University of Washington where she studied music.

Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in Venice in 1908

In 1907 Toklas traveled to Paris , where she met Gertrude Stein. Two years later she moved into the apartment that Gertrude and her brother, Leo Stein , shared in the apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, which also served as a salon and private art museum and featured many artists such as Picasso and Henri Matisse as well as literary figures such as Apollinaire , Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway attracted as a meeting place. Toklas became Gertrude Stein's lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor and critic. She always stayed in the background, lived in the shadow of stone. She achieved notoriety in 1933 when Stein's memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , was published, which portrays Stein from the perspective of Toklas.

After Leo Stein left the household in protest against the "menage à trois" and his sister's writing activities in 1913, the two women managed the salon alone.

The couple lived together until Gertrude Stein's death in 1946. Toklas began her own career writing cookery books in rue Christine 5, both of whom had moved into their apartment on rue de Fleurus in 1938 after they had given up their apartment. She had been collecting recipes for a long time . In 1954 she published The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook and in 1958 Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present . A recipe in the Cookbook , presumably suggested by a friend, is a caramel candy with hashish fudge, which was not allowed to be published in the US in the first edition and only appeared in the British edition. The book had great success and is reprinted to the present day. Toklas' memoir What is Remembered was published in 1963. Toklas lived 21 years longer than Stein, but her book ended with Stein's death.

Gertrude Stein had appointed Alice B. Toklas, together with her nephew Allan Stein, to be the administrator of the estate, as she was supposed to take care of the printing of previously unpublished manuscripts. Toklas withdrew from the estate administration in September 1946. According to Stein's legacy, she should get a living by selling paintings. After Allan Stein's death in 1951, however, his wife Robina obtained a court judgment that awarded her the remaining pictures from rue Christine. In 1964 Toklas was given notice and moved to rue de la Convention, where she spent the last years of her life in poverty.

In 1957 Toklas converted to the Catholic faith, the reason was her idea that she would then be reunited with Gertrude Stein in the kingdom of heaven.

Alice B. Toklas is buried with Gertrude Stein in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris . Her name is written in gold letters on the back of Stein's tombstone.

Others

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (Eng. Let me kiss your butterfly ) is a1968American comedy film with Peter Sellers in the lead role. The protagonist Nancy bakes hash cookies for her friend Harold - based on a recipe from Alice B. Toklas' cookbook. From then on his life changes.

plant

literature

  • Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas . Harcourt, Brace, New York 1933; German autobiography by Alice B. Toklas , from the American by Roseli Bontjes van Beek and Saskia Bontjes van Beek. Arche, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-716-02348-8
  • Charis Goer: Gertrice / Altrude or: I am someone else. Gertrude Stein's 'Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'. In: Orbis Litterarum , Vol. 58, No. 2, 2003, pp. 101-115.
  • James Lord : Where the pictures were. G. Stein and ABT . In: Extraordinary Women. Six portraits pp. 9–52. Matthes, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-8822-1803-7 ; Exceptional women. Six portraits . Fischer, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 978-3-596-13898-2
  • Janet Malcolm : Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice . Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn. 2007, ISBN 978-0-300-12551-1 ; German two lives: Gertrude and Alice . Translation of Chris Hirte. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-42034-8
  • Stefana Sabin : Gertrude Stein . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-50530-4
  • Monique Truong: The Book of Salt , 2003; German The Book of Salt . Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-406-52184-3
  • Andrea Weiss: Paris was a woman. The women from the Left Bank. Djuna Barnes, Janet Flanner, Gertrude Stein & Co. , new edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2006, ISBN 978-3-499-24224-3
  • Nancy Kuhl: Intimate Circles. American Women in the Arts. Catalog book with essays. Yale University Press , New Haven 2007 ISBN 0300134029 (including a chapter on Toklas and Stein; in English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefana Sabin: Gertrude Stein , pp. 43–51
  2. ↑ Stefana Sabin: Gertrude Stein , pp. 124–127
  3. ↑ Janet Malcolm: Gertrude and Alice . P. 142
  4. ↑ Axel Schock : TWO WOMEN - ONE GRAVE STONE (LAST PLACES II). May 16, 2016, accessed March 2, 2019 (d).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Toklas, Alice B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Toklas, Alice Babette (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cookbook author and partner of Gertrude Stein
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1967
Place of death Paris