Anna Benfey

Anna Benfey (née Schuppe, also Anna Benfey-Schuppe ; born September 19, 1830 in Landeck , † May 27, 1903 in Weimar ) was a German writer and composer .

Life

Schuppe was born in 1830 as the daughter of a senior judicial officer in Silesia . She grew up in Landeck and spent her youth in Brieg , Großglogau , Breslau and Berlin , where her father was a senior tribunal advisor. Schuppe was enthusiastic about literature at an early age and wrote her first poems at the age of eleven, but she soon turned to music. In the 1850s, Schuppe received composition lessons from Ludwig Meinardus in Glogau and then worked as a music teacher at the Glogau Ursulinenstift . In Breslau she took lessons with Moritz Brosig and in Berlin with Georg Bierling and Hubert Rieß . She was soon composing choral and orchestral works, including an overture to Götz von Berlichigungen and the opera Kaiserin Adelheid . The most famous work was her music to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , which was performed in Gotha and Breslau, among others . Schuppe continued to work as a teacher at the same time and worked in Hungary , Vienna and Dresden , among others .

In 1879 she married the Jewish writer Rudolf Benfey , with whom she had been in written contact for a long time and whom she had visited in Munich at his request during a serious illness . After his recovery, the wedding took place. In 1880 Benfey was in correspondence with Franz Liszt through her husband .

The couple lived together in Weimar, Graz and Dresden, among others . In Jena Benfey husband died in February 1891. BENFEY first moved to Görlitz and lived from 1892 in Weimar . Benfey became increasingly hard of hearing in old age, so she had to give up her job as a music teacher. She turned to writing and has mainly published children's and youth literature since her marriage. In 1903 she died in a hospital in Weimar.

Works (selection)

• The child and the animal world. Stories for children aged 6 to 11. Buchal, Paschka 1888.
• Forest fairy tale. Buchal, Paschka 1889.
• The women's question and Christianity. Kupferberg, Mainz 1890.
• The wild Siegfried. Narrative. Seyfried, Munich 1891.
• Old love doesn't rust. A story for the people. Seyfried, Munich 1892.
• The blond Josef. Narrative. Seyfried, Munich 1892.
• The hunchbacked Rosel. Narrative. Seyfried, Munich 1892.
• Two women. Seyfried, Munich 1893.
• Friedolin, a disciple of Gutenberg. Novella from the 15th century. Kirchheim, Mainz 1895.
• The girlfriends and other stories for young girls. National Publishing House, Regensburg 1896.
• The forest home. Narrative. Riffarth, Gladbach 1896.
• The magic garden. A fairy tale. Bonifatius, Paderborn 1897.
• The Bergfexinnen. 1897.
• Pictures from girls' lives. Four stories. Kösel, Kempten 1898.
• Red hot iron. Novel. Weichert, Berlin 1900.
• Two fairy tales. ( The village by the lake or the water women. Forest magic. ) Bonifacius, Paderborn 1900. ( digitized version )
• Through struggle to victory. Story from Berlin's past. Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 1901.
• The dissimilar sisters. Story for young girls. Bucher, Würzburg 1901.
• Laura Bassi. Emanuel Astorga. Two historical novellas. Styria, Graz 1904.

literature

• Benfey, Anna . In: Franz Brümmer : Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the present . Volume 1. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1913, pp. 181-182.
• Benfey, Anna . In: Elisabeth Friedrichs: The German-speaking women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. A lexicon (= repertories on German literary history. Vol. 9). Metzler, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-476-00456-2 , p. 21.
• Benfey scale, Mrs. Anna . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 51 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Benfey scale, Anna . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 52 ( digitized version ).
• Dandruff, Anna . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 2. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 285 ( digitized version ).
• BENFEY-dandruff, A. . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 2. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 482 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ No copy can be found