Anna Gmeyner

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Anna Wilhelmine Gmeyner , married. Wiesner , later Morduch , pseudonym Anna Reiner (born March 16, 1902 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † January 3, 1991 in York ) was an Austro-British writer.

life and work

Anna Gmeyner, who came from a liberal Jewish family, began studying at the University of Vienna in 1920 and moved to Berlin in 1925. In 1925 she married the physiologist Berthold P. Wiesner and went with him to Scotland in 1926 when he accepted a position at the University of Edinburgh . After the couple separated, Anna Gmeyner returned to Berlin in 1930 and later to Vienna, where she worked as a dramaturge for Erwin Piscator . The songs and ballads she wrote during this time were set to music by Hanns Eisler and Herbert Rappaport , among others .

Gmeyner's first works for the theater were the children's play Big and Little Klaus , the miners' drama Army Without Heroes , which was shaped by experiences in Scotland, and the play Ten on the Assembly Line . Her socially critical and satirical folk piece, Automatenbüfett , which was successfully performed, is considered her breakthrough as a playwright.

During the transfer of power to the National Socialists in January 1933, Gmeyner stayed in Paris, where she worked on the scripts of several Georg Wilhelm Pabst film projects . She did not return to Germany and in 1933 her work was banned there. Her daughter Eva Maria Charlotte Michelle Wiesner (* 1925), who remained in Vienna, moved to her father in Edinburgh in 1933. She later became a successful children's book writer under the name Eva Ibbotson .

Meanwhile, Gmeyner became a well-known author of exile literature : Automatenbüffet was performed in 1933 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich with Therese Giehse in the lead role, and in 1938 the renowned Querido publishing house in Amsterdam published her novel Manja (under the pseudonym Anna Reiner). Manja describes life in a German city from 1920–1934 using the example of the fate of children from five families from different backgrounds. This novel was first published in Germany in 1984, by persona verlag in Mannheim.

Gmeyner moved from Paris to London around 1935 and married the religious philosopher Jascha Morduch, who was of Russian origin. The novels Manja and Café du Dome about life in exile were published in English translation in London and New York . The original German version of Café du Dome was supposed to be published by Querido Verlag , but the manuscript has been lost since the German invasion of Amsterdam in 1940.

From 1940 to 1950 she lived in seclusion with her husband in Berkshire . After his death in 1950 she began to write again and published several English books under the name Anna Morduch (including biographies, religious stories and poetry). Most recently she lived in York, England.

Works

  • Big and Small Klaus , children's play, 1929
  • Army without heroes. Miners' play in 8 pictures , Dresden 1929
  • Ten on the Assembly Line , Drama, 1931
  • Vending machine buffet. A game in three acts with prelude and epilogue , Volksstück, Berlin 1932 (also called Im Trüben fischen )
  • Mary-Ann waits , narrative, 1933 (published in sequels in the Austrian magazine "Moderne Welt. Almanach der Dame"; 1934 again in the "Pariser Tageblatt")
  • Manja. A novel about five children , Amsterdam 1938 (English: The Wall , London 1939 or Five Destinies , New York 1939), new edition 1984 ff. By persona verlag, Mannheim.
  • Café du Dome (English translation), Roman, London 1941 (also as The Coward Heart , New York 1941)
  • The Death and Life of Julian , London 1960 (biography of the Roman emperor Julian )
  • A Jar Laden with Water. Six Stories , London 1961
  • No Screen for the Dying , London ca.1964
  • The Sovereign Adventure. The Grail of Mankind , Cambridge 1970 (1987 edition: ISBN 0227677544 )

Scripts

Films by Georg Wilhelm Pabst :

  • La tragédie de la mine (collaboration), 1931 - with scenes from "Army without Heroes"
  • Don Quixote (collaboration), 1933
  • Du haut en bas , according to Lászlo Bús-Fekete , 1933

Films by Roy Boulting :

  • Pastor Hall (collaboration), 1940 - based on the life of Martin Niemöller
  • Dawn Guard , 1941
  • Thunder Rock , 1942

Translations

Newer editions

  • Manja. A novel about 5 children . With a foreword by Heike Klapdor-Kops. Persona, Mannheim 1984, ISBN 3-924652-00-7 (Licensed edition: Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1987, ISBN 3-378-00120-8 )
  • Vending machine buffet. A game in 3 acts with foreplay and aftermath . Publishing house of the authors, Frankfurt am Main 1987
  • Manja . Audiobook, spoken by Iris Berben . Director: Walter Adler . 12 CDs. Hörkultur, Dänikon 2006, ISBN 978-3-9523087-4-5
  • Café du Dôme . Translation from German into English by Trevor and Phyllis Blewitt. Edited by Birte Werner. (= Exile documents; vol. 9). Lang, Bern et al. 2006, ISBN 3-03910-953-7
  • Manja. A novel about 5 children . Structure, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-351-03415-3

literature

  • Angelika Führich: The feminine awakening in the drama of the Weimar Republic. Brecht - Fleisser - Horváth - Gmeyner . Winter, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-533-04494-7 (also dissertation, University of Pennsylvania 1989)
  • Klaus Harpprecht : Every word, every picture, every tone sounds familiar . the daily newspaper (taz), November 6, 2007
  • Heike Klapdor: Anna Gmeyner. The dramaturgy of the crisis . Lecture January 11, 2006 ( online edition ; with bibliography)
  • Anja Schmidt-Ott: Young love. Negotiationes of the self and society in selected German novels of the 1930s. (Hans Fallada, Aloys Schenzinger, Maria Leitner, Irmgard Keun, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Anna Gmeyner and Ödön von Horváth) . Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2002, ISBN 3-631-39341-5 (also dissertation, University of Oxford 2001)
  • Anne Stürzer: playwrights and time pieces. A forgotten chapter in theater history from the Weimar Republic to the post-war period . (= Results of women's research; vol. 30). Metzler, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-476-00890-8
  • Birte Werner: Without illusions - full of hope. Anna Gmeyner's time pieces and exiled novels . (= Results of women's and gender research; NF, Vol. 10). Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0019-4 (also dissertation, University of Göttingen 2005)
  • Heike Klapdor-Klops (among others): Script: Anna Gmeyner. A Viennese screenwriter in exile. Synema, Vienna 2009 ISBN 978-3-901644-32-0
  • Debbie Pinfold: The Child's View of the Third Reich in German Literature. "The Eye Among the Blind" . Oxford UP 2001 ISBN 0199245657 (Series: Oxford Modern Languages ​​and Literature Monographs) in Engl.
  • Edward Timms : Principles of Hope: Childhood Experiences and Women in the Novels of Anna Gmeyner , in: No complaint about England? German and Austrian exile experiences in Great Britain 1933–1945 , ed. by Charmian Brinson , Richard Dove, Anthony Grenville, Marian Malet and Jennifer Taylor. iudicium Verlag, Munich 1998 (Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London School of Advanced Study, Vol. 72), pp. 100–111

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gmeyner, Anna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reiner, Anna; Gmeyner-Wiesner, Anna; Wiesner, Anni; Morduch, Anna; Gmeyner, Anny
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-British writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1991
Place of death York