Anna Wambrechtsamer

Anna Wambrechtsamer

Anna Wambrechtsamer (also Ana Wambrechtsamer or Ana Wambrechtsammer, born July 4, 1897 in Montpreis (today: Planina pri Sevnici), a place in today's municipality of Šentjur pri Celju (German: Sankt Georgen bei Cilli), Slovenia ; † August 4, 1933 in Graz ) was a Slovenian-Austrian writer.

Life

Anna Wambrechtsamer was born in Lower Styria (present-day Slovenia) in 1897, not far from Cilli (Celje). Her father, Friedrich Wambrechtsamer, was a merchant, her mother, Maria Rožanc, a postal worker. At the age of six she went to the elementary school in Montpreis (Planina), at eleven she had to go to the community school in Cilli, where she was confronted for the first time with the tensions between Slovenian and German-speaking classmates and fellow citizens. She tried all her life to alleviate these tensions and to promote peaceful coexistence between the two ethnic groups. When she was twelve years old, she and her parents moved to Brunndorf (Studenci) near Marburg an der Drau (Maribor). She only returned to Montpreis during the holidays. During this time her first literary attempts were made. The community school ended at 14; Anna Wambrechtsamer enrolled in the teacher training college, but fell ill with pneumonia after two years (1913) and had to finish her school days.

Even in elementary school, Wambrechtsamer had chosen Rosa Adamus, the former head of a private girls' training institute in Vienna, as her role model and friend, who led her to interest in literature and history with fairy tales and myths, proverbs and folk customs.

After her father's death in 1914 - she was 17 years old - she was forced to pursue the career of a postal worker, a profession she never learned to love and which she believed only kept her from becoming a writer.

Relocation to Austria

When Anna Wambrechtsamer was 21 years old, the old European world order collapsed; Lower Styria fell to Yugoslavia. On December 8, 1919, she found herself with her mother and two suitcases in St. Lambrecht in Upper Styria and was about to start over from scratch.

The extensive abbey library in St. Lambrecht made it possible for her to undertake her first historical studies. She got to know Vienna. She moved to Graz. She was still working at the post office, this time in Frauental an der Laßnitz near Deutschlandsberg .

First marriage and divorce

Wambrechtsamer looked for ways to devote himself more to writing. She believed that she would find this in the harbor of marriage. In the summer of 1922 she married the post office clerk Hans Sigmundt, who was 20 years her senior. No doubt she had loved her husband at first; however, the hopes that both had placed in the marriage soon faded away. Eventually Anna Wambrechtsamer's desire to break this bond became so strong that she assumed all the guilt in the divorce proceedings in 1924.

Second marriage

A little later she met "the love of her life", Johann Buchenauer, a journalist, a man who had only one fault: he was married and had two children. Later she even converted from the Catholic to the Evangelical faith for this man. He then married her too. However, it did not remain a very happy relationship. To stay afloat, the two opened a household goods store in Graz. The workload remained almost entirely on Anna Wambrechtsamer's shoulders. Nevertheless, she was also able to spend time in the Graz regional archive and in the regional library.

Work as a writer

From 1925 to 1927 she wrote the Chronicle of the Planina Castle and Market, which she also translated into Slovenian. From 1928 she worked on the preparations for "Today Counts of Cilly and Nevermore". In addition, more than 30 essays and stories in feature sections were created for the Cillier Zeitung and the Deutsche Zeitung, just like on the assembly line. She translated two Slovenian dramas into German: "Veronika Deseniška" by Oton Župančič and "Hermann von Cilli" by Anton Novačan. In 1933, six months before her death, she completed a novella from the time of the French Revolution , “The Experiences of Philip Carmont”, and wrote the autobiographical novel “Reinhold der Grenzer”.

Her greatest work, the historical novel “Today Counts of Cilly and Nevermore”, was completed in 1932. In 1933, she succeeded in finding a publisher in Graz, Leykam , who published the extensive work with 693 pages and 15 plates that same year - zu Late, Wambrechtsamer had died on August 4, 1933 at the age of 36. "Today Counts of Cilly and Nevermore" is the only one of her works that has been held for a long time and has been widely distributed. In the translation by Niko Kuret, “Danes grofje celjski in nikdar več” saw six reprints and a number of editions that only a few Slovenian writers have so far received.

The Counts of Cilli

The novel is a single answer to the question of why the Cillier became extinct after expanding their influence over all of Central and Southeastern Europe.

The von Cilli family died out in 1456 with the murder of Ulrich II in Belgrade . In a contract of inheritance, the Cillier and the Habsburgs had assured each other that all possessions would be transferred to the surviving family if one of the two families died out. The saying quoted in the title of the book is attributed to the imperial ambassador who, after the burial of the last Cillier, pushed the family coat of arms from the entrance of the family crypt with his lance.

Works (selection)

• Today Counts of Cilly and never more
• The Count of Tattenbach's game of chance
• The chronicle of Planina Castle and Market
• To die young (poem)
• Anno Domini 1919 (poem)
• The last count of Cilli
• Count Friedrich, patron of the city of Cilli

literature

• Pozabljena polovica (The Forgotten Half), a collection of biographies by female Slovenian artists, ed. 2007 by the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts in the publishing house Založba Tuma, doo, in Ljubljana

Web links

• Literature by and about Anna Wambrechtsamer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Life description of Ana Wambrechtsamer in Slovene in the tourist portal of the municipality of Šentjur pri Celju (German St. Georg bei Cilli).