Anni Geiger-Hof

Anni Geiger-Hof (also: Anni Hof , name during the first marriage: Anni Geiger-Gog , pseudonym : Hanne Menken ; * November 7, 1897 in Stuttgart as Anna Dorothea Geiger ; † July 6, 1995 in Emmendingen ) was a German writer .

Life

Anna Dorothea Geiger was the daughter of a social democratic print shop owner. After attending secondary schools in Stuttgart, she trained as a kindergarten teacher in her hometown from 1914 to 1916 and then worked as an educator in private households and as a nurse . From 1918 to 1920 she was again trained as a nurse in Stuttgart ; after passing her exam, she worked for a family of doctors in Arosa, Switzerland . After being active in the youth movement at an early age , she met the anarchist Gregor Gog in 1922 , whom she married in 1924. Both worked from 1922 to 1923 as educators in a reformatory in Hildburghausen , Thuringia . From 1923 Anni Geiger worked as a publishing editor for the Gundert publishing house in Stuttgart . In February 1924, she went to Brazil with her husband and his son from their first marriage in order to implement the plan to establish a cooperative settlement there. The project failed after a short time. After their return to Germany , Gregor Gog and Anni Geiger-Gog, who in the following years lived in a wooden house on the Sonnenberg in Möhringen near Stuttgart, dedicated themselves to social work with orphans and in particular to the vagabond movement . They maintained contact with a number of prominent representatives of the left of the Weimar Republic, such as their neighbor Friedrich Wolf , Johannes R. Becher , Theodor Plievier and Erich Mühsam . Anni Geiger-Gog, who had appeared with her own literary work since 1923, belonged to the League of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers from 1928 and to the KPD from 1929 . In 1931/32 she toured the Soviet Union with her husband Gregor Gog .

After the Reichstag fire , Anni Geiger-Gog was arrested on February 28, 1933. She spent several months as a " protective prisoner " in Stuttgart prisons and finally in the Gotteszell concentration camp near Schwäbisch Gmünd . After her release in the summer of 1933, she returned to Stuttgart, where she was under the supervision of the Gestapo for the following years . Her husband Gregor Gog, who had also been arrested, managed to escape to Switzerland in November 1933; he later stayed in the Soviet Union . The couple divorced in 1934 ; Anni Geiger then mainly devoted herself to the upbringing of Gregor Gog's son from his first marriage, who was also called Gregor Gog and, as the child of a Jewish mother, was acutely threatened by the racial laws of the Third Reich . From 1934 Anni Geiger was able to publish books again, during the Third Reich she used the pseudonym "Hanne Menken". From 1937 she worked as an editor for the Franckh publishing house in Stuttgart ; from 1941 she belonged to the Reichsschrifttumskammer .

After the Second World War , Anni Geiger married the trade teacher Ernst Hof in 1948 . The couple lived in Oldenburg in Holstein from 1951 to 1958 and in Eutin from 1959 to 1975 . Anni Geiger-Hof published several books again in the 1950s. From 1975 to 1982 she lived in Stuttgart again. Anni Geiger-Hof spent the last years of her life in retirement homes in Schnait im Remstal and Emmendingen. She was buried in the cemetery in Untertürkheim . Her literary estate was handed over to Manfred Altner of the TU Dresden for archiving while she was still alive .

Anni Geiger-Hof wrote numerous novels and stories for children , fairy tales and poems ; While the works published in the early 1930s are clearly shaped by their political convictions at the time, the works published before and during the Third Reich are of a non-political character. Anni Geiger-Gog received the International Women's League Prize for Peace and Freedom in 1929 .

Others

 Her estate is located in the Fritz Hüser Institute for Literature and Culture in the Working World in Dortmund .

Works

• Sky Key , Stuttgart 1923 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Peterle and other fairy tales , Stuttgart 1924 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• The saint and the flower , Leipzig 1925 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Me and you , Leipzig 1926 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• In the Land of the Holy Cross , Pfullingen in Württ. 1926 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• At midnight , Pfullingen 1926 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Maidi , Stuttgart 1927 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Mary's legends , Leipzig 1927 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Schlamper , Stuttgart 1928 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Heini Jermann , Stuttgart 1929 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• School end - summer vacation! , Stuttgart 1930 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Musikantenkinder , Stuttgart 1931 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Fiete, Paul & Firma , Stuttgart 1932 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Moscow sketchbook , Stuttgart 1933 (under the name Anni Geiger-Gog)
• Mother's problem child , Stuttgart 1933 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Marli , Stuttgart 1934 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Christmas Eve in the Snow , Stuttgart 1935 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Sunflowers and radishes , Stuttgart 1935 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Nickel runs into life , Stuttgart 1937 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Anja , Stuttgart 1939 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Robinson Crusoe , Stuttgart 1939 (under the name H. Menken)
• Anja auf dem Sonnenberg , Stuttgart 1940 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• The silent fire , Stuttgart 1941 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• The children of Au , Stuttgart 1942 (under the name Hanne Menken)
• Alle Neune , Reutlingen 1949 (under the name Anni Hof)
• Kordula , Stuttgart 1950 (under the name Anni Geiger-Hof)
• Jan Ellerbusch , Stuttgart 1952 (under the name Anni Geiger-Hof)
• The Fischerkinder , Berlin 1957 (under the name Anni Geiger-Hof)
• The girl Urd , Hanover 1958 (under the name Anni Geiger-Hof)

Editing

• Laura Fitinghoff : Seven Little Homeless People , Stuttgart 1934 (published under the name Hanne Menken)

Translations

• Ernest Thompson Seton : Katug , Stuttgart 1937 (translated together with Paul Bäuerle)

literature

• Heeke, Matthias (2003): Travel to the Soviets: Foreign Tourism in Russia 1921-1941 , Münster, p. 528 ff.
• Leutheuser, Karsten (1995): Free, guided and seduced youth. Politically motivated youth literature in Germany 1919-1989 , Paderborn, p. 49

Web links

• Homepage of the Fritz Hüser Institute