Ditha Holesch

Ditha Holesch (born June 9, 1901 in Tullnerbach-Lawies in Lower Austria ; † October 26, 1992 in Vienna ) was an Austrian author of animal novels for young people and adults. Holesch lived in Brazil and Canada for a long time , and many of her books are set outside Austria. Her first work, The Black Stallion Bento, is best known to this day .

Life

Ditha Holesch was born Editha Maria Julie Clementine Friedrich. She was the daughter of the pharmacist Adolf Friedrich, who practiced in Vienna Fünfhaus , whose father Adolf Friedrich (1833–1902) was mayor of Fünfhaus from 1873 to 1890 and after whom Friedrichsplatz in Rudolfsheim / Fünfhaus was named in 1886 . The pharmacist's daughter grew up in a wealthy family, attended high school and, after graduation, an agricultural school. In October 1919, at the age of eighteen, she married the farmer Franz Geschwandtner in Vienna Fünfhaus. Before her 19th birthday, she left her home - probably with her husband. With an organized emigration group she tried to settle in southern Brazil on her own land. But when they arrived in their new homeland, it turned out that the organization had cheated the emigrants of their money and that they had no land available. Ditha Geschwandtner initially worked on a coffee plantation . When she could finally afford her own land, storms and pests reduced or destroyed the first harvest.

Even before her 21st birthday, in 1921, Ditha Geschwandtner tried her luck again with an emigration and moved with other Europeans disappointed from southern Brazil to the Canadian province of Alberta on the Peace River . But even here the Austrian could not gain a foothold. She returned to Brazil and worked on a fazenda , a farm with large herds of cattle and horses that were tended by gauchos . 15 years later, the young woman processed some of her impressions from this time in her first novel, The Black Stallion Bento . When she found out about her father's death in 1922, she returned to Austria. Shortly thereafter, their first marriage was annulled. Back in Austria, the young woman first worked in her father's pharmacy and later as a journalist.

At the age of 25, the Austrian remarried in 1926, the later writer and publisher Oskar Holesch , who was a year older than her. In 1937 Ditha Holesch published her first book. The youth novel The Black Stallion Bento tells of a German Trakehner stallion who is shipped to Brazil, escapes from the people there and experiences various adventures in the wilderness with a herd of horses that he “stole”. When the book was first published, it was illustrated with black-and-white photographs taken by Holesch.

The following year the Holesch couple traveled to Brazil. According to the German Literature Lexicon / Biographical-Bibliographical Handbook, this was a (renewed) emigration, elsewhere the trip is presented as a mere visit. In settlements in southern Brazil, Ditha Holesch had the opportunity to hear from older residents about the colonial past of the country and the struggles of European immigrants against the Indians . Soon afterwards (1939?) Ditha Holesch returned to Austria and settled again as a freelance writer in Vienna. She died there in 1992.

Ditha Holesch has published numerous novels for young people, the main characters of which are usually a single animal. His experiences are told from his point of view, whereby Holesch largely manages without humanization. For the experiences and the surroundings of the stories, Holesch repeatedly processed his own impressions, including from her trip to Brazil in 1938.

Some of Holesch's books have been translated into several languages, such as Dutch, Swedish, French, Danish and Latvian. The black stallion Bento in particular is still very popular today. The German editions alone, printed by various publishers, are in the double-digit range.

Works

• The black stallion Bento , Berlin 1937
• Manso, the Puma , Berlin 1939
• The dog Xingu , Berlin 1941
• Moonlight , Vienna 1948
• Tschief , Rüschlikon-Zch. 1948
• Shadows over Itaoca , Vienna 1949
• Ruta, the shepherd , Berlin 1954
• The chamois goat Tschief and its mountains , Berlin 1955
• Urian , Berlin [a. a.] 1958
• El Fuego , Berlin 1962
• The mare Grisanna , Würzburg 1979

literature

• Dieter Halama: 100 years ago in Tullnerbach: Adolf Friedrich (1833–1902). The penultimate mayor of Fünfhaus near Vienna. Ditha Holesch b. Friedrich (1901-1992). From the Lawies to the Brazilian jungle. Commemorative writing on the 100th or 10th anniversary of death. Self-published. Tullnerbach-Lawies, 2002.

Supporting documents and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Short biography on literaturkreisel.eu (without author and date information )  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed January 18, 2010)  
2. ↑ The mayor was probably also a pharmacist; because already in 1864 there was a pharmacist named Dr. Adolf Friedrich, member of the Austrian Zoological-Botanical Society : Austrian Zoological-Botanical Society (around 1864). Status of the company at the end of 1864, p. XXXIV (PDF file; 1.93 MB, p. 18; accessed on January 19, 2010)
3. ↑ ^{a b} Ingrid Bigler: Ditha Holesch. In: German Literature Lexicon. Biographical-bibliographical manual. 8th volume. 3. Edition. 1981

Web links

• Literature by and about Ditha Holesch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Image by Ditha Holesch