Dolores Viesèr

Dolores Viesèr (born September 18, 1904 in Hüttenberg , Carinthia ; † December 24, 2002 in Klagenfurt ), actually Wilhelmine Maria Aichbichler (also: Maria Valdez ), was an Austrian writer and narrator .

Life

Dolores Viesèr was born in 1904 in Hüttenberg as Maria Dolores Wilhelmine Wieser as the daughter of the watchmaker and jeweler Johann Wieser, but lost her father in 1914 and, at the age of 16, her beloved mother. After the war and inflation , she and her two brothers Hans and Franz were left with practically nothing. “There were terrible times of need, a tremendous economic crisis and severe unemployment. We had to get away from Hüttenberg. Everything had changed there, the mine was temporarily closed, and there was terrible hardship among the people too. The younger brother went to the steel works in Zeltweg as an electrician apprentice, the older brother, himself with lung disease, had lost his job as a forestry assistant. I worked, whatever came my way, the three of us starved together, almost lived off the air ”(interview 1984).

Because of her poor health ( tuberculosis ), Dolores Viesèr lost her job at the Josefbruderschaft publishing house (now Carintia) in Klagenfurt in 1921. Since after a few months of convalescence in the Elisabethinen hospital there was no more work to be found for her in Carinthia, she went to Hall in Tyrol on advice and with a letter of recommendation from a clergyman . Once there, the city pastor placed her in a pension, which was run as a retreat home, as a 'girl for everything'. In addition to her work, in the end mainly as a cook, she wrote her first novel "Das Singerlein" (published in 1926) between 1922 and 1926, which was an immediate success. At that time she was the youngest novelist in the German-speaking world. Already in 1926, before the publication of this novel, she moved to Munich at the invitation of the publishing director of Kösel & Pustet, Siebert . There she wrote her second novel "Märtyrer und Lilotte" (1929), with which she later identified with the least, although it was a success. With the fees she was able to buy a half-finished house on Kinkstrasse in Klagenfurt in 1931 and move there with her brothers. She wrote the short story volume "An der Eisenwurzen" (1948), as well as the novel "Der Gurnitzer" (1931), to which she had suggested a mention in the history of Carinthia Gottlieb von Ankershofen . He had reported about a lay priest who was so worldly minded that he even took his falcon with him to church and, despite his ecclesiastical office, was fateful to a lover. This work deals with the bilingual settlement (German - Slovene) of Carinthia and is therefore still published in Slovene today.

Before her novel about Saint Hemma von Gurk was published, Austria was occupied by the troops of the Third Reich. Dolores Viesèr was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer in 1938 and was banned from writing. Due to the one-thousand-mark ban , she was already very unable to work because the publishers of her books were in the German Reich. This also led to the fact that the fee credits were confiscated immediately after the so-called "Anschluss" of Austria. Especially the works "Hemma von Gurk" and "Der Gurnitzer" were described as not conforming to the 'German understanding of the people and history' and all books were confiscated and crushed. "Hemma von Gurk" was hit particularly hard, as the first edition for the Christmas market was printed but not yet delivered. Only after the war could the works appear again in the Federal Republic of Germany with the Ehrenwirt publishing house.

Dolores Viesèr met her future husband Otto Aichbichler , who in the years before 1933 - u. a. worked as a weather warden at the Sonnblick - had written a novel ("The Unfree") himself. He had asked her to write a foreword to his novel and to look for a publisher, which was difficult even then. There were three children from this marriage. The eldest son had a fatal accident in an avalanche on a ski tour in February 1953 . The daughter Ute inherited the artistic talents of her parents and celebrated great success as an opera singer Ute de Vargas from Italy, later she became a fashion designer and is now a wine grower in Piedmont .

Viesèr viewed the novel "Hemma von Gurk" as a turning point for himself. “With the book 'Hemma von Gurk' a new phase of life began in my writing. My marriage and the duties that had come up to me, the children, the household, the estate, had only really introduced me into women's life. I was put on the ground with my feet. (...) I had to deal with the simplest of everyday things and so I was able to bring the warmth to the touch in the representation, I was able to amalgamate the simple with the great so that it could be reached through the stages of simple life. The simple is the real ”(conversation 1984). The inspiration for this gigantic work came from Father Dr. Löw, who was sent from Rome to Carinthia in 1932 as a cardinal relator of the papal archives , in order to historically underpin the process of canonization for Hemma. He was able to provide her with important documents and give her access to various archives, in particular to the 600-year-old files of the canonization process in Rome. It was a long and arduous job and also required long trips - to Rome, Bamberg , Regensburg , Lower Styria and Carniola - as well as learning medieval Latin in order to be able to study the documents in the archives. The intention of Dr. Löws was probably right from the start to put Dolores Viesèr on the trail of this novel in order to make the canonization of 1936 and above all the historical figure of St. To make Hemma popular and to anchor it in the religious consciousness of the people, which is very important, almost a prerequisite for the status of a saint. The novel not only tells the story of a saint, but also the story of an ultimately happy marriage. The result is a painting of the times of the early Middle Ages, in which home and faith, nature and folk play an important role. She had to poetically empathize with the figures of Hemma and her family, as not many documents are available about them.

In 1952, “Aelia. A woman from Rome ”published. The extensive and personal novel is set in Carinthia at the time of Diocletian , and again the focus is on a woman who finds access to Christianity in Virunum . This was followed in 1953 by the novel “Licht im Fenster”, in 1954 “The Funeral Mass”, in 1956 the novel “Little Brother” and the novella “The Ribbon Hat” and in 1971 the last great novel “Nachtquartier”. This novel from the French era deals with incidents that have happened so similarly in her husband's family. It is the story of Leopold and Gertraud Rabensteiner - Gertraud cheats on her husband with a French occupation officer and gets a girl from him. A painter immortalized the sad end on the altar plinth of a path chapel, which was built by the next generation to commemorate, although the family event took place about 80 years before the story described in the novel. A pious inscription testifies to the strange happening. “In the 'night quarters' I avoided with a certain humility to find too easy an answer to the great secrets. Even as a poet, one cannot say everything; much has to remain unsaid and unexplained ”(Interview 1984).

"You end a book knowing that it had to be like that. I wanted to say that even the writer cannot penetrate the secrets that God has woven into our fate. The last sentence of the book, 'I don't see' far enough. That is what the angels sing 'says it all. There will therefore be no continuation; the thoughtful reader will recognize the paths that are predetermined for the people in the' night quarters' ". In reality, two follow-up novels were planned as a trilogy and about a third of the second had already been written. The title should be "The beautiful Amai" (Amai, the daughter of a character from the first part).

“I have always written very slowly and with difficulty. I didn't write the words down before I could see through them, but once I had written them, they couldn't be changed ”. In the novel "Hemma von Gurk", Dolores Viesèr has z. B. worked 6 years and on "Aelia" more than four years. (Interview 1992).

She was the oldest member of the renowned Carinthian Writers' Association , but otherwise consciously avoided the literary business and had little contact with other artists. She was not in conflict, because the feeling of peace with oneself was more important to her than any publicity.

Works

• The Little Singer - The Story of a Young Soul (1928)
• The Martyr and Lilotte (1929)
• The Gurnitzer - A Hero's Life from the Turkish Period (1932)
• The Hero Virgin (under the pseudonym Maria Valdez)
• Hemma von Gurk (1938)
• An der Eisenwurzen (short stories) (1948)
• Aelia - A Woman from Rome (1952)
• Light in the window (1953)
• The Ribbon Hat (1956) (short story)
• The Funeral Mass (1955)
• Little Brother (1956)
• Die Rauhnacht des Modestus (short novella) (1960)
• Cats in Venice (1967)
• The night quarters (1971)

Awards

• Adalbert Stifter Prize (1930)
• Ebner Eschenbach Prize (1933)
• Handel-Mazzetti Prize (1955)
• Culture Prize of the State of Carinthia (1975)
• Jug of honor of the Dichterstein community Zammelsberg (1986)

literature

• Helga Abret: A Christian Alternative in the Thirties. Dolores Viesèr's historical novel "Hemma von Gurk" (1938) . In: Martin G. Petrowsky (Ed.): Poetry in the shadow of the great crises. Erika Mitterer's work in the context of literary history . Published in collaboration with Helga Abret. Praesens_Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-7069-0352-0 , pp. 199-217.
• Erika Klenk: Dolores Viesèr. A Carinthian homeland poet . Vienna 1950, (Vienna, university, dissertation).

Web links

• Literature by and about Dolores Viesèr in the catalog of the German National Library
• Inwardness and Authority Chapter from a dissertation from 1989, deals with Viesèr's worldview as expressed in Das Singerlein .