Dora Hohlfeld

Dora Hohlfeld (born as Luise Josefine Julie Theodore Tenge ; * February 21, 1860 at Gut Niederbarkhausen ; † February 11, 1931 in Salzburg ) was a German writer.

family

Her grandfather was the early industrialist Friedrich Ludwig Tenge from Osnabrück , who in 1822 a. a. had bought the goods of the Counts of Rietberg in the East Westphalian county of Rietberg . Dora Tenge came with her parents Carl Friedrich and Therese Tenge, geb. Bolongaro Crevenna, her sister Hermine Theodora Johanna Benedikta Maria Alma and the two older brothers Karl Ludwig Woldemar and Hermann Alfred to Rietberg. There she grew up in the former manorial house of the royal family Kaunitz-Rietberg. Her mother had two more sons and Dora Tenge grew up with her five siblings.

The father Carl Friedrich Tenge owned the Rietberg estates and Holte Castle . He was a co-owner of the Holter ironworks, which was run by his uncle Julius Meyer by marriage . The millionaire and “emotional socialist” Julius Meyer and the Tenge family were the focus of a literary-political circle at Holte Castle (Holter Circle) with contacts to August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , Georg Herwegh , Wilhelm Weitling , Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx .

Her mother, Therese Tenge, came from the Bolongaro Crevenna merchant family from Höchst near Frankfurt. Her family originally came from Italy and settled in the region near Frankfurt in the middle of the 18th century. The book The Tenges shows that she was a good pianist and largely followed her artistic inclinations. Karl Marx was impressed with her piano playing.

Life

Doras Hohlfeld's literary talent was evident at the age of five when she began to write fairy tales and poetry. She and her sister Alma attended a girls' boarding school in Osnabrück. The relationship with her father seems to have been rather critical, as he was primarily responsible for the education of the male family members.

At the age of 25, Theodora Tenge married Maximilian Ludwig Freiherr von Reitzenstein (born May 10, 1853 in Karlsruhe , † March 24, 1903 in Karlsruhe), royal Prussian lieutenant colonel, son of Ernst Philipp Freiherr von Reitzenstein and Jeanette Ziegler. Her mother died in the same year. She and her husband had three children, Heinz (* July 6, 1886 in Munich; † April 21, 1903), Hildegard Emma Alma (* September 18, 1887 in Munich; † 1982) and Horst Woldemar Ernst (* October 27, 1889 in Munich; † 1966). Her son Heinz died shortly after the death of her first husband, she mentions this in a letter to Richard von Schaukal.

Her daughter Hilde (born September 18, 1887; †) had three grandchildren: Felicitas Theodore Agnes Emma (born September 19, 1910 in Karlsruhe; † 1970 in Rosenheim), Phillibert Guido Bruno Sigismund (born July 24, 1917 in Salzburg , †) and Sybille Thesy Hildegard (* Esslingen March 21, 1921, †). The grandchild Helmut (* December 11, 1919, †), Baron von Reitzenstein, zu Klein Polschen (East Pomerania) comes from her son Horst.

She and her husband lived in southern Germany. But the strong impressions that shaped her in her childhood in Rietberg, Westphalia, stayed with her throughout her life and were later expressed again and again in her novels. In 1896 her father Carl Friedrich bequeathed his fortune to his children.

After the death of her first husband in 1903, she was married on January 29, 1904 in the parish church of St. Clement Danes in London by JJH Septimus Pennigton MA to the Silesian-Austrian academic portrait painter Bruno Hohlfeld . The couple settled in Gnigl near Salzburg.

In 1909 she took a share of 15,000 marks in the Dalbker paper factory, which her cousin Max Dresel converted into a GmbH.

Her husband Bruno Hohlfeld committed suicide on January 18, 1917. After his death she lived in Parsch near Salzburg. Dora Hohlfeld died in Salzburg in 1931, ten days before her 71st birthday.

Literary work

From the Krautwinkel

Her first publication, the novella Aus dem Krautwinkel , was described as characteristic of the poet Dora Hohlfeld. The special mood of the book was compared to that of Theodor Storms in his novel Immensee . Her most famous novel, Die Arme Josefa , tells a family story that reflects many characters and scenes from their childhood and youth in the former county of Rietberg. When the book came out, the family was very concerned that it might reveal information about the family. Dora Hohlfeld knew how to artfully combine poetry and real events. She used words to paint expressive pictures of natural landscapes.

Poor Josefa

This story was praised by the press across Germany. In the novel she describes many real locations, people and events from her life. Her family had the publication of the book concern, this novel could serve as a roman à clef be construed. This concern was not entirely unjustified. Her hometown Rietberg, for example, is easy to recognize in the story because of her portrayal of the moors, the Johanniskapelle with the St.-Johannes-Nepomuk figure in front of it and the Johannisallee. Her creative power of the landscape is still able to cast a spell on readers today. This novel received good reviews all over Germany and was a success. It is therefore not surprising that this novel was reprinted in 1930 shortly before her death, albeit shortened and under a new title: The child of mad Arnhem .

In the joy room

In her next novel Im Freudensaal , from the life of a countess , we find Freisaal Castle near Salzburg as the setting. From one of her letters from 1907 to the journalist and literary historian Dr. Moritz Necker is told that she wanted to draw pictures from the life of a countess, as a young girl in the so-called society, but the nature of Salzburg carried her away. It appears from her letters to him that she attached great importance to his judgment. He repeatedly made recommendations for her works, e. B. opposite the Österreichische Rundschau . While he was working for the Viennese newspaper “ Die Zeit ” , he was their contact person there. When he left the newspaper at the end of 1907, she wrote a letter to thank him for the kindness with which he had met her in the editorial office. She regretted not knowing him there anymore, but she was happy to soon get to know him personally with her husband when they came to Vienna . She herself later also worked for the Viennese “Die Zeit” , which emerges from a comment she published on the book “Der wilde Mann” by Adolf Latzko (1914). Her book Im Freudensaal received not only positive reviews, as she wrote Necker, he just shouldn't be sorry about the reviews.

Her husband Bruno Hohlfeld designed the cover for this book.

How they walk across the earth

She writes to the content of her novel, "Souls same substance can exist separately on earth, imagine themselves without finding ever, only at the resolution they find target security." All that go over the earth, whether animal or human, can not Determine everything yourself, much is left to fate.

Low people

Low people , published in the same year, is considered a socially critical novel . She clarified in the novel the grievances in the judiciary. Here she describes how a woman is punished in court for something that she did not commit. She describes the conditions that women were exposed to at the turn of the century with great sensitivity. For this novel she was hoping for support from Dr. Necker, whom she asked for a recommendation to the newspaper Österreichische Rundschau . She did not want to offer the novel to various newspapers, she described it as being as strong as Poor Josefa . These were the last novels of her that were published by Schuster & Loeffler .

By 1910, Chinese poetry came into fashion. In der Jugend , the Munich-based illustrated weekly for art and life, Dora Hohlfeld wrote about Si-Chy, the beauty sung about by the Chinese poet Li Po .

Literary classification

Dora Hohlfeld was considered a modern woman whose strength was to give her stories images of nature and fantasy, but also to describe realistic figures. She was able to portray the love life of the people of her century in her own way. She also dealt with the "modern marriage" of her time. Her literary work is convinced that marriage is probably only for people who are strong enough to accept the sober truth that in most cases love turns into friendship at best. Love was depicted by her as a law of nature that the characters can hardly escape from, love as a passion and curse. In her stories, Hohlfeld knew how to unite the emotional and the intellectual in symbolic and magnificent images and to let them speak, as in her novel The Women of the Nebelsiek Family , published in 1912 .

It is not unlikely that Dora Hohlfeld shared the general enthusiasm for war at the beginning of the First World War with other intellectuals, especially since she grew up in a patriotic family and her mother was delighted that three of her sons served the emperor, and she even founded in 1878 Rietberg is a branch of the Patriotic Women's Association . So it is not surprising that Dora Hohlfeld contributed to the paperback of the war year 1914/15 for Germany and Austria-Hungary with the contribution The Mourning of God . The book was intended to set a monument to the brotherhood of arms in Germany and Austria. The editor A. Schremmer had won a number of renowned German and Austrian writers to collaborate on the book. Besides Hohlfeld, u. a. and Richard von Schaukal whose enthusiasm for war finds himself in his brazen sonnets from 1915, or Ernst Lissauer , the national poems written and evolved from its Hassgesang against England the battle cry: God punish England. A clearly German national attitude was also evident in all of Walter von Molos' works . Schremmer wrote in the foreword: "Some stayed away who shouldn't have been missing here and are now being missed." This could well be an indication that some of the artists in demand were critical of the First World War. All that is known of her novel Confessions is that it was published in 1915.

No major publications followed for a long time. It was not until 1923 that she wrote in the series “Poets of the Present” for Wolfram Verlag, Würzburg, about Richard von Schaukal, who was friends with the artist couple. She told from the life of Schaukal, quoted some of his early poems and also his biographies, e. B. About Wilhelm Busch , whom she had seen herself as a young girl. Selma Lagerlöf wrote about her novel Meerland-Menschen in a letter: “You describe a region that I have seldom seen, but that through the poetry of your portrayal has emerged in unexpected beauty before my eyes. From this nature your people arise logically and safely, just as real creations of the mighty expanses and the nearby sea. ”She signed the preface“ With German greetings, Selma Lagerlöf. ”

Works

• From the herb corner ; Novella (1905, Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin)
• Poor Josefa ; a word of coming and going. (1906, Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin). Abridged and reissued under the title:
  • The child of great Arnhem (1930, Verlag Schöningh, Paderborn)
• In the joy room , from the life of a countess; Roman (1907, Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin)
• How they walk the earth ; Roman (1909, Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin)
• Minor people ; Roman (1909, Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin)
• The women of the Nebelsiek family ; Roman (1912, publishing house 'The Books of Reading')
• The grief of God ; (1914, paperback of the war year 1914/15; Hugo Schmidt Verlag, Munich)
• Confessions ; Novel (1915)
• Richard von Schaukal ; Contemporary poet (1923, Wolfram, Würzburg)
• Sealand people ; Grenzroman (1924, Bacham Verlag, Cologne)
• Rosian Ibranowitsch's smile ; Novel (1927). Presumably, an extract from it appeared in 1930 under the title
  • Smile of grace in the monthly newspaper Die Bergstadt (1930, issue 10; 18 publisher Paul Keller)
• Kaspar Grune's daughter ; Dora Hohlfeld mentions this novel in a letter to Richard von Schaukal (November 1, 1919)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Schmidt-1902/A/Schuster+&+Loeffler

literature

• Walter Gödden and Iris Nölle-Hornkamp: Westphalian Author Lexicon 1850–1900. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1997, pp. 299-300
• Max Geissler: German literature of the 20th century. Weimar 1913, p. 228e
• Franz Brümmer: Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the present. Volume 3, Leipzig 1913, p. 168
• M. Feichtlbauer: Salzburg's High German literature from 1850–1917. In: Communications from the Society for Regional Studies in Salzburg. LVII. Association year, Volume 57, Salzburg 1917, pp. 125–133
• Sigried Schmid-Bortenschlager and Hanna Schnedl-Bubenicek: Austrian women writers 1880–1938. Stuttgart 1982
• Austrian Academy of Sciences: ÖBL, Friedrichs 1860, 1862 Giebisch-Guggitz, 1866 Kosch biographical reports, notes: Freiherr Gotha
• Frank Konersmann: The Tenges. Volume 1, Publishing House for Regional History, Bielefeld 2004, ISBN 3-89534-561-X
• Ingrid Schuster: China and Japan in German Literature, 1890–1925. 1977, p. 103
• Article: Tenge, Tenge-Rietberg. In: Bernhard Koerner (Hrsg.): German gender book (Genealogisches Handbuch Bürgerlicher Familien). Volume 108, Görlitz 1940, pp. 453-454
• Manfred legs and Ursula Honerlage : The Rietberg writer Dora Hohlfeld on the 150th birthday. In: Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Gütersloh 2010. Flöttmann Verlags GmbH, 2009

swell

• Vienna Library in the City Hall in Vienna, manuscript collection, five letters / one postcard 1909–1924 from the estate of Dr. Moritz Necker, two letters from Richard von Schaukal's estate
• Letters from Dora Hohlfeld to Richard von Schaukal, private archive of the artist Ursula Honerlage , Rietberg

Web links

• Literature by and about Dora Hohlfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Memorial website for Dora Hohlfeld
• Dora Hohlfeld in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors