Editha Klipstein

Anna Dorothea Editha Klipstein (born November 13, 1880 in Kiel , † May 27, 1953 in Laubach ) was a German writer and journalist .

Life

Editha Klipstein, b. Blaß, was the second child of three daughters of the Graecist Friedrich W. Blaß and his wife Anna Blaß, b. Schulz. The family moved to Halle an der Saale in 1892 . Due to the professional position of their father - he was one of the leading Graecists - the children came into contact with international scholars at an early age. The father also traveled extensively with his children. On a trip to England undertaken in 1899, the nineteen-year-old Editha's first surviving literary testimony was a travel diary.

However, her interest was still in painting. As a teenager she received drawing lessons, in 1901 she went to Berlin . There she studied painting first with her aunt Sabine Lepsius and then with Lovis Corinth . In her aunt's salon, she made the acquaintance of Stefan George , Friedrich Gundolf , Karl Wolfskehl , Gertrud Kantorowicz and other members of the George Circle during the so-called “Stefan George Evenings” .

Portrait of Wilhelm von Blume painted by Editha Klipstein in the Tübingen Professorengalerie

In 1905 the student went to Paris , where she continued her studies with the painter Claudio Castelucho at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière . The following years were marked by trips, especially to Spain . In 1908 she met the painter Felix Klipstein in Madrid . Editha Blaß and Felix Klipstein married on March 17, 1909 in Halle. The couple first went to Segovia , but at the end of 1909 they moved to Laubach , the husband's hometown.

After the marriage, Klipstein turned away from painting and focused on columnist writing. In 1914, Christian was born as the couple's only child. After the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, Editha Klipstein describes in her diaries not only political developments but also everyday war life. Despite the war, she went on several trips. In 1915 she met the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in Munich .

In 1918 there was a marriage crisis as a result of a marriage for three ( Ménage-à-trois ) with her friend Ilse Erdmann († 1924 suicide); Klipstein spent a few months with friends in Worms . It is here that the first works on the novels Anna Linde and The Spectator were probably created . In 1931 Klipstein's article Encounter with Rilke appeared in the Neue Schweizer Rundschau.

Klipstein's essays make up a large part of her publications. She writes for the feature sections of various newspapers and magazines, especially for the Frankfurter Zeitung . In her cultural-historical essays, Klipstein commented on ideological and aesthetic questions as well as on representatives and works of world literature, for example on the writer Marcel Proust ( reflections on Proust ), on Flaubert's Madame Bovary ( from Flaubert's workshop ) and on Goethe's confessions of a beautiful soul.

In the summer of 1935 Editha Klipstein was with her friend Gertrud Kantorowicz in Switzerland , where she met with Jewish exile groups. Here she finished her novel Anna Linde , which was published as the first book in October 1935 by the newly founded Henry Goverts Verlag. The success of their debut led to new marital problems. After Felix Klipstein's death in 1941, a literarily productive time began.

Editha Klipstein - her estate is in the archive of the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library in Frankfurt am Main - had contacts with artists of her time such as Stefan George , Friedrich Gundolf , Lovis Corinth , Rainer Maria Rilke , James Pitcairn-Knowles , Käthe Kollwitz , Le Corbusier and Regina Ullmann .

membership

• Since 1949: Member of the PEN Club

reception

Editha Klipstein had some literary successes in the first half of the 20th century; however, the author is almost forgotten. Her literary debut Anna Linde from 1935 became famous. Today, Klipstein is particularly interesting as an astute and articulate contemporary witness. In addition to novels, short stories and essays, she left numerous autobiographical records that are only made available to the public posthumously .

Content description

The audience

Six years after Editha Klipstein's successful debut novel Anna Linde appears in 1942 The Viewer . It is the only one of her novels to be written in the first person and describes the view of events from a male perspective. Through the first-person narrator, a retired doctor, the reader learns of various incidents that take place in a small town in Central Germany: a mine accident, a duel, a fire and finally a love story in which the otherwise so distant viewer suddenly seems to intervene.

As in all of Editha Klipstein's novels, it is a young woman who finally finds herself through errors and guilt. Filtered by the viewer's gaze, the plot of the novel often seems a bit stiff. The end is surprising, because here the sober realism of the narrative is broken in favor of a fateful, almost mystical clarification of all confusions. The order, which comes about, like a feudal order and not by chance is one part of the protagonists from the nobility, which applies to Editha Klipstein as a symbol of "unadulterated", that is "right". “It depends on the correctness of a life in itself, not on its morals”, says the novel and so the irrepressible Sophia, who always obeys her feelings and also accepts defeat and punishment, finally finds her place in society and the right man by your side.

bibliography

• Anna Linde. Novel. Goverts, Hamburg 1935
• Storm in the evening. Novella. In: Frankfurter Zeitung, from February 3, 1938 in 8 parts
• The audience. Novel. Goverts, Hamburg 1942
• The acquaintance with death. Novel. Claassen & Goverts, Hamburg 1947
• Yesterday and today. Collected essays. Ulrich Steiner, Laupheim 1948
• The hotel in Castile. Novella. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1951
• About Marie Baschkirzeff . With a few letters from MB and Guy de Maupassant. Friedenauer Presse, Berlin 1964
• Spain. Essay. Posthumously edited by Rolf Haaser, Nikola Herweg, Christiane Klipstein, Gießen 2001.

literature

• Local history working group Laubach e. V. (Ed.): Portrait of a writer. Editha Klipstein . Laubach 1997
• Nikola Herweg: Editha Klipstein. One life . Fernwald 2002, ISBN 3-932289-73-0 .
• Nikola Herweg: "An everyday word never escaped her lips". On the life and work of the Laubach writer Editha Klipstein . In: Hessian homeland. Journal for Art, Culture and Monument Preservation , issue 2/3, vol. 58, 2008, pp. 70–75.

Web links

• Literature by and about Editha Klipstein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Rolf Haaser: Editha Klipstein Archive.
• Na 13 - Editha Klipstein's estate

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hilde Claassen: Letter from May 1972. In: Dietrich Schaefer (Ed.): Encounter with Henry Goverts. On his 80th birthday presented by the friends on May 28, 1972. Goverts Krüger Stahlberg Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, p. 15.