Elisabeth Kottmeier

Anna Elisabeth Kottmeier (born July 31, 1902 in Sandowitz (Silesia) , † January 11, 1983 in Stuttgart ) was a German writer and translator.

Life

As the daughter of the Forestry Councilor Adolf Ludwig Wilhelm Hermann Kottmeier (1873–1957) and the Christian love Charlotte Elisabeth Kottmeier geb. Reichardt (1876–1965) she came from the David line of the Bremen theologian Adolph Georg Kottmeier . She grew up in Bad Harzburg and attended school there and in Halberstadt until she graduated from high school in 1921. In addition to an apprenticeship as a bookseller, she studied psychology and art history for four semesters, but from 1923 worked as a kindergarten teacher and nanny in Paris, among other places, and later trained as a state-certified Welfare worker.

As a guest student at Paul Tillich's philosophical seminars and during visits to the elementary school home of the reform pedagogue and writer Fritz Klatt in Prerow, as well as by the later resistance fighters Harald Poelchau and Adolf Reichwein , she was shaped literarily and her worldview. In the period from 1931 to 1933 she worked at the employment office in Goslar and was dismissed by the National Socialists due to her social democratic activities. She then worked as a maid in East Prussia.

After working as a clerk and librarian at the German Institute for Youth Welfare in Berlin from 1934 to 1945, she came as a helper for Aktion Storch via the British to the American occupation zone, where she worked as an employment agency in Dinkelsbühl from 1947 . It was here in 1950 that she met the Ukrainian writer Eaghor Kostetzky , whom she married in 1954. She died in 1983 at the age of 81.

Literary work

Until 1954 she published poems and little prose in newspapers, magazines and anthologies. Later she mainly devoted herself to translating from the Ukrainian and Russian languages, partly together with her husband. Her anthology Weinstock und Wiedergeburt is regarded as the first German-language overview work of Ukrainian poetry after the Second World War. She was on friendly terms with Boris Pasternak and had frequent correspondence. In 1961 she published a selection of his poems. The authors she has translated include a. Juri Tynjanow , Bella Achmadulina , Nikolai Erdman , Juri Olescha , Lesja Ukrajinka , Oles Hontschar , Stanisław Jerzy Lec and Wassyl Barka.

In 1984 Petra Köhler published a selection of her poems together with Reiner Kunze under the title The Hour Has Sixty Teeth .

Works

Original works (selection)

• Poems, in: The poet's stage in 1950. Erich Blaschker Verlag, Berlin 1950.
• Poems, in: Poetry of our time. A publication of the Neue Deutsche Hefte. C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh 1956.
• The hour has sixty teeth. Poems posthumously. Edited by Petra Köhler and Reiner Kunze. Edition Toni Pongratz, Hauzenberg 1984.
• East Prussian Maiden Summer. Freese, Berlin 1987.

Translations (selection)

• Boris Pasternak. Selected poems and how to read them. Verlag der Arche, Zurich 1961.
• Elisabeth Kottmeier (ed.): Vine of rebirth. Modern Ukrainian poetry. Kessler, Mannheim 1957.
• Wassyl Barka: Trojand novel. Kessler Verlag, Mannheim 1956.

literature

• Irmgard Kottmeier: Adolph Georg Kottmeier (1768–1842), cathedral preacher in Bremen: his ancestors and descendants. Degener, Insingen 1984, ISBN 978-3768650670 .

Remarks

1. ↑ Irmgard Kottmeier: Adolph Georg Kottmeier (1768–1842), cathedral preacher in Bremen: his ancestors and descendants. Degener, Insingen 1984, pp. 180-181.
2. ↑ http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CK%5CO%5CKottmeierElisabeth.htm
3. ↑ http://www.planetlyrik.de/boris-pasternak-gedichte-und-poeme/2010/10/