Elisabeth von Grotthuss

Elisabeth "Elise" Baroness von Grotthuss (born October 29 ^{. Jul} / 10. November  1820 ^greg. Gut Durben in Courland (now Latvia ); † 4. February 1896 in Vienna ) was a Baltic German storyteller and playwright.

Life

Elisabeth Baronesse von Grotthuss was born on the Durben estate in Courland and was raised in St. Petersburg , where her father was a colonel in the Russian service. She developed an eye disease when she was a child, which is why her parents brought her first to Berlin and later to Dresden for medical treatment by the best German doctors . In Dresden, however, her health deteriorated and she became blind. Elisabeth von Grotthuss, who was raised as a Protestant, found consolation in the Catholic faith, to which she converted in 1855. In her work My Conversion , which appeared in 1893, she goes into this step in more detail.

While her parents returned to Russia, Elisabeth von Grotthuss stayed in Dresden, where she maintained a close friendship with the wife of the Austrian ambassador in Dresden, Countess Kueffstein. In 1856 she followed the couple to Vienna, where she became a member of the “Association of Writers and Artists” and lived until her death in 1896.

Elisabeth von Grotthuß wrote a total of around 50 works, including a plethora of novels with social themes that often dealt with Russian problems. She also published novels, humoresques and comedies. Some of their stories were also published in French.

Works (selection)

• Anna Rosenberg (1867)
• Novellas (three volumes, 1867)
• Stories (1868)
• The Runenthal Family (Socialer Roman, 1869)
• The Green Tree Inn (1869)
• The adoptive siblings (1870)
• The Men of the Lodge (1871)
• Count Bruno Degenhart (1872)
• Celeste Alland or The Mixed Marriages (1873)
• The Misunderstood Sense of Honor (1874)
• Two uncles from America (comedy, 1875)
• Four Pictures of Life (1875)
• The magnetizer (comedy, 1876)
• Picture book without pictures (Humoresken, 1878)
• Eleanor (1878)
• Lucie (1881)
• The Children of the Nihilist (1883)
• Helene Grandpré (social novel, 1885)
• Martha (1889)
• My conversion (1893)
• Seemingly dead (1894)
• I miss the son (1896)
• Elsbeth Sommer (1898)
• The Robber's Sons (1899)
• The American Duel (1888)

literature

• Grotthuss, Elise Freiin von . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 287 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Franz Brümmer : Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the present . Reclam, Leipzig 1913, p. 464f.
• Elisabeth Friedrichs : The German-speaking women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries . Metzler, Stuttgart 1981, p. 108.
• Susanne Kord : A look behind the scenes. German-speaking playwrights in the 18th and 19th centuries . Metzler, Stuttgart 1992, p. 375.
• Carola L. Gottzmann , Petra Hörner: Lexicon of the German-language literature of the Baltic States and St. Petersburg . De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019338-1 , p. 501 f .

Web links

• Literature by and about Elisabeth von Grotthuss in the catalog of the German National Library
• Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Elisabeth von Grotthuss. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
• Short biography and bibliography