Elise Henle

Information board on Henle's former home

Elise Henle , married Levi (born August 10, 1832 in Munich , † August 18, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German writer.

Life

Elise Henle was the fifth and youngest child of the Munich goods and exchange room Benedikt Henle and Therese, nee. Ottenheimer from Stuttgart, a sister of the poet Henriette Ottenheimer . Elise's father, a son of Elkan Henle , who was born in Fürth , also dealt with time measurement, for example with the development of a so-called polytopic clock . One of her three brothers was the lawyer and member of the state parliament Sigmund von Henle .

Elise was brought up at a girls' boarding school “for daughters of higher classes” in Munich, where she performed her first pieces and musical compositions for internal performance. On July 3, 1853, she married the jewelry manufacturer Leopold Levi and moved with him to his hometown Esslingen am Neckar , where she initially lived at Fabrikstrasse 5 and from 1868 at Neckarstrasse 33. Her daughter Mathilde was born on August 24, 1854.

Henle's first, still anonymous publication is the satirical poem Hats off! , which she wrote spontaneously in response to an anti-Semitic statement by a judicial officer. Numerous comedies, dramas and opera libretti followed under her maiden name Henle, as well as two dialect cookbooks with the titles Guat ist's and So like i's . The number of her humoresques and stories published in mostly entertaining magazines has not yet been researched. The best known are perhaps the poem Der Bayer und der Zuave, printed in the humorous weekly Fliegende Blätter in 1871, and the story Die Wacht am Rhein , published in the same year in the Blätter for the domestic circle . As Meyer Kayserling found, she characterized the exuberant German smack with a fine sense of humor .

Submitted as a manuscript in 1872 and revised several times, her comedy Aus Göthes Lustigen Tage was finally to be performed at the Stuttgart court theater in 1876 . The artistic director Feodor von Wehl had meanwhile accepted when the performance that had already been rehearsed was canceled at the last moment. The comedy was not printed until 1878 by Raphael Levi in ​​Stuttgart. Before that, however, she had dealt with the difficulties she had encountered in her play Through the Intendanz . At the Stadttheater Wien in 1877 and under the direction of Heinrich Laube, this received the first prize, albeit a controversial one, out of almost 500 submissions. After the premiere in Vienna on October 29, 1877, it was performed on other stages. Around 1870, but without any response, the comedies Ein Duell and The Eighteenth October were shown in Esslingen . In the same city in 1879/80, the pieces Aus Göthes lustigen Tage , Dishonored and Die Wiener in Stuttgart followed .

In the meantime, the Levi couple had separated, but not divorced. The bankruptcy proceedings initiated against Leopold Levi in ​​1881 prompted both of them to move to Munich together. There they lived together for several years in an apartment at Dachauerstraße 9, right next to their daughter Mathilde, married Sonnemann.

Henle-Levi was probably able to live on the income from her literary work in her last years, some of which were still played. But since she continued to live with her husband in Munich, they seem to have supported each other. Otto Robert Maier and the Reclam publishing house in Leipzig published their printed texts in book form . Levy & Müller in Stuttgart published the anthologies Durch die Intendanz, Was soll ich declamieren (three volumes) and Backfischchens theaterfreuden .

Elise Henle had close relationships with her older sister Sophie Mayer, who lived in Frankfurt. The lexicographer Franz Brümmer claims that Henle moved to Frankfurt to live with her sister in 1889. However, this contradicts the Munich sources. In any case, she died in Frankfurt and Rabbi Rudolf Ruben Plaut gave the funeral oration. Elise Levi-Henle's grave is in the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt am Main.

Appreciation

In the city of Esslingen, where Elise Henle lived for 28 years, Elise Henle has been remembered several times since 1996. The Germanist Marion Schmaus judges Henle's literary work that although women's emancipation is negotiated, it is limited to the choice of spouse and should not be understood politically. Political undertones aimed at harmonization permeated her entire work. Nevertheless, today it is important to rediscover Henle's work in the course of a feminist and socio-historical literary study.

Works (selection)

• From Göthes merry days. Original comedy in four acts. Levy, Stuttgart 1878. ( digitized version )
• By the directorship. Original comedy in five acts. Levy and Müller, Stuttgart 1879. ( digitized version )
• Dishonored. Drama in 5 acts. Greiner, Stuttgart 1879. ( digitized version )
• The uncle. Comedy in 5 acts. Reclam, Leipzig 1881. ( digitized version )
• Castle de l'Orme. Romantic-comic opera in four acts. Text by Elise Henle, music by Richard Kleinmichel. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1880. ( digitized version )
• Murillo. Opera in four acts. Text by Elise Henle, music by Ferdinand Langer. Haas, Mannheim 1887. ( digitized version )

literature

• Meyer Kayserling: The Jewish women in history, literature and art , Leipzig 1879
• Henle, Elise . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 333 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Henle, Elise . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 2. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 516 ( digitized version ). - Addendum
• Ingrid Gierhake: Elise Henle, playwright . In: Women's Commissioner of the City of Esslingen: Women Life History. A way through Esslingen. Esslingen 1996, pp. 93-101
• Henle, Elise. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 11: Hein – Hirs. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-22691-8 , pp. 80-86.
• Marion Schmaus: Henle, Elise , in: Killy Literaturlexikon , Volume 5, 2nd edition 2009, pp. 265f

Web links

• Literature by and about Elise Henle in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature portal Bavaria, but still with the wrong year of birth

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.calzareth.com/tree/p255.htm
2. ↑ Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums , features supplement to No. 26 of June 25, 1867. Online: [1]
3. ↑ Meyer Kayserling: The Jewish women in history, literature and art , Leipzig 1879. Here after the reprint published by Julius H. Schoeps for the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute . Online: [2]
4. ↑ Article Elise Henle in: The collector. Fiction supplement to the Ausburger Abendzeitung dated December 6, 1877. Online: [3]
5. ↑ Both comedies in archiv.org
6. ↑ The collector , ibid.
7. ^ Morgen-Post dated November 6, 1877. Online: [4]
8. ^ Joachim Hahn: Jewish life in Esslingen . Volume 14 of the Esslinger Studien series of publications, published by the Esslingen City Archives, 1994, p. 301
9. ↑ This emerges from a review of the Munich address books from 1885 to 1893. Compare also Monika Ebert: Between recognition and ostracism. Doctors at the Ludwig Maximilians University in the first half of the 20th century , Neustadt ad Aisch, 2003, p. 211f. Accordingly, the doctor Elise Sonnemann, who was murdered near Kaunas in November 1941, was Elise Henle's granddaughter. See also Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database
10. ↑ See the Munich address books for the years 1891 to 1893
11. ↑ For the name see obituary notice for the father 1863. Online: [5]
12. ^ Franz Brümmer: Lexicon of German poets and prose writers [etc.] , Leipzig 1913, p. 244. Online: [6]
13. ↑ Rudolf Plaut: Words of Memory, spoken on the bier of the immortalized Mrs. Elise Henle , 1892
14. ↑ First by Ingrid Gierhake: Elise Henle, playwright . In: Women’s Representative City of Esslingen: Women’s Life History. A way through Esslingen. Esslingen 1996, pp. 93-101
15. ↑ Marion Schmaus: Henle, Elise , in: Killy Literaturlexikon , Volume 5, 2nd edition 2009. P. 265f, Online: [7]