Elise Krinitz

Elise Krinitz

Heinrich Lefler : Elise Krinitz at Heine's bedside (posthumous fantasy image, without year)

Elise Krinitz (born March 22, 1825 as Elise Müller in Belgern , Prussia , † August 7, 1896 in Orsay ) was a Franco-German writer and Heinrich Heine's last love , who gave her the nickname Mouche .

Identity and course of life

Elise Krinitz's identity has long been controversial; she herself took care of this through numerous pseudonyms and mystifications. It is now relatively certain that she was born under the name Johanna Christiana Müller, but was given up for adoption and renamed by her father, a master weaver , after the death of her mother in childbed . The church book of Belgians records the renaming to Adolphine Emilie Elise Krinitz on April 30, 1825. The girl grew up in Paris , but the German adoptive mother made numerous visits to her Saxon homeland, which Elise Krinitz could still remember later, although she faked a different family story.

After growing up, Elise lived as a pianist, composer and publicist in Paris. She did not consider herself overly musical, however; how she financed her existence - the adoptive father who emigrated to America but returned unsuccessfully and died impoverished in 1862, could hardly leave anything behind her and her adoptive mother - is unknown. She tried to make contact with celebrities from cultural circles, especially Alfred Meißner , who did not return her affection. From 1850 to 1853 she lived in England - supposedly married to a wealthy Frenchman - but then returned to Paris and began her platonic relationship with Heinrich Heine. It actually became interesting for Meißner in the short term, but he ended the relationship again in 1857 when no further profits from information and materials about Heine could be expected.

Elise Krinitz, who now began to publish under various pseudonyms, especially as Camille - a "gender-neutral" first name - or Camilla Selden , began a liaison with Hippolyte Taine in 1858 , which ended in 1868 at Taine's instigation. Elise Krinitz continued to work as a writer, but in 1882 she also took a position as a German language teacher in Rouen , which finally made her financially secure, if not exactly happy. She died at the age of 71 in her holiday resort Orsay south of Paris.

The encounter with Heine

Henri Heine est mort ici, 3 avenue Matignon

The first visit to Heine took place on June 19, 1855 in his Paris apartment; the last five days before his death. This was preceded by an exchange of letters between Margareth , as she first signed, and the terminally ill poet. Heine called his last lover neither Elise nor Margarethe, but Mouche (French: "fly"), because she sealed her messages with a fly seal .

However, there are other versions of the beginning of the love story. Johann Vesque von Püttlingen , according to the author herself, had instructed her to deliver a package with sheet music to the poet; their relationship developed from this encounter. Another variant reports that Elise Krinitz got to know Heine after Heine had placed an advertisement in which he was looking for a reader and secretary.

25 letters from Heine, which testify to his strong emotional bond with Mouche , have been received, as well as four replies. While Elise Krinitz was rather reserved in her letters and also in her memoirs, Heine complained about his illness - he possibly suffered from very advanced MS ; a hair analysis from 1997 indicated lead poisoning - condemned to inaction and limited to a purely spiritual love. His five poems to the Mouche , which were found in the estate, also have this tenor. These poems are considered the only personally motivated or addressed love poems Heine.

The character of Elise Krinitz appears as “Die Mouche” in Günter Bialas ' opera From the Mattress Crypt .

Works

Original editions

• Daniel Vlady. Histoire d'un musicien , Charpentier, Paris 1862
• L'esprit des femmes de notre temps , 1865 archive.org
• La musique en Allemande. Mendelssohn , 1867 archive.org
• L'esprit modern en Allemagne , Didier, Paris 1869 archive.org
• En route
• Heinrich Heine's last days / Les derniers jours de Henri Heine / The Last Days of Heinrich Heine ,
  • Heinrich Heine's last days - memories , Jena 1884, from the French, 4 + 104? S. archive.org , digitized
  • Derniers jours de Henri Heine , Paris 1884, 125 p. Archive.org
  • The last days of Heinrich Heine , London 1884, translated into English by Clare Brun, 118 pp. Archive.org
• Mémoires de la Mouche , 1884

As a translator

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Les affinités électives , Paris 1872 archive.org

literature

• Eduard Engel : From Heinrich Heine's last days - The Mouche - Mrs. Caroline Jaubert . In: The Gazebo . Issue 19, 1884, pp. 312-316 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
• Menso Folkerts : Who was Heinrich Heine's “Mouche”? Poetry and truth . In: Heine-Jahrbuch , 38/1999, pp. 133–151.
• Edda Ziegler: Heinrich Heine. The poet and the women . Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-538-07212-4 .
• Heidi Urbahn de Jauregui: Poet's love. Life and work of Heinrich Heine's last lover, the "Mouche" . Thiele, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-940884-02-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Elise Krinitz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Recent research on Krinitz's life