Else Wildhagen

Else Wildhagen (born January 10, 1863 in Leipzig as Else Friedrich-Friedrich ; † August 9, 1944 ibid) was the daughter of the writer Emmy von Rhoden , the author of " The Defiant Head ", and the writer Hermann Friedrich Friedrich . She was married to Georg Wildhagen , the Göttingen judiciary, since 1885 .

life and work

Else Wildhagen grew up in Dresden and in the girls' boarding school in Möder near Eisenach . Her diary entries inspired her mother to write a girls book about boarding school life. The novel The Defiant Head , which appeared posthumously in 1885, achieved such a success that the publisher wanted to publish a sequel. Else Wildhagen wrote the second volume under the pseudonym of her mother, Trotskopf's Bridal Time , the first edition of which appeared in 1894. Only in the 10th edition was the author's identity revealed.

In 1895 the third volume was published, From Trotshead's marriage , which Else Wildhagen had written after long hesitation at the urging of the publisher. In a foreword to From Trotshead's marriage , Else Wildhagen notes that she is aware of the difficulties that a repeated continuation would bring with it: “But now, since a trot head literature seems to be developing from another side and others feel called and justified, I have to abandon my previous reservations about using the characters in the tales of the tales that they want to be understood as continuations of the tales of tears. ”Else Wildhagen is referring to the novel Frau Ilse by Doris Mix, which was also published in 1895. In 1916 and 1919 Maria Mancke published under the pseudonym Marie von Felseneck the books Trotskopf's Experiences in World War II and Trotskopf Marries , which - like the work of Mix - were quickly forgotten.

In 1908 Else Wildhagen published three “marriage studies” under the title First wag's, then wag’s ; In 1909 a story followed, Our Young Girls . On the other hand, Wildhagen declined to write a fourth defiant head volume. She wanted to let a reasonable amount of time pass before the fictional Ilse would also be of grandmotherhood in reality. Volume 4 of the series, Defiant Head as Grandmother (original title: Stifkopje as Grootmoeder ), comes from the pen of the Dutch woman Suze la Chapelle-Roobol , appeared in 1905 and was translated into German by Anna Herbst. Volume 4, which ends with the death of the main character (Ilse Gontrau dies as a great-grandmother in the circle of her family of old age), is now considered the last volume in the series. Little is known, however, that Else Wildhagen published a fifth novel in 1930 - Trotskopf's Descendants - a new generation - which is no longer published today.

Her marriage to Georg Wildhagen had two children, the engineer Max Wildhagen (1888-1960) and the actress Susanne Wildhagen (1892-1952), who married the book artist Walter Tiemann .

expenditure

• Despite head's bridal period, published under the pseudonym “from the estate of Emmy von Rhoden”, Weise, Stuttgart 1892, OCLC 921805330 .
• From Trotsper's marriage , published as "Else Wildhagen-Friedrich Friedrich: Third volume on" Trotsky "by Emmy von Rhoden Emmy von Rhoden", Weise, Stuttgart 1894, OCLC 906617794 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Else Wildhagen in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sophie Pataky : Lexicon of German women of the pen . A compilation of the works by female authors that have appeared since 1840, along with the biographies of the living and a list of pseudonyms. Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898 ( zeno.org [accessed April 7, 2020] Lexicon entry "Wildhagen, Frau Else").