Emilie Wedekind-Kammerer

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Emilie Wedekind

Emilie Wedekind-Kammerer (* May 8, 1840 as Emilie Friederike Kammerer in Riesbach near Zurich , †  March 25, 1916 in Lenzburg ) was a German actress and singer . She was the mother of Frank , Erika and Donald Wedekind . Her biographical notes under the title “ Jugenderinnerungen” serve as an important source for research on the work and person of the playwright Frank Wedekind.

Life

Emilie Kammerer was the second daughter of the Württemberg manufacturer and republican Friedrich Kammerer (1796–1857), the inventor of matches , and his wife Karoline Friedrike Keck (1807–1846). She grew up in Zurich , the vanishing point of numerous political emigrants after the failed revolutions in Europe before and after 1848 . Her father had set up his first match factory there. Emilie attended the community school in Riesbach, then the country daughters' school in Niederdorf and the German school founded by Karl Friedrich Fröbel . In 1852 she spent almost a year in a girls 'boarding school in Zurich-Enge , until she returned to her parents' house in 1853 to take over the household for a while while her father was ill.

Emilie accompanied her older sister Sophie in 1853, at the age of only 13, when she performed as an opera singer in Vienna , Nice and Milan . Sophie was a trained opera singer and performed successfully. In 1858 Emilie traveled to her sister in Valparaíso ( Chile ), where she and her husband, a son of a French nobleman, had emigrated. Emilie was invited to this trip by her family. Since the sister lived in unhappy circumstances, the two women began to earn money independently through concerts, especially in vaudeville shows . They traveled north up the South American coast by ship to San Francisco , California . They performed from town to town. On this trip Sophie died of yellow fever on December 23, 1858 . Emilie now had to look after her sister's three-year-old daughter. In San Francisco, then a gold mining town, Emilie worked as an actress and singer.

A marriage concluded on June 4, 1859 in San Francisco with the innkeeper, singer and assistant conductor Johannes (Hans) Schwegerle (1817-1891) was divorced in 1861. She got to know the president of the German Club in San Francisco, the gynecologist Friedrich Wilhelm Wedekind (1816–1888), who was a left-liberal deputy in the parliament of the Paulskirche in Frankfurt and who after the failure of the German Revolution in 1848/1849 (so-called Forty-Eighter ) emigrated to America. Wedekind had made a significant fortune in property speculation during the California gold rush . Emilie Kammerer married him in March 1862 and returned to Europe with him in 1864. They first lived in Hanover , the home of Friedrich Wilhelm Wedekind, before settling in the Swiss canton of Aargau in 1872 .

Emilie Kammerer-Wedekind regularly organized parties with music and singing at Lenzburg Castle , which her husband had bought. She was a lively and constantly active person who also wanted her children to do consistent physical work. The father saw it as the maidservant's job. So the children chose who they obeyed in each situation. In fact, the parenting methods of the parents were considered "very American" by the citizens of Lenzburg. The development of personal freedom was the highest principle. Even at the table there were different customs: while other children had to remain silent, the Wedekinds were allowed to have a say at the table. However, this freedom was more due to the mother, as the father was rarely present.

Her children were the doctor Armin (Francis) Wedekind (1863-1934), the playwright and poet Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (1864-1918), the farmer William Lincoln Wedekind (1866-1935), the soprano Frieda Marianne Erica Wedekind (1868-1944) ), the writer Donald Lenzelin Wedekind (1871–1908) and the teacher Emilie Richewza Wedekind (1876–1969).

Wedekind-Kammerer kept a diary about her youth up to her marriage. She completed her biographical notes in 1914 under the title Youth Memories . According to the Wedekind biographer Artur Kutscher , Frank Wedekind urged his mother to write down her childhood memories for her children. They were archived in the manuscript collection of the Munich City Library and served as an important source for scientific research on the work and person of Frank Wedekind as well as for the standard biographical work on the playwright by Anatol Regnier . The musicologist Friederike Becker first published Emilie Wedekind-Kammerer's youth memories in 2003 as a book.

Publications

  • For my children - memories of the youth (= Wedekind-Lektüren - writings of the Frank Wedekind-Gesellschaft Vol. 3), edited by Friederike Becker, Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 978-3-8260-2683-6 ( partially digitized )

literature

  • Wilhelm Wedekind: The Wedekinds in America. His father's journal amoureux - translated by Frank Wedekind. Edited and with an essay by Stephen Parker. Wallstein, Göttingen 2020, ISBN 978-3-8353-3731-2 .
  • Wedekind-Kammerer, Emilie. In: Gudrun Wedel : autobiographies of women. A lexicon. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20585-0 , p. 911.
  • Ingrid Bigler-Marschall: Wedekind-Kammerer, Emilie Friederike. In: Wilhelm Kosch (founder): German Literature Lexicon . 3rd edition, Volume 29, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-908255-44-4 (Volume 29), ISBN 978-3-907820-00-1 (complete works), Sp. 60-61.
  • Anatol Regnier: Frank Wedekind. A tragedy for men. Knaus, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8135-0255-8 ( partially digitized ).
  • Gerald N. Izenberg: Frank Wedekind and the Feminity of Freedom. In: Ders .: Modernism and Masculinity. University of Chicago Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-226-38869-4 , pp. 21ff., In particular pp. 33ff.
  • Rolf Kieser: Benjamin Franklin Wedekind. Biography of a youth. Arche, Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-7160-2113-X , pp. 48–64 (chapter “ Une certaine froideur du cœur ”), pp. 196–205 (chapter The mother ), p. 399 (register of persons for other sources) .
  • Frank Wedekind (Author); Gerhard Hay (ed.): The diaries. An erotic life. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7610-8405-6 , pp. 9, 15, 23f., 56, 59, 69f., 76, 88, 103, 110, 161, 169, 335, 345.
  • Dorothee Mounier: The mother's career. In: This: Wedekind's “Herakles”. Investigations into the function and reception of a mythological drama figure (= European university publications . Series 1: German Language and Literature, Volume 797). Lang, Frankfurt am Main [a. a.] 1984, ISBN 3-8204-7492-7 , ISSN  0721-3301 , pp. 148-149.
  • Carl Ludwig Wedekind and Benno Wedekind: Wedekind. In: Lower Saxony Gender Book (= German Gender Book , Volume 187). CA Starke, Limburg an der Lahn 1982, pp. 481-634, especially pp. 526-533.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Artur Kutscher: Frank Wedekind. His life and his works. Volume 1, Verlag G. Müller, Munich 1922, p. 13
  2. ↑ Advertisement in Sacramento Daily Union , Vol. 17, No. 2560, June 10, 1859, p. 2, Advertisements Col. 2 ( online with California Digital Newspaper Collection )
  3. ↑ Dirk Heißerer: Where ghosts wander. Literary walks through Schwabing. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56835-0 , p. 20
  4. ↑ Rolf Spinnler: Literature: Herrin Frau . In: Der Tagesspiegel Online. January 25, 2009
  5. ^ Rolf Kieser: Benjamin Franklin Wedekind. Biography of a youth. Arche-Verlag, Zurich 1990, ISBN 978-3-7160-2113-2 , p. 360
personal data
SURNAME Wedekind-Kammerer, Emilie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kammerer, Emilie Friederike (maiden name); Schwegerle, Emilie Friederike (name during their first marriage 1860–1861); Wedekind, Emilie Friederike (name from 1862); Wedekind-Kammerer, Emilie Friederike; Kammerer, Emilie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress and singer, mother of Frank Wedekind
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Riesbach near Zurich
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1916
Place of death Lenzburg