Emma Pollmer

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Emma Lina Pollmer (born November 22, 1856 in Hohenstein ; † December 13, 1917 in Arnsdorf ; married Emma May ) was the first wife of the writer Karl May .

family

Emma Pollmer was the illegitimate daughter of Emma Ernestine Pollmer (* 1830; † 1856) and a journeyman barber from Zittau , who had come to Hohenstein to work there. Since the mother died shortly after the birth of her daughter, she grew up with her grandfather Christian Gotthilf Pollmer (* 1807; † 1880). Grandfather was a barber, also pulled teeth and treated wounds; He was considered a dentist or surgeon by his fellow citizens.

Life

Twenty-year-old Emma used to meet her friends in Hohenstein in the house of Wilhelmine Schöne, a sister of Karl May. At that time, Karl May was employed as an editor at Kolportageverlag Münchmeyer in Dresden . Since he mainly worked on his own manuscripts, his constant presence in Dresden was not necessary, so that he often spent time with his parents in Ernstthal or with his sister in Hohenstein. It was there that Emma and Karl met and fell in love. Emma was not yet of legal age and was under the tutelage of her grandfather. However, the latter refused to give his granddaughter's consent to marry Karl May. Deeply offended, Emma faced the choice of choosing him or her grandfather.

Emma followed him to Dresden in May 1877. He was sublet on Pillnitzer Strasse, she on Mathildenstrasse. The economic situation was difficult, since May had left the Münchmeyer-Verlag. This termination had the following background: The Münchmeyers family recognized May's talent and endeavored to bind him to the publishing house as a family. Münchmeyer's wife Pauline had tried to marry May to her sister Minna Ey. By refusing, he made his employer's wife an enemy, which led to inconveniences that led him to leave the publishing house at the end of March 1877. In the late autumn of 1877 he got a permanent job as an editor at the Bruno Radelli publishing house in Dresden for the entertainment paper Frohe Stunden. This secure existence enabled him to rent an apartment in Neustrießen , where he moved in with Emma. May pretended - also to the authorities - that both were married to each other.

In connection with an investigation against Karl May for presumption of office, they both moved to Hohenstein in July 1878; the editorial work for the happy hours has ended.

Marriage to Karl May

In 1880 Emma's grandfather died and in the same year Karl May and Emma Pollmer got married in a civil and church office. The following years brought Karl May's economic and social rise; in his travel stories he repeatedly mentioned his wife, whom he called Emmeh in an orientalizing way . In 1896 he bought the property at Kirchstrasse 5, Villa Shatterhand, in Radebeul . In the opinion of Pollmer biographer Fritz Maschke, this time was probably the happiest of their marriage. In March 1899, May began a long journey to the Orient without his wife, which took him across the Middle East to Sumatra . In November of that year he asked Emma to come to the Egyptian port city of Port Said . If she doesn't want to go on the trip alone, she may do so in the company of Richard and Klara Plöhn . Both couples had been friends for a long time; Emma later wrote that in Radebeul they were mistaken for sisters. Since Emma suffered from an abdominal disease, she did not dare to undertake the long journey alone and drove in the company of the Plöhns.

During his trip to the Orient, the first journalistic attacks against Karl May occurred, which led to a plethora of disputes, including criminal and civil litigation, which persecuted May until the end of his life and which severely affected him physically and mentally.

After Emma's arrival in Egypt, an estrangement became apparent between the couple. At the same time, Karl and Klara came closer. The journey led via Constantinople and Greece to Italy; in August 1900 the travelers arrived back in Radebeul. Richard Plöhn died in February 1901. Karl and Emma agreed to give the widow Klara Plöhn the task of processing May's readers' mail, for which she received an annual salary of 3,000 marks. The biographer Maschke writes about this time: “The author and the two women around him obviously needed more and more relaxation over time. The closer Karl Klara got, the further he distanced himself from Emma, ​​who did not escape this change in the long run. He, an overworked neurotic […], Emma an ailing woman, hurt in her feelings by her husband and girlfriend; he to anger […], they tend to hysteria - they simply had to lose control often. Little things, incidents that were irrelevant in themselves, triggered quarrels and arguments and poisoned the previously good relationship. "

Separation and divorce

In July 1902 the three traveled to South Tyrol to relax in the Mendel region . On this trip there was a final break between Karl and Emma. He got her to sign a pre-formulated statement that they no longer loved each other and that she consented to a divorce. When she had done so after initial reluctance, he provided Emma with money for the next few weeks and traveled back to Dresden with Klara. On October 3, 1902, May obtained an injunction to live separately.

However, the declaration signed by Emma May was not enough for a divorce. At that time, the principle of guilt applied in marriage law . It said that the marriage, which was basically lifelong, could only be divorced in exceptional cases, namely in the event of culpable behavior by one of the spouses. The question of guilt determined not only the requirements for a divorce but also its consequences, in particular the regulation of the maintenance rights and obligations of the divorced. Therefore, May had to present and prove his wife's misconduct in the divorce suit. The main allegations were the theft or embezzlement of sums of money, including a sum of 40,000 marks that she had lent to Richard Plöhn, as well as the withholding of important business correspondence. Klara Plöhn and her mother testified as witnesses in favor of the plaintiff. Thereupon the Dresden Regional Court ruled that the marriage was divorced due to the fault of the defendant, who was also charged with the costs of the proceedings. On March 4, 1903, the divorce became final.

“Karl and Klara are likely to have considered the grounds of claim to be a more or less formal legal necessity, whose subtleties did Emma in many respects, but which, they were both convinced, could not do her any further harm. The reasons for their 'guilt' remained hidden in the court files. [...] So he was certainly aware of some exaggerations and strongly one-sided representations, which had only served the goal of freeing himself from a woman he had lost love with in order to be able to connect with another who was more to him meant. "

Emma, ​​on the other hand, wrote in 1907: “I was furious about the allegations in the divorce suit because they are decidedly untrue. The reasons for divorce have been hugely exaggerated and pulled by the hair. I am firmly convinced that my husband first tried to divorce me on the basis of the declaration I had signed that I no longer loved him. Only when his lawyer may have told him that such a declaration was not a reason for divorce will he have worked out the reasons for the divorce with Plöhn. [...] As I have repeatedly emphasized, some of the facts presented are based on truth, but they are colossally exaggerated and almost pulled by the hair. "

At Karl's request, she undertook to leave Dresden and to take her residence no closer than 100 km away. Then she moved to Weimar . According to Karl May, he furnished her new apartment with the best furniture and gave her a pension of 3,000 marks a year. However, this was contractually carried out under certain conditions: The pension should not be paid, even amounts already received, if Emma “had any insults, suspicions, defamations or defamation against Mr. May or his relatives.” Even before the conclusion of this contract Emma does tell her friends about the divorce proceedings and the allegations against them. They advised her to take legal action, which she refused. One of these friends, Louise Haeussler, took the initiative and on October 9, 1903 filed a criminal complaint against Karl and Klara May for fraud in the divorce proceedings. She thought she was acting in Emma's favor. "In fact, however, she brought Emma into a new conflict and caused further excitement for those who were torn apart anyway." Nevertheless, Emma refused to testify, whereupon the proceedings were discontinued.

For some time now, May has been involved in various civil and criminal lawsuits. It was about legal disputes with the acquirer of the Münchmeyer-Verlag, but also about active and passive lawsuits based on public statements, especially in the press, about Karl May.Opjectives particularly branded his colportage novels as immoral and as dirty and trash literature , something from today's View is barely comprehensible. May partly denied the authenticity of the criticized passages and claimed that they had been edited by the publishers to increase circulation. Then it was about the criminal record from his youth, some of which were exaggerated ("robber captain"), and about his travel stories, about which he had seriously claimed that the events described there as Old Shatterhand, Kara Ben Nemsi Effendi, etc., had personally experienced himself to have. Some media used these points of attack for regular campaigns against May.

In the Münchmeyer trial, May took a party oath to prove his claims. The opposing attorney then filed a criminal complaint for perjury in April 1907 . This advertisement, "a terrible blow for Karl May, who believed himself so close to victory", led to extensive investigative measures: House searches at May in the Villa Shatterhand, at his former wife in Weimar and various witnesses in Germany and Austria, investigative measures extended to Italy, blockage of letters against him and his former wife and the use of files from lawyers who had represented Karl and Emma. From November 10 to 17, Emma had to testify for several hours a day about her life with Karl May and the details of the divorce.

Fearing that his ex-wife might testify unfavorably about him, May wrote a treatise entitled Ms. Pollmer, a psychological study that he sent to the coroner. Feeling relatively secure, Karl and Clare embarked on a long-planned trip to America. During this time one of his main opponents, the journalist Rudolf Lebius , prepared a devastating blow against May. Lebius had demanded money from May and tried unsuccessfully to blackmail him by publishing his criminal record. While May was in America, Lebius drove to Hohenstein-Ernstthal , made inquiries about May and his family and thus collected the local gossip. Then he drove to Emma and listened to her, too, dispelling her fears.

After the Mays returned from America, the perjury proceedings were discontinued in January 1909 for lack of evidence. In March of this year Lebius published a diatribe against May in a newspaper in which he processed the information he had gathered. May apparently assumed that Emma was behind this publication, canceled her alimony and sued her. A comparison was only made at the end of 1909. Emma withdrew accusations against Karl and stated that Lebius had misrepresented the communications she had received. In return, Karl resumed maintenance payments. The comparison had been arranged by Emma's friend Selma vom Scheidt . In a threatening letter to this, Lebius called Karl May a born criminal. The recipient forwarded this letter to Karl May, who in December 1909 filed a criminal complaint against Lebius for defamatory insult. In April 1910, the Lebius court acquitted, citing the justification of safeguarding legitimate interests . In the press, the saying that May one could call a born criminal met with a great response. Lebius used this outcome of the trial to publish a more than 300-page document with excerpts from trial files, including from the divorce process, with the title: "The witnesses Karl May and Klara May - a contribution to the criminal history of our time". The appeal proceedings against Lebius did not take place until December 1911. May was represented as a joint plaintiff by attorney Erich Sello . Lebius was fined 100 marks.

According to Matzke, there was a reconciliation between Karl and Emma in the last few years of Karl May. Karl May died on March 30, 1912.

Emma's final years have been overshadowed by psychological and physical suffering. In Weimar she fell in love with the musician Fritz Appunn (* 1890). In 1912 she moved to Berlin. In 1914 she was sent to a mental hospital in Schöneberg for a few months. Until 1916 she lived in the household of Fritz Appunn and his fiancée Emma Johanna geb. Long. Then she moved - alone - back to Weimar in early 1916. From June 1916 until her death she was a mentally ill inmate of the Royal State Institute in Arnsdorf in Saxony. She died there on December 13, 1917.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The presentation is based in particular on the work of Fritz Maschke.
  2. ↑ Maschke, p. 7 f.
  3. ↑ Maschke, p. 6 f.
  4. ↑ spelling at that time
  5. ↑ Maschke, p. 13.
  6. ↑ Maschke, p. 64.
  7. ↑ Maschke, p. 87.
  8. ↑ Maschke, p. 94.
  9. ↑ Maschke, p. 98.
  10. ↑ For the divorce process, see Maschke pp. 101-105.
  11. ↑ Maschke, p. 104 f.
  12. ↑ Briefs to the Dresden Regional Court, reproduced in Maschke, p. 105.
  13. ↑ Quoted in Maschke, p. 106.
  14. ↑ Maschke, p. 106.
  15. ↑ Maschke, p. 108.
  16. ↑ Maschke, p. 108.
  17. ↑ In 1898 both cities merged.
  18. ^ According to Maschke's evaluation, p. 114.
  19. ↑ See the criminological theory of Cesare Lombroso .
  20. ↑ Matzke, p. 119.
personal data
SURNAME Pollmer, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pollmer, Emma Lina; May, Emma
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Wife of Karl May
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Hohenstein
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1917
Place of death Arnsdorf