Erika Mitterer

Erika Mitterer (born March 30, 1906 in Vienna , † October 14, 2001 in Vienna) was an Austrian writer. As an epic poet , poet , playwright and committed letter writer , she dealt with the social, societal and political developments of her time. As an important representative of the literature of inner emigration , she was one of Austria's first women writers to “come to terms with the past ”.

Life

Erika Mitterer as a child

Childhood and Adolescence (1906–1926)

Erika Mitterer was born on March 30, 1906 in the 13th district of Vienna in the size it was then. Her parents were Antonie (née Loeb, from Westphalia , Germany ) and Rudolf Mitterer ( architect and railway official, from Lower Austria ); the family's house at Einwanggasse 19 has been part of the 14th district since 1938, as it lies north of the Vienna River. She attended the elementary and community school of the teacher training institute and the private girls' college in Luithlen. At that time she was already intensively involved in world literature . The young girl was particularly impressed by Goethe and “the Russians” ( Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky ).

She finally made the decision to take up a social profession (welfare worker), and from 1924 completed specialist courses for “people care” with Ilse Arlt. In May 1924 the correspondence in poems with Rainer Maria Rilke began , one of her later most popular publications. The following year Erika Mitterer traveled to Italy and in November she visited Rilke in Muzot.

Activity as a carer (1926–1930)

Erika Mitterer circa 1923

From 1926 Erika Mitterer worked as a welfare worker in various federal states of Austria. In 1927 she traveled to Germany ( Frankfurt , Heidelberg ), where she met numerous artists and writers and made friends: Hans Carossa , Friedrich Gundolf , Theodor Däubler . She visited Stefan Zweig in Salzburg , and through him became acquainted with Felix Braun . She translated poems by the Comtesse de Noailles into German; In 1928 she worked as a substitute translator at the international social workers' congress in Paris . That year she was employed as a welfare worker in Burgenland . She maintained close contacts with the married couple Käthe Braun-Prager and Hans Prager as well as with Ernst Lissauer .

Her first work, the volume of poetry Thanks to Life , was published in 1929. In 1930 the young writer met Ricarda Huch and Lou Andreas-Salomé in Berlin . She made friends with Theodor Kramer and Ernst Scheibelreiter . That year her mother died and Erika Mitterer gave up her career plans to run the father's household and concentrate more on writing.

Intensive literary work (1931–1939)

In 1931 Erika Mitterer traveled a lot again, including to Switzerland and southern Italy . She met Paula von Preradović and Hans Leifhelm and visited Hans Carossa in Seestetten. Her story Höhensonne was published in 1933 , a work that was influenced by her experiences from her professional work as a carer.

In 1934 she worked as a temporary carer in the Mühlviertel in Upper Austria. She completed her first great novel We Are Alone , which for ideological reasons could only appear after the Second World War (1945), and began the novel The Prince of the World . In 1934 and 1935 she traveled to Greece ; Kehr never went back from the experiences he gained there - Greek poems . In 1937 she married Dr. Fritz Petrowsky. A year later, daughter Christiane was born as the first of three children.

During the Second World War (1939–1945)

Erika Mitterer around 1930

Erika Mitterer's grave

While many of the writer's friends left Austria in 1938, she too considered emigrating to Brazil with her family . Since Erika Mitterer's husband could not have worked there (he was a lawyer ), they rejected this idea and stayed in Vienna. In the same year Erika Mitterer completed her novel Der Fürst der Welt , which appeared in 1940. This work, in which the author covertly criticizes the Nazi regime , is considered a prime example of the literature of internal emigration . In 1941 Erika Mitterer's story Encounter in the South was published , in 1942 the story Die Seherin . In that year the second child, Martin, was born. In 1944, Erika Mitterer's bomb victims were “forcibly quartered” in the Vienna apartment; the writer spent the winter with her two small children in the summer house in Kritzendorf near Vienna.

Post-war years (1945–1954)

During the liberation of Vienna in 1945, Erika Mitterer made first contacts with Oskar Maurus Fontana for the purpose of reestablishing the Austrian Writers' Union . Her husband Fritz Petrowsky worked alongside Ernst Molden on the re-establishment of the daily newspaper " Die Presse ". Erika Mitterer resumed contact with many friends who had emigrated and made friends with the dancer Grete Wiesenthal . The Twelve Poems 1933-1945 were published in 1946 . In 1947 their son Stefan was born.

The following year Erika Mitterer received the City of Vienna Prize for Literature .

In 1950, the correspondence appeared in poems with Erika Mitterer from the estate of Rainer Maria Rilke , with only those Erika Mitterer poems that were necessary for understanding the Rilke poems. The complete correspondence was published for the first time in 2001 in the complete lyric work (Edition Doppelpunkt, Vienna). In 1951 Erika Mitterer's novel The Naked Truth was published. The writer began the friendship with Wilhelm and Imma von Bodmershof . In 1953, the girl's novel Kleine Damen Größe and the story Wasser des Lebens appeared . In 1954 Erika Mitterer's father died.

Occupation with the drama (1954–1962)

For a few years the writer has now devoted herself to the drama : she wrote, among other things, the folk play Arme Teufel 1954 ( premiered in October 2005 at the "Freie Bühne Wieden" in Vienna ), which is the only drama from the Austria in the 1950s is trading. Two years later, the comedy What Do You Take Me For? and the tragedy blackout completed. Erika Mitterer was one of five Austrian writers in the context of a poetry reading at the 1956 Vienna Festival . In 1957 Erika Mitterer's many years of collaboration with the International Reconciliation Alliance began . The following year her novel Tauschzentrale was published. In 1959 the author completed the play Choose the World ; In 1960 the drama A sheet of tissue paper was created ; In 1962 the tragic comedy Somebody Must Speak was completed.

In 1965, Erika Mitterer converted from Protestantism to Catholicism , a development that the three volumes of poetry that followed, with mainly religious poems, attest. She took part in the international peace fasting of women in Rome and began working in telephone counseling . In the following year, Erika Mitterer's longstanding commitment to a young killer began. In 1968 she went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes .

The years 1970–2001

In addition to the Literature Prize of the City of Vienna , Erika Mitterer received numerous Austrian prizes, honors and awards from 1971 to 1996 (see below). In 1977 her novel All Our Games was published , for which she had already received the Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti Prize in 1971 .

In 1982 and 1983 she toured the USA as part of a lecture tour.

In 1984 Erika Mitterer resigned from the PEN Club and the Writers' Association . In their opinion, the two organizations had not sufficiently distanced themselves from a resolution by the IG authors protesting against the ban on the screening of Herbert Achternbusch's film Das Gespenst , which was viewed as blasphemous . In 1987 Erika Mitterer and her husband moved to an old people's home . Fritz Petrowsky died at the beginning of 1996.

In 2000 she reactivated her membership in the PEN Club and the Writers' Association after clarifying discussions. In 2001, the Austrian Society for Literature organized a two-day symposium on Erika Mitterer's life's work .

The writer, who last lived in a home in Vienna's 13th district, Ober-St.-Veit , Veitingergasse 147, died on October 14, 2001 at the age of 95. She was buried in the Ehrenhain Gruppe 40 at the Vienna Central Cemetery. In 2002 the Erika-Mitterer-Weg in Vienna- Hietzing (13th district) was named after her.

Work overview in chronological order

Erika Mitterer was a very diverse author who worked as a poet, epic writer and playwright. In her work she dealt artistically with the political and social developments of the 20th century. She was one of the first women writers to deal with the Nazi past. Her work is also an expression of her time and can therefore be viewed as a historical source. The following is a selection of her most famous works.

Her novel We Are Alone , in which she deals with socially disadvantaged people of proletarian origin and describes their depressing and poor living conditions, testifies to the author's spiritually resistant attitude towards prevailing political tendencies: she refused to edit the manuscript and the figure of a sympathetic Jewish doctor for the poor, as the censorship authorities of the Nazi regime demanded. The novel, which was completed in 1934, could therefore not appear until 1945. In this work she paints a picture of the anti-Semitism prevalent in society in the 1920s, which she both condemns and exposes. The Arbeiter-Zeitung wrote in 1945: “It would be trivial to downgrade Erika Mitterer and her work from some politically programmatic Feldherrnhügel ... The poet belongs ... to the community of those who disapprove of 'tolerance only extending to like-minded people'. "

In the work Der Fürst der Welt (1940), designed by her as an inquisition novel , Erika Mitterer covertly criticized the Nazi regime . It is considered one of the most important works of the Inner Emigration . In total she worked on this great work for seven years. Erika Mitterer chose a city in Germany as the setting in the first half of the 16th century to use an analogy between the Inquisition and witch trials to show how the "evil seizure of power" can come about in a supposedly functioning society. She does not draw her protagonists and characters in black and white, but they evade a simple attribution of good and bad, which generally characterizes her works. The Prince of the World was translated into Norwegian and English and was able to appear in 1940 because the Nazis interpreted the work as hostile to the Catholic Church . The attentive readers understood Erika Mitterer's concerns very well. The Austrian politician Dr. Viktor Matejka wrote after the war: “ I had the next intensive contact with your literature in the Dachau concentration camp . Your 'Prince of the World' was a kind of targeted resistance for me and my friends. ” In the course of the publication of the novel in Norway, a literary critic published his finding in 1942 that the work was actually a description of the conditions in the Hitler Empire , whereupon the censorship authorities immediately stopped the paper allocation. In the newspaper “Nations” ( Oslo ) in 1942 one could read: “The book can teach you that the Middle Ages could express itself differently on different degrees of breadth, but also that it extended in time and space for a very long time.” Erika Mitterer became fortunately not prosecuted and she made her breakthrough with this novel. Felix Braun wrote to Erika Mitterer: "I expected a lot ... but not such a great, wonderful creation that surpasses everything that your contemporaries tried and your predecessors had donated since 'Witiko'."

Erika Mitterer devoted herself intensively to drama in the late 50s and 60s . The tragedy Darkening (1956) was the only one of her dramatic works to be premiered during her lifetime (1958 in the “ Theater der Courage ”, Vienna). Erika Mitterer starts from a particularly tragic basic situation in this play: a son forces his mother to declare in court that he is not the son of his non- Aryan father - a situation that actually existed (the case of the playwright Arnolt Bronnen ). The first version of the tragedy was criticized because of the promise , whereupon Erika Mitterer wrote a prose version . The " Wiener Zeitung " reviewed the premiere in 1958: "The high moral seriousness that does not absolve the lie of purpose, the ethical sensitivity and the wide knowledge of the soul that speaks from some of the connections testify to the great poetic gift that stands behind the piece."

Other dramas by Erika Mitterer include Choose the World! (1959), A sheet of tissue paper (1960, world premiere at the “ Freie Bühne Wieden ”, Vienna, 2003) and Arme Teufel (1954, world premiere at the “Freie Bühne Wieden”, Vienna, 2005).

After converting to Catholicism in 1965 , she dealt intensively with religious issues and was also guided in her actions by her strengthened faith. Under the influence of this development, she wrote numerous religious poems , which appeared in the Atonement of Cain (1974) and Bible poems (1994), among others . Imma of Bodmershof said of the poetry book of Cain atonement : "I was under the impression your poems - authenticity and spontaneity, her momentum and her courage, that's all very grown alive, is generous and exciting."

In 1975 she wrote the prologue for the Passion Play by Kirchschlag in der Bucklige Welt . The prologue “We'll play the game of Jesus Christ for you because it's not over yet” is still used today.

Erika Mitterer received the Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti Prize in 1971 for the manuscript of the novel All Our Games . The novel was not due to appear until 1977, however, as 26 different publishers apparently believed that the topic of " coming to terms with the past " would not interest readers. Erika Mitterer wanted to do a kind of “memory work” with this work: A woman (not autobiographically drawn) writes a letter to her teenage son to explain his origins and her involvement in the Nazi regime and about herself on the basis of these written memories about her Behavior, its causes and consequences become clearer. Again, the author does not evaluate the figures and designs them in such a way that the reader is denied one-dimensional assessments. Erika Mitterer thematizes how the characters in the novel deal with the disappearance of the Jewish fellow citizens and describes the justification and rationalization strategies of the followers who were unable to recognize the "truth" either during the Nazi regime or after the war. The newspaper “Wochenpresse” wrote in 1977 about All our Games : “A new novel - and belongs to the best that has been written in German lately, and also to the most important because the past is dealt with in an unheard-of way. Exemplary, gorgeous. ” The “ Nürnberger Zeitung ” reviewed the new edition of the work in 2001 : “ Erika Mitterer is a master of storytelling. The words are simple, understandable, without vanity. They give an idea why it can happen again anytime and anywhere. "

Awards

Minister of Education Herbert Moritz honored Erika Mitterer with the Decoration of Honor for Science and Art in 1985

Erika Mitterer has received a large number of honors and prizes for her work.

In 1930 she was awarded the privately donated Julius Reich Prize , which was awarded to young artists (painters and writers) during the 1930s.
In 1948 Erika Mitterer received the Literature Prize of the City of Vienna , which is awarded by the City of Vienna to this day for outstanding achievements in the field of art (poetry).
In 1971 the author was awarded the Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti Prize for the manuscript of the novel All Our Games .
In 1974 Erika Mitterer received the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art .
In 1978 Erika Mitterer became an honorary member of the Austrian Writers' Association .
In 1985 she was awarded the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art and she was accepted into the Curia for Art.
In 1986 Erika Mitterer received the Gold Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital Vienna , which is awarded “for special services to Vienna”.
In 1992 the writer was awarded the Lower Austria Prize.
1994 Austrian Prize for Literature
In 1996 she was awarded the Great Gold Medal of Honor with the Star for Services to the Republic of Austria .
In 2002 the Erika-Mitterer-Weg in Vienna-Hietzing was named after the author.
In 2005, a memorial plaque for Erika Mitterer was unveiled at Rainergasse 3 in the fourth district of Vienna, where the author lived from 1978 to 1991.
In 2007 a memorial corner with the author's original workspace was set up in the Kritzendorf village museum .

The memorial plaque for Erika Mitterer in Vienna 4th, Rainergasse 3, where she lived from 1978 to 1991

Friends and colleagues

The most famous of her friendships is probably the one with Rainer Maria Rilke, to whom she wrote letter poems regularly from May 1924 , to which he answered passionately. The letters published as correspondence in poems with Erika Mitterer 1924-1926 (1950) are regarded as one of her most popular works. As a student, the author said in a TV report on ORF (1980), she began to be interested in Rainer Maria Rilke and his poems:

“Modern literature, the Russians, but also Ibsen, Hauptmann, Dehmel, Liliencron, Hofmannsthal, George - you read that at home, in the much free time we still had back then. And also Rainer Maria Rilke, especially Rilke from the age of sixteen ... "

(From: Selbstportrait, ORF, 1980, quoted from: Austrian Society for Literature / Martin Petrowsky (Ed.): Erika Mitterer. A poet - a century, Edition Doppelpunkt, Vienna 2002)

Erika Mitterer wrote her first letter to Rainer Maria Rilke on May 31, 1924 at the age of 18. She perceived Rilke's sonnets to Orpheus as a “personal message” to which she “responded” with two of her own poems. Among other things, she wrote:

“Understand: until today you were not in time / and never and through nothing to explore. / I wish you were in the past / connected by nothing and with no one ... // But since you are, now lost in life, / allow me a smile, a small, / joyful smile when you rest / in the autumn shadow of the Haines ... "

(From: Rainer Maria Rilke: Correspondence in poems with Erika Mitterer 1824–1926. Insel Verlag, Wiesbaden 1950, p. 5 f.)

A few days later she received Rilke's reply. Erika Mitterer remembered: “When I came home after ten days from the cooking class, the reply letter was there: a blue envelope with the beautiful, clear writing and the seal coat of arms; a registered letter… ” (Meyer Jochen:“ Thanks to life ”. Erika Mitterer's correspondence in poems with Rainer Maria Rilke, In: Austrian Society for Literature / Martin Petrowsky (Ed.): Erika Mitterer. A poet - a century, Edition Colon , Vienna 2002, p. 88)

In Rilke's response poems, invitations to Muzot were already mentioned in the summer of 1924, which Erika Mitterer only accepted in the winter of the following year when she learned that the revered poet was suffering from an incurable disease ( leukemia ). When she heard of Rilke's death on December 29, 1926, she was deeply affected and a few days later set out with her mother a second time to Muzot.

Also Stefan Zweig know, the Erika Mitterer 1927 had learned, was enthusiastic about her work. Zweig described the young woman as a "great poet" to the writer Felix Braun , with whom she eventually became deeply friends. Zweig encouraged contact with other well-known writers and promoted the publication of her first volume of poetry ( Dank des Lebens , 1930).

Erika Mitterer also had a special relationship of friendship and trust with many other writers such as Alexander von Bernus , Imma von Bodmershof , Marianne Bruns , Robert Braun , Hans Carossa , Michael Guttenbrunner , Theodor Kramer , Hans Leifhelm , Paula von Preradović , Ernst Scheibelreiter , Ina Seidel and the dancer Grete Wiesenthal . The correspondence stored in the German Literature Archive in Marbach attests to a lively, fruitful and often decades-long exchange of ideas.

Reading samples and quotes from the author

Autobiographical

Erika Mitterer on the beginning of her writing activity in the television program "Selbstportrait", ORF 1980:

“… I started writing as a child. I still remember a few poems in the primary school reading books that I read until I knew them by heart, even if we didn't 'open' them up, and once I suddenly thought: maybe I can do that too? And then I tried it.

In my parents' circle of friends there were people who encouraged me, but also pointed out mistakes. One was a friend of Anton Wildgans. He read his poems out beautifully, I loved them before I understood them and even more afterwards, and some I still love today.

I fervently adored my German teacher - the classics were nothing far from us, no compulsory reading, but daily joy and exaltation. "

(From: Selbstportrait, ORF, 1980, quoted from: Austrian Society for Literature / Martin Petrowsky (Ed.): Erika Mitterer. A poet - a century, Edition Doppelpunkt, Vienna 2002)

Lyric work

"Warnings

'Just hurt yourself!'

the child was told

that climbed too high

jumped too far.

It stopped

Tears of anger in their eyes.

'This can only end badly!'

I read, aged,

in the faces of friends.

Certainly!

Everything that has any value in life

could go bad, and most of the time

it turns out badly.

And it was still worth it.

What is without danger

bores me! "

(From: Petrowsky, Martin G. / Sela, Petra (eds.): Erika Mitterer, The entire lyrical work, 3 volumes, Ed.Kononpunkt, Vienna, 2001)

Web links

Commons : Erika Mitterer - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Homepage of the Erika Mitterer Society
The German Virtual School, including excerpts from Mitterer's works
Entry on Erika Mitterer in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
Austrian Society for Literature
The correspondence in poems between Rilke and Erika Mitterer
University professor Johann Holzner on Erika Mitterer's poems (PDF file; 30 kB)
Praesens Verlag, Vienna
Literature by and about Erika Mitterer in the catalog of the German National Library
Literature by and about Erika Mitterer in the ÖNB
Audio recordings with Erika Mitterer in the online archive of the Austrian Media Library (interviews, readings)

Individual evidence

↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)

personal data
SURNAME	Mitterer, Erika
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Erika Petrowsky (married)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH	March 30, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH	Vienna
DATE OF DEATH	October 14, 2001
Place of death	Vienna

[1] List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)