Miss Wonder

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German woman and American soldiers (1946)

Fräuleinwunder , also German Fräuleinwunder was an expression in the 1950s in the United States marked and was available to young, attractive, modern, confident and desirable women of the German post-war period (see Miss ). At the turn of the millennium it also found a late echo in the literature business.

history

The word “Fräuleinwunder” was created by Franz Spelman , Munich correspondent for the American Time Life magazine . The trigger was the Berlin mannequin Susanne Erichsen (1925–2002), who won the Federal Republic's first Miss Germany election in 1950 at the age of 24 in Baden-Baden . She was the successor of Inge Löwenstein , who was named the first Miss Germany after the Second World War in 1949 before the founding of the Federal Republic in the western zones .

Two years after her election, Susanne Erichsen went to the USA as the "German fashion ambassador". She impressed the Americans and was referred to in America as the "German Miss Wonder". How important she was for another image of Germany is shown by the fact that her memorabilia from the 1950 election are kept in the Foundation House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany .

A satirical depiction of the Miss Miracle is Liselotte Powder's role as secretary in Billy Wilder's 1961 film One, Two, Three .

From the mid-1960s onwards , the Hollywood actress Christiane Schmidtmer , who came from Mannheim, also had a massive impact on the image of the stereotypical German miracle girl in Hollywood , particularly through her external appearance . She played for example in the US film comedy Boeing Boeing a German Lufthansa - stewardess .

The expression Fräuleinwunder is part of the post-war miracle republic such as “ economic miracle ” and “ miracle of Bern ” in 1954.

Other uses

The term Fräuleinwunder was used again and again in other contexts from time to time. In 1999 a new generation of young German women authors was given this title; the name came up in an article by the literary critic Volker Hage . In a doctoral thesis by Katrin Blumenkamp, ​​it says: "The catchphrase that Hage used in the 'Spiegel' article has developed into a collective term legitimized by literary history and the university."

The Miss Miracle of German literature since 1999 includes above all young women authors who had just published their first books, including: Julia Franck , Judith Hermann , Mariana Leky , Alexa Hennig von Lange , Zoë Jenny , Juli Zeh and Ricarda Junge . Karen Duve and Silvia Szymanski were also mentioned in this context. This “miracle” is now a thing of the past in literary criticism and in the feature pages.

From a feminist perspective, summarizing a generation of female authors under the designation “Fräuleinwunder” seems initially derogatory. It is no “wonder” that women write novels, nor that they critically deal with their time. The expression “literary Miss Wonder” is rather a label that does not refer to literary categories. However, some of the authors covered by this used this label to advertise themselves and their books. In addition to the statement that “the female authors don't have much more in common than their gender and their not very advanced age”, there was also the opinion that after Judith Hermann's debut at Sommerhaus, a certain type of writing was later taken up by young female authors in particular was copied and thus the literary Miss Miracle is a kind of genre after all .

literature

  • Katrin Blumenkamp: The “Literary Miss Wonder”: How a label works in the literary field of the turn of the millennium . Lit, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-643-10920-0 (doctoral thesis University of Göttingen 2011).
  • Michael Opitz, Carola Opitz-Wiemers: About the "literary Miss Miracle" or "The grandchildren are coming" . In: Wolfgang Beutin u. a .: German literary history. From the beginning to the present . 6th, improved and enlarged edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, pp. 697-700, ISBN 3-476-01758-3 .
  • Manfred Mai : History of German Literature . Extended new edition. Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 2004, pp. 179-185, ISBN 3-407-75323-3 .
  • Heidelinde Müller: The literary Miss Miracle. Inspection of a phenomenon in contemporary German literature in individual case studies (Inter-Lit; Vol. 5). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 978-3-631-51359-0 (Master's thesis University of Lüneburg 2002).
  • Wiebke Eden : Don't be afraid of big feelings. Women writers, one job - eleven portraits . TBV, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-15474-X .
  • Susanne Erichsen , Dorothée Hansen (editor): A mink and a crown: the memories of the German fräuleinwunder . Autobiography, Econ, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-430-12547-5 .
  • Miss miracle literary. Literature by Women at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Edited by Christiane Caemmerer, Walter Delabar and Helga Meise. Frankfurt u. a .: Lang 2005 (= Inter-Lit 6); 2nd edition 2010.
  • Miss Wonder. On the literary afterlife of a label. Edited by Christiane Caemmerer, Walter Delabar and Helga Meise. Frankfurt / M .: Peter Lang Verlag 2017 (= Interlit 15).

Web links

Wiktionary: Fräuleinwunder  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gisela Freisinger: Hubert Burda: The media prince. Campus, Frankfurt / M. u. a. 2005, ISBN = 978-3-593-40087-7, pp. 68-69 ( page previews in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ Manuel Brug: Liselotte Pulver: How a Backfisch became a famous world lady. In: The world . October 11, 2009, accessed August 2, 2020.
  3. ↑ Volker Hage: Pretty crazy. In: Der Spiegel . March 22, 1999; Reprinted in: The same: Prophets in their own country: In search of German literature. DTV, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-423-12692-2 , pp. 335-341.
  4. ↑ Katrin Blumenkamp: The "literary fräuleinwunder": The functionality of a label in the literary field of the turn of the millennium . Lit, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-643-10920-0 , p. 12 (doctoral thesis University of Göttingen 2011).
  5. ↑ Astrid Klocke: Review of “About contemporary literature. About Contemporary Literature. Festschrift für Paul Michael Lützeler ”by Mark W. Rectanus . In: The German Quarterly . tape 83 , no. 1 , 2010, p. 127-128 , JSTOR : 25653667 .
  6. ↑ literary criticism, power and gender by Mechthilde Vahsen
  7. ↑ Hermann Schlösser on: Volker Hage, Propheten im Eigen Land, October 20, 1999
  8. ↑ Fräuleinwunder revisited by Maike Schiller, 2007