Gabriela Preissová
Gabriela Preissová, née Sekerova (born March 23, 1862 in Kutná Hora , Austrian Empire ; † March 27, 1946 in Prague ;) pseudonym Matylda Dumontová , was a Czech writer, dramaturge and representative of idealized realism.
Life
Shortly after her birth as the daughter of a butcher in Kutná Hora, the family moved to Plaňany in Central Bohemia. They lived in Prague again from 1871 to 1874 before moving to Hodonín in the Moravian-Slovak border area. There Gabriela married Preiss (er), an employee of a sugar factory, in 1880. She returned to Prague, took an active part in the city's public and cultural life, but often changed her milieu.
In the 1890s Preissová moved to Oslavany . From here she made trips to Halytsch , Carinthia and Russia. She lived for two years on her husband's farm in southern Austria, where she was impressed by the life of the southern Slavs in Carinthia . Around 1900 she moved back to Prague. After the death of her husband in 1908 she married the Austrian Colonel A. Halbaerth for the second time and from then on lived in Pula , from where she traveled to Italy and France. During the First World War she was accused of high treason for caring for Russian prisoners of war. After the war and the end of the monarchy, she moved back to Prague in the newly founded Czechoslovakia , lived in Chlum u Třeboně and turned to bourgeois society. In 1925 she was admitted to the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts . The architect Josef Fanta and she are among the first residents in the weekend settlement Jevany of the emerging upper class in Prague according to the Nobility Repeal Act of December 3, 1918.
Literary work
Gabriela Preissová was the author of plays and opera libretti. She wrote stories full of optimism and joie de vivre and idealized village life in the country. The first stories appeared in the early 1890s. They are her most impressive works, including a collection of stories in a three-part edition. She wrote most of the books in the 1920s. These stories are about the life of the Carinthian Slavs and the tragic life in the country, mostly with a woman as the heroine. These dramas no longer achieved the artistic spontaneity of their early works.
The themes of her stories were mostly love affairs between young people who faced social obstacles. Some of her prose pieces have been used musically, including Eva by Josef Bohuslav Foerster . Preissová's realistic drama from Moravian peasant life Její Pastorkyňa (German: Your stepdaughter), which had its world premiere in Prague in 1890, served Leoš Janáček as a text for his opera of the same name and was also known abroad under the name Jenůfa .
literature
- Ferdinand Seibt , Hans Lemberg , Helmut Slapnicka (Hrsg.): Biographical lexicon for the history of the Bohemian countries. Published on behalf of the Collegium Carolinum (Institute) . Volume III, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-55973-7 , p. 308. (with further references and titles of the works in Czech)
Web links
- Literature and other media by and about Gabriela Preissová in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
- Literature by and about Gabriela Preissová in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Preissová, Gabriela |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Preissová, Gabriela (full name); Sekerova (maiden name); Dumontová, Matylda (pseudonym) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Czech writer, dramaturge and representative of idealized realism |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 23, 1862 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kutná Hora , Bohemia |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 27, 1946 |
| Place of death | Prague |