Gertrud Kolmar

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Berlin memorial plaque for Gertrud Kolmar in Berlin-Westend
Stumbling block at the house at Münchener Strasse 18a, in Berlin-Schöneberg

Gertrud Kolmar ( pseudonym for Gertrud Käthe Chodziesner , born December 10, 1894 in Berlin , † probably in early March 1943 in Auschwitz ) was a German poet and writer .

Life

Gertrud Kolmar was the daughter of the Jewish lawyer Ludwig Chodziesner (1861–1943) and his wife Elise, née Schoenflies (1872–1930), and the cousin of Walter Benjamin and his brother Georg Benjamin (→ families Schoenflies and Hirschfeld ). She grew up in Charlottenburg's Westend , today's Berlin Westend , and after several private girls' schools in Berlin , she attended a home and agricultural school for women in Elbisbach near Leipzig in 1911/12 . In the meantime, she worked in a kindergarten , learned Russian and completed a seminar for language teachers in Berlin in 1915/16 with a diploma in English and French. At the time, she had a love affair with an officer that ended with an abortion and subsequent separation.

Her first volume of poetry appeared in 1917 under the pseudonym Gertrud Kolmar . The pseudonym is explained by the origin of her family name in the town of Chodziesen in the then Prussian province of Posen, which was renamed Kolmar in 1878 . In 1917/18 Gertrud Kolmar worked as a censor in the Döberitz prisoner of war camp near Berlin. In 1921 the Chodziesner family moved to downtown Berlin and in 1923 to Falkensee near Spandau to the Finkenkrug villa colony . During this time Gertrud was an educator in various Berlin families, in 1927 she also went to Hamburg in this position . In the same year she went on a study trip to France with stays in Paris and Dijon . From 1928 onwards, due to a serious illness in her mother, she took over the running of the parents' household and also worked as a secretary for her father. Because of him, she stayed in Germany after 1933 while her siblings managed to escape.

From the late 1920s, some of her poems appeared in literary journals and anthologies . In 1934 her second volume of poetry, Prussian Wappen, was published by Victor Otto Stomps' Die Rabenpresse publishing house . This publication put the publisher on a list of undesirable publishers of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, from which it was then boycotted. From 1936, Kolmar was no longer allowed to publish under her artist name, but only under her family name Chodziesner.

Her third volume of poetry, Die Frau und die Tiere , published by Erwin Löwe in August 1938, was sold off after the Reichspogromnacht of November 9, 1938 in connection with the dissolution of the Jewish book publishers. As a result of the intensified persecution of the Jews , the Chodziesner family was forced to sell their house in Finkenkrug and move to an apartment in a Jewish house in Berlin-Schöneberg in November 1938 .

From July 1941 Gertrud Kolmar had to do forced labor in the armaments industry . Her father was in September 1942 in the Theresienstadt ghetto deported and died there in February 1943. Gertrud Kolmar was on 27 February 1943 in the course of Fabrikaktion arrested and on March 2, 1943 in the so-called 32 Osttransport the RSHA to the concentration camp Auschwitz deported. Of the approximately 1,500 Berlin Jews who arrived in Auschwitz on this train on March 3, 1943, 535 men and 145 women were registered as "fit for work" prisoners after the selection at the 'Alte Rampe' and sent to the camp. The remaining 820 or so deportees on this train, including Gertrud Kolmar, were not registered as prisoners and were presumably murdered in the gas chamber immediately upon arrival .

Gertrud Kolmar, of whose work relatively little appeared during her lifetime, is today considered one of the most important German-speaking poets of the 20th century. After more conventional beginnings, she found her own, unmistakable tone in her poems, especially from the end of the 1920s, characterized by great linguistic virtuosity and expressiveness , while at the same time maintaining traditional forms . In her work, themes of nature and women predominate, often heightened into the mystical and hymnal .

Honors

Gertrud Kolmar Library in Schöneberg
  • In 1956 Gertrud Kolmar was posthumously awarded the German Critics' Prize.
  • The Schöneberg-Nord district library in Berlin's Tempelhof-Schöneberg district bears her name, as does one street in Berlin-Mitte and one in Falkensee - Finkenkrug .
  • In 2007 stumbling blocks were laid for her and her father at her last home in Falkensee . And on the street front of the house there is a stone plaque that is included in the Brandenburg list of monuments .
  • The museum and gallery of the city of Falkensee is devoting its permanent exhibition to the life and work of Gertrud Kolmar.
  • Christening of a new rose breed from Hamburg 2011: naming of the "Gertrud-Kolmar-Rose" in the garden of the museum and gallery Falkensee; the rose garden there bears her name
  • The online literature platform Fixpoetry has been awarding a Gertrud Kolmar Prize for poetry worth a total of 18,500 euros since 2019 .

Works

Publications during his lifetime

  • Poems , Berlin, Fleischel & Co. 1917
  • Prussian coat of arms , Berlin, Die Rabenpresse 1934
  • The woman and the animals , Berlin, Jüdischer Buchverlag E. Löwe 1938

Posthumous editions

  • Welten , Berlin, Suhrkamp 1947
  • The lyrical work , Heidelberg, Lambert Schneider 1955
  • The lyric work , Munich, Kösel 1960
  • A Jewish mother , Munich, Kösel 1965
  • Letters to sister Hilde , Munich 1970
  • The word of the mute. Postponed poems . Ed. And with an afterword by Uwe Berger and "Memories of Gertrud Kolmar" by Hilde Benjamin , Berlin, Buchverl. The morning 1978
  • Susanna , Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 1993; on 2 CD Berlin: Herzrasen Records, 2006
  • Night , Verona 1994
  • Letters . Edited by Johanna Woltmann. Göttingen, Wallstein 1997
  • The lyric work . Edited by Regina Nörtemann. 3 volumes. (first critical, commented edition). Göttingen, Wallstein 2003 (² 2010)
  • The dramas . Edited by Regina Nörtemann. Göttingen, Wallstein 2005
  • Gertrud Kolmar(= Poetry album 315) , selection of poetry by Horst Nalewski, graphic: Max Liebermann . Märkischer Verlag Wilhelmshorst 2014, ISBN 978-3-943708-15-8 .
  • Der Engel im Walde , version 1933 and 1937, translation into Polish by Iwona Mickiewicz, translation into Hebrew by Varda Getzow, artist's book with linoleum etchings by Thomas P. Konietschke, Kaefertal-Presse & Edition 2017

literature

  • Hans Byland: On the poems of Gertrud Kolmar . Dissertation Zurich 1971
  • Rüdiger Frommholz:  Kolmar, Gertrud. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 472 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Beatrice Eichmann-Leutenegger: Gertrud Kolmar. Life and work in texts and pictures . Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993. ISBN 3-633-54072-5
  • Ulrich Ott (Ed.): Marbacher Magazin 63/1993. Gertrud Kolmar 1894–1943 . Edited by Johanna Woltmann. Marbach am Neckar 1993. ISBN 3-928882-06-6
  • Marion Brandt: Silence is a place of answer. An analysis of the cycle of poems “The Word of the Mute” by Gertrud Kolmar . Hoffmann, Berlin 1993. ISBN 3-929120-00-3
  • Johanna Woltmann: Gertrud Kolmar , Göttingen 1994 (also Diss. Phil. Univ. Munich), ISBN 3-89244-067-0 ; New edition Suhrkamp TB, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-39754-0
  • Birgit R. Erdle: Face - Murder - Law. Figures of the Other with Gertrud Kolmar and Emmanuel Lévinas . Passagen, Vienna 1994. ISBN 3-85165-095-6
  • Marion Brandt (Ed.): Gertrud Kolmar, Orte (exhibition catalog). Context-Verlag, Berlin 1994. ISBN 3-86161-027-2
  • Monika Shafi: Gertrud Kolmar . Iudicium, Munich 1995. ISBN 3-89129-233-3
  • Heidy Margrit Müller (Ed.): Sound crystals, ruby ​​songs. Studies on the poetry of Gertrud Kolmar . Lang, Bern [u. a.] 1996. ISBN 3-906755-42-8
  • Karin Lorenz-Lindemann (Ed.): Resistance in Word. Studies on the poems of Gertrud Kolmar . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1996. ISBN 3-89244-230-4
  • Barbara C. Frantz: Gertrud Kolmar's prose . Lang, New York a.] 1997. ISBN 0-8204-3658-5
  • Gudrun Jäger: Gertrud Kolmar: Publication and reception history . Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main [u. a.] 1998. ISBN 3-593-35964-2
  • Chryssoula Kambas (Ed.): Lyrical portraits. Contributions to poetry and biography of Gertrud Kolmar . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 1998. ISBN 3-89528-199-9
  • Kathy Zarnegin: Animal Dreams . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1998. ISBN 3-484-32097-4
  • Flavia Arzeni (Ed.): Gertrud Kolmar, la straniera . Bulzoni, Roma 1999. ISBN 88-8319-292-3
  • Gerlind Fink: The beautiful miracles - On Gertrud Kolmar's cycle of poems “Image of the Rose. A bed of sonnets ” . In: Die Gartenkunst  12 (2/2000), pp. 198–202.
  • Annegret Schumann: “picture riddles” instead of homeland poetry. Image and identity in Gertrud Kolmar's collection of poems "The Prussian Wappenbuch" . Iudicium, Munich 2002. ISBN 3-89129-666-5
  • Marion Brandt: "More than a strangely animated picture - and less than a sorceress". About Gertrud Kolmar . In: Walter Fähnders u. Helga Karrenbrock (ed.) Authors of the Weimar Republic , Bielefeld 2003, pp. 59–77.
  • Cornelia Naumann: Dear Trude , acting. WP Teamtheater, Munich 2003
  • Simon Schiller: Kaddisch - funeral prayer for Gertrud Kolmar , play. Nonnenberg, Engelthal 2004. ISBN 3-00-014618-0
  • Sibylle Quack: Cora Berliner , Gertrud Kolmar, Hannah Arendt . Streets at the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" honor their memory . Hentrich, Berlin 2005 (series: Jüdische Miniatures 33) ISBN 3-938485-12-4
  • Kolmar, Gertrud. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 14: Kest – Kulk. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-22694-2 , pp. 218-228.
  • Silke Nowak: Talking pictures. On the lyric and poetics of Gertrud Kolmar . Wallstein, Göttingen 2007. ISBN 978-3-8353-0153-5
  • Dieter Kühn : Gertrud Kolmar. Life and work, time and death. S. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 2008. ISBN 978-3-10-041511-0
  • Friederike Heimann: Relationship and Break in the Poetics of Gertrud Kolmar. Hidden German-Jewish Discourses in the Poem . DeGruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012. ISBN 978-3-11-029722-5
  • Chryssoula Kambas (Ed.): Sand in the shoes of the coming. Gertrud Kolmar's work in dialogue . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012. ISBN 978-3-8353-1031-5
  • Ilse Nagelschmidt / Almut Constanze Nickel / Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein (eds.): Poetry against the inopportune time. Critical articles on Gertrud Kolmar . Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2013. ISBN 978-3-631-62814-0

Web links

Commons : Gertrud Kolmar  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gertrud Kolmar: Letters . Edited by Johanna Woltmann, reviewed by Johanna Egger and Regina Nörtemann, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2014, p. 300.
  2. ↑ Cf. Danuta Czech: Calendar of events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939-1945 , Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, p. 429.
  3. ↑ Stolperstein-laying for Gertrud and Ludwig Chodziesner 2007
  4. ↑ a b Museum and Gallery Falkensee
personal data
SURNAME Kolmar, Gertrud
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chodziesner, Gertrud Käthe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin , Germany
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: March 1943
Place of death Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , Germany