Grete Weil

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Grete Weil (* July 18, 1906 in Egern , Upper Bavaria ; † May 14, 1999 in Grünwald near Munich ), born as Margarete Elisabeth Dispeker , also Grete Dispeker ; Grete Jockisch ; Margarete Elisabeth Weil ; Margarete Elisabeth Jockisch ; Grete Weil-Jockisch ; Margarete Elisabeth Weil-Jockisch , was a German writer , translator , reviewer and photographer . She also published under the pseudonym B. van Osten .

Family and friends (excerpt)

approx. 1912: Grete Dispeker at the age of about six
approx. 1932: Grete Dispeker on a mountain peak in the Bavarian Alps

Grete Dispeker was born as the child of the renowned Munich-based Secret Justice Council (lawyer) Siegfried Dispeker and his wife Isabella "Bella" Dispeker in their country house on Lake Tegernsee. Her brother, eleven years older, was called Friedrich "Fritz" Dispeker (1895–1986), was a highly decorated front-line fighter in World War I and later worked as a lawyer together with his father in a law firm. Grete Dispeker grew up in an upper-class, liberal milieu that was associated with the literary avant-garde. Intellectuals and artists met regularly at Dispeker. The family met the increasing anti-Semitism in Bavaria with a basic trust in the German-Jewish symbiosis . In 1923, however, her father fled with her because of the Hitler putsch in Munich to Grainau at the foot of the Zugspitze , but returned to Munich a few days after its failure. Grete Weil and her older brother Fritz were enthusiastic mountaineers, Grete also (with Sepp Hinterseer) ski tourers; However, their applications for admission to the German Alpine Club were rejected due to their Jewish origin. She began writing as a child - initially for herself.

“At the very beginning, when I, the twelve-year-old, wanted to write, I didn't think about publication and readers. I did it for myself. Without the knowledge of the loneliness into which a writer finds himself. Even then I started to tell myself stories. "

- Grete Weil

She was friends with her Frankfurt cousins, the brothers Edgar (1908–1941) and Hans Joseph Weil (1906–1969) and their friend Walter Jockisch (1907–1970). Through her childhood friend at Tegernsee, the photographer and journalist Doris von Schönthan (1905–1961), she was a member of the circle of friends around the closely related siblings Erika and Klaus Mann , whose father Thomas Mann was one of her literary role models.

On July 26, 1932, she married one of her two great cousins, Edgar Weil , who was two years younger and worked as a dramaturge at the Münchner Kammerspiele . He had completed his German studies with a doctorate in the same year .

On February 13, 1961, she married her childhood friend Walter Jockisch in Frankfurt am Main.

education

Grete Dispeker attended a secondary school for girls in Munich , where she failed when she graduated in German. She took her final examination , therefore, 1929 in Frankfurt after and studied there then German at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University , moved to the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Berlin , and in 1931 for a semester at the Sorbonne to Paris . She was involved in a politically left-wing student group. For her intended doctorate, she worked on her dissertation on the development of the bourgeoisie using the example of the Journal of Luxury and Fashion , which appeared between 1786 and 1827, but broke this off due to political circumstances and instead completed an apprenticeship in photography between the end of 1933 and 1935 Portrait photographer Edmund Wasow (1879–1944) in Munich. During this period, she was with this on behalf of the Organization Todt photographically on a documentary of March 21, 1934 the first sod by Adolf Hitler began construction of the autobahn - track alignment between Munich and Salzburg involved, the second Nazi major project of this kind after the Frankfurt am Main - Darmstadt - Heidelberg route.

Personal and professional development

Grete Weil completed her first literary work, the autobiographical story Erlebnis einer Reise , six months after their wedding in January 1933. The work reflects the revolt of the younger generation against bourgeois moral concepts at the end of the Weimar Republic , but was only published in 1999.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis , her husband was arbitrarily arrested in March 1933 and in so-called " protective custody taken". In the same year Edgar Weil emigrated to the Netherlands to set up a branch of his father's chemical-pharmaceutical company ( Endopharm Frankfurter Arzneimittelabrik ), which was threatened by " Aryanization " . Grete Weil followed her husband to Amsterdam in 1935 . The couple, who lived in Amstelveen, knew that they would have no professional opportunities as a writer or dramaturge in a foreign language abroad. The pharmaceutical company of the Weil family therefore formed the economic backing of the two.

The couple met regularly with their friends who had also emigrated to the Netherlands, for example the painter Max Beckmann , the writer Albert Ehrenstein and the conductor Bruno Walter . In the summer of 1937, however, Grete Weil returned to Germany when her father was dying. After his death, she took her mother with her to Amsterdam in 1938, accompanied by Signe von Scanzoni , Erika Mann's partner. Edgar Weil's mother Paula (1885–1970), b. Hochstetter, moved to the Netherlands.

In the spring of 1938, Grete Weil acquired the Edith Schlesinger photo studio in Beethovenstraat 48 in Amsterdam and continued to run it for around three and a half years. She lived in the adjoining apartment until she went into hiding in 1943. More than a third of the Beethovenstraat was inhabited by Jews who were mostly exiled from the German Reich; the tram line 24 that runs through it was therefore given the nickname “Berlijn-Express”, which Grete Weil later processed in literary terms. In the late summer of 1938 the couple traveled to Sanary-sur-Mer in the south of France , where Grete Weil got in touch with Lion Feuchtwanger , Alma Mahler-Werfel and Franz Werfel through the secretary Lola Humm-Sernau and was allowed to photograph them with her Leica .

“I think the pictures are excellent. They are by far some of the best I've ever made. Your great leisure, which you have taken, crowns real success. "

- Franz Werfel , Paris, November 9, 1938

Shortly before the German invasion of Poland , Edgar and Grete Weil came back from Switzerland to Amsterdam from a trip together at the end of August 1939.

After the Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands within five days in 1940, the couple tried to flee to Great Britain via the port of Ijmuiden , but this failed. Grete Weil's older brother Fritz had already gained a foothold there since 1938. The rapid expansion of the Nuremberg Laws to the occupied territories by the responsible Reich Commissioner also had a direct impact on the Weils and Dispekers. The couple therefore planned to leave for Cuba. While Grete was already holding her tourist visa in her hands, her husband Edgar was able to pick it up in Rotterdam on June 11, 1941. The following evening he was arrested during a raid on the street, deported after a stay in an internment and concentration camp in the dunes of Schoorl in North Holland and murdered on September 17, 1941 in the Mauthausen concentration camp .

As a Jew, Grete Weil was no longer allowed to run her photo studio after August 1941. She made contact with the Dutch resistance and helped with photos to forge passports and ration cards.

Although she was very close to suicide, she continued to hold on to responsibility for her mother. She now regarded living on as the last form of resistance. She was employed by the Joodsche Raad Amsterdams, where she initially worked as a portrait photographer in the Central Office for Jewish Emigration run by the SS . Later it was part of her job to write letters for the Jews who were captured for deportation to the labor and extermination camps . Because of these activities her passport was next to the stigmatizing large J for Jews marked with a lock temple that it indemnified provisionally from deportation.

When she was finally to be deported on September 29, 1943, she and her mother fled to her friend Herbert Meyer-Ricard (1908–1988), a “ first-degree Jewish hybrid ” who built up the anti-fascist and socialist Holland group Free Germany in 1944 . Grete Weil subsequently lived hidden in a house on Prinsengracht , where she spent about a year and a half behind filled bookshelves on a mattress on the floor. There she resumed her literary work, which had been lying idle since 1933, and worked on a novel about deportation ( The Path to the Border ) dedicated to Edgar Weil , which, at her request, remained unpublished. She also wrote the puppet show Christmas legend there in 1943 . At the end of 1943 Amsterdam was declared “ Jew-free ”. Weil's first book Ans Ende der Welt deals with a love affair against the background of persecution and deportation in Amsterdam, which was published in 1949 by the East Berlin publisher Volk und Welt after West German publishers showed no interest in the work.

“There was only one task left to write against oblivion. With all love, all ability, with tenacious doggedness. Forgotten kills the dead one more time. It couldn't be forgotten. And so I continued to write. And I was read more and more often, and that was a faint reflection of happiness. "

- Grete Weil

She felt obliged to testify and looked for opportunities to express her personal experiences of displacement and exile, of murder in the Jewish ghetto and in the labor and extermination camps.

After the war, her Leica with many interchangeable lenses was stolen. Her mother and brother had survived the Shoah and they literally moved to Germany, because they had not been able to feel at home in the Netherlands or Great Britain due to the forced emigration. However, as stateless persons , they were not officially allowed to travel. Nevertheless, Grete Weil traveled to Frankfurt am Main in autumn 1946 and briefly met her childhood friend Walter Jockisch again.

"Write, please, please, write."

- Text of a postcard from Grete Weil to Walter Jockisch, January 3, 1947

After everything that had happened between 1933 and 1945 , her friend Klaus Mann could not understand her decision to return to Germany . His attempts to dissuade her from her decision were unsuccessful. After she was recognized as a resistance fighter in 1947 and received a Dutch passport, she moved to Darmstadt, where she lived with Jockisch, who worked there as an opera director, and married him in 1961. As the heir of her first husband, Edgar Weil, she received his parents' pharmaceutical factory (Endopharm) back within the framework of restitution claims .

Grete Weil set herself the literary goal of “writing against oblivion. With all love, all ability, with tenacious doggedness ”.

In 1951 she published libretti ( Boulevard Solitude ) for Hans Werner Henze and Wolfgang Fortner ( The Widow of Ephesus ). From 1955 she lived in Frankfurt am Main, where she worked as a translator from English and American for Limes-Verlag in Wiesbaden and wrote articles for the new forum . In 1963 she published the novel Tramhalte Beethovenstraat . In 1974 she moved to Grünwald near Munich. Her literary breakthrough came with the novel My Sister Antigone in 1980.

She died at the age of 92. Her grave is in the new community cemetery in Rottach-Egern .

Engagements

Memberships

Works (selection)

prose

Translations

Honors

Videos

literature

  • Uwe Meyer: Say no, the only indestructible freedom. The work of the writer Grete Weil. (= Research on literary and cultural history. Volume 56). Lang, Frankfurt et al. 1996, ISBN 3-631-30096-4 . (also: University of Siegen, Phil. Diss., 1996)
  • Thomas Daum, Dieter Lamping (Eds.) Grete Weil. An appreciation. Carl Zuckmayer Medal of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate 1995. Institute for Palatinate History and Folklore, Kaiserslautern 1996.
  • Carmen Giese: The I in the literary work of Grete Weil and Klaus Mann . Frankfurt am Main et al. 1997.
  • Pascale Rachel Bos: Writing against objectification . Minneapolis 1998.
  • Lisbeth Exner : Land of my murderers, land of my language. Munich 1998.
  • Maria Palmira Roque da Silva: Autobiografia e mito no romance "My sister Antigone" de Grete Weil. Coimbra 2004.
  • Stephan Braese: The other memory. Jewish authors in West German post-war literature . Philo, Berlin / Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-86572-227-X . (also habilitation thesis)
  • David Dambitsch: Voices of the Saved - Reports from Survivors of the Shoah. The Audio Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89813-213-7 . (Audio CD)
  • Judith Hélène Stadler: Grete Weil. The bride price .
  • Tatjana Neef (Ed.): Unexposed - unexposed. Munich photographers in exile . (Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in the Jewish Museum in Munich). Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-86828-130-9 .
  • Paul Maurer: And me? Witness to pain: the life and work of the German-Jewish writer Grete Weil . Jerusalem 2015, ISBN 978-965-555-878-4 .
  • Stefan Braese: Because, Grete. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , pp. 530-533.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weil, Grete (contains incorrect information on Walter Jockisch). In: Exile archive. at: exilarchiv.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  2. ↑ B. van Osten: The fettered theater - Het marionettentooneel of the 'Holland group' speelt voor onderduikers . ( German : The marionette theater of the 'Holland Group' plays for people in hiding). Amsterdam 1945.
  3. ↑ Grete Weil . at: uni-muenster.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  4. ^ Fritz Dispeker . In: Jewish Museum Berlin. at: jmberlin.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  5. ^ Exclusion of Fritz Dispeker from the German Lawyers' Association . In: Jewish Museum Berlin. at: jmberlin.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  6. ↑ Grete Weil . In: Munzinger Archive. on: munzinger.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  7. ↑ Grete Weil: Generations . Benziger, Zurich et al. 1983, ISBN 3-596-25969-X , p. 37.
  8. ↑ Elizabeth Tworek: Literary summer. Artists and writers in the foothills of the Alps. A reader . Allitera Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-86906-150-4 , p. 237f., P. 265.
  9. ↑ Grete Weil: Do I live when others are alive? Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-14342-X , pp. 78-79.
  10. ↑ Weil, Hans Joseph . at: juedisches-leben-in-ingenheim.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  11. ↑ Katharina Rutschky: Restlessness and thirst for experience . In: The time. 37, September 8, 1989. from zeit.de , accessed July 15, 2017.
  12. ^ Edgar Weil: Alexander von Sternberg (Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg) - A contribution to the literary and cultural history of the 19th century . Inaugural dissertation . Berlin 1932. (Reprint: Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1967)
  13. ^ Marriage certificate at the registry office in Frankfurt am Main-Mitte, No. 470/1961
  14. ^ Els Andringa: German exile literature in the Dutch-German network of relationships: A history of communication and reception 1933-2013 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-034205-5 , p. 334.
  15. ^ Killy Literature Lexicon. Band: Vo-Z . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-022039-1 , pp. 223-225.
  16. ^ Richard Vahrenkamp : The Chiemsee motorway: planning history and construction of the Munich – Salzburg motorway 1933–1938. In: Upper Bavarian Archive. Volume 130, 2006, pp. 385-416.
  17. ↑ Endopharm Frankfurt pharmaceutical factory limited liability company . at: moneyhouse.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  18. ↑ Christel Berger: Anna Seghers and Grete Weil - Witnesses of the Century. on: luise-berlin.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  19. ↑ Because, Paula . at: juedisches-leben-in-ingenheim.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  20. ↑ Beethovenstraat . at: joodsamsterdam.nl , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  21. ↑ Grete Weil: Portrait photography by Franz Werfel (1938). on: kuenste-im-exil.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  22. ↑ Imre Schaber: I am ashamed of my eyes, my freedom, my better clothes, I am ashamed of my Leica and still take pictures. Interview with Grete Weil. In: Photo history. Issue 60, Jonas Verlag, Marburg 1996, pp. 42-48.
  23. ↑ Reinhard Weber: The fate of Jewish lawyers in Bavaria after 1933. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-486-58060-4 , p. 166. Fritz Dispeker stayed in Great Britain until his retirement in 1959, where he was Company Secretary was employed by an electrical company. He then moved to Switzerland, where he died in Lugano at the age of 91.
  24. ^ Edgar Weil: Letter to Grete Weil (August 31, 1941) . From: kuenste-im-exil.de, accessed on July 15, 2017
  25. ↑ Peter Ahrendt: A bad hater. On the 10th year of the death of the writer Grete Weil. In: Glarean Magazine. July 25, 2009. from: glareanverlag.wordpress.com , accessed July 15, 2017.
  26. ↑ Grete Weil - uncomfortable, compelling to think. In: Exile Research: An International Yearbook. Volume 11, 1993, pp. 156-170.
  27. ^ Waldemar Fromm, Wolfram Göbel: Friends of Monacensia e. V. - Yearbook 2009 . Books on Demand, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86906-038-5 , pp. 85ff.
  28. ^ Rainer Dillmann (ed.): Bible impulses: Film - Art - Literature - Music - Theater - Theology . LIT-Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9287-5 , p. 107ff.
  29. ↑ Volker Jakob, Annet van der Voort: Anne Frank was not alone - life stories of German Jews in the Netherlands . JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin / Bonn 1988, p. 125.
  30. ^ Herbert Meijer (1908). In: Rijksbureau Kunsthistorische documentatie. on: rkd.nl , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  31. ↑ Lydia E. Winkel, Hans de Vries: De ondergrondse pers 1940-1945. (PDF file; 40.7 megabytes) Lemma 235 - Hollandgruppe Free Germany, p. 118.
  32. ↑ Living on as resistance. from: hagalil.com , accessed July 15, 2017.
  33. ↑ Ariane Neuhaus-Koch: Variations on borderline experiences. Persecution and resistance in “The way to the border”, “At the end of the world” and “Tramhalte Beethovenstraat”. In: text and criticism. Issue on Grete Weil, Munich 2009, pp. 11–28.
  34. ↑ Peter Hölzle: The late fame of Grete Weil. In: Calendar sheet (broadcast on DLF ). May 14, 2019, accessed May 15, 2019 .
  35. ↑ Renate Schostack: My talent is in tatters . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 6, 2000 at: faz.net , accessed July 15, 2017.
  36. ↑ Bettina Bannasch, Gerhild Rochus: Handbook of German-language exile literature: From Heinrich Heine to Herta Müller . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-025674-1 , p. 586.
  37. ^ Monacensia Literature Archive Munich
  38. ↑ Stephen Braese: unreconciled returned. In: Jüdische Allgemeine. July 13, 2006. from: juedische-allgemeine.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  39. ↑ Grete Weil, quoted from Elisabeth Exner: Land of my murderers, land of my language. The writer Grete Weil. Munich 1998, p. 131.
  40. ↑ Died: Grete Weil. In: Der Spiegel. No. 22, May 31, 1999. from: spiegel.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
  41. ^ Foundation School by the Sea : Leaves of the outer community of the School by the Sea Juist. o. No., November 1934, p. 5.
  42. ↑ Lydia E. Winkel, Hans de Vries: De ondergrondse pers 1940-1945. (PDF file; 40.7 megabytes) Lemma 235 - Hollandgruppe Free Germany, p. 118.
  43. ↑ Grete Weil . at: literaturportal-bayern.de , accessed on July 15, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Because, Grete
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dispeker, Margarete Elisabeth; Dispeker, Grete; Because, Margarete Elisabeth; Weil-Jockisch, Margarete Elisabeth; Jockisch, Margarete Elisabeth; Jockish, Grete; Weil-Jockisch, Grete; Osten, B. van (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, translator and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Rottach-Egern
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1999
Place of death Grünwald near Munich