Hedwig Wigger

Johanna Friederike Julia Hedwig Wigger , married. Barsch , also on works: Wigger-Barsch (born January 27, 1853 in Grevesmühlen ; † November 28, 1918 in Breslau , pseudonyms: Rana Düsen , J. Martinitz ), was a German-speaking novelist , translator and literary critic .

educator

Hedwig Wigger was born as the daughter of the Grevesmühlen rifle host Joachim Detlof Heinrich Wigger and his wife, Catharina Dorothea Juliane Reeps, a shoemaker's daughter from Malchow (Mecklenburg) . Growing up in Grevesmühlen and Wismar , Hedwig Wigger received her schooling in a Hamburg girls' boarding school, where she learned French and proved to be very talented in languages. As a young woman, she went to Portugal , where she worked as a tutor in the family of a minister of the Portuguese government and lived alternately in Lisbon and Madeira . She mastered the foreign language so well that she wrote in Portuguese for various magazines and translated works of Portuguese literature.

With the family of her employer, she traveled all over Europe, especially to Hungary and Bohemia . She later settled in Vienna , where she took on the upbringing of two daughters of a spa owner and was friends with the writers Heinrich Laube and Anton Lindner .

Mediator of Portuguese literature

Hedwig Wigger-Barsch has translated poetry by Eugénio de Castro , José Ramos Coelho , Alberto de Oliveira and António Duarte de Oliveira Soares , among others . She was friends with Pedro Machado . For the Munich magazine Die Gesellschaft, edited by Michael Georg Conrad . For many years she wrote the Portuguese literary report, a monthly for literature, art and social policy , which propagated naturalism .

A central passage in Fontane's late work Der Stechlin , which deals with the poet João de Deus Nogueira de Ramos (1830–1896), mentions her obituary for this important Portuguese poet of modern times.

For her mediating work, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Coimbra on August 2, 1902 and was awarded a medal by the Portuguese King Dom Luis . The Portuguese President dedicated one of his works to her.

Marriage and last years of life

In 1886 Hedwig Wigger settled in Breslau and married the Silesian narrator Paul Barsch . Their daughter Julia Gertrud was born in the same year. She later married the Görlitz high school teacher Paul Gatter and was the grandmother of the television journalist Peter Gatter . Between 1900 and 1905 the perch lived in Grüneiche; later they used a summer house in Schieferstein am Zobten .

The couple worked together for the publications of the Wroclaw Poetry School . Hedwig Barsch's book of novels, Die Monarchenkommen , was published three times and described the life and poverty of migrant workers (the so-called “monarchs”) from a socially critical perspective. For this purpose, she conducted studies on customer German or Rotwelsch , the language of vagabonds. As a result, she also contributed indirectly to the autobiographical novel Von Eine, who moved out of her husband Paul Barsch.

Wigger collected memories and sketches from her time in Portugal under the title In Lusitanischer Sonne . In 1897 she was a permanent employee of the Breslauer Rechts-Zeitung; In 1899 she took over the position of the late editor Berthold Stein at the Breslauer Zeitung.

Hedwig Wigger died at the end of the First World War, on November 28, 1918, after a long illness at the age of 65. In addition to her widower, the director of the Breslau City Theater Theodor Loewe and fellow writers Paul Keller and Hermann Stehr attended her funeral service in Hirschberg . Her remains were cremated and buried in her Mecklenburg homeland.

Works

• The monarchs are coming. Novellas. CF Müller, Leipzig 1892
• In the Lusitan sun. Stories. L. Heege, Schweidnitz 1914

Contribution to periodicals

• Wroclaw Newspaper
• Wroclaw Court Newspaper
• Stage and world. Journal for theater, literature and art
• German sheets
• Society. Monthly for literature, art and social policy
• The magazine for literature
• Monthly sheets of the Breslauer Dichterschule (from 1901: The East. Literary monthly of the "Breslauer Dichterschule")

literature

• Perch, Hedwig . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 39 ( digitized version ).
• Wigger, H. . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 2. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 433 ( digitized version ).
• Hedwig Barsch, b. Wigger †. In: Breslauer Rechts-Zeitung vol. 40, no. 49 of December 8, 1918, pp. 1-4.
• Marie Barsch-Muthreich: friend among friends. Written to Paul Barsch. Self-published, Neuenrade 1955 Partly digitized as pdf
• Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania? A dictionary of persons. Edition Temmen, Rostock / Bremen 1995, p. 30 f.
• Klaus Küpper: Bibliography of Portuguese Literature. Prose, poetry, essay and drama in German translation, Lisbon / Frankfurt a. M. 1997, ISBN 972-97068-7-5

Web links

• Literature by and about Hedwig Wigger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature about Hedwig Wigger in the state bibliography MV

Individual evidence

1. ^ Theodor Fontane: The Stechlin. Novel. Ullstein, Frankfurt a. M. / Berlin 1994, p. 183 f .; 314 f .; see. Hans-Heinrich Reuter: Fontane. Nymhenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1968, vol. 2, p. 807 f .; 974
2. ↑ Hedwig Wigger: Joao de Deus. In: Das Magazin für Literatur Vol. 65, No. 9 February 29, 1896, Col. 295 ff.
3. ↑ Paul Keller: Mrs. Hedwig Barsch, b. Wigger †. In: Breslauer Rechts-Zeitung vol. 40, No. 49 of December 8, 1918, p. 3
4. ↑ Cf. the copy by D. Rocholl: Dark images from wandering life. Craftsman's records. FA Wiegand: Bremen 1885 from their property.