Helene von Druskowitz

Helene Druskowitz (no year, no author)

Helene von Druskowitz (* May 2, 1856 in Hietzing near Vienna ; † May 31, 1918 in Mauer-Öhling ; actually Helena Maria Druschkovich , also Druscowitz or Druscowicz are more often used) was an Austrian philosopher , literary and music critic . In some women’s stories she is considered the second female philosopher to have a doctorate. Covered with scorn and ridicule by her contemporaries, she published under (not only male) pseudonyms (Adalbert Brunn, Erna (von Calagis), H. Foreign, (Miss.) E. (von) René, H. Sackorausch, Sacrosanct).

Life

Since it was not possible for a girl to study at university in her youth, Helene von Druskowitz first went through the classic educational path of a senior daughter and was trained as a pianist at the Vienna Conservatory . In 1874 she moved with her mother to Zurich , where women had been admitted to regular studies since 1867.

After studying philosophy, archeology, German literature, oriental studies and modern languages, it was 22-year-old the first Austrian and the second woman to Stefania Wolicka at the University of Zurich with a thesis on Don Juan at Lord Byron "to" Dr. phil. PhD . She herself had the female title of doctor and used the German term Weltweisheit for philosophy, which emphasized the contrast to theology or church philosophy. In the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, the female title “doctor” was widespread, even if there were no universities (under Lutheran or Catholic ecclesiastical supervision) that granted it and the prevailing doctrine fought against these memories. Only with the nationalization of higher education through secularization and the subsequent Kulturkampf did the doctorate become possible for some previously excluded groups (especially Jews).

After completing her doctorate, Druskowitz worked as a lecturer in literary history at various universities and gave lectures in Germany, France, Spain and Italy. She published on Kant, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer and Paul Rée . In 1881 she met Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach , from whom she was accepted into her literary circle. She made contact with Meta von Salis , met Friedrich Nietzsche , Lou Andreas-Salomé and, in 1884, Rainer Maria Rilke . She published magazines on the emancipation of women. The Lexicon of Women names The Holy Struggle and The Feud as women's revues she founded while writing writings for the women's movement .

Nietzsche was very impressed by the 12 years younger and her philosophical conversational skills and raved about his sister Elisabeth in a letter of October 22, 1884 :

In the afternoon I went for a long walk with my new friend Helene Druscowitz, who lives a few houses away from Pension Neptun with her mother: of all the women I have known, she was by far the most serious about my books, and not in vain. See how you like her last writings ... I mean, it is a noble and righteous creature that does no harm to my 'philosophy'.

He hoped for a disciple in her, sent her his books, and would rather publish them in the same publishing house as her (with the Berlin publisher Oppenheim) than with Franz Overbeck at Schmeitzner. But Nietzsche's attitude towards women ("A man who has depth [...] must understand woman as possession, as lockable property, as something predetermined for servitude." "Woman should not continue to compromise herself through enlightenment." ; ö “Science is against shame for all right-wing women.”) made Druskowitz his harshest critic. Nietzsche was still trying to counteract this in August 1885 when he received a book that had been given back:

My dear Miss.

The copy was intended for you as your property: but of course: another thing is to make even one word of it your own. And now you want to write about such things! in relation to which you have not yet experienced anything, let alone a most sacred and inward shock, as it must have preceded any degree of understanding!

To my sad astonishment I see from your - - -

As far as I know about these current people, my hope is low.

Excuse me, my dear lady, but I am not one of those who “make people suffer”, much less those who believe that one can speak of all things in public. Whoever does not thank me from the bottom of his heart for the fact that something like my Zarathustra has been communicated by me at all, who does not bless all existence because something like this Zarathustra is possible in him , that lacks everything, ear, understanding, depth, education, taste and in general the nature of an "exquisite person". I want to attract such "chosen ones" to myself: - - -

Ps. The copy you sent belongs to you, my dear and honored Miss, how cheaply it is your property

As for your sincere, albeit not exactly circumspect and insightful, and perhaps not particularly "modest" letter: I say, as so often, that it is a pity that one cannot have half an hour of conversation if it is necessary! That winter I got a shy and very devoted companion of old age to the point where he tore an essay he had written about me to pieces in shame.

In Modern Attempts at a Religion Replacement from 1886, Druskowitz denied Nietzsche any philosophical qualification. In doing so, she sometimes stylized herself as a “Gegenenzarathustra” in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish between irony, hubris and - similarly in both cases - the tragic fate of health. In her criticism of Zarathustra from 1886, she imitated Nietzsche's style and so aroused him that in February 1887 he turned to Malwida von Meysenbug for help against “all the young or less young girls” . On September 17, 1887, he wrote to his early supporter in the Swiss press, Carl Spitteler : "The little literary goose Druscowicz is anything but my 'student' ...". Spitteler was not convinced of this and changed the front. His famous article in the Bernese Bund from 20./21. November 1888 on Nietzsche's apostasy from Richard Wagner he culminated in the words that Druskowitz found in her work on Dühring about Nietzsche (which was not uncommonly predated by the publisher a year):

We fear that Nietzsche himself will have to be included in the category of the physiologically injured. Because he increasingly loses his sense of simply human feelings and natural thinking, he indulges in increasingly unfounded and at the same time more dangerous paradoxes, enjoys becoming more and more repulsive, and grandeur and conceit take on increasingly dubious dimensions in him. We remind the readers of his last writings with what indescribable contempt he speaks, and he does it countless times, of those who are unfortunate enough to be rabble and what idolatrous devotion he shows to the "noble". Ultimately, however, it turns out that his conception of nobility is completely wrong, since Napoleon I is described as the incarnate problem of the noble ideal itself. One of the most brilliant stylists and most ingenious minds of our time, he deceives himself and the world about the insufficiency of his being and the lack of independent thoughts, unless they are those that lack any durability or justification. So after decades of fumbling around, he came to results that can easily be taken to the point of absurdity and must be described as monstrous, such as B. the assertion that the progressive "moralization" of humanity signifies the downfall of the higher human type, a view that is rooted in a fundamentally wrong conception of the ideal of humanity.

As an intellectual and lesbian , Druskowitz was a social outsider. In her writings, she campaigned for absolute equality between the sexes, but advocated a consistent difference in feminism .

Her brother died in 1886 and her mother in 1888. Druskowitz got more and more into alcohol and drug problems. After her longtime partner, the singer Therese Malten , separated from her in 1891 , she fell into an existential crisis and finally slipped into alcoholism. It was on 14 June 1902 as Paranoikerin in the mental hospital admitted and wall-Oehling briefly incapacitated it. In spite of everything, she continued to write and in 1905, for example, published her polemical answer to the highly acclaimed work On the Physiological Nonsense of Wife by the Leipzig neurologist Paul Julius Möbius : Pessimistic Cardinal Sentences. A vademecum for the free spirits , which was published again in 1988 under the title The man as a logical and moral impossibility and as the curse of the world .

Helene von Druskowitz spent the last years of her life in the sanatorium in Mauer-Oehling and died of dysentery at the end of May 1918. In 2008, in Vienna- Hietzing , Druskowitz 'former residential district, a small green space on the corner of Wolkersbergenstrasse and Biraghigasse was named Helene-Druskowitz-Park.

plant

Druskowitz 'early philosophy consists of criticism of religion and an attempt to replace religion with a non-religious worldview. In doing so, however, she criticizes Nietzsche's freedom from values ​​or arrogance of values, for whom the superman stands beyond good and evil, and claims instead of the Kantian transcendental biologicals: the body decides on good and bad and people know exactly what is good and what is bad, that is not entirely up to one's discretion and discretion. But with this precise and actually positive criticism, she does not succeed in regaining optimism (against Schopenhauer). The romance remains black, no dawn breaks behind the dystopias, but there is also no hope of a return.

Her late work is marked by deep misanthropy . Her pessimistic cardinal sentences confirm a pessimism that goes beyond Schopenhauer, and she elevates this - even more radically than Eduard von Hartmann - to a program. In their picture of the future of humanity, men destroy the world and women serve as “guides into death”. To speed up this process, Druskowitz recommends a consistent gender segregation and homosexuality in order to promote "the extinction of the human sex".

Her plays are also sharply judged against those around her. In the comedy Die Emanzipationsschwärmerin, for example, she criticizes the heterosexual traitors who only studied at the university for “emancipation reasons” and disrupted operations there with “confused speeches about the women's issue” in order to “attract the attention of men”. Irony and ridicule bring some beneficial insights to light here, but also show how dangerous they can be - if taken too seriously.

Publications

In addition to the limited availability in second-hand bookshops and libraries, there are also obstacles to research due to the pseudonyms and various deviating spellings, which were sometimes used deliberately to minimize the findability. A bibliography is still a desideratum . The following is due in particular to the Austrian National Library / Ariadne. The works marked with an asterisk (*) were taken from the lexicon of women (Zurich 1953) without an autopsy .

Scientific

Pessimistic cardinal sentences

• On Lord Byron ’s Don Juan : a literary-aesthetic treatise . Zürcher and Furrer, Zurich 1879, OCLC 637221766 Dissertation University of Zurich , 1879, 58 pages, speaker: Andreas Ludwig Kym .
• Percy Bysshe Shelley . Robert Oppenheim, Berlin 1884.
• Three English female poets ( Joanna Baillie , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , George Eliot ) , essays. Robert Oppenheim, Berlin 1885, OCLC 6696737 ( Austrian Literature Online University Innsbruck, 246 pages).
• Modern attempts at a substitute for religion: a philosophical essay . G. Weiß, Heidelberg 1886. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
• How is responsibility and imputation possible without acceptance of free will? An investigation. G. Weiss, Heidelberg 1887.
• To the new teaching. Considerations. Weiss, Heidelberg 1888.
• To justify an over-religious worldview . Weiss, Heidelberg 1889.
• Eugene Dühring . A study for his appreciation. Weiss, Heidelberg 1889.
• The free transcendentalism or the overworld without God. 1900.
• Ethical pessimism. 1903. (*)
• Philosophical circular questionnaire. Design dated February 1903.
• von Erna [Helene von Druskowitz]: Pessimistic cardinal sentences: a vademecum for the freest minds. Herrose & Ziemsen, Wittenberg [1905], OCLC 249038086 , ( online from ngiyaw , Wikisource ). Newly published by Traute Hensch under the title: The man as a logical and moral impossibility and as the curse of the world. Pessimistic cardinal sentences. Kore, Freiburg im Breisgau 1988, ISBN 3-926023-16-3 .

Literary

• (E. v. René :) Sultan and Prince. Tragedy in 5 acts. Wallishausser, Vienna 1881.
• (Erich René :) The President of the Zither Club. Original posse in 4 elevators. Alwin Arnold, Dresden-Blasewitz [approx. 1884].
• (Adalbert Brunn :) Aspasia. Comedy in 5 acts. Petzold, Dresden 1889.
• The emancipation enthusiast. Comedy in five acts (new edition of Aspasia ) and dramatic jokes. Petzold, Dresden 1890.
• International. Dramatic joke in 3 acts. Metzger & Wittig, Leipzig 1890.
• The pedagogue. Dramatic joke in three acts. Metzger & Wittig, Leipzig 1890.
• The male proletariat or the felling of men as beasts and thinkers. 1900. (*)
• Division of cities by gender. 1901. (*)
• Appearance and reality. Poems 1904 (*)

Sources and archive materials

As the Nietzsche researcher Janz has shown several times, the estate of Meta von Salis in Basel comes into question. Also from Salis' Nietzsche book Philosopher and Noble Man. A contribution to the characteristics of Friedrich Nietzsche offers information. Research into their situation in the institution (free mail ?, financial circumstances) is a desideratum.

Newer literature

In the wake of the 1988 new edition by Traute Hensch , a new reception was created in the German-speaking area. The following are mentioned:

• Hinrike Gronewold: Helene von Druskowitz 1856–1918 - the spiritual Amazon. In: Wahnsinns-Frauen. Edited by Sibylle Duda. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 96–122.
• Brigitta Keintzel: Helene von Druskowitz. In: We are the first to dare: biographies of German-speaking scientists, researchers, intellectual women. Edited by Ilse Korotin. Federal Ministry for Education and the Arts, Dept. Pres. 3, Vienna 1993, pp. 36–41.
• Christa Gürtler, Sigrid Schmid-Bortenschlager: Obstinacy and resistance. Writers of the Habsburg Monarchy. Ueberreuter, Vienna 1998.
• Helga Guthmann: Helene Druskowitz: from the show of the last things to the end. In: Knowledge Power Gender: Philosophy and the future of the “condition féminine”. Edited by Birgit Christensen. Chronos, Zurich 2002, pp. 755–761.
• Ursula Kubes-Hofmann: Druskowitz, Helene von. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 149–151.

Web links

Wikisource: Helene von Druskowitz  - Sources and full texts

• Druskowitz Helene von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1957, p. 201.
• Helene von Druskowitz in the database Women in Motion 1848–1938 of the Austrian National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ Death Register Oehling, tom. V, fol . 174 ( facsimile ).
2. ↑ The Nietzsche teacher Albrecht Ritschl , who wrote in the first volume (Reformed Churches) of his History of Pietism (1880), especially against Anna Maria Schürmann , who, in a different perspective, wrote a dissertation on women’s studies in 1638, was particularly afraid of this advance had received a doctorate. Nietzsche, who was sponsored by Ritschl at the University of Basel, needed the title “Doktorin” for Meta von Salis , but not for Druskowitz. See: Nietzsche, Digital Critical Complete Edition, Works and Letters / Digital Critical Edition of the Complete Works and Letters. based on the critical text by G. Colli and M. Montinari, ed. by Paolo D'Iorio. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1967ff. It provides the following five sources: Letters from Nietzsche, 1887, 884; 1887, 887; 1887, 900; 1887, 903; 1888, 1103.
3. ↑ Also discussed in Curt Paul Janz 'Nietzsche-Biographie Vol. 2, p. 352.
4. ↑ This conclusion is drawn with horror by the Nietzsche biographer Curt Paul Janz : Vol. 2, 356; as a source for this: Nietzsche's letter to his mother dated October 30, 1884 and of the same day to Franz Overbeck .
5. ↑ See the eKGWB / BVN-1885,623 draft letter (To Helene Druskowitz in Berlin (drafts), Sils-Maria, around mid-August 1885)
6. ↑ eKGWB / BVN-1887,809 letter to Malwida von Meysenbug: end of February 1887
7. ↑ eKGWB / BVN-1887,914 letter to Carl Spitteler, from Sils-Maria, September 17, 1887
8. ↑ also printed in: Curt Paul Janz: Nietzsche-Biographie, vol. 3, p. 290f.
9. ↑ NÖLA, HPA-MÖ, professional protocols, 1902-1904 .
10. ^ Gudrun Ankele: Helene Druskowitz 'Pessimistische Kardinalsätze (1905) as a manifesto.
11. ^ Naumann, Leipzig 1897; Scientific publishing house, Schutterwald / Baden 2000