Hertha Koenig

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Hertha Koenig (born October 24, 1884 at Gut Böckel , Bieren ; † October 12, 1976 ibid) was a German writer and salonnière .

Life

Hertha Koenig was the daughter of the landowner Carl Koenig (brother of the zoologist Alexander Koenig ). She received private lessons from 1894 ; from 1898 she attended a secondary school for girls in Bonn . From 1901 to 1903 she trained as a nurse . In 1904, after the death of her grandfather Leopold Koenig , who had lived as a sugar manufacturer in Russia , she went on a trip to Russia with her mother. From 1905 to 1921 she lived temporarily in Munich . During this time, when she began to publish her own poems, she hosted a literary salon in which important writers and visual artists of the time frequented. In 1906 she traveled to Italy with her mother . From 1910 to 1913 she was married to the literary scholar Roman Woerner ; the couple lived in Freiburg / Breisgau . From 1914 Koenig worked as a nurse in the Freiburg Deaconess House . In May of the same year, during a stay in Paris, she visited Pablo Picasso , from whom she had previously acquired some pictures. From 1915 she became friends with Rainer Maria Rilke . During the First World War she had contact with Munich and Berlin artistic circles; individual artists were also guests at Gut Böckel.

After the end of the First World War , Hertha Koenig supported various settlement projects. From 1921 to 1931 she lived on the Einödhof Aich in Prutting in Upper Bavaria . After the death of her father in 1927, she took over the management of the Böckel and Waghorst estates , which together covered over 500 hectares. At Gut Böckel, which also served as a venue for private cultural events, an extensive art collection was created which, in addition to three paintings by Picasso, also included works by Hodler , Nolde and Klee . During the Third Reich , Koenig had to repeatedly defend himself against government attempts to forcibly dispose of their property.

After the Second World War , Hertha Koenig maintained acquaintances and correspondence with numerous prominent personalities, including Carl Jacob Burckhardt , Martin Heidegger and Theodor Heuss . Although she suffered from depression at times , she was literary active into old age.

Her estate is now in the German Literature Archive in Marbach . In 1994 Gut Böckel founded the Hertha-Koenig-Gesellschaft , which is dedicated to maintaining the author's work and estate. In 2004 the Hertha Koenig Literature Prize was awarded for the first time on the occasion of the writer's 120th birthday .

Hertha Koenig's work includes poetry , novels , stories and memories. In old age she still wrote the novel Der Fährenschreiber von Libau and the haunting portrait of Rilke's mother .

Works

Books:

  • Sundial , poems, Munich 1910
  • Emilie Reinbeck , Roman, Berlin 1913
  • The small and the big love , Roman, Berlin 1917
  • Sonnets , Leipzig, 1917
  • Flowers , Leipzig, poems 1919
  • The last , prose, Berlin 1920
  • The old city , poems, Berlin 1925
  • Everything has become a beginning , poems, Iserlohn 1946
  • To everyone , essay, Lingen-Ems 1950
  • Rilke's mother , memories, Pfullingen 1963
  • The ferryman from Libau , Roman, Pfullingen 1964
  • Memories of Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke's mother , Bielefeld 1992, 2002
  • The ferryman from Libau , Roman, Bielefeld 1993
  • Spring in Autumn , Selected Poems 1910–1946, Bielefeld 1999, 2004
  • The small and the big love , Roman, Bielefeld 2001
  • The Last / To Everyone , double volume, Bielefeld 2001
  • The Lippe Rose , novel from the estate, Bielefeld 2003
  • Behind the scenes of a life , memories, Bielefeld 2004
  • New poems , with drawings by Heinrich Vogeler , Bielefeld 2007
  • Der Zuckerkönig , Roman, Bielefeld 2012 - originally published as: Der Fährenschreiber von Libau

Audiobooks:

  • Spring in autumn , read by Therese Berger, Bielefeld 2000
  • Rilke's mother , read by Therese Berger, Bielefeld 2007

literature

  • Gerhard Kaldewei (Ed.): Hertha Koenig , Bielefeld 1986

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Hertha Koenig / Vita and Works . pendragon.de. Retrieved November 26, 2014.