Isabelle Kaiser

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Isabelle Kaiser, photograph by Johannes Meiner around 1899

Isabelle Kaiser (born October 1, 1866 in Beckenried / Canton Nidwalden , † February 17, 1925 in Beckenried) was a Swiss writer .

Life

Isabelle Kaiser was the daughter of Fernando Kaiser and his wife, née Wilhelmine Durrer. She came from a politically active family: Her grandfather Ferdinand Kaiser was an ophthalmologist and was involved in social policy as a Council of States and Grand Councilor of the liberal party . The father was also politically active as a journalist , church councilor and Geneva councilor and had participated on the Christian Catholic side in the culture war in Switzerland .

From 1868 to 1879 Isabelle lived with her family in Geneva , then in Zug on her grandfather's country estate. In the 1880s, father and grandfather and a brother and two sisters died in quick succession. Since then she herself suffered from a lung disease, which made several spa stays in the mountains and on the Riviera necessary. At the end of the 1890s she moved with her mother, first to Zurich , then in 1898 to Beckenried on Lake Lucerne . When her mother died in 1906, she only spent the summer months there and stayed in Paris in the winter .

She began early with the writing of literary texts in French , which appeared in book form from 1888. For the novella Gloria victis she received the first prize in a French literary competition in 1884, and for the novel Coeur de Femme in 1891 the novel prize of the Geneva Institute . After she had acquired a good knowledge of both the German language and Swiss German , she also published works in German from 1901 . From 1902 Kaiser, whose life was overshadowed by a series of personal strokes of fate and a tuberculosis disease, lived in seclusion in her “Ermitage” estate in Beckenried.

On the occasion of her 50th birthday, Carl Spitteler wrote an article about Isabelle Kaiser in Schweizer Illustrierte in 1916 . Isabelle Kaiser was the author of novels , short stories and poems . Her work was strongly influenced by the naturalistic and neo-romantic currents of the era as well as by Emperor's Catholic religiosity. Her greatest role model was the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé .

Works in French

  • Ici-bas (Poésies, Genève 1888)
  • Sous les étoiles (Poésies, Genève 1890)
  • Coeur de femme (Roman, Neuchâtel 1891)
  • Fatimé. Chants de deuil. (Poésies, Neuchâtel 1893)
  • Sorcière! (Roman, Lausanne 1896)
  • Des ailes! (Poésies, Lausanne 1897)
  • Héro , Lausanne 1898
  • Notre Père qui êtes aux cieux ... (Roman, Lausanne 1900)
  • Vive le Roi! Roman des guerres de la vendéee (Lausanne 1903)
  • L'éclair dans la voile (Lausanne 1907)
  • Marcienne de Flue. L′ascension d′une ame. Journal de la vie d'une femme. (Roman, Lausanne 1909. Extended editions 1913, 1928)
  • Le jardin clos (Poésies, Lausanne 1912)
  • La vierge du lac. Roman des montagnes d′Unterwalden (Lausanne 1913/14)
  • Le vent des cimes (novellas, Paris 1916)

Works in German

  • When the sun goes down (Novellen, Stuttgart 1901): His last will , The Lord Marquis , On the lighthouse , The fairy tale of the lost sleep , Fineli's Ascension , Captain Rupprecht , The Snake Queen , Christianen's Pilgrimage , How I became a Duchess , A letter , The Twins . Heavenly Tales . The Taurus , Last Success , The Redeemer , From Childhood Paradise , Sweetheart , Vale carissima
  • His Majesty (novellas, Stuttgart 1905): The Lanzigbub , A Blossoming Apple Tree , Abishag , The Pastor , Cadet , Trümer , Nachtzug , The Spider , War , Lore Migi's wife . The fastest rider . The star . Holi ho! dia hu!
  • Six Novelettes from Nidwalden (Zurich 1906)
  • Our Father ... Novel from the Present (Cologne 1906)
  • The peace seeker. Novel from the Life of a Woman (Cologne 1908)
  • My heart (poems, Stuttgart 1908)
  • The Marquise's novel. Novel from the Vendée Wars (Kevelaer 1909)
  • The wandering lake. Novel from the Unterwaldner Mountains (Cologne 1910)
  • Introduction ; Foreword in: A. Ryffel: Der Vierwaldstättersee . 24 pictures, 1912.
  • My Life (1913)
  • Of Eternal Love (Novellas and Sketches, Cologne 1914)
  • Our German war guests at Lake Lucerne (Meiringen, 1916)
  • Rachel's love (novella, Cologne 1920)
  • Bilda, the witch. Novel from the time of the witch trials in Switzerland , Regensburg 1921 (translated by Fritscheller)
  • The Queen's Nights (Novellas, Zurich 1923)
  • Last Sheaf (Zug 1929)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Karola Ludwig, Angela Wöffen: Lexicon of German-speaking women writers 1800–1945. dtv Munich, 1986. ISBN 3-423-03282-0 . P. 147f.
  2. ↑ 1916, article by Carl Spitteler
  3. ^ 1899, Vale carissima

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Isabelle Kaiser  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Kaiser, Isabelle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Beckenried
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 1925
Place of death Beckenried