Lena Christ

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Lena Christ (around 1911)

Lena Christ (born October 30, 1881 in Glonn as Magdalena Pichler ; † June 30, 1920 in Munich ) was a German writer .

life and work

Lena Christ was born out of wedlock to Magdalena Pichler (1860–1928), then a cook on Zinneberg near Glonn. The journeyman blacksmith and business traveler Karl Christ from Mönchsroth near Dinkelsbühl confessed to fatherhood . Although Karl Christ, at that time employed by the Munich cavalry master Ewald Hornig, "expressly" acknowledged paternity and committed himself to maintenance payments, contemporaries and biographers later doubted his paternity. The real father is more likely to be among the Scanzoni zu Lichtenfels at Schloss Zinneberg . The assumption was also fed by the fact that Lena Christ stated that her mother claimed that her father was lost and died when the Cimbria sank on January 19, 1883 on the way to America on the high seas. However, a Karl Christ was not recorded on any passenger lists. Lena Christ's mother may have wanted or had to withhold her true fatherhood. Christ's physical fatherhood is now considered very unlikely. The local chronicler from Glonn, Hans Obermair, also noted that Karl Christ had emigrated to America, but only later, and that he arrived there safely. He suspects Albert von Scanzoni and Ewald Hornig as likely fathers. Despite her stage name, it remained unclear whether Lena Christ herself was convinced that Karl Christ was her father.

Class photo around 1893 (Lena Christ in the middle of the bottom row with an apron with two dark stripes)

Lena Christ spent the first seven years of her life with her grandfather, the farmer Mathias Pichler (Bichler) (1827-1894) and step-grandmother and great-aunt Magdalena Pichler, née. Houses. Later she remembered this time as her happiest, she only had contact with her “Munich mother” once. At school she, the "Hansschusterleni", showed herself to be talented and bright. Lena Christ was very attached to her grandfather, whom she adored all her life and to whom she later dedicated the novel Mathias Bichler . Named "Hansschuster" after the court, he was considered kind, calm and modest; he was popular in the locality and valued as helpful.

In 1888 her mother married the butcher's journeyman Josef Isaak and took the seven-year-old girl to Munich against the wishes of her grandparents . She had to do hard labor in her parents' restaurant . The relationship with the mother was characterized by a love-hate relationship and violence. She was exploited and suffered badly from her mother's coldness and corporal punishment. Because of this severe abuse by her mother, Lena Christ lived with her grandparents in Glonn for a year from 1892. In mid-1893 he returned to Munich again; there the mental and physical abuse by the mother continued unchanged. The death of her grandfather in 1894 led the desperate Lena Christ to attempt suicide.

To escape the hard work and the outbreaks of the mother, she decided in 1898, when candidate and teacher student into Premonstratensian after Ursberg to go, but resigned after one and a half years back and returned to her parents' house.

Lena Christ 1898

Another rift with the mother led to another suicide attempt in 1900. Her stepfather, who did not abuse her but also did not protect her from her mother, found her with cut wrists in the wine cellar of her parents' restaurant and saved her. In the same year she started working as a cook and waitress in the excursion restaurant “ Floriansmühle ” in the north of Munich. Although she flourished there, homesickness and a misunderstood sense of duty were drawn back to their parents' home for Christmas. In 1901 she married the accountant Anton Leix and moved into an apartment with him in the house of her in-laws. As was customary at the time, the wedding was a marriage of convenience. Numerous suitors tried to attract the attractive Lena Christ, but she and her parents decided on the man's status, occupation and wealth. In 1902 she gave birth to her son Anton and a year later to her daughter Magdalena. Marital crises quickly developed. Anton Leix began to drink and play and fell out with his parents, whose house the couple had to leave in 1904. Numerous changes of residence followed and Lena Christ later complained about violent, including sexual assaults by her husband. In 1906 she gave birth to daughter Alexandra Eugenie. She also suffered three miscarriages. Her husband was increasingly noticed because of his alcoholism and the resulting financial difficulties. In 1909 Lena separated from him and left him. Son Anton came to live with his in-laws and never had contact with his mother. Anton Leix was convicted of embezzlement in the same year and released from Nuremberg prison in 1914. He later remarried and died in 1942 at the age of 64. In her “Memories”, Lena Christ has her raving husband sent to an asylum and ends there.

Lena Leix tried poorly to earn a living for herself and her two daughters through paperwork. In Haidhausen they lived in new buildings free of charge in order to “live dry ” them. In 1910 she became seriously ill with pneumonia, her daughters were taken away from her and taken to a Catholic children's home. Notes and documents from the Royal Police Directorate suggest that Lena Christ occasionally prostituted herself at the time in order to secure a living for herself and the children. In March 1911 she was sentenced by the Munich lay judge's court to four weeks' imprisonment for pimping and in June 1911 for industrial immorality .

From 1911 she worked as a dictation writer for the writer Peter Jerusalem, who later became known as Peter Benedix . In 1912 she married him; the marriage with Anton Leix had been divorced on March 13, 1912. Jerusalem made them write down their personal experiences.

In September 1912, her debut work, Memories of a Superfluous, was published by Albert Langen-Verlag under the name Lena Christ, which she used for all other publications. In it, she describes her life, the broken relationship with her mother and the human and sexual tragedies of her marriage in unusually drastic words. Her daughters returned to her in the same year. The book was initially unsuccessful, but it was praised by literary critics and a friendly contact with Ludwig Thoma , Wilhelm Langewiesche and Korfiz Holm began. At that time until 1914 she lived in the villa colony of Gern .

In 1913 she wrote the book Lausdirndlgeschichten , also consisting of memories of her childhood. Thoma criticized her for it and saw it as a plagiarism of his rascal stories . Gradually there was literary success. Her novel Mathias Bichler went largely unnoticed when it was published in 1914. In it she described the adventurous résumé of a small wood carver in Leitzach Valley and Tyrol. It was her first work that did not make use of the autobiographical. After the outbreak of World War I , she made the book Our Bavaria anno 14 , which was followed in 1915, Our Bavaria anno 14/15 . In it she collected stories that describe the events and atmosphere at the beginning of the First World War in Bavaria, in the city and in the country. In 1915 she was given an audience with King Ludwig III. invited, the following year she received the Ludwig Cross for her patriotic services. Also in 1916 she began work on the drama Die Rumplhanni , which she rewrote to the novel on the advice of Benedix. In this she describes the unscrupulous attempts by Johanna Rumpl, cook from Öd (near Schönau near Bad Aibling ) to achieve social advancement and independence. Both my own memories and experiences of the mother flowed into the novel. In 1917 Christ dissolved the Munich household and moved to Landshut, where Benedix, who was drafted into the military in 1915, was posted. Lena Christ fell ill with tuberculosis and depression.

Through Benedix in 1918 she made the acquaintance of the war-disabled young singer Ludwig Schmidt at readings in the military hospital, born Lodovico Fabri as the son of German parents in Italy, and fell in love with him. She broke away from Benedix and moved back to Munich with Schmidt, her “boy”. In 1919 she published stories under the title Bauern , as well as Madam Bäuerin , a cheerful work that was criticized because it appeared "raw" and "unfinished", the reason being assumed to be a lack of concentration due to war and private crises. In the autumn Benedix separated from his wife. In 1920 she left Ludwig Schmidt, for whom Lena Christ was just one affair among many. Having got into great economic hardship, she signed worthless pictures with the names of well-known painters, sold them and thus came into conflict with the law because of forging pictures. In order to protect her mother, daughter Magdalena initially took the blame on herself.

Threatened by a prison sentence, she took the tram to Munich's forest cemetery / old part (grave no. 44-3-1 (#) ) on June 30, 1920 . There she met her ex-husband Peter Jerusalem, who gave her a dose of potassium cyanide . With the poison she committed suicide in front of Ludwig Schmidt's father's grave . Today it is questionable whether it was mainly the imminent prison sentence that prompted them to take this step, or depression and the desire to preserve their own honor. Before her suicide, she wrote several detailed farewell letters, including to Ludwig Thoma and her son-in-law Heinrich Dietz. Her youngest daughter Alexandra († 1933), her half-brother Friedrich Isaak († 1973) and his wife Berta († 1958) were later buried in her grave (Waldfriedhof No. 44-3-14). On the grave cross, the date of Lena Christ's death is given as June 31, which is not included in the calendar, instead of June 30.

Bust of Lena Christ at the town hall in Glonn

Meaning and judgment

Today Lena Christ is recognized as an important German author. With memories of a superfluous , Die Rumplhanni and Mathias Bichler she created three lasting works. What is impressive is, among other things, the processing of her own observations and experiences in her books, which give a deep insight into the poor life of the working class, the servants and the rural population at the beginning of the 20th century. Another contemporary representative of this socially critical regional literature , Emerenz Meier , has been forgotten next to her.

The local history researcher Maria Sedlmaier wrote about Lena Christ: “Her books are full of patriotism, she took the material from her homeland, she was an extremely popular writer, knew how to write masterfully, briefly gripping, exciting, full of humor and wit, however sometimes a bit rough. "

The Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten wrote eleven years after Lena Christ's death that if she “had not left the racetrack prematurely”, she “would probably be the most famous poet in Bavaria today, would be on a front with the best names in the new German story.” Literary critic Werner Mahrholz called her “purely poetic, perhaps next to Annette Droste, the greatest, strongest, most sensual talent in all of our literature”.

Biographer Marita Panzer also noted that Lena Christ presented a “remarkable work” in the short period of eight years, which is still recognized today. However, they consider it wrong that many reviewers assigned them to the local art movement due to their rural origins and use of the Bavarian idiom . Lena Christ by no means describes her homeland, the village, the peasantry as an idyll, but rather describes a harsh, hierarchical reality, violence and bigotry . In addition, Lena Christ lived as a landlord's daughter in the city of Munich from the age of eight.

In Memoirs of a Superfluous tank sees no means a pure autobiography. The work fulfills a “literary claim”, is not only “subjective” but “dramatized and largely a literary construct”. The literary scholar Herta-Elisabeth Renk praised the book as "great literary and human testimony", as "poetry and truth of a woman, a time and a society", but criticized that Christ did not differentiate between "objective truth and subjective processing of their descriptions" .

Gunna Wendt describes in her biography that for Lena Christ writing would have been “a line of flight”, as it enabled her “to not only endure life passively, but to actively shape it”. So powerlessness became the power of a creator. Monika Baumgartner played the leading role in the film version Die Rumplhanni in 1981 , whereby she, according to her own statements, aggressively tried to get this role from Rainer Wolffhardt . The Baumgartnerin was enthusiastic about Lena Christ, whose work she compared with Oskar Maria Graf : “This language, the bulkiness, that's more Graf, he also creaks like that. Ludwig Thoma is much smoother there. "

In her dissertation, Ghemela Adler stated that Peter Benedix has shaped the image of Lena Christ to this day. As a representative of the conservative-traditionalist Heimatkunst movement, he declared Lena Christ to be a “primitive, childlike woman” whose storytelling is “instinctive”. He described his wife, decades later, mind you, as a "physically and mentally ill woman who needed care and guidance". He described Lena Christ as an uneducated child woman who draws her work from the unconscious. The biographer Günter Goepfert also partly agreed with this interpretation. Marita Panzer contradicts such interpretations. Lena Christ was a "clever and musically gifted woman", full of "creativity and funny ideas". As early as 1998 Ingrid Reuther demanded that Lena Christ's biography was “in need of revision”. Peter Benedix's biography is largely lacking in distance and is full of "one-sided representations". Benedix's biography reads like a justification; that of a man who was in the literary shadow of his wife all his life, but who acted as her discoverer and mentor. For years he argued with Lena Christ's daughters about royalties and exploitation rights. Dominik Baur points out that Benedix, despite his merit of having recognized Lena Christ's talent, also advised her against typical homeland literature à la Thoma and Ganghofer and instead referring to representatives of realism such as Jeremias Gotthelf and Gottfried Keller , an "unpleasant type" had been a "ambivalent, if not dodgy character". Instead of talking her out of suicide, he confirmed Lena Christ in this plan. Author Asta Scheib is also of the opinion that he persuaded her to commit suicide in order to subsequently benefit from it. In excessive self-overestimation, he exaggerated his role as their discoverer. He published the biography Der Weg der Lena Christ in 1940, exactly after twenty years, after the limitation period had expired, during which he first admitted that he had procured the poison for Lena Christ.

Commemoration

Lena Christ memorial plaque at the birthplace in Glonn
Marble bust of Martin Kargruber of Lena Christ in the Hall of Fame in Munich
Museum and exhibition
  • The local history museum in Glonn (Klosterweg 7) has souvenirs and books by the author.
  • After her great-grandson Peter Dietz left the written estate to the Monacensia Literature Archive in Munich in 2010 after the death of her granddaughter , a large exhibition was opened in July 2012 under the title Lena Christ - The Happiness Seeker. This was set up by the curator Gunna Wendt.
Monuments
  • Her bust is on the town hall in Glonn.
  • According to the decision of the Bavarian Council of Ministers in 1997, a bust of Lena Christ created by the sculptor Martin Kargruber was set up in the Hall of Fame on Theresienwiese in Munich on April 3, 2000 .
Memorial plaques
  • In 1921 friends put a memorial plaque on the house where she was born in Glonn. A new plaque was created by Theodor Georgii for the new building.
  • Plaques on two of her former houses in Munich (Sandstrasse 45 and Linprunstrasse 35) also commemorate her.
  • There is also a memorial plaque in Landshut .
Lena Christ as namesake
  • The street in Glonn, where she was born and grew up, was named "Lena-Christ-Straße" in her honor. The house where she was born and the new building that was built in the same place was given house number 10.
  • In other municipalities, streets were named after Lena Christ, for example in the Milbertshofen district of Munich .
  • "Lena-Christ-Realschule" in Markt Schwaben (like the place of birth Glonn also in the district of Ebersberg ).
  • The house in which she lived in Landshut for two years (Maximilianstrasse 8) was named "Lena-Christ-Haus". A plaque commemorates the writer.
  • A hall in the Germering town hall is named after her.
  • The former inn "Neuwirt" in Glonn, directly opposite the house where she was born, set up a Lena-Christ-Stüberl , which contained a few souvenirs of the writer in an adjoining room.

Works

Books

Film adaptations

radio play

  • Memories of a superfluous. Director: Stefanie Ramb. Bavaria 2 . 2020.

Audio books

literature

  • Ghemela Adler: Finding a home and identity. The work of the Bavarian writer Lena Christ (= European University Writings, Series 1, German Language and Literature . Volume 1261). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-631-42869-3 .
  • Günter Goepfert: The fate of Lena Christ. Revised and exp. Edition Rosenheimer Verlag, Rosenheim 2004, ISBN 3-475-53520-3 .
  • Edgar Hederer:  Christ, Lena. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 218 ( digitized version ).
  • Michaela Karl : Lena Christ. The superfluous. In: Michaela Karl: Bavarian Amazons. 12 portraits. Pustet, Regensburg 2004, ISBN 3-7917-1868-1 , pp. 66–83.
  • Hans Obermair: Lena Christ and Glonn. Origin and roots. Cultural Association Glonn, Glonn 2006.
  • Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Pustet-Verlag, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 .
  • Herta-Elisabeth Renk: The superfluous and their home. On the life and work of Lena Christ. In: Albrecht Weber (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Literatur in Bayern. From the early Middle Ages to the present. Pustet, Regensburg 1987, ISBN 3-7917-1042-7 , pp. 373-385.
  • Asta Scheib : In the gardens of the heart. The passion of Lena Christ. Hoffmann et al. Campe, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-455-06495-7 .
  • Gunna Wendt : Lena Christ. The luck seeker. LangenMüller, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7844-3289-2 .
  • Reinhard Wittmann : Lena Christ. In: Katharina Weigand (ed.): Great figures of Bavarian history. Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-8316-0949-9 .

Web links

Commons : Lena Christ  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Lena Christ  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 , p. 9.
  2. ↑ Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 , p. 10.
  3. ↑ MUH - Bavarian Aspects, Edition 37, 2020, Dominik Baur: Madam Dichterin - On the 100th anniversary of Lena Christ's death, page 56
  4. ↑ Lena Christ: Memories of a Superfluous. Verlag Holzinger, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-1-4823-7153-6 , p. 175.
  5. ↑ Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 , p. 42.
  6. ↑ Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 , p. 48.
  7. ↑ Biography of Contumax GmbH & Co. KG
  8. ↑ MUH - Bavarian Aspects, Edition 37, 2020, Dominik Baur: Madam Dichterin - On the 100th anniversary of Lena Christ's death, page 59
  9. ↑ MUH - Bavarian Aspects, Edition 37, 2020, Dominik Baur: Madam Dichterin - On the 100th anniversary of Lena Christ's death, page 59
  10. ↑ Gunna Wendt: Lena Christ. The luck seeker. LangenMüller, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7844-3289-2 , p. 9.
  11. ↑ MUH - Bavarian Aspects, Edition 37, 2020, Dominik Baur: Madam Dichterin - On the 100th anniversary of Lena Christ's death, page 55
  12. ↑ MUH - Bavarian Aspects, Edition 37, 2020, Dominik Baur: Madam Dichterin - On the 100th anniversary of Lena Christ's death, page 55
  13. ↑ Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 , p. 7
  14. ↑ MUH - Bavarian Aspects, Edition 37, 2020, Dominik Baur: Madam Dichterin - On the 100th anniversary of Lena Christ's death, page 59
  15. ↑ Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 , p. 8
  16. ↑ Marita Panzer: Lena Christ. No superfluous ones. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2307-5 , p. 58
  17. ↑ MUH - Bavarian Aspects, Edition 37, 2020, Dominik Baur: Madam Dichterin - On the 100th anniversary of Lena Christ's death, page 59
  18. ^ Exhibition "Lena Christ - the lucky seeker". The Bavarian writer Lena Christ (1881–1920)
  19. ↑ Gunna Wendt: Lena Christ. The luck seeker. Biography. Langen Mueller, Herbig 2012. online
  20. ↑ Lena-Christ-Realschule
  21. ↑ On the 100th anniversary of the death of the Bavarian author - "Memories of a Superfluous" by Lena Christ. Bayerischer Rundfunk website , accessed on June 2, 2020.
  22. ↑ Radio play "Memories of a Superfluous" (1/2) by Lena Christ. In the Bayern 2 program calendar. Accessed June 2, 2020.
(#) Coordinates: 48 ° 06'36.5 "N 11 ° 29'52.6" E, on the southern edge of Gräberfeld 44.
personal data
SURNAME Christ, Lena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pichler, Magdalena (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Glonn
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1920
Place of death Munich