Luise Algenstaedt

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Luise Auguste Johanna Marie Algenstaedt , sometimes incorrectly Algenstädt (* May 8, 1861 in Wattmannshagen , † May 26, 1947 in Güstrow ) was a deaconess and German writer . She also wrote under the pseudonym Ludwig Annshagen or Luise Annshagen .

Life

Luise Algenstaedt was the tenth and last child of the pastor Heinrich Johann Hermann Algenstaedt (1808-1891) and his wife Dora Friederike Luise Marie, nee. Hofe (1827–1897), born. Unlike her brothers, she did not attend a public school. She received her school education first from her father, formerly principal, and then from her older sisters. At the age of 17 she began intensive music training at the Kullak Conservatory in Berlin . She was very talented and interested in music. At the request of her parents, who considered her too young to work as an independent music teacher after completing her training at the age of 21, she became a home economics student on an estate in Mecklenburg. At the age of 25 from 1886 she ran the rectory of her eldest and unmarried brother in Reinshagen near Rostock for nine years. During this time she began to work as a writer and had already published her first publications. Then she made an attempt to gain a foothold as a private music teacher. Since this activity could not be organized economically by her, she made the decision in 1896 to find her "curriculum vitae through practical work". At the age of 35, and thus quite late, she joined Bethlehem Abbey as a deaconess student. She went through the medical wards and several training hospitals in northern Germany. However, Luise Algenstaedt did not find her professional fulfillment in the nursing work, as expected and organized by the monastery. Therefore she ended her time as a deaconess in Teterow in 1899 for family reasons, but also and above all because of the unsatisfactory role of sister in the deaconry.

Luise Algenstaedt moved to Rostock to live with her sister Elisabeth. Between 1906 and 1910 both lived in Gehlsdorf - in the rural area around the city. She then lived in Ribnitz until 1933, where she again ran the household of her brother Friedrich until he died there. Since Luise Algenstaedt's savings had largely been lost due to inflation in the late 1920s, she sold the house in Ribnitz that her brother had inherited and moved back to live with her sister in Rostock.

Here both experienced the rise of the National Socialists and the persecution of the Jews, which was incompatible with their Christian worldview and knowledge of the Jewish way of life. The two sisters survived the wartime evacuations to Güstrow, but had to leave their apartment with all the furnishings in 1945 when Rostock was occupied by the Soviet troops. From then on, the living and living conditions of the sisters deteriorated considerably. On May 26, 1947, Luise Algenstaedt died largely alone in Güstrow. She was buried in Wattmannshagen.

The author

At the beginning of the 20th century, Luise Algenstaedt was a popular author with many publications. Initially, poems and short stories appeared in various magazines. In 1902 her first novel "Quellsucher" was printed in the then well-known magazine "Daheim". Numerous short stories, short stories and novels by her followed by 1912. Luise Algenstaedt processed a lot of autobiographical things from her youth in the countryside and in her own pastor family: the boys were able to study and the girls had few career prospects. She did not accuse, but told about it in her works in her own way. "Female Barriers" appeared as early as 1894 and "Ex officio" followed in 1909. In this novel, Luise Algenstaedt traces the first phase of the pastor's daughter Ruth's life. It shows how the age of Ruth's adolescence is dominated by the demands of the brothers and the traditional self-image of the male world in the rural community. Ruth senses these differences and, in contrast, her predefined feminine role, which she finds difficult to get into, often at the expense of her own wishes and expectations.

Luise Algenstaedt, through her literary work, pursued a very independent image of women compared to the time. This included the search for self-fulfillment and fulfilling work for women. In her stories she makes clear the limited possibilities for women after the turn of the century to assert themselves in life with professional independence and social recognition. Her female characters fail many times or, over time, adapt to the expectations in their family or society.

A very big success with numerous new editions was "Free for Service! A Deaconess Story" (1903), also translated into Dutch. With this - also autobiographical - publication Algenstaedt triggered a diverse and controversial discussion about the deaconess in hospital operations. On the advice of her publisher, the first edition appeared under a male pseudonym. Luise Algenstaedt soon regretted this; the other editions from 1905 appeared under her full name. In the same year "Sketches from the Sister's Life" followed.

In the period that followed, Luise Algenstaedt's literary interests were very different. On the one hand, she wanted to process the rural environment and the way of life in Mecklenburg in novellas and sketches (1904/1907) without getting stuck in the pure homeland character. On the other hand, it was unusual for a novelist to deal with Christian and Jewish life in her stories with a lot of tolerance and knowledge. Her novels "Allzeit Fremde" (1905) and "Ums Land der Väter" as well as "Die große Sehnsucht" (Jewish novels, 1910) are examples of this.

Luise Algenstaedt knew how to write and describe always very concisely and sensitively. She was a particularly good observer of the people and traditions in her Mecklenburg homeland and of nature between land and sea. It goes without saying that the Protestant religion in the countryside with the parish as the focus is part of it.

It is tragic that Algenstaedt - despite the diversity and success of her literary work - had little money all her life and was therefore only able to live very modestly. As the youngest, she repeatedly put herself at the service of her family, for example she looked after her parents. She did not succeed in making her own life economically independent.

In the war year 1916 she turned to the German Schiller Foundation with a request for financial support. "My income [is] so low ... that it is 'impossible' to make a living from it in the judgment of peers. In reality, I 'live' on it, but only with constant consumption of my savings. ”According to her information, Algenstaedt's annual income was barely more than 850 marks for several years. The Schiller Foundation agreed to financial support from Algenstaedt and supported it in the following years with a total of 2,700 marks.

Works

  • Feminine barriers. (1894)
  • Source finder. Novel. Railway, Schwerin 1902.
  • Free to serve! A deaconess story. Bredt, Leipzig 1903. ( digitized 7th edition 1905 )
  • Weeds and weeds from home soil. Novellas and sketches. Railway, Schwerin 1904.
  • What the earth gave. Novel. Janke, Berlin 1904.
  • Always strangers. Novel. Baahn, Schwerin 1905.
  • The passport. A court story. For the honor. 3 novellas. Turm-Verlag, Leipzig 1905.
  • Sketches from the life of a sister. Railway, Schwerin 1905.
  • Our way. Pictures from the Mecklenburg country and beach. Amelang, Leipzig 1907. ( digitized version )
  • Ex officio. Wismar 1909.
  • The great longing. Jewish novella. Grunow, Leipzig 1910.
  • Mrs. Rübezahl and other short stories. Reclam, Leipzig 1910.
  • The stone curse. Whom the honor? 2 stories. Railway, Schwerin 1910.
  • About the land of the fathers. Novel. Runge, Berlin 1912.
  • Bathsheba: A drama. Leopold Lehmann. (1920)

literature

  • Franz Brümmer : Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the present . Volume 1, Brockhaus, Leipzig 1913, p. 48.
  • Elisabeth Friedrichs: The German-speaking women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. A lexicon. (= Repertories on German literary history. 9). Metzler, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-476-00456-2 , p. 4.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Algenstaedt quoted from: Lucia Hacker: Writing women around 1900. Roles - Images - Gestures . LIT, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2007, p. 128.
  2. Lucia Hacker: Writing women around 1900. Roles - Images - Gestures. LIT, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2007, p. 128.
  3. No copy can be found
  4. No copy can be found