Martha Asmus

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Martha Asmus (born June 20, 1844 in Pillkallen , East Prussia , † January 28, 1910 in Eberswalde ) was a German writer . She also wrote under the pseudonym Martha Klodwig .

Life

Asmus was born as the daughter of a district doctor who died in 1846. The mother came from an old aristocratic family from Pomerania and moved to Stolp in Pomerania with her five children . Asmus attended school here and spent her childhood and youth. In 1865 the family moved to Mecklenburg , in later years Asmus moved to her brother Paul Asmus (1842–1877) in Halle an der Saale . Asmus began writing after his death and lived in England and Paris for two years in the early 1880s . In 1885 she moved to Berlin .

Poems, novels and stories emerged, some of which were published in magazines such as Simplicissimus . In the newspaper Die Gesellschaft , Asmus dealt with the philosopher in her article A Glance into Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil in 1895. Later articles turned to the women's movement and addressed female sexuality. In an 1899 article, Asmus took the view of psychological equality between the sexes. In 1901 she also published a reply to Paul Möbius ' misogynistic work On the Physiological Nonsense of Woman . In 1909 her translation of Charles Baudelaire's work The Flowers of Evil appeared under the title The Devil's Flowers . She is considered to be the “first woman in Baudelaire's line of German translators”. She died in the state insane asylum in Eberswalde.

Asmus was friends with Rudolf Steiner , who called her in his memoirs “a philosophically thinking lady who was strongly inclined to materialism”. Through Asmus' mediation, Steiner dealt intensively with the philosophical works of her brother Paul Asmus.

Together with Steiner, Max Martersteig and Rudolf Penzig , Asmus was a member of the steering committee of the newly founded Giordano-Bruno-Bund in February 1900, chaired by Bruno Wille .

Works

  • Under the tropics (novella, 1889)
  • I congratulate! Occasional poems (original poems , 1893)
  • Women's liberation and eroticism (article in Die Gesellschaft , 11/1895)
  • Annette (novel, 1900)
  • Tantalus (narrative, 1900)
  • Indiscreet messages about experiences. Seemannn, Leipzig 1901.
  • A Savior from the Spirit (1901)
  • In spring (novel, 1902)
  • The moods of love (story, 1902)

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. 81.
  • Elisabeth Friedrichs: The German-speaking women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. A lexicon . Metzler, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-476-00456-2 , ( Repertories on the history of German literature 9), p. 9.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Digital view of four stories on simplicissimus.info
  2. ^ Rüdiger Lautmann: Homosexuality: Handbook of the history of theory and research . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 125.
  3. ↑ Thomas Keck: The German "Baudelaire" . Winter, Heidelberg 1991, p. 186.
  4. ↑ Rudolf Steiner: My course of life: With four portraits, two handwriting samples and the obituary of some students . Edition 12. Philosophical-Anthroposophical Goetheanum, Dornach 1932, p. 324.
  5. ↑ Eg Rudolf Steiner: Comments on the essays from Paul Asmus' bequeathed papers . In: Lucifer-Gnosis , January / May 1904.
  6. ^ Andreas W. Daum: Science popularization in the 19th century. Civil culture, scientific education and the German public, 1848–1914 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2002, p. 214 f.
personal data
SURNAME Asmus, Martha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Klodwig, Martha (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH Pillkallen , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH after 1909