Peggy Sinclair
Ruth Margaret "Peggy" Sinclair (born March 8, 1911 in Dublin ? ( Ireland ); † May 3, 1933 in Bad Wildungen ) was a cousin of the Nobel Prize winner for literature Samuel Beckett . She was his first childhood sweetheart and inspired him to write his first novel .
Life
In 1922 her parents, who were art dealers and valued the reputation of the Kassel Art Academy and the exhibitions on the avant-garde by Arnold Bode in the Orangery , left Ireland and settled in today's Kassel Bodelschwinghstrasse 5 (then Landgrafenstrasse 5). Peggy Sinclair grew up with four siblings and learned to play the piano at the Waldorf School in Kassel. In 1928, she met her cousin Samuel Beckett while on summer vacation in Dublin . From 1928 onwards, Samuel Beckett traveled several times to Kassel because he had fallen in love with his cousin who lived there. Peggy had a secret correspondence with Beckett. Around 1928/29 and 1931 Karl Leyhausen portrayed Peggy Sinclair; the oil painting from 1931 was exhibited during documenta 14 in the Neue Galerie in Kassel.
Inspiration for Beckett's first novel
The love for his cousin inspired Beckett in 1932 to his first novel Dream of fair to middling women (German: dream of more to less beautiful women ), which was only published posthumously in English in 1993 and in German in 1996. The first novel was written by Samuel Beckett in Paris . Here he processes his experiences in Kassel. Beckett and his cousin went on excursions to the Karlsaue and the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe and they rowed together on the Fulda . Many Kassel locations were described in literary terms in the first work. The love for Peggy Sinclar can be assumed to be the actual trigger for Beckett's lifelong interest in Germany.
Separation and early death
The pair of lovers separated on New Year's 1929 in a restaurant in Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. Peggy's parents were against the close relationship. From 1928 to 1932 Samuel Beckett visited Peggy Sinclair in Kassel and after 1932 in a sanatorium in Bad Wildungen. Sinclair fell ill with tuberculosis in 1931 and died in Bad Wildungen in 1933 at the age of 22. Her family left Germany for political and financial reasons in 1936 and returned to Ireland.
Commemoration in Kassel
A commemorative plaque in front of the house at Kassel Bodelschwinghstrasse 5 commemorates the love affair between Samuel Beckett and Peggy Sinclair. In the immediate vicinity there is a residential complex named after Samuel Beckett. A mural in Bodelschwinghstrasse reminds of his visits to Kassel with a portrait of Samuel Beckett and the title of the novel. During documenta 14, Karl Leyhausen's 1931 portrait of Peggy Sinclair, which is part of the Neue Galerie's museum holdings , was exhibited.
Exhibitions
- 2017: documenta 14 . Athens, Kassel
- 2017/18: German Fever Beckett in Germany . Museum of Modern Literature , Marbach
literature
- Samuel Beckett: Dream of more to less beautiful women. Suhrkamp Verlag. Translated from the English by Wolfgang Held , ISBN 978-3-518-40777-6
Web links
- Not easy love. In: hna.de . March 8, 2011, Retrieved August 2, 2017 (Commemoration of Peggy Sinclair on the occasion of her 100th birthday).
- Information about Peggy Sinclair with the portrait of Karl Leyhausen by Peggy Sinclair
Individual evidence
- ↑ Die Welt, November 9, 2017, p. 22
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sinclair, Peggy |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sinclair, Ruth Margaret |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | inspired Samuel Beckett to write his first novel |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 8, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | unsure: Dublin |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 3, 1933 |
| Place of death | Bad Wildungen |