Sophie van Leer

Sophie van Leer (after her baptism Francisca (Maria) van Leer ; * February 3, 1892 in Amsterdam ; † June 3, 1953 ibid) was an expressionist poet and painter, Jewish-Christian mystic and, as a Jew who converted to Catholicism, the initiator of the Amici priestly movement Israel .

Life

Nell Walden and Sophie van Leer (1916)

Sophie was the seventh of eight children of the married couple Willem van Leer (1855-1918) and Cato Calkar (1855-1928). The father was a less than successful businessman and Freemason with unorthodox views, who adhered to a mixture of Judeo-Christian esotericism and enthusiastic utopian socialism, while the mother was more down to earth and paid attention to obeying the commandments and an upbringing according to the traditions of the Jewish faith. Shortly after Sophie's birth, the family moved to Nijmegen , where Sophie spent her childhood. In 1904 the couple moved with Sophie and their youngest sister Clara to Kleve and in 1906 to Lucerne , where Sophie attended the teachers' seminar from 1910 and, at the age of 18, met the painter Fritz Huf , with whom she went to Frankfurt am Main in 1911 and lived together until she met the art collector Franz Kluxen in 1914.

In 1915 she went to Berlin, where she joined the group around Herwarth Walden . In the following years numerous poetry and prose contributions by van Leer appeared in their magazine Der Sturm . In her poems there are tones that are reminiscent of the High Song , close to expressionist pathos, with the lyrical I and you connect:

My lips are red tulips
And my neck is a pillar That
carries your light, blonde love

White angel hands
mild your eyelids
Smiling children
Beds
Your face
In clouds

My love is entwined
About you
Up
A circling earth
You

Her later turn to Christianity is also heralded lyrically:

I confess in gloomy domes
and kiss,
crucified,
your pain

I bed
your dead head
in my weeping lap

In 1915 she met the painter Georg Muche at an exhibition , with whom she fell stormily in love and with whom she became engaged. The relationship broke up in 1918. At the same time, however, there was a relationship with the young poet Wilhelm Runge (1894–1918), who fought as a soldier on the Western Front, and with whom she conducted extensive correspondence, which was published in 2011. Runge fell in the Arras area on March 22, 1918 .

During the November Revolution , Sophie van Leer was arrested in Munich and sentenced to death, but was released a day later. Following a vow made during her imprisonment , she converted to Catholicism, taking the first name Francisca Maria .

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literature

• Ute Ackermann: Sophie van Leer and Georg Muche. A "missionary relationship" between Mazdaznan doctrine, mysticism and Catholicism. In: Christoph Wagner (ed.): Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee: the Bauhaus and esotericism. Kerber, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-938025-39-5 , pp. 114-122.
• Ludger Busch: Georg Muche. Documentation on the painting work from 1915 to 1920. A contribution to the discussion on Expressionism. E. Wasmuth, Tübingen 1984.
• Jattie Enklaar, Marcel Poorthuis, Theo Salemink (eds.): "Death jumps up ..." Wilhelm Runge - Sophie van Leer. Letters from a Dutch collection. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8260-3624-8 .
• Jattie Enklar: Sophie van Leer (1892 - 1953) “and one day, like a flash of lightning, knowledge struck my brain”. In: Jattie Enklar (ed.): In the shadow of literary history: Authors who no longer knows? Rodopi, Amsterdam 2005, ISBN 90-420-1915-8 , pp. 307-331.
• AH Huussen Jr. (ed.): Sophie van Leer, an expressionist poet. Leven en werk 1892 - 1953. Knoop, Haren-Gn 1997, ISBN 90-6148-990-3 .
• Marcel Poorthuis: A Jewish woman and a priest as the new Adam and the new Eve in the Holy Land. The mysticism of Sophie (Francisca) van Leer (1892–1953). In: Anja Middelbeck-Varwick, Markus Thurau (ed.): Mystics of the Modern Age and Present. Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59337-0 , pp. 75-108, p. 75 in the Google book search
• Marcel Poorthuis, Theo Salemink: Op zoek naar de blauwe ruiter. Sophie van Leer, een leven tussen avant-garde, jodendom en christendom (1892–1953). Valkhof Pers, Nijmegen 2000, ISBN 90-5625-073-6 .
• Marcel Poorthuis: De kunst en het goddelijke. Sophie van Leer and Wilhelm Runge. In: Frank Bosman et al. (Ed.): Avant-garde en religie. Over het spirituele in de modern art, 1905 - 1955. Van Gruting, Utrecht 2009, ISBN 978-90-75879-49-0
• Petra Jenny Vock: “I don't stay true to myself for five minutes” Between literature, politics and religion: Sophie van Leer in the Sturm circle. In: Else-Lasker-Schüler yearbook on classical modernism. 3 (2006), pp. 49-74.

Web links

• Surrender, not surrender. Sophie (Francisca) van Leer - Birth pangs of a new era , biographical essay by Rob Steinbuch (PDF)
• Leer, Sophie van (1892-1953) (in Dutch), Homepage of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sophie van Leer's autobiography, cited in Im Schatten der Literaturgeschichte , p. 308.
2. ↑ From: my I love . In: The storm. Vol. 6 (1915), No. 11/12, pp. 66 f., Doi: 10.11588 / diglit.37113 # 0068 ; quoted from: Hartmut Vollmer (ed.): The sun dances itself to death in red shoes. Poetry by expressionist female poets. Arche, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7160-2164-4 , p. 214.
3. ↑ From: Poem. In: Der Sturm Vol. 6 (1915), No. 13/14, p. 81, doi: 10.11588 / diglit.37113 # 0082 ; quoted from: Poorthuis: A Jewess and a Priest ... In : Mystikinnen der Neuzeit. Frankfurt a. M. 2009, p. 83f.
4. ↑ Natalia W. Pestova: Wilhelm Runge: "Thinking dreams"; in: Jattie Enklar (ed.): In the shadow of the history of literature. Pp. 299-306.
5. ↑ Marcel Poorthuis: A Jewess and a priest as the new Adam and the new Eve in the Holy Land. The mysticism of Sophie (Francisca) van Leer (1892–1953). , P. 75 in Google Book search
6. ↑ Jattie Enklar: Sophie van Leer ( 1892-1953 ) , pp. 327-329