Sybille Bedford

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sybille Bedford OBE (born March 16, 1911 in Charlottenburg , † February 17, 2006 in London ), née Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck , was a German-British journalist and writer .

Life

Sybille Bedford grew up in Germany, England, Italy and France. Her father was the lieutenant colonel a. D. and art collector Maximilian von Schoenebeck (1853–1925). After the separation of his parents in 1918, Sybille lived with him at Schloss Feldkirch in considerable poverty in the middle of her father's art collection. Her uncle August von Schoenebeck was murdered in the Allenstein Affair in 1907 , and Bedford dealt with his fate in her novel "A legacy" (1956).

In 1921, at the request of her mother Elisabeth Bernhardt (1883–1937), a daughter of wealthy Jewish merchants from Hamburg, she moved to the Côte d'Azur to Sanary-sur-Mer , then a small fishing village. The mother married a much younger Italian architecture student, Norberto Marchesani, in her second marriage. Her father died in 1925 and his art collection was auctioned off in Freiburg in 1927.

The family in Sanary was often visited by the daughter from the father's first marriage: Maximiliane von Dincklage stayed there with her husband Hans Günther von Dincklage between 1928 and 1939 to spy on information for the Nazi security service of the Reichsführer SS - for one of French naval officers via Toulon and the port of Bizerta in the French protectorate of Tunisia and, on the other hand, the community of exiles gathered there about possible intellectual resistance. Bedford's mother Elisabeth (Lisa) and her husband Marchesani should not have been uninvolved. Bedford hides this chapter in her memoirs.

Bedford made numerous friends in Sanary. Her connections with the painter Eva Herrmann as well as with Aldous Huxley and his second wife Maria remained lifelong , an experience that she crowned forty years later with a celebrated two-volume biography of Huxley and processed into literature in A Favorite of the Gods . She was also friends with Klaus and Erika Mann . “From 1933 onwards, Sybille von Schoenebeck was personally threatened by Germany: because of her Jewish ancestors and the lesbian sexuality she practiced - I secretly considered myself unjustifiable because of my origins . So she immersed herself as deeply as possible in the Anglo-Saxon culture and language during the years of the catastrophe. It became English because it had a German fate. "

In 1935 Aldous Huxley had arranged her marriage of convenience with a homosexual Englishman, Walter ("Terry") Bedford, through which Bedford obtained British citizenship and was therefore not interned in France. She left France for California before the German invasion in 1940, also with the support of the Huxleys, and stayed there until the end of the Second World War. She then traveled through Mexico, a time she described in A Visit to Don Ottavio .

She lived in London until her death. Her autobiography was most recently published under the title Quicksands . Her novels and travel stories largely reflect the rich and varied life story of her author, whereby she often veiled biographical information about her family, e.g. B. in her autobiographical novel Jigsaw (German return to Sanary , 2009). In this, she certifies her mother's English origin instead of a German-Jewish one. “A search in the Hamburg State Archives, where the mother was born on October 24, 1883, reveals that she was the daughter of the businessman Max Bernhardt and his wife Anna, née Levy. Both were also born in Hamburg ... The couple belonged to the Israelite community in Hamburg ... She hardly commented on her parentage herself; occasionally she even claimed that she did not know how much Jewish blood ran in her veins. "

Only in Quicksands (2005) can she reproduce the dramatic end of her mother with some authenticity: “At the train station in Toulon, the patient is transported on a stretcher through a window on the express train northwards. The daughter is standing on the platform - the last picture in the book. ”The mother, who used to be a strong and self-confident looking woman who was spoiled for success, was completely addicted to morphine after separating from Marchesani. As an addict she was not granted a license in France and was deported to Nazi Germany, where she died on February 4, 1937, at the age of fifty-three, in Berlin. "I hope not, but I fear: alone," writes the daughter. An unreliable source speaks of suicide.

In addition, Sybille Bedford also worked as a court reporter for magazines such as Esquire and Life .

Works

  • On Aldous Huxley's new book , in: The Collection . Monthly literary magazine under the patronage of André Gide , Aldous Huxley, Heinrich Mann. Klaus Mann (ed.). 1st year 1934, issue 9, pp. 482–488. Amsterdam, Querido 1934. Reprint Munich 1986 ISBN 3-8077-0222-9
  • The Sudden View: A Mexican Journey , also published as A Visit to Don Octavio. A Traveller's Tale From Mexico , 1953
  • A legacy. A Novel , 1956
  • The Best We Can Do: The Trial of Dr Adams, 1958
  • The Faces of Justice: A Traveller's report , 1961
  • A Favorite of the Gods , 1963
  • A Compass Error , 1968
  • Aldous Huxley. A Biography , 1973
  • Jigsaw. To Unsentimental Education , 1989
  • As It Was: Pleasures, Landscapes and Justice , 1990 (re-released as Pleasures and Landscapes: A Traveller's Tales from Europe )
  • Quicksands. A Memoir , 2005

Works in German translation

Awards

  • 1964 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FSRL)
  • 1981 Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire
  • 1989 Nomination for the Booker Prize for Literature (Jigsaw / Das Vermächtnis)
  • 1994 Companion of Literature of the Royal Society of Literature

bibliography

  • Martin Mauthner: German Writers in French Exile, 1933-1940 , Vallentine Mitchell, London 2007 ISBN 978-0-85303-540-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Collection of the late Baron Maximilian von Schoenebeck. Auction in Freiburg im Breisgau on October 18, 19 and 20, 1927 . Altkunst GmbH Freiburg, Poppen & Ortmann, 1927
  2. ↑ Flügge, Manfred: Muse des Exils: Das Leben der Painter Eva Herrmann, Berlin, Insel 2012, pp. 135ff., ISBN 978-3-458-17550-6
  3. ↑ a b c d Peter Brugger: The Baroness von Feldkirch , in: Supplement Pictures and Times, June 5, 2010
  4. ↑ see new translation 2006 with a different title.
personal data
SURNAME Bedford, Sybille
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schoenebeck, Sybille Aleid Elsa von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 2006
Place of death London