Thekla Merwin

Thekla Merwin (born April 25, 1887 in Riga ; † October 20, 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) was an Austrian writer.

Life

Thekla Blech was born in Riga as the daughter of Sarah Chaje and Iwo Blech. In 1908 she married in Vienna to from Lviv originating lawyers Emil Merwin (born March 29, 1881) in the Polish school . In 1911 their daughter Magda was born. She later became a lawyer.

Thekla Merwin's first publications appeared in 1911, initially drawn with Thekla Merwin sheet metal. She published poems, feature sections, short prose works and dialogues in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including Arbeiter-Zeitung , Neue Freie Presse , Neues Wiener Tagblatt , and Die Frau . However, an independent publication did not come out. She also wrote about Oscar Wilde and Betty Paoli . Above all, she dealt with the outsiders of society. In 1933 Thekla Merwin became a member of the Association of Socialist Writers .

Emil Merwin died on August 12, 1934. Thekla Merwin found it difficult to raise the money for the spa stays that she had to do because of her diabetes. Thekla and Magda Merwin were in the on 24 September 1942 Terezin concentration camp deported . Mother and daughter were taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on October 19, 1944 and murdered in the gas chamber of Crematorium III on October 20, 1944.

literature

• Herbert Exenberger : Thekla Merwin - an Austrian writer . In: Yearbook 1991. Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. Editor: Siegwald Ganglmair. Vienna 1991, pp. 108-114
• Eckart Früh : Thekla Merwin. Even more . Self-published, Vienna 1998. Stitched brochure
• Alexander Emanuely : Thekla Merwin . In: Zwischenwelt. Journal of the Culture of Exile and Resistance. Vol. 29, 3/2012, p. 39f

Web links

Wikisource: Thekla Merwin  - Sources and full texts

• Entry in the Herbert Exenberger archive of the Theodor Kramer Society