Therese Tesdorpf-Sickenberger

Maria Therese Elisabeth Sickenberger (born January 24, 1853 in Weiherhammer , Upper Palatinate; † April 6, 1926 in Munich ) was a teacher and writer, she also published under the pseudonym Therese Singolt.

Live and act

Therese Sickenberger was born as the daughter of the mountain councilor Franz Sickenberger (1819-1893) and his wife Anna, b. Eckart was born in Weiherhammer , Upper Palatinate . Together with her siblings, including the pedagogue and center politician Hermann Sickenberger and the Catholic priest, anti-celibacy and philosopher Otto Sickenberger , she grew up in Munich.

After she left the Aschersche Girls ' Institute in Munich in 1868 , she became a teacher. At the end of 1871 she began working abroad as a teacher for several years, first in Sézanne in France and then in Rome and Naples. In 1879 she was employed by Amalia von Bourbon at the Bavarian royal court as the tutor of the princesses Clara von Bayern (1874-1941) and Elvira von Bayern (1868-1943).

1882 she suffered severe bouts of rheumatoid arthritis , she had the prestigious job in the royal court give up, was temporarily bedridden and in need of care and fell into depression. In the summer of 1883 she spent several months in the Friedrich Ritter von Hessings sanatorium in Göggingen , where she experienced relief from her physical and mental pain. She had written her first poems and prose in the early 1870s, but never went public with them. In Göggingen she made the decision to dedicate her energy to writing. She did this under the pseudonym Therese Singolt , who was inspired by the Singold stream that flowed through the spa area.

When her condition improved after her stay at the spa and in the course of further therapeutic treatments, she and her sister Sophie Sickenberger (1860–1928) founded the higher education courses for young girls in Munich's Burgstrasse , in which young girls from high society were educated and educated prepared for her future role as housewife and mother or educator. In 1898, the two siblings finally opened the María de la Paz girls' high school in Munich.

As a teacher, Therese Sickenberger was subject to the so-called celibacy of teachers , she had had a secret and brief love affair with the Catholic priest and art historian Joseph Popp (1867–1932) since 1898 at the latest . As early as 1896 she had met the psychiatrist Paul Hermann Tesdorpf (1858–1936), with whom she very quickly developed a close friendship and kinship. Tesdorpf, who himself had literary ambitions, was close friends with the writer Henriette Keller-Jordan (1835–1909), with whom Sickenberger quickly became friends. Together they ran a literary salon in Munich. When Keller-Jordan died, Sickenberger and Tesdorpf were married in 1910.

From then on, they published their own poetry and prose works together and translated works from English, French, Spanish and Latin. Sickenberger's poetry is shaped by nature and the experience of nature, where it mainly combines autobiographical and longing thoughts. Although she advocated women's education and women's rights, her poetry and prose are largely apolitical. Through her publications she quickly made a name for herself, especially in southern Germany, she published regularly in anthologies and magazines, and she was in contact with Munich writers such as Michael Georg Conrad .

On Christmas Eve 1923, Therese Sickenberger suffered a stroke that tied her to bed for the rest of her life and severely restricted her literary work. She died in Munich on April 6, 1926. Her private and artistic estate has been preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich .

Works

Therese Tesdorpf-Sickenberger published countless poems and prose works in newspapers and magazines such as the German poetry or the literary waiting , among her monographic publications

• Henri de Régnier : As a poet. Literary study (1912)
• Old-time fairy tales: Each with its moral (1912, translation of fairy tales by Charles Perrault )
• The medical didactic poem of the High School in Salerno (1915, together with Paul Hermann Tesdorpf , translation of the Latin text by Johann Christian Gottlieb Ackermann )
• Books of Happiness: Poems (1926, published posthumously by Paul Hermann Tesdorpf )
• Verses by Henri de Régnier (1932, published posthumously by Paul Hermann Tesdorpf)
• Ahnungsbang before a near storm: Poems (2019, posthumously edited by Marc Rothballer)

literature

• Sophie Pataky (Ed.): Sickenberger, Therese. In: Lexicon of German women of the pen. Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 301 (The biogram was written by Therese Sickenberger herself).
• Marc Rothballer: Weiherhammer in the literary memory of Therese Tesdorpf-Sickenberger (1853–1926). In: Oberpfälzer Heimat. Volume 63, 2019.
• Marc Rothballer (Ed.): Editorial note. In: Ahnungsbang before a near storm: Poems. Independently Published, Luxembourg 2019, pp. 64–69.

Web links

• Literature by and about Therese Tesdorpf-Sickenberger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Therese Tesdorpf-Sickenberger in German Biography , accessed on November 17, 2019.