Wilhelmine von Hillern

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Wilhelmine von Hillern as a young woman ( Friedrich Gustav Adolf Neumann )Wilhelmine von Hillern signature.jpg

Wilhelmine von Hillern , b. Wilhelmine Birch (born March 11, 1836 in Munich , † December 25, 1916 in Hohenaschau near Prien ) was a German writer whose most successful work Die Geier-Wally has been filmed many times to this day. Before her marriage, Wilhelmine von Hillern was also successful as an actress under her maiden name Wilhelmine Birch .

Life

Early years as an actress

Wilhelmine von Hillern was born as the only child of the actress and writer Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer and the writer, dramaturge and theater critic Andreas Christian Birch . She received careful training from private tutors. Her father taught her languages, music and literature. The idols of her childhood and youth, some of whom she got to know herself in her parents' house, were Helene von Hülsen , Gustav Heinrich Gans Edler Herr zu Putlitz , Julius Rodenberg , Gustav Freytag , Friedrich von Flotow and Jenny Lind , among others in 1905 “will always remain the highest female ideal”. She was close friends with the writer Felix Dahn .

The mother Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer 1831

Wilhelmine von Hillern was only allowed to visit the theater for the first time when she was 12 years old. She decided from the game Bogumil Dawisons and Rachel enthusiastically against her mother's wishes to become an actress herself. Under the protectorate of her friend Alexandrine von Baden , she began her career at the Gotha Court Theater in 1853 in the role of Julia. In the following years she gave guest performances at court theaters in Braunschweig, Karlsruhe, Berlin and at city theaters in Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main. In Mannheim she got an engagement at the court and national theater in 1856, so she became Grand Ducal Baden court and national actress, and appeared in the world premiere of the dramatic poem Die Huldigung des Landes by Hermann von Hillern from Karlsruhe. She began a secret love affair with him and was "on the point of [...] becoming a German Rachel" when she became pregnant by Hermann von Hillern.

In 1857 she married Hermann von Hillern, the Baden court judge and later president of the Freiburg Regional Court, and ended her stage career. The son born by Wilhelmine soon after the marriage, whose illegitimate conception was scandalous by the standards of the time and should therefore be covered up, died 13 days after the birth. Rumors that he died of deliberate malnutrition led to Hermann von Hillern's forcible transfer to Freiburg im Breisgau . There are three daughters from the marriage, one of whom Hermine Diemer, born in 1859, also became a writer.

In 1865 Wilhelmine von Hillern published her first novel Doppelleben , which, like the following publication A Doctor of the Soul (1869), was well received by the public. Her novel On Your Own Power was included in the popular journal Die Gartenlaube in 1870 and was published in book form in 1872.

The Vulture Wally (1875)

Wilhelmine von Hillern around 1885

Wilhelmine von Hillern's greatest success was her novel Die Geier-Wally in 1875 , which is based on an anecdote from Anna Stainer-Knittel's youth , whom Wilhelmine von Hillern met in Innsbruck in 1870. At the age of 17, Anna Steiner-Knittel had gutted an eagle's nest on a rock wall hanging from a rope, which was common practice to protect flocks of sheep, but it was a job for men. Wilhelmine von Hillern created a dramatic homeland novel from the actual event, in which the main female character Walburga refuses to accept the conventions of femininity and lives her youth as a tomboy out of harsh nature.

Shortly after its publication, the novel was translated into eight languages ​​in book form and, after the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71), was the first German novel to appear in excerpts in France in the Revue des Deux Mondes and later translated by Hachette (under the title La fille au Vautour ). Wilhelmine von Hillern wrote a play of the same name based on her novel in 1880, which was performed on numerous German theaters from 1881. In the 20th century, the material was also filmed several times based on Wilhelmine von Hillern's novel. In retrospect, Wilhelmine von Hillern assessed her novel Die Geier-Wally as rather mediocre in comparison to her later works, which she felt as “deeper and more psychologically worked through problems” that “cannot be compared with the impulse of youthful creative joy”.

The Hillern-Schlößl in Oberammergau
Wilhelmine von Hillern around 1905

The Oberammergau years 1883–1911 and her death in 1916

Shortly after the Geier-Wally was published , Wilhelmine von Hillern interrupted her writing. She cared for her seriously ill husband, who died in 1882. In 1883 she moved to Oberammergau to live with Hermine Diemer, moved in the highest aristocratic circles and had the so-called Hillern-Schlössl built for herself . She worked with Alfredo Catalani on the libretto of the opera La Wally , which premiered in Milan in 1892. Her last work, A Slave of Freedom , was written in 1903. A year later she converted to the Catholic faith in Ettal Abbey . She sold the Hillern-Schlössl in 1910 and moved to Hohenaschau near Prien in 1911, where she died in 1916. She found her final resting place in the parish cemetery in Oberammergau .

Literary development, style and meaning

The contemporary works of Wilhelmine von Hillern are entertainment novels and plays from the Biedermeier era. Around 1900 her writing turned more to the homeland and mountain novel, in which Wilhelmine von Hillern was influenced by works by Felix Dahn and Berthold Auerbach , among others . After 1900, her works also show clear religious references.

“The language of her novels has a tendency towards strong effects and drama; but it rarely succeeds in getting beyond stereotypes. The myth of blood and soil pervades the event. "

- Gisela Bisterfeld

In her time, her comedies were also great hits with audiences. An autograph collector and The Eyes of Love saw several hundred performances, especially at the court theaters in Dresden and Berlin.

If East Prussia is looked down with pity and regret everywhere in the German Reich , for Fritz Milkau this was mainly due to the distorting statements about Masuria in Wilhelmine von Hillern's novel “Aus Eigenkraft” (From Own Strength).

Works

Novels

Novellas and short stories

  • Higher than the church. An old story. Paetel, Berlin 1877. ( digitized version )
  • And she's coming! Story from a thirteenth century Alpine monastery. Paetel, Berlin 1879. ( digitized version )
  • The skald. An epic poem. Duncker, Berlin 1882.
  • The cemetery flower. Novella. Paetel, Berlin 1883. ( Digital new edition 2018 )
  • Higher than the church. An old story. Paetel, Berlin 1877. ( digitized version )
  • 'S rice on the way. A story from the Isarwinkel. Cotta, Stuttgart 1897.

Plays

literature

  • Heinrich Groß: Germany's female poets and writers . Thiel, Berlin 1882, pp. 131f.
  • Heinrich Groß: Germany's female poets and writers in words and pictures . Volume 2. Thiel, Berlin 1885, pp. 477-484.
  • Hillern, Wilhelmine v. . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 355 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Fritz Abshoff: Forming Spirits. Our most important poets and writers of the present and the past in characteristic autobiographies . Oestergaard, Berlin 1905, p. 48.
  • Franz Brümmer: Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the present . Reclam, Leipzig 1913, p. 214.
  • Gisela Bisterfeld:  Hillern, Wilhelmine von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 156 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Elisabeth Friedrichs: Lexicon of German-speaking women writers of the 18th and 19th centuries . Metzler, Stuttgart 1981, p. 131.
  • Susanne Kord: A look behind the scenes. German-speaking playwrights of the 18th and 19th centuries . Metzler, Stuttgart 1992, pp. 285f., 384.
  • Gerhard J. Bellinger and Brigitte Regel-Bellinger : Schwabings Ainmillerstrasse and its most important residents. A representative example of Munich's city history from 1888 to today. Norderstedt 2003, pp. 147-148 - ISBN 3-8330-0747-8 ; 2nd edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-8482-2883-6 ; E-Book 2013, ISBN 978-3-8482-6264-9 .

Web links

Wikisource: Wilhelmine von Hillern  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Wilhelmine von Hillern  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelmine von Hillern: autobiography. In: Bildende Geister , p. 48.
  2. ↑ Forming Spirits, p. 48.
  3. ^ Brümmer, p. 215.
  4. ^ Brümmer, p. 215.
  5. ↑ Groß (1882), p. 131.
  6. ^ Wilhelm Güde: From the Freiburg Oberhof to the Freiburg Regional Court . In: Festschrift 200 years of the Badisches Oberhofgericht, Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court . Karlsruhe 2003, p. 329.
  7. ↑ Die Geier-Wally first appeared as a serialized novel in 1873 and was published in 1875 as a novel in two volumes.
  8. ↑ Forming Spirits, p. 48.
  9. ^ NDB, 1972.
  10. ↑ Forming Spirits, p. 48.
  11. ↑ Inventor of interlibrary loan and union catalog. Fritz Milkau was a pioneer as a librarian - a committed champion for the reputation of his homeland East Prussia . In: Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 39, September 26, 2009.
  12. ↑ No copy can be found
personal data
SURNAME Hillern, Wilhelmine von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Birch, Wilhelmine (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1916
Place of death Hohenaschau near Prien