Mechtilde Lichnowsky

Mechtilde Christiane Marie Gräfin von Arco- and Zinneberg, better known as Mechtilde Lichnowsky ( born March 8, 1879 Castle Schoenburg, † June 4, 1958 in London, in a second marriage Mechtilde Peto ) was a German writer.

Life

Mechtilde Lichnowsky came from the count's family of Arco- Zinneberg and was a great-granddaughter of Maria Theresa. Her parents were Count Maximilian von Arco- and Zinneberg and his wife Baroness Olga von Werther.

In 1904, Arco- Zinneberg married the landowner and diplomat Karl Max Lichnowsky. The couple lived with their three children at the castles of Gratz and Kuchelna. Between 1912 and 1914 her husband was appointed German Ambassador to London, where he tried in vain to reach a settlement with Britain. In 1928, he passed away.

Already in Munich entertained Lichnowsky close contacts with writers like Carl Sternheim and Frank Wedekind. Even the theater director Max Reinhardt and the publisher Kurt Wolff belonged to their circle of friends. In Wolff's publishing her first, clearly influenced by expressionism works appeared, and later published including in the S. Fischer Verlag. A special friendship she joined the Viennese writer and The Torch editor Karl Kraus, with whom she maintained a long correspondence and for its Nestroy lectures, they composed the music.

1928 moved to southern France Lichnowsky. During the Nazi period, Lichnowsky refused to join the Reich Chamber, their works were banned then. 1937 Lichnowsky married her childhood friend, the British Major Ralph Harding Peto. When she made ​​a visit to Germany in 1939, she was detained and placed under police surveillance, separated from her second husband, she should not see, because he died on 3 September 1945.

The period of house arrest, she used to write the language and style critical book " words about words ", in which it, inter alia, Statements of Adolf Hitler ridicule surrendered. For Lichnowsky was already evident in the language of the barbarism of the Nazis. Publisher Peter Suhrkamp felt in 1939 but unable to publish her ​​book. This was done in 1949 in Vienna Bergland publisher.

In the summer of 1946, Lichnowsky settled in London. In 1954 she was awarded the Literature Prize of the city of Munich, and has also served the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts as a member.

Lichnowsky died on 4 June 1958 in London and was in the cemetery at Brookwood, Surrey, buried.

Name in different stages of life

Works

  • Gods, kings and animals in Egypt, Leipzig 1914
  • A game of death, Leipzig 1915
  • God prays, Leipzig 1918
  • The children's friend, Berlin 1919
  • Birth, Berlin 1921
  • The fight with the person skilled in Vienna 1924
  • Half & half, Vienna 1927
  • Rendezvous in the Zoo ( Querelles d' amoureux ), Vienna 1928
  • On a leash, S. Fischer Verlag 1930
  • Childhood, Berlin 1934
  • Deläide, Berlin 1935
  • The Pink House, Hamburg 1936
  • The course of the A flat major, Vienna 1936
  • Conversations in Sybaris. Tragedy of a City in 21 dialogues, Vienna 1946
  • Words about words, Vienna 1949
  • To look ordered, Esslingen 1953
  • Today and yesterday, Vienna 1958

Letters

  • Mechtilde Lichnowsky and Karl Kraus: Dear Princess! Letters and documents. 1916-1958, ed. by F. Pfäfflin, E. Dambach, among other things, Göttingen 2005
Chuchelná Kurt Wolff (publisher) Karl Kraus (writer) Neue Deutsche Biographie Integrated Authority File
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