Unica Zürn

Unica Zürn ( born July 6, 1916 in Berlin -Grunewald as Nora Berta Ruth Zürn, † October 19th 1970 in Paris) was a German writer and illustrator.

Life

Unica Zürn attended high school, but she left before the final examination in Berlin. From 1934 to 1942 she was employed by the Ufa, initially. As secretary and archivist, and later as a dramaturge for commercials In 1942 she married Erich Laupenmühlen, with whom she had two children. In 1949 this marriage ended in divorce, the father got custody awarded. From 1949 to 1955, she earned her living by writing stories for Berlin newspapers.

In 1953 she met the artist Hans Bellmer, with whom she developed a close relationship in the sequence. Zürn followed him to Paris, where she began to draw and write anagrams. 1953 and 1957 their drawings were exhibited in Paris. From 1957, they maintained contacts with the Paris Surrealists Hans Arp, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Henri Michaux and began working on surrealist prose pieces.

In 1959, Unica Zürn was a participant of the documenta II in Kassel in the Department of graphics. Beginning of the sixties came with her paranoid schizophrenia to the outbreak. From 1961 to 1963 she therefore remained in a psychiatric hospital in Paris, and also in the following years, several more times to hospitalization. In 1967, she had in Hannover together with Hans Bellmer her first major exhibition in Germany. The summer of 1970 she spent in the open psychiatric hospital Château de la Chesnaie de Chailles. Here, her condition improved for the first time since the outbreak of the disease significantly. On 18 October, she was on leave for a few days from the hospital stay. On October 19, 1970, she committed suicide by jumping from a window of the apartment Hans Bellmer.

Unica Zürn literary work that has received little attention during his lifetime, consisting of a combination autobiographical embossed and often fragmentary prose that has especially their romantic relationships, their disease and its treatment on the subject, on the other, poetic lyrics, of which their 123 anagram poems are the most important.

Trivia

A congenial anagram of her name was Oskar Pastior: " Unica Zuern - Azur in nuce " ( sky blue in a Nutshell ').

Works

  • Witches texts, Berlin 1954
  • Dark Spring, Hamburg 1969
  • The man in the jasmine, Frankfurt / M. [ among others ] 1977
  • In the dust of this life, Berlin 1980
  • The White with the red dot, Berlin 1981
  • The House of the disease, Berlin 1986
  • Complete edition, Berlin Vol 1, Anagrams, 1988
  • Vol 2 Prose 1, 1989
  • Vol 3 prose 2, 1991
  • Vol 4.1. Prose 3, 1991
  • Vol 4.2. Prose 4, 1998
  • Vol 4.3. Notes, letters, documents, 1999
  • Vol 5 records, 1989
  • Vol 6 letters, documents, radio, 2001

Exhibition catalogs

  • Unica Zürn: watercolors, drawings, etchings, Hannover 1967
  • Unica Zürn: images 1953 - 1970, Berlin 1998

Musical settings

  • Bernhard Arndt: Anagrams
  • Unsuk Chin: Kalá (2000 ) for soprano, bass, mixed choir and orchestra. Texts: Gerhard Ruhm, Inger Christensen, Unica Zürn, Gunnar Ekelöf, Arthur Rimbaud, Paavo Haavikko. World premiere March 9, 2001 in Gothenburg Concert Hall; Piia Komsi (soprano ), Martin Snell ( bass), Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Choir of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Péter Eötvös
  • Uwe Strübing: Six unicate for V. D. (op. 37, 1998). Song cycle for soprano and piano. Texts: Anagrams of Unica Zürn. UA October 5, 2000 Schwandorf ( Oberpfalz House of Artists ); Valentine Deschenaux (soprano), Rume Urano (piano)
  • Burkhard Stangl: Three Songs (1994 ) for three female voices and ensemble by Unica Zürn Anagrammgedichten. World Premiere October 26, 1994, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Sainkho Namtchylak Renate Burtscher, Eva Hosemann (vocals), Ensemble maxixe
Universum Film AG Surrealism Jean Arp Hanover Autobiography Literary fragment Integrated Authority File
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