Marieluise Fleißer (German: [maËŒÊ iË luˈiË zÉ™ ˈflaɪsÉ ]; 23
November 1901, Ingolstadt â€" 2 February 1974, Ingolstadt) was a
German author and playwright, most commonly associated with the
aesthetic movement and style of Neue Sachlichkeit, or New
Objectivity.Born in Ingolstadt in 1901 to Anna and Heinrich Fleißer,
a smith and hardware store owner, Fleißer was sent to a Catholic
convent school in Regensburg for her education, an experience which
would later be reflected in her first novel Ein Zierde für den
Verein: Roman vom Rauchen, Sporteln, Lieben und Verkaufen (1931).[1]
In 1919, she enrolled at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in
Munich, where she studied German literature, philosophy, and theater
under Arthur Kutscher, the founder of theater studies in Germany and
an influential critic and historian of literature; during this period,
her first time living on her own, she began writing short stories,
such as "Meine Zwillingsschwester Olga," which would be her first
publication in 1923.[2] It is during her time as a young student in
Munich that Fleißer befriended Lion Feuchtwanger and, through him,
Bertolt Brecht, with whom she would collaborate on her playwriting and
theatrical productions throughout the 1920s. Brecht would subsequently
help her throughout the decade to secure publishing opportunities and
support for her plays; conversely, Brecht often felt the liberty,
without her permission, to revise and take from her work, which caused
considerable strain on their relationship as well as Fleißer's
reputation.[3] Due to financial difficulties and the pressure of her
father, who wanted her to become a teacher, Fleißer returned to
Ingolstadt in 1924, where she would remain until moving to Berlin in
1926.[4] What was a personally fraught time for the young author was
artistically rich, as Fleißer wrote her first major play that would
ensure her breakthrough in Weimar Germany, Fegefeuer in Ingolstadt
(Purgatory in Ingolstadt) (1926). Her first success was followed by a
second, Pioniere in Ingolstadt (Pioneers in Ingolstadt) (1929), which
scandalized the public through Brecht's unauthorized changes,
transforming the piece into an explicitly anti-militaristic and
sexually daring satire of petit bourgeois mores and small-town
life.[5] Discussed in many of the major German newspapers of the time,
the scandal caused an uproar in her hometown: the mayor published a
rebuttal, distancing the city from its now most famous daughter, while
Fleißer's father temporarily disowned her.[6]During this tumultuous
period, which would prove to be the apex of her fame during her
lifetime, Fleißer also published a collection of short stories, Ein
Pfund Orangen (A Pound of Oranges, 1929), and became engaged to a
local swimming star in Ingolstadt, Bepp Haindl, which was later called
off in 1929.[7] After moving to Berlin, she worked as a freelance
journalist and author, publishing a travelogue about her journey
Andorra with her then fiancé, the arch-conservative journalist and
poet Hellmut Draws-Tychsen.[8] She sunk further into intellectual and
social isolation and financial troubles due to her liaison with the
notorious conservative, and her subsequent works published in the
early 1930s, such as the novel Ein Zierde für den Verein was met with
tepid reviews and sales.[9] This culminated in an attempted suicide in
1932 and her move back to Ingolstadt, where she married her first
fiancé, the shop owner Bepp Haindl, who forbid her from writing and
demanded that she work in his tobacco shop; her fall into contemporary
obscurity was sealed in 1935, when she partially forbidden to write by
the Nazis due to her leftist political sympathies and innovative
modernist style.[10] The 1930s and 1940s were a difficult period for
Fleißer, who suffered from mental illness and unhappiness caused by
the stresses and deprivations of war and the work demands placed on
her by her husband; after the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, she
managed to write little, such as the play Karl Stuart (1944).It was
only from the mid-1950s onwards that Fleißer began her gradual
reemergence as a known and celebrated writer. After the death of her
husband in 1958, she began writing in earnest again, such as the short
story "Avantgarde" (1963) and the play Der starke Stamm (1966), which
premiered at the Schaubühne in West Berlin.[11] Awarded a literary
prize by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1953 and invited to join
in 1954, Fleißer was "rediscovered" by a trio of famous young male
playwrights and critics, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Martin Sperr, and
Franz Xaver Kroetz (whom she nicknamed her "sons"), who brought her
major works of fiction and theater back into the public eye throughout
the 1960s and 1970s. For example, Pioneers in Ingolstadt was adapted
as a TV film by Fassbinder in 1971. Upon the publication of her
complete works, Gesammelte Werke (1972), by the renowned Suhrkamp
Verlag, she was award the Bavarian Order of Merit in 1973, before
dying on February 2, 1974.[12]
November 1901, Ingolstadt â€" 2 February 1974, Ingolstadt) was a
German author and playwright, most commonly associated with the
aesthetic movement and style of Neue Sachlichkeit, or New
Objectivity.Born in Ingolstadt in 1901 to Anna and Heinrich Fleißer,
a smith and hardware store owner, Fleißer was sent to a Catholic
convent school in Regensburg for her education, an experience which
would later be reflected in her first novel Ein Zierde für den
Verein: Roman vom Rauchen, Sporteln, Lieben und Verkaufen (1931).[1]
In 1919, she enrolled at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in
Munich, where she studied German literature, philosophy, and theater
under Arthur Kutscher, the founder of theater studies in Germany and
an influential critic and historian of literature; during this period,
her first time living on her own, she began writing short stories,
such as "Meine Zwillingsschwester Olga," which would be her first
publication in 1923.[2] It is during her time as a young student in
Munich that Fleißer befriended Lion Feuchtwanger and, through him,
Bertolt Brecht, with whom she would collaborate on her playwriting and
theatrical productions throughout the 1920s. Brecht would subsequently
help her throughout the decade to secure publishing opportunities and
support for her plays; conversely, Brecht often felt the liberty,
without her permission, to revise and take from her work, which caused
considerable strain on their relationship as well as Fleißer's
reputation.[3] Due to financial difficulties and the pressure of her
father, who wanted her to become a teacher, Fleißer returned to
Ingolstadt in 1924, where she would remain until moving to Berlin in
1926.[4] What was a personally fraught time for the young author was
artistically rich, as Fleißer wrote her first major play that would
ensure her breakthrough in Weimar Germany, Fegefeuer in Ingolstadt
(Purgatory in Ingolstadt) (1926). Her first success was followed by a
second, Pioniere in Ingolstadt (Pioneers in Ingolstadt) (1929), which
scandalized the public through Brecht's unauthorized changes,
transforming the piece into an explicitly anti-militaristic and
sexually daring satire of petit bourgeois mores and small-town
life.[5] Discussed in many of the major German newspapers of the time,
the scandal caused an uproar in her hometown: the mayor published a
rebuttal, distancing the city from its now most famous daughter, while
Fleißer's father temporarily disowned her.[6]During this tumultuous
period, which would prove to be the apex of her fame during her
lifetime, Fleißer also published a collection of short stories, Ein
Pfund Orangen (A Pound of Oranges, 1929), and became engaged to a
local swimming star in Ingolstadt, Bepp Haindl, which was later called
off in 1929.[7] After moving to Berlin, she worked as a freelance
journalist and author, publishing a travelogue about her journey
Andorra with her then fiancé, the arch-conservative journalist and
poet Hellmut Draws-Tychsen.[8] She sunk further into intellectual and
social isolation and financial troubles due to her liaison with the
notorious conservative, and her subsequent works published in the
early 1930s, such as the novel Ein Zierde für den Verein was met with
tepid reviews and sales.[9] This culminated in an attempted suicide in
1932 and her move back to Ingolstadt, where she married her first
fiancé, the shop owner Bepp Haindl, who forbid her from writing and
demanded that she work in his tobacco shop; her fall into contemporary
obscurity was sealed in 1935, when she partially forbidden to write by
the Nazis due to her leftist political sympathies and innovative
modernist style.[10] The 1930s and 1940s were a difficult period for
Fleißer, who suffered from mental illness and unhappiness caused by
the stresses and deprivations of war and the work demands placed on
her by her husband; after the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, she
managed to write little, such as the play Karl Stuart (1944).It was
only from the mid-1950s onwards that Fleißer began her gradual
reemergence as a known and celebrated writer. After the death of her
husband in 1958, she began writing in earnest again, such as the short
story "Avantgarde" (1963) and the play Der starke Stamm (1966), which
premiered at the Schaubühne in West Berlin.[11] Awarded a literary
prize by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1953 and invited to join
in 1954, Fleißer was "rediscovered" by a trio of famous young male
playwrights and critics, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Martin Sperr, and
Franz Xaver Kroetz (whom she nicknamed her "sons"), who brought her
major works of fiction and theater back into the public eye throughout
the 1960s and 1970s. For example, Pioneers in Ingolstadt was adapted
as a TV film by Fassbinder in 1971. Upon the publication of her
complete works, Gesammelte Werke (1972), by the renowned Suhrkamp
Verlag, she was award the Bavarian Order of Merit in 1973, before
dying on February 2, 1974.[12]
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