Elena Zendler, M.A.

Dissertation Project:

Late-Life Realities of Female Writers from Munich's 'Fin de Siècle'

Everyday Life, Networks, Precarisations

At the end of the 19th century, Munich was considered one of the most important centres of art
in Europe, attracting numerous writers, painters, actors, and other creative people. They met and
networked in coffee houses, artists' pubs, literary salons, and associations. In the historiography
of art and literature, it was, and remains, mainly the male artists from this period who are
remembered. However, there were also numerous female artists living and working alongside
them. Yet, it is only in recent years that their contributions and successes have gradually been
"rediscovered". Many of these women are still only known to experts, if at all.

This dissertation project aims to offer insights into the biographies of female writers who lived and
worked in Munich during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and who have thus far received
limited scholarly attention. It highlights previously overlooked aspects of their life realities, with a
focus on their later years – a period often marked by uncertainty, precarisation, and social
marginalisation, particularly during the era of Nazism. This phase of life has, until now, been only
briefly explored in research on female artists, which typically concentrates on their “most active”
younger years. However, many of the female writers who worked in Munich during the time of the
so called 'Fin de Siècle' remained creatively active into old age, despite being largely unnoticed
during their later lifetimes.

The focus is on the writer Helene Böhlau (1856–1940), in particular due to the opportunity to
access documents from the private collection of her descendants. Furthermore, the project
includes a comprehensive examination of the writers Regina Ullmann (1884–1961) and Anna
Croissant-Rust (1860–1943), as well as the musician and writer Margarethe Quidde (1858–1940).
Throughout their lives, all of them maintained wide-ranging networks within Munich, and their
estates contain numerous correspondences from their later years, which open up new research
potential.

The project explores the individual and societal challenges faced by these female writers due to
their gender and their – for the time – often unconventional lifestyle. For the purpose of
contextualisation, the life realities of other female writers of that time are also briefly examined. It
then analyses how these women's life realities evolved in old age, how both they and their
surroundings recognized their potential precariousness, and the role that social networks played
for them in later life.

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Irene Götz