Anne Brontë

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

There is also version.

Alma M. Karlin

born on October 12, 1889 in Celje, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Slovenia)
died on January 14, 1950 in Celje, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia)

Slovenian writer, journalist, explorer, world traveler and painter
135th birthday on October 12, 2024

She was one of the most popular and widely read travel writers in the German-speaking world in the 1930s. Her books about an eight-year trip around the world — Einsame Weltreise (The Lonely Journey,1929), Im Banne der Südsee (Enchanted by the South Sea, 1930) and Erlebte Welt (The Experienced World, 1933) — were all bestsellers despite the economic crisis. Childhood and youth Alma Maximiliana Karlin was the only child of Willibalda Miheljak, a teacher at a girls' school, and Jakob Karlin, a retired Austro-Hungarian army officer. She was born paralyzed on one side in 1889; a doctor foresaw a short life during which she would remain physically and mentally disabled. She was raised speaking German in the small town of Celje (then Austria-Hungary, now Slovenia). As it turned out, the doctor had erred: Alma M. Karlin was a highly intelligent child who would travel the world on her own as an adult. Her only confidant and friend in early childhood was her father, who died when she…read more

Jekaterina Daschkowa

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Eleanor Marx

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Lorraine Hansberry

born May 19, 1930 in Chicago
died January 12, 1965 in New York City

US-American playwright
50th anniversary of death on 12 January 2015

Lorraine Hansberry, child of a cultured, middle-class black family but early exposed to the poverty and discrimination suffered by most blacks in America, fought passionately against racism in her writings and throughout her life. Best known for her plays, Hansberry was the first black woman to write a Broadway drama; A Raisin in the Sun (1959) became the longest-running black play in Broadway's history and made many consider Hansberry the most promising playwright of her generation, although her career was cut short by her early death. Angry about the way blacks had been portrayed in literature by whites, she intended to show "that we have among our miserable and downtrodden ranks people who are the very essence of human dignity." Hansberry's father was a successful real estate broker and founded one of the first Negro banks in Chicago. Her mother, a major force in Hansberry's life, had been a hairdresser, cashier, and schoolteacher in the south, and like her father, was…read more

Maybrit Illner

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Adelheid Reinbold

German Writer

bon January 15, 1800 in Hannover
died February 14, 1839 in Dresden

From the recollections and acknowledgements of Adelheid Reinbold's contemporaries emerges virtually the ideal image of a woman: talented and cultured, politically engaged (liberal-progressive), charming and cheerful, self-confident yet modest, and on top of all that young, beautiful and slender. The shadow over this image was that she apparently had to suffer malicious gossip: from her letters and novellas one can surmise she experienced a tragic love affair. "Endowed with a masculine power in her talent, she was nevertheless truly feminine in her nature" – such was the judgment of virtually all who expressed their sadness at the sudden death of Adelheid Reinbold. She had just begun her literary career, and her early death is probably the reason that she has remained so completely unknown to us. Only the "Idyll-Novella" Irrwisch-Fritze, (Will o' the Wisp Fritze) – according to Ludwig Tieck a "masterful portrait . . . so truly German . . . so simple, naive, mischievous, the…read more

Mireille Best

born June 4, 1943 in Le Havre, France
died January 16, 2005 in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, France

French writer
20th anniversary of her death on January 16, 2025

Mireille Best was a master of the art of omission. In Les Mots de hasard, published in 1980, as well as in the books that followed, she conveyed the struggle two people – in most cases two women – have to communicate and how difficult it is for the one to find an opening to the other as much through what is left out or unsaid as through the words exchanged. She was born during the Second World War in Le Havre, a city that was completely destroyed by bombing. Her father was a metalworker and her mother was 'without a profession,' as it was put. Her family had such severe housing problems that Mireille grew up with her maternal grandmother, a travelling fishmonger. Mireille was hard of hearing and had a lung disease and was unable to attend school regularly until she was twelve years old. It was therefore her beloved mémé who taught her reading, writing, and arithmetic and who introduced her to Victor Hugo's Les Misérables at the age of five. Mireille would later adopt her…read more

Ida Dehmel

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Marie von Bunsen

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Sibilla Aleramo

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Emmy Ball-Hennings

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Barbara Uthmann

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.