-
Elisabeth Freundlich
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
There is also version.
-
Anna Maria Jokl
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
There is also version.
-
born on January 21, 1901, in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany
died on September 7, 1990, in Björnlunda, Sweden
German-Swedish racing driver; farmer; together with her driver and later husband, she was the first person to circumnavigate the globe by car
125th birthday on January 21, 2026
Clärenore Stinnes caused an international sensation from 1927 to 1929 when she was the first to drive around the world. Self-confident, athletic, and cosmopolitan, she wanted to travel and to see the world with her own eyes. “I'm setting off to the east and returning from the west.” The seemingly impossible became reality, even though there were hardly any roads suitable for cars outside the major cities in the United States and in Europe, and gas stations were rare. She was determined to prove what a German-built car could endure; her determination was in part a result of the upbringing she had enjoyed as a child and in part due to her frustration that many countries in the 1920s were choosing to avoid doing business with Germany. Above all, however, she was a bold and fearless racing driver.
Clärenore Stinnes grew up as the eldest daughter in a distinguished family in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Her mother, Cläre Stinnes-Wagenknecht (1872-1973), ran the household, while her…read more
-
Ruth Berghaus
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
born on January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas, United States
died on February 14, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland
American writer
30th anniversary of death on February 14, 2025
“I have always only ever been interested in the criminal traits and tendencies of those in society who appear to be ordinary; I have no interest in solving a murder case.”
Patricia Highsmith published twenty novels and seven volumes of short stories during her lifetime. Millions of readers identified with her criminals. Take, for example, the “talented” Tom Ripley, who first appeared on the scene in 1955: a charming, intelligent, and utterly unscrupulous blackmailer with plans for a more pleasant life. She had already explored the depths of the human soul in her first novel, Strangers on a Train, which appeared in 1950 after having been rejected by six publishers. That same year, Raymond Chandler adapted the book into a screenplay for a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock that then made Patricia Highsmith world-famous.
She had come across a psychiatric textbook by Karl Menninger, The Human Mind, in her parents' library when she was nine years old. “It was a book of case…read more
-
Sawako Ariyoshi
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
Minna Planer
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
Anna von Österreich
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
born August 10, 1805 in Berlin
died on January 25, 1881 in Wiesbaden
German socialist
220th birthday on August 10, 2025
The name of Sophie von Hatzfeldt, the "red countess", is intimately linked with Ferdinand Lassalle, the German socialist, of whom she says, "We are identified in our thoughts and actions and in our lives to such a degree that his success seems to me like mine and he also is in need of me in everything."
In 1846, when she met Lasalle, she had already endured 23 years of an unbearable marriage, arranged for financial and dynastic reasons. Married at 17 to her cousin Count Edmund von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg she had been humiliated from the first day by her spouse, who had spurned her on their wedding night in favor of his mistress. Her later attempts to lead an independent life resulted in her husband cutting her allowance, trying to take away the children and house arrest. The countess, who through this ordeal had turned into a courageous and independent woman, was no longer willing to suffer in silence, as her family demanded. When her beloved six-year-old son Paul was kidnapped…read more
-
Queen Victoria
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
born on January 7, 1904 in Berlin. Germany
died on January 19, 1966 in New York City, USA
German-US-American actress, writer, journalist and translator
120th birthday on January 7, 2024
She was a woman of many names. Born in 1904, she was first named after her father, the engineer Eduard Levy, but then, like her two older brothers, called herself after her mother, the opera singer Else Landshoff. During the Weimar Republic, she was known as Rut Landshoff - Rut without the h she had deemed superfluous. Through her marriage she became Countess Yorck; in the USA she was known as Ruth Yorck; and after the Second World War she used Ruth Landshoff-Yorck in Germany.
She came from a middle-class Jewish family and grew up in Berlin. Her uncle was the well-known publisher Samuel Fischer, who introduced young Ruth to literary greats such as Thomas Mann and Gerhart Hauptmann.
She was discovered by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau while still a schoolgirl and played the role of Ruth in his film Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror (1922). She also made a brief appearance in the silent film Die Gezeichneten (Love One Another, 1922) by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
After finishing secondary…read more
-
Agnes von Böhmen
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
Anna Pavlova
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
Ilse Fromm-Michaels
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
Harriot Stanton Blatch
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
-
born on November 14, 1925, in Ahlbeck on the island of Usedom, Germany
died on January 19, 2006, in Berlin, Germany
German political journalist, radio editor, and author
100th birthday on November 14, 2025
"Who am I? Someone who has had almost as many names as professions! People knew me as a farm worker in the Eichsfeld region and as a teacher in the Markian district, as a librarian at a rocket research institute in the southern Harz mountains and as a party functionary in Potsdam and Kleinmachnow, and then as a student, assistant, and journalist in West Berlin. In Cologne, I was an editor at a publishing house, a co-founder of a magazine, and spent my happiest professional years at WDR. I had always written, but I didn’t decide to become a writer until after I retired.“
These are the opening sentences in Carola Stern’s Doppelleben (Double Life, 2001). Nobody knew that she had actually also worked in espionage until she revealed in the autobiography that she had spied for the Americans.
Erika Assmus, who decided to call herself Carola Stern at the beginning of her career in journalism in the 1950s, grew up on the Baltic island of Usedom. Her mother was the owner of a guest…read more
