Nathalie Sergueiew

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

There is also version.

Pauline Viardot-Garcia

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

There is also version.

Olga Korbut

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Katherine Anne Porter

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Florence Nightingale

Born 12 May 1820 in Florence
Died 13 August 1910 in London

British social reformer, statistician and pioneer of nursing profession
200th birthday on 12 May 2020

Florence Nightingale, the legendary „Lady of the Lamp,” gained initial fame for ministering to British soldiers during the Crimean War, and later for leading the professionalization of nursing as a career for women. But while her early exploits were romanticized in the media of the time – she had become a national icon by the age of 36 – her achievements in subsequent years extended far beyond the education of nurses. A tireless reformer and talented mathematician with a gift for administrative analysis, Nightingale made major contributions to the fields of statistics, military and public sanitation, and epidemiology in England and British India. Although she herself epitomized the independent-minded woman idealized by modern feminists, Nightingale herself was ambivalent about aims of the women’s movement of her day. Born into a wealthy but liberal Unitarian family, Florence and her older sister Parthenope received an early education like that usually reserved for boys. Their…read more

Nelly Sachs

born on December 10, 1891 in Berlin
died May 12, 1970 in Stockholm

German poet; winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1966)
130th birthday on December 10, 2021

She was almost murdered by the Nazis like her friends Gertrud Kolmar and Helene Herrmann, and we would not even know her name. For the later "poet of Jewish fate" and Nobel Prize winner for literature received the order for deportation and the visa to Sweden on the same day. Leonie ("Nelly") Sachs was the only child of wealthy Jewish parents. Her greatest desire was to become a dancer, but she also began writing at an early age. At the age of 17, she experienced a deep but hopeless love that decisively influenced her life and work; many of her later poems revolve around the "dead bridegroom" who (according to Hilde Domin) was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 and later murdered. Nelly Sachs never spoke about the beloved. On May 16, 1940, Nelly and Margarete Sachs arrived in Stockholm on the last plane from Berlin (their father had died in 1930). In addition to the hard work of survival (Sachs worked for a time as a laundress) and the exhausting care of her ailing mother, she…read more

Helene Weigel

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Amy Lowell

born on February 9, 1874 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
died on May 12, 1925 in Boston, Massachusetts/ United States

US-American poet, salonière, critic and book collector
150th birthday on February 9, 2024

Amy Lowell, a prominent American Imagist poet in the first quarter of the last century, came from a prestigious Boston family. It is said of the elite Boston Brahmins that "the Cabots speak only to the Lowells, and the Lowells speak only to God." In addition to being filthy rich, Amy was a very astute businesswoman; she succeeded in placing her texts in important literary journals and anthologies and her expressive oral renditions of the works attracted huge audiences. Stocky and suffering from obesity all her life, she was unable to pursue a career as an actress and instead brought her considerable acting talents to the stage for her readings. Like the Pennsylvanian Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell was clever, well-read, witty, self-confident, passionate and eccentric. The two mothers of modernism were born six days apart in the same year, but Amy Lowell — who otherwise knew "everyone who was anyone” in the American and European literary scenes and promoted, hosted and entertained…read more

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Pauline Strauss

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Else Frobenius

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Emma Goldman

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.

Helene Lange

This biography is not yet available in English.

You can find the German version here.