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news of 28.09.2009E nglische novels from Pomerania
Just before the turn of the century, 1898, appeared in London "Elizabeth and Her German Garden". Written in a refreshingly light-hearted style, it was a best seller, brought in the eight months to the end of it, the book runs to 11, were already there in May 1899 21st Even in 1914, it was reprinted several times a year. The Fact that it was published anonymously, gave rise to wild speculation on where the time involved, even the prestigious Daily Mail. She dedicated the guesswork out a full page and drew three authors in the shortlist. In addition to Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Irene of Prussia, and Daisy, Princess of Pless, the book of the real author, Mary Anne Countess von Arnim, née Beauchamp was capable of. For a short time was "Elizabeth" has gone on this way to the famous writer in the English speaking and publish the most of their now following, highly autobiographical books with the words "From the author of Elizabeth and her garden." As Elizabeth von Arnim, she was in the German-speaking countries, however only in the 1990s, a renaissance if exercised their books.
The 40-year-old Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941): The author was born Mary Annette Beauchamp. Repro: Mary Annette Beauchamp Rengert Bernhard is 31 August 1866 in Kirribilli Point (now part of Sydney), Australia, the daughter of English parents. The family went back to London in 1870, after the father had brought into Australia as a merchant of wealth. On a trip to Italy in May 1889 in Florence, known to the widowed, 16 years earlier German Count Henning August von Arnim from the home-Golm Güstow. According to his mother, Elisabeth Louise of Prillwitz, illegitimate daughter of Prince August von Hohenzollern, inherited property, but he called himself "von Arnim-Schlagenthin. He tried successfully for the return of the goods of his father, Harry, Graf von Arnim Suckow. The marriage was May 1891 in London to the German citizenship. The young couple moved to Berlin, where she was not feeling well. Even with her step-mother, Sophie Adelheid von Arnim from the house Boitzenburg, the petite, energetic young woman is probably never have become quite warm. As the May Henning again awarded Good wet Heather learns she is thrilled. 1896 applies to the family, which already belong to the daughters of Eve, Elizabeth and Beatrice, Felix in 1899, followed the north-west of Szczecin estate. "Elizabeth and her garden" is the creative fruit of May's early years Pomeranian on this estate. In today's Polish Rzedziny, a few miles east of the border villages and Pampow Blankensee the Uecker-Randow district, remembers little of the May - which was called after her initial success of Elizabeth - in circumstances described in several books wet heath. "The gray stone house with its many gables," the "very old and has been extended several times" and before the Thirty Years War should have been a nunnery, has disappeared. Also, the refuge, which Elizabeth can be created in the park had to write undisturbed, it no longer exists. Except for a few outbuildings in Rzedziny nothing reminds us of the Pomeranian manor house, and at that time was also visited by other English authors who wrote here, some of its plants. The summer months of 1897 and 1898, the family spent on complaints. In the summer of 1901 we find Elizabeth again complaints - no family. With a four-horse drawn light, closed carriage, she collapsed on her English friend Oona mid-July. Followed by an open car with the luggage and the maids. Elizabeth had previously studied maps and guidebooks read. There should be a research trip for a new book and were quite aware of the two women on this adventure. The result is "The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen," a travel book that was printed in 1904 in London. was between this trip and the completion of the book in October 1902, the birth of her last child, the man of her long-awaited male heir, Bernd Henning. While the English version was received with enthusiasm, was the first German edition coming. That was a reason. Self-confidence as a woman alone, that is, except for a driver without a male escort, to take that trip around in Wilhelmine Germany, had to be regarded as scandalous at the time simply because they all common ideas contradicted. In Britain, the novel will hardly have the time triggered a wave of British travel to the island. A decade before the First World War, he served well, especially the prejudices of the English to German and seemed to prove quite clear that Elizabeth was in fact always Englishwoman. Today this can be read much more differentiated. With delicate irony, some satirical remark, and tinged with scorn Elizabeth takes the circumstances of their time and occasionally poke fun at themselves without really hurting. Delicious as it integrates a "cousin Charlotte" in the act, it occasionally presents in her militant feminism just yet their own views with it transported. Who "Elizabeth auf Rügen" on hand will be tried after the first few pages, to imitate the heroine and to make a trip to complaints, as she describes it. This is still possible and not only shows what has changed since then. The sites are visited by Elizabeth today to the canon of travel complaints: Lauterbach, the Vilm, Göhren, Thiessow, Sellin, Binz, the Stubbenkammer, Glowe, Wiek and Hiddensee. Matter of taste whether one day using the ferry at Stahlbrode or Rügendamm. The view from the tower of the hunting lodge Granitz, however, should not be missed, and the peculiar delicacy of "flounder and this hot gooseberry jelly, "leaving the author in taste Glowe refers to as the" Baltic Sea plaice with hot gooseberries, "for example on the menu at the inn" Zur Linde "in Middelhagen. He is the oldest evidence on the island and it just has not visited Elizabeth, according to their description. The result is also the author of this seventh book in wet heath. In the long run it seemed neither marriage to Henning von Arnim still bring the estate to be really lucky. They increasingly Elizabeth moved to England to visit friends and relatives. In 1899, she was shocked by the unexpected arrest of her husband, even though the charges against him were finally settled in grueling court proceedings. The story seemed to be repeating itself in dramatic fashion. 1874 Henning's father already had been arrested in wet heath. He had then have to go into exile to escape the prison sentence imposed on him. Elizabeth's husband, who often appears in her books as "the Grim", had paid on the barren soil of his estate with dedication of breeding resistant potato varieties. Permanent economic success will be sold to him remained refused, the estate had to avert the threat of foreclosure 1910th A little later, on 20 August 1910 dies, Henning von Arnim seriously ill in a sanatorium in Bad Kissingen. With the somewhat one-sided attribute of the "grim" while Elizabeth has it that she let into her literary ambitions, their penchant for sentimental transfiguration, for feminism as a conservative Landadliger share but could not, well done wrong. After they had moved in 1908 with her children to England, was later successfully sought again to the British citizenship and in 1916 an unhappy second marriage to Francis Russell, Earl of Amberley, received, Elizabeth finally the wanderer between the worlds. She writes her books, lives temporarily in Switzerland and later in southern France, and moved the U.S. in 1939, where they lived almost exclusively in hotels. On 9 February 1941 Mary Anne (Elizabeth), Countess Russell is in Charleston, South Carolina, died. After the war, her urn was transferred to England and nestled on the side of her brother Sydney in the cemetery at Penn to rest. In his obituary noted her longtime friend and fellow writer Hugh Walpole (1884-1964), who for a time worked as a tutor of their children in wet heath, not only that she had written some of the funniest novels in English, but also to that he may find another "Elizabeth auf Rügen" the most, and declared: "I think one or two of her books are as small have classic stock. "Bernhard Rengert
