Irmgard Keun
Encyclopedia
Irmgard Keun was a German author noteworthy both for her portrayals of life in the Weimar Republic
as well as the early years of the Nazi Germany
era.
(Charlottenburg
) to Eduard and Elsa Charlotte Keun on February 6, 1905. She and her family, including her brother Gerd, born in 1910, lived in the city until 1913, when they moved to Cologne. There Keun attended an evangelical girls' school, from which she graduated in 1921. She worked as a stenotypist, but also attended acting school in Cologne from 1925-1927. Although she then landed stage roles in Greifswald
and Hamburg
, these were only somewhat successful, and she decided to abandon her acting career in 1929. Encouraged by German writer Alfred Döblin
, she turned her hand to writing.
In 1932, she married the writer and director Johannes Tralow. They divorced in 1937.
Keun's first novel, Gilgi - One of Us, made her famous, as well as her next book and best-seller, The Artificial Silk Girl.
In 1933/34, her books were confiscated and forbidden by the Nazis. She went into exile from 1936–1940, first to Ostend
in Belgium
and later to Holland
.
Keun received great acclaim for her sharp-witted books, most notably from such well-known authors as Alfred Döblin
and Kurt Tucholsky
, who said about her, "A woman writer with humor, check this out!". She counted among her friends such literary notables as Egon Erwin Kisch
, Hermann Kesten
, Stefan Zweig
, Ernst Toller
, Ernst Weiss
, and Heinrich Mann
. From 1936 to 1938, she had a romantic relationship with Joseph Roth
, a relationship that at first had a positive effect on her literary output. She worked together with Roth, traveling with him to various cities such as Paris
, Wilna, Lemberg, Warsaw
, Vienna
, Salzburg
, Brussels
and Amsterdam
. After the German invasion of the Netherlands
, she returned in 1940 to Nazi Germany. Protected by false reports of her own suicide, she lived there undercover until 1945.
The novel opens with Gilgi working as a legal secretary. Gilgi is a structured and ordered person at the beginning, living with her parents; she takes English, Spanish and French language classes overnight, so that she is less likely to be unemployed in the mounting unemployment crisis. Additionally, she rises early every morning to do a strict exercise and beauty regime, which she is obviously proud of.
After falling in love with Martin, Gilgi quits her job, and abandons her former lifestyle, (including the independence she was so proud of), and she begins a life of leisure supported by him.
Gilgi later meets a former colleague of hers, Hans, who has been forced to make a living as a door to door salesman, a job which brings in barely enough to sustain him, his wife, and two children. On a second encounter, she finds out that Hans will be imprisoned if he cannot raise 500 marks before the end of the day. Gilgi is shocked into action, and she decides to seek out her real, wealthy mother to ask her for the money. So she finds her, and the meeting turns out to be something of an anti-climax, as she is so preoccupied with raising the money to help Hans that she forgets to ask about the identity of her real father. Gilgi’s mother is unable to get cash at the last minute, so she gives her all of the jewelled rings that she is wearing.
However, when Gilgi returns home and encounters Martin, he misunderstands her garbled account events, and assuming that Hans is an ex-lover, he begs Gilgi not to deliver the jewels to Hans, but to stay with him instead. Gilgi does, but the next morning she learns that Hans has committed suicide, gassing not only himself, but also his whole family.
At the close of the novel, Gilgi has left Martin, and is moving to Berlin, where she will go back to work once more, and raise the child she is expecting as a single mother. So, in effect, she returns to her former independent lifestyle, and makes a brave choice to stand alone as a single mother- something which was still somewhat socially stigmatising in Weimar Germany. In the subplot Gilgi tries to procure an abortion, but decides not to go through with it.
Important themes dealt with in the novel include sexual harassment, the concept of the “New Woman”, and labour, domesticity, and femininity in the Weimar Republic. After being invited to dinner by her boss, Gilgi arranges for a friend to turn up at just the right moment to rescue her from his predatory advances. Weimar republic Gilgi epitomised the “New woman” that so fascinated contemporaries. There was an explosion in the numbers of female office workers in both Germany and France after 1920’s. Popular press and literature often promoted these professions. Women were attracted by the promise of greater freedom as empowered and emancipated working women and city dwellers with lots of opportunities in leisure time. Women in the office were seen as modernity incarnate, although the reality was often very different.
There are definite similarities between the author, Irmgard Keun, and the protagonist, as Keun also lived in Cologne and was a steno-typist. However, the novel is not autobiographical. Between 1933/1934 Keun’s books were prohibited by the Nazi’s.
The protagonist Gilgi takes on a “matter of factness” that was previously only associated with young men, and declares, in her own words, that modern women need an ice-cold “Sachlichkeit” and the air of a “Strassenjunge” about them to succeed. So, this effort to assert her independence involves adopting male roles, rather than creating a new, female interpretation. Thus, the author shows us that women’s progress in the 1920s was still subject to serious labor-economic factors.
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
as well as the early years of the Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
era.
Biography
Irmgard Keun was born in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
(Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, named after Queen consort Sophia Charlotte...
) to Eduard and Elsa Charlotte Keun on February 6, 1905. She and her family, including her brother Gerd, born in 1910, lived in the city until 1913, when they moved to Cologne. There Keun attended an evangelical girls' school, from which she graduated in 1921. She worked as a stenotypist, but also attended acting school in Cologne from 1925-1927. Although she then landed stage roles in Greifswald
Greifswald
Greifswald , officially, the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald is a town in northeastern Germany. It is situated in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, at an equal distance of about from Germany's two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg. The town borders the Baltic Sea, and is crossed...
and Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, these were only somewhat successful, and she decided to abandon her acting career in 1929. Encouraged by German writer Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...
, she turned her hand to writing.
In 1932, she married the writer and director Johannes Tralow. They divorced in 1937.
Keun's first novel, Gilgi - One of Us, made her famous, as well as her next book and best-seller, The Artificial Silk Girl.
In 1933/34, her books were confiscated and forbidden by the Nazis. She went into exile from 1936–1940, first to Ostend
Ostend
Ostend is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke , Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the largest on the Belgian coast....
in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
and later to Holland
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
.
Keun received great acclaim for her sharp-witted books, most notably from such well-known authors as Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...
and Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky
Kurt Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel. Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved to Paris in 1924 and then to Sweden in 1930.Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of...
, who said about her, "A woman writer with humor, check this out!". She counted among her friends such literary notables as Egon Erwin Kisch
Egon Erwin Kisch
Egon Erwin Kisch was a Czechoslovak writer and journalist, who wrote in German. Known as the The raging reporter from Prague, Kisch was noted for his development of literary reportage and his opposition to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.- Biography :Kisch was born into a wealthy, German-speaking...
, Hermann Kesten
Hermann Kesten
Hermann Kesten was a German novelist and dramatist. He was one of the principal literary figures of the New Objectivity movement in 1920's Germany.The literary prize Hermann Kesten Medal has been given in his honor since 1985....
, Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
, Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...
, Ernst Weiss
Ernst Weiss
Dr Ernst Weiss was a German-speaking Austrian author of Jewish descent. He is the author of Der Augenzeuge , a novel dealing with the Hitler period.- Biography :...
, and Heinrich Mann
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
. From 1936 to 1938, she had a romantic relationship with Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
, a relationship that at first had a positive effect on her literary output. She worked together with Roth, traveling with him to various cities such as Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Wilna, Lemberg, Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. After the German invasion of the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, she returned in 1940 to Nazi Germany. Protected by false reports of her own suicide, she lived there undercover until 1945.
A synopsis of "Gilgi- eine von uns" (Gilgi- one of us)
The novel (published 1931) is based in Cologne, and was an overnight sensation, shocking much of the still conservative population for its honest portrayal of modern life. The protagonist is a lower class steno-typist called Gisela, or Gilgi, aged twenty one. She has an affair with Martin, a wealthy middle aged bohemian business man. The main thread of the narrative deals with this, but also in the subplot we find out that Gilgi is anxious to trace her real parents. Gilgi gradually discovers the identity of her supposed natural mother, who is a seamstress, but when Gilgi actually discovers her, she is living in desperate squalor, and Gilgi discovers that what her adoptive mother had told her was a ruse to hide Gilgi’s true background. The seamstress had been paid to take on Gilgi as her own child, and in fact Gilgi’s true identity is that she is the illegitimate child of a wealthy and still prominent family.The novel opens with Gilgi working as a legal secretary. Gilgi is a structured and ordered person at the beginning, living with her parents; she takes English, Spanish and French language classes overnight, so that she is less likely to be unemployed in the mounting unemployment crisis. Additionally, she rises early every morning to do a strict exercise and beauty regime, which she is obviously proud of.
After falling in love with Martin, Gilgi quits her job, and abandons her former lifestyle, (including the independence she was so proud of), and she begins a life of leisure supported by him.
Gilgi later meets a former colleague of hers, Hans, who has been forced to make a living as a door to door salesman, a job which brings in barely enough to sustain him, his wife, and two children. On a second encounter, she finds out that Hans will be imprisoned if he cannot raise 500 marks before the end of the day. Gilgi is shocked into action, and she decides to seek out her real, wealthy mother to ask her for the money. So she finds her, and the meeting turns out to be something of an anti-climax, as she is so preoccupied with raising the money to help Hans that she forgets to ask about the identity of her real father. Gilgi’s mother is unable to get cash at the last minute, so she gives her all of the jewelled rings that she is wearing.
However, when Gilgi returns home and encounters Martin, he misunderstands her garbled account events, and assuming that Hans is an ex-lover, he begs Gilgi not to deliver the jewels to Hans, but to stay with him instead. Gilgi does, but the next morning she learns that Hans has committed suicide, gassing not only himself, but also his whole family.
At the close of the novel, Gilgi has left Martin, and is moving to Berlin, where she will go back to work once more, and raise the child she is expecting as a single mother. So, in effect, she returns to her former independent lifestyle, and makes a brave choice to stand alone as a single mother- something which was still somewhat socially stigmatising in Weimar Germany. In the subplot Gilgi tries to procure an abortion, but decides not to go through with it.
Important themes dealt with in the novel include sexual harassment, the concept of the “New Woman”, and labour, domesticity, and femininity in the Weimar Republic. After being invited to dinner by her boss, Gilgi arranges for a friend to turn up at just the right moment to rescue her from his predatory advances. Weimar republic Gilgi epitomised the “New woman” that so fascinated contemporaries. There was an explosion in the numbers of female office workers in both Germany and France after 1920’s. Popular press and literature often promoted these professions. Women were attracted by the promise of greater freedom as empowered and emancipated working women and city dwellers with lots of opportunities in leisure time. Women in the office were seen as modernity incarnate, although the reality was often very different.
There are definite similarities between the author, Irmgard Keun, and the protagonist, as Keun also lived in Cologne and was a steno-typist. However, the novel is not autobiographical. Between 1933/1934 Keun’s books were prohibited by the Nazi’s.
The protagonist Gilgi takes on a “matter of factness” that was previously only associated with young men, and declares, in her own words, that modern women need an ice-cold “Sachlichkeit” and the air of a “Strassenjunge” about them to succeed. So, this effort to assert her independence involves adopting male roles, rather than creating a new, female interpretation. Thus, the author shows us that women’s progress in the 1920s was still subject to serious labor-economic factors.
Works about Keun
- Stefanie Arend, Ariane Martin (Hrsgg.): Irmgard Keun 1905/2005. Deutungen und Dokumente. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89528-478-5.
- Carmen Bescansa: Gender- und Machttransgression im Romanwerk Irmgard Keuns. (Mannheimer Studien zur Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft; Bd. 42). Röhrig Verlag, St. Ingbert 2007, ISBN 978-3-86110-424-7.
- Heike Beutel, Anna Barbara Hagin (Hrsg.): Irmgard Keun. Zeitzeugen, Bilder und Dokumente erzählen. Emons, Köln 1995, ISBN 3-924491-48-8.
- Hiltrud Häntzschel: Irmgard Keun. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2001, ISBN 3-499-50452-9.
- Ingrid Marchlewitz: Irmgard Keun. Leben und Werk. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1621-1.
- Liane Schüller: Vom Ernst der Zerstreuung. Schreibende Frauen am Ende der Weimarer Republik: Marieluise Fleißer, Irmgard Keun und Gabriele Tergit. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89528-506-4.
- Volker Weidermann: Das Buch der verbrannten Bücher. Köln: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008; ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7. (Zu Keun Seite 188-191)