Kaschnitz, Marie Luise, pen-name of Freifrau Marie Luise von Kaschnitz-Weinberg, née von Holzing-Berstett (Karlsruhe, 1901-74, Rome), was brought up in Potsdam, Berlin, and the family seat in Bollschweil nr. Freiburg, then trained for the book trade in Weimar, subsequently working in Munich and Rome, where in 1925 she married the Viennese archaeologist von Kaschnitz-Weinberg. The couple travelled widely, and from 1932 university appointments took them to Königsberg and Marburg, and from 1941 to Frankfurt. In 1953, following her husband's appointment as director of the German Archaeological Institute, they moved to Rome, but on his retirement they returned to Frankfurt, where he died in 1958. Marie Luise Kaschnitz remained in Frankfurt, where in 1960 she lectured at the university (Gastdozent für Poetik). She died during a visit to her daughter in Rome.
Marie Luise Kaschnitz's first publications began after her marriage and include two novels, Liebe beginnt (1933) and Elissa (1937), Griechische Mythen (1943), prose and poetry published posthumously in the volume Gesang vom Menschenleben (1974), and Der alte Garten (1975), a fairy-tale. She herself viewed her adherence to traditional forms as an expression of her ‘inner emigration’ (see Innere Emigration), exemplified by her sonnet ‘Strom der Zuversicht’ (Frankfurter Zeitung, 29.8.1943); this was remembered when, in 1955, she was awarded the Büchner Prize, though by then she had already achieved considerable recognition for her modern prose and free verse. Despite her independence, her writing reflects contemporary literary trends, including the erosion of her trust in a new spirit of justice and humanity, of which her ‘Hiroschima’ poem of 1951 is an early expression, culminating twenty years later in the satirical verse of ‘Morgen und übermorgen’. No less distinctive, however, is her preoccupation with her own individual development since childhood, with loneliness, fear (Angst), and death (a taboo in the parental home), which first drew her to Trakl; the ‘Genazzano’ poem of 1955 exemplifies the perfection of her new art. After Gedichte (1947), Totentanz und Gedichte zur Zeit (1947), Zukunftsmusik (1950), and Ewige Stadt (1952), Neue Gedichte (1957) forms the climax; Dein Schweigen—meine Stimme (1962) describes the critical years following the death of her husband, Ein Wort weiter (1965) renewed commitment; its central cycle, Zoon politicon, written under the impact of the Auschwitz trial, shows an affinity to Celan and includes unreserved acceptance of guilt, to her a repeatedly expressed prerequisite for Germany's renewal. Kein Zauberspruch (1972), a volume of political resignation, is her last; Überallnie (1965) is a selection (1928-65) with postscript by K. Krolow, Gedichte (1975) an edition with postscript by P. Huchel.‘The presence of death in life’, which Marie Luise Kaschnitz described as the basic theme of her work, serves in her short stories as a catalyst for the exposure of inner conflicts, mercilessly turned against herself in the title-story of her first collection Das dicke Kind (1951), which was followed by Lange Schatten (1960), Ferngespräche (1966), Vogel Rock. Unheimliche Ge-schichten (1969), and Eisbären (1972), a personal selection; it includes Märzwind, a tightly wrought story which focuses on the grave consequences of denunciation and addresses social and political issues of wide-ranging validity. Her autobiographical prose includes Das Haus der Kindheit (1956) and Beschreibung eines Dorfes (1966). After Engelsbrücke. Römische Betrachtungen (1955) appeared four volumes of prose sketches (Aufzeichnungen), Wohin denn ich (1963), Tage, Tage, Jahre (1968), Steht noch dahin (1970), and Orte (1973). Her essays are mainly devoted to aspects of literary form and style, to which her interest in the evolution of aesthetics, in part indebted to Adorno, a friend in Frankfurt, is central. Her collections include Menschen und Dinge (1945, repr. 1986), Die Umgebung von Rom (1960), Liebeslyrik heute (1962), and Zwischen immer und nie. Gestalten und Themen der Dichtung (1971), a collection partly based on her Frankfurt lectures; they include Georg Trakl, her response, as a creative writer, to Trakl, Hälfte des Lebens, on Hölderlin, Die Wildente, a study of Ibsen and Tennessee Williams, Lucky, on Beckett, and the essay Über die Schwierigkeiten, heute die Wahrheit zu schreiben, in which she defines ‘truth in art’ (künstlerische Wahrheit) by insisting on the writer's critical commitment to historical and sociological experience as well as on his personal integrity; even in irrational poetry both must be recognizable. This forms the basis from which the last lecture, Rettung durch die Phantasie, prepared in draft just before her death, proceeds. Die Wahrheit, nicht der Traum (1967) is the title of a biography of Gustave Courbet of 1949; she also published an extensive edition of Grillparzer's Medea (1966). She died before completing her work on Eichendorff; Florens (1984) describes his youth. Her radio plays (see Hörspiel), favourably received at the time, are collected in Hörspiele (1962), Die fremde Stimme (1969), and Gespräche im All (1971).
She received numerous honours in addition to the Büchner Prize, and in 1967 was awarded the order Pour le mérite (Friedensklasse).
The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
