A poetry project powerpoint

1. Gertrud Kolmar
By: Taylor Turner

2. Early Life
 Gertrud Kolmar, pseudonym of Gertrud Chodziesner, was born on
December 10, 1894 in Berlin, Germany. She was the oldest of four
children of a middle class German family. Her parents were Ludwig
Chodziesner, a criminal defense lawyer and Her mother Elise
Chodziesner, who came from an intellectual mercantile family.

3. Early Life cont.
 From 1901 to 1911 Kolmar attended a private girls’ grammar school,
continuing her studies at a women’s agricultural and home economics
school in Arvershof near Leipzig. She worked at a public school as a
kindergarten teacher. She studied Russian before receiving a teaching
degree as a French and English language instructor and military
interpreter in 1916.
 The following year Kolmar had her first and bitterly disappointing love
affair, during which she became pregnant. Her parents forced her to have
an abortion—surely a traumatic event at a time when abortions were
illegal in Germany, which may explain Kolmar’s focus on childless
women and mother figures in her poetry.

4. Germany

5. Germany in the Early 1900’s

In 1914, World War I began between the great powers, which were the
allies (United Kingdom, France, and Russia) and the central powers
(Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Thought as a way to settle
disputes with neighboring countries, the war ultimately defeated
Germany, causing 2.1 million military deaths, and 430,000 civilian deaths
due to malnutrition from the food blockades.
 The war finally ended in November of 1918, resulting in Treaty of
Versailles, a peace treaty between Germany and the Allied powers.
 It was in 1917, near the end of World War I, when Gertrud Kolmar wrote
her first book, Gedichte, which drew little attention.

6. Early Life
 During the last two years of World War I she was also employed as an
interpreter and censor of soldiers' correspondence in Doberitz, a prisoner-
of-war-camp near Berlin, shown in picture below.

7. Early Life cont.
 At the end of World War I, Kolmar served as governess and teacher in
private households. In 1927 she took a summer course at the University of
Dijon, where she graduated with a teaching degree, achieving the highest
honors ever given to a foreign student. After her mother fell terminally ill
in 1928, Kolmar returned to Finkenkrug, running the household and
caring for her mother until her death in 1930. She then took over her
mother’s position in the household, became her father’s notary assistant,
and focused on her own writing.
 Kolmar’s experiences of isolation and loneliness as a woman and Jew are
expressed vividly in the poetry she wrote during this time of growing
antisemitism.

8. Some of her most Famous works
 1930- Kolmar writes an autobiographical poem, Die Dichterin (The
Woman Poet), where she pleads with the reader to respect her fragility:
heart beats like that of a little bird/In your fist.
 1930-1931- Kolmar wrote her only novel, Die Jüdische Mutter (The
Jewish Mother.
 1935- Cecile Renault, not yet published.
 1936- Three of Kolmar’s poems were published in a journal of the Jewish
Book Club (Jüdische Buchvereinigung).
 1938- Nacht, not yet published.

9. Some of her most Famous works
 1938- Kolmar’s collection of poems, written ten years earlier, Die Frau
und die Tiere (The Woman and the Beasts) was published by the Jewish
Publishing Company Erwin Loewe.
 1940- Kolmar’s first short story, titled Susanna. The first-person narrator,
an aging Jewish woman who is the governess of the depressed teen-aged
Susanna who confesses: she didn’t know Judaism, “my faith and regards
the Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of the town,” where the Eastern
European Jewish inhabitants speak Yiddish-German, as a “foreign world”

10. Sample of Works
 Click on the following link for my favorite of her poems, an English translation of
Die Dichterin.
 http://allpoetry.com/poem/8628379-The_Woman_Poet__--
_Translation_of_Die_Dichterin-by-Gertrud_Kolmar
 The following link is to one of Gertrud Kolmar’s poems which is made into a
choral piece
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs44qjupLcg

11. Kolmar’s Life during WWI
 In 1938, as the antisemitic political and social climate became intolerable
for Kolmar, she made plans to escape Nazi persecution by emigrating to
England to work as a governess. Her sister Hilde Wenzel emigrated to
Switzerland in 1938. That same year Kolmar and her father were forced
to sell their house in Finkenburg and move to a so-called “Jewish house”
in Berlin-Schöneberg. Despite terrible living conditions, it was during this
time that Kolmar continued her writing, including Susanna, which she
wrote out of a sense of her own powerlessness. In her effort to escape
persecution Kolmar also sent her resumé to her uncle Fritz Crzellitzer,
who had emigrated to Palestine.

12. Kolmar’s Life during WWI
 In 1940, hoping to emigrate to Palestine, Kolmar began to study Hebrew
and write prose in this language, also translating a poem by Hayyim
Nahman Bialik into German, as stated in letters sent to her sister.
However, she was unable to leave Germany since proof of employment
was necessary in order to receive a visa for Palestine. In mid-1941
Kolmar was forced to work at an arms factory. Her eighty-one-year-old
father’s dependence on her led her to remain with him until his
deportation to Theresienstadt in September 1942, where he died the
following year. Kolmar was arrested by the SS on February 27, 1943 and
deported on March 2, 1943 with the “eastern transport” to Auschwitz. It
can be assumed that at the time of her arrest and deportation the Nazis
destroyed her personal papers, letters, and documents. The exact date of
Kolmar’s death is unknown.

13. Literary Works
 Kolmar’s surviving work consists of four hundred and fifty poems, three
plays, and two short stories that exist as manuscripts or typoscripts.
Although much of her work has been published, some of it is also held at
the Gertrud Kolmar archives in Marbach, Germany.

14. What she has left behind…
 “What little is known of Kolmar’s biography can be viewed in sharp contrast to the rich
spiritual life made evident in her poetry. It is in the poems that the internal and intimate self
rather than the external everyday existence is revealed. In the context of the process referred
to as “coming to terms with one’s past” and a renewed appreciation for Kolmar’s work, the
poet—as she wished to be identified—has reached an international audience which responds
to the powerful attraction of her writing. Kolmar’s work is a vehicle for readers of the early
twenty-first century to come to terms with the events of World War II and the Shoah, as well
as for German-Jewish identity through reflection and remembrance.”
(Kristen Krick-Aigner, 2005)

15. Her Impact on Me
 Throughout this semester, I have read many literary works written by strong
women who faced many struggles, oppression, and the pains of life, but were
courageous enough to share their stories with the world, in hopes of impacting it
for the better. Gertrud Kolmar is one of many women who have done this, but I
especially appreciate her story and her works, because of the interest that I have
always taken in my own German heritage.

16. Bibliography
 Krick-Aigner, K. (2005). Gertrud Kolmar. Jewish Women’s Archive.
Accessed on Nov. 26, 2012, from
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kolmar-gertrud
 Kuhn, P. (2012). Gertrud Kolmar: Worlds. Shearsman Books.
Accessed on Nov. 27, 2012, from
http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2012/kolmar.html
 Smith, H. (2010). The woman poet- A translation of die dichterin. All
Poetry. Accessed on Nov. 27, 2012, from www.allpoetry.com
 Zohn, H. (2008). Gertrud Kolmar. Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed on
Nov. 26, 2012, from
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org