Grete Weil (18 July 1906 – 14 May 1999) was a German writer.Monacensia Literaturarchiv und Bibliothek.
Grete Weil
" ''Literaturportal Bayern''.

Biography

She was born Margarete Elisabeth Dispeker, the daughter of a prominent lawyer in Munich. She studied

German literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy ...

in Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, and Paris.Schirnding, Albert von, and Bruno Jahn.
Weil, Grete
" ''

Killy Literaturlexikon The ''Killy Literaturlexikon - Autoren und Werke des deutschsprachigen Kulturraumes'' is an author's lexicon of German language literature. The latest edition of twelve volumes was published between 2008 and September 2011 by De Gruyter. A registe ...

'', 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Berlin:

De Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

, 2011. 223-225. In 1932, she began writing her dissertation, and also completed her first story, "Erlebnis einer Reise" (Experience of a trip).Schmidinger, Veit Johannes.
Grete Weil
." ''Literatur - Personen A-Z'', in: ''NiederlandeNet''. In 1932, she married Edgar Weil, a playwright at the

Munich Kammerspiele The Munich Kammerspiele (German: Münchner Kammerspiele) is a state-funded German-language theater company based at the ''Schauspielhaus'' on Maximilianstraße (Munich), Maximilianstrasse in the Bavarian capital. The company currently has three ...

. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Edgar lost his position and was also briefly detained by the police. The couple made the decision to emigrate to the Netherlands. Edgar traveled there first, and established a pharmaceutical company, based on his experience with his family's pharmaceutical business in Frankfurt am Main. During this time, Grete broke off her literature studies, and trained as a photographer. In 1935, she followed her husband to Amsterdam, where she operated a photo studio. In June 1941, the year following the occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis, Edgar was arrested and soon transferred to

Mauthausen concentration camp Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 f ...

, where he was killed, within just a few months of his arrest. Grete went into hiding and survived the

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. She returned to Germany in 1947 where she lived at first in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

, and later in Stuttgart, Berlin, and Hannover. She settled in Frankfurt in 1955. In 1949, her short novel ''Ans Ende der Welt'' (To the end of the world), which she had written while still in Amsterdam, was published by an

East Berlin East Berlin (; ) was the partially recognised capital city, capital of East Germany (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. From 1945, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet occupation sector of Berlin. The American, British, and French se ...

publishing company. After that, she wrote

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

s for works by

Hans Werner Henze Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large List of compositions by Hans Werner Henze, oeuvre is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Igor Stravinsky, Stravinsky, Mu ...

(''

Boulevard Solitude ' is a ' (lyric drama) or opera in one act by Hans Werner Henze to a German libretto by Grete Weil after the play by Walter Jockisch, in its turn a modern retelling of Abbé Prévost's 1731 novel '' Manon Lescaut''. The piece is a reworking of ...

'', 1951) and

Wolfgang Fortner Wolfgang Fortner (12 October 1907 – 5 September 1987) was a German composer, academic composition teacher and conductor. Life and career Fortner was born in Leipzig. From his parents, who were both singers, Fortner very early on had intense ...

(''Die Witwe von Ephesus'', 1952), and worked on a novel, "Antigone," which remained unpublished. To earn a living, Weil also wrote articles for the theater periodical ''Das neue Forum'' (Darmstadt), and translated books from English for the Limes publishing house in

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden (; ) is the capital of the German state of Hesse, and the second-largest Hessian city after Frankfurt am Main. With around 283,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 24th-largest city. Wiesbaden form ...

. In 1960, Weil married her longtime friend, the opera director Walter Jockisch, with whom she had been together since her return to Germany.Bos, Pascale R. ''German-Jewish literature in the wake of the Holocaust: Grete Weil, Ruth Klüger, and the politics of address''. Gordonsville, Va.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 32. After Jockisch's death, in 1970, Weil increasingly turned to her writing. In 1974, she moved to Grünwald near Munich. Weil is one of the major proponents of

Holocaust literature The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been repre ...

. Her books have been translated into all the major European languages. Weil was a member of the

PEN Centre Germany PEN Centre Germany is part of the worldwide association of writers founded in London in 1921, now known as PEN International. One of over 140 autonomous PEN centres around the world, PEN Centre Germany is based in Darmstadt, Hesse. Work PEN Ce ...

Awards

Among her awards are the Wilhelmine-Lübke-Preis (1980), the Tukan Prize from the city of Munich (1983), the

Geschwister Scholl-Preis The Geschwister-Scholl-Preis is a literary prize which is awarded annually by the Bavarian chapter of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels and the city of Munich. Every year, a book is honoured, which "shows intellectual independence and s ...

(1988), the Carl-Zuckmayer Medal of Rhineland-Palatinate (1995) and the

Bavarian Order of Merit The Bavarian Order of Merit () is the Order of Merit of the Free State of Bavaria. It is awarded by the Minister-President of Bavaria as a "recognition of outstanding contributions to the Free State of Bavaria and the Bavarian people". The or ...

(1996). She died in Grünwald in 1999 at the age of 92.

Works

* ''Ans Ende der Welt'', Berlin 1949 * ''Boulevard Solitude'', Mainz 1951 * ''Tramhalte Beethovenstraat'', Wiesbaden 1963 * ''Happy, sagte der Onkel'', Wiesbaden 1968 * ''Meine Schwester Antigone'', Zürich . a.1980 * ''Generationen'', Zürich . a.1983 * ''Der Brautpreis'', Zürich . a.1988 * ''Spätfolgen'', Zürich . a.1992 * ''Leb ich denn, wenn andere leben'', Zürich . a.1998 * ''Erlebnis einer Reise'', Zürich 1999

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weil, Grete 1906 births 1999 deaths Writers from Munich Jewish women writers Jewish writers Holocaust survivors Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands German autobiographers 20th-century German women writers German women autobiographers German opera librettists Women opera librettists