User:Eli185/Thea Sternheim



Thea Sternheim (* November 25, 1883 in Neuss; † July 5, 1971 in Basel; born Thea Bauer; in first marriage Thea Löwenstein) was a German author.

Early life
Thea Bauer was the daughter of the wealthy screw manufacturer Georg Bauer, who left her a fortune of two million Reichsmarks after his death in 1906. She was raised Catholic and attended girls' boarding schools, including one in Brussels. While still a schoolgirl, she began a correspondence with Maurice Maeterlinck. In November 1901, against her parents' wishes, she married Arthur Löwenstein in London, ten years her senior, the father of her first daughter Agnes ("Nucki") Löwenstein (1902-1976).

In 1903 she met Carl Sternheim, who was still married. With him she had the daughter Dorothea ("Mopsa") (1905-1954), born in 1905, and the son Klaus (1908-1946). In 1906 she divorced Arthur Löwenstein and Löwenstein was given custody and asset management of both daughters, although the second was Sternheim's child.

She began keeping a diary during her first marriage, which she continued until May 25, 1971, shortly before her death on July 5, 1971.

In 1907 she married the art collector Carl Sternheim. In 1908 she and her family moved into the castle-like estate "Bellemaison" in Höllriegelskreuth near Munich, which she had designed herself and which was subsequently built by the architect Gustav von Cube. She became estranged from Sternheim because of his sexual infidelity, his delusions and the squandering of her fortune, and finally withdrew his administration: "I must get used to living with Karl without being his wife. [...] Since November I have been managing my assets alone. [...] If I had never placed unconditional trust in him, I would never have been exposed to the embarrassing feeling of being deceived at my expense.“ In 1927 she was divorced from Carl Sternheim.

Before the beginning of World War I, she moved into La Hulpe Castle in Belgium with Sternheim, but returned to Germany again and again for temporary stays, primarily in Munich. In 1919 she went to Switzerland, from 1922 to 1924 she lived in the Waldhof in Wilschdorf near Dresden, and in 1925 she designed a small palace that was built in Uttwil on the Swiss shore of Lake Constance near Romanshorn. She formed intense friendships with, among others, Frans Masereel, André Gide, Gottfried Benn, as well as with the Belgian painter Herman-Lucien de Cunsel (1908-1971), her lifelong friend for decades, and most recently in Basel with Peter Geiger. She translated various French-language works by André Maurois, among others, into German.

In France, she was briefly interned in the Camp de Gurs at the outbreak of war in 1939, but was able to escape in company with Alexandra Ramm-Pfemfert, among others. In Germany, her assets were frozen, and she eventually lived impoverished in a small apartment in Paris. In 1944, she was deprived of her German citizenship. After the end of the war, she remained in France. There she maintained contact for a time with the Berlin society photographer Frieda Riess, who had emigrated to Paris in the 1930s.

The two children she had with Carl Sternheim children died early: Klaus as a refugee in Mexico in 1946 and Dorothea ("Mopsa"), who was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp until 1945, died of cancer in 1954. Thea Sternheim received a reparation payment for her daughter's suffering in the Nazi concentration camp.

In 1963, Sternheim moved to Basel to join her first daughter Agnes, who had married the Lorca translator Enrique Beck and worked as a singer and music lecturer at the Musikhochschule Freiburg i. Br. under the stage name Inés Leuwen-Beck. Thea Sternheim died there in 1971 at the age of 87.

In addition to her diaries, she wrote the novel Sackgassen. Her correspondence with Gottfried Benn was published posthumously; it also contains excerpts from Mopsa's diaries. The diaries I-V were edited by Thomas Ehrsam and Regula Wyss on behalf of the "Heinrich Enrique Beck Foundation" and published by Wallstein Verlag Göttingen in 2002.

Writings

 * Erinnerungen. Herausgegeben von Helmtrud Mauser in Verbindung mit Traute Hensch. Kore, Freiburg im Br. 1995, ISBN 3-926023-66-X. (Das Typoskript entstand 1936, im Wesentlichen entstand das Werk 1952.)
 * Sackgassen. Roman. Mit einem Nachwort von Regula Wyss. Hrsg. von Monika Melchert. Trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89626-498-2; zuerst Limes-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1952.
 * Gottfried Benn, Thea Sternheim: Briefwechsel und Aufzeichnungen. Mit Briefen und Tagebuchauszügen Mopsa Sternheims. Herausgegeben von Thomas Ehrsam. Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-714-4.
 * Thea Sternheims Tagebuch (1903–1971). Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3892443157.
 * Tagebücher 1903–1971. 5 Bände. Herausgegeben von Thomas Ehrsam und Regula Wyss. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0748-3. [Mit dem gesamten transkribierten Text auf CD-ROM.]

Literature

 * Melancholie und Kaviar. In: Fritz J. Raddatz: Das Rot der Freiheitssonne wurde Blut. Springer, Berlin u. a. 2007, ISBN 978-386674-013-6, S. 139–174.
 * Monika Melchert: Abschied im Adlon. Die Geschichte von Thea und Carl Sternheim. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-942476-89-8.
 * Thomas Ehrsam, Regula Wyss: Thea Sternheim und ihre Welt. „Keiner wage, mir zu sagen: Du sollst!“ Begleitband zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung in der Universitätsbibliothek Basel, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1769-7.
 * Lea Singer: Die Poesie der Hörigkeit. Hoffmann & Campe, 2017, ISBN 978-3-455-40625-2.
 * Dorothea Zwirner: Thea Sternheim. Chronistin der Moderne. Biographie. Wallstein, Göttingen 2021, ISBN 978-3-8353-5060-1.
 * Dorothea Zwirner: Thea Sternheim. Chronistin der Moderne. Biographie. Wallstein, Göttingen 2021, ISBN 978-3-8353-5060-1.

Radio shows

 * Fritz J. Raddatz. Melancholie mit Kaviar. Thea Sternheim in ihren Tagebüchern. Feature am Sonntag. Sendung am 22. Februar 2004 in SWR 2. – Erneut gesendet am 11. Mai 2008 im Nachtstudio unter dem Titel: Reiches Leben und waches politisches Gewissen. Die Tagebücher der Thea Sternheim in Bayern 2.

Weblinks

 * Monika Buschey: Thea Sternheim, Schriftstellerin (Todestag, 05.07.1971) In: ZeitZeichen auf WDR 5 vom 5. Juli 2021, ARD Audiothek, abgerufen am 11. Juli 2021.
 * Website zu Thea Sternheim von der Heinrich Enrique Beck-Stiftung, Basel
 * Website zu Thea Sternheim von der Heinrich Enrique Beck-Stiftung, Basel