Uri, Elsa

Elsa Uri was born into a family of Berlin tobacco manufacturer Emil Uri, of Jewish origin. The family perceived itself as assimilated Jews , German patriots of liberal views.

After graduation, Elsa received a teacher education and continued to live with her parents in central Berlin. In 1898, a theatrical play came out from under her pen, her first literary work. In 1905, she published her first collection of fairy tales, which received positive criticism. In 1906, he followed the second book by E. Uri - “Learning Girl” ( Studierte Mädel ). She made Elsa a famous writer, her photos appear in newspapers. In 1908, a collection of fairy tales and short stories “Goldblondchen” was published, for which Elsa Uri was awarded an official diploma - a message from the “Supervision of Literature for Young People”, signed by the state “Joint Control Commission” (JCC), which classified the works of E. Uri as exemplary for children of primary and secondary school age. E. Uri was the first woman to receive such approval by the JCC until 1913.

In 1913, the first book from the 10-volume series about Nesthekhen , the most famous and still published under the works of E. Uri, appears. This series has been published since 1913 - the first book, “Nesthekhen and Her Dolls”, and through 1925 (“Nesthekhen with Gray Hair”). In these books there is a story about the whole life of a girl, the daughter of a doctor Annemarie Brown, her growing up, family life, her children and grandchildren. The entire series is sustained in the tradition of German Bakfish literature . In 1930, books on Netzhekhen were translated into foreign languages ​​and published in France , Norway, and the Netherlands . By the beginning of the XXI century, the total circulation of books in this series amounted to 7 million copies.

During the First World War , the Uri family, like the vast majority of German Jews, unconditionally supported Kaiser Germany, the brothers of the writer volunteered for the front, E. Uri herself wrote cheers-patriotic children's stories.

In 1923 - 1929, the writer created a new children's book series - Professor's Zwillinge , which also had significant commercial success. Only for the period from 1922 to 1932 for both children's series she received about 300,000 marks as fees.

The coming of the National Socialists to power in 1933 was always enthusiastically accepted by E. Uri. In 1933, her last novel, Youth Forward ( Jugend voraus ), was published , in which chauvinistic , national-socialist notes are heard. Nevertheless, in the same 1933, E. Uri was expelled from the Reichsschriftumskammer , the German analogy of the Writers' Union, which meant a de facto ban on literature. In 1938 - 1939, the writer translated part of her tales and short stories into English in order to publish them in England , but this was not possible. Almost all relatives of E. Uri emigrated from Germany, her brother Hans committed suicide in 1937 . In 1940, a seriously ill mother, E. Uri, dies in Berlin, and she remains completely alone. On January 11, 1943, she was announced the confiscation of her property, on January 12, she, together with a group of Jews, was sent by train to the Auschwitz concentration camp and immediately upon arrival there, on January 13, 1943, along with 108 more prisoners, she died in a gas chamber.

• Marianne Brentzel: Mir kann doch nichts geschehen - Das Leben der Nesthäkchen-Autorin Else Ury, Edition Ebersbach, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938740-54-5

• German culture