Weissman, Maria Louise

Born in the family of a gymnasium teacher. The family lived in Schweinfurt , but with the outbreak of World War I, the Weissmans moved to Nuremberg . There, in the newspaper Franconian Courier, the first publications of her works appeared. Georg Britting published four of her poems in the magazine Die Sichel, after which Maria Louise got a job as a secretary in the Nuremberg Literary Union. There she met her future husband, writer Ludwig Bakhmayr .

In 1919, Weisman moved to Munich, where she worked in the book trade. There she joined the short-lived Union for the Buddhist Life and the revolutionary Young Franconia group ( German: Das junge Franken ). In subsequent years, it was published in the local press. During the revolution, the poet’s groom Ludwig Bakhmayr joined the Bavarian Soviet Republic , for which he was later sent to prison. They managed to get married only after the liberation of Ludwig in 1922 . The couple moved from city to city, but in terms of creativity, these were the most productive years for Maria Louise Weisman.

In 1929, the poetess suddenly died of a sore throat complicated by sepsis . She was buried in Munich at the Waldfriedhof cemetery.

In 1922, her first book, Feast in the Morning ( German: Das frühe Fest ) , was published. Criticism noted the influence of Rilke and Hoffmannsthal , but Weisman's poems are closer in style to the early expressionists, Trakl and Game . A year later, she published a short narrative poem, "Robinson," in which, in a philosophical manner, the plot of the novel by Daniel Defoe was rethought. Weisman's last lifetime publication was the sonnet cycle The Little Cactus Collection ( 1926 ).

Only after the death of the poetess did they talk about her as a significant phenomenon in German-language poetry. The posthumous collection "Selected Poems" ( 1932 ) was met with positive reviews in the press. The Berliner Börsenzeitung columnist even called Weissmann “the greatest German poetess from the time of Droste-Hülshof ”, in a review of “Der Deutsche Rundfunk” it was noted that the author’s small heritage, nevertheless, is of great importance ^[1] . In the same year, the husband of the poetess Bahmayr published in his own publishing house a small book of memoirs and memoirs dedicated to her ^[2] . Also, the legacy of the poetess was released in the collection "Imago", which has survived several reprints.

Nowadays, Weisman's work was rediscovered; in the 2000s, several editions of her selected works were published.

Intravital and posthumous publications

• Das frühe fest. Gedichte. Pasing bei München, Bachmair 1922.43 S.
• Robinson Eine Dichtung. Münchener Liebhaber-Drucke (Neue Folge). Band 2. Pasing bei München, Bachmair 1924.
• Mit einer kleinen Sammlung von Kakteen. Privatdruck für die Gesellschaft Münchener Bücherfreunde. Pasing bei München, Bachmair 1926.
• Imago. Ausgewählte Gedichte. Hrsg. mit einem Nachwort von Heinrich FS Bachmair. Starnber, Bachmair, Starnberg 1946 (1929). 108 S.
• Gesammelte Dichtungen. Mit 2 Photographien von Mary Hausner. Pasing bei München, Bachmair 1932. 199 S. Gesamtauflage 800 Exemplare.
• Gartennovelle. Eine Dichtung. Söcking, Bachmair 1949.35 S.

Modern Reprints

• "Ich wünsche zu sein, was mich entflammt". Gesammelte Werke. Hg. Hartmut Vollmer. Elfenbein, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-932245-68-7 .
• Ausgewählte Gedichte. Degener, Potsdam 2010, ISBN 978-3-940531-20-9 .

In Russian

• M. L. Weissman. Forest Heart (Poems) / per. and entry. Art. A. Black // New World . No. 4, 2018.
• M. L. Weissman. Poems on the website of the Society of George Game / per. A. Black .

• Maria Luise Weissmann zum Gedächtnis (link not available) . Herausgegeben von Heinrich FS Bachmair. Pasing 1932.

• Maria Louise Weisman on the website of the Georg Geim Society (rus.)
• Collection of materials about life and work (German)
• On the website of the German National Library (German)
• At the Bavarian Literary Portal (German)
• On Zeno.org (German)