Gertrud Kolmar's Lyrical Body

The poet Gertrud Chodziesner (known better by her penname Gertrud Kolmar) has been called by writer Jacob Picard 'one of the most important woman poets' in the whole of German literature, and 'the greatest lyrical poetess of Jewish descent who has ever lived'. But she was largely unknown when she was deported to the Auschwitz death camp in 1943 and murdered.

Gertrud was only first truly “discovered” in April 1936 – just as Jewish life was becoming increasingly constrained under Nazi law – when she was introduced alongside Nelly Sachs and Else Lasker-Schüler at a recital of “Frauendichtung” (women’s prose”) held by Erna Feld Leonhard. By then middle-aged, unwed, and childless, Getrud Kolmar had remained relatively unknown in the literary world, despite two small volumes published previously (Gedichte, 1917 and Preussische Wappenbuch, 1934) and the support of her well-known cousin, Walter Benjamin. The poet Jacob Picard described her powerful verses (rather chauvinistically) as “crystalline in their rigor and form, and at the same time spare and pure in their intellectual and emotional quality, to a degree that we otherwise find only in the work of men …”

After the Holocaust, her work was revived through the efforts of German literary personalities like Jacob Picard; her sister, Hilde Wenzel; and her sister’s former, husband Peter Wenzel. Her poetry collection Welten (published in 1947) as well as the novella Susanna (published in 1959 in Das leere Haus) survived through her correspondence with her sister Hilde Wenzel, who was able to flee to Switzerland.

While the largest body of Gerturd Kolmar's correspondence – specifically her letters to her sister Hilde - is held by the Germany Literary Archive in Marbach, LBI’s Archives has a small collection of letters written from 1906 to 1929 by Gertrud’s mother, Elise, to her sister, Hilde Wenzel. This collection of correspondence documented some of the daily activities of Chodziesners’ family life. Elise Chodziesner wrote often of the family ducks and beloved dog, the weather; visits from aunts, uncles, and close friends; the care and maintenance of clothing; and family walks in nature.

Gertrud often appeared in the letters, sharing blueberries with her sister Margot, caring for the family dog, or accompanying her mother to the market. Greetings and notes from other family members like Gertrud were added at the end or even upside down in the margins. Elise’s letters showed there were many differences between Gertrud and herself (Elise frequently wrote of clothing and fashion, things Gertrud seemed to have taken little interest in), but the letters also indicated a shared love for walks in outdoors and as well as for the care of the family dogs and ducks.

Described as a somewhat shy, sensitive young girl, Gertrud Kolmar was born in 1894 into assimilated Jewish family in Berlin. Her father, Ludwig Chodziesner, was a successful lawyer, and she grew up in the affluent Westend neighborhood of Berlin. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she loved to write, both fiction and prose, but did not share them outside the family. Most of them were secreted away in a box in her room. She performed most of the household chores and was quite dutiful, if not a bit too quiet and somewhat odd. Her relatives called her "Crazy Trude" but this didn't seem to be because of loud and emotional behavior as much as that of a shy, introverted person living in her own world.

Gertrud attended school for the domestic arts, a typical education for bourgeoise Jewish women in Berlin at the time. But she also took her education a step farther and received a teaching degree. She was very skilled in languages, and spoke French, Russian, Czech, Spanish, Flemish, and, later in life, Hebrew.

By this time World War I was underway, and Gertrud had fallen in love. The object of her affection was Karl Jodel, a German officer. The affair proved short-lived and with unhappy consequences. Although there is no written documentation, her sister and many scholars speculate that in the fall of 1916 Kolmar found herself pregnant. By then, Jodel had left her, and she had to confess her pregnancy to very unhappy parents who forced her to have an abortion. In January 1917, Kolmar, accompanied by her mother, was forced to recuperate in a hospital after a suicide attempt.

Kolmar’s first book of poetry was published around this time after her father stole her poetry from her desk and shared it with a publisher. Her first published book of poems started her life as a poet, but she was never very successful or well-known outside of literary circles. Her poetry writing continued mostly as a private affair, and it was perhaps with even a certain lack of enthusiasm that she took part in the very public world of publishing her work. She once stated that for her, poetry came not out of a place of elation and strength, but out of a feeling of powerlessness. After her literary “debut” with the “Frauendichtung” evening and the subsequent publication in several Jewish newspapers in the late 1930s, she described in a letter to Jacob Picard how she felt after seeing her name in the paper next to the name of the author Dostoevsky; "Do you know how I felt? It's difficult to describe - but maybe that's how Andersen's 'ugly duckling' felt when he finally got among the swans and the water, as a mirror, showed him that he was a swan himself....." In another letter, she wrote: "....even if I were proclaimed the most important Jewish poet since Else Lasker-Schüler, this wouldn't excite me very much. Dad would be happier for me."

Kolmar’s poetry invited the reader into her inner world to experience feelings of love, loneliness, and longing. These internalized experiences were primarily embodied through female figures and nature - men are rarely direct participants in any text. In her prose, men often serve as antagonists in the lives of women, dangerous beings that visit the feminine sphere to bring possible joy, but more often loss and the pain of loneliness and childless motherhood; many scholars connect the feelings in Kolmar’s poetry of agonizing heartbreak and yearning for a child to Kolmar’s own traumatic breakup and subsequent forced abortion.

An excellent example of this is her poem "Die Dichterin" or "The Poetess" a poem she wrote around 1930. Throughout the 1920’s she had held many teaching positions, but by 1928, when she began assisting her sick mother at her parents’ new home in Finkenkrug, she had transformed from a young woman of marriageable age into a spinster living with her family. She cared for her aging parents, and after her mother’s death, helped her elderly father run the household, an oft-expected obligation of an unmarried child. (It is perhaps extra poignant in the fact that, by today's standards, she certainly was still a young woman, only in her early thirties.)

In "The Poetess" Kolmar in a sense transforms a book of poetry into a speaking female body. The poems are identified as the clothing of the body, and the entire physical book as the woman speaking, both physically and emotionally. The book is in the hands of a man - indeed, she has offered herself to him. The poem can be read in multiple contexts: as a pair of lovers, yes, but one where the man might also prove dangerous, tearing pages and causing harm. Further, as a woman poet in a man's literary world, it can also be read as the struggles of women authors to be recognized and approved of by their male critics and authority figures.