Hermynia Zur Mühlen (12 December 1883 – 20 March 1951), or Folliot de Crenneville-Poutet, was an

Austrian Austrian may refer to: * Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent ** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law * Austrian German dialect * Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...

writer and translator. She translated over seventy books into German from English, Russian and French, including work by

Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in sever ...

, John Galsworthy,

Jerome K. Jerome Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humourist, best known for the comic travelogue ''Three Men in a Boat'' (1889). Other works include the essay collections '' Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow'' (1886) an ...

, Harold Nicolson,

Max Eastman Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical ...

and

Edna Ferber Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning '' So Big'' (1924), ''Show Boat'' (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), '' Ci ...

.Lionel Grossman, 'Remembering Hermynia Zur Mühlen: A Tribute', in Hermynia Zur Mühlen,
The End and the Beginning: a Memoir
', Open Book Publishers, 2010, pp.271-295 She has been characterised as "one of the best known women writers of the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...

." A committed

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

from a Viennese aristocratic

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

family, she was sometimes called the Red Countess.

Life

The Countess Folliot de Crenneville, born as Hermine Isabelle Maria Gräfin Folliot de Crenneville in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, was the great granddaughter of Louis Charles Folliot de Crenneville, a French-born general who fought for the Habsburg monarchy in the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

. Her paternal grandfather was Franz Folliot de Crenneville, Knight in the Order of the Golden Fleece. Her maternal grandfather was the diplomat Ferdinand, Count von Wydenbruck, who had married a politically liberal woman from the Anglo-Irish gentry. Growing up in the

Governorate of Estonia The Governorate of Estonia, also known as the Governorate of Esthonia (Pre-reformed rus, Эстля́ндская губе́рнія, r=Estlyandskaya guberniya); et, Eestimaa kubermang was a governorate in the Baltic region, along with the ...

, where her father was a diplomat, she was sent aged 30 to a pulmonary sanatorium in Davos. Here she began a career of translation into German, translating an anti-war novel by

Leonid Andreyev Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev (russian: Леони́д Никола́евич Андре́ев, – 12 September 1919) was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer, who is considered to be a father of Expressionism in Russian liter ...

, and in 1918 ''King Coal'' by

. An unhappy marriage to Viktor von zur Mühlen, a conservative German landowner, was officially ended in 1923. By this time she had met Stefan Klein, a German Jew and fellow translator who would be her partner for the rest of her life. Zur Mühlen wrote six

detective novels Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as specu ...

under the name Lawrence H. Desberry, and collections of fairy tales interpreted from a radical perspective. She also wrote anecdotes, sketches and

feuilletons A ''feuilleton'' (; a diminutive of french: feuillet, the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criti ...

for periodical publication. She published an autobiographical memoir, ''End und Anfang'', in 1929, in which the new beginning is that of the Russian Revolution. Though she quietly left the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

around 1931 or 1932, she remained committed to socialism. Zur Mühlen and Klein left Germany for Vienna in 1933. Zur Mühlen refused to agree to S. Fischer Verlag's appeal that she follow

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

, Alfred Döblin,

René Schickele René Schickele (4 August 1883 – 31 January 1940) was a German-French writer, essayist and translator. Biography Schickele was born in Obernai, Alsace, the son of a German vineyard owner and police officer and a French mother. He studied literat ...

and Stefan Klein in undertaking not to write in ''émigré'' magazines: ''Unsere Töchter die Nazinen'' was a directly anti-Nazi satire: serialized in the

Territory of the Saar Basin The Territory of the Saar Basin (german: Saarbeckengebiet, ; french: Territoire du bassin de la Sarre) was a region of Germany occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France from 1920 to 1935 under a League of Nations mandate. It had its ...

in a leftwing newspaper in 1934, it was banned after eventually finding a publisher in 1936. With the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

of 1938, Zur Mühlen and Klein left for Bratislava, where they married. After the German occupation of Bohemia in March 1939, they had to escape again; via Budapest, Yugoslavia, Italy, Switzerland and France, they reached London on 19 June 1939. Wilhelm Kuehs (2002)
''Hermynia Zur Mühlen (1883-1952)''
p. 2 (pdf). In London, Zur Mühlen scraped a precarious living from journalism. The two novels she wrote in England - ''Ewiges Schattenspiel'' and ''Als der Fremde kam'' - seem to have been part of an intended trilogy. She died in obscurity in Radlett, Hertfordshire.

Works

* ''Schupomann Karl Müller'' (1924)
''Fairy tales for workers' children''
Chicago, Ill., Daily Worker Pub. Co. 1925 * ''Unsere Töchter, die Nazinnen'' Our Daughters, the Nazis (1935)
"Unsere Töchter die Nazinen."
A Synopsis in English, With an Introduction. By Lionel Gossman, Princeton University. * ''We Poor Shadows'' (1943) * ''Came the Stranger'' (1946) * ''The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales'' (Princeton, 2020), ed. and trans. by Jack Zipes

References

Sources

* ''Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature'' *

Lionel Gossman Lionel Gossman (1929 – 11 January 2021) was a Scottish-American scholar of French literature. He taught Romance Languages at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University, and wrote extensively on the history, theory and practice of histori ...

, "The Red Countess: Four Stories," ''Common Knowledge'', vol. 15 (2009), 59-91. * Ailsa Wallace, ''Hermynia Zur Muhlen: The Guises of Socialist Fiction'' (

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2009) * Manfred Altner, ''Hermynia Zur Muhlen; Eine Biographie,'' (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997) *Barbara McCloskey, "Teach Your Children Well: Hermynia Zur Mühlen, George Grosz, and the Art of Radical Pedagogy in Germany between the World Wars." In ''Art and Resistance in Germany'', edited by Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Elizabeth Otto. (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018), p. 77-95.

External links

* * * *
''Liebe Genossin: Hermynia Zur Mühlen: a Writer of Courage and Conviction''
by

* Lionel Grossman,
The End and the Beginning: a Memoir
'' Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2010
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0007
{{DEFAULTSORT:ZurMuehlen, Hermynia 1883 births 1951 deaths Political writers Austrian women novelists Austrian translators Translators from Russian English–German translators Austrian socialists Austrian countesses Austrian people of French descent Austrian expatriates in Germany Austrian fantasy writers Austrian expatriates in England Writers from Vienna Pseudonymous women writers 20th-century Austrian novelists 20th-century Austrian women writers 20th-century translators Women political writers 20th-century pseudonymous writers