💘📚 Hedwig Courths-Mahler (1867-1950) was one of the most popular writers of the early 20th century. She published over 200 novels and novellas, mostly romance novels. Most of her stories featured a couple who had to overcome obstacles and differences in social status before they were joined in love and marriage.
From Maid to Published Author
.📚💘 Hedwig Mahler was born on February 18, 1867. Her mother was a Marktenderin (canteen proprietor) who traveled with the army, her father fell before she was born. Because her stepfather didn’t like her, Hedwig grew up with the shoemaker couple Birkner. At the age of 14, she moved to live with her mother in Leipzig.
💘📚 Hedwig left school and started working as a maid and a reader for an elderly lady. Her employers subscribed to the magazine “Gartenlaube” that published novels in the feuilleton by E. Marlitt which Hedwig read with great enthusiasm. She also discovered her love for writing her own stories.
📚💘At 17, she published her first novella “Wo die Heide blüht” (Where the heather blooms) in a local paper.
💘📚 In 1889, now living in Halle and working as a salesperson, she married Fritz Courths. They had two daughters who eventually followed in their mother’s footsteps and became writers.
📚💘 Courths-Mahler published her first novel (“Licht und Schatten” (Light and Shadow)) as a serial novel in a Chemnitz newspaper in 1904.
💘📚 During their marriage, the family moved several times for Fritz’ work and lived in Berlin from 1905 until 1935. The Berlin time were very creative and productive times for Courths-Mahler. In 1920 alone, she published 20 novels, the covers were often designed by her husband.
📚💘 Courths-Mahler was one of the most renowned women in Berlin. Her salon (Salon) in Charlottenburg attracted many artists and actors like Emil Jannings and Käthe Haack.
💘📚 In 1935, she bought a house in Tegernsee where she and her extended family lived until her death in 1950.
The daughters
📚💘 Margarete Elzer (1889-1966) wrote the same kind of formulaic, stereotypical stories as her mother, published 54 novels between 1921 and 1953, and was especially popular during the Nazi regime.
📚💘 The second daughter Elfriede Stein wrote under the name Friede Birkner, in the same veins as her mother and sister. During the Third Reich, she got into political trouble, in 1941, she was no longer allowed to publish and was also sentenced to 28 months of imprisonment and hard labor.
Reception
📚💘 While her stereotypical portrayal of men and women and lack of social criticism went well with the Nazi propaganda, her refusal to change her protagonists from dukes and counts to military leaders didn’t make her any friends with the writers’ guild. Eventually only a few of her titles were still in print.
💘📚 Hedwig Courths-Mahler’s popular fiction was translated into many languages, and several were turned into movies. At the times of her death, she had published over 200 novels with over 80 million printings.
📚💘 In the 1970s, five of her novels were made into movies, in 2005 her romance “Durch Liebe erlöst” (Saved by love) was also turned into a movie.
Sources and Resources
- Wiki – dt
- Literaturportal
- LEMO – Lebendiges Museum Online
- Wiki – Margarete Elzer
- Wiki – Friede Birkner/Elfriede Stein
