Women’s Writing and Translating in Fin-de-Siècle Prague and the Bohemian Lands

Researchers: Anna-Dorothea Ludewig and Veronika Jičínská (University Ústí nad Labem)
Duration: 2023–2025
Funding: Czech Science Foundation (GAČR)

Compared to the other European metropolis around 1900, Prague and Bohemia seem to have fewer female contributions to literary and journalistic life. This is especially true of German-speaking literature: While Czech literature around the turn of the century was highly influenced by the works of Božena Němcová and Karolína Světlá (Johanna Rottová) their German-speaking colleagues stayed among themselves. Accordingly, Prague is known as a city of men: Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka or Franz Werfel are its world-famous representatives – but we hardly know any woman writers. In his autobiographical study on the Prague circle (which is also an ex post facto construction of this group) Max Brod mentions the Prague-born Auguste Hauschner (1850–1924) as the only female exception in a long list of male authors. Brod writes some kind but condescending lines about her novels, referring to her as “the good Hauschner” (“die gute Hauschner”). And this seems to be the specific ‘Prague undertone’ of the (contemporary) perception of not only female writing but also female activities in general: “In the writings of each of the women who moved to other cities we can find remarks about the stifling atmosphere of the Prague Jewish Society which they have left behind.” (Iggers, Wilma A.: Women of Prague. Ethnic diversity and social change from the eighteenth century to the present. Providence, RI 1995, 25)

But were there really fewer interesting and noteworthy women writers in Prague and Bohemia, or were they – as so often – marginalized and not canonized? De facto, a number of German-speaking Bohemian women actually were active in the literary field. Like their male counterparts, they came mainly from Jewish families; this is hardly surprising, since German-speaking Jews were an important part of the intellectual middle and upper classes. But – as indicated by Wilma Iggers above – the women lived in a strong dependence on their male relatives, stronger than in Vienna or Berlin, for example.

Thinking about the history of Jewish women writers thus involves an examination of the social history of Bohemia and Prague. Beyond social history, further important factors to consider are  gender images, female education, the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish environments, and the understanding of nationality, nationhood, and language. This represents a major methodological challenge. By considering the translation aspect, we will move in a large, growing field of translation studies. And, in an already complex field determined by national and cultural differences, we will add the gender aspect. But the methodological complexity that these challenges entail promises valuable research results. The value is that the activities of German-speaking writers and translators (also bilingual women or women with command of German, not necessarily native speakers) in the Bohemian Lands will be recorded for the first time. They will be contextualized in the broader frame of gender discourses in the Habsburg monarchy and against the backdrop of Czech-German constellations. And their work and biographies will be analyzed under the gender perspective that will provide us with tools to bring the sub-current realities and contexts to the fore that have so far escaped academic attention.