Friederike Kempner
Friederike Kempner was a 19th-century German writer and poet, born in 1836 in Opatow, Germany. Despite lacking formal schooling, she was well-educated, mastering several languages through her mother's guidance. Her family's connections with prominent intellectuals, such as the botanist Ferdinand Julius Cohn, influenced her creative pursuits, blending science and philosophy in her literary work. Kempner was deeply committed to social issues, advocating for better treatment of the deceased and the sick through her writings, including a notable pamphlet on the need for proper burial practices.
She ventured into historical fiction with her play "Berenize," which dramatizes the Jewish resistance against Rome, and another play titled "Rudolf der Zweite," addressing religious persecution. While her works received criticism for their unconventional style and grammatical flaws, they reflect her passionate pleas for humanity. Kempner's legacy is characterized by her unique linguistic creativity and her eccentric personality, exemplified by her unusual request for an electronic device to be placed in her coffin upon her death in 1904. Today, she is often remembered for her distinct, if unorthodox, contributions to literature.
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Friederike Kempner
Writer
- Born: June 25, 1836
- Birthplace: Opatow, Posen, Germany
- Died: February 23, 1904
- Place of death: Friederikenhof, Germany
Biography
Friederike Kempner was born in Opatow, Germany, in 1836. Her father, a farmer, bought a manor of his own when she was young. Although she never matriculated to school, the tutelage of her mother apparently was quite effective, and resulted in her knowing French, English, and Latin.
Despite her family’s relative middle-class standing, they consorted with some of the most respected and prominent intellectuals of the area. Some of these men, such as the botanistFerdinand Julius Cohn and liberal philosopher Christian Nees von Esenbeck, helped shape Kempner’s dedication to fuse science and philosophy together in her poetic works. A zealous volunteer to the destitute and deathly ill, Kempner had all the trappings of nobility without the financial backing. These volunteer efforts provided the spark for her Denkschrift über die Nothwendigkeit einer gesetzlichen Einführung von Leichenhäusern, which pled for the fair treatment of the dead and mortally ill, and advocated proper burials and autopsies instead of just burying people in shallow mass graves in the interests of time.
Encouraged by early success, Kempner moved on to historical fiction and wrote Berenize: Tragödie in fünf Aufzügen und in Jamben about the final battle of the Jews against Rome that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem. Professing that the Roman historian Tacitus left a lot of holes in his narrative, Kempner took extensive poetic license in this work, so much so that scholars ignore it as a history and focus upon its fervent pleas for humane actions in the face of war.
Having come into money, Kempner’s father bought her an estate of her own in 1864 which she referred to as Friederike’s Court. Soon thereafter, Rudolf der Zweite: Oder, Der Majestätsbrief was performed on stage and would end up being the only play of hers to ever reach theater. This drama, like Berenize: Tragödie in fünf Aufzügen und in Jamben, was based on real events, but in this case the scientist Johannes Kepler speaks out against religious persecution of the Jews in court. Like so many of her works, Rudolf der Zweite was sharply criticized because it forced the juxtaposition of science and the humanities in an odd sort of way. This explains why Kempner’s legacy is a great one.
In fact, she is best remembered for her grammatical and poetic abuses of the English language all to convey her rather trite and obvious morals. Dubbed “the Genius of Involuntary Humor” by some, Kempner never produced anything of substance and her grammar is said to have been atrocious. Always an eccentric, upon her death in 1904, she asked for an electronic device to be placed in her coffin so that she could ring for help if she were ever to be resurrected.