Martina Wied
Martina Wied, born Alexandrine Martina Augusta Schnabl on December 10, 1882, in Vienna, was an influential Austrian poet, novelist, and literary critic. The daughter of a poet and a lawyer, she pursued a diverse education, including art history and modern literature, at the University of Vienna. Under the pseudonym Martina Wied, she began publishing poetry in 1912, with her first collection appearing in 1919. Her literary career expanded into fiction, where she explored themes of history, politics, and exile, drawing heavily from her own experiences as a Jewish woman forced to flee Austria following the annexation by Nazi Germany.
After relocating to Glasgow, Wied taught various subjects while continuing to write novels, including one that reflects on political intrigue in Scotland. Her works often deal with troubled romances and the struggles of individuals against societal norms. Wied returned to Vienna in 1948 and received the Austrian State Prize for Literature in 1952, making her the first woman to achieve this honor. She also contributed significantly to literary criticism and introduced Austrian audiences to notable foreign writers. Wied passed away on January 25, 1957, leaving behind a legacy of diverse literary contributions, which are preserved in various archives, including the Brenner Archive at Innsbruck University.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Martina Wied
Writer
- Born: December 10, 1882
- Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
- Died: January 25, 1957
Biography
Alexandrine Martina Augusta Schnabl was born on December 10, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of Jenny Schnabl, a poet, and Dr. Joseph Schnabl, a lawyer at the imperial court. After attending a teacher-training school from 1899 to 1902, Wied studied art history, history, philosophy, philology, and modern literature at the University of Vienna from 1906 to 1910. Her fellow students included the future playwrights Felix Braun and Franz Theodor Csokor. She married Siegmund Weisl, an industrialist, on June 12, 1910, and their son, Johann Georg, was born the following year.
Using the pseudonym Martina Wied to avoid confusion with her mother, she began publishing poetry in literary magazines in 1912 and her first volume of poems, Bewegung, appeared in 1919. While she continued writing poetry in the 1920’s, she began to focus more on fiction, publishing stories in Arbeiter- Zeitung. Wied was active in Viennese literary circles, becoming friends with dramatist Paul Ernst and philosopher Georg Lukács and basing characters upon them. She wrote her first novel in 1925 and 1926, and it was serialized in Weiner Zeitung in 1934 and published in book form in 1950 under the title Kellingrath.
Following her husband’s death in 1930, Wied became poetry critic for Zeitwende and literature and arts correspondent for Frankfurter Zeitung and contributed to many other publications. Wied converted to Catholicism, but because of her Jewish ancestry and association with socialist publications she was forced to leave Austria after the country’s annexation by Nazi Germany. She eventually settled in Glasgow, Scotland, and her son immigrated to Brazil around the same time. In Glasgow, Wied taught art history, French, and German at several Catholic institutions and concentrated on writing novels. In addition to novels set in Austria dealing with troubled romances and individuals at odds with society, she wrote Das Einhorn: Aus dem Tagebuch eines schottischen Malers in Italien, a historical novel concerned with political intrigue in Scotland. Much of her fiction examines history, politics, and exile. She wrote about the loneliness and poverty of her exile in both fiction and essays.
Wied lived in Wales for a time before returning to Vienna in 1948, where she received the Austrian State Prize for Literature in 1952, the first woman so honored. Wied also wrote plays, radio plays, and literary essays, drawing Austrian readers’ attention to such writers as Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Hermann Hesse, and Aldous Huxley. A book about motifs in literature was incomplete when she died on January 25, 1957. Wied’s letters are collected in the Brenner Archive at Innsbruck University.