Friederike Kempner, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetFriederike Kempner
German writer
Date of Birth: 25-Jun-1828
Place of Birth: Opatów, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland
Date of Death: 23-Feb-1904
Profession: writer, poet
Zodiac Sign: Cancer 
About Friederike Kempner
- Friederike Kempner (25 June 1828 – 23 February 1904) was a German-Jewish poet. The daughter of a well-off family from Kepno (German: Kempen), Kempner was born in Opatów, then part of the Prussian Grand Duchy of Posen (today Poland).
- In 1844, her father purchased a manor (Rittergut) in Droschkau, Silesia, where she and her siblings spent a sheltered youth.
- By her mother, she received education in the French language, literature, and the Jewish Enlightenment.
- In 1864, she was able to establish her own residence at a family estate called Friederikenhof (Gierczyce) near Reichthal (Rychtal), where she wrote many of her works.
- By her niece Doris Davidsohn, née Kempner, she was the great-aunt of Jakob van Hoddis. The death of both her parents in 1868 had a lasting effect on Kempner's work.
- Early in life, she developed an interest in general humanitarian questions, especially in hygiene, as well as in reforms of the prison system and the abolition of solitary confinement.
- Suffering from taphophobia like many of her contemporaries, she urgently advocated the introduction of morgues and a waiting time in cases of suspended animation.
- Kempner left a comprehensive oeuvre of pamphlets, as well as several novellas and theatre plays which, however, remained largely unheeded by literary critics.
- Some of her exalted poems attained notoriety for their unintentional humor; she was mocked as "The Silesian Swan" by editors like Paul Lindau and many parodies were created which later were occasionally even attributed to Kempner herself.
- This "literary heritage" prompted the author and critic Alfred Kempner (not a direct relative) to adopt the surname Kerr in 1887. Friedrike Kempner remained unmarried.
- Some years before her death she was stricken with blindness.
- She died at her Friederikenhof manor and is buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery, Wroclaw.
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