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Doris von Schönthan

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Doris von Schönthan in 1927 (press photo)

Doris von Schönthan (1905–1961), born Maria-Dorothea Ehemann (also Doris Ehemann; Doris von Salomon; Doris de Salomon; Maria-Dorothea von Salomon; Maria-Dorothea von Schönthan; Maria-Dorothea von Salomon-Schönthan; Doris von Salomon-Schönthan),[1][2] called 'Dorinde',[3] was a German model, a copywriter, journalist and photographer. She is characterised as a dazzling figure of the Weimar Republic or bohemian of the Roaring Twenties.[4][5]

Family and circle of friends

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Schönthan was born in Worms. As an early orphan, she was adopted by the Berlin comedy writer Franz von Schönthan [de], who together with his brother Paul became known for the comedy Der Raub der Sabinerinnen and worked behind the scenes, for example, on operettas to the music of Eduard Künneke. Professionally, she was partly employed, partly freelance, such as for a Berlin "advertising service of American style" (advertising agency),[6] for Berlin daily newspapers, magazines and illustrated papers. She was portrayed in drawings by Paul Citroen,[7] 1927 but also by the contemporary cultural magazine Der Querschnitt.[8]

Doris von Schönthan, portrayed by Zander & Labisch in 1927 for the cultural magazine Der Querschnitt

Schönthan belonged to the circle of friends around the closely connected siblings Erika and Klaus Mann, into which she brought Grete Dispeker (later married Weil), their friend from their shared childhood days at Tegernsee[9] The brothers Edgar (1908-1941) and Hans Joseph Weil (1906-1969) and their friend Walter Jockisch (1907-1970) were also integrated. Dispeker admiringly called her a cherub.[5]

The writer Franz Hessel fell in love with her and publicly dedicated his Doris-Texte (among others Leichtes Berliner Frühlingsfieber, some texts in Nachfeier, both titles in 1929) to her.[10] During walks through Berlin together, he served as a pretext for her to be able to photograph people unnoticed by seemingly aiming her camera at him at a suitable spot in order to deceive the actual photo subjects or lull them into a sense of security. In reality, she photographed past him, for example in the Schöneberger Heinrich-von-Kleist-Park [de] or people stepping out of the KaDeWe after shopping and strolling past its blue-uniformed porter with a German shepherd dog. She looked for types: a park bench with "broads", another with old men, scuffling little boys, children playing in the sandbox, ball players, a "slutty Venus" in the Königskolonnaden, women and men with "Kneifer", an old toilet woman....[11]

Mit Hessel und Hilmar Adolf Otto Maximilian Thankmar von Münchhausen (1894–1976) verband Doris von Schönthan Ende der 1920er Jahre eine Dreiecksbeziehung.[12] Gut befreundet war sie auch mit Ruth Landshoff-Yorck[13] und Walter Benjamin,[14] Walter Hasenclever and Alfred Kantorowicz, described by these as a "lovely woman",[15] as "tall and slender, of fragile grace, nervously endangered"[16] or as "lean and witty"[17] or as "very thin, disjointed, uncommonly forgetful and scattered".[18]

Klaus Mann described her in his diary as a "companion of my borderline walks between self-awareness and self-destruction": "Big evening with Doris. In search of cocaine. With transvestites taxi into the city [...] Finally the stuff. To Doris. Taken."[5] He briefly considered marrying her.[19] She remained friends with him until his death in Cannes and also supported him financially.[20] She took him to a clinic in Nice for detoxification on 4 May 1949, after he had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.[21] Von Schönthan informed Thomas Mann, who was staying at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, of Klaus' critical condition by telegram on 21 May 1949. That same evening, she informed the Mann family and friends of Klaus Mann's death by telephone.[22]

Political resistance

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In 1933, she distributed anti-fascist flyers in the Reich capital together with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Friedrich Wolf. Politically persecuted persons such as Rudolf Olden found shelter in her flat. When she strictly refused to formulate professionally in the spirit of NS diction, it became so dangerous for her that she emigrated to France. Through this she met the political activist Bruno von Salomon [de] in Paris; they both married.[23][10] During the Battle of France in May and June 1940, both were initially interned as enemy aliens about one thousand kilometres apart, she in southern France,[16] but were able to resume their resistance work afterwards and joined the French Resistance.[24][4]

Return to Germany

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In 1952 she returned to Germany; life in emigration and the illegality caused by the resistance had shattered her physically and psychologically.[3] In the same year her husband died. She was committed to a mental institution between 1952 and 1954, fled from there and called Alfred Kantorowicz from the Berlin Friedrichstraße station, crying and talking confusedly.[16] She unsuccessfully sought redress from the authorities for her persecution during the Nazi era. The glamour girl of the Weimar era became increasingly lonely and slipped away. She became destitute, attempted suicide and eventually became homeless. After she was unable to pay for a meal in a Berlin pub, she was remanded in custody for dine and dash. From November 1961, her four-page letter to the German journalist and publicist Manfred George, who had been in exile since 1933, survives; she knew him personally from their time working together as journalists before 1933.[25] Resigned, she is said to have emigrated again to France, where she died of a cerebral stroke in Paris.[5]

Film

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Schönthan was portrayed by the actress Naomi Krauss [de] in the 2001 three-part television film Die Manns – Ein Jahrhundertroman by Heinrich Breloer.

References

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  1. ^ Biographie, Deutsche. "Salomon, Doris von - Deutsche Biographie". www.deutsche-biographie.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-02-16.
  2. ^ "Kalliope | Verbundkatalog für Archiv- und archivähnliche Bestände und nationales Nachweisinstrument für Nachlässe und Autographen". kalliope-verbund.info. Retrieved 2024-02-16.
  3. ^ a b Eckhardt Köhn: Die traurige Geschichte der Dorinde. Klaus Manns Gefährtin, Franz Hessels Muse: Erinnerung an Doris von Schönthan. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Nr. 84 (2000), 8 April 2000, Beilage, p. IV.
  4. ^ a b Ulla Plener: Frauen aus Deutschland in der französischen Résistance – Eine Dokumentation. Edition Bodoni, 2006. ISBN 978-3-929390-90-2.
  5. ^ a b c d Stolzenau, Martin. "Doris von Schönthan". nd-aktuell.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-02-16.
  6. ^ Euphorion, Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte, vol. 98, 1-4 edition, C. Winter Verlag, Heidelberg 2004, p. 196.
  7. ^ Ruth Yorck: Klatsch, Ruhm und kleine Feuer: Biographische Impressionen. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 1963, DNB-IDN 452698561, p. 34.
  8. ^ Foto: Doris von Schönthan im Jahr 1927 (1). At gettyimages.de, retrieved 3 September 2021
    Foto: Doris von Schönthan im Jahr 1927 (2). At gettyimages.de, retrieved 3 September 2021
  9. ^ Grete Weil. At kuenste-im-exil.de, retrieved 3 September 2021
    Waldemar Fromm, Wolfram Göbel: Freunde der Monacensia e. V. - Jahrbuch 2009. Books on Demand, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86906-038-5, p. 87.
  10. ^ a b Magali Laure Nieradka: Der Meister der leisen Töne - Biographie des Poets Franz Hessel. Igel Verlag [de], Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86815-590-7, p. 86.
  11. ^ Franz Hessel: Tagebuchnotizen (1928–1932), p. 40.
    Franz Hessel: Doris im Regen. In Franz Hessel: Nachfeier. In Franz Hessel: Werke 2 – Prosasammlungen, p. 278.
  12. ^ Magali Laure Nieradka: Der Meister der leisen Töne – Biographie des Dichters Franz Hessel. Igel-Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-86815-590-7, p. 120.
    Katharina Lunau: L'homme personnage: literarisches self-fashioning und Strategien der Selbstfiktionalisierung bei Henri-Pierre Roché. Igel-Verlag, Hamburg 2010. ISBN 978-3-86815-510-5, p. 258.
  13. ^ Cristina Fischer: Zwischen Angst und Heldentum – Frauen aus Deutschland in der französischen Résistance. In Unsere Zeit, 10 March 2006. Auf: dkp-online.de, retrieved 15 July 2017.
  14. ^ Walter Benjamin: Gesammelte Werke: Literarische und ästhetische Essays + Rezensionen + Satiren + Autobiografische Schriften. e-artnow, 2015, ISBN 978-8026828112. Quote: "19. September 1928: I stayed at home in the evening, despite an appointment with [Gustav] Glück, Doris [von Schönthan] etc. [...]. [...] Soon while I was reading, I had to think of the particular intensity with which Doris had mentioned the book to me. It occurred to me that it might have played a role in her love for Thankmar [von Münchhausen] and I felt like stealing it."
  15. ^ Walter Hasenclever: Briefe in zwei Bänden 1907-1940, vol. 1: 1907-1932. Hase und Koehler Verlag, Mainz 1994, ISBN 978-3-7758-1324-2, p. 373.
  16. ^ a b c Alfred Kantorowicz: Exil in Frankreich: Merkwürdigkeiten und Denkwürdigkeiten. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2016, ISBN 978-3-10-561098-5.
  17. ^ Carmen Giese: Das Ich im literarischen Werk von Grete Weil und Klaus Mann: Zwei autobiographische Gesamtkonzepte. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt 1997, ISBN 978-3-631-31204-9, p. 41.
  18. ^ Fredric Kroll (ed.): Klaus-Mann-Schriftenreihe: 1927–1933, Vor der Sintflut. Männerschwarm Verlag, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 978-3-935596-93-0, p. 85.
  19. ^ André Sokolowski: Klaus Mann Dies. epubli, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3737545679. Quote: "I considered marrying her the other day. Doris, why Doris, it's nonsense, nonsense, a hysterical idea, what would I have to do with her, no."
  20. ^ Katharina Rutschky: Unruhe und Erfahrungshunger. In Die Zeit 37 (1989), 8 September 1989, retrieved 3 September 2021.
    Manfred Flügge: Das Jahrhundert der Manns. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-8412-0880-4.
  21. ^ Loek Zonneveld: Door het losgeslagen. In De Groene Amsterdamer, 16 December 2000, retrieved 3 September 2021.
  22. ^ Tilman Lahme: Die Manns – Geschichte einer Familie. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2015, ISBN 978-3-10-402263-5.
  23. ^ Thomas O. H. Kaiser: Klaus Mann. Ein Schriftsteller in den Fluten der Zeit: Bestandsaufnahme und kritische Würdigung von Leben und Werk. Book on Demand, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-7392-7230-6, p. 439.
    Salomon, Doris von. At kalliope-verbund.de, retrieved 3 September 2021.
  24. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz: Nachtbücher – Aufzeichnungen im französischen Exil 1935 bis 1939 Archived 2017-08-10 at the Wayback Machine. Edited by Ursula Büttner, Angelika Voß, Forschungsstelle für die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus. Christians, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-7672-1247-1, p. 145, 206, 232, 235, 240.
  25. ^ Letter Doris von Salomon to Manfred George, 1 November 1961. On kalliope-verbund.info, retrieved 3 September 2021
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