Annette Kolb was the working name of German author and pacifist Anna Mathilde Kolb. She became active in pacifist causes during World War I and this caused her political difficulties from then on. She also wrote novels on high society and in later life wrote nonfiction about musicians.
Background
Annette Kolb was born on February 3, 1870 in Munich. Her father, a horticulturist, hailed from Germany; her mother, a pianist, was from France. While their household was always filled with interesting and artistic people from a variety of cultures, tensions outside the house, between these two countries, were mounting. In July of the same year as Kolb's birth, the Franco-Prussian War erupted. A little over one year later, in May of 1871, France fully surrendered to Germany. This capitulation created a rift between the two countries that would last well into the twentieth century and serve as fodder for two world wars.
Kolb's strongest influences remain rooted in her childhood. Spending hours with her mother and her artistic friends, Kolb discovered her own interest in music. Not only did she take up the piano, but she also was fascinated by the idea of composing, a facet of music her mother had once toyed with but never seriously pursued. This interest would lead to a series of books Kolb later wrote about some of the most influential musical composers to date, including Mozart and Schubert.
Career
In 1913, Kolb's first novel, Das Exemplar ("The Paragon") was published. While she had already written a couple collections of essays without much notice. Das Exemplar became an instant success. For this work, Kolb was awarded the Fontane Prize for Literature in 1913. In the years following its release, it was reprinted twelve times. Based upon the disappointing misadventures of a young woman who falls in love with a man only to find out he is married. Das Exemplar could easily be seen as a roman a clef. The novel ends with the heroine deciding to remain true to herself, and thus, ultimately alone.
World War I brought not only devastation to Kolb's homeland, but two other events during this period marked the collapse of Kolb's "dialogue of the bridge." In 1915, both of her parents died, leaving Kolb completely alone in the world. The changing tides within Germany, coupled with the passing of her two closest relatives, marked a shift in every sense of the word for Kolb. From this point forward, Kolb turned her literary attention away from the personal, focusing on more public concerns. However, many of her themes remained constant. In 1917, she relocated to Switzerland on the advice of friends. There, Kolb participated freely in anti-war activities and met numerous like-minded individuals.
During this time, she maintained contact with people in both France and Germany and discovered that both countries, because of her mixed allegiances, considered her untrustworthy. This discovery must have been painful for Kolb who, on the simplest level, merely wanted peace between her two homelands. In 1919, Kolb returned to Germany and continued publishing essays and articles. She still hoped that nationalism would wane and that a peaceful order would be restored to Europe. While she often felt caught between two worlds, Kolb found inspiration in the 1919 international meeting of the Socialist Congress. According to Fetzer. Kolb insisted that she believed "socialism constituted not a goal, but a pathway to new shores."
Kolb spent the 1920s in Germany writing. According to Fetzer, during this time "she raised her voice against the gassing of the minds, against such absurd concepts as Met Goethe croak/ and against the flowering desert of silence into which many writers of conscience were being banished." At the urging of friends, Kolb once again fled Germany before Hitler came to power in 1933. She spent the next few years in France, living happily and writing. In 1934, she published Die Schaukel ("The Swing"), an autobiographical novel about the dichotomy of north versus south; Protestant versus Catholic; professional versus artistic. She also began writing about musical composers, publishing her first book on the subject, Mozart, in 1937.
In 1939, Kolb traveled to America at the invitation of Dorothy Thompson, President of the PEN Club. While in America, Kolb met with Thompson, as well as her old friend Thomas Mann and President Roosevelt. Despite sharing the company of legends, Kolb was unimpressed with America and was often quite homesick. She returned to Germany in 1945, only to discover the devastation caused by World War II. She spent her remaining years divided, as always, between France and Germany. Kolb continued writing until her death in 1967.
Kolb's belief in pacifism, as well as her outspoken anti-war stance, made her an unpopular figure in Germany. Unafraid to stand up for what she believed in, she often criticized the political climate within Germany.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
According to Thomas Svend Hansen in the Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century, Kolb's "Franco-German allegiance and her political role as mediator of both cultures place her above convenient national categories. Her German revels in Gallic conceits, using foreign words, frequent rhetorical questions, and exclamation points for emphasis. Her diction, although sometimes archaic, is musical and elegant, and a fitting medium for the values of tolerance, humanity, and grace - tempered with a dash of pessimism - with which she tried to inspire the twentieth century."
Connections
Kolb herself never married and was considered by some to be an old maid, while others believed she lived vicariously through her characters.