Ricarda Huch was a German novelist, poet, short-story writer, essayist, historian, biographer, and autobiographer. Huch was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich, at a time when university study for women in the German-speaking world was possible only in Switzerland. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.
Background
Ricarda Huch was born on July 18, 1864, in Braunschweig, Germany, to Marie Louise and Georg Heinrich Huch. The Huchs were a wealthy and artistically talented merchant family. Her brother, Rudolf, and her cousins, Friedrich and Felix, were also well-known writers.
She was encouraged in the arts and wrote lyric poetry as a youth. Huch used the pseudonym Richard Hugo and published her first poems under the alias R. Ith Carda.
Education
Ricarda Huch became the first female student admitted to the University of Zurich at a time when women could not study at any German university; she obtained her doctorate in history in 1892.
While at the University of Zurich she established lasting friendships with Marie Baum, Hedwig Bleuler-Waser and Marianne Plehn, who like her had come to Zurich to study.
Shortly after attaining her doctorate, Huch published poetry under the alias of Richard Hugo. After working as a librarian, Huch left for Bremen, where she taught German and history. Her Swiss experiences she later described in a charming book of memoirs, Frühling in der Schweiz (1938).
Huch's first creative phase (1890-1900) is marked by several volumes of lyrical poetry written in a neo-romantic style. Huch’s first major work was a novel Erinnerungen von Ludolf Ursleu dem Juengeren (Recollections of Ludolf Ursleu, Jr. 1893; translated as Eros Invincible, 1931). The novel is narrated by Ludolf Ursleu, Jr., a man who has taken refuge from the world in a monastery high in the Swiss Alps. There he records how his once-powerful merchant family was destroyed by a sudden wave of tragedy. The grim nature of the novel’s plot is characteristic of Huch’s early works.
In 1896, Huch moved to Bremen, Germany, where she gave a series of lectures on historical and literary subjects. She eventually expanded a lecture on the German Romantic Movement, publishing it in two volumes, Bluetezeit der Romantik (“The Golden Age of Romanticism,” 1899), and Ausbreitung und Verfall der Romantik (“Diffusion and Decline of Romanticism,” 1902). These volumes sealed her reputation as a leading literary intellectual.
Aus der Triumphgasse (1902) mixes realistic and romantic elements in describing the slum districts of Trieste. But her basic theme, the will to live, finds expression here and in her next novel, Vita somnium breve (1903).
Huch won prominence during the years 1902 to 1910 as a master of the historical novel. Best known are two brilliant works dealing with the romantic period in German history: Blütezeit der Romantik (1899) and Ausbreitung und Verfall der Romantik (1902). Several of her books from this period center on the theme of the unification of Italy in the 19th century: Die Geschichten von Garibaldi (1906-1907), Die Verteidigung Roms (1906), and Der Kampf um Rom (1907). Later she turned to the historical works that assure her a lasting place in the history of German letters: Her trilogy, Deutsche Geschichte (1912-1949), deals respectively with Germany during the Thirty Years War, the Reformation, and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire.
The beginning of Huch's final artistic period corresponded roughly with the end of World War 1. During
this period she wrote several works reflecting her new-found religious sensibilities, including Luthers Glaube: Briefe an einen Freund (“Luther’s Faith: Letters to a Friend,” 1916), and Der Sinn der heiligen Schrift (‘The Meaning of the Bible, ”1919). She also wrote works of secular philosophy such as Entpersoenlichung (“Depersonalization,” 1921), a key work which analyzed her conception of moral growth through emotional catharsis. She also began to publish a new nonfiction trilogy, Deutsche Geschichte (“German History”). The first two volumes appeared in 1934 and 1937, although the third could not appear until after World War II, (in 1949) because Huch’s view of German history differed so wildly from the official Nazi version.
After the war, she began to collect documents about the anti-Nazi movement in Germany in the hopes of detailing its history. Huch’s reputation was so renowned that she was named honorary president of the German Writers Congress, in October 1947.
At the time of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Huch was one of her country's most respected members of the Preussische Dichterakademie (Academy of Prussian Writers). However, in protest to Hitler's dictatorship, she refused to join the newly founded Nazi Academy of Writers. Nor was her opposition only symbolic, as she was also close to the circle of conspirators responsible for the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Hitler.
Huch called the Nazis' tactics un-German, defended her right to freedom of expression, and noted that she was not in agreement with the Nazi doctrine. The Third Reich tacitly tolerated Huch's contempt for it as long as she was not too vocal about her opinions.
Views
While Huch emphasized the importance of the home country and family values, she regarded change as inevitable and valued individuality above all else. Her books on religious and philosophical history conveyed a joined-up view of human beings, human life, and history.
In March 1946, 13 years after her resignation from the Prussian Academy of Arts Huch published a public appeal in Germany's daily newspapers asking for help in compiling biographical information on those who had sacrificed their lives to resist the Nazi terror. She reasoned that this ultimate sacrifice had helped all Germans to retain a grain of human dignity during a period of near-boundless brutality. Huch argued that those who had resisted allowed all humans to rise from the swamp of everyday routine, light the spark for the fight against the bad and maintain the belief in the noble godliness of humanity.
Huch was in her 70s when the Nazi seized power, and unlike authors such as Thomas Mann who first fled into ‘‘inner emigration‘‘ and then went into exile, she took a stand against the Nazi doctrine from the outset. Huch continued to live in Germany, made no attempt to conceal her convictions and published in Germany through Swiss publishers. In 1934 Mann wrote of his intellectual struggle against the powers that be "Getting through it and maintaining one’s own personal dignity and liberty is everything." After the second world war, Thomas Mann honored Huch as "the first lady of German letters."
Quotations:
"Love is an award received for no merits."
“To save Germany was not granted to them; only to die for it; luck was not with them, it was with Hitler. But they did not die in vain. Just as we need air if we are to breathe, and light if we are to see, so we need noble people if we are to live.”
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Martin Luther, Mikhail Bakunin
Writers
Caroline Schelling, Dorothea von Schlegel, Karoline von Günderrode, Rahel Levin, Bettina von Arnim, Dorothea von Rodde-Schlözer
Connections
Huch married Ermanno Ceconi, an Italian dentist in 1898. She moved to his Italian homeland of Trieste for several years, where they had a daughter, but they divorced in 1906. She later married her former brother-in-law and cousin, the writer Richard Huch, who had divorced from her sister in 1907.