Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) was an Austrian writer of noble birth who wrote in German. She lived in Cisleithania, the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is regarded as one of the most important German-language writers of the later nineteenth century. Today she is valued for her sharp view of the aristocracy, the middle class and village life.

She was born at the castle of Zdislawitz in Moravia, into a family of the Czech nobility. She lost her mother as a small child and was educated at home by two stepmothers, especially the second, who encouraged her to write. She never attended a formal school, but she learned French, German and Czech and made good use of the family libraries. In 1848 she married her cousin Moritz von Ebner-Eschenbach, a professor of physics and chemistry at an engineering academy who later became an army officer. The couple lived in Vienna, in Klosterbruck and again in Vienna. They had no children, a disappointment to both, and in her diaries and letters she expressed a restlessness that modern readers often connect with the narrow room that society allowed women of her class.

Her first efforts were dramatic. With encouragement from Franz Grillparzer and Baron von Münch-Bellinghausen, she saw the drama Maria Stuart in Scotland staged in 1860, but her plays had only limited success. Earlier, in 1858, she had made an anonymous debut with Aus Franzensbad, a series of satirical letters already marked by irony and a sharp eye for the middle class and nobility. Her real strength lay in prose, beginning with Die Prinzessin von Banalien (1872). In Božena (1876) and Das Gemeindekind (1887) she evoked the Moravia of her childhood, while Lotti, die Uhrmacherin (1883) and Glaubenslos? (1893) portray the Austrian aristocracy. Her prose pairs psychological insight with gentle sympathy and a subtle humour.

Her elegant style, her incisive wit and her skill in shaping characters earned her a foremost place among the German-language women writers of her day. Much of her wider reputation came through Julius Rodenberg, who published her work in his periodical Deutsche Rundschau. On the occasion of her seventieth birthday, the University of Vienna awarded her an honorary doctorate in philosophy. Her legacy lies in her socially engaged fiction, and a park in the Währing district of Vienna bears her name.