Hildegard Maria Rauchfuß

Hildegard Maria Rauchfuß (22 February 1918 - 28 May 2000) was a German writer. Her output included novels, short stories, poems, song/cabaret lyrics, radio plays and television dramas. Many of her books flowed from her own extensive in-person research and tell of women who achieved, or failed to find, emancipation.

Biography Hildegard Maria Rauchfuß was born in Breslau. Herbert Rauchfuß, her father, was an imperial guards officer who later went into business. It was said that she inherited her style from Clara, her French-born mother, and her discipline from her Prussian father. She left school earlier than intended, and before having the chance to complete the curriculum or take part in the final exams. The National Socialists had taken power early in 1933 and rapidly transformed the country into a one-party dictatorship. Antisemitism was no longer merely a shrill slogan for populist politicians. It had become a core underpinning of government policy: Rauchfuß was excluded from her school because she stood up for school friends identified by the authorities as Jewish. She therefore completed her school studies at a nearby commercially focused school ("Handelsschule") before embarking on a traineeship in singing. During the Second World War, which had broken out in 1939, she combined her musical studies with work in a bank.

Now working as a freelance writer, she was encouraged by erudite neighbours such as former publisher Wieland Herzfelde (1896-1988), his brother, the polymath visual artist John Heartfield (1891-1968), and the philosopher Ernst Bloch (1985-1977). Increasingly, Rauchfuß draw in her writings on her own experiences. She drove over to Dresden, stood in the middle of all the rubble, spoke with the restoration workers, sat on the remains of ruined buildings, asked questions and listened to the answers. The driving principle, that "you must have touched the stones about which you write", was one to which she would adhere for the rest of her life. After taking time investigating clinics and health spas, in 1954 she published Besiegte Schatten (loosely "Shadows overcome"), in which she portrayed the struggle of doctors and nurses against Tuberculosis. There followed a succession of poems, ballads, television dramas and scripts for the Leipziger Pfeffermühle ("Leipzig Pepper-grinder"), a gently anti-establishment cabaret company. Twelve years later another strongly autobiographical novel, Fische auf Zweigen (literally, "Fish in the branches") dealt with the personal development of a young woman who has grown up in the conservative Silesian middle-class milieu of the 1920s and is coming to terms with the challenges and family tensions presented by life in the Soviet occupation zone and the German Democratic Republic in the later 1940s. Gender and discrimination issues feature particularly strongly in this book.

Her manuscript Meine sieben Männer oder Rückseite des Feigenblatte ("My seven men and the backside of the fig leaf") remains unpublished: it forms part of her literary estate which is held by the Leipzig City Library. it also achieved significant success in "distant Greece". Other poems and song lyrics came to prominence through the many recordings made by Gisela May.

Works by Rauchfuß have been translated into Mongolian, Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian.

Memberships Hildegard Maria Rauchfuß sustained her membership of the East German arts establishment. She was, in 1950, a founder member of the (East) German Writers' Association. In 1975 she also became a member of the (East) German Journalists' Association. She was, in the words of one sympathetic source, a "companionable comrade who could be very direct with contemporaries. She was an excellent and lucid conversationalist who sometimes became positively garrulous". These qualities were also placed at the disposal of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) between 1967 and 1976. The authorities used her insights for their own purposes. She was identified in their files as an informer under the cover name "Bettina Schreiber" (loosely "Bettina Writer"). She regretted the closeness of her links to the Stasi during this period for the rest of her life.

Personal Hildegard Maria Rauchfuß was childless and never married. Her life-partner during the final decades of her life, till his death, was the Leipzig literary scholar Robert Zoppek (1919-1998).

Awards and honours (selection)

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