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Anna Elisabet Weirauch (August 7, 1887 - December 21, 1970)
Anna Elisabet Weirauch is best remembered for her three-volume lesbian novel Der Skorpion (The Scorpion) set during the Weimar Republic.Born in Galatz, Rumania, Weirauch was moved, along with her sister, by her mother to Germany upon their father's death in 1891. By the turn of the century, they were living in Berlin, where Anna Elisabet studied acting. From 1906 to 1914, she was a member of Max Reinhardt's prestigious ensemble at the Deutsches Theater.
Although she had written plays, she discovered after the war that her real talent lay in writing prose. Clearly, she had been writing for some time already since four novels and three novellas all appeared in 1919, the beginning of her long career. One of these was the first volume of Der Skorpion (The Scorpion), the work for which Weirauch is remembered today.
This three-volume lesbian Entwicklungsroman (a novel that traces the development of its main character from childhood into young adulthood) follows Mette Rudloff from her troubled childhood, in search of love and of answers about her "different" sexuality, to her acceptance of her nature and the possibility that she can now find the love she has sought.
The first volume portrays her from childhood through her early twenties. Olga, the first woman she loves, succumbs to the view of homosexual love as decadent and futile. After breaking off their relationship, she commits suicide. Mette's family hires a psychiatrist to "cure" her, but Mette refuses to accept a medical view of lesbians as aberrant and diseased.
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Citation Information
Author: Jones, James W.
Entry Title: Weirauch, Anna Elisabet
General Editor: Claude J. Summers
Publication Name: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture
Publication Date: 2002
Date Last Updated November 23, 2002
Web Address www.glbtq.com/literature/weirauch_ae.html
Publisher glbtq, Inc.
1130 West Adams
Chicago, IL 60607
Today's Date December 21, 2012
Encyclopedia Copyright: © 2002-2006, glbtq, Inc.
Entry Copyright © 1995, 2002 New England Publishing Associates
( Further Readings )
Doug Wright (born December 21, 1962) is an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2004 for his play, I Am My Own Wife.
Wright was born in Dallas, Texas. He attended and graduated from Highland Park High School, in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, where he excelled in the theater department and was President of the Thespian Club in 1981. He earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1985. He earned his M.F.A. from New York University. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and serves on the boards of Yaddo and New York Theatre Workshop. He is a recipient of the William L. Bradley Fellowship at Yale University, the Charles MacArthur Fellowship at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, an HBO Fellowship in playwriting and the Alfred Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. (Picture: David Clement)