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Marie Madeleine Baronness von Puttkamer
(April 4, 1881 - September 27, 1944) Germany

Marie Madeleine

Poet

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Born Marie Günter in Eydtkuhnen, East Prussia (now in Russia). At age 19 she married the much older Major-General and Baron Heinrich Georg Ludwig Freiherr von Puttkamer, and moved to Berlin. In the same year she published her first poetry collection, called Auf Kypros (On Cyprus, 1900). Although most of its poems are heterosexual in tone, some are clear depictions of lesbianism. Three years later she gave birth to her only child, Jesco Gunther Heinrich.

From 1905 Puttkamer lived mainly in Baden-Baden and in Nice. Undeterred by her critics, Marie Madeleine had published six further successful collections of poetry by 1920, as well as plays, short stories, and novels. In Taumel (Dizziness, 1020), she created a type of female Don Juan, who voraciously pursues and conquers.

Her lifelong heavy addiction to morphine (close to 30 years) was quite destructive to her health. She attempted to quit several times to no avail. Around 1942 or 1943 she bought herself into a sanitarium in the city of Katzenelnbogen. A relatively short time later, she died there under obscure circumstances.

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Foiled Sleep

Ah me! I cannot sleep at night;
And when I shut my eyes, forsooth,
I cannot banish from my sight
The vision of her slender youth.

She stands before me lover-wise,
Her naked beauty fair and slim,
She smiles upon me, and her eyes
With over fierce desire grow dim.

Slowly she leans to me. I meet
The passion of her gaze anew,
And then her laughter, clear and sweet,
Thrills all the hollow silence through.

O, siren, with the mocking tongue!
O beauty, lily-sweet and white!
I see her, slim and fair and young.
And ah! I cannot sleep tonight.

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Source: Excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001 - et alii

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