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Annemarie Schwarzenbach
(May 23, 1908 - November 15, 1942) Switzerland

Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Writer

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She grew up as one of three children in a materially secure, middle-class environment. In 1930 she met Erika and Klaus Mann and fell in love with the former. She completed her doctorate and in 1931 published her first novel, Friends of Bernhard. In 1931 Annemarie went to Berlin, where she was introduced to morphine and became a drug addict.

In the spring 1933 her Lyrical Novella was published; shortly afterwards she went on her first voyage to Turkey, the Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, described in Winter in Asia Minor: Diary of a Journey. Having met Maud von Rosen in 1934, Annemarie traveled to Teheran and married the French diplomat Claude Clarac in 1935, a common move in this period to avoid questions about sexual preferences. Then she went to the US.

During the 1930s her drug addition led to repeated bouts of illness as well as attempts to cure her addictions, which proved fruitless. Involved with various women, she met Carson McCullers in 1940 who fell madly in love with her. Annemarie, however, had an association with Margot Opel and when they fell out she attempted suicide by cutting her wrists. Carson McCullers took care of her.

In 1941 she worked on her new novel The Mircle of the Tree but died a year later aged 34 following a bicycle accident. Her work was rediscovered and republished by the Swiss publishing house Lenos in the 1980s.

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Source: Gabriele Griffin, Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay and Writing, Routledge, London, 2002

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