Name Anna Hoyer | Role Writer | |
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Died November 27, 1655, Stockholm, Sweden | ||
Anna Ovena Hoyer (born: Anke Hanß, aka Anna Ovena Hoyers, Swedish: Anna Orena Höijer) (Koldenbüttel on Ejdersted peninsula 1584 – 27 November 1655) was a writer and poet, originally German; active in Sweden from 1632. She belonged to the anabaptists and was a critic of Lutheranism.
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Biography
Hoyer was the only child of the wealthy Hans Owens (aka Johann Oven) and his wife Wennecke Hunnens was educated in astronomy, literature and the Classics. She married Hermann Hoyer, stadtholder in Ejdersted, with whom she had at least nine children. With her dowry, amounting to 100,000 rixdollar of Lübeck fineness, she helped to repay debts charged on her spouse's estates. She inherited the manor Hoyersworth (a part of today's Oldenswort) in the North Sea coastal marshes at Hermann Hoyer's death on 13 September 1622.
She was influenced by Indian religion in her reluctance to kill anything living, and became influenced by the sectarians Nicolaus Knutzen Teting and Hartvig Lehmann, religious refugees from Flensborg, whom she gave asylum. She refused to participate in the church services and held her own. She ruined herself on charity. In 1632, she sold her estate to Augusta of Denmark and fled to Sweden, where she became a protégée of the queen, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. In 1634 she visited Hoyersworth and experienced in October the devastating Burchardi flood. In Sweden she resided in Västervik and thereafter at a little property outside Stockholm until her death.