Name Kathinka Zitz-Halein | Role Writer | |
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Died March 8, 1877, Mainz, Germany | ||
Kathinka Zitz (née Halein; November 4, 1801 – March 8, 1877) was a German poet, short story writer, journalist, translator and novelist who has been called "the poet laureate of the German Revolution".
Life
Kathinka Halein grew up in Mainz, and was educated at private school before working as a governess and returning to Mainz to look after her younger sister. In the 1830s she translated three novels by Victor Hugo. On June 3, 1837, she married a distant relative, the prominent Mainz attorney and 1848 revolutionary Dr. Franz Heinrich Zitz. They lived together for two years. She wrote for the Mannheimer Abendzeitung, opposing censorship and calling for reform in marriage, divorce and guardianship laws. In the German revolutions of 1848–49 she founded and was first president of the Humania Association, the largest revolutionary women's organization. A prolific short story writer, in the 1860s she wrote fictionalized biographical novels of Goethe, Heine, Rahel Varnhagen and Byron.