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Lena Christ Biography & Facts

Lena Christ German: [lɛna krɪst] (née Magdalena Pichler; 30 October 1881 – 30 June 1920) was a German writer. Life and works Lena Christ was born as the nonmarital child of Magdalena Pichler (1860–1928), then a cook on Zinneberg near Glonn.: 9  Smith journeyman and salesman Karl Christ from Mönchsroth near Dinkelsbühl admitted to paternity. Despite this explicit profession by Karl Christ, then employed with Munich cavalry captain Rittmeister Ewald Hornig, and his commitment to alimony, later contemporaries and biographers doubted his paternity. Rather Scanzoni zu Lichtenfels at Schloss Zinneberg was to be suspected as true father. This speculation was fed through Lena Christ's statement that her mother claimed her father went missing and lost his life in the sinking of the Cimbria on 19 January 1883 on route to America at the high seas. There was however no Karl Christ registered in the passenger lists. Lena Christ's mother therefore wanted or had to keep the true paternity concealed.: 10  Christ's biological paternity is viewed as relatively improbably today. Glonn's local chronicler Hans Obermair also noted that Karl Christ did emigrate to America, but only later, and he did arrive safely. He suspects Albert of Scanzoni and Ewald Hornig as likely fathers.: 56  Despite her pen name, it remained unclear if Lena Christ herself was convinced that Karl Christ was her father. The first seven years of her live Lena Christ stayed with her grandfather, the farmer Mathias Pichler (Bichler) (1827–1894), and her step-grandmother and grand-aunt Magdalena Pichler née Hauser. She later remembered this time as her happiest one, she only once had contact to her "Munich mother". In school she, the "Hansschusterleni", appeared as talented and bright. Lena Christ was very attached to her grandfather, whom she admired all of her life and to whom she later dedicated the novel Mathias Bichler. He was called "Hansschuster" after his farm, and was considered kind-hearted, quiet and modest; he was popular in the village and appreciated as helpful. In 1888 her mother married the butcher journeyman Josef Isaak and took the seven-year-old girl against the will of the grandparents to her to Munich. In the parental inn she had to do heavy labour. The relationship to her mother was marked by hate-love and inflicted abuse. She was exploited and suffered greatly under the coldness of her mother and the bodily punishments. Because of this massive mistreatment by the mother, Lena Christ since 1892 lived one more year with her grandparents in Glonn. In the middle of 1893 came another return to Munich; there the emotional and bodily mistreatment by the mother continued unchanged. The death of her grandfather in 1894 led the desperate Lena Christ to attempt suicide. To avoid the hard labour and the outbursts of the mother, she decided in 1898 to enter the Premonstratensian abbey in Ursberg as candidate and teaching student, but left again after one-and-a-half years and returned to her parents' house. Another conflict with the mother led to another suicide attempt in 1900. She was found with slit wrists in the wine cellar of the parental inn and saved by her step-father, who did not mistreat her but neither protected her from her mother. In the same year she began working as cook and waitress in the tourist restaurant "Floriansmühle" in the north of Munich. She flourished there, but homesickness and a misunderstood sense of duty drew her back into her parents' house at Christmas. In 1901 she married the accounting clerk Anton Leix and moved with him into a flat in the house of her parents-in-law. The wedding was, as was then the norm, purely a marriage of convenience. Many suitors wooed the attractive Lena Christ, but she decided, together with her parents, according to the status, occupation and fortune of the husband. In 1902 she gave birth to her son Anton, a year later to her daughter Magdalena. Soon there were crises in the marriage. Anton Leix began to drink and gamble and broke with his parents, the couple had to leave their house in 1904. Many changes of residence followed and Lena Christ later complained about violent, also sexual assaults by her husband. In 1906 she gave birth to daughter Alexandra Eugenie. She also suffered three miscarriages. Her husband increasingly stood out due to his alcoholism and the resulting financial difficulties. In 1909 Lena broke up with him and left him. Son Anton came to the parents-in-law and no longer had any contact with his mother. Anton Leix was sentenced for misappropriation in the same year, and imprisoned in Nuremberg penitentiary until 1914. He later remarried and died in 1942 aged 64 years. In her "Erinnerungen" (Remembrances), Lena Christ has her raving mad husband commit to an asylum and find his end there.: 42  By doing desk work Lena Leix tried to provisionally earn a living for herself and her two daughters. In Haidhausen she stayed rent-free in new buildings to "live them dry". In 1910 she came down grievously with pneumonia, the daughters were taken from her and turned over to a Catholic children's home. Notes and documents from the royal police department suggest that Lena Christ occasionally prostituted herself at this time, to secure the livelihood for herself and the children. In March 1911 she was sentenced of procuration and in June 1911 of professional fornication by Munich's court of lay assessors to four weeks of arrest each.: 48  Since 1911 she was working as dictation writer at the author Peter Jerusalem, who later became well known as Peter Benedix. In 1912 she married him; the marriage with Anton Leix had been divorced 13 March 1912. Jerusalem induced her to write down her personal experiences. In September 1912 her debut book Erinnerungen einer Überflüssigen (remembrances of an unnecessary one) came out at the publisher Albert Langen under the name of Lena Christ, which she used for all other publications. In it she portrayed in unusually drastic words her life, the shattered relationship to her mother and the human and sexual tragedies of her marriage. Her daughters came back to her in the same year. The book was not initially successful, but was praised by literary criticism and an amicable contact with Ludwig Thoma, Wilhelm Langewiesche and Korfiz Holm began. At this time, until 1914 she lived in the villa colony Gern in Munich. In 1913 she wrote the book Lausdirndlgeschichten (naughty girl stories), also composed of memories from her childhood. Thoma criticized her for it and saw it as a rip-off of his Lausbubengeschichten (naughty boy stories). Gradually she achieved literary success. Her novel Mathias Bichler, however, remained largely unnoticed at the time of its publication in 1914. In it she portrayed the adventurous live of a small-time wood carver in the Leitzach valley and Tyrol. It was her first literary work that did not draw on autobiographical experiences. The book Unsere Bayern anno 14 (our Bavarians in the y.... Discover the Lena Christ popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Lena Christ books.