Helene Böhlau

Helene Böhlau (1856-1940) is born in Weimar as the daughter of the Weimar publisher and court printer Hermann Böhlau (1826-1900) and his wife Therese. In 1882 she publishes her first novels. On a trip to the Orient she meets the architect and private scholar Friedrich Arnd (1839-1911), who converts from Judaism to Islam and calls himself Omar al Raschid Bey from then on. They marry in 1886 in Constantinople and move to Munich in 1890. Böhlau joins the Verein für geistige Interessen der Frau in 1894.

Böhlau's work includes art as well as functional writing and light fiction. Her novellas and novels can be divided into two categories: the emancipatory right of women (Im frischen Wasser (In Fresh Water), 1891; Der Rangierbahnhof (The Shunting Yard), 1896; Das Recht der Mutter (A Mother's Right), 1896; Halbtier (Half Animal), 1899) and the Old Weimar past (Rathsmädelgeschichten, 1888; Altweimarische Geschichten (Old Weimar Stories), 1897; Der gewürzige Hund (The Spicy Dog), 1916; Die leichtsinnige Eheliebste (The Frivolous Married Sweetheart), 1925).

Her novel Halbtier causes a sensation and leads to Böhlau being regarded as a women's rights activist. In 1913 she distances herself from the one-sidedness of this attribution: "I realized that women had no spiritual past, that they had left as few traces on earth as the waves and animals, – an unparalleled woe! And I was looking for words – images – ways to make myself understood. [...] Today I would [...] no longer give the passionate expression I found back then." (Wilhelm Zils) After that Böhlau writes Old Weimar stories like Das Sommerbuch (The Summer Book – 1902) and Die Kristallkugel (The Crystal Ball – 1903), Das Haus zur Flamm (1907) and the story of her life under the title Isebies (1911).

After the death of her husband in 1911, she sees it as her mission to publicise his philosophical work. One year later she publishes his Das hohe Ziel der Erkenntnis. Aranda Upanishad (The High Goal of Insight. Aranda Upanishad) at Piper Publishers. In 1913 she becomes a member of the Münchner Schriftstellerinnen-Verein. Böhlau lives alternately in Ingolstadt, Munich, Widdersberg (Herrsching) and Augsburg. She dies in 1940 and is buried in the cemetery in Widdersberg.