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On 23 May 1908 Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Bisexual Swiss photographer, writer, and anti-fascist was born, in Zurich, in German-speaking Switzerland ,When she was four, the family moved to the Bocken Estate in Horgen, near Lake Zurich, where she grew up. Her
father, Alfred Schwarzenbach, was a textile magnate/.
Her mother Renee Schwarzenbach-Wille, the daughter of the Swiss general Ulricj Wille
and descended from German aristocracy, was a prominent hostess, Olympic
equestrian sportswoman and amateur photographer. is said to have almost bled to death at the birth of her daughter and to have clung to her fiercely all her life. Terrible feelings of loneliness were later to torment this daughter, who remained tied to her mother in a kind of love-hate relationship. Her imposing shadow hangs over the childhood of young Annemarie, as she grew up in the luxurious property of Bocken. Her mother had an imposing and devouring personality and while she was growing up, her mother conducted a long-term affair with opera singer Emmy Krüger, which her father and may have catalyzed Annemarie's awareness of her own attractions to women. In childhood, Annemarie was not only allowed to wear
traditionally masculine clothes, but it was encouraged by her mother.
Her family might have been one of the wealthiest families in Switzerland, but Annemarie spent most of her adult life trying to get away from them. Tensions evolved .into major political disagreements with her mother, who had a domineering personality.But from an early age, it was in writing that Annemarie found freedom and a way to emancipate herself from her mother’s suffocating presence.
At her private school in Zurich she studied mainly German, history and
music, neglecting the other subjects. She liked dancing and was a keen
piano player, but her heart was set on becoming a writer. She studied in
Zürich and Paris and in 1931, at the age of 23, she received her doctorate in history at the University of Zurich and wrote her first book freunde um bernhard (bernhard's circle).
Annemarie left Switzerland for the bohemian underground of Berlin.
There, she met fellow writers and her life became a flurry of words, lovers, projects, international
expeditions and disappointments.
Though her beauty caught the eye of men and women alike, her
androgynous style also baffled people and gave way to cruelty.
Throughout history a male-dominated world has enforced a very rigid idea
of what women should look like and how a woman should behave Annemarie Schwarzenbach.was a trailblazer and a seductress, who dared to challenge the norm.
Both women and men found her painfully attractive. after all there’s nothing more
tempting than a beautiful woman who breaks the rules. She was introspective, sensitive and passionate. Stylish and daring while at the same time she also developed intense anti-Fascist
political views..
Annemarie loved the Bohemian lifestyle Berlin offered and was described
by her friend Ruth Landshoff stating, “ She lived dangerously. She drank
too much. She never went to sleep before dawn.” It was during this time
period she befriended the children of author Thomas Mann, Klaus and
Erika Mann, and like their father, they hated Nazi’s.
In 1933 bohemian Berlin disappeared with the
Nazi take-over Annemarie found her carefree lifestyle coming to. an end. Her
mother was a Nazi sympathizer and demanded Annemarie cut ties with her
Berlin friends, especially the Mann family. Annemarie who was devoutly
anti-fascist refused, and remained friends with them anyway, rejecting her pro neo-nazi family she soon starting a relationship with Erika. This relationship would not last, though, as while Annemarie was head over heels for Erika, Erika soon moved on to a new woman, an actress named Therese Giehse. Something she never fully got over.
She spent much of
her time with Klaus in Berlin. Klaus however was the one to first
introduce her to morphine the drug that would haunt her.. Annemarie would spend the rest of her life
battling her on again/off again addiction.
She helped Klaus Mann finance an anti-fascist literary
review called “Die Sammlung.” This review helped writers in exile from
Germany by publishing their articles and short stories. But the
complications and strain of being pulled between what she knew was right
and her family took its toll on her mental health and Annemarie
attempted suicide which caused a scandal among her family and their conservative circle in Switzerland. .
Annemarie is portrayed by Klaus Mann in two of his novels: as Johanna in Flucht in den Norden (1934) and as the Angel of the Dispossessed in Der Vulkan (The Volcano, 1939).
Thomas Mann called her a “ravaged angel”; another writer, Roger Martin du
Gard, said she had “the face of an inconsolable angel”; while German
photographer Marianne Breslauer, who took numerous photos of
Schwarzenbach, likened her to “the Archangel Gabriel standing before
Heaven”.the portraits that remain still retain their androgonous alllure
Over the next several years Annemarie
travels to France, Italy and Scandinavia with Klauss. To Spain, with
fellow photographer Marianne Bresleaur. She visited Moscow with Klaus
for the Soviet Writers Union Congress. There she met André Malraux and Louis Aragon. Annemarie did not hide her
enthusiasm for the Bolshevik model, stressing in a letter to her friend
Claude Bourdet the place of literature in the USSR: “Here, a man like
Gorky is, with Stalin, at the center of the interest of the greatest
number, he is a true national hero – and here everyone is concerned with
literature”.
In 1935 Annemarie returns to Persia. Here she
meets French diplomat Claude Clarac. After just a few weeks they decide
to marry. Their marriage was one of convenience as they were both gay but allowed her to obtain a French diplomatic passport and to travel without restrictions..
She stays with Claude for a while but has an affair with the daughter of
a Turkish diplomat that does not end well.
n 1937 and 1938, her photographs documented the rise of fascism in Europe, visiting Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Ultimately, she leaves
Claude, although still married, and travels to America. This is the
first of two trips to the US for Annemarie. She spends her time there as
a freelance photographer and reporter working alongside her friend American photographer, Barbara Hamilton-Wright. . She is completely taken with
capturing the social dynamics and everyday life for those in the mining
and steel industries during the Great Depression.
She returned again the following year and traveled to the
deep South—Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.
Anniemarie published several articles depicting the suffering and
violence happening there. The pair encountered lumberjacks in Tennessee,
who were starting to organize unions—And her support for the formation
of labor unions, caused a deeper rift with her family who owned many
textile mills in the US.
On her second trip to
America she has an affair with fellow writer Carson McCullers. Carson
fell madly in love with Annemarie saying “She had a face that I knew
would haunt me for the rest of my life.” But the relationship became
rather one-sided. Annemarie’s depression rears its head again and she
makes her second attempt at suicide. This time she’s admitted to a
psychiatric hospital. When she’s finally released it is with the
agreement that she leaves the US. Carson never quite gets over
Annemarie. She dedicates several books to Annemarie.
She then embarks on a daunting 4,000
mile road trip from Geneva to Kabul, Afghanistan with her friend the ethnologist Ella
Maillart. To finance the adventurous journey the two
women signed contracts with a Swiss press and photo agency, a book
publisher and several newspapers, which paid them advances. In their luggage they had typewriters, cameras and a movie camera. Schwarzenbach also planned to participate in excavations of the "Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan". The trip was taken in part in an effort to help cure Annemarie
of her addiction to morphine, but failed as she eventually found her way back to the drug. Ella eventually becomes so
frustrated with Annemarie for wasting all her talent on drugs that she
abandons her in Kabul. Maillart chronicled the difficult experience in the
book All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey It is considered a
classic of travel literature, but the name of her troubled and
transcendent companion was changed to Christina, presumably at the
intervention of Annemarie’s family.
Schwarzenbach would make her way back to Europe and then on to the U.S.
where she met her old friends, the Manns, and worked with them on a
committee for helping refugees from Europe.
Annemarie’s last years lead her on writing expeditions to Portugal,
the Belgian Congo as an accredited journalist in order to join the resistance and in particular the Free French
Forces., but was prevented from taking up her position. .
In June 1942 in Tétouan, she met up again with her husband, Claude Clarac,before returning to Switzerland. While back home, she started making new
plans. She applied for a position as a correspondent for a Swiss
newspaper in Lisbon. In August, her friend the actress Therese Giehse
stayed with her at Sils.
Then on September 7, 1942 tragically she suffered a
devastating fall on her bicycle and fell into a coma for three days. she
awoke to amnesia ,and died soon after on the 15th of November aged just 34.During her final illness, her mother permitted neither Claude Clarac, who had rushed to Sils from Marseille, nor her friends, to visit her in her sick bed.
After her
death, her possessive mother also destroyed all her letters and diaries.Hundreds of letters from Klaus and Erika Mann, and
Carson McCullers which would have
provided an important insight into her fascinating life went up in smoke. Thankfully, one of Schwarzenbach’s friends held on to a collection of
photographs and writings, and in the process saved Annemarie
Schwarzenbach from the mists of obscurityl
Although Annemarie’s life span was short, wrecked by
morphine, as well as a domineering mother and other disasters before the bicycle crash
that ended it.her output in those few years was prodigious, and eventful She was immensely gifted as a photographer, author, photojournalist, and documentarian in a time dominated by men when few women were represented in these fields.
Between 1933 and 1942 she produced approximately 170 articles and 50
photo-reports for Swiss and German newspapers and magazines. Schwartzenbach’s subjects, her travels, were widespread and amazingly
disparate—linked together chiefly by her liberal-to-radical political
emotions.
With thankfully the rediscovery in the late 1980s of Schwarzenbach’s body of
work she gained new interest and e was recognised as a female pioneer and a
gay icon.
In 2001, there was even a feature film, The Journey to Kafiristan,
tracing her 4,000-mile drive from Geneva to Kabul in a Ford Deluxe with Ella Maillart.
In life, Annemarie Schwarzenbach may have battled personal demons,
but she also waged ideological war against the violent political
regimes, social inequalities and gender norms of her time.She rebelled against her prestigious family’s conservative values and
struggled with her mother’s possessiveness. Nonetheless, Annemarie lived
openly as a lesbian and developed her journalistic voice and camera
skills through adventurous travel and keen observation of social
conditions.
Annemarie remains a remarkable trailblazer who dared to challenge the norm. She refused
to live within the confines of traditional femininity or masculinity,
and instead occupied a space of radical liberation. Antifascist, courageous and lucid, she stood her ground and remained
focused in the face of Hitler’s rise to power, while her family
saluted. She traveled the
world, as a daring free spirited seeker and despite her traumas and struggles in her words. photographs, and fascinating life, her legacy endures. long may her life be celebrated.
