Gertrud Kolmar

Gertrud Kolmar, born Gertrud Chodziesner in Berlin in December 1894, was a German Jewish poet and writer. Her surviving works include 450 poems, three plays, and two short stories. Kolmar drew inspiration from French Symbolists, including Charles Baudelaire, and her writing explored themes including motherhood, identity, war, and antisemitism. 

From 1901–1911, Kolmar attended a girls’ grammar school before furthering her studies at a home economics and agricultural school for women. Her passion for languages led her to study Russian, and by 1916, she had earned a teaching degree as an English and French language instructor and military interpreter. In 1927, she completed a summer course at the University of Dijon and earned a teaching degree with high honors. 

Kolmar’s first poetry collection, Gedichte (“Poems”), was published in 1917 by Egon Fleischel & Co. in Berlin. By 1930, she wrote the famous autobiographical poem “Die Dichterin” (“The Poetess”). This poem was included in her 1938 book, Die Frau und die Tiere (approximately translated “The Woman and the Beast”), published by Jüdischer Buchverlag Erwin Löwe. From 1930 to 1931, Kolmar wrote the novel, Die jüdische Mutter (approximately translated “The Jewish Mother”), which was posthumously published under the title Eine jüdische Mutter (“A Jewish Mother”) by Wallstein Verlag in 1978. 

Her dramatic works, such as Cecile Renault (1935) and Nacht (1938), remain unpublished. In 1943, Kolmar was arrested by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. Gertrud Kolmar: Das Lyrische Werk (approximately translated to “Gertrud Kolmar: The Lyric Work”) was published by Lambert Schneider in 1955. English translated titles include Dark Soliloquy: The Selected Poems of Gertrud Kolmar by Henry A. Smith (Seabury Press, 1975) and the 1937 collection Welten, translated by Philip Kuhn and Ruth Von Zimmermann as Worlds (Shearsman Books, 2012). 

Some of Kolmar’s works are housed in the Gertrud Kolmar archives in Marbach, Germany. In memory of her contributions to poetry and her depiction of Jewish experiences during the Holocaust, Gertrud Kolmar Park was dedicated in Chicago in September of 2022. As highlighted by Block Club Chicago, this space serves as a solemn testimony to the atrocities of the past and the significance of reflection and remembrance.