Rosa Mayreder
Encyclopedia
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n freethinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
and feminist. She was the daughter of Franz Arnold Obermayer, a wealthy restaurant operator and barkeeper, and his second wife Marie.
Rosa had 12 brothers and sisters and although her conservative father did not believe in the formal education of girls he allowed her to participate in the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
lessons of one of her brothers. She also received private instruction in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, painting and the piano.
Life and marriage
In 1881 Rosa married the architect Karl MayrederKarl Mayreder
Karl Mayreder was an Austrian architect.- Life and work :Karl Mayreder was born the son of hotelier Leopold Mayreder and his wife Henriette Mayreder...
, who later became rector of the technical university in Vienna. The marriage was harmonious but remained childless. In 1883 Rosa had an abortion and she also had two affairs, which she describes in detail in her diaries. Karl suffered repeated depressions from 1912 until his death in 1935.
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...
(with whom she entered into a long and extensive correspondence), Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but utterly unrelated in...
and Friedrich Eckstein. Rosa formed a warm friendship with Wolf and developed one of her stories as the libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
for his opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Der Corregidor
Der Corregidor
Der Corregidor is a comic opera by Hugo Wolf. The libretto was written by Rosa Mayreder-Obermayer, based on the short novel by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón.-Composition history:...
, which was first performed in Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
in 1896. During these years she published her first novel Aus meiner Jugend (From My Youth). It was also in Lang's circle that Rosa met Marianne Hainisch
Marianne Hainisch
Marianne Hainisch, born Marianne Perger was the founder and leader of the Austrian women's movement...
with whom she worked in the Austrian women's association "Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein", which was formed in 1902.
Mayreder published two influential works, Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit (To Critics of Femininity) (1905, published in English as A Survey of the Woman Problem, 1912) and Geschlecht und Kultur (Sex and Culture) (1923). The latter work, which criticised the double standard
Double standard
A double standard is the unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations. The concept implies that a single set of principles encompassing all situations is the desirable ideal. The term has been used in print since at least 1895...
and discrimination against women, was translated into English. She also published an autobiography, Das Haus in der Landskrongasse.
During the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Mayreder engaged in the peace movement and became in 1919 the chairman of the "Internationale Frauenliga für Frieden und Freiheit" (International Women's League for Peace and Liberty, IFFF).
Mayreder was an influence on Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
literary critic Klara Johanson.