Marie Luise Kaschnitz was born in Karlsruhe in 1901 and grew up in Potsdam and Berlin. After training as a bookseller, she worked in a second-hand bookshop in Rome. She was married to the archaeologist Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg and accompanied him on his expeditions. After the birth of their daughter in 1928, she began to write – novels, short stories, essays, and poems. Her first novel, Liebe beginnt (Love Begins), was published in 1933. From 1950 she focused increasingly on writing radio plays. She was awarded several prizes and was, among other things, a member of the PEN Centre of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Academy for Language and Literature and the Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts. She died in Rome in 1974.
*Photo: © Peter Zollna, Suhrkamp Verlag.
