Magdalene (Matti) Carlotta Pauli, b. Melchers, also spelling of first names Magdalena and Magda, (born November 4, 1875 in Bremen; † August 5, 1970 in Hamburg; as a pseudonym also Marga Berck) was a German writer.
Magda (lene) Pauli was the daughter of the wealthy Bremen merchant Karl Theodor Melchers (1839–1923) and his wife Luise Adelgunde nee. Struve (1841–1921) from Dresden, and the granddaughter of Gustav Adolph Struve and the great granddaughter of Friedrich Adolf August Struve (1781 – 1840). She was a soulful and musically gifted girl. She grew up in a middle-class family and attended Betty Goosmann’s private girls’ school. In the summer months the family lived in the Lesmona house, which Hermann Melchers, her father’s brother, had bought in St. Magnus.
There Magda fell in love with the German-Englishman Gustav Rösing and, with her cousin Bertha Schellhass (1875-1896), with whom she was a close friend, ran an extensive correspondence from 1893 to 1896 about this relationship, which was rejected by the Melchers family. Gustav emigrated to the US and later committed suicide in February 1913.
In 1896 Pauli married the art historian Gustav Pauli, who later became the museum director of the Kunsthalle at Bremen and Hamburg, who was dismissed in Hamburg in 1933 for political reasons and died in Munich in 1938. The marriage had four children: The first child was the art historian and art dealer Alfred Pauli (1896–1938). A daughter died in 1898 immediately after giving birth. The daughter Liselotte (1902–1931) committed suicide because of a leg amputation after a traffic accident, as did the son Alfred, as a result of a preliminary investigation opened against him in 1938 in Hamburg for alleged “homosexual bundling”. In 1938 she published the book “In memoriam Alfred Pauli” with 16 poems by him in his memory. The youngest son, the businessman and first lieutenant Carl Theodor (1914–1944), was shot down as an aviator in World War II on December 24, 1944 and has been missing since then. The Pauli family grave is located in the Riensberg cemetery in Bremen-Schwachhausen (T 0631A).
Summer in Lesmona
The Hamburg notary and later Senator for Culture, Hans Harder Biermann-Ratjen, induced Magda Pauli to publish the correspondence from 1893 to 1896 about her love for Gustav Rösing. Under the pseudonym Marga Berck, the story of an unfulfilled love appeared in the form of a letter novel in 1951 under the title Summer in Lesmona published by Christian Wegner Verlag and was a great success. This book was filmed in 1985 under the direction of Peter Beauvais with Katja Riemann in the lead role by Radio Bremen.
The events from summer in Lesmona take place in St. Magnus. Since 1994 there has been an open-air concert by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under the title “Summer in Lesmona” in the local Knoops Park, which includes a picnic and a film screening in the evening.
Honors
In 2001 the Magdalene-Pauli-Monument (also called Magdalene-Melchers-Monument) was erected below the Villa Lesmona in Knoops Park in St. Magnus. The monument consists of a bronze bust on a natural stone base and was designed by the sculptor Claus Homfeld.
The bust of Magdalene Pauli holds a sheet of song on which the text of the song “Daisy, Daisy” is reproduced.
Gustav Pauli, born on February 2, 1866 in Bremen, was a son of the Bremen mayor Alfred Dominicus Pauli (1827-1915). After graduating from high school in Bremen, he studied art history in Strasbourg, Basel and Leipzig. Rudi Klein Then drafted into military service, he was diagnosed with acute pulmonary tuberculosis, so that he had to drop all his professional plans for the time being.
After four years in Swiss lung sanatoriums, however, he had overcome the disease and was able to ask for the hand of 19-year-old Magdalene Melchers, with whom he had already sought contact during his time in the sanatorium. In June 1895 her reluctant parents announced the engagement and they were married on March 21, 1896. At the same time, Gustav Pauli got a job as a librarian at the Dresden Art Academy. In 1900 he became director of the Bremer, and in 1914 director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. He wrote a number of books on art history and in 1936 published his “Memories from Seven Decades”. He died after an operation on July 8, 1938 in Munich.
Alfred Pauli was born in 1896 as the son of the art historian and later museum director Gustav Pauli and his wife, the writer Magdalene Pauli (also Marga Berck as a pseudonym). His paternal grandfather was Alfred Dominicus Pauli, a lawyer, senator and mayor of the city of Bremen. His maternal grandmother was Louise Adelgunde Struve and his great grandfather was Gustav Adolph Struve.
Early on he came into contact with writers from Bremen such as u. a. Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Alfred Heymel, as well as artists and art historians and their wives, who had gathered around his parents in Bremen as the intellectual circle of the so-called Golden Cloud, launched various artistic projects and invited guests from abroad, such as B. Rudolf Borchardt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Alfred Lichtwark invited to readings and discussions.
In 1914 the family moved to Hamburg, as his father was given the management of the art gallery.
He studied art history in Hamburg and received his doctorate in 1923 on Erhard Schön, a Nuremberg painter and wood cutter from the first half of the 16th century [3], whose domain included the illustrated flyer on verses by Hans Sachs and other Nuremberg poets. After completing his studies, he first worked in an Amsterdam art shop and in 1935 opened his own shop on Hamburg’s Dammtorstrasse. In the meantime he was briefly in the Reiter-SS, although a political proximity to National Socialism remains unclear.
He committed suicide as a result of a preliminary investigation opened against him in Hamburg in 1938 for alleged “homosexual bundling”. He probably had nothing to do with this group directly, but his address had been found and his homosexuality was known. “Although nothing could be proven, he drove to Bremen and hanged himself there in an art dealership where he was known and where he pretended to be waiting for someone, and then hanged himself up in the quiet of the noon hour.” He was buried in the Paulische family grave in the Riensberg cemetery in Bremen.