Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Next November it will be 70 years that Annemarie Schwarzenbach died. This magnetic restless adventurer who seduced countless men and women during the turbulent years between WWI and WWII, survived a severe addiction to morphine (among other drugs), malaria, intrepid trips to places like Congo, Chad, Syria, Persia (which hadn't become Iran yet) or Afghanistan (with Ella Maillart, two women in the 1930s driving alone from Europe to Afghanistan) only to die from a bike fall in Switzerland at the age of 34.

Her work would only get the attention it deserved almost 50 years after her death. Six months before she died she wrote a letter from Lisbon to Carson McCullers:

"Je crois toujours que les forces spirituelles, la relation sincère + véritable entre des êtres humains qui s'aiment sont plus fortes que les obstacles matériels du monde extérieur, de même que la relation sincère + véritable avec n'importe quel ami, n'importe quel objet extérieur, une pierre, un arbre, est plus forte que la séparation artificielle que nous impose l'unité brisée. Je me sens très patiente quant aux événements à venir". (quoted by Dominique Laure Miermont in Annemarie Schwarzenbach ou le mal de l'Europe)



Annemarie Schwarzenbach by Marianne Breslauer