Ich bin fleißig, gewissenhaft, leidlich verläßlich.
Mela Hartwig is one of the great unknown authors, a modernist and feminist, whose career was destroyed by the nazis. She was born in 1893 in Vienna, where she went on to have a successful career as an actress. After marrying, Hartwig left the stage and turned her hand to writing, where she developed a name for herself as a modernist and feminist. In 1938, Hartwig and her husband immigrated to London – due to their Jewish background -, where she befriended Virginia Woolf. She died in London in 1967.
From the thirties until her death Hartwig could barely publish her in many ways progressive texts. Important parts of her unpublished works came out at Droschl: Bin ich ein überflüssiger Mensch? (Am I a redundant being?, 2001), Das Weib ist ein Nichts (The Woman is a Nothing, 2002) and Das Verbrechen (The Crime, 2004).
