Maria Frisé

Maria Frisé (née von Loesch; 1 January 1926 – 31 July 2022) was a German journalist and author. Her journalistic work consisted primarily of features and reviews, covering the arts and fringe political issues. She was a member of the staff of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) from 1968 to 1991, working for the paper until her death. She was also the author of short stories, essays, poetry and autobiographical works about her childhood and family in Silesia.

Life

Maria von Loesch, the second of her parents' three recorded children, was born in

In 1968, Maria Frisé joined the staff of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a contributing editor,^[8] working on the feuilleton.^[9] She was operating in a milieu in which women were still rare. There were 152 contributing editors of whom 142 were men.^[9] (By 2019, in contrast, 302 of the paper's 402 contributing editors were men.^[9]) The office was nevertheless already familiar to her, since she had been visiting – at times two or three times in a week – to deliver and discuss contributions while working "as a freelancer" since the late 1950s. The staff were housed in a cramped building incongruously located in a commercial district of Frankfurt where used-car show rooms and tyre-fitting stations seem to have predominated. The first day she arrived for work, there was, initially, nowhere to sit; since the sick colleague, whose desk had temporarily been assigned in the "Feuilleton" department for the new staffer, had unexpectedly returned to work.^[9] Nor was the initial salary of 1,000 marks per month generous: she had often earned three times as much as a free-lance journalist.^[9] She seemed at the time more or less to have accepted that the salary disparity arose because she had no university degree, rather than having to do with her gender. Nevertheless, there was much about the security of the permanent post that suited her, and she remained on the FAZ staff till 1991,^[8][10] writing articles until her death.^[6]

She published a successful autobiographical book, Eine schlesische Kindheit (A Silesian childhood), in 1990, followed by others, including in 2004 Meine schlesische Familie und ich (My Silesian family and I). She also wrote about family as a social group, such as Auskunft über das Leben zu zweit (Information on life in pairs), written at age 90. A story collection was planned to be published in 2021, Einer liebt immer mehr (Someone always loves more).^[6] She kept writing articles for the FAZ, seven of them during her last 12 months.^[6]

Frisé and her husband lived in Bad Homburg where she remained after his death in 2003. She was a centre of the community there, and remained a dedicated horse rider into her 90s. She died on 31 July 2022 at the age of 96.^[6]

Awards

• 1991 Hedwig Dohm Award [de] from the Association of women journalists [de]. The prize was inaugurated in 1991, so Frisé was the first recipient.^[11]
• 1994 Andreas Gryphius Prize, Ehrengabe (Award of Honor)^[12]
• 1996 Kulturpreis Schlesien des Landes Niedersachsen [de], (Silesia culture prize from Lower Saxony)^[13]

Works

Frisé's works are held by the German National Library, including:^[14]

• Hühnertag und andere Geschichten,
  DNB-IDN 456673806
• Erbarmen mit den Männern, Reinbek 1983
  ISBN 978-3-499-15175-0
• Montagsmänner und andere Frauengeschichten,
  ISBN 978-3-596-23782-1
• Eine schlesische Kindheit, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1990,
  ISBN 3-499-33187-X
• Allein – mit Kind, Munich, 1992 (with Jürgen Stahlberg)
  ISBN 978-3-492-03501-9
• Wie du und ganz anders, Frankfurt 1994
  ISBN 978-3-596-11826-7
• Liebe, lebenslänglich, Frankfurt 1998
  ISBN 978-3-596-14207-1
• Meine schlesische Familie und ich: Erinnerungen, Berlin 2004
  ISBN 978-3-351-02577-9
• Familientag, Berlin 2005
  ISBN 978-3-7466-2133-3
• Auskünfte über das Leben zu zweit. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2015,
  ISBN 978-3-596-23758-6
• Einer lebt immer. Erzählungen. Literareon, Munich 2021,
  ISBN 978-3-8316-2269-6

References