Margarete Susman

Margarete Susman (married: Margarete von Bendemann; October 14, 1872  – January 16, 1966) was a German-Jewish poet, writer, and critic who lived much of her life in Switzerland. The author of hundreds of essays, five collections of poetry, and notable literary-critical works, she distinguished herself as a philosophical writer addressing vital questions in literature, politics, culture and religion. Her 1946 work Das Buch Hiob und das Schicksal des jüdischen Volkes (1946), a reflection on Jewish history through the lens of the Biblical book of Job, was one of the earliest postwar Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust.

Susman was born in Hamburg, the daughter of Adolph Susman, a businessman (1836–1892), and Jenni Susman (née Katzenstein, 1845–1906). Her parents were of Jewish heritage, with a mostly secular outlook, and Susman received no formal Jewish education as a child. When she was around 10 or 11 years old, her family moved to Zurich, Switzerland. In Zurich she attended a public school for girls (Höhere Töchterschule), where she was educated in the Protestant faith. Later, when she was in her twenties, she sought out further instruction in Judaism from the Reform rabbi Caesar Seligmann.

Although her father would not consent to her attending Zurich University, she eventually studied art in Düsseldorf and Paris; and, later, art history and philosophy in Munich. In Munich she met Gertrud Kantorowicz, with whom she formed a lasting friendship. At the beginning of the 1900s she moved to Berlin, where she again studied philosophy, and participated in the seminars of Georg Simmel, who remained her friend and mentor until his death in 1918. In the circle around Simmel she also formed friendships with the religious philosopher Martin Buber and the philosopher and historian Bernhard Groethuysen.

In the course of her art studies Susman met the painter and art historian Eduard von Bendemann (born 1877, a grandson of the painter Eduard Bendemann), whom she married in 1906. Their son Erwin was born the same year. During the First World War the family lived in Rüschlikon, Switzerland, and afterward returned to Germany, settling in a small village in southern Germany, and later in Frankfurt am Main. Susman and her husband divorced in 1928.

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