Oda Schaefer

Oda Schaefer (really Oda Lange, born December 21, 1900 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf as Oda Krus; died September 4, 1988 in Munich) was a German writer and journalist.

Oda Schaefer was the daughter of Eberhard Kraus, one of the early Baltic writers and journalist, and his wife Alice Baertels, who came from a merchant family in Estonia. Oda Schaefer attended a secondary school in Berlin and then went to a private arts school for training in graphic design. She then worked as a commercial artist. In 1923 she married the painter Albert Schaefer-Ast, with whom she had a son in 1924. The marriage ended after a short time in divorce. In 1926 Schaefer moved for family reasons to Liegnitz. There she met the writer Horst Lange, with whom she returned to Berlin in 1931 and married in 1933.

From 1928 Schaefer wrote fashion magazine articles, poems, and plays. During the Third Reich she was with Lange and Günter Eich in the circle around the literary magazine The Column, which was affiliated with Inner Immigration, a movement of writers and artists who were opposed to National Socialism but did not leave Germany. Peter Huchel and Elisabeth Langgässer were close friends with her at this time. Works by her appeared in the journal The Interior Kingdom, and the Frankfurter Newspaper. Schaefer was a member of the Reich Chamber. Although Shaefer and her husband were opponents of the Nazi regime, and helped Jews by hiding them for a while, at the same time they wrote for officially sanctioned publications.

In the aftermath of World War II Oda's son was missing and her husband was severely injured. They lived for a while in the middle of a forest and then in Switzerland, before going to Munich in 1950, where she freelanced for various newspapers and broadcasts.

Schaefer's literary work consists primarily of poetry in traditional forms inspired by the naturalist poet Wilhelm Lehmann and George von Vring. With Horst Lange she wrote Trümmerliteratur of the post-war period along with the authors of the Group 47.

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