Hermann Borchardt und der Club der Harmlosen. Wiederentdeckung eines Romans

In 1944, the writer Hermann Borchardt (1888–1951) completed the Geschichte einer Edelfrau (Tale of a Noblewoman) while in exile in New York. Although his first novel, Die Verschwörung der Zimmerleute (The Conspiracy of the Carpenters), had been published in the U.S. in English translation a year earlier, the Geschichte einer Edelfrau did not find success. No publisher was willing to publish the novel about the political and moral disintegration of Germany after Bismarck’s dismissal, which was astonishingly insinuating for its time and in which the dark love affairs of the German nobility are interwoven with the conspiracies of the “Club of the Harmless.” It eventually ended up unprinted in Borchardt’s estate, which is held by the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, where Christoph Hesse and Lukas Laier discovered it in 2018.

Now, 80 years after its completion, the Geschichte einer Edelfrau has finally been published in the third volume of Borchardt’s works. In conversation with Clara Fischer, editor of the Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, Christoph Hesse and Lukas Laier talk about their surprising discovery and the complicated story of the novel’s origins, which also involves Borchardt’s adventurous escape from Europe as a former collaborator of Bertolt Brecht. Actress Anja Kunzmann will read excerpts from the novel and Borchardt’s autobiographical fragments.

Admission is free, there is no need to register in advance.

Fig. above: Hermann Borchardt, © Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv