Frieda von Richthofen
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Frieda von Richthofen (August 11, 1879 - August 11, 1956), a distant relative of the "Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen, became famous as the wife of the British novelist D. H. Lawrence.
[edit] Life
Emma Maria Frieda Johanna Freiin (Baroness) von Richthofen (also known as Frieda Weekley or Frieda Lawrence) was born in Metz. Her father was Baron Friedrich Ernst Emil Ludwig von Richthofen (1844-1915), an engineer in the German army, and her mother was Anna Elise Lydia Marquier (1852-1930).
In 1899, she married the British professor of modern languages Ernest Weekley with whom she had three children, Charles Montague (born 1900), Elsa Agnès (born 1902) and Barbara Joy (born 1904). They settled in Nottingham, where Ernest worked at the university. During her marriage with Weekley, she started to translate pieces of German literature, mainly fairy tales, into English.
In 1912 she met D. H. Lawrence, at the time a former student of her husband. She soon fell in love with him and the pair eloped to Germany, leaving her children behind. During their stay, Lawrence was arrested for spying and, after the intervention of Frieda's father, the couple walked south, over the Alps to Italy. Following her divorce from Weekley, Frieda married Lawrence in 1914. They intended to return to the continent, but the outbreak of war kept them in England, where they endured official harassment and censorship. They also struggled with limited resources and D.H. Lawrence's frail health.
Leaving post-war England at the earliest opportunity, they travelled widely, eventually settling down at a ranch in Taos, New Mexico. After her husband's death in Vence, France in 1930, she returned to Taos to live with her third husband.
Mainly through her elder sister Else von Richthofen, Frieda became acquainted to many intellectuals and authors, including the socioeconomists Alfred Weber, the psychoanalyst Otto Gross, and the writer Fanny von Reventlow.
Frieda Lawrence died on her 77th birthday in Taos.
[edit] Further reading
- Frieda Lawrence: "Not I, but the Wind...", Rydal/Viking, 1934.
- Janet Byrne: A Genius for Living - A Biography of Frieda Lawrence, Bloomsbury, 1995.
