Wilhelmine von Hillern


Wilhelmine von Hillern was a German actress and novelist.

Biography

She was the daughter of the novelist Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer. She was brought up in Berlin, became an actress at Gotha, and married the prominent jurist von Hillern at Freiburg im Breisgau in 1857. Her husband died 8 December 1882. After that, she lived chiefly at Oberammergau and Tutzing.

Writings

Her principal novels and short stories were produced during the 1860s and 1870s. One of them, Höher als die Kirche was quite well known in America by reason of the fact that it was frequently read as a text by students of elementary German. It is a comparatively insignificant work, however, by no means so important as the novels, Ein Arzt der Seele, Die Geier-Wally, Und sie kommt doch, and Ein Blick ins Weite. One of her novels, Only a Girl, was translated into English by Annis Lee Wister in 1870.

Cultural influence

Von Hillern's Die Geyer-Wally became the subject for the Italian composer Alfredo Catalani's last and most successful opera.