Slovene Poetry - Fanny Haussmann

Fanny Haussmann

Fanny Haussmann was born in 1818 in the town of Bruck an der Mur, in the present-day Austrian state of Styria. She was the only daughter of Joseph Ludwig Haussmann, the owner of the Landskron estate. In 1835, following the death of her mother, she moved with her father to Dobriša Vas, where he had purchased Novo Celje, a large country house known in German as Schloss Neu-Cilli. There she led the expected life of a wealthy young woman from a bourgeois family, with an education that included the study of several languages. Her interest in the Slavonic languages, and in Slovene in particular, is believed to have been inspired by the arrival of the estate's new manager, who shared these interests. Her involvement in public affairs was apparently prompted by the revolutionary year of 1848, when democratisation and the rise of national movements also led to the publication of eight Slovene poems under her name in Celjske slovenske novine. Since she spoke only German with other educated people, despite having actively studied Slovene since 1844, doubts have arisen over her authorship. Some scholars believe that the published poems were merely translations of her German originals, while others have attributed their authorship entirely to Slovene nationalists in what was then German-dominated Styria.

Fanny Haussmann has nevertheless come to be regarded as the first woman to write poetry in Slovene, thereby establishing a female voice within the emerging Slovene national movement. The revolutionary year of 1848 also had other consequences for her life. The abolition of feudalism and the fall in landed property values plunged her father into financial difficulties. He was forced to sell the estate and became embroiled in lengthy legal proceedings. He fell ill and died soon afterwards. Fanny Haussmann also contracted tuberculosis and died in 1853.

Irena Selišnik