Family Card - Person Sheet
Family Card - Person Sheet
Spouses
Birth18 Jul 1864, Braunschweig, Germany
Death17 Nov 1947, Schönberg (Taunus)608
FatherRichard HUCH (1830-1887)
MotherEmilie (1842-1883)
Notes for Richard HUCH
Richard Huch is Ricarda’s brother in law.608 and also her first cousin. She forms a relationship with him. Eventually Richard divorces Ricarda’s elder sister Lilly to marry Ricarda. This marriage lasts only three years. Lilly remarries (marrying a cousin). Here is an account of this ‘almost incestuous’ sequence of events:
“...changed by puberty to her disadvantage and only accepted once again when she had grown into an attractive young woman. Reality is a matter of expression; whatever can be called beautiful, noble, great - love above all. For Ricarda it was clear early on that "poetry was the essence of life [6]" and that she was going to become a poet. Yet the right words ennoble a family that in every respect was dancing on the edge of an abyss. "I came from a family that was passionately, recklessly, wastefully unconcerned and, whether rich or poor, always felt at the peak of life..."[7] The Huchs were nouveau riche from the Wilhelminian generation, entrepreneurs , inventors and adventurers, who soon lost their fortune. Ricarda was not the only one who chose the profession of a writer; her brother, Rudolf, published novels, and Friedrich Huch, who belonged to the group around Stefan George in Munich, was a cousin.
Ennobled by "true" love, adultery is not adultery but tragic fate, betrayal not betrayal but the fateful misfortune of the betrayed, a scandal not a scandal, for the outer world is not perceived, Ricarda Huch left Braunschweig at the age of 22. because the situation had become too hot to handle. She had become the lover of her first cousin, Richard Huch, an attorney, with whom her sister, Lily, who was five years older, was married and had two children. A third was added during this affair, Kaete (who would also avenge her mother unscrupulously twenty years later in the same way that the younger sister had deceived the older one); even that did not prompt Ricarda to lessen her demands. In her autobiographical writing, in which she no longer attempted to describe her guilt nicely, that of her betrayed sister does not appear. A psychological interpretation would probably be productive here.
The family stayed to itself, with little outside contact. The almost incestuous constellation - Lilly marries a cousin, Ricarda falls in love with her brother-in-law - was a consequence of this seclusiveness. The menage a trois was staged as an internal drama. The pair of lovers who played an intricate game of hide-and-seek, were suspected by the relatives and spied upon, yet it did not create a sensation. The circumstances of the family were by no means intact, the mother in bed, the father in South America for months at a time, where he was involved in a business that went bankrupt at about this time. Suddenly there was no more money for the "reckless, wasteful, unconcerned" life. Since Richard Huch gave no signs of leaving his wife, Ricarda saw herself forced, for reasons of securing her existence, to learn a profession. She decided to finance study at a univeristy with her portion from the sale of the family home.“608 [Translation by Dr Sara Drake]
“...changed by puberty to her disadvantage and only accepted once again when she had grown into an attractive young woman. Reality is a matter of expression; whatever can be called beautiful, noble, great - love above all. For Ricarda it was clear early on that "poetry was the essence of life [6]" and that she was going to become a poet. Yet the right words ennoble a family that in every respect was dancing on the edge of an abyss. "I came from a family that was passionately, recklessly, wastefully unconcerned and, whether rich or poor, always felt at the peak of life..."[7] The Huchs were nouveau riche from the Wilhelminian generation, entrepreneurs , inventors and adventurers, who soon lost their fortune. Ricarda was not the only one who chose the profession of a writer; her brother, Rudolf, published novels, and Friedrich Huch, who belonged to the group around Stefan George in Munich, was a cousin.
Ennobled by "true" love, adultery is not adultery but tragic fate, betrayal not betrayal but the fateful misfortune of the betrayed, a scandal not a scandal, for the outer world is not perceived, Ricarda Huch left Braunschweig at the age of 22. because the situation had become too hot to handle. She had become the lover of her first cousin, Richard Huch, an attorney, with whom her sister, Lily, who was five years older, was married and had two children. A third was added during this affair, Kaete (who would also avenge her mother unscrupulously twenty years later in the same way that the younger sister had deceived the older one); even that did not prompt Ricarda to lessen her demands. In her autobiographical writing, in which she no longer attempted to describe her guilt nicely, that of her betrayed sister does not appear. A psychological interpretation would probably be productive here.
The family stayed to itself, with little outside contact. The almost incestuous constellation - Lilly marries a cousin, Ricarda falls in love with her brother-in-law - was a consequence of this seclusiveness. The menage a trois was staged as an internal drama. The pair of lovers who played an intricate game of hide-and-seek, were suspected by the relatives and spied upon, yet it did not create a sensation. The circumstances of the family were by no means intact, the mother in bed, the father in South America for months at a time, where he was involved in a business that went bankrupt at about this time. Suddenly there was no more money for the "reckless, wasteful, unconcerned" life. Since Richard Huch gave no signs of leaving his wife, Ricarda saw herself forced, for reasons of securing her existence, to learn a profession. She decided to finance study at a univeristy with her portion from the sale of the family home.“608 [Translation by Dr Sara Drake]