author
Claire von Glümer
1825–1906
A German writer, translator, and early advocate of women’s emancipation, Claire von Glümer transformed the upheavals of the 1848 revolution and her own unconventional life into novels, stories, travel writing, and memoir. She also introduced German readers to important works by George Sand, Ivan Turgenev, and Leo Tolstoy.
1 Audiobook
A noble name : or, Dönninghausen
by Claire von Glümer
About the author
Claire von Glümer (1825–1906) was born in Blankenburg, Germany, to a liberal lawyer and a writer. Because of her father’s political views, the family spent much of her childhood moving through Germany, Switzerland, and France. These experiences later shaped her memoir Aus einem Flüchtlingsleben (1904). During the revolutionary years of 1848–49, she worked as a journalist and became involved with democratic causes, experiences that eventually led to surveillance, imprisonment, and exile from Saxony.
She supported better education and greater freedom for women, themes that run through her novels and stories. Her writing included travel sketches, novellas, portraits, and historical fiction, often featuring women constrained by social expectations. Among her notable works are Fata Morgana, Frau Domina, Aus der Bretagne, and Ein Fürstensohn.
Glümer was also a prolific translator. Her work included George Sand’s Story of My Life, writings by Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, and an early German translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. She spent much of her later life in Dresden and died in 1906.