author
Harriet Straub
1872–1945
A pioneering German doctor who also built a literary life, she wrote novels, stories, and memoirs that drew on a restless, unconventional path through Europe. Her work is often remembered alongside the intellectual world around philosopher and writer Fritz Mauthner, but her own career was wide-ranging in its own right.
1 Audiobook
Rupertsweiler Leut
by Harriet Straub
About the author
Born Maria Hedwig Luitgardis Straub in Emmendingen in 1872, she became one of the women of her generation to move across borders and professions with unusual determination. After an early marriage, she studied medicine and philosophy in Zurich and Paris, earned a medical doctorate, and practiced as a physician before turning more fully toward literature.
She published most of her literary work under the name Harriet Straub, though some books appeared under names from her marriages, including Hedwig Silles-O'Cunningham and Hedwig Mauthner. Her writing included fiction and autobiographical work, and it reflects a life shaped by education, travel, and intellectual independence.
Straub later lived in Meersburg on Lake Constance, where she was closely connected with Fritz Mauthner, whom she married after meeting him in Freiburg. She died in Meersburg in 1945, leaving behind a life that joined science, letters, and personal reinvention in a way that still feels strikingly modern.