Marie Madeleine

Born Gertrud Günther in East Prussia on April 4, 1881, she wrote under the pen name Marie Madeleine and later became Baroness von Puttkamer through marriage. Library and biographical records identify her as a German writer, poet, and dramatist, and her work was centered mainly in Berlin.

She became widely known with Auf Kypros (1900), a collection of erotic poems. Reference sources describe the book as her breakthrough, and later accounts note that her writing included openly homoerotic and lesbian-themed elements, which helped give her a distinctive and provocative place in early 20th-century German literature.

Her bibliography grew quickly after that success, with poetry, novels, short prose, and work for the stage and screen. She died in Katzenelnbogen in 1944; some sources agree on the year but differ on the exact day, listing either September 27 or September 30.