- Born
- 23 May 1908Zurich, Switzerland
- Died
- 15 November 1942Sils im Engadin, Switzerland · aged 34
Annemarie Schwarzenbach
Her writing and photographs followed journeys from Switzerland to Afghanistan and a life at odds with her family’s expectations.
Annemarie Schwarzenbach was born in Zurich in 1908. She came from a wealthy Swiss industrial family; her mother, Renée, was the daughter of General Ulrich Wille. After studying history, Schwarzenbach completed her doctorate in 1931.
She became close to Erika and Klaus Mann and their anti-fascist circle, moving between Zurich, Berlin and an increasingly unsettled Europe. Her fiction, including “Lyrische Novelle” (1933), explored desire and estrangement. Relationships with women and her androgynous appearance placed her at odds with conventional expectations and parts of her family.
As a journalist and photographer, she travelled through the Middle East, the United States and Africa. In 1939 she drove to Afghanistan with Ella Maillart. The reports and photographs from these journeys recorded social conditions as well as the places through which she passed. In 1935 she married the French diplomat Claude Clarac, an arrangement that allowed both considerable personal independence.
Schwarzenbach struggled with morphine addiction and periods of severe psychological distress. In 1942 she suffered a bicycle accident in the Engadin and died weeks later, aged 34. Renewed interest in her writing and photographic archive has since made her an important figure in Swiss literary and queer history.