Marlen Haushofer

Who was Marlen Haushofer?

Marlen Haushofer née Marie Helene Frauendorfer was an Austrian author, most famous for her novel The Wall. Haushofer was born in Frauenstein in Upper Austria. She attended Catholic boarding school in Linz, and went on to study German literature in Vienna, as well as Graz. After her years in school, she settled in Steyr.

In 1941, she married Manfred Haushofer, a dentist, and had two sons, Christian and Manfred. In 1950, they divorced, only to remarry in 1958.

Earning literary awards as early as 1953, Haushofer went on to publish her first novel, A Handful of Life in 1955. In 1956, she won the Theodor-Körner Prize for early contributions and projects involving art and culture. In 1958, her novella We Murder Stella was published.

The Wall, considered her finest achievement, came out in 1963. The novel was composed four times over in longhand between 1960 and 1963, but had to wait until 1968, two years before Haushofer's death, to be printed. In a letter written to a friend in 1961, Marlen describes the difficulty with its composition:

I am writing on my novel and everything is very cumbersome because I never have much time and, mainly, because I can not embarrass myself.