Schneider Lengyel Ilse 1903 1972

Member of the  Group 47 (Gruppe 47)

On September 6, 1947, a handful of writers met at a vacation house on a Bavarian lake to read aloud their works to one another. That gathering, the founding of the movement Gruppe 47 (Group 47), is now remembered as one of the seminal moments in the cultural history of post-war Germany. In the years that followed, Gruppe 47 provided a forum where many acclaimed West German authors - including Heinrich Böll, Ingeborg Bachmann and Günther Grass - made their names during the 1950s and '60. As famous as the birth of Gruppe 47 might be, though, literary scholars say a recent archival discovery throws new light on the almost legendary event and could prompt a reconsideration of the influences at work among Gruppe 47's early participants.

lse Schneider-Lengyel  owned the lakeside house outside the town of Füssen in southern Bavaria where Gruppe 47 first met and had a large hand in organizing the meeting. A poet, critic, essayist and photographer,, Schneider-Lengyel was involved with a number of literary journals over the years and remained active in Gruppe 47 until 1950. She has been largely forgotten by the reading public, and even scholars familiar with her work believed that few records of her life and career survived. That, however, was not the case: a large group of Schneider-Lengyel manuscripts and photos was recently discovered in the Bavarian State Archives, along with numerous letters addressed to her.

The  papers figure prominently in an exhibition now on display in Füssen to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Gruppe 47's founding. At the September 7 opening of , historian Jürgen Schutte described the rediscovery of Schneider-Lengyel's papers a „literary sensation." Thomas Riedmüller, director of Füssen's cultural affairs office, suggested that the newly available sources could open up new areas of investigation in a well-worked area of research and speculated that Schneider-Lengyel may have exerted more of an influence on the work of her fellow participants in the early Gruppe 47 meetings than critics have realized.  

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