Marie Bloede

Marie Bloede (29 September 1821[1] – 12 March 1870[2]) was an American author of German descent, who also published under the pseudonym Marie Westland.[1]

Marie Bloede
Born	29 September 1821 Wrocław (then Breslau), Silesia
Died	12 March 1870 (aged 48) Brooklyn, New York
Pen name	Marie Westland
Occupation	Author, poet
Nationality	American

Early life

Bloede was born Marie Antoinette Franziska Jungnitz[3] in Wrocław (then Breslau), Silesia,[1] to Johanna Maria Friederike Jungnitz (née Schmieder) and Karl Ferdinand Jungnitz (a Justice of the Supreme Court of Silesia).[4]

Her half-brother,[5] Friedrich von Sallet, was a poet, an intense liberal in his political views. He died in 1843. Bloede shared his poetical gifts and his liberal sympathies.

Career

She married early, and in opposition to the wishes of her family, in circa 1844 around the age of 23.[4] Her husband, Gustavas "Gustav" Blöede (23 September 1814 – 1 May 1888[4]), born in Dresden to Auguste Sophia Juliane (née von Langen) and Karl August Blöede,[6] was a physician.[7] Gustav became and member of the city council of Dresden during the revolution of 1848.[7] He was foremost in the liberal ranks, had to flee Dresden to avoid arrest, made his way to Brussels and then disappeared.[8] The family (Marie, Gustav, and their three children, Gertrude, Kate and Victor) reunited and sailed from Antwerp on 14 July 1850, aboard the Julia Howard, arriving in New York on 21 August.[8][9][10]

She published Princess Sheba, Vittoria, Godiva, Three narrative poems in 1868 and Enoch Arden v. Tennyson in 1869.[1]

The Bloedes' home was frequented by noted writers, among them Bayard Taylor, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Thomas Aldrich and Richard Henry Stoddard.[11] Marie Bloede's poems and articles, both in English and German, attracted attention. She also assisted her husband, he was the editor of the New-Yorker Demokrat, a daily Republican paper, using her literary skills.

Bloede died in Brooklyn, New York.[1] Gustav died in Catonsville, Maryland.[4]

Family

Gustav and Marie Bloede's daughters included the poet Gertrude Bloede (1845–1905), Kate (1848–1891; who married the American artist, naturalist and teacher Abbott Handerson Thayer), and Indiana "Indie" (1854–1936;[12] married Samuel Thomas King, a New York City area physician and surgeon[13]). Their son was the chemist and businessman Victor Gustav Bloede (1849–1937).

Notes

1. Pataky, Sophie (1898), Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder (Glossary of German Women of the Spring) (in German), C. Pataky
2. Bloede, Victor C. (1996), The Journey: Victor G. Bloede, His Forebears & Successors, Gateway Press, p. 62
3. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 4, James Terry White, 1934, p. 445
4. Bloede. - p.22.
5. Sarah G. Bowerman (1929). "Bloede, Gertrude". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
6. Bloede. - p.1.
7. Hall, Clayton Colman (1912), Baltimore: Biography, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., p. 615
8. Bloede. - p.36.
9. Zucker, Adolf Eduard (1950), The Forty-Eighters: Political Refugees of the German Revolution of 1848, Columbia University Press, p. 280
10. New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957. Ancestry.com.
11. Ann Perkins (1999). "Bloede, Gertrude". American National Biography (online ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1600137. (subscription required)
12. Bloede. - p.105.
13. Hamersly, Lewis Randolph (1907), Who's who in New York City and State, Issue 3, L.R. Hamersly Co., p. 785

References

• Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). "Bloede, Marie" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.