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A Brief History
of the
FPG & FrL Collections
and
various Electronic Sources, Resources & Projects related to
Frederic Philip Grove/Felix Paul Greve (FPG)&
Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (FrL)
in:
University of Manitoba,
Archives & Special Collections
The FPG & FrL Website started out in 1995 with a digitized version of a budding informational Brochure* about the University of Manitoba archival collections related to Felix Paul Greve/Frederick Philip Grove & his first wife Else Ploetz/divorced Endell, later known in NY Dada circles as the Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven.
The e-Image used above next to Else's portrait was named "Solar Grove" due to its eery luminous quality reminiscent of Man Ray's solarized, rayogravure-like photographs. It was commissioned at the time of the brochure's making, & has been used as a kind of logo in various size- and colour adaptations ever since (see, for instance, the e-Collage "Six Times Solar Grove", or a full-sized version).
*The TEXT of an updated & shortened version of the 1995 document, which was printed horizontally on a grey, folded sheet of paper, and widely distributed at various scholarly conferences, is appended below.
Apart from the Description of the Collections & a brief FPGBiography, thetwo earliest additions to the UMA's FPG & FrL Website were the monumental e-TextEditions of Grove's first autobiographical novel A Search for America (1927)and his unpublished typescript novel Jane Atkinson (ca. 1921). This pioneeringdigitizing venture was carried out, with the help of a successful UM ResearchGrant application, by Gaby Divay, Jan Horner and Barry Pomeroy between1998 & 2000.With a special FrL-focus occasioned by the New York launch of Irene Gammel'sFreytag-Loringhoven biography at Francis Naumann's Gallery in April2002, the website took on a new look and a more pan-Canadian scope. More recently, the digitized Conference Video Proceedings of 1998 "In Memoriam FPG:1879-1948-1998" Anniversary Symposium have been added to this cornerof the UMA website.
Numerousother e-Text clusters - some big, some small - as wellas a host of illustrative or descriptive webpages accompanyingthese documents, have been made available online sincethen. They include:
BIOGRAPHICAL
- Gide's "Conversation avec un allemand" (1904) in the French original version & Englishtranslation
- Greve's 1907 autobiographical account which he submitted for publication in a German literary dictionary
[it eventually appeared, much shortened,in Brümmer's LiterarischesLexikon,1913; Germ.+ Eng.]
- Greve's 1909 essay "Reise in Schweden" in Neue Revue & Morgen [facsim.e-Edition]
- Grove's fictional autobiography A Search for America (ASA, 1927)
- Grove's "true" autobiography In Search of Myself (IMS, 1946)
- 2005 Anniversary e-Edition of the couple's 1904/5 'Fanny Essler' poetry cycle [about Greve, Germ.+Eng.]
- FrL's poems about FPG, incl. one stating "Sparta, am Eagle Creek" [facsim., German]
- FrL's long, satirical poems about Ernst Hardt & Endell [German & English]
COLLECTIONS
- the UMA's Greve German Translations Collection [ca. 60 titles, 2006]
- an annotated Bibliography of the UMA's Grove Library Collection [ca. 500 titles, 2007]
- the Video Proceedings of the 1998 "In Memoriam FPG: 1879-1948-1998" Anniversary Symposium [2008]
- the 2007 e-Edition of POEMS/GEDICHTE, incl. Greve's, Grove's, & FannyEssler's poetry [Ger. & Eng.]
- the 2008/9 facsim. ed. of Das Jahr der Wende [bound vol. of mss. poems,Nov. 1901, UMA]
CORRESPONDENCE:
- Greve's Correspondence with contemporaries like Stefan George, Gundolf, Schmitz,Wolfskehl,
Gide and H. G. Wells [UMA Spettigue & Divay Collections, 1986ff]
- Grove's Correspondence with contemporaries like K. Crouch, H. Miller/GraphicPub., A. L. Phelps, etc.,
& his wife CatherineWiens Grove
Several other Editorial Projects relatedto the FPG & FrL Collections are underway:
- an updated Register to the Grove Collection
- enhanced Finding Aids to the Spettigue-, Stobie-, and Divay Research Collections
- Greve's correspondence with Karl Wolfskehl, Insel Publishers, André Gide,H. G. Wells, et al.
- facsimile editions of Greve's early German mss. poetry "Aus Helga" [fromDLA, Marbach]
- facsimile edition of Grove's first Canadian publication "Rousseau als Erzieher" [fromStobie Coll.]
- facsimile edition of Grove's confessional aphorisms "Of St. Nishivara, the Saint" [fromGrove Coll.]
- SOURCE materials, like the Chaffee Family photographs related to Grove's 1912Bonanza Farm experience
[near Fargo, N.D.; from: Carie Good, Divay Collection,2007ff]
- FrL's poems or letters dedicated to Marcus Behmer, Ernst Hardt, Richard Schmitz, & "Tse"/AugustEndell
and of course FPG [facsims., German, from UMdCollection]
- FrL's reminiscences about Greve, his friend Kilian, her first husband Endell, Behmer, Hardt, Lechter,
Oscar & Richard Schmitz, Wolfskehl, Dachauart teachers [incl. Hölzel], [Eng. & Germ., from UMd]
- THIRD PARTY reminiscences about Greve & Else, Grove & the Baroness FrL from Germany, Canada,
New York, Paris & Berlin [Divay Collectionof publ. & mss. sources, 1986ff]
All are in various stages of completion.
History and Description of the Collections
[updated & shortened version]
F. P. Greve lived from 1879 to 1909 in Germany, and as F. P. Grove in Canada from 1912 until his death in 1948. The three transitional years from 1909 to 1912 FPG spent in the United States, probably under his real name Greve, as indicated by an entry in the 1910 Pittsburgh directory found in 1994.
Documentation for this period remains rather sparse, the most reliable source being Grove's 1927 ASA [see VIII below for some important recent discoveries emanating from this key text e-published on this website in 2000].
Grove's Canadian works are predominantly in English, but contain many veiled references to his German past. His alleged Anglo-Swedish origins and Rutherford family connections include the pseudonym "Andrew R. Rutherford" which Grove proposed both for his first Canadian book, the nature essays Over Prairie Trails (1922) and his unpublished novel Jane Atkinson.
There are several major components to the FPG & FrL collections at the University of Manitoba. They include important texts and documents pertaining to the author Greve/Grove and his first wife who later was known in New York Dada circles as Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven:
I. The Frederick Philip Grove Collection
II. The FPG Library Collection
III. The FPG Translations Collection
IV. The FPG Symposia Collections (Simcoe, 1977; Ottawa, 1973; Winnipeg, UM 1998)
V. Freytag-Loringhoven materials exchanged with the University of Maryland
VI.-VIII. Sources in the Spettigue, Stobie, and Divay Research Collections
Many minor research manuscripts or collections about FPG & Else were deposited in recent years by H. Makow, I. Gammel, W. Ruttkowski, M. Rubio, and others. G. Wade, St.John-Stubbs, Karl Werner Maurer and others provide insights by Grove's contemporaries, early admirers, and critics.
Professor A. W. Riley's 1995 donation is especially noteworthy, including his doctoral dissertation, Tübingen University, on Thomas Mann's Felix Krull, valuable copies of Greve's Flaubert & Meredith translations, and an astounding 2nd 1909 ed. of Greve's Maurermeister Ihles Haus.
Approximately 60 boxes of manuscripts, primary and secondary research documents, photographs, tapes, and videos/DVDs overall provide a unique array of original source materials which is of extraordinary scholarly value to researchers and graduate students investigating the dual lives and works of Greve/Grove & his colourful companion from 1902 to 1911 alike.
An FPG Endowment Fund for fostering Greve/Groveand Freytag-Loringhoven research in all its multi-layeredaspects, and for propagating the unique archivalresources through symposia, e-text editions andresearch publications was established in 1996.
FPG's contacts with many notable authors and publishers on both continents link him to renowned names like Thomas Mann, André Gide, H. G. Wells, George Meredith, Oscar Wilde, A. Swinburne, Knut Hamsun, Stefan George, Hermann Hesse, and the French author Louis Hémon, best known for his French-Canadian novel Maria Chapdelaine (1916). Many of these authors received the Nobel Prize in the 1920s, 1930s, or 1940s.
Lesser known, but not less important, are German contemporaries like Karl Wolfskehl, Stefan George, Ernst Gundolf, O.A.H. Schmitz, Karl Vollmoeller, August Endell, Lou Andreas-Salome, Franziska (Fanny) von Reventlow, Ernst Hardt, Melchior Lechter and Marcus Behmer.
On Else's side, besides many of the German personalities mentioned above, famous artists like Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Brancusi, Schwitters, Berenice Abbott, Marsden Hartley, and writers like Djuna Barnes, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, and a host of other French, American, or German authors can be added.
Subjects like Autobiography, Translating, Tutoring, Teaching in rural Manitoba, Froebel Kindergardens, German & Canadian Publishing from 1900 to 1948, Bonanza Farms in North Dakota, Decadence Literature, Classical Philology & Archaeology, Comparative Literature, Art History, Symbolism, Realism, Expressionism and Dadaism are all relevant for FPG and Freytag-Loringhoven studies.
The FPG sources are well supported by comprehensive collections of Grove's Canadian and Greve's German publications, including his many literary translations, and his rare, privately published editions of his Wanderungen (poems, 1902) and Helena und Damon (neo-romantic, lyrical play, 1902).
Virtually all theses and critical works about both FPGs & FrL are either held in the Rare Book Room or elsewhere in the Libraries' collections. Excellent supporting book- and periodical collections in Canadian, German, and French literature are available in the Elizabeth Dafoe, St. John's and St. Paul's College Libraries. The Art/Architecture Library contains many important titles pertaining to Else's first husband, the "art nouveau/Jugendstil" artist August Endell.
I.-V. The central Frederick Philip Grove Collection was acquired from his widow in the early 1960s. FPG's papers contain numerous unpublished manuscripts or typescripts of novels, short stories, poems, essays, lectures, autobiographical notes, and correspondence. It is the most important and comprehensive archival resource available anywhere.
Of crucial importance for FPG's identity are six German poems by Grove, one of which matches Greve's "Erster Sturm", published in Die Schaubühne, 1907. -- The same poem also plays a role in Else von Freytag-Loringhoven's lyrical tribute to her former lover & husband, and the couple's brief farming experience near Sparta, Kentucky in 1910/11.
A detailed Register to the 23 archival boxes containing the Frederick Philip Grove Collection was published by UM Archives & Special Collections in 1979. Unfortunately, it failed to reflect most of the major research developments since the early 1970s, and a thorough revision is still required.
Grove's son, Leonard Grove (1930-2006), donated his father's invaluable Library in 1992. Many of the nearly 500 books are annotated in the author's hand, and all are fully described in the University of Manitoba Libraries' online catalogue BISON. They allow to make many connections with FPG's carefully concealed European past, and also reveal the author's literary tastes and preferences.
Highlights include: a much used Baedeker travel guide to the United States published in 1909, American editions of Goethe and Heine some of whose poems Grove imitated, and a complete set of Swift's Prose Works edited by Temple Scott which Greve had used 1909/10 German translation.
Greve's many translations into German have been described a long time ago, but in 2006, they were made available online with a grant from the FPG & FrL Endowment.
While the 1973 Ottawa Symposium is only documented in a single Inscape issue, and the Simcoe one in 1977 with a complicated array of sound tapes, the 1998 "IN MEMORIAM FPG" Anniversary Symposium has been fully video-taped and exists also in DVD format today. The PROGRAM, four full-text presentations, and the Tour through FPG Country already exist as webpages since ca. 2003.
Foremost among scholarly posthumous editions of FPG's writings are:
- Desmond Pacey's authoritative collection, The Letters of Frederick Philip Grove (1976), which represents an excellent reference source for Grove's Canadian activities, and includes the correct identification of Greve's Else as née Ploetz, divorced Endell, as well as a selection of Greve's German correspondence with English translations.
- Pacey's substantial collection of Grove's short stories Tales from the Margin (1971).
- W. J. Keith' edition of Grove's It needs to be said, a collection of eight critical articles (r1982, ©1929)
- Eleven critical essays, entitled An edition of selected unpublished essays and lectures by Frederick Philip Grove, bearing on his theory of art was edited by Henry Makow (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1982).
- Paul Hjartarson's 1987 book A stranger to my time : essays by and about Frederick Philip Grove includes several texts from the UMA's Collections, including "Flaubert's theories of artistic existence" [Eng. of "Flauberts Theorien uber das Kunstlertum", 1904], "Of St. Nishivara, the Saint", 5 Letters Grove sent to his wife Catherine from Eden, Manitoba, Sep.-Nov. 1919, & "Thoughts and reflections: an intermittent diary, 1933-1940".
- FPG's English and German poetry from the archival FPG Collections was edited by Gaby Divay in 1990 (M.A. Thesis, University of Manitoba, 1992. -- Revised and enlarged version published as v.13 of Deutschkanadische Schriften in 1993, Winnipeg, Wolf Verlag, lxxxix, 296 p. & facsims. -- e-Ed., UMA Website, 2007).
E-Text Editions have been prepared since 1998. See in particular:
etexts/index.html
VI. The research papers documenting Professor D. O. Spettigue's spectacular 1971 discovery of Grove's former life as Greve were acquired in 1986.
Many fundamental documents -- concerning Greve's origins in Thurow near Schwerin, his education at the Hamburg Gymnasium Johanneum and the universities of Bonn, Munich, and at the University of Manitoba from where, after seven years of extra-mural studies, he obtained a B.A. in French & German in 1922, plus an Honorary Doctorate in 1946, Grove's marriage (1915) and naturalization (1921) certificates, and his nomination to the Royal Society of Canada -- are extant in this remarkable collection.
Especially noteworthy are two letters by Thomas Mann from Princeton in 1939 revealing that Grove had sent him his first autobiography (ASA, 1927) and his latest novel Two Generations (1939).
Professor Spettigue published his truly sensational findings in a variety of articles, and in a substantial book, FPG: The European Years (Ottawa, Oberon, 1973).
In 1995, his research collection was supplemented by an addition which contains important letters by Greve to André Gide (1903-1908), Karl Wolfskehl (1901/02), and O. A. H. Schmitz (1906), as well as correspondence by Else von Freytag-Loringhoven whose revealing Autobiography was published by Spettigue & Hjartarson in 1992.
Also reflected is the editorial work undertaken with A. W. Riley for Greve's two substantial novels about Else's life: The Master Mason's House (1976, orig. 1907) and Fanny Essler (1984, orig. 1905).
A Finding Aid to both Parts of the Spettigue Collection exists since 1990/6.
VII. In 1976, Professor Margaret Stobie, UM, donated research documents related to her 1973 book about Grove in the Twayne World Authors series.
Her papers contain detailed records of Grove's early Canadian years as a teacher in Manitoba's Mennonite & German-speaking areas, and his very first Canadian publication: "Rousseau als Erzieher", in Der Nordwesten, Nov.-Dec., 1914. -- This highly significant text transparently imitates the title of Nietzsche's essay "Schopenhauer as Educator."
Note that Greve had reviewed two volumes of the philosopher's posthumous works in1901.
There are also numerous tape recordings of interviews with former pupils, colleagues, friends or neighbours, documenting the seventeen years Grove spent in Manitoba from 1912 to 1929.
A Finding Aid to the Stobie Research Collection is available. It has received a certain measure of upgrading and detailed component descriptions in recent times.
VIII. FPG source material collected in North American and European archives and libraries has been deposited in the Divay Research Collection since the late 1980s.
Included are findings like:
- early manuscript poems Greve submitted for Stefan George's exclusive journal Blätter für die Kunst in 1902;
- six sonnets from Dante's Vita Nuova in German translation;
- the 1904/5 poetry cycle by a certain "Fanny Essler" (Else and Greve's joint pseudonym). It was published in Die Freistatt even before the novel entitled Fanny Essler appeared in print in 1905;
- his entire correspondence with Insel Publishers obtained from the Weimar Archives in early May 1990;
- his Munich police registration (1901/2) showing that he briefly shared an address with Thomas Mann at the Pension Gisela in 1902;
- his initial attempt from Bonn prison to secure the translation rights for H. G. Wells' works, as well as his 1904-1906 correspondence with this author from the Urbana-Champaign collections;
- numerous documents pertaining to FrL & other FPG contemporaries, such as Endell's & Else's police registrations in Munich, & FrL's stay at Dachau's "Künstlerkolonie" in 1900;
- discoveries based on Grove's autobiographies ASA & ISM, such as FPG's elusive Passage on the on the White Star liner "Megantic" from Liverpool to Montreal in 1909 [in 1998], the "Bonanza Farm in the Dakotas" [in 1996], and the New York crooked book-selling scam [in 2000]; the likelihood that "young Ray" is in fact Man Ray [which builds a foundation for FrL's later affiliation with the American artist]
- Else's German poems at the University of Maryland refer back to her & Greve's 1904/5 "Fanny Essler" poetry cycle, and one makes an explicit reference to the couple's farming location near Sparta, Kentucky, in 1910/11.
- the sensational NYT note about Else's arrest in Pittsburgh for cross-dressing & smoking in public (her husband Greve is also mentioned]
- two FrL photos in exotic costume & pose, one with Liberator editor Claude MacKay
No Finding Aid exists to date, but detailed BISON entries have been provided for most documents, many of which are also accessible online as e-Texts or e-Graphics. |
For further information
about the FPG & FrL Collections
and/or related Greve/Grove and Freytag-Loringhoven Research
contact
Dr. Gaby Divay
gaby_divay@umanitoba.ca
rev. 18.8.2008©gd | |  | |
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