In 1906 Maria married Ernst Gerhard Benemann, a bookseller and founder of the Horen publishing house. The couple had a daughter and a son. While living in Worpswede, they become friends with the artist, designer and architect Heinrich Vogeler and with the poets Richard Dehmel, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Werfel and the architect Walter Gropius.
Maria’s husband joined the German Army in WW1 and kept a diary recording his time in Visé in Belgium. The Germans entered Belgium on 4th August 1914, and entered Visé on that day as part of the opening movements of the Battle of Liège. A small group of Belgian gendarmes opposed the advancing Germans and two of their number, Auguste Bouko and Jean-Pierre Thill, were killed in the action, thus becoming the first Belgian casualties of the First World War. On 7th August, in the Lixhe section of the town, the German 90th Infantry Regiment killed eleven civilians and destroyed eleven houses.
When Ernst’s friends went home on leave, they told Maria that while in the devastated town, her husband had found a piano intact in a bombed out house. He sat down and played the piano. The story inspired Maria to write a poem about the incident. Ernst Gerhard Benemann was killed in 1915.
Maria’s publications were “Wandlungen. Gedichte” Verlag der Weißen Bücher, Leipzig 1915.
“Die Reise zum Meer” Märchen. Kiepenheuer, Weimar 1915.
“Kleine Novellen” Kiepenheuer, Weimar 1916.
“Leih mir noch einmal die leichte Sandale” Erinnerungen und Bewegungen. Christians, Hamburg 1978.
Maria died in Überlingen on 11th March 1980.
Read Maria’s poem "Visé (After a Letter from the Field)": http://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-day-music-died.html …
http://historysru.blogspot.com/2016/05/instudying-first-world-war-it-is.html
