German physician and writer, whose children’s books won awards, and whose adult stories were reprinted numerous times. Her short stories and novels were set in the far north of Scandinavia, and North and South America, mostly exploring the lives of local indigenous people.
Edith Mischke was the daughter of the writer Karl Mischke (1863-1932), a student of Friedrich Engels. She spent her childhood in Japan, where she attended the International School in Yokohama. She toured India and Siberia with her parents. In 1912 the family returned to Germany. After graduation in 1916, she studied medicine in Berlin and Munich but abandoned her studies in 1921. In 1919 she married the reform educator, writer and draughtsman Fritz Klatt. They had a son, Ullrich, and a daughter, Elisabeth.
Inspired by Käthe Kollwitz, Edith Klatt established a children’s home in Prerow, a Baltic resort on the Darß, where the Klatts started from 1921 to organize holiday courses. After the 1933 seizure of power by the Nazis, the home could continue for only a few years as a leisure and rest home.
Her first literary work, Jupp und Peter können zaubern, was published in 1934. In 1935 the Klatts divorced. In 1936 she resumed her medical studies, passed the state exam in 1939, and was ordered immediately to the war effort. She practised as a doctor until 1944 in Freiburg, Dresden, Arnstadt and Stralsund. In the meantime, another early literary work appeared in 1937, Der Hund. Eine Erzählung.
Klatt was buried in a bombing raid and suffered so severe head injuries that she could no longer work as a doctor. Her son died in the last year of the war, and her daughter disappeared, presumably killed in a concentration camp. A second marriage with Dr. Werner Meyer ended in divorce in 1946. Edith Klatt moved back to the house in Prerow and devoted herself to her literary work.
In 1967, she joined the German Writers Association (DSV). She led a modest, withdrawn life at her home until her death on 14 December 1971, aged 76.
Link to Wikipedia biography (German)