Initiative for a Henriette Haill Park in Linz

In the course of the redesign of the Landstraße-J.K.Vogel-Straße-Hessenplatz-Bismarckstraße area, a publicly accessible park was built in the inner courtyard area. The previously nameless park will be officially opened to the public in May 2011. We propose naming this park after the Linz writer Henriette Haill (1904-1996).

Henriette Haill was born on June 27, 1904 and grew up in poor circumstances in a working-class family on the Römerberg. She completed an apprenticeship as a tailor and later worked as a maid and unskilled worker in a waffle factory. She traveled through Europe for years with her companion Hans Kerschbaumer.
Henriette Haill had been active as a writer since her youth. We owe her most beautiful landscape and nature poems to her experiences on the country road, and she sensitively recreated the experiences of vagabonds and wanderers.

After February 1934, her house was searched. During the Nazi regime, she witnessed how her best friends suffered and perished in concentration camps and prisons. Miraculously, she remained unmolested. In the last year of the war, she moved to the Mühlviertel with her four children to protect them from Nazi persecution. Henriette Haill was able to hide her manuscripts. Nevertheless, some of them were lost.

In 1946, Henriette Haill published her first volume of poetry. She was a founding member of the "Mühlviertler Künstlergilde" and editor of its magazine. Her dialect poems are characterized by heartfelt warmth and her literature was always socially committed. Many of her poems express the bitter romanticism of the country road. Above all, however, she was also a successful storyteller. Poems by Henriette Haill were set to music by Hans-Eckardt Wenzel.

The writer Erich Hackl writes: "Henriette Haill was destined to be overlooked by the literary public in five ways: because of her poor origins; because of her communist sentiments; because of her devotion to the geographical and social periphery; because of her gender; because of her modesty."

Henriette Haill died in Linz on February 22, 1996 at the age of 92 after a long and serious illness.

Contact:
Dr. Edith Friedl
aon.913460834(at)aon.at

Photo: Inner courtyard / Photo: Mag. Linz