Anne Fried Biography and List of Works

Austrian-born writer, who immigrated to the United States on the outbreak of World War II. After a long career in education and social work, Anne Fried moved to Finland, where she established herself as a novelist, essayist, and critic.

"Taivaan ja maan kulkijaksi
kutsui äitini minua, kuin aavistaen.
Kulkija, etsijä, aina liikkeessä -
äitini tunsi minut."

Anne Fried was born in Vienna into a middle-class Jewish family. Her father, Robert Politzer, was a goldsmith. Her mother Ida Bresnitz had lost her parents at an early age in a fire and she grew up in the family of his father's Freemason friends. As an active person, Ida founded a successful charity organization and arranged with her friends summer vacations for Jewish children. Her plans to continue her studies at a university or at a teacher's school did not come true, because the family considered it unnecessary for a woman.

In 1922 Fried entered the University of Heidelberg, studying literature. She also studied in Jena and at the University of Tübingen, receiving her Ph.D. in 1926. During her visit in Paris next year, she met Theodore Fried, an artist. They married in November. Later Fried depicted the years between the wars, that they were very naïve: 'literature was more real than past revolutions and wars'. She wrote reviews to several magazines and found regular work at the magazine Individualität, which appeared in Basel, and from Forum in Prague.

In the 1930s Fried helped refugees, who were escaping Nazis. Her neighbour was the refugee writer Anna Seghers - Fried never met Seghers personally but was at a meeting where Seghers spoke. Seghers's life has parallels with Fried's own: similar social background, studies at university (Heidelberg), interest in literature and art, and an exile - a story common to a number of intellectuals at that time.

When Fried's marriage was coming to end, she moved in 1938 with her son to the United States, starting first as a teacher at Newark Junior College, and then working as Dr. Philip Levine's laboratory assistant at Newark Beth Hospital. She worked for a short time at a bookstore; she also found works as a secretary and proofreader, until she was offered a job as a teacher of retarded children at Amity Hall. From 1945 to 1948 she studied sociology at the Columbia University, receiving her M.A. in 1948. In the1950s she became director of Fuld Neighbourhood House in East Harlem.

Before moving to Finland, Fried worked at The New York City Mission Society and as a director of James Weldon Johnson Community Centre. Fried's career as a teacher and social worker in the United States lasted 31 years - in the new home country she started another career. She studied Finnish two years at the Columbia University, and then joined his son Christopher (Risto), who had settled in Finland with his family.

In her American years Fried had written poems and essays, among others about Ellery Queen's novels - she was a friend of Hilda Wiesenthal, who was married to Fred Dannay, the other writer behind the pseudonym. At the University of Helsinki Fried studied literature in 1971-1973. Her teacher, Kai Laitinen, wrote later: 'I realized that I was not only teacher at the course but also a pupil at her humanistic school of life.' In 1975 Fried published her study about the writer Marko Tapio. His book, Terassi, Fried had first read in New York. She found the work, which was enough small, from a bookshop by accident.

Since the appearance of Marko Tapio Fried published eleven books. Her literary studies, including LITERATUR UN POLITIK IN FINNLAND (1982), MYYTTI JA USKO MICHEL TOURNIERIN TUOTANNOSSA (1984), autobiographical works, and essays are considered valuable international and humanistic contribution to Finnish literary culture. Her views about aging and terminal care have gained wide response and her interviews in radio and television have deeply touched the audiences. In her essays Fried has dealt with such writers as Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Marguerite Duras, Peter Handke, Paul Celan, Helen Schjerfbeck and Jaan Kross.The subjets are set against the political, sociological, moral and historical powers that have shaped our 20th-century. Fried's style is clear, objective and dispassionate, but on the other hand she also offers close and valuable insights to her own experiences or to scenes from books that have affected her deeply. - Anne Fried died in Helsinki on December 11, 1998.

For further reading: Anne Fried ystävien silmin, ed. by Maija Pellikka (1998); Elämän värit by Anne Fried (1987); Kirjailija Anne Fried by Pekka Tarkka in Helsingin Sanomat 13.12.1998

Essays and articles in anthologies and magazines:

REPORTOF FOUR WEEKS OF WORK AT THE GUIDANCE CLINIC FOR RETARDED CHILDREN, American Journal of Mental Deficiency, (1955)
BEGEGNUNG UND ERINNERUNG, Sinn und Form 3/, (1981)