Gertrud von Brockdorff (1893–1961)

Gertrud von Brockdorff, née Stendal, was born in Magdeburg, Germany. She studied at the universities in Munich, Berlin, Marburg, and Kiel. In 1915, she married Cay Baron von Brockdorff, a philosopher and sociologist, with whom she had a daughter. In 1919, she earned her doctoral degree in philosophy at the University of Kiel. She traveled through the USA in the 1920s. She published her first novel, Knospen (Buds) at age 17 under her birth name, and went on to write some four dozen more works, mainly historical fiction. She also wrote a few film scripts in the 1930s.