Anna Croissant-Rust (1860–1943)

Anna Croissant-Rust was born in Bad Dürkheim, Germany. She spent her youth and much of her adulthood in Munich, and became an important figure in the Münchner Moderne, a late 19th- and early 20th-century artistic movement. In 1890, she was a founding member and the only woman in the Gesellschaft für modernes Leben (Society for Modern Life), an important avant garde literary club. This gave her opportunities to publish in the group's journals such as "Die Gesellschaft" (Society), and "Moderne Blätter" (Modern Gazette), for which she also worked as co-editor from 1891. She made her literary debut with a novella called Feierabend (Knocking-off Time, 1890). Other novellas, novels, poetry, sketchbooks, and plays followed. In 1888, at the age of 28, she married her childhood sweetheart, Hermann Croissant, an engineer and artillery officer. The couple moved to Ludwigshafen in 1895, where her husband held a position as manager of a gas works. She found living in this industrial city oppressive, so after Hermann Croissant retired in 1905, they moved back to Pasing, near Munich, where their home quickly became the focus of a circle of artistic friends. Her last published work was the novel Unkebunk (1917). Her writing was widely respected in her day, although it is now largely forgotten.