Mela Hartwig (1893–1967)

Mela Hartwig was born in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of Katharina Hess, and was originally known as Melanie Hess. Her biological father was the sociologist and philosopher Theodor Hartwig.

After graduating from high school, Mela studied to be a teacher, then switched to the Vienna Conservatory, where she trained in singing and acting from 1917 to 1921. During these years, she played various parts in Vienna and with the Berlin Schillertheater ensemble, including Hedda Gabler. In 1921, she married lawyer Robert Spira, who was also Jewish, and the couple moved to Graz, where Mela began writing. Her breakthrough came in 1927, when she won a prize in a competition sponsored by the magazine Die literary Welt for her story "Das Verbrechen" (The Crime). Her debut novel Das Weib ist ein Nichts (The Woman Is Nothing) was published the following year. Despite the positive reception of this work, Mela attempted in vain to find a publisher for her next book, Bin ich ein überflüssiger Mensch? (Am I a Superfluous Person?). It only appeared in print some 70 years later.
Mela was becoming well-known as a modernist and feminist.
Following Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, she and her husband fled to England, where she worked as a translator. She befriended Virginia Woolf, who helped her get a job as a language teacher. After World War II, the couple decided to remain in London. Mela made a name for herself as a painter under the name Mela Spira. She continued to write, although she also struggled to get published. The last book she published during her lifetime was a volume of poems called Spiegelungen (Reflections, 1953). Shortly before her death, she was working intensively on a novel with the working title Die andere Wirklichkeit (The Other Reality), which remained a fragment. Am I a Superfluous Person? was finally published in 2001 by the Austrian literary publisher Droschl. The Crime was reprinted with a collection of her short stories in 2004.