Dill, Liesbet (Elisabeth Pauline, married name von Drigalski)

Writer

born: 28.03.1877 in Dudweiler/Saar

died: 15.04.1962 in Wiesbaden

Dill, daughter of the estate and brewery owner Friedrich Wilhelm Dill, attended the secondary school for girls in Saarbrücken and the St. Maria Institute of the English Ladies in Wiesbaden. In 1897, she entered into a marriage arranged by her parents with the district judge Gustav Seibert, divorced in 1902 and left her husband and two sons, which caused a scandal.

In 1905, she married the doctor Wilhelm von Drigalski, with whom she had two children. He gave her the freedom she needed to pursue her literary ambitions. Drigalski's career took the couple to Wiesbaden in 1942, where Dill remained living after his death in 1950, most recently at Schützenstraße 1. Under her maiden name Liesbet Dill, she published her first novel "Lo's Ehe" in 1903, which was followed by around 100 other works.

Her main themes were the problems of the border regions of Saarland and Lorraine and the role of women in bourgeois society. She opposed prejudice and patriarchal paternalism and advocated independence and employment for women. Several of her novels are set in Wiesbaden. In 1934, Dill moved closer to nationalist literature with the novel "Wir von der Saar". Her works after 1945 are considered pure entertainment literature. In the Saarland and Wiesbaden, some of her novels have been rediscovered in recent years due to their local and socio-historical information content.