Frieda Lawrence

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German literary figure mainly known for her marriage to the British novelist D. H. Lawrence. His infamous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover is thought to be based partly on her relationship as an aristocrat with the working class Lawrence. Her father was Baron Friedrich Ernst Emil Ludwig von Richthofen (1844–1916), an engineer in the German army. Frieda was a fifth cousin, once removed, of German air ace Manfred von Richthofen, also known as the "Red Baron". In 1899, she married a British philologist and professor of modern languages, Ernest Weekley, with whom she had three children. They settled in Nottingham, where Weekley was an academic at the university. During their marriage she began to translate German literature, mainly fairy tales, into English. She met D. H. Lawrence, a former student of her husband, in 1912; soon she fell in love with him, and they eloped to Germany. During their stay Lawrence was arrested for spying; after the intervention of Frieda's father, the couple walked south over the Alps to Italy. Following her divorce, Frieda and Lawrence married in 1914. She had been legally obliged to leave her children with Weekley; divorced adulterous women were unable to gain custody. Leaving postwar England at the earliest opportunity, they traveled widely, eventually settling at the Kiowa Ranch (now D. H. Lawrence Ranch) near Taos, New Mexico, and in Lawrence's last years at the Villa Mirenda, near Scandicci in Tuscany. After her husband's death in Vence, France, in 1930, she returned to Taos to live with her third husband, Angelo Ravagli. By her approval of the dramatization for the theatre of Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover it became his only novel ever to be staged. John Harte's play was the only dramatization to be accepted by her, and she did her best to get it produced. Although she loved the play when she read it, the copyright to Lawrence's story had already been acquired by Baron Philippe de Rothschild, who was a close friend. He did not relinquish it until 1960, after his film version had been released. John Harte's play was first produced at The Arts Theatre, London in 1961, five years after her death. Frieda Lawrence had died on 11 August 1956, her 77th birthday, in Taos, New Mexico. Link to Wikipedia biography