Helen Hessel

Diagnoses

Personal

Vocation

Family

German fashion journalist, who wrote for Tage-Buch, Frankfurter Zeitung, Monde illustré and Die Dame. She was married from 1913 to 1921 and again from 1922 to 1941 to the writer Franz Hessel; her sons were Ulrich and Stéphane Hessel. Helen Grund was born into a wealthy, tragic family. Her mother died in 1915 in a Swiss psychiatric hospital, and her eldest brother Otto Grund was taken to a mental hospital while young, and he soon died. Her sister Ilse Grund and her brother Fritz Grund both committed suicide in their 20s. Hessel's youth was shaped by trips to London and Paris. There she learned to speak both languages, English and French, almost fluently. This is reflected in her diary, where the written language alternates between German, English and French. While studying in Paris in 1912, she met the German poet and writer Franz Hessel. They married in June 1913, and she soon became pregnant and gave birth to her first son, Ulrich, in Switzerland in 1914. The birth was difficult and the child was delivered with forceps, which had serious consequences for the newborn. Ulrich Hessel remained partially paralyzed on his left side. Franz Hessel went to war a few days after the birth of his son. In July 1917, their second son, Stefan Hessel, was born, later known as Stéphane. After the war ended in 1918, Franz Hessel returned from the front. In addition to her marriage to Franz Hessel, Helen Hessel had a relationship with his best friend Henri-Pierre Roché for more than thirteen years. Roché wrote about their triangular relationship in his novel "Jules et Jim" (published in 1953, filmed in 1962). In 1921 Helen and Franz Hessel divorced so that Hessel and Roché could live together. In the summer of 1922, Helen and Franz Hessel married again, although the affair between Roché and Hessel persisted. The family moved to Paris in 1925 before Franz Hessel returned to Berlin at the beginning of National Socialism. He was of Jewish descent and after the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, Helen Hessel urged him to leave Germany, which her husband refused. When Hessel was fired due to her marriage to a Jew, she divorced him again to continue her job as a journalist. In 1938, Hessel single-handedly obtained the necessary documents to bring her husband to Paris without a valid passport and to save her from National Socialism. After France was occupied by the German armies, Franz and Ulrich Hessel were arrested and spent several months in a concentration camp. In order not to be imprisoned herself, Hessel stood naked in front of the French officials. In the face of a scandal, the official dropped it. After the release of her husband and son, Franz Hessel died in 1941. Helen and Franz Hessel were indeed divorced, but lived together until his death as a couple. After the death of her husband and the memories left by the war, Hessel fell into depression and attempted to commit suicide. Finally, she moved to New York in the summer of 1947 where her son Stéphane worked as a UN official, and then lived in various locations in the United States. She worked as a housemaid in California, where she had an accident when her car collided with a freight train. She broke her leg several times, then returned to France in 1950. Helen Hessel then lived in Paris in a shared apartment with Anna-Maria Uhde, the sister of Wilhelm Uhde. She kept in touch with her family. Even in old age Hessel travelled much within Europe. On 15 June 1982 Helen Hessel died at the age of 96. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)