Uhl, Frida (1872–1943)

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Uhl, Frida (1872–1943)

Austrian-born journalist and second wife of August Strindberg. Name variations: Frida Strindberg. Born inAustria in 1872; died in 1943; daughter of Friedrich Uhl (a newspaper publisher and theater critic); married August Strindberg (1849–1912, the playwright), in 1893 (divorced 1895); children: (with Strindberg) one daughter; (with playwright Frank Wedekind) one child.

The daughter of Friedrich Uhl, the publisher of Austria's official government newspaper Wiener Zeitung and a respected theater critic, Frida Uhl once proclaimed that she "came into the world with ink in my veins." According to biographer Monica Strauss , Uhl was raised by her father to think of herself as a man, to seek her ambition to write, to speak her mind, and to align herself with men of talent. He did not, it would seem, prepare her to deal with the scorn of a society not yet equipped to deal with a woman of independence.

At age 20, while still a fledgling journalist, Uhl met and married playwright and novelist August Strindberg, who was 20 years her senior and had recently separated from his wife Siri von Essen . (He also had four children.) "His nerves are badly strained," Uhl wrote of Strindberg to her father, "but it is an inspired madness." In the course of their two-year union, which produced a daughter, Uhl subjugated herself to her husband's career, arranging for translations and productions of his work in England and managing the household and his business affairs. Strindberg, however, resented her meddling and was cruel and abusive to her. Jealous of her outside relationships and her translations of works other than his own, he accused her of being an unfit wife and mother. "Go your dirty way to the life you seek in the gutter," he once told her. Finally, with the emotional and financial help of her father, Uhl divorced Strindberg in 1895. (He would go on to marry actress Harriet Bosse .)

The remainder of Uhl's life lacked focus. She had a second child with playwright Frank Wedekind who refused to marry her, adding yet another disgrace to her already compromised respectability. She left her children with her family, and took a job as the German agent for English publisher William Heinemann. Her work kept her on the fringe of the Viennese avant-garde writers whom she idolized and from whose midst she selected a series of lovers. Her behavior grew increasingly erratic, due in part, suggests Strauss, to "too many tranquilizing drugs." In 1905, she sued her most recent lover, writer Werner von Oesteren, for harassing a detective she had hired to investigate him. During the ensuing trial, it was revealed that she had previously threatened him twice with a revolver. A few years later, on New Year's Day, she fired a pistol in the Hotel Bristol, although it was not known whether the shot was meant for her latest paramour or for herself.

Uhl subsequently fled to England, setting herself up as an art dealer and opening a German-style cabaret theater, the Cave of the Golden Calf. She later sabotaged the venture by embezzling funds, and in 1914, turned up in the United States, where she was hired by Fox Film to develop Swedish and other European works for the screen. She became a frequent visitor to the New York Public Library. "My husband is there, complete now in 58 volumes," she explained. "My father, Friedrich Uhl, novelist, critic, connoisseur and editor, is also there." Having earlier hoped to promote Strindberg's work in a series of lectures, in 1937 she published a memoir of their years together, translated as Marriage With Genius.