ABSTRACT
Winsloe for this all-female production of a text that found its final form in the novel Das Mädchen Manuela, published in 1933 in Amsterdam, and a year later in Leipzig and Vienna where it was quickly banned by the Nazi regime. Mädchen in Uniform, which is probably the bestknown title of this story, belongs to the genre of lesbian boarding-school fiction. Like many of these texts it centres on the tragic relationship between two female protagonists, in this instance a pupil and her teacher. Based on Winsloe’s own boardingschool experiences, the story features Manuela von Meinhardis who falls in love with her teacher Fräulein von Bernburg. Following the performance of a school play in which Manuela, cross-dressed, plays the male lead, Manuela declares her love for her teacher but the teacher does not support her in the ensuing isolation from her fellow pupils and teachers that the headmistress imposes on Manuela, and Manuela commits suicide by jumping from a window. This tragic ending was suppressed in one film where the suicide is prevented by an intervention from Manuela’s fellow pupils. However, as a narrative the story has much in common with similar fictions such as Rosemary MANNING’S The Chinese Garden and Olivia’s (see STRACHEY BUSSY, DOROTHY) Olivia, for example. Winsloe’s own personal life, aided by her financial independence, changed once she had returned to Munich. She met the US journalist Dorothy Thompson in the early 1930s and the two embarked on a relationship, conducted both in Europe and in the USA, which lasted until 1935 when Winsloe returned to Europe as she could not find work in the USA and Thompson felt uneasy about living as a lesbian. Winsloe’s 1935 novel, published only in English, Life Begins, centred autobiographically on a sculptress deciding to live openly as a lesbian with another woman. Following her last novel, Passagiere (1938; Passengers), Winsloe turned to writing film scripts. Now living in Paris, Winsloe was forced to move to the Côte d’Azur to flee from the Nazis. There she lived with her lover, the Swiss writer Simone Gentet. In 1944 the two women were shot dead in a wood near Cluny. Initially, it was suggested that they had been shot by members of the French Resistance Movement for collaborating with the Germans but it was later discovered that they had been the victims of common criminals.
