The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hillern, Wilhelmine von

HILLERN, Wilhelmine von, German authoress: b. Munich, 11 March 1836. She is the daughter of a well-known novelist, Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer. She was brought up in Berlin, became an actress at Gotha (1854), and married the prominent jurist von Hillern at Freiburg in Breisgau in 1857. Her husband died 8 Dec. 1882. She has since been living chiefly at Oberammergau and Tutzing. Her principal novels and short stories were produced during the 60's and 70's of the last century. One of them, ‘Höher als die Kirche’ (1877) is quite well known in America by reason of the fact that it is frequently read as a text by students of elementary German. It is a comparatively insignificant work, however, by no means so important as the novels, ‘Ein Arzt der Seele’ (Berlin 1869), ‘Die Geyer-Wally’ (Berlin 1875) and ‘Und sie kommt doch’ (Berlin 1879).