Memorial Alfred Mombert

ALFRED MOMBERT was born on 6 February 1872 in Karlsruhe as the second of three children of the businessman Eduard Mombert and his wife Helene, née Gompertz. After secondary school, Alfred Mombert studied law in Heidelberg, Leipzig and Berlin and opened a law practice in Heidelberg in 1899.
He had already begun writing poetry when he began his studies: in 1894, his first collection of poems, ‘Day and Night’, was published by the Heidelberg publishing house Hörning.
Supported by his friend Richard Dehmel, Alfred Mombert soon became one of those young poets who quickly became famous.
Mombert’s love for his sister Ella Gutman, to whom he dedicated his first poem "Awakening" in 1891, is evident from the caring letters he sent her in the women’s barracks:
»Dearest Ella! I hope you are holding on bravely... Tell me what you miss most of all. If you need a pillow, you can have one, as well as my half or full woolen stockings.'
In April 1941, the friends initially managed to accommodate the siblings in the interned sanatorium in Idron par Pau.
In Idron, Mombert largely completed his "opus ultimum" "Sfaira the Old" Part 2.
On 11 October 1941, Alfred Mombert and Ella Gutman reached Winterthur, where they lived in the house of their friend Hans Reinhart. Alfred Mombert's 70th birthday was celebrated at the Winterthur Literary Association - Hans Reinhart presented his friend with a private print of "Sfaira the Old" Part 2.

Alfred Mombert died on 8 April 1942 in Winterthur. In his will, he named his sister Ella as sole heir - an inheritance for which she had to fight for a long time. Ella Gutman died on 16 June 1960 in Switzerland.

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