Zenta Mauriņa

Zenta Mauriņa
Zenta Mauriņa (1930)
Born	(1897-12-15)15 December 1897 Lejasciems, Russian Empire (Now  Latvia)
Died	25 April 1978(1978-04-25) (aged 80) Basel,   Switzerland
Occupation	writer, essayist
Nationality	Latvian
Genre	Prose
Spouse	Konstantīns Raudive

Zenta Mauriņa (15 December 1897 – 25 April 1978) was a Latvian writer, essayist and researcher in philology. She was married to the Electronic Voice Phenomena researcher Konstantin Raudive.

Born to doctor Roberts Mauriņš, Zenta spent her childhood in Grobiņa, where, at the age of five, she contracted polio leaving her confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. After studying at the Russian girls high school in Liepaja (1913–1915), she studied philosophy at the Latvian University in Riga (1921–1923). After this, she studied philology of Baltic languages (1923–1927). She taught at the Latvian Teachers Institute and at the Latvian University in Riga and in Murmuiza, and achieved her doctorate in philology in 1938, researching the works of Latvian poet and philosopher, Fricis Bārda.

At the close of the Second World War, Mauriņa went into exile, first in Germany, but later in Sweden, where she became a lecturer at Uppsala University (1949–1963). In later life she lived in southern Germany, in Bad Krozingen, and died and was buried in Basel, Switzerland.

Up to 1944, Mauriņa published 19 books in Latvia, including monographs on Latvian writers Rainis, Jānis Poruks, Anna Brigadere and Fricis Bārda, as well as on Dostoyevsky and Dante. During this period she also wrote her novel, Life on a Train (1941). After the war, she published 20 books in Latvian, and 27 in German, and her works have been widely translated into Italian, English, Russian, Swedish, Dutch, Finnish and Danish. Notable among her works in German are: