Agnes Miegel was very early called "Mother of East Prussia" because numerous readers could relate to her visionary pictures of the history and downfall of East Prussia. She wrote poetry, ballads and historical narratives from many locations. Realism and mythical exaltation were combined in mostly traditional forms. Her national perspective led to an appropriation by the National Socialists, from whom she never distanced herself. Her person is therefore controversial today.
Coming from a bourgeois family in Königsberg, Miegel broke off teaching and nursing jobs in Berlin and Great Britain to care for her sick parents. In the 1920s she was a journalist for Königsberg newspapers. In 1945 she had to flee and lived after internment in a camp in Denmark from 1948 in Bad Nenndorf.
Illustration:
"The Old Book", poem by Agnes Miegel, drawn and written by Lieselotte Plangger-Popp (1913-2002), around 1947