Forbes-Mosse, Irene

Irene Forbes-Mosse was born in Baden-Baden on 5 August 1864, the daughter of Albert Georg Friedrich Graf von Flemming and his wife Armgart, née von Arnim. She was the granddaughter of Bettina and Achim von Armin. After her marriage, she lived in Rathenow and Brussels, and after her second marriage in Florence. There she became friends with the English writer Vernon Lee, whose "Genius loci" she translated into German in 1905. Since the death of her husband, she travelled a lot. After the outbreak of the First World War, she took German citizenship again, although she lost her property as a result. She devoted herself to social aid work in various places in Germany and later to her poetry. It was not until 1931 that she settled permanently with her friend Berthy Moser in a country house in Chexbres above Montreux, where she died in December 1946 as a result of pneumonia, without ever having set foot in Germany again after 1933.