Kautsky, Minna

Born June 11, 1837, in Graz; died Dec. 20, 1912, in Berlin. German writer.

Kautsky was the daughter of a theatrical artist and was an actress until 1862. She was the mother of Karl Kautsky. She wrote works based on the lives of the urban poor and the proletariat. K. Marx made favorable mention of her novel Stefan of Grillenhof (vols. 1–2, 1879). In a letter to Minna Kautsky, F. Engels wrote a generally positive appraisal of her novel The Old and the New (1884), but criticized her simplified conception of tendentiousness in artistic work.