Emma Hauck

1878-1920 · Heidelberg, Germany

In a Heidelberg clinic in 1909 she wrote the same plea to her husband over and over, sweetheart come, until the words fused into columns of solid pencil. The letters were never posted.

The life

Hauck was born in 1878 in Ellwangen, Germany, married a schoolteacher and had two young daughters. In February 1909, at thirty, gripped by delusions of poisoning and infection, she was admitted to the university psychiatric clinic in Heidelberg with a diagnosis of dementia praecox. There she wrote letter after letter begging her husband to come for her. The letters stayed in her patient file. She died in 1920 in the asylum at Wiesloch, aged 41.

The work

About a dozen small pencil pages survive, each filled edge to edge with the repeated words Herzensschatzi komm, sweetheart come, or simply komm, layered so densely they become vibrating vertical columns, writing collapsing into drawing. They are preserved in the Prinzhorn Collection at Heidelberg, where they are now read as some of the most affecting works in all of outsider art.

Why we love them

The shortest distance ever drawn between love and despair. Two words, repeated until they became a picture.

Go deeper

• Emma Hauck at the Outsider Art Fair
• Emma Hauck on Wikipedia
• Sammlung Prinzhorn, Heidelberg
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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