Mononymous person town of Stendal, birthplace of the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, whom Stendhal admired. In the 20th century, a fourth French writer, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (author of "Gigi", 1945), used her actual surname as her mononym pen name, Colette. Some French actors and singers have used their given name or surname as a stage mononym. In the 17th and 18th centuries, most Italian castrato singers used mononyms as stage names (e.g. Caffarelli, Farinelli). The German writer, mining engineer and philosopher, Georg Friedrich Philipp Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772–1801), became famous as Novalis. The 19th-century Dutch writer Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–87), better
Gabrielle Wittkop of it in "Hemlock" (1988). She herself committed suicide in 2002, after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Although popular in France and Germany, Wittkop's works are not widely available in English. "The Necrophiliac" was translated in a Canadian edition by Don Bapst in 2011. Gabrielle Wittkop Gabrielle Wittkop (née Menardeau) (1920-2002) was a French writer. She was born in Nantes. She married Justus Wittkop, a Nazi deserter, in Paris and moved with him to Germany in 1946 after the end of the Second World War. Her first book, on the German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann was published in German in