Clara Bauer was a German writer and music teacher, best known by the pen name Karl Detlef. She was born on June 23, 1836, in Swinoujscie, the daughter of the local port director and head of navigation.
When she was two, her family moved to Krotoszyn after her father took a post as district administrator. In 1849 they moved to Poznan, where she attended school. After her father’s death, Bauer followed her older sister to Wroclaw and became a teacher. She passed a teaching examination, then went to Dresden to study piano with Friedrich Wieck. She worked as a pianist in the household of Russian lieutenant general Fyodor von der Lannitz and later lived in St. Petersburg and Oryol.
Bauer returned to Dresden in 1866, where she taught piano. After meeting the poet Gustav Kühne, she turned to writing. Her first novel, Into the Steppe, appeared in 1871 and drew on life in Russia. Her other works included Unbreakable Bonds, Guilt and Atonement, Nora, Between Father and Son, and The Mysterious Singer.
She traveled to Italy in 1872 and returned to Wroclaw in 1875, suffering from tuberculosis. She died there on June 29, 1876, aged 40.