Paul Celan

Paul Celan was the most frequently used pseudonym of Paul Antschel (the pseudonym adopts an anagram of his surname in Romanian, Ancel) (November 23, 1920 – approximately April 20, 1970), who is considered one of the few major poets of the post-World War II era. He was born in Romania, lived in Austria and later in France, and wrote in German. In additional to the composition of his poetry, he was an extremely active translator, translating literature from Romanian, French, Portuguese, Russian, and English into German.

The formation years

In 1938, Celan travelled to Tours, France to study medicine (Romanian university quotas on Jewish students and the Anschluss precluded Bucharest and Vienna), but returned to Czernowitz in 1939 to study literature and Romance languages. His journey to France took him by way of Berlin as Kristallnacht happened and introduced him to his uncle, Bruno Schrager, who later was among the French detainees to Auschwitz who died at Birkenau. The Soviet occupation in June 1940 deprived Celan of any illusions about Stalinism and Soviet Communism which may have lingered from his earlier socialist engagements; the Soviets quickly imposed bureaucratic reforms in the university where he was studying Romance philology, and the Red Army brought deportations to Siberia before the Germans and Romanians brought ghettos, internment, and forced labour a year later.

Related Topics:
1938 - Tours - France - Medicine - Anschluss - Bucharest - Vienna - Czernowitz - 1939 - Literature - Romance languages - Berlin - Kristallnacht - Auschwitz - Birkenau - Stalinism - Red Army - Siberia - Ghettos

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