Jewish German-Swedish poet and playwright. Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate
Nelly Sachs
(
German pronunciation:
[?n?liː
zaks]
ⓘ
; 10 December 1891 ? 12 May 1970) was a German?Swedish poet and playwright. Her experiences resulting from the rise of the
Nazis
in
World War II
Europe transformed her into a poignant spokesperson for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews. Her best-known play is
Eli: Ein Mysterienspiel vom Leiden Israels
(1950); other works include the poems "
Zeichen im Sand
" (1962), "
Verzauberung
" (1970), and the collections of poetry
In den Wohnungen des Todes
(1947),
Flucht und Verwandlung
(1959),
Fahrt ins Staublose
(1961), and
Suche nach Lebenden
(1971). She was awarded the
1966 Nobel Prize in Literature
.
Life and career
[
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]
Leonie Sachs was born in Berlin-
Schoneberg
, Germany, in 1891 to a Jewish family. Her parents were the wealthy
natural rubber
and
gutta-percha
manufacturers Georg William Sachs (1858?1930) and his wife Margarete, nee Karger (1871?1950).
[1]
She was educated at home because of frail health. She showed early signs of talent as a dancer, but her protective parents did not encourage her to pursue a profession. She grew up as a very sheltered, introverted young woman and never married. She pursued an extensive correspondence with her friends
Selma Lagerlof
[2]
and
Hilde Domin
. As the Nazis took power, she became increasingly terrified, at one point losing the ability to speak, as she would remember in verse: "When the great terror came/I fell dumb." Sachs fled with her aged mother to Sweden in 1940. It was her friendship with Lagerlof that saved their lives:
[2]
shortly before her own death, Lagerlof intervened with the Swedish royal family to secure their release from Germany. Sachs and her mother escaped on the last flight from Nazi Germany to Sweden, a week before Sachs was scheduled to report to a
concentration camp
. They settled in Sweden, and Sachs became a Swedish citizen in 1952.
Living in a tiny two-room apartment in Stockholm, Sachs cared for her mother alone for many years, and supported their existence by translations between Swedish and German.
[2]
After her mother's death, Sachs suffered several psychotic breakdowns,
[
citation needed
]
characterized by
hallucinations
,
paranoia
, and
delusions
of persecution by Nazis, and spent a number of years in a
mental institution
. She continued to write while hospitalized, and eventually recovered sufficiently to live on her own, though her mental health remained fragile. Her worst breakdown was ostensibly precipitated by hearing spoken German during a trip to Switzerland to accept a literary prize. But she maintained a forgiving attitude toward younger Germans, and corresponded with many German-speaking writers of the postwar period, including
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
and
Ingeborg Bachmann
.
Paul Celan and lyrical poetry
[
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]
In the context of the
Shoah
, her deep friendship with "brother" poet
Paul Celan
is often noted today. Their bond was described in one of Celan's most famous poems, "
Zurich, Zum Storchen
" ("Zurich, The Stork Inn").
[3]
Sachs and Celan shared the Holocaust and the fate of the Jews throughout history, their interest in Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices, and their literary models; their imagery was often remarkably similar, though developed independently. Their friendship was supportive during professional conflicts. Celan also suffered from artistic infighting (
Claire Goll
's accusations of
plagiarism
) during a period of frustration with his work's reception. When Sachs met Celan she was embroiled in a long dispute with Finnish-Jewish composer
Moses Pergament
over his adaptation of her play
Eli: Ein Mysterienspiel vom Leiden Israels
. In Celan she found someone who understood her anxiety and hardships as an artist.
Sachs's poetry is intensely
lyrical
and reflects some influence by
German Romanticism
, especially in her early work. The poetry she wrote as a young woman in Berlin is more inspired by Christianity than Judaism and makes use of traditional Romantic imagery and themes. Much of it concerns an unhappy love affair Sachs suffered in her teens with a non-Jewish man who would eventually be killed in a concentration camp. After Sachs learned of her only love interest's death, she bound up his fate with that of her people and wrote many love lyrics ending not only in the beloved's death, but in the catastrophe of the Holocaust. Sachs herself mourns no longer as a jilted lover but as a personification of the Jewish people in their vexed relationship with history and God. Her fusion of grief with subtly romantic elements is in keeping with the imagery of the
kabbalah
, where the
Shekhinah
represents God's presence on earth and mourns for the separation of God from His people in their suffering. Thus Sachs's Romanticism allowed her to develop self-consciously from a German to a Jewish writer, with a corresponding change in her language: still flowery and conventional in some of her first poetry on the Holocaust, it becomes ever more compressed and surreal, returning to a series of the same images and tropes (dust, stars, breath, stones and jewels, blood, dancers, fish suffering out of water, madness, and ever-frustrated love) in ways that are sometimes comprehensible only to her readers, but always moving and disturbing. Though Sachs does not resemble many authors, she appears to have been influenced by
Gertrud Kolmar
and
Else Lasker-Schuler
, in addition to Celan.
In 1961 Sachs won the first
Nelly Sachs Prize
, a
literary award
given biennially by the German city of
Dortmund
and named in her honour. The city commissioned
Walter Steffens
to compose the opera
Eli
based on her mystery play, which premiered at
the new opera house
in 1967. When, with
Shmuel Yosef Agnon
, she was awarded the 1966
Nobel Prize in Literature
, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas "I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people."
[2]
She read her poem "In der Flucht" at the ceremony.
[4]
Sachs died from
colorectal cancer
in 1970. She was interred in the
Norra begravningsplatsen
in Stockholm. Her possessions were donated to the
National Library of Sweden
.
[5]
A
memorial plaque
commemorates her birthplace, Maaßenstraße 12, in
Schoneberg
, Berlin, where there is also a park named for her in Dennewitzstraße. A park on the island of
Kungsholmen
in Stockholm also bears her name.
Partial bibliography
[
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]
Poetry
[
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]
- In den Wohnungen des Todes
[In the Houses of Death], 1947.
[6]
[7]
- Sternverdunkelung
[Eclipse of Stars], 1949.
[6]
- Und niemand weiss weiter
[And No One Knows Where to Go], 1957.
[6]
- Flucht und Verwandlung
[Flight and Metamorphosis], 1959.
[6]
- Fahrt ins Staublose: Die Gedichte der Nelly Sachs 1
[Journey into the Dustless Realm: The Poetry of Nelly Sachs, 1], 1961.
[8]
: 1089?1091
- Zeichen im Sand
[Signs in the Sand], 1962
[6]
[7]
- Suche nach Lebenden: Die Gedichte der Nelly Sachs 2
[Search for the Living: The Poetry of Nelly Sachs, 2], 1971.
[8]
: 1089?1091
Stories
[
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]
- Legenden und Erzahlungen
[Legends and Tales], 1921.
[7]
[8]
: 1089?1091
Drama
[
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]
- Eli: Ein Mysterienspiel vom Leiden Israels
[Eli: A Mystery Play of the Suffering of Israel], 1950
[6]
Letters
[
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]
- Briefe der Nelly Sachs
[Letters of Nelly Sachs] ed. Ruth Dinesen and Helmut Mussener, 1984.
[8]
: 1089?1091
- Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs: Correspondence
, tr. Christopher Clark, ed. Barbara Wiedemann, 1995.
[9]
Translations
[
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]
- O the Chimneys: Selected Poems, Including the Verse Play, Eli
, tr. Michael Hamburger et al., 1967.
[8]
: 1089?1091
- The Seeker and Other Poems
. tr. Ruth Mead, Matthew Mead, and Michael Hamburger, 1970.
[8]
: 1089?1091
- Contemporary German Poetry
, selections, ed. and tr. Gertrude C. Schwebell, 1964.
[8]
: 1089?1091
- Collected Poems I, 1944?1949,
2007.
- Glowing Enigmas
, tr. Michael Hamburger, 2013.
- Flight and Metamorphosis
, tr. Joshua Weiner with Linda B. Parshall, 2022.
[10]
Sachs is published by
Suhrkamp Verlag
.
[11]
See also
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]
Notes
[
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]
References
[
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]
Further reading
[
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]
In English
In German
- Ruth Dinesen (2005),
"Sachs, Nelly"
,
Neue Deutsche Biographie
(in German), vol. 22, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 336?337
- Walter A. Berendsohn
:
Nelly Sachs: Einfuhrung in das Werk der Dichterin judischen Schicksals.
Agora, Darmstadt 1974,
ISBN
978-3-87008-046-4
.
- Gudrun Dahnert: "
Wie Nelly Sachs 1940 aus Deutschland entkam. Mit einem Brief an Ruth Movius.
" in:
Sinn und Form
February 2009, pp. 226?257
- Ruth Dinesen:
Nelly Sachs. Eine Biographie.
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1992,
ISBN
978-3-518-40426-3
- Gabriele Fritsch-Vivie
:
Nelly Sachs.
Monographie. Rowohlt, Reinbek, 3rd edition, 2001,
ISBN
978-3-499-50496-9
.
- Petra Oelker
[
de
]
: "
Und doch, am Ende steht wieder das Licht, wenn auch noch so fern
". In:
Charlotte Kerner
[
de
]
:
Nicht nur Madame Curie. Frauen, die den Nobelpreis bekamen.
Beltz, Weinheim 1999,
ISBN
978-3-407-80862-2
.
- Gerald Sommerer:
Aber dies ist nichts fur Deutschland, das weiß und fuhle ich.
Nelly Sachs ? Untersuchungen zu ihrem szenischen Werk. Konigshausen & Neumann, Wurzburg 2008,
ISBN
978-3-8260-3860-0
.
External links
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