Paul Celan

Paul Celan (/ˈsɛlæn/; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a German language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then Kingdom of Romania (now Chernivtsy, Ukraine), and adopted the pseudonym "Paul Celan". (Celan in Romanian is pronounced Chelàn, and was derived from transposing the syllables of his surname). He became one of the major German-language poets of the post-World War II era.

Life

Early life

Celan was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Cernăuți, Northern Bukovina, a region then part of Romania and earlier part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (when his birthplace was known as Czernowitz). His first home was in the Wassilkogasse in Cernăuți. His father, Leo Antschel, was a Zionist who advocated his son's education in Hebrew at the Jewish school Safah Ivriah.

Celan's mother, Fritzi, was an avid reader of German literature who insisted German be the language of the house. In his teens Celan became active in Jewish Socialist organizations and fostered support for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. His earliest known poem is titled Mother's Day 1938. In 1934, fourteen-year-old Paul wrote a letter to his aunt Minna in Palestine, in which there is the eloquent phrase: "With regard to anti-Semitism in our school, I could write you a 300-page book."