Rose Ausländer

Rose Ausländer
Born Rosalie Beatrice Scherzer
(1901-05-11)May 11, 1901
Czernowitz, Duchy of Bukovina, Austria-Hungary
Died January 3, 1988(1988-01-03) (aged 86)
Düsseldorf, West Germany

Rose Ausländer (May 11, 1901 – January 3, 1988), maiden name Rosalie Beatrice Scherzer, was a Jewish German and English language poet. She was born in Bukovina, and lived in Austria-Hungary, the United States, Romania, Austria, and Germany.

Life

She was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, (today Chernivstsy, Ukraine), which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her father Sigmund (Süssi) Scherzer (1871–1920) was from a small town near Czernowitz, and her mother Kathi Etie Rifke Binder (1873–1947) was born in Czernowitz to a German-speaking family.[1] Between 1907 and 1919, she received her primary and secondary education in Vienna and Czernowitz, which became part of Kingdom of Romania after 1918, and was given the name 'Cernauti'.

In 1919, she began studying literature and philosophy in Cernauti. At this time, she developed a lifelong interest in the philosopher Constantin Brunner.

She gave up her studies after her father died in 1920. In 1921, she left Cernauti and migrated to the United States with her friend and future husband Ignaz Ausländer. Here, she worked as an editor for the newspaper Westlicher Herold and began to write poems. In 1927, her first poems were published in the Amerika-Herold-Kalender, which she edited.

She married Ausländer on October 19, 1923 in New York, and divorced him only three years later while choosing to keep his last name. She became an American citizen in 1926, yet returned home to Cernauti to take care of her sick mother in 1927 and 1931, and finally lost her American citizenship, after she had not been in America for more than 3 years. In Cernauti, she met graphologist Helios Hecht, with whom she was in a relationship until 1936, when she left Cernauti for Bucharest.

In 1939, her first volume of poems, Der Regenbogen (The Rainbow) was published after intermediation of Alfred Margul-Sperber. Even though it was regarded favorably by critics, it was not accepted by the public. The greater part of the print run was allegedly destroyed when Nazi Germany occupied Cernauti in 1941. As a Jew, she had to move to the ghetto of Cernauti. She remained there for two years, plus another year in hiding so as not to be deported to the Nazi concentration camps.

During her years in the Cernauti ghetto, Ausländer met poet Paul Celan. The image "black milk," used by Celan in his well-known poem Todesfuge (first published 1948), appeared in a poem published in 1939 by Ausländer. Ausländer herself is recorded as saying that this usage by Celan was "self-explanatory, as the poet may take all material to transmute in his own poetry. It's an honour to me that a great poet found a stimulus in my own modest work".[2]

Ausländer returned to New York in 1946 and received American citizenship again in 1948. She had continued to write poetry in German during her first stay in the United States, but in 1948, she began to write English poems.[3] While attending the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College, Staten Island, Ausländer met poet Marianne Moore. This was the beginning of a friendship documented in several letters, in which Moore advised Ausländer on her writing and finally encouraged her to return to writing poetry in German. Several of Ausländer's English poems are dedicated to Moore.[4]

When she published her second volume of poems, Blinder Sommer (Blind summer), in 1965, it was welcomed enthusiastically by the public. In 1967, she returned to Europe, finally settling in Düsseldorf. She was bedridden from 1978 due to arthritis and had to dictate her texts, as she was not able to write by herself. She died in Düsseldorf in 1988.

Works

References

  1. ↑ Rose Ausländers Leben und Dichtung (Rose Ausländer life and poetry). "Ein denkendes Herz, das singt" ("A thinking heart that sings")]
  2. ↑ Cited in Forstner, Leonard (1985). "Todesfuge: Paul Celan, Immanuel Weissglas and the Psalmist", in German Life and Letters, (October 1985), Vol 39, Issue 1, p. 10
  3. ↑ Braun, Helmut (1999). "Ich bin fünftausend Jahre jung" : Rose Ausländer : zu ihrer Biographie. Stuttgart: Radius. ISBN 9783871731785.
  4. ↑ Ausländer, Rose (1995). The Forbidden Tree. Englische Gedichte. Fischer Taschenbuch. ISBN 978-3596111534.

Sources

External links

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