29 Facts About Paul Celan

Paul Celan was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Cernauti, Bukovina, a region then part of Romania and earlier part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Paul Celan's father, Leo Antschel, was a Zionist who advocated his son's education in Hebrew at the Jewish school Safah Ivriah.

Paul Celan's mother, Friederike Antschel nee Schrager, was an avid reader of German literature who insisted Austrian German be the language of the household.

Paul Celan's earliest known poem is titled Mother's Day 1938.

Paul Celan attended the Liceul Ortodox de Baieti No 1 from 1930 until 1935, Liceul de Baieti No 2 in Cernauti from 1935 to 1936, followed by the Liceul Marele Voievod Mihai, where he studied from 1936 until graduating in 1938.

In 1938, Paul Celan traveled to Tours, France, to study medicine; the Anschluss precluded his study in Vienna, and Romanian schools were harder to get into due to the newly imposed Jewish quota.

Paul Celan returned to Cernauti in 1939 to study literature and Romance languages.

Paul Celan hoped to convince his parents to leave the country so as to escape certain persecution.

Later that year, after being taken to a labour camp in Romania, Paul Celan received reports of his parents' deaths.

Paul Celan remained imprisoned in a work camp until February 1944, when the Red Army's advance forced the Romanians to abandon the camps, whereupon he returned to Cernauti shortly before the Soviets returned.

Friends from this period recall Paul Celan expressing immense guilt over his separation from his parents, whom he had tried to convince to go into hiding prior to the deportations, shortly before their deaths.

Paul Celan was active in the Jewish literary community as both a translator of Russian literature into Romanian, and as a poet, publishing his work under a variety of pseudonyms.

Paul Celan met with the poets Rose Auslander and Immanuel Weissglas, elements of whose works he reused in his poem "Todesfuge", which first appeared as "" in a Romanian translation of May 1947.

Paul Celan found only a ruined city divided between Allied powers and which bore little resemblance to the literary, musical, and cultural mecca it had been as the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Paul Celan visited Celan twice in Paris between 1949 and 1951.

In 1952, Paul Celan's writing began to gain recognition when he read his poetry on his first reading trip to West Germany where he was invited to read at the semiannual meetings of the hugely influential Group 47 literary group.

When Ingeborg Bachmann, with whom Paul Celan had an affair, won the group's prize instead for her poetry collection, Paul Celan said "After the meeting, only six people remembered my name".

Paul Celan did not attend any other meeting of the group.

Paul Celan sent her many love letters, influenced by Franz Kafka's correspondence with Milena Jesenska and Felice Bauer.

Paul Celan made his living as a translator and lecturer in German at the Ecole normale superieure.

Paul Celan was a close friend of Nelly Sachs, who later won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Paul Celan became a French citizen in 1955 and lived in Paris.

Paul Celan was awarded the Bremen Literature Prize in 1958 and the Georg Buchner Prize in 1960.

Paul Celan drowned in the river Seine in Paris around 20 April 1970.

Paul Celan created and used German neologisms, especially in his later works Fadensonnen and Lichtzwang.

Paul Celan has been seen as attempting either to destroy or remake the German language in his poetry, using it to convey dense imagery and subjective experiences; he described this stance in a letter to his wife Gisele Lestrange as feeling as though "the German I talk is not the same as the language the German people are talking here".

Paul Celan has been regarded, alongside Goethe, Holderlin and Rilke, as one of the most significant German poets, and a radical innovator of German-language literature.

Paul Celan is featured as an inspiration for the work of Anselm Kiefer, who reads Paul Celan's poem Todesfuge, in Wim Wenders' 2023 3D movie Anselm.

Paul Celan's poetry has been translated into English, with many of the volumes being bilingual.