Paul Celan

Paul Celan (1920–1970), born Paul Antschel, was born in Czernowitz, then in Romania, to German-speaking Jewish parents. During the Second World War, he was forced to perform labor in Romanian work camps. Afterward, he worked as an editor and translator in Bucharest, where his first poems were published. From 1948 onward, he worked in Paris as a German-language poet, translator, and editor. He became widely known through the poetry collection *Mohn und Gedächtnis* (1952), which includes his poem “Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”). Celan is regarded as one of the most important poets of postwar German literature. He received the Georg Büchner Prize in 1960.