Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan

Paul Celan was born on 23 November 1920 as Paul Antschel, the sole son of German-speaking Jewish parents in the then Romanian city of Czernowitz. After completing school in 1938, he began studying medicine in Tours, France, but returned to Romania a year later to complete a degree in Romance studies. In 1942, Celan’s parents were deported to a labour camp. In the autumn of that year, his father died of typhoid, and his mother was shot. Between 1942 and 1944, Celan was made to do forced labour in several Romanian camps. From 1945 to 1947 he worked as an editor and translator in Bucharest and began to publish his first poems. In 1948, he moved to Paris, where he lived until his death. That same year, he met Ingeborg Bachmann, and in 1951, Celan met the artist Gisèle de...

Ingeborg Bachmann was born on June 25, 1926 in Klagenfurt. She began to write when she was at school. She studied Philosophy in Innsbruck, Graz and eventually in Vienna, where she met, among others, Hans Weigel. In 1949 Bachmann wrote her dissertation entitled »The Critical Reception of the Existential Philosophy of Martin Heidegger«. She subsequently started working for the Allied radio station Rot-Weiss-Rot. Her friendship with Paul Celan majorly influenced her thought. Ingeborg Bachmann is considered one of the most important German-language poets and writes of the 20th century. She died in Rome on October 17, 1973 .