Poet and writer Paul Antschel, much more popularly known by his pseudonym Paul Celan, was born on November 23, 1920 in Cernauti, Bukovina, which was part of Romania then but now forms a section of the Ukraine. Celan was the son of a Zionist father who enrolled Celan in a Hebrew learning institution. Celan’s mother, on the other hand, insisted that German be the main language in their household, as she was a heavy reader of German literature. Celan would largely abandon Zionism after his Bar Mitzvah in 1933, turning instead to Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The earliest of his known poems, Mother’s Day 1938, was published in this time.

In 1938 Celan went to Tours in France to study medicine but quickly returned home to take up study of Romance languages and literature in general. His time in France saw Celan present in Berlin during the Kristallnacht pogrom, though he was unharmed by the events. In 1940 his earlier, more favorable views on Socialism disappeared when the Soviets occupied Cernauti, shortly after the beginning of the Second World War.

            In 1941 Romania became an official member of the Axis Powers and Cernauti went with it. The arrival of the German Einsatzkommando saw a large number of Jews, Celan included, pressed into a ghetto. Celan would spend his time – when not forced into hard labor – translating the work of Shakespeare and immersing himself in Yiddish culture.

In 1942 Celan’s parents were rounded up and shipped off to an internment camp in Transnistria. Celan, luckily, was not home when his parents were captured and subsequently remained behind in the labor camp. He later received word that both of his parents had died in Transnistria. Celan continued working in the labor camp until 1944, when it was abandoned due to the advances of the Red Army. He worked for a short time as a nurse in a mental hospital, and during this time worked on and distributed early versions of his poem Todesfuge, a stirring piece depicting life in concentration camps.

Celan left for Bucharest in 1945, staying there as a translator and engaging in literary work under a number of pseudonyms. It was in Bucharest that he first developed the name Paul Celan. It was also during this time that Todesfuge received its first official publication.

By 1947 Romania’s autonomy under the Soviet Union was growing thin, and Celan left for Vienna, Austria. From there he went to Paris in 1948 and found a publisher for his first work of poetry, Der Sand aus den Umen, or Sand from the Urns. His first years in Paris were generally depressing and lonely, though he would slowly build a network of friends. His poetry would not gain purchase for some time, however, as his delivery of his material was off-putting to many audiences.

In 1952 Celan married a graphic designer named Gisele Lestrange and continued to translate to earn a living, still also writing his poetry. He also earned a place as a lecturer in German at the Ecole Normale Superieure to supplement his income. Between the time of his first collection and his death Celan would complete eight more, most successful but many only recently translated into English.

Despite his wife and fairly full life in Paris, however (he’d become a French citizen in 1955), Celan continued to feel persecuted by his contemporaries, which only increased when he was accused of plagiarizing the work of a friend of his, Yvan Goll, by his widow. Despair mounting, Celan drowned himself in the Seine river in April of 1970.