Literary Birthday – 11 May – Rose Ausländer

Rose Ausländer was born on 11 May 1901 and died on 3 January 1988.

Rose Ausländer Quotes

1. Be who you are. / Give what you have.
2. Behind my cheerfulness / breathes the grief / Behind the grief / stands my amazement / beyond cheerfulness and grief / and beyond all / what was / what is and / what will be.
3. My Fatherland is dead / they have buried it / in fire / I live / in my Motherland / Word.

Rose Ausländer was a Jewish German and English language poet. She spent part of World War II in the ghetto of Czernowitz. She was given American citizenship in 1948. After the trauma of persecution, she wrote in English and only resumed writing in German in 1956. According to Wikipedia: ‘Ausländer wrote more than 3000 poems, essentially revolving around the topics of “Heimat” (homeland), childhood, relationship to her mother, Judaism (Holocaust, exile), language (as a medium of expression and of home), love, ageing and death.’  She is the author of Hints.

Source for Image: anonymous (The photographer never disclosed his identity), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rose_Ausl%C3%A4nder_(1914).jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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