Born into a liberal and wealthy Jewish family, with an open mind, despite her father coming from an Orthodox Jewish family, Rose Ausländer entered the university in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), in 1919. On the advice of her mother, she emigrated to the United States in 1921.
On her return to Chernivtsi, she worked as a journalist, translator, and teacher of English, which allowed her to lead an independent life.
She participated in the literary salon of the playwright Vera Hacken, born in Odessa, with whom she maintained a lifelong friendship.
With the arrival of the Red Army at Chernivtsi in 1944, she left the country as did other Romanian and contemporary writers with whom Ausländer maintained contact throughout her life, including Edith Silbermann and Paul Celan.
Ausländer belongs to a generation of writers of Jewish origin, such as Nelly Sachs, Hilde Domin, Hilde Spiel or Else Lasker-Schüler, who, from different poetic approaches, had broken into the German literary scene and had to interrupt their promising literary career (in the case of Lasker-Schüler already consolidated) and were forced to emigrate. Like Hilde Spiel, Ausländer also used English in her literary output in exile, although back in Germany (Spiel returned to her native Austria) she recovered German as a language of literary expression.
She met important figures in German-language poetry, such as Paul Celan, and American poetry, such as Marianne Moore. When she finally settled in the Federal Republic of Germany, she also received many recognitions from the cultural world.
Rose Ausländer
Txernivtsí/ Bucovina 11-05-1901 ‖ Düsseldorf 03-01-1988
Period of activity: From 1939 until 1987
Geographical classification: Europe > Ukraine
Socio-cultural movements
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Literary and cultural movements since the end of the 19th century > Literature since the last third of the 20th century
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Literary and cultural movements since the end of the 19th century > Post-war literature > Experimental literature
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Avant-garde art movements > Expressionism
Groups by dedication
Writers > in > German
Writers > in > English
Writers > Poets
Writers > Journalists / Chroniclers
Writers > Epistolographers
Context of feminine creation
Review
Rose Ausländer's biography shows the profound changes that took place in Europe and the world throughout the 20th century, and which had a special significance for Jews in Europe. Coming from Eastern Europe, Ausländer witnessed the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Revolution, the Nazi occupation and the post-war period.
In terms of her poetic work, it evolves from a more classical poetry linked to expressionism and influenced by Hölderlin and Trakl, towards more objectivist poetry and finally towards a more distilled poetry, which follows the stele of Paul Celan's.
She also maintains an interesting correspondence with culture personalities, among which we highlight Nelly Sachs, who, as the author, had to emigrate.
The most important themes of her work are: fatherland (Bucovina), childhood, language, Judaism (holocaust and exile), love, old age and death.
Ausländer always kept hope in the value of writing; as we read in her verses:
God gave us
the word
and we live
in the word.
Justifications
Biography
Rose Ausländer (née Rosalie Scherzer) was born in 1901 in Chernivtsi (Rumania; Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time) to a Jewish family. Her father came from the city of Sadagora, where Orthodox Judaism and the mysticism of Eastern Judaism dominated. Her mother came from a well-established Germanophile bourgeois family in Chernivtsi.
In 1919 she began her undergraduate studies in literature and philosophy, but soon interrupted them to emigrate to the United States, along with her future husband Ignaz Ausländer. There, she worked as a bank employee and journalist. It was in America that her first poems appeared, in the Amerika-Herold Kalender, and where she wrote her first New York poetic cycle, in which she recognized the transit of expressionism towards a more objectivistic style.
In 1931 she returned to Chernivtsi to take care of her sick mother, and in 1939 published her first volume of poetry, Regenbogen. Not able to escape from the Nazis, Ausländer lived in the city's Jewish ghetto between 1941 and 1944, when she was liberated by the Soviet troops. There she met Paul Celan, whom she met again years later, in Paris. Thanks to him her poetry turned towards formal purity, the tendency to essentials and musicality.
In 1946 she moved back to the United States, where she settled until 1965. She began there a period of distance from the German language, in which she could no longer write because she considered it the Slayers' language (Sprache der Mörder). It was not until 1965 that she returned to it, publishing her second volume of poetry in German, Blinder Sommer.
In 1965 she settled in Düsseldorf and took a very active cultural life, received all kinds of awards and distinctions, and published numerous collections of poetry. Ausländer died in Düsseldorf, in 1988.
Works
Volumes of poetry (selection that includes both translations into Spanish and the two translations into Catalan that we have)
Der Regenbogen (1939). Czernowitz: Literaria
Es bleibt noch viel zu sagen (1978). Köln: Braun. Spanish translation by Nuria Manzur: Aún queda mucho por decir (2016). México: Sexto Piso.
Mein Atem heißt jetzt (1981). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Spanish translation by Teresa Ruiz Rozas and José Ruiz Rozas: Mi aliento se llama ahora (2014) Castelló de la Plana: Igitur.
Ich zähl die Sterne meiner Worte (1985). Catalan translation of the advanced German-Catalan translation group of the UPF (coordinated by Feliu Formosa): Compto els estels dels meus mots (1997). Barcelona: Jardins de Samarcanda. Cafè Central/ Eumo Editorial.
Deiner Stimme SchattenGedichte, kleine Prosa und Materialien aus dem Nachlass Herausgegeben. (2007), Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag.
Rose Ausländer – Hans Bender. Briefe und Dokumente (2009). Aachen: Rimbaud Verlag.
No resideixo, visc (2023). Anthology of poems by Rose Ausländer translated by Feliu Formosa.. Vic: Jardins de Samarcanda, Cafè Central/ Eumo Editorial.
Mutterland / Màtria (2023). Translation by Anacleto Ferrer and Lola Andrés. València: Vincle Editorial.
Posthumous work
Poems of Rose Auslander. An Ark of Stars (Translated by Ingeborg Wald, Drawings by Ed Colker, Haybarn Press 1989)
Rose Auslander: Twelve Poems, Twelve Paintings (Translated by Ingeborg Wald, Paintings Adrienne Yarme, Ithaca, NY 1991)
Bibliography
Lawick, Heike van (2023). “Rose Ausländer, una poeta de Czernowitz”. In: Ausländer, Rose; No resideixo, visc. Vic: Jardins de Samarcanda. Cafè Central; Eumo Editorial, 5-41.
Ferrer, Anacleto (2022). Habitar en la palabra. Rose Ausländer y la poesía después de Auschwitz. Theory Now. Journal of Literature, Critique, and Thought, 5(2), 205–222. https://doi.org/10.30827/tn.v5i2.24632
Websites
Lyrikline, 12-01-2023
https://www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/rose-auslaender
Jewish Women’s Archive, 12-01-2023
Didactic approach
Ausländer's work can be dealt with on Secondary schools, in the EOI, in the FPA, for the subjects she addresses in her poetry: fatherland, childhood, relationship with language, Judaism (holocaust and exile), love, old age and death.
Having an original work in German and English, it makes it useful for such subjects in both Official Languages Schools and Secondary and Primary Schools.
Being an author translated into Catalan and Spanish facilitates the use of her works in the language block as in Literature.
The topics she addresses make it easier for us to use her poetry in subjects such as Social Sciences or Ethical values. She is an author who can also be dealt with in Universal Literature, and in Tutoring.
Account must be taken of the correspondence in German with different writers.