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Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) Kathrin M University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Publications 2003 Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) Kathrin M. Bower University of Richmond, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/mlc-faculty-publications Part of the German Literature Commons Recommended Citation Bower, Kathrin M. "Nelly Sachs." In Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work, edited by S. Lillian Kremer, 1067-074. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NELLY SACHS (1891-1970) KATHRIN M. BOWER EONIE (NELLY) SACHS was born 10 December 1891 abrupt end when Hitler came to power and increasingly L in Berlin. The only daughter of Georg William repressive measures against the Jews forced Sachs to Sachs (1858-1930), a wealthy rubber manufacturer confront her identity. While she had never felt much and inventor, and Margarete Sachs, nee Karger affinity with Judaism before 1933 and regarded herself (1871-1950), Nelly experienced a sheltered and often as a product of the German cultural tradition, she re­ lonely childhood. Her parents belonged to the Berlin sponded to the identity imposed upon her by the Nazis Jewish community in name only, and she remained by delving into the roots of a tradition that had hitherto largely ignorant of Jewish tradition and religion until been foreign to her. She was particularly drawn to the well into her adult years. As a result of her education Hasidic tales in Martin Buber's translation as well as in an assimilated household, Nelly developed strong the tenets of Jewish mysticism. In the mid-1930s she affinities with German Romanticism (particularly with became an active member of the Jewish cultural asso­ the poet Friedrich Navalis) and Christian mysticism ciation in Berlin, and her poems were read at associa­ (most prominently with Jakob Bohme). A painfully tion events between 1936 and 1938. It was here that shy, sensitive, and introspective child, Nelly did not Sachs became familiar with the work of another fa­ fare well in public school, and her parents had her mous Berlin poet, Gertrud Kalmar, who unlike Sachs, tutored privately at home. would not survive the Holocaust. In January 1939 the After completing her formal education in 1908, Third Reich implemented a mandatory second-name Sachs devoted herself to writing poetry and painting policy for all Jewish residents: men would take the watercolors. This was also the year in which she met second name Israel, women would be called Sara. the love of her life, a divorced older man whom she Nelly Sachs's last published poem in Germany before was forbidden to marry. The unhappy outcome of this she fled the country appeared in April 1939 in the doomed affair threw Sachs into deep despair and she monthly bulletin of the Jewish cultural association languished in bed for over a year, suffering from under the name "Nelly Sara Sachs." depression and anorexia, until she was gradually able to regain her strength and stability, in large part through writing poetry. She later maintained that the love affair that inspired such excess of feeling and de­ Flight and Exile spair was the real stimulus for all of her subsequent writing, and that it was then that she had first recog­ After Kristallnacht in November 1938, Sachs realized nized that writing enabled her to survive. Long after it was unsafe to remain in Germany any longer, and this incident, Sachs referred to the therapeutic power set about finding a place of refuge for herself and her writing held for her in a statement that is quoted repeat­ mother. Sweden was a logical choice. Since the age edly in Sachs scholarship: "Had I not been able to of fifteen, Sachs had been corresponding with Selma write, I would not have survived. Death was my Lagerlof, a Swedish novelist whose legends and sagas teacher ... my metaphors are my wounds" (Dischner, had captivated her and inspired her to write a collection 1966, p. 108). of her own, Legenden und Erziihlungen (Legends and After the death of William Sachs in 1930, Nelly and Stories, 1921), which she had sent to Lagerlof as a her mother moved to a smaller apartment in Berlin. token of her admiration. Obtaining visas for herself The peaceful, reclusive existence they shared met an and her mother, however, proved an arduous task, and 1067 NELLY SACHS even with the benevolent intercession of the aging La­ begins to develop the repertoire of images that come to gerlof, the situation seemed hopeless. The Swedish characterize her poetry of mourning and remembrance. government would only accept refugees who could Most resonant are the repeated references to sand, prove that their stay in the country was solely for pur­ shoes, and dust. In laments to the dead she asks who poses of transit to another safe haven, preferably the has emptied the victims' shoes of sand and reflects on United States. Sachs was fortunate in having friends the force of death that inevitably turns all mortals to willing to sponsor her in America so that her visa pa­ dust. Sand and dust combine to represent mortality and pers would be acceptable. Just as the tension and dan­ the cycle of death and regeneration that spares neither ger were reaching nearly unbearable proportions-she the innocent nor the guilty, but is also representative had already received her deportation papers-the visas of the countless victims turned to dust and ashes in arrived, and Sachs and her mother were able to escape the Holocaust. The reference to shoes filled with sand in May 1940, on the last flight from Berlin to Stock­ evokes not only the victims' nearness to death, but also holm. Without the courageous support of friends and the figure of the Wandering Jew, the tribes of Israel the assistance of both Lagerlof and Prince Eugen of cast into the desert, and the exile bereft of home. Sweden, Nelly and her mother would have been trans­ Sachs's own sense of exile and her desire to find a ported to the camps, with little or no hope of survival. home at least for her writings galvanized her search Sachs greeted her new home with a mixture of grati­ for a publisher. In the immediate aftermath of the war, tude and apprehension. She did not speak the language, this proved difficult despite the moving force of her and she and her mother had been forced to leave all poems. Eventually, with the assistance of a German their valuables behind. Destitute and dependent upon friend, she was able to find a sympathetic ear among the goodwill of the Stockholm Jewish community, the editors of the Aufbau Verlag in Soviet-occupied Sachs set about learning Swedish and within a few eastern Germany, and the press published the collec­ years became adept enough to earn a modest living as tion In den Wohnungen des Todes (In the Habitations a translator. By the late 1940s, Sachs was recognized as of Death) in 1947. It was the publication of this volume an accomplished translator of modem Swedish poetry, that established Sachs's reputation as the "Dichterin and by the end of her life her translation work spanned jtidischen Schicksals" (poetess of Jewish fate). The seven volumes. Several scholars have argued that it dedication that opens the collection-"to my murdered was this exposure to modem Swedish poetry and the brothers and sisters" -demonstrates .. the degree of task of translation that brought about a dramatic shift Sachs's identification with the victims as well as the in Sachs's own writing. She left behind the traditional newfound strength of her sense of kinship with the rhyme and strophes that characterized her early poetry Jewish people. Two years later, she was again forced and began writing free verse flush with genitive meta­ to search for a home for her poems, and found one phors and anguished language. While changes in form this time with an Amsterdam publisher known for its may have been influenced in part by her contact with support of exile writers. Stemverdunkelung (Darken­ contemporary Swedish poetry, her content and im­ ing Star) was published by Bermann Fischer Verlag in agery were undeniably the result of her growing 1949. Although celebrated in critical reviews, the book knowledge of the events of the Holocaust and the ever­ found little appeal with the public, and unsold copies widening circle of victims it claimed. In 1943 Sachs were pulped. Germany in 1949 was more concerned learned of her lover's death as well as of the deporta­ with reconstruction and the conflicts of a divided na­ tions of Jews to Auschwitz. She was filled with sorrow tion than with pangs of conscience and reminders of and despair about the fate of friends and relatives, feel­ a past most wanted to forget. ings mingled with a sense of guilt at having escaped In February 1950 Margarete Sachs died. Nelly felt their fate, and turned to her poetry as a vehicle for her loss acutely; her mother's death after a long illness bearing witness to the memories of the dead and an was the catalyst for a psychological crisis she sought instrument of mourning. to overcome by writing and intensive study of Jewish The poem cycles "Dein Leib in Rauch durch die mysticism, particularly the Zohar (Book of Splendor).
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