Nelly SACHS and Bertolt BRECHT Move into the Rooms of the Library.
We cordially invite you to celebrate the moving into our library rooms of two exiles Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).
Find out how their spiritual closeness to Irish authors suggests that they have a home here, even though the two writers did not actually ever reside in Dublin. Links to Samuel Beckett can be found not only in the works of Brecht, but also in those of Sachs.
Nelly Sachs (born Leonie Sachs)
Born 10th December 1891 in Berlin-Schöneberg
Died 12th May 1970 in Stockholm
-was a German-Jewish writer known for her poetry and dramatic poetry. Due to the persecution of the Jews in National Socialist Germany, she had to flee to Sweden with her mother in 1940. There she worked as a washer woman (among other occupations) or earned her money as a translator Swedish lyrics into German. Her poems, written after 1945, are exclusively written in German and examine the tension between German as her mother tongue and the language of her murderers and persecutors, which affected many German-Jewish writers. Expulsion and exile are recurrent motifs in Sachs' poetry. In her later works, she also turned to core figures and stories of the Torah.
Awards:
1965: Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
1966: Nobel Prize for Literature
Nelly Sachs Prize:
The prize is awarded every two years by the city of Dortmund and is worth 15,000 euros. Honored are persons who not only create outstanding literary achievements, but also engage in work towards international understanding or are involved in the field of intergovernmental cultural work.
Bertold Brecht (Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht)
Born 10th February 1898 in Augsburg
Died 14th August 1956 in Berlin
was an influential dramatist and lyricist, who is known for his contribution to developing epic theatre. This theatre’s founding principle of the alienation effect has since played a significant role in dramaturgy and filmmaking. He lived and worked in Berlin for a long period but because of his critical attitude and political standing he was regarded as an enemy of the Nazi regime, and so he left Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933. Denmark, America, and Switzerland were significant adopted homelands in his exile life.
Brecht gained worldwide fame through his numerous plays and above all his modern operas, such as „The Threepenny Opera“ and the „Moritat of Meckie Messer“, which were produced in collaboration with the composer Kurt Weill.
Back
