Paul Celan Author

Paul Celan was born Paul Antschel in Bukowina, Romania in 1920. In 1938 he visited France as a medical student, returning home in 1939 to study Romance languages and literature. The family was deported in 1942; Celan's parents died in a concentration camp and Celan was conscripted into a series of labour camps until 1944. He escaped, survived a period in a labour camp and eventually settled in Paris where he taught and wrote. After the war he emigrated to Bucharest, where he worked as a translator. He escaped to Vienna in 1947, and settled in Paris in 1948, the same year in which his first collection of poetry was published. In 1958 Celan was awarded the Bremen Literature Prize, and in 1960 the Georg Buchner Prize. He committed suicide in Paris in April 1970.