Singing the Zion of her ancestors.

Rose Ausländer

Rose Ausländer, a German-speaking Jewish poet from Czernowitz/Bukovina who spent much of her life in exile in the United States and Germany, wrote that her true home was the word itself. Her poem Mutterland (Motherland) distinguishes between national identity and individual identity which is informed by language: “My fatherland is dead/they have buried it/in fire./I live/in my motherland/word” (Mein Vaterland ist tot/sie haben es begraben/im Feuer/Ich lebe/in meinem Mutterland/Wort).

Ausländer is known for her crystalline poems describing the natural wonders of the world, such as stars, butterflies and flowers, as well as her experiences in the Czernowitz ghetto during World War II and the Shoah, her life in exile, her travels through Europe, and her relationship to family and friends.

While her early poems are tightly structured and rhymed, her later poetry is influenced by the modern rhythms of free verse which she encountered while reading modern poetry during her exile in the United States and in her meetings with Paul Celan (Paul Antschel 1920–1970). She also translated Yiddish poems by Itzik Manger (1901–1969) into German and German poems by Else Lasker-Schüler and Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) into English.

From 1948 to 1956, while in exile in New York, she wrote approximately thirty poems in English. Ausländer dedicated many of her poems to those who had inspired her personal philosophy and writing, such as the writers Heinrich Heine, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl and Marie Luise Kaschnitz, as well as the philosopher Constantin Brunner (1862–1937).

Ausländer’s lifetime correspondence with Brunner began when she sent him one of her early poems, Niagara Falls I. Upon receiving it Brunner replied that he had been standing in spirit with Ausländer before Niagara Falls (Ed. Braun, p. 5). Brunner’s death moved Ausländer to write the poem “Constantin Brunner In Memoriam,” which laments the loss of her long-time mentor yet ends on a hopeful note: “He is not dead, and his words float/in the space of the soul above our life” (“Er ist nicht tot, und seine Worte schweben/im Raum des Geistes über unserem Leben;” Ed. Braun, p. 191).

Rosalie Beatrice Scherzer was born May 11, 1901 in Czernowitz/Bukovina (Chernovtsy), at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, into an assimilated German-speaking Jewish family. She had one brother, Maximilian (1906–1993), who lived in Czernowitz until 1945 and then in Satu Mare until 1963, when he emigrated with his wife and two children to New York. Her father Sigmund Scherzer (1872–1920) was a salesman who in his youth had been educated to become a rabbi at the court of the Rabbi of Sadgora. Ausländer’s mother Etie Rifke (Binder) Scherzer (1884–1947), originally from Berlin, maintained a close relationship with her daughter, a bond described in Ausländer’s poetry.

From childhood on, Ausländer wrote about Jewish traditions in poems such as Sadagorer Chassid, Sabbat II, Ur, and an untitled poem in which she relates her own experiences of forced exile to the history of the Jewish people: “I/Moses-daughter/wander through the desert/A song/I hear/sand and stones weep/starvation” (Ich/Mosestochter/wandel durch die Wüste//Ein Lied/Ich hör/Sand und Steine weinen/Hungersnot) (Vogel and Gans, p. 44).

Ausländer also captured the landscape and culture of Czernowitz and the Bukovina in her poems Dorf in der Bukowina (Village in the Bukovina), Heimatstadt Czernowitz (Hometown Czernowitz), and Czernowitz vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Czernowitz before the Second World War), a poem that recalls her idyllic childhood and the multiple cultures and languages coexisting in this geographic area: “Vier Sprachen/verständigen sich/Viele Dichter blühten dort auf/deutsche jiddische Verse/verwöhnten die Luft//Bis Bomben fielen/atmete glücklich die Stadt” (Four languages/communicate/Many poets blossomed there/German Yiddish verses/graced the air/Until bombs fell/the city breathed happily” (Vogel and Gans, p. 33).

From 1907 to 1919 Ausländer attended the Volksschule and the Lyzeum Czernowitz. Due to the war she lived and attended school in Vienna from 1916 to 1918. After receiving her high school diploma in Czernowitz in 1919 she went on to study literature and philosophy at the city’s university. In 1920 her father’s death prompted her to emigrate the following year to Minneapolis/St. Paul and Winona in the US together with Ignaz Ausländer, later her husband.

For the next two years Rose Ausländer was assistant editor of the magazine Westlicher Herold and editor of the calendar anthology American Herold (until 1927). Her first poems were also published during this time. In 1923 she moved to New York, where she worked as a bank employee, and on October 19 married Ignaz Ausländer, who managed an automobile garage in New York. In 1926 Ausländer received her American citizenship and became co-founder of the Constantin-Brunner-Circle in New York.

At the end of 1926 Ausländer traveled to Czernowitz and separated from her husband, whom she divorced on May 8, 1930. In 1927 she spent one month visiting Constantin Brunner in Berlin after which she returned to Czernowitz in 1928 to take care of her ailing mother. At the end of 1928 she returned to New York with Helios Hecht, a graphologist, journalist and magazine editor, with whom she lived until 1935.

During the first months of 1931 she returned to Czernowitz, where she published poems in newspapers, magazines and anthologies, while working as a journalist, translator and English instructor. In 1934 she lost her American citizenship because she had been out of the country for more than three years. After 1935, when she separated from Hecht, she lived mainly in Bucharest, working at a chemical factory. In 1939, when her first book Der Regenbogen (The Rainbow) was published in Czernowitz with the support of her mentor Alfred Margul-Sperber, a company secretary at the Bowery Savings Bank, she traveled to Paris and New York.

From 1941 to spring of 1944 German troops occupied Czernowitz and Ausländer was forced to live in the Jewish ghetto of the city. Her collection of poems, Ghettomotive (Ghetto Motifs), describes her experience of horror during the Shoah. After the ghetto was dissolved, she was no longer able to leave the city and was forced to labor and hide in cellars to escape deportation and death.

Of this experience she writes in the poem Mit giftblauem Feuer (With Poison-Blue Fire): “Wir stiegen in den Keller, er roch nach Gruft./Treue Ratten tanzten mit unsern Nerven” (“We descended into the cellar, it smelled like a tomb./Loyal rats danced with our nerves”). Ausländer expressed her need to write as a means of survival during this traumatic time: “And while we waited for death, some of us lived in dream-words, our traumatized home in the homelessness. Writing was life. Survival” (Vogel and Gans, p. 84).

Of the sixty thousand Jews who had lived in Czernowitz, only five thousand survived the Shoah (Braun, ed. Vol. 1, 1985, p. 10). Erwachen (Awake) describes the Shoah: “I observe/the building/of a gigantic gallows/for me/and/my people” (Ich beobachte/den Bau/gigantischer Galgen/für mich/und/mein Volk). In a later poem, Phönix (Phoenix), she portrays the Jewish people as having risen from the ashes of the Shoah: “Phönix/mein Volk/das verbrannte/auferstanden […]” (Phoenix/my people/the burned/arisen/[…]).

When the Russians occupied the Bukovina in the spring of 1944 the Jews were liberated, enabling Ausländer to work in Czernowitz’s town library. In August 1946 she traveled to Bucharest from where she emigrated to New York the following month in the hope of also obtaining a visa for her mother, her brother and his family. The news of her mother’s death in 1947 in Satu Mare, Romania caused Ausländer to have a physical and psychological breakdown, after which she was ill for a year (Braun, ed. Vol. 1, 1985, p. 12).

She wrote numerous poems about her devotion to her mother, even after her death, as documented in the poem Die Mutter (The Mother): “Oh that the dead rise in us/ and always absolutely live in us./How did she enter, the mother, layer upon layer?/I am her shadow and she my light” (O daß die Toten sich in uns erheben/und immer unbedingter in uns leben./Wie trat sie ein, die Mutter, Schicht um Schicht?/Ich bin ihr Schatten und sie mein Licht) (Ed. Braun, p. 299).

Ausländer later also translated Else Lasker-Schüler’s poem My Mother, which captured Ausländer’s feelings of loss at her own mother’s death. The first stanza of Lasker-Schüler’s poem translated by Ausländer reads: “Was she the great angel/who walked at my side? Or is my mother buried/under the sky of smoke?” The concluding stanza describes a mother-daughter symbiosis that Ausländer herself had experienced: “I shall always be alone now/as the great angel/who walked at my side” (Ed. Braun, p. 347).

From 1953 to 1961 Ausländer worked as a foreign correspondent at the transport company Freedman and Slater in New York. During that time, from May to November 1957, she also traveled in France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands. During her trip through Europe she met Paul Celan on three separate occasions, after which her own metaphors and images became more multi-dimensional and abstract (Vogel and Gans, 118). In May 1963 she traveled to Vienna, where she met her brother and his family, who had come to a refugee camp from Romania.

Describing her month in Jerusalem in 1964, Ausländer wrote the poem Jerusalem in German, translating and modifying the same poem into an English version which begins: “I have never been in Jerusalem./When I hang my blue-white scarf/toward east,/Jerusalem swings to me/with Temple and Solomon’s Song” (Vogel and Gans, 173).

Ausländer returned to New York to plan her move to Vienna but then decided against Austria before finally settling in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1965. It was during this year that Blinder Sommer (Blind Summer), her first book publication since 1939, appeared. The bulk of her work, however, was published after 1965. In 1968 and 1969 Ausländer spent her last year in the United States. In 1972 she moved to the Nelly-Sachs-Haus of the Jewish Community of Düsseldorf.

From 1978 until her death ten years later Ausländer was confined to bed due to arthritis. During this period she was rediscovered by Dr. Helmut Braun, who was searching for authors to be published by his newly-founded publishing house, Helmut Braun Verlag, Cologne. During Ausländer’s bed-rest Braun wrote down all the poems that were in the author’s memory and made sure to promote and publish her works.

In June, 1986 Ausländer dictated her last poem to Helmut Braun: “Give up/the dream/lives/my life/to the end” (Gib auf/der Traum/lebt/mein Leben/zu Ende). That same month she revised 120 poems that she had written between 1965 and 1978 (Vogel and Gans, p. 211). Ausländer died in Düsseldorf on January 3, 1988 and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in the city’s Nordfriedhof (North Cemetery). During her life Ausländer was awarded the Droste-Prize of Meersburg (1967), the Ida-Dehmel-Prize, the Andreas-Gryphius Prize, the Roswitha-Medallion of Bad Gandersheim (1980) and the Literature Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Art (1984).

Ausländer owned only two suitcases throughout her life, traveling with them from country to country. At her death they remained with her brother Max in New York until his death, after which they became part of Ausländer’s posthumous collection, now housed at the Heinrich Heine Institut in Düsseldorf and managed by Dr. Helmut Braun. Since 1998 the privately-owned Kronenhaus in Manderscheid has a literature center dedicated to Rose Ausländer which offers books by and about Ausländer.

In a poem, Verregnete Abreise (Rainy Departure), her suitcases are symbolic of her life in exile: “I hear the heart of the/locomotive beating in each/suitcase” (“Ich höre das Herz der/Lokomotive in jedem/Gepäckstück pochen,” Vogel and Gans, p. 176). For Ausländer, whose life was touched by sorrow and loss, the Shoah and exile, words became her steadfast companion, her homeland, her home.

Ausländer “wrote life out of words”: “When I/fled from childhood/my happiness/suffocated/in foreign lands/When I/in the ghetto/stiffened/froze/my heart/in the cellar hiding place/I, the survivor/of horror/write out of words/life” (Als ich/aus der/Kindheit floh/erstickte/mein Glück/in der Fremde/Als ich/im Ghetto/erstarrte/erfror/mein Herz/im Kellerversteck//Ich Überlebende/des Grauens/schreibe aus Worten/Leben) (Vogel und Gans, p. 206).

Asking herself in the poem Trauer II (Mourning II) “How/to endure/the unending sorrow?” (Wie/die undendliche Trauer/ertragen?), Ausländer replies to herself and the world: “Search for/a tiny glowing spark/in the darkness” (Such/ein Fünkchen Glanz/in der Finsternis).

Despite her encounter with the horrors of the Shoah, Ausländer believed that the true beauty of the world was invincible and that the power of the word would relay this message of hope to humanity. In Mein Reich (My Kingdom), Ausländer described her realm: “My small room/is a giant kingdom/I don’t wish to rule/but to serve” (Mein kleines Zimmer/ist ein Riesenreich/Nicht herrschen will ich-/Dienen), and made evident her desire to serve humanity with her poetry.

SELECTED WORKS BY ROSE AUSLÄNDER (in German and English)

Blinder Sommer. Vienna: 1965; Wir wohnen in Babylon. Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: 1984–1992; Die Sonne fällt. Gedichte. Frankfurt a.M.: 1984–1992; Braun, Helmut, ed. Ausländer, Rose. Die Erde war ein atlasweißes Feld. Gedichte 1927–1956. Frankfurt a.M.: 1985; Melin, Charlotte, ed. and trans. German Poetry in Transition. 1945–1990. Bilingual Edition. Hanover: 1999.

Published Posthumously (German and English)

Works in sixteen volumes edited by Helmut Brown

Wir ziehen mit den dunklen Flüssen. Gedichte (Volume 1) 1993; Denn wo ist Heimat? (Volume 2) 1994; Ausländer, Rose. Ed. Helmut Braun. The Forbidden Tree. Englische Gedichte (Volume 3) 1995; Die Musik ist zerbrochen (Volume 4) 1993; Wir pflanzen Zedern. Gedichte (Volume 5) 1993; Wir wohnen in Babylon (Volume 6) 1992; Gelassen atmet der Tag (Volume 7) 1992; Sanduhrschritt (Volume 8) 1994; Treffpunkt der Winde. (Volume 9) 1991; Hinter allen Worten (Volume 10) 1992; Die Sonne fällt (Volume 11) 1992; Und nenne dich Glück (Volume 12) 1994; Brief aus Rosen (Volume 13) 1994; Schweigen auf deinen Lippen (Volume 14) 1994; Die Nacht hat zahllos Augen (Volume 15) 1995; Schattenwald (Volume 16) 1995.

Works in eight volumes with index edited by Helmut Braun

Die Erde war ein atlasweißes Feld. (Volume 1) 1985; Die Sichel mäht die/Zeit zu Heu. (Volume 2) 1985; Hügel/aus Ather/unwiderruflich. (Volume 3) 1984; Im Aschenregen/die Spur deines Namens. (Volume 4) 1984; Ich höre das Herz/des Oleanders. (Volume 5) 1984; Wieder ein Tag aus Glut und Wind. (Volume 6) 1986; Und preise die kühlende/Liebe der Luft (Volume 7) 1988; Jeder Tropfen/ein Tag. (Volume 8) 1990; Ausländer, Rose. Andere Zeichen. Gedichte. Nachwort von Marie Luise Kaschnitz. 1975; Ausländer, Rose. Im Atemhaus wohnen. Gedichte. Mit einem Porträt von Jürgen Serke. 1981; Ausländer, Rose. Der Mohn ist noch nicht rot. Gedichte. Ed. Harald Vogel. 1994; Ausländer, Rose. Immer zurück nach Pruth. Ein Leben in Gedichten. Ed. Helmut Braun. 1989; Ausländer, Rose. Regenwörter. Ed. Helmut Braun. 1995; Ausländer, Rose. Alles kann Motiv sein. In Helmut Braun, ed. Ich fliege auf der Luftschaukel Europa-Amerika-Europa. Rose Ausländer in Czernowitz und New York. 1994; Ausländer, Rose. Selected Poems. Translated from the German by Ewald Osers. London: 1977; Ausländer, Rose. Shadows in the Mirror. Translation by Freed Weininger. Tel Aviv: 1981; Ausländer, Rose. Jeder Tropfen ein Tag: Gedichte aus dem Nachlass. 1990; Ausländer, Rose. Johanna Blömeke, ed. Gedichte nach dem Holocaust. 1995.

Some of her poems

MY NIGHTINGALE



My mother was a doe in another time.

Her honey-brown eyes

and her loveliness

survive from that moment.

Here she was---

half an angel and half humankind---

the center was mother.

When I asked her once what she would have wanted to be

she made this answer to me: a nightingale.

Now she is a nightingale.

Every night, night after night, I hear her

in the garden of my sleepless dream.

She is singing the Zion of her ancestors.

She is singing the long-ago Austria.

She is singing the hills and beech-woods

of Bukowina.

My nightingale

sings lullabies to me

night after night

in the garden of my sleepless dream.

Chinatown

Narrow lanes

crosswise and crossway

mustard-scented

vertical lined names

about buddhas and gewgaw

In the basement

the twilight smells like

chinese lanterns and limes

over bridges of paper

music of the rodlets

on porcelain

where red lobster lies between

stems and sap

Peacocks open blue fans

on silky sleeves

Little Woman in a Kimono

conjures tea-spirits

in the can

6000 years

slit in black eyes

hiding the heritage

around the silent quarter

see the chinese wall

sky-high drawn by

tgin paintbrushes and

confucious´lessons



Resounding silence

Some rescued themselves

Out of the night

hands are crawling

crimson-red with blood

of the slayed

It was a resounding show

a sight of fire

firemusic

Then death was silent

he was silent

It was a resounding silence

between the branches

stars were smiling

The rescued

wait at the harbour

miscarried ships are resting

They are like cradles

without mother and child


Selling

In spring

I sell

violets from lost gardens

In summer paper-roses

Asters from words

in autumn

In winter

ice-flowers from the window

of my dead mother

So I live

into the day

into the night

At night

I praise

moon and stars

until sun rises

and sells me

to the day