Nelly Sachs

Facts

Nelly Sachs

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Nelly Sachs
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1966

Born: 10 December 1891, Berlin, Germany

Died: 12 May 1970, Stockholm, Sweden

Residence at the time of the award: Sweden

Prize motivation: “for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength”

Language: German

Prize share: 1/2

Life

Nelly Sachs was born in Berlin to a wealthy family with Jewish roots. Her father was a factory owner. Sachs suffered from poor health and so was schooled at home. She became fascinated with Selma Lagerlöf's works at a young age, and corresponded with Lagerlöf by letter. Lagerlöf helped Sachs and her mother to flee from Nazi Germany to Sweden in 1940. Several members of Sachs' immediate family ultimately became victims of the Holocaust. The Nazi persecution left deep scars in Sachs' psyche and also influenced her writing. Sachs continued to live in Stockholm until her death.

Work

The fate of the Jewish people casts a dark shadow over the 20th century. It is also the basis for Nelly Sachs' literary works. Sachs borrows subjects for her poetry from the Jewish beliefs and mysticism, but her authorship is also strongly colored by Nazi persecution of the Jews, with the horrors of the death camps as its ultimate expression. Sachs' poetry combines echoes from the poetry of ancient religious texts with modernist language. Besides poetry, her writings also include a couple of plays.

To cite this section
MLA style: Nelly Sachs – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 19 Mar 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1966/sachs/facts/>

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