(In her close, stylish versions of Sarah Kirsch’s poems, w...)
In her close, stylish versions of Sarah Kirsch’s poems, which combine fluid movement with abrupt dislocations of syntax, and in her choice of poems from all phases of her work, Margitt Lehbert demonstrates the qualities which make Sarah Kirsch’s poetry so original and compelling.
Sarah Kirsch was a German poet. She gained initial prominence in the 1960’s as one of a group of young poets in the German Democratic Republic who challenged the official ideology that literature should primarily reflect the values and achievements of socialist society.
Background
Ingrid Hella Irmelinde Bernstein (Sarah Kirsch) was born April 16, 1935 in her paternal grandfather’s parsonage in the village of Limlingerode on the southern edge of the Harz Mountains in Thüringen, and was baptized soon thereafter in his nearby church. She would later take the name Sarah out of solidarity with Jews murdered in the Holocaust and in protest against the anti-semitic views of her father, a telecommunications technician.
Her childhood was spent in Halberstadt in an apartment complex belonging to her maternal grandparents. In spite of the Third Reich and sufferings during the war - Halberstadt was severely bombed in April 1945 - Kirsch later described her childhood as a happy one, shaped especially by her relationship with her mother. The easygoing, empathetic mother conveyed her love of nature and knowledge of plants to her daughter. She also modeled a passion for reading: often she would be reading five books at a time, and would comment on a particularly effective use of language.
Education
During her teenage years Ingrid Bernstein saw life improving for the populace, and became an enthusiastic participant in organizations sponsored by the socialist state - the GDR was founded in 1949 - such as the FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend / Free German Youth). Driven by her love for nature, she first attended a school for forestry following high school, but gave it up when it appeared to involve destroying her beloved forest. She switched to the study of biology at the University of Halle and graduated in 1959.
From 1963-65 she attended the Johannes R. Becher Institut für Literatur in Leipzig, where she gained greater access to international contemporary literature than was usually possible in the GDR.
Career
As expected in the GDR, Sarah also spent time working in a sugar factory, on a collective farm and in residential education.
Although she had begun writing poems at 14, she was influenced to write more seriously through her relationship with Rainer Kirsch. A student of history and philosophy at Jena, he had been thrown out of the university and the party (SED) because of his poems and his support for the controversial philosopher Ernst Bloch. Mentored by Gerhard Wolf (husband of Christa Wolf), Sarah and Rainer Kirsch joined a group of other aspiring young writers, and met for two days of readings and mutual critique each month. They were part of a new direction in GDR poetry represented by Wolf Biermann, Volker Braun, Günter Kunert, Elke Erb and Karl Mickel among others, which emphasized subjective approaches to reality in contrast to more ideological affirmations of socialist society.
Despite her somewhat defiant stance, Sarah Kirsch was admitted to the GDR Writers Association (Schriftstellerverband). In 1965 Sarah and Rainer Kirsch jointly published Gespräch mit dem Saurier (Conversation with the Dinosaur), a volume of poems written by the two. Two years later Sarah’s first solo collection, Landaufenthalt (A Stay in the Country), appeared, in which she asserted formally and thematically a new poetic identity. The poems of this and the two following volumes, Zaubersprüche (1973; Incantations) and Rückenwind (1976; Tailwind) bore the now characteristic marks of her lyric voice.
The independent-minded Kirsch - whose poems were grounded primarily in personal experience and emphasized subjective feeling often subtly critical of GDR conditions - was eyed with suspicion by the cultural authorities of the SED. Nonetheless she was recognized as an important talent, received numerous awards in the GDR and was allowed to travel outside the country, for example to Italy and France.
In 1968 Sarah moved to East Berlin, where she made a modest living from translating.
Kirsch left East Berlin on 28 August 1977 and settled in Charlottenburg (West Berlin); soon thereafter (1978) she was granted a stipendium to the Villa Massimo in Rome, where she met the composer Wolfgang von Schweinitz. Her next volume of poetry, Drachensteigen (1979; Flying Kites), reflects her separation from the GDR and her happiness at being in Italy with a new lover. Kirsch did not regard herself as a writer in exile, but rather one who had simply moved, “a German writer” who took the German language with her. Even her early poems, written under the strictures of a repressive regime, had featured a longing to travel freely.
And through the years Kirsch continued to reap the poetic and literary fruits of her travels - to France, the USA, Norway, England, Wales, Iceland, for example. But ultimately she craved the creative solitude of nature, and in 1983 she moved with Schweinitz and son Moritz to Schleswig-Holstein, settling in a former schoolhouse in Tielenhemme (Dithmarschen). Here she kept sheep, cats and a donkey, observed and absorbed nature and the world, and wrote daily for the next 20 years. She also took up painting; her watercolors appear in some of her publications, for example Spreu (1991).
Kirsch continued publishing throughout, poems and increasingly prose and journal entries. She maintained her politically engaged, even defiant stance: when invited to join the prestigious Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 1992 she declined, decrying it as a “Schlupfbude” (hideout) for former GDR state poets and Stasi informants; she also refused to accept the Federal Cross of Merit out of condemnation of then Bundestag president Karl Carstens’ Nazi past. Sarah Kirsch died in Heide on May 5, 2013 after a short illness; her ashes are buried in the garden of her house in Tielenhemme.
Sarah was the most prominent female representative of her generation. She won many prizes and honors including the German international literary Petrarca-Preis in 1976, the Peter-Huchel Prize in 1993 and the Georg Büchner Prize in 1996.
In 1976 Kirsch signed a letter protesting the expulsion of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann from the GDR. As a result she was herself expelled from the party and lost her position in the leadership of the GDR Writers’ Association, among other reprisals. Kirsch requested permission to leave the GDR, and the exit visa was quickly granted; the authorities were glad to be rid of the uncomfortably rebellious author.
Connections
In 1958 Sarah married Rainer Kirsch, a writer. They divorced in 1968. In 1969 her son Moritz was born; the father was poet Karl Mickel. She had a four-year relationship “across the wall” with the West Berlin poet Christoph Meckel.
She had a relationship with Wolfgang von Schweinitz, 18 years her junior.
