Sarah Kirsch

Sarah Kirsch studied at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, German Institute for Literature and Leipzig University. The recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is poetry. Distinctions recorded are Georg Büchner Prize, Mainz resident writer, Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis and Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia.

Sarah Kirsch was originally born Ingrid Bernstein in Limlingerode, Prussian Saxony but had changed her first name to Sarah in order to protest against antisemitism. She studied biology in Halle and literature at the Johannes R. Becher Institute for Literature in Leipzig. In 1965, she co-wrote a book of poems with writer Rainer Kirsch, to whom she was married for nine years, from 1960 to 1968. She protested against East Germany's expulsion of Wolf Biermann in 1976, which led to her exclusion from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). One year later she left the country herself, nevertheless being critical of the West as well. Sarah Kirsch won many prizes and honours including the German international literary Petrarca-Preis in 1976, the Peter Huchel Prize in 1993 and the Georg Büchner Prize in 1996. She died in May 2013 following a brief illness.

Sarah Kirsch is known both for her poetry and her (lyrically inflected) prose. She also translated children's books into German. According to complete review, "the great German-language post-war poets were largely East German (or Austrian) born in the mid to late 1930s which included towering figures such as Volker Braun, Heinz Czechowski" and Sarah Kirsch who was "the most prominent female representative of that generation." Andreas Dorschel credits her prose with "highly flexible spelling, nuanced in puns, archaisms, turns of dialect, peculiar rhythms, poetic imagery".

Sarah Kirsch by Mererid Hopwood (1997)