Hilde Domin
Encyclopedia
Hilde Domin whose real name was Hilde Palm (née Löwenstein), was a German
lyric poet and writer. She was amongst the most important German-language poets of her time.
as Hildegard Löwenstein, the daughter of a German Jewish lawyer (her year of birth has been erroneously reported in some accounts as 1912).
Between 1929 and 1932 she studied at Heidelberg University, Cologne University, University of Bonn
, and the Humboldt University of Berlin
. She initially studied law, and later changed her specialism to economics, social sciences and philosophy. Among her teachers were Karl Jaspers
and Karl Mannheim
.
As a result of the increasingly virulent anti-semitism in Nazi
Germany, she emigrated to Italy in 1932 with her friend (and future husband) Erwin Walter Palm
who was a writer and student of archaeology
. She received a doctorate in political science in Florence in 1935 and worked as a language teacher in Rome
from 1935 to 1939. She and Erwin Walter Palm were married in 1936. With Hitler's visit to Rome and the acrimonious atmosphere of fascist Italy under Mussolini the couple was prompted to once again emigrate.
In 1939 the couple went to England where she worked as language teacher at St Aldyn’s College. Hilde's fears of the Nazi menace did not wane, and the couple tried frenetically to obtain a visa to any American nation. None of their preferred countries (the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil) granted them a visa, while some charged them exorbitant sums of money which they didn't have. The only country to unconditionally welcome them was the Dominican Republic
, where they emigrated in 1940.
In Santo Domingo
, where they lived for 14 years, Hilde worked as a translator and lecturer at the University of Santo Domingo, and as a photographer of architecture. Her photographs meticulously documented the Ciudad Colonial (old city) of Santo Domingo, which illustrated Palm's seminal book on the art and architecture of Europe's oldest American city. Their work was referenced by the Dominican government in their successful bid before UNESCO to grant the entire sector of old Santo Domingo World Heritage Site
status in 1989. She often worked together with other European exiles, such as Austrian photographer Kurt Schnitzer. In November 2006, Hilde was awarded the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella
in recognition of her efforts to advance Dominican culture.
Putting aside her studies in Political Sciences and Sociology, Hilde began to write in Santo Domingo towards 1951, after the death of her mother, acquiring the pseudonym
Hilde Domin, in gratitude to the city which offered her shelter. Many afternoons were spent by Hilde at the home of Francisco Prats Ramírez, discussing literature and poetry among intellectuals in endless tertulia
s.
Some years after the end of World War II
, in 1954, she and her husband (whose family had been murdered by the Nazis) returned to Germany
. Domin lived as a writer in Heidelberg from 1961 until her death.
She was a close friend of Nelly Sachs
, her lyric colleague living in Stockholm, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1966. From 1960 to 1967 they had a correspondence that was almost sisterly in intensity. She was also a friend of Hans-Georg Gadamer
.
In 1968, she presented Das zweite Paradies (The second Paradise), her first volume of prose, and a critical love story dealing with the experience of exile and home.
Her poems are rarely metaphorical, completely unpathetic and of a simple vocabulary
that in its simplicity meets magic, but the more frequently evoking and appealing; hence poems, which are easily accessible to a wide range of readers, and not confined to specialist audiences. Her output also included some pieces on literature theory.
In an interview in 1986 she was asked the question how much courage a writer needed. "A writer needs three types of courage. To be himself/herself. The courage not to lie and to misrepresent and skew, to call things by their right names. And thirdly, to believe in the open mindedness and forthrightness of the others."
Her husband died in 1988. The anthology of poetry "Der Baum blüht trotzdem" (The Tree blossoms nevertheless) which was published in 1999, is her personal farewell. In one of her late poems she encourages us not to become tired. We are rather, as she writes, called to long for "the miracle/quietly/like a bird/the hand reaching out".
She continued to read her poems to audiences until 2006. She died in Heidelberg
, a "grande dame" of German verse, aged 96, on February 22, 2006.
Her work has been translated into more than 21 languages.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
lyric poet and writer. She was amongst the most important German-language poets of her time.
Biography
Domin was born in 1909 in CologneCologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
as Hildegard Löwenstein, the daughter of a German Jewish lawyer (her year of birth has been erroneously reported in some accounts as 1912).
Between 1929 and 1932 she studied at Heidelberg University, Cologne University, University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...
, and the Humboldt University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
. She initially studied law, and later changed her specialism to economics, social sciences and philosophy. Among her teachers were Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
and Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim , or Károly Mannheim in the original writing of his name, was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology and a founder of the sociology of knowledge.-Life:Mannheim studied in Budapest,...
.
As a result of the increasingly virulent anti-semitism in Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
Germany, she emigrated to Italy in 1932 with her friend (and future husband) Erwin Walter Palm
Erwin Walter Palm
Erwin Walter Palm was a German Latin American scholar, historian, and writer.-Early years:Palm was born 28 August 1910 in Frankfurt/Main, in a house that was located near today's Suhrkamp house. He is the only survivor of the Holocaust from his family, his relatives having been murdered by the...
who was a writer and student of archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
. She received a doctorate in political science in Florence in 1935 and worked as a language teacher in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
from 1935 to 1939. She and Erwin Walter Palm were married in 1936. With Hitler's visit to Rome and the acrimonious atmosphere of fascist Italy under Mussolini the couple was prompted to once again emigrate.
In 1939 the couple went to England where she worked as language teacher at St Aldyn’s College. Hilde's fears of the Nazi menace did not wane, and the couple tried frenetically to obtain a visa to any American nation. None of their preferred countries (the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil) granted them a visa, while some charged them exorbitant sums of money which they didn't have. The only country to unconditionally welcome them was the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
, where they emigrated in 1940.
In Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,294,385 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...
, where they lived for 14 years, Hilde worked as a translator and lecturer at the University of Santo Domingo, and as a photographer of architecture. Her photographs meticulously documented the Ciudad Colonial (old city) of Santo Domingo, which illustrated Palm's seminal book on the art and architecture of Europe's oldest American city. Their work was referenced by the Dominican government in their successful bid before UNESCO to grant the entire sector of old Santo Domingo World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...
status in 1989. She often worked together with other European exiles, such as Austrian photographer Kurt Schnitzer. In November 2006, Hilde was awarded the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella
Order of Merit of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella
The Order of Merit of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella is the principal order of the Dominican Republic. It was established on 24 February 1931 as the Juan Pablo Duarte Order of Merit and renamed on 9 September 1954...
in recognition of her efforts to advance Dominican culture.
Putting aside her studies in Political Sciences and Sociology, Hilde began to write in Santo Domingo towards 1951, after the death of her mother, acquiring the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Hilde Domin, in gratitude to the city which offered her shelter. Many afternoons were spent by Hilde at the home of Francisco Prats Ramírez, discussing literature and poetry among intellectuals in endless tertulia
Tertulia
A tertulia is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones, especially in Iberia or Latin America. The word is originally Spanish, and has only moderate currency in English, in describing Latin cultural contexts....
s.
Some years after the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, in 1954, she and her husband (whose family had been murdered by the Nazis) returned to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Domin lived as a writer in Heidelberg from 1961 until her death.
She was a close friend of Nelly Sachs
Nelly Sachs
Nelly Sachs was a Jewish German poet and playwright whose experiences resulting from the rise of the Nazis in World War II Europe transformed her into a poignant spokeswoman for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews...
, her lyric colleague living in Stockholm, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
Female Nobel Prize laureates
The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals who make outstanding contributions in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, Literature, Peace, Physiology or Medicine and...
in 1966. From 1960 to 1967 they had a correspondence that was almost sisterly in intensity. She was also a friend of Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
.
In 1968, she presented Das zweite Paradies (The second Paradise), her first volume of prose, and a critical love story dealing with the experience of exile and home.
Her poems are rarely metaphorical, completely unpathetic and of a simple vocabulary
that in its simplicity meets magic, but the more frequently evoking and appealing; hence poems, which are easily accessible to a wide range of readers, and not confined to specialist audiences. Her output also included some pieces on literature theory.
In an interview in 1986 she was asked the question how much courage a writer needed. "A writer needs three types of courage. To be himself/herself. The courage not to lie and to misrepresent and skew, to call things by their right names. And thirdly, to believe in the open mindedness and forthrightness of the others."
Her husband died in 1988. The anthology of poetry "Der Baum blüht trotzdem" (The Tree blossoms nevertheless) which was published in 1999, is her personal farewell. In one of her late poems she encourages us not to become tired. We are rather, as she writes, called to long for "the miracle/quietly/like a bird/the hand reaching out".
She continued to read her poems to audiences until 2006. She died in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, a "grande dame" of German verse, aged 96, on February 22, 2006.
Books
- Hilde Domin - Gesammelte Gedichte (Collected poems), Editorial S. FischerS. Fischer VerlagThe German publishing house S. Fischer Verlag was founded in 1886 by Samuel Fischer in Berlin and is a leading German address for literary publications and fiction.Originally, it was renowned for naturalism literature...
- Ziehende Landschaft (Poem, 1955)
- Nur eine Rose als Stütze (Poems, 1959). Her first collection of poetry.
- Rückkehr der Schiffe (Poems, 1962)
- Linguistik (Poems, 1963)
- Hier (Poems, 1964)
- Höhlenbilder (Poems, 1968)
- Das zweite Paradies (Prose, 1968)
- Wozu Lyrik heute. Dichtung und Leser in der gesteuerten Gesellschaft (Prose, 1968). In this essay Hilde Domin asks the question: Why lyrics?
- Ich will dich (Poems, 1970)
- Von der Natur nicht vorgesehen (Autobiography, 1974)
- Aber die Hoffnung. Autobiographisches aus und über Deutschland (Autobiography, 1982)
- Unaufhaltsam (Poem, 1962)
- Rufe nicht
- Der Baum blüht trotzdem (Poems, 1999), ISBN 3100153227
- Vielleicht eine Lilie. Water colours by Andreas Felger. Hünfelden: Präsenz Kunst & Buch, (1999)
- Ausgewählte Gedichte (Selected poems), Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, (2000)
- Wer es könnte. Water colours by Andreas Felger. Hünfelden: Präsenz Kunst & Buch, (2000)
- Auf Wolkenbürgschaft. Water colours by Andreas Felger. Hünfelden: Präsenz Kunst & Buch, (2005)
Her work has been translated into more than 21 languages.
Awards and prizes
For her work Hilde Domin has been awarded a wide range of prizes including:- BundesverdienstkreuzBundesverdienstkreuzThe Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
Erster Klasse and the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz - Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis of the city of Bad HomburgBad HomburgBad Homburg vor der Höhe is the district town of the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse, Germany, on the southern slope of the Taunus, bordering among others Frankfurt am Main and Oberursel...
- Roswitha PrizeRoswitha PrizeThe Roswitha Prize is the oldest German language prize for literature that is given solely to women.The Roswitha-Medal has been given almost yearly since 1973 by the city of Bad Gandersheim....
(1974) - Nelly Sachs PrizeNelly Sachs PrizeThe Nelly Sachs Prize is a literary prize given every two years by the German city of Dortmund. It is named after the Jewish poet Nelly Sachs and includes a cash award of €15,000...
(1983) - Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (1995)
- 1999 Jakob-Wassermann-Literaturpreis
- 1999 State Prize of the Federal state of North Rhine-WestphaliaNorth Rhine-WestphaliaNorth Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...
- 2004 Honorary citizenship (Ehrenbürgerin) City of Heidelberg
- 2005 „Orden del Mérito de Duarte, Sánchez y Mella, en el grado de Commendador”, which is the highest order of the Dominican Republic.
Readings and lectures
- Guest of Honour at the Villa MassimoVilla MassimoVilla Massimo, short for Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo , is a German art institute in Rome, established in 1910 and located in the Villa Massimo....
, Rome (1985) - Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen (1987/88)
- May 2005: Reading of selected poems in both German and English, organized by Oxford University German Society.
Special Collections & Archives
- Collection reference at SIBMAS
- German Literature Archive in Marbach
- Correspondence with Gisela Blauner Graf (1967-1987)