HAUS FÜR POESIE

His books were always published almost simultaneously on both sides of the Wall, in West and East editions. He made his debut late, in 1961, with the poetry collection Sarmatische Zeit; by then he was in his mid-forties and had less than four years to live. This was followed by the collection Schattenland Ströme, several short stories, and two novels, including his perhaps most popular work Levins Mühle. The collection Wetterzeichen, Bobrowski’s lyrical legacy, appeared a year after his death.

Johannes Bobrowski was a highly educated poet, familiar from childhood with the Bible and hymnbooks. Early on, he studied through the odes of Hölderlin and Klopstock. The theme of the Russian landscape (as he himself says) and German guilt in Eastern Europe became, after the war, the initial impetus for his writing. His East Prussian–Lithuanian homeland, the plains between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Ilmensee, the Memel flowing through Tilsit—all of this is omnipresent in his verses. He found a distinct lyrical voice for it, sometimes archaic in tone, reaching back to childhood and mythical prehistory, and remaining unique in postwar German literature.

Bobrowski depicts the year “mit Schauern ausfahrende[n]”, the rafters with their poles, and the women of the Nehrung fishermen, “wo das Haff um den Strand lag,” and returns to a time “als die Tage alle vollhingen noch von erhellten Kinderspielen” and everywhere the “kleinen Schatten aus Liedern und Tänzen” were present. With Bobrowski, readers follow the elk’s hoofprints or the “Torkelspur” of the badger, glimpse fish mist, crow light, and peat smoke, and are surprised by the speaking detail that appears unexpectedly in a verse—like the nest of a stickleback “über dem Hechtmaul der Tiefe” or the veined stone brushed by a swallow’s wing.

A joint event with the Internationale Johannes-Bobrowski-Gesellschaft

In reading & conversation Kerstin Preiwuß, Tom Schulz, Ingo Schulze
Moderation Maren Jäger