Johannes Bobrowski

Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1964) published his first poems in the prestigious East German journal Sinn und Form in 1955. During the following years, Bobrowski continued to sketch out an ambitious cycle of poems which he referred to as his "Sarmatian Divan"—located in ancient Sarmatia, a region half-historical and half-mythical. Slow to find a publisher, these poems eventually saw light—quite unusually, in simultaneous West and East German editions—under the titles Sarmatian Time (1961), Shadowland Rivers (1962), and the posthumous Weathersigns (1966). Toward the end of his career, before his untimely death at age 47, Bobrowski turned increasingly to prose, publishing two novels, Levin's Mill (1964) and Lithuanian Piano (1966), as well as several collections of short stories.

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