Collection: Johannes Bobrowski

Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965) was born in the East Prussian town of Tilsit and spent his boyhood summers on his grandfather's farm in neighboring Lithuania. He later moved to Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad), where he received a classical education. After briefly studying art history at the Humboldt University of Berlin, he was conscripted in 1939 as a lance corporal in the Wehrmacht's signal corps. Captured near Riga on the very last day of the war, Bobrowski spent the next four and a half years in Russian POW camps. Released in 1949, he returned to his family's home in the suburbs of East Berlin. Employed as an editor in various sectors of the GDR's publishing industry, he attracted the attention of Peter Huchel, who brought out his first poems in the prestigious East German journal Sinn und Form in 1955. His poetry was later published in three volumes: Sarmatian Time (I961), Shadowland Rivers (I962), and the posthumous Weathersigns (1966). Before his untimely death at age forty-eight, Bobrowski turned increasingly to prose, publishing two novels, Levin's Mill (1964) and Lithuanian Piano (I966), as well as several collections of short stories.