Anne Ranasinghe

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Anne Ranasinghe (born October 2, 1925 in Essen , † December 17, 2016 in Colombo , Sri Lanka ) was one of the most important contemporary Sri Lankan writers. She stood out mainly with her poetry and short stories. Your works are written in English.

Life

Anne Ranasinghe was born as Anneliese Katz in Essen into a Jewish family. She remained the only child of Emil Katz (1892-1944) and Anna Amalie, called Änne, née Mendel (1902-1944). Anne Katz attended the Jewish elementary school in Essen from 1931. There she wrote her first play at the age of ten, a Purim play in ten pictures. From 1936 she went to Jawne , the Jewish high school in Cologne. To do this, she took the train from Essen every day, accompanied by her two classmates Miriam Hahn and Lotte Rosendahl. The three friends were members of the Makkabi Hazair youth association . Anne experienced the November pogrom in 1938 , her father, a World War II veteran, was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp , and her parents' apartment was vandalized.

On January 1st, 1939, at the age of 13, Anne was sent by her parents on a Kindertransport to an aunt in England. She attended Parkstone Girl's Grammar School in Poole , Dorset. When the Second World War broke out , she was initially declared a friendly hostile foreigner . She then worked as a nurse in the military service. After the end of the war she learned that her parents and all relatives had been murdered by the National Socialists. The parents were deported to the Lodz ghetto and gassed three years later in Kulmhof .

Anne trained as a nurse and completed a journalism training. In 1949 she married the Sri Lankan medical professor Dr. Abraham Ranasinghe and went with him and their first son to Sri Lanka in 1952, where she was to be the only known Jewish woman for the next forty years. She studied journalism at Colombo Polytechnic. She has been writing poetry and prose as well as features and radio plays since the 1970s. In addition to three children from the husband's first marriage, the couple had four children together. Her husband died in 1981.

For her works, which have been translated into seven languages, she has received several literary prizes, including the State Literary Award for her life's work in 2007 as the highest honor in the country of Sri Lanka . One of her radio plays, otherwise all of which were commissioned by Radio Singapore, was commissioned by the GDR radio and was broadcast in German translation in 1975. In November 1983, Anne Ranasinghe returned to Essen for the first time since her escape for three days and made it possible for the Old Synagogue there to edit a volume of lyrical texts in English with a German translation and biographical explanations, combined with her dedication: “For my parents, and for everyone other Essen Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. ”This volume of poetry is included in the collection of evidence and learning materials of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , and her poem Holocaust 1944 published therein is included in the anthology Holocaust Poetry alongside works by WH Auden , Paul Celan , Primo Levi , Nelly Sachs and Elie Wiesel . In 1985, a 45-minute documentary by Michael Lentz about her life with the title was in the WDR Visitation (Engl. Visitation ) is shown.

From 1975 to 1990 she worked for Amnesty International South Asia based in Colombo.

Anne Ranasinghe died in Colombo in December 2016 at the age of 91.

Prizes and awards

  • 2007: State Literary Award
  • 2011: "The Godage National Literary Award for lifelong Contributions to Sri Lankan Literature"
  • 2015: Federal Cross of Merit

Works (selection)

  • Poems - And a Sun That Sucks The Earth to Dry , 1971
  • With Words We Write Our Lives Past, Present, Future , 1972
  • Plead Mercy , 1975
  • Love, Sex and Parenthood 1978
  • The woman and her god. Short story , in: Hermann Schröter (Hrsg.): History and fate of the Essen Jews: memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Essen . City of Essen, Essen 1980, pp. 290-296
  • Of charred wood midnight fear / Burned wood and fear at midnight. Poems / poems . Bilingual; German transl. Monika Nold. Old Synagogue Essen (Ed.), 1983
  • Against Eternity and Darkness 1985
  • At What Dark Point , 1991
  • Not Even Shadows , 1991
  • Desire and other Stories 1994
  • You Ask Me Why I Write Poems , 1994
    • You ask me why I write poetry . Translated from Jeannine Braun. Maro, Augsburg 1994
  • The Letter and Other Stories , 1994
  • Mascot and Symbol , 1997
  • A Long Hot Day , 2005
  • On the fifth day , 2006
  • Snow , 2014
  • Who can guess the moment? , 2015
  • Four Things , 2016

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yohan Perera: Anne Ranasinghe passes away . The Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka), December 19, 2016, accessed December 22, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b Anne Ranasinghe. Viator Publications, September 9, 2005, archived from the original September 8, 2005 ; accessed on December 22, 2016 (English).
  3. ↑ Marko Martin : How Rilke came to Colombo. Anne Ranasinghe is Sri Lanka's most famous poet . Jüdische Allgemeine , January 20, 2011, accessed December 22, 2016.
  4. ↑ The empty street . HörDat , accessed on December 22, 2016 (pdf; 25 kB).
  5. ↑ See Anne Ranasinghe-Katz, Of charred wood midnight fear / Burned wood and fear at midnight. Poems / poems . Bilingual; German transl. Monika Nold. Old Synagogue Essen (Ed.), 1983
  6. ↑ Anne Ranasinghe-Katz, Of charred wood, midnight fear: Poems = Burned wood and fear at midnight: Poems is available in the Holocaust Memorial Museum under "Publication | Library Call Number: PR9440.9.R35 O35 1983"
  7. ↑ Hilda Schiff (ed.), Holocaust Poetry , New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.
  8. ^ Anne Ranasinghe. WriteClique.net, February 6, 2005, archived from the original on February 6, 2005 ; accessed on December 22, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Defended by writing . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 10, 2015, page 42.
personal data
SURNAME Ranasinghe, Anne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Katz, Anneliese (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sri-Lankan-German writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH eat
DATE OF DEATH 17th December 2016
Place of death Colombo , Sri Lanka