Life
Bobrowski was born in Tilsit in East Prussia. In 1925, he moved first to Rastenburg, then in 1928 on to Königsberg, where he attended the Gymnasium. One of his teachers was Ernst Wiechert. In 1937, he started a degree in art history in Berlin. As a member of the Confessing Church, Bobrowski had contact with the German resistance against National Socialism. He was a lance corporal for the entire Second World War in Poland, France and the Soviet Union. In 1943 he married Johanna Buddrus.
From 1945—1949 Bobrowski was imprisoned by the Soviet Union, where he spent time working in a coal mine. On his release, he worked as an editor in Berlin, first for the Altberliner Verlag, a children’s publisher run by Lucie Grosner, and then from 1959 for the Union Verlag publishing house. His work was influenced by his knowledge of Eastern European landscapes and of the German, Baltic and Slavic cultures and languages, combined with ancient myths. In 1964, Bobrowski became a member of the PEN Club.
Bobrowski died as a result of a perforated appendix in East Berlin in 1965. Since 1992, the Foundation for Prussian Maritime Trade (Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung) has donated funds towards the Johannes Brobowski Medal.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That poor little thing was a good woman, Judge. But she just sort of let life get the upper hand. She was born here and she wanted to be buried here. I promised her on her deathbed she’d have a funeral in a church with flowers. And the sun streamin’ through a pretty window on her coffin. And a hearse with plumes and some hacks. And a preacher to read the Bible. And folks there in church to pray for her soul.”
—Laurence Stallings (1804–1968)
“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)