Nobel Prize in Literature · 1966
Nelly Sachs
A Berlin poet who escaped the Nazis in 1940 and, in Swedish exile, wrote poems mourning the Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
The Nobel citation: “for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength”
- Born
- December 10, 1891, Berlin, Germany
- Died
- May 12, 1970, Stockholm, Sweden
- Shared with
- Shmuel Agnon
Literature prize
1966
Shared with 1 other laureate.
Age that year
75years
Born in 1891.
Sources cited
18
Fact-checked September 24, 2026.
- She received the Nobel Prize on her 75th birthday. Back in Berlin, her father used to remark every 10 December that Stockholm was holding its Nobel ceremony.
- She fled Nazi Germany in May 1940 on one of the last flights from Berlin to Stockholm, after the Swedish Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf backed her plea for refuge.
- She was nearly 50 before her career as a poet really began. Her first poetry collection appeared in 1947, seven years after she reached Sweden as a refugee.
- She was the first woman to win the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1965) and the first German-speaking woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- In 1971 Sweden's Royal Library opened a room recreating her tiny Stockholm flat, where she had written at night in the kitchen while her sick mother slept.
The breakthrough
Giving the murdered a voice: poems and plays of exile (1943 onward)
For most of her life Sachs wrote gentle, old-fashioned verse that few people read. Exile changed that. In Stockholm, as detailed reports of the death camps reached Sweden, she began to write in a new, harder way, and she later asked that everything she wrote before 1940 be left out of her bibliography. Her first real book, In the Houses of Death (1947), was dedicated to her dead brothers and sisters, meaning the murdered Jews. Many of its poems are choruses. Think of a choir in which each section sings with one voice: Sachs let whole groups speak together, including the rescued, the orphans, the dead and even the stones. She joined modern free verse with echoes of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish mysticism, from the Hasidic tales retold by Martin Buber to the Zohar. Images such as sand, stars, butterflies, stones and fish return again and again as signs of suffering and transformation. Her verse play Eli, written in 1943 and published in 1951, tells of an eight-year-old Polish boy killed by a German soldier as he raises his shepherd's pipe to heaven while his parents are taken away. A cobbler named Michael tracks down the soldier, who collapses from remorse before any act of revenge. In its 1966 presentation speech, the Swedish Academy said that no writer of the day expressed the Jewish response to suffering more intensely.[1],[3],[5],[6],[7],[8],[9],[10],[15],[18]
“We breathed the air of freedom without knowing the language or any person.”
What it meant for humanity
Sachs gave the murdered Jews of Europe a voice in German, the language of the country that killed them. Her collections of the late 1940s helped found Holocaust literature as a tradition, and her play Eli carried the same story to German audiences as a radio play in 1958, on stage in Dortmund in 1962 and as an opera in 1967. In the late 1950s younger German writers such as Alfred Andersch and Hans Magnus Enzensberger championed her, and by the 1960s she was celebrated as one of the greatest poets writing in German. In 1965 she became the first woman to receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and at the Nobel ceremony Swedish Academy speakers praised a mourning free of hatred. The city of Dortmund created a literary prize in her name in 1961, with her as its first winner; it has since honored writers who work for understanding between peoples, including Elias Canetti, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera, David Grossman and Margaret Atwood. She was also a bridge between two literatures: her German translations of modern Swedish poets such as Gunnar Ekelöf, Erik Lindegren and Karin Boye carried their work to German readers. Her own work has been translated into many languages, and new English versions still appear, including a bilingual edition of Flight and Metamorphosis in 2022. A traveling exhibition on her life visited Berlin, Stockholm, Zurich, Frankfurt and Dortmund in 2010 to 2012, and since 1971 Sweden's Royal Library has held a memorial room recreating her apartment. She also gave friendship and support to Paul Celan, another Jewish poet who wrote in German after the Holocaust.
- Her first poetry collection, In the Houses of Death (1947), was dedicated to the murdered Jews and helped establish Holocaust literature as a literary tradition.[2],[7],[9]
- In 1965 she became the first woman to receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, honored for work of forgiveness and peace and for linking Swedish and German literature.[15]
- Dortmund's Nelly Sachs Prize, created in 1961 with her as its first winner, has honored writers working for understanding between peoples, including Elias Canetti, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera and Margaret Atwood.[8],[16]
- Her German translations of modern Swedish-language poets, including Gunnar Ekelöf, Erik Lindegren, Karin Boye and Edith Södergran, built a lasting bridge between Swedish and German poetry.[2],[6],[8],[15]
- Her work has been translated into many languages. A new bilingual English edition of Flight and Metamorphosis appeared in 2022, more than 60 years after the German original.[8],[18]
- A traveling exhibition on her life and work, with unpublished manuscripts, her furniture and material on her friendships with writers such as Paul Celan, visited Berlin, Stockholm, Zurich, Frankfurt and Dortmund from 2010 to 2012.[5],[17]
Impact in numbers
Sachs's impact is on memory and conscience, and it cannot be counted honestly. She turned the murder of Europe's Jews into poems and plays written in German, the language of the perpetrators, and she became a central voice as postwar Germany began to face its past. Her refusal to answer hatred with hatred made her a figure of reconciliation, though scholars warn that this image was sometimes used to ease German guilt. Through her translations she also built a bridge between Swedish and German poetry, and the literary prize named for her still honors writers who work for understanding between peoples. We record no quantified claims: there is no credible way to measure how many readers her work reached or how it changed them, and an invented number would break this site's evidence-first standard.
CulturePeace
No number is given here on purpose. Some contributions cannot be counted honestly, and we would rather describe them than invent a figure.
The double edge
Sachs's poems and plays caused no documented harm. Two criticisms are worth knowing. Some critics found her lush, mystical and Romantic style ill-suited to the horror of the death camps. The scholar Karin Bauer argues that West Germany embraced her too comfortably in the 1960s. Because her poems mourn without hatred or calls for revenge, praising her let German readers honor the dead and feel reconciled without confronting their own guilt, and her hopes for young Germans were misread as proof that the past could now be put behind them.
- Minor
Critics questioned whether her style fit her subject
Her poetry grew out of German Romanticism and mysticism. Some critics argued that this ecstatic, visionary style was insincere and did not suit the reality of mass murder. Sachs herself later disowned her early Romantic work and refused to let it be reprinted.[9],[10]
- Minor
Used as a comfortable symbol of German-Jewish reconciliation
In the 1960s German newspapers treated her with near-religious reverence. The scholar Karin Bauer argues that honoring a poet who mourned without hatred let German readers honor the victims without confronting their own guilt. The 1965 Peace Prize citation praised her work for reconciling German and Jewish elements without contradiction, while in 1966 Gershom Scholem warned that hopes of a German-Jewish dialogue were an illusion.[9],[15]
Against the odds
When the Nazis took power in 1933, about 160,000 Jews lived in Berlin, the largest Jewish community in Germany. Step by step they were pushed out of public life. In 1933 most Jewish civil servants and many Jewish professionals lost their jobs, and in the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 most of Berlin's synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. Sachs and her widowed mother were barred from cultural events, streetcars and public gardens and denied ration stamps for many foods. From 1939 Jewish women had to add the name Sara to their own. Sachs was summoned for a Gestapo interrogation and afterward could not speak for five days, and the family house was sold under pressure. Few countries would take Jewish refugees, and Sweden's policy was very restrictive. A friend traveled to Sweden to ask the novelist Selma Lagerlöf for help, and Lagerlöf and Prince Eugen backed the request. In May 1940 Sachs received an order to be ready for transport to a labor camp. An official advised her to fly rather than take the train, and she and her mother reached Stockholm on 16 May with almost nothing. Relatives who stayed behind were murdered; in all, 160,000 to 180,000 German Jews were killed in the Holocaust. In Sweden she lived in poverty, caring for her mother and earning a little by translating. The trauma never left her: from 1960 to 1963 she spent long periods in a psychiatric hospital.
1933
Discrimination
After 1933 Nazi measures steadily stripped Berlin's Jews of their rights. Sachs and her mother were shut out of cultural events, streetcars and public gardens, banned from owning pets and refused ration stamps for milk, meat, fish and fruit.[9],[11]
1938
Discrimination
Few countries would admit Jewish refugees. Sweden's policy was very restrictive: from October 1938 its border posts were secretly told to turn away holders of J-stamped passports without valid entry papers, and refugees needed guaranteed support and sponsors.[7],[13],[14]
1939
Persecution
Sachs was summoned for a Gestapo interrogation and afterward lost her voice for five days. The family house was sold under Nazi pressure in 1939, and from 1 January 1939 she, like every Jewish woman in Germany, had to take the extra name Sara.[5],[6],[9]
1940
Exile
In May 1940 she received an order to be ready for transport to a labor camp. With Swedish entry permits won through Selma Lagerlöf and Prince Eugen, she and her mother fled by plane to Stockholm with one suitcase and a few marks.[6],[7],[9]
—
Family killed
Relatives she left behind were murdered in the Holocaust, which killed 160,000 to 180,000 German Jews in all. According to her biographers, a man she had loved in her youth was also killed in a Nazi camp, and she mourned him in her poems.[1],[5],[7],[12]
1940
Poverty
In Stockholm she and her mother first stayed in a children's home and with families, then lived in a small flat in the Jewish congregation's building. She earned a meager living translating Swedish poetry into German and nursed her mother until her death in 1950.[5],[7],[9]
1960
Other
The persecution left lasting psychological wounds. After her first trip back to Germany in 1960 she suffered a severe breakdown, with fears of being watched and pursued, and spent most of 1960 to 1963 in psychiatric care in Stockholm.[5],[8],[9]
Jewish background
Sachs was the only child of William Sachs and Margarete Karger, who both came from assimilated Jewish families in Berlin. The family belonged to the Jewish community but did not attend synagogue or keep Jewish holidays, and her early writing drew on German Romanticism and Christian mysticism. Nazi persecution turned her toward her heritage: she read Martin Buber's Hasidic tales and, after 1950, the Zohar. Her mature work takes the fate of the Jewish people as its subject. On sharing the Nobel Prize with Agnon, she remarked that he represented Israel while she represented the Jewish people's tragedy. She is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Solna, near Stockholm.[5],[6],[8],[9],[10]
Key dates
December 10, 1891
Born Leonie Sachs in Berlin, the only child of the rubber-goods manufacturer William Sachs and Margarete Karger.[1],[7],[8]
1921
Publishes her first book, Legends and Tales, and sends a copy to her idol Selma Lagerlöf, who writes back with warm praise.[6],[7]
1939
The family house is sold under Nazi pressure; her friend Gudrun Harlan travels to Sweden to ask Lagerlöf to support a residence permit.[6],[7]
May 16, 1940
After receiving an order to be ready for transport to a labor camp, she and her mother fly from Berlin to Stockholm as refugees.[2],[6],[9]
1947
Publishes her first poetry collection, In the Houses of Death, and an anthology of her German translations of Swedish poetry.[2],[6],[8]
February 7, 1950
Her mother dies, deepening her isolation; she turns more fully to Jewish mysticism.[5],[6]
1951
Eli, her verse play about the Holocaust written in 1943, is published in Sweden; it later becomes a German radio play, stage play and opera.[5],[7],[8],[10]
April 25, 1952
1960
Receives the Droste Prize in Meersburg, meets Paul Celan in Zurich, then suffers a breakdown and spends most of 1960 to 1963 in psychiatric care.[8],[9]
1961
Dortmund creates the Nelly Sachs Prize and names her its first winner.[8],[16]
October 17, 1965
Becomes the first woman to receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, in Frankfurt's Paulskirche.[15]
December 10, 1966
On her 75th birthday, shares the Nobel Prize in Literature with Shmuel Yosef Agnon.[1],[3],[9]
May 12, 1970
Dies of cancer in Stockholm, weeks after the death of her friend Paul Celan.[1],[5],[9]
December 10, 1971
Prime Minister Olof Palme opens the Nelly Sachs room at Sweden's Royal Library, recreating her apartment.[8],[9]
Sources
- 1.Nelly Sachs - Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
- 2.Nelly Sachs - Biographical · NobelPrize.org (from Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967), 1966
- 3.The Nobel Prize in Literature 1966 - Award ceremony speech by Anders Österling · NobelPrize.org, 1966
- 4.Nelly Sachs - Banquet speech, Stockholm City Hall, 10 December 1966 · NobelPrize.org, 1966
- 5.Nelly Leonie Sachs (Kirsten Krick-Aigner), Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women · Jewish Women's Archive
- 6.Leonie (Nelly) Sachs (Anders Olsson) · Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon (Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women), 2018
- 7.Leonie (Nelly) Sachs (Aris Fioretos), Svenskt biografiskt lexikon · Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives)
- 8.Sachs, Nelly (eigentlich Leonie) (Ruth Dinesen), Neue Deutsche Biographie 22 · Deutsche Biographie (Historical Commission, Bavarian Academy of Sciences), 2005
- 9.Sachs, Nelly (1891-1970) (Karin Bauer), Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia · Gale, via Encyclopedia.com
- 10.Nelly Sachs · Jewish Virtual Library (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise)
- 11.Berlin (Holocaust Encyclopedia) · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- 12.German Jews during the Holocaust, 1939-1945 (Holocaust Encyclopedia) · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- 13.German Jewish Refugees, 1933-1939 (Holocaust Encyclopedia) · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- 14.How did the media report on refugees? (In Black and White digital exhibition) · Sveriges museum om Förintelsen (Swedish Holocaust Museum)
- 15.Nelly Sachs - Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 1965 (citation, address and laudatio) · Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, 1965
- 16.Nelly-Sachs-Preis · Stadt Dortmund
- 17.Flight and Metamorphosis - Nelly Sachs, Writer, Berlin/Stockholm (exhibition) · Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation)
- 18.Ayça Türkoğlu reviews Flight and Metamorphosis by Nelly Sachs, translated by Joshua Weiner with Linda B. Parshall · Modern Poetry in Translation, 2022
Fact-checked on September 24, 2026 by a separate AI fact-checking pass that re-opened the sources, with 10 corrections made. How we check
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