1. Traian Popovici (1892-1946) was the mayor of Cernăuți, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), within the Bukovina region, during WW2. Honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, he is credited with saving some 19,000 Jews in his city from deportation.
2. Among those in Cernăuți Popovici was not able to protect were the parents of Paul Celan (1920-70), a German-speaking Romanian poet and translator. His best-known work, published after the war, is the Holocaust-themed "Todesfugue" (1948). A French citizen from 1955 onward, he drowned in the Seine in 1970; it is unclear whether this was suicide.
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| Celan's grave at Thiais, photographed in 2008 |
3. Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-73) studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, completing a dissertation on Heidegger in 1949 under the supervision of Vienna Circle vet Victor Kraft. Her literary career took off after Group 47 gave her their main prize in 1953. During this time, she and Paul Celan were lovers.
Remembered for exploring themes related to Vergangenheitsbewältigung in works like Malina (1971), Bachmann is the namesake of the Festival of German-Language Literature's Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Her relationship with Celan is the subject of Ruth Beckermann's film The Dreamed Ones (2016). Margarethe von Trotta's Ingeborg Bachmann - Journey into the Desert (2023) stars our old Luxembourger Vicky Krieps as Bachmann and covers her romances with Max Frisch and Adolf Opel and her friendship with Hans Werner Henze.
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