born Dec. 10, 1891, Berlin, Ger.
died May 12, 1970, Stockholm, Swed.
German poet and dramatist.
Born to a prosperous family, Sachs wrote poems mainly for her own entertainment until the advent of Nazism darkened her work and forced her to flee to Sweden. Her lyrics from those years combine lean simplicity with imagery variously tender, searing, or mystical. In the famous title poem of her collection O the Chimneys (1967), Israel's body drifts upward as smoke from the Nazi death camps. Her best-known play is Eli (1951). She shared the 1966 Nobel Prize with S.Y. Agnon .
Nelly Sachs, 1966
UPI