These Numbered Days

Peter Huchel (1903-1981) was born in Lichterfelde (now part of Berlin) as Hellmut Huchel. From 1923 to 1926 he studied literature and philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg and Vienna. Between 1927 and 1930 he travelled to France, Romania, Hungary and Turkey. In 1930, he changed his first name to Peter and befriended Ernst Bloch, Alfred Kantorowicz and Fritz Sternberg. His early poems, published from 1931 to 1936, are strongly marked by the atmosphere and landscape of Brandenburg. In 1934, Huchel married Dora Lassel. The couple would divorce in 1946 and Huchel would marry Monica Rosental in 1953. Between 1934 and 1940, Huchel wrote plays for German radio. During the Second World War, he served as a soldier until he was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945. After his release, he began working for East German radio and in 1949, he became editor of the influential poetry magazine Sinn und Form ("Sense and Form"). After the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Huchel came under attack from the East German authorities and the following year he was forced to resign the editorship of Sinn und Form. From 1962 to 1971, he lived in isolation under Stasi surveillance in his house in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin. In 1971, he was finally permitted to leave the GDR and move, first to Rome, then to Staufen im Breisgau in West Germany, where he later died.

"With Brecht, Benn, Bobrowski and Celan, Peter Huchel is one of a handful of essential post-war poets in the German language. A precise observer of natural phenomena, Huchel is above all a realist whose metaphors take us deep into the social and historical landscape, into zones of devastation and despair, the zero-hour of isolation. His world is devoid of illusion or sentimentality; there is no redemption, at most an exactitude that is itself a confirmation of what is human and real. Lifted out of the schismatic currents of the Cold War era by Martyn Crucefix's supple and arrestingly sensual translations, Huchel surprises us as a fresh and startling voice for our own numbered days." -Iain Galbraith