Paul Celan
Poet
Romanian-Jewish, German-language poet and translator of the post-World War II era. His literary works include From Threshold to Threshold, Lightduress, and Speechwicket.
He began writing his poem "Death Fugue" shortly after his parents died in a Holocaust-era labor camp.
He committed suicide by drowning himself in Paris' Seine River.
He married Gisele de Lestrange, a French graphic artist, in 1952.
He exchanged hundreds of love letters with his wife. This romantic act was inspired by a similar correspondence between Franz Kafka and his lovers.