The Legacy of Ruth Klger and the End of the Auschwitz Century

Ruth Klger (1931 2020) passed away on October 5, 2020 in the U.S. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in Germany for a short time after the War, she immigrated to New York. She was educated in the U.S. and received degrees in English literature as well as her Ph.D. in German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American universities. She has numerous scholarly publications to her credit, mostly in the fields of German and Austrian literary history. She is also recognized as a poet in her own right, an essayist, and a feminist critic. She returned to Europe, where she was a guest professor in Gttingen and Vienna. Her memoir, entitled weiter leben (1992), which she translated and revised in an English parallel-text as Still Alive, was a major bestseller and highly regarded autobiographical account of a Holocaust survivor. It was subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages. It has also generated a vigorous critical discussion in its own right. Ruth Klger received numerous prestigious literary prizes and other distinctions. The present volume, The Legacy of Ruth Klger and the End of the Auschwitz Century, aims to honor her memory by assessing critically her writings and career. Taking her biography and writings as points of departure, the volume includes contributions in fields and from perspectives which her writings helped to bring into focus acutely. In the table of contents are listed the following contributions: Sander L. Gilman, "Poetry and Naming in Ruth Klgers Works and Life"; Heinrich Detering, "Spannung: Remarks on a Stylistic Principle in Ruth Klgers Writing"; Stephan Braese, "Speaking with Germans. Ruth Klger and the Restitution of Speech between Germans and Jews"; Irne Heidelberger-Leonard, "Writing Auschwitz: Jean Amry, Imre Kertsz, and Ruth Klger"; Ulrike Offenberg, "Ruth Klger and the Jewish Tradition on Women Saying Kaddish; Mark H. Gelber, "Ruth Klger, Judaism, and Zionism: An American Perspective"; Monica Tempian, "Childrens Voices in the Poetry of the Shoah"; Daniel Reynolds, "Ruth Klger and the Problem of Holocaust Tourism"; Vera Schwarcz, "A China Angle on Memory and Ghosts in the Poetry of Ruth Klger."