Ruth Klüger facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ruth Klüger
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Ruth Klüger at Frankfurt Book Fair 2010
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| Born | 30 October 1931 |
| Died | 5 October 2020 (aged 88) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | professor, author |
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Notable work
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weiter leben: Eine Jugend, Still Alive |
Ruth Klüger (30 October 1931 – 5 October 2020) was Professor Emerita of German Studies at the University of California, Irvine and a Holocaust survivor. She was the author of the bestseller weiter leben: Eine Jugend about her childhood in Nazi Germany.
Biography
Ruth Klüger was born on 30 October 1931 in Vienna. In March 1938, Hitler marched into Vienna. The annexation of Austria by the Nazis deeply affected Klüger's life: Klüger, who then was only six years old, had to change schools frequently and grew up in an increasingly hostile and antisemitic environment. .....
In September 1942, she was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp at the age of 10, together with her mother; her father had tried to flee abroad, but was detained and murdered. One year later she was transferred to Auschwitz, then to Christianstadt, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen. Following the end of World War II in 1945 she settled in the Bavarian town of Straubing and later studied philosophy and history at the Philosophisch-theologische Hochschule in Regensburg.
In 1947 she emigrated to the United States and studied English literature at Hunter College and German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Klüger obtained an M.A. in 1952, and later a Ph.D. in 1967. She worked as a college professor of German literature in Cleveland, Kansas, and Virginia, and at Princeton and UC Irvine.
Klüger was a recognized authority on German literature, and especially on Lessing and Kleist. She lived in Irvine, California and in Göttingen.
Her memoir, Still Alive, which focuses primarily on her time in concentration camps, is strongly critical of the museum culture surrounding the Holocaust.
Klüger died on 5 October 2020, aged 88, 25 days before she would have turned 89 in her home in Irvine, California. She was buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery.
Prizes
Klüger was awarded many prizes, including:
- Rauris Literature Prize (1993)
- Grimmelshausen Prize (1993)
- Niedersachsenpreis (1993)
- Marie Luise Kaschnitz Prize (1995)
- Andreas Gryphius Prize, honorary prize (1996)
- Heinrich-Heine-Medaille (1997)
- Österreichischer Staatspreis für Literaturkritik (1998)
- Prix de la Shoah (1998)
- Thomas Mann Prize (1999)
- Preis der Frankfurter Anthologie (1999)
- Goethe Medal (2005)
- Roswitha Prize (2006)
- Lessing Prize of the Free State of Saxony (2007)
- Hermann Cohen Medal (2008)
- Ehrenmedaille der Stadt Göttingen (2010)
- Austrian Danubius Donauland Nonfiction Book Prize (de) (2010), for her life's work
- Theodor-Kramer-Preis (2011)
See also
In Spanish: Ruth Klüger para niños
