Sunday Times 2
German government to honour poet and writer Anne Ranasinghe
View(s):This week the German government will honour poet and writer Anne Ranasinghe with The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The prestigious order was established in 1951 and is awarded to both German nationals and foreigners with “achievements that served the rebuilding of the country in the fields of political, socio-economic and intellectual activity, and is intended to mean an award of all those whose work contributes to the peaceful rise of the Federal Republic of Germany.” Ranasinghe’s life and work will be celebrated in a ceremony held on the evening of October 13.
Born Anneliese Katz, Ranasinghe grew up in Essen, Germany, the only child of Jewish parents. As a young girl, she was a witness to Kristalnacht (The Night of the Broken Glass) when the synagogue in Essen was attacked and burnt to the ground by the Nazis. She also saw her devastated by a period of imprisonment in the concentration camp known as Dachau.
In 1939, fearing worse was ahead, Ranasinghe’s parents sent her England. Her sponsor was an aunt she was meeting for the first time. In England, Ranasinghe would make her home among strangers and later learn English at school. When World War II broke out, she lost touch with her family. She did not hear of their confinement in the Lodz Ghetto and their tragic death by lethal gas in Chelmno till many years after.
Anne Ranasinghe
Having met and married a Sri Lankan Post-graduate and settled with him in Sri Lanka, Ranasinghe became a Sri Lankan citizen in 1956. She would study journalism, raise a large family and eventually make her debut as a poet in 1971 with a slim volume of poems titled ‘And the Sun That Sucks the Earth to Dry.’ Themes of alienation and minority persecution run through her large body of work as the poet and author grapples with their prevalence in modern life.
Over the course of a long career, Ranasinghe has since been recognised both nationally and internationally as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost poets. Her body of work also includes numerous short stories, essays, and translations. Her works have been broadcast on radio and published in seventeen countries and translated into nine languages.
She has won numerous prizes for her writing including the Sri Lanka Arts Council Prize for Poetry 1985 and 1992 and non-fiction in 1987. In 1994, she won the Sri Lanka Literary Award for best collection of short stories. She is a founding member of the English Writers’ Cooperative of Sri Lanka.