Herta Müller (b. 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist noted for her works depicting the harsh conditions of life in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime. She is the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature of 2009.
Biography
Herta Müller was born in Niţchidorf, Timiş County, the daughter of Swabian farmers. Her family was part of Romania's German minority; her father had served in the Waffen SS[2] and her mother was deported to a labour camp in the Soviet Union after World War II.[3] She studied German studies and Romanian literature at the Timişoara University.
In 1976, Müller began working as a translator for an engineering company, but was dismissed in 1979 for her refusal to cooperate with the Securitate, the Communist regime's secret police. Initially, she made a living by teaching kindergarten and giving private German lessons. Her first book was published in Romania (in German) in 1982, and appeared only in a censored version, as with most publications of the time.
Müller left for Germany with her husband, novelist Richard Wagner, in 1987. Over the following years she received many lectureships at universities in Germany and abroad. She currently lives in Berlin. Müller received membership of the German Academy for Writing and Poetry in 1995, and other positions followed. In 1997 she withdrew from the PEN centre of Germany in protest of its merge with the former German Democratic Republic branch. In July 2008, Müller sent a critical open letter to Horia-Roman Patapievici, president of the Romanian Cultural Institute in reaction to the support given by the institute to a Romanian-German Summer School involving two former informants of the Securitate.[4]
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