Jeannette Lander (1931–2017)

Jeannette Lander was born in New York City to Polish Jewish émigrés to the USA. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, bilingual in English and Yiddish. In 1944, she published her first poems in Yiddish, followed in 1952 by volumes of short stories and essays in English. In 1950, she married German-born author Joachim Seyppel, with whom she had two children. She attended Middlebury College and Bryn Mawr College, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1957. From 1959 to 1960, she taught English and history.

In 1960, the family moved to Berlin, where she studied English and German at the Freie Universität and received a doctoral degree with a thesis on William Butler Yeats. From this point, she wrote her novels, short stories, poems, and radio plays exclusively in German. In 1971, she separated from her husband and the couple divorced in 1982. She lived with Gheorghe Bauer, a designer, and traveled widely. She was a member of the Association of German Writers and the German PEN Center.