Hanny Michaelis (19 December 1922 – 11 June 2007) was a Dutch poet. The daughter of Alfred Michaelis and Gonda Sara Swaab, both

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish, she was born in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

. Her parents were sent to

Sobibór Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...

in 1943 and never returned. She lived in hiding from 1942 to 1945. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Michaelis worked for the Artistic Affairs department of the municipality of Amsterdam . In 1948, she married the writer Gerard Kornelis van het Reve; they separated in 1959. She was awarded the Anna Bijns Prize in 1996. Her work has a prevailing tone of melancholy, loneliness and despair, although her last collection of poems has a more vital tone to it and moments of humour. Michaelis died in Amsterdam at the age of 84.

Poetry collections

* ''Klein voorspel'' (Little prelude) (1949) * ''Water uit de rots'' (Water from the rock) (1957) * ''Tegen de wind in'' (Against the wind) (1962) * ''Onvoorzien'' (Unforeseen) (1966); received the

Jan Campert Prize The Jan Campert Prize (in Dutch: Jan Campert-prijs) is a Dutch literary prize established in 1948, which is awarded annually for works of poetry by the Jan Campert Foundation. The foundation was created in 1948 to honour Jan Campert, considered by ...

* ''De rots van Gibraltar'' (The Rock of Gibraltar) (1970) * ''Wegdraven naar een nieuw Utopia'' (Running off toward a new Utopia) (1971)

References

1922 births 2007 deaths 20th-century Dutch poets 20th-century women writers Dutch Jews Dutch women poets Writers from Amsterdam 20th-century Dutch women {{Netherlands-writer-stub