Oskar Pastior (Romanian:[ˈoskarpasˈtjor]; 20 October 1927 – 4 October 2006) was a Romanian-born German poet and translator. He was the only German member ofOulipo.
Born into aTransylvanian Saxon family inSibiu (Hermannstadt) in theKingdom of Romania, hewas deported in January 1945,[1] along with many otherethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, to theUSSR for forced labor. He returned to Romania in 1949, and went on to studyGerman studies at theUniversity of Bucharest in 1955. After graduation, he worked for the German language service of theRomanian Radio Broadcasting Company. In 1964, he published his first collection of poems, "Offne Worte".
After having been under surveillance by theSecuritate for 4 years, Pastior became an informer for the Securitate in 1961 with the alias "Otto Stein".[2] This became known in 2010, years after his death.
He was an informer until 1968, when he obtained a scholarship toVienna anddefected fromCommunist Romania.
Pastior left for Germany, living at first inMunich, then inWest Berlin, where he lived the rest of his life. He was known for his translations ofRomanian literature into German (among others, the works ofTudor Arghezi,George Coşbuc,Tristan Tzara,Gellu Naum,Marin Sorescu, andUrmuz).
He received the highly prestigiousGeorg Büchner Prize in 2006.
The Hunger Angel, the 2009 novel of Nobel Prize-winning authorHerta Müller, is based partly upon Pastior's experiencesas a forced laborer in the USSR.[3] Initially, Pastior and Müller had planned to write a book about his experiences together, but he died in 2006[4] inFrankfurt.
Herta Müller said she thought that Pastior, as a homosexual, was vulnerable and susceptible to blackmail (in Romania, homosexuality was punishable by several years in prison).[1]
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