„Ich bin in den Karpaten geboren“ – Manfred Winklers rumänische Herkunft

Abstract Manfred Winkler‘s beginnings as a poet and author are closely linked to his Romanian past. Born in the former Bukowina, the Eastern outpost of the Austrian-Hungarian-Empire, it was its landscape and the capital Czernowitz/Cernăuți, as well as the fate of the Jewish population that decisively shaped his German-language poetry. When, after World War II, Winkler moved to Temeswar/Timişoara, he published his first collection of poems, Tief pflügt das Leben (Bucharest, 1956) and became an active member of the Romanian German language literary scene. This article explores the traces and facts of Winkler‘s biography and examines the first publications of the emerging author under the particular circumstances of Romania in the 1950s.