[1] As a result of the increasingly virulent anti-semitism in Nazi Germany, she emigrated to Italy in 1932 with her friend (and future husband) Erwin Walter Palm who was a writer and student of archaeology.
None of their preferred countries (the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil) granted them a visa, while others would have charged them exorbitant sums of money.
Their work was referenced by the Dominican government in their successful bid before UNESCO to grant the entire sector of old Santo Domingo World Heritage Site status in 1989.
In November 2006, Hilde was awarded the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella in recognition of her efforts to advance Dominican culture.
[1] Many afternoons were spent by Hilde at the home of Francisco Prats Ramírez, discussing literature and poetry among intellectuals in endless tertulias.
She was a close friend of Nelly Sachs, her lyric colleague living in Stockholm, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966.
In 1968, she presented Das zweite Paradies (The Second Paradise), her first volume of prose, and a critical love story dealing with the experience of exile and home.
She was also a translator, bringing selected works by lyric poets including Denise Levertov and Giuseppe Ungaretti to German language readers.
We are rather, as she writes, Not to tire but to hold out your hand gently as if to a bird to the miracle Domin continued to read her poems to audiences until 2006.