Oskar Pastior

Born into a Transylvanian Saxon family in Sibiu (Hermannstadt) in the Kingdom of Romania, he was deported in January 1945,[1] along with many other ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, to the USSR for forced labor.

After graduation, he worked for the German language service of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company.

He was known for his translations of Romanian literature into German (among others, the works of Tudor Arghezi, George Coşbuc, Tristan Tzara, Gellu Naum, Marin Sorescu, and Urmuz).

The Hunger Angel, the 2009 novel of Nobel Prize-winning author Herta Müller, is based partly upon Pastior's experiences as 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] in Frankfurt.