Nelly Sachs (; 10 December 1891 – 12 May 1970) was a German–Swedish poet and playwright. Her experiences resulting from the rise of the Nazis in World War II Europe transformed her into a poignant spokesperson for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews. Her best-known play is (1950); other works include the poems "" (1962), "" (1970), and the collections of poetry (1947), (1959), (1961), and (1971). She was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature. Life and career Leonie Sachs was born in Berlin-Schöneberg, Germany, in 1891 to a Jewish family. Her parents were the wealthy natural rubber and gutta-percha manufacturers Georg William Sachs (1858–1930) and his wife Margarete, née Karger (1871–1950). She was educated at home because of frail health. She showed early signs of talent as a dancer, but her protective parents did not encourage her to pursue a profession. She grew up as a very sheltered, introverted young woman and never married. She pursued an extensive correspondence with her friends Selma Lagerlöf and Hilde Domin. As the Nazis took power, she became increasingly terrified, at one point losing the ability to speak, as she would remember in verse: "When the great terror came/I fell dumb." Sachs fled with her aged mother to Sweden in 1940. It was her friendship with Lagerlöf that saved their lives: shortly before her own death, Lagerlöf intervened with the Swedish royal family to secure their release from Germany. Sachs and her mother escaped on the last flight from Nazi Germany to Sweden, a week before Sachs was scheduled to report to a concentration camp. They settled in Sweden, and Sachs became a Swedish citizen in 1952. Living in a tiny two-room apartment in Stockholm, Sachs cared for her mother alone for many years, and supported their existence by translations between Swedish and German. After her mother's death, Sachs suffered several nervous breakdowns characterized by hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions of persecution by Nazis, and spent a number of years in a mental institution. She continued to write while hospitalized, and eventually recovered sufficiently to live on her own, though her mental health remained fragile. Her worst breakdown was ostensibly precipitated by hearing spoken German during a trip to Switzerland to accept a literary prize. But she maintained a forgiving attitude toward younger Germans, and corresponded with many German-speaking writers of the postwar period, including Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Ingeborg Bachmann.