Meister, Ernst, 1911-1979

Ernst Meister (3 September 1911 – 15 June 1979) was a German poet and writer. Meister's poetry falls within a dark abstract landscape of existentialism, with tortured themes influenced by his experiences during World War II. In his 1976 collection of poems, Im Zeitspalt ("In Time's Rift"), Meister frankly addresses mortality and the nothingness of our existence as both mind and body decay into death. His poetry is noted for its spare brevity and difficult syntax and has been compared to the work of Romanian poet Paul Celan (1920–1970), Meister's contemporary in German letters. However, despite writing 16 collections of verse, Meister was not involved with the dominant literary and cultural elite and his works were relatively unknown during his lifetime.