Tuvia Ruebner

Tuvia Ruebner was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1924. He came to pre-state Israel in 1941 and joined Kibbutz Merhaviya. From 1963-66 he was General Secretary of the Zionist Organization in Switzerland. Since 1974, he has been professor of comparative literature at Haifa University. Ruebner is a member of the German Language and Literature Academy and of the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature. He published his first book of poetry in 1957 and has since published 11 more collections. He has also published many academic studies, including on Leah Goldberg and Ludwig Strauss, translated Goethe, Shlegel and Kafka into Hebrew, and Agnon, T. Carmi and Dan Pagis – among others – into German. Ruebner has been awarded, in Israel: the Anne Frank Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, the Prime Minister`s Prize twice and the prestigious Israel Prize (2008); abroad he has received the D. Steinberg Prize (Zurich, 1981), the Christian Wagner Prize (Germany, 1994), the Jeannette Schocken Prize (Germany, 1999), the Paul Celan Translation Prize (1999), the Jan Smrek Prize and the Theodore Kramer Prize (2008). His poems have been translated into 14 languages.

Photo by: Dan Porges