Katja Behrens

Katja Behrens (born Katja Oswald; 18 December 1942 – 6 March 2021 ) was a German author and translator of Jewish descent.

Biography Behrens was the daughter of Josef Oswald, a photographer, and Leni Oswald, an author and journalist. With her mother and grandmother, she went into hiding in the home of a Catholic priest in Austria during World War II and returned to Germany after the war. Behrens began working as a translator in 1960, translating works by authors such as William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller and Kenneth Patchen into German. She lived in Israel from 1968 to 1970. From 1973 to 1978, she was a reader for publisher Luchterhand Literaturverlag, moving to Darmstadt. Behrens has travelled to India, north Africa, the United States and South America. She was a member of the PEN Centre Germany and of the German authors' association . Her work also draws on her own experiences to explore the relationships between women of different generations.

She married Peter Behrens in 1960. The couple had a daughter(Toshka) and later divorced in 1971.

Selected works Source: Chilenische Erzählungen ("Chilean Stories"), as editor (1977) Die weiße Frau ("The White Woman"), short stories (1978) Frauenbriefe der Romantik ("Letters by Women of the Romantic Period"), as editor (1981) Die dreizehnte Fee ("The Thirteenth Fairy"), novel (1983) Abschiedsbriefe ("Farewell Letters"), as editor (1987) Im Wasser tanzen, novel (1990) Salomo und die anderen—Jüdische Geschichten ("Salomo and the Others—Jewish Stories") (1993) Zorro—Im Jahr des Pferdes ("Zorro––In the Year of the Horse"), children's story (1999)