# Is "In the Habitations of Death (In den Wohnungen des Todes)" by Nelly Sachs a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of In the Habitations of Death (In den Wohnungen des Todes) by Nelly Sachs (Aufbau-Verlag, 1947) is identified by: The true first is the Aufbau-Verlag (East Berlin) issue of 1947, Sachs's first published poetry collection: 75 pp., small octavo (roughly 19 x 13 cm), with full-page drawings by Rudi Stern (dealer copies collate 11 illustrations) and the dedication "Meinen toten Brüdern und Schwestern" ("to my dead brothers and sisters"). The true first edition is the German-language "In den Wohnungen des Todes," Aufbau-Verlag, (East) Berlin, 1947 — Sachs's first published poetry collection.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The true first is the Aufbau-Verlag (East Berlin) issue of 1947, Sachs's first published poetry collection: 75 pp., small octavo (roughly 19 x 13 cm), with full-page drawings by Rudi Stern (dealer copies collate 11 illustrations) and the dedication "Meinen toten Brüdern und Schwestern" ("to my dead brothers and sisters")
- The 1947 first printing carries the print-run statement "1.-20
- Tausend" (total run 20,000 copies); that Tausend line plus the Rudi Stern drawings confirm the true first against a bare "1946" claim, but the line appears on BOTH states and does not by itself distinguish trade from deluxe
- Two issues exist: the ordinary trade issue in illustrated wrappers (original-Broschur with illustrated dust jacket), and a numbered Vorzugsausgabe of 200 copies in full linen/cloth with the original dust jacket (the more desirable state)
- Sachs's original working title was "Dein Leib im Rauch durch die Luft," changed to the final title at Aufbau's request before publication; presence of the final title is correct for the first
- Publisher imprint reads Aufbau-Verlag
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Nelly Sachs |
| Publisher | Aufbau-Verlag |
| Year | 1947 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | The true first is the Aufbau-Verlag (East Berlin) issue of 1947, Sachs's first published poetry collection: 75 pp., small octavo (roughly… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
The true first is the Aufbau-Verlag (East Berlin) issue of 1947, Sachs's first published poetry collection: 75 pp., small octavo (roughly 19 x 13 cm), with full-page drawings by Rudi Stern (dealer copies collate 11 illustrations) and the dedication "Meinen toten Brüdern und Schwestern" ("to my dead brothers and sisters"). The 1947 first printing carries the print-run statement "1.-20. Tausend" (total run 20,000 copies); that Tausend line plus the Rudi Stern drawings confirm the true first against a bare "1946" claim, but the line appears on BOTH states and does not by itself distinguish trade from deluxe. Two issues exist: the ordinary trade issue in illustrated wrappers (original-Broschur with illustrated dust jacket), and a numbered Vorzugsausgabe of 200 copies in full linen/cloth with the original dust jacket (the more desirable state). Sachs's original working title was "Dein Leib im Rauch durch die Luft," changed to the final title at Aufbau's request before publication; presence of the final title is correct for the first.

## Is this the true first?
The true first edition is the German-language "In den Wohnungen des Todes," Aufbau-Verlag, (East) Berlin, 1947 — Sachs's first published poetry collection. The first English-language book is "O the Chimneys: Selected Poems, Including the Verse Play, Eli," Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1967 (xxi + 387 pp.), a career-spanning bilingual selection with an introduction by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and translations by several hands (Michael Hamburger, Ruth and Matthew Mead, Michael Roloff, Christopher Holme, and others), issued right after her 1966 Nobel Prize; first printings are stated "First English Language Edition" and should retain the original unclipped dust jacket. There is no standalone English-only first edition of "In den Wohnungen des Todes"; English readers encounter it inside "O the Chimneys."

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No U.S. book-club (BCE/Reader's-type) edition of this German poetry volume exists, so the classic blind-stamp/clipped-jacket book-club tells do not apply. The real trap is dating and later reprints: scholarly consensus (German Wikipedia; the Frühe Texte der Holocaust-/Lagerliteratur catalog; the Literary Encyclopedia) fixes the first edition at 1947, yet some dealer/eBay listings tag the wrappered trade issue "1946" — treat a bare "1946" claim skeptically and verify against the "1.-20. Tausend" statement and the Rudi Stern drawings rather than a penciled date. Also distinguish the 1947 Aufbau first from the later Suhrkamp reissues (from 1961 onward) and its reappearance within collected editions such as "Fahrt ins Staublose" (Suhrkamp, 1961) and the multi-volume "Werke. Kommentierte Ausgabe" — none of which are the first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *In the Habitations of Death (In den Wohnungen des Todes)* by Nelly Sachs a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/in-the-habitations-of-death
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.