# Is "Mohn und Gedächtnis" by Paul Celan a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Mohn und Gedächtnis by Paul Celan (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1952) is identified by: First edition, issued December 1952 with general sale from January 1953; 75 pp., in the publisher's black original linen with cover and spine titles stamped in gilt; catalogued as Wilpert/Gühring II 8 ('WG² 8'), the reference German dealers cite to confirm the first. Both books belong in a serious reference, and the distinction is one of definition rather than doubt.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, issued December 1952 with general sale from January 1953
- 75 pp., in the publisher's black original linen with cover and spine titles stamped in gilt; catalogued as Wilpert/Gühring II 8 ('WG² 8'), the reference German dealers cite to confirm the first
- The volume collects 56 poems in three cycles — 'Der Sand aus den Urnen', 'Gegenlicht' and 'Halme der Nacht' — of which 27 are carried over in slightly altered form from the suppressed 1948 Vienna book whose title supplies the first cycle's name; that recurrence is a common source of confusion between the two books
- Dealers record a transparent glassine jacket printed on the flaps, but we found this on only one description, so treat its absence as unproven rather than as a defect
- Der Sand aus den Urnen (Vienna: A. Sexl, 1948), the bibliographic first: 500 hand-numbered copies, 61 pp. + 1 leaf, roughly 22 x 14.5 cm, in original half-cloth with the cover title printed in red, with two lithographs by Edgar Jené — Celan telegraphed to have the book withdrawn on receiving it, objecting to the printing errors and to Jené's illustrations, and copies are recorded with the lithographs removed by Celan himself and with his autograph corrections in ink
- Publisher imprint reads Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Paul Celan |
| Publisher | Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart |
| Year | 1952 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | First edition, issued December 1952 with general sale from January 1953 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First edition, issued December 1952 with general sale from January 1953; 75 pp., in the publisher's black original linen with cover and spine titles stamped in gilt; catalogued as Wilpert/Gühring II 8 ('WG² 8'), the reference German dealers cite to confirm the first. The volume collects 56 poems in three cycles — 'Der Sand aus den Urnen', 'Gegenlicht' and 'Halme der Nacht' — of which 27 are carried over in slightly altered form from the suppressed 1948 Vienna book whose title supplies the first cycle's name; that recurrence is a common source of confusion between the two books. Dealers record a transparent glassine jacket printed on the flaps, but we found this on only one description, so treat its absence as unproven rather than as a defect. Der Sand aus den Urnen (Vienna: A. Sexl, 1948), the bibliographic first: 500 hand-numbered copies, 61 pp. + 1 leaf, roughly 22 x 14.5 cm, in original half-cloth with the cover title printed in red, with two lithographs by Edgar Jené — Celan telegraphed to have the book withdrawn on receiving it, objecting to the printing errors and to Jené's illustrations, and copies are recorded with the lithographs removed by Celan himself and with his autograph corrections in ink.

## Is this the true first?
Both books belong in a serious reference, and the distinction is one of definition rather than doubt. Der Sand aus den Urnen (A. Sexl, Vienna, 1948) is Celan's first book and the first German-language appearance of 'Todesfuge'; Mohn und Gedächtnis (DVA, Stuttgart, 1952) is the first edition Celan himself acknowledged — German auction cataloguing describes it as the first book publication recognised by the author — and is the first obtainable book for effectively all collectors. Note also that 'Todesfuge' had already appeared in print before either book, in Petre Solomon's Romanian translation as 'Tangoul morţii' in Contemporanul (Bucharest, May 1947), which was also the first appearance of the pseudonym 'Celan'; the 1948 Vienna book is the first German printing, not the first printing. No English edition has any precedence.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of the 1948 Vienna book — the question is largely moot, since sources record that by 1952 only five deposit copies had gone to libraries and nine had been sold, with 320 copies pulped (a tally that does not account for the full 500, so the survival figure should be read as approximate). For Mohn und Gedächtnis, DVA reprinted the collection and it remains in print, including a Joachim Seng edition, so the 1952 black linen binding, the 75-page collation and the WG² 8 reference — not the DVA imprint — are what identify the first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Mohn und Gedächtnis* by Paul Celan a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/mohn-und-ged-chtnis
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.