The reason why Death Fugue became a "poem of the times" is also closely related to the western ideological situation and the attention of western intellectuals after World War II. 1949, Adorno, a German Jewish philosopher, proposed that "it is barbaric and impossible to write poetry after Auschwitz". This not only raised the possibility of post-war western art, but more importantly, "Auschwitz" was raised as an insurmountable major "obstacle" for the first time. Auschwitz was originally a small place in Poland, where Nazi Germany established a concentration camp and millions of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and Slavs were slaughtered. It has become the most cruel and dark mystery in modern human history, not only as a symbol of the Holocaust and genocide, but also accompanied by people's thinking and criticism of all forms of alienation in modern society.
Paul. Paul celan (1920- 1970) is a German Jewish poet who has exerted a wide influence in the world since the second half of the 20th century. George steiner, a critic, called Celan's poems "the highest peak of German poetry (perhaps modern Europe)", while Vendler, a professor at Harvard University and a poetry critic, called Celan "the greatest poet since Ye Zhi". Now, in the world, he is recognized as the greatest German poet after Rilke.