Carmen Sylva

Carmen Sylva, the pen-name of Elizabeth, queen of Roumania, who was born 29th December 1843, the daughter of Prince Hermann of Wied Neuwied, and Maria of Nassau, and married King (then Prince) Charles of Roumania in 1869. Her only child, a daughter, died in 1874, and out of this great sorrow of her life arose her literary activity. Two poems, printed privately at Leipzig in 1880 under the name 'Carmen Sylva,' were followed by Stürme (Bonn, 1881), Leidens Erdengang (Berlin, 1882; translated into English as Pilgrim Sorrow by Helen Zimmermann, 1884), Jehovah (Leip. 1882), Ein Gebet (Berlin, 1882), and Pensées d'une Reine (Paris, 1882). Many of the translations in Rumän. Dichtungen (Leip. 1881) are from her pen. Another book, in which she worked into literary form many native traditions of her adopted country, is Pclesch-Märchen (Leip. 1883). In the war of 1877-78, as muna rantilor ('mother of the wounded'), she endeared herself to her people by her devotion to the wounded, and since then she has fostered the national women's industries. See Life by Baroness Deichmann (Eng. trans. 1890).