Olga Kirsch
Olga Kirsch (1924-1997) Poet.
An English-speaking South African who is well-known in South Africa as a major poet writing in the Afrikaans language. In Israel she wrote in English but remained virtually unknown, although she lived there from l948 until her death in l997. In South Africa she published eight volumes of Afrikaans poetry, and in 1994 a volume of “Selected Poems” (Human and Rousseau, Cape Town). Her first English volume of poems in Israel was “The Book of Sitrya” in 1990, written as a way of coping with the death of her granddaughter. She then continued to write in English, becoming active in “The Israel Association of Writers in English”. In l996, seeking wider publication in English, she sent poems to the USA and England. Months after her death, an English editor approached “The Israel Association” about publication of five poems received the previous year. Her poems from Israel deal mainly with her family and her feelings, and do not portray contemporary life in this country.
KIRSCH
(Family Name)Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a patronymic, derived from a male ancestor's personal name, in this case of biblical origin.
Literally "cherry" in German, Kirsch(e) is one of the numerous variants of the biblical male personal name Gershon, mentioned in Genesis 46.11; Exodus 6.16,17; Numbers 4.22, 38,41; 7.7; 10.17; Joshua 21.6,27; 1 Chronicles 5.27. The Levitic clan of the Gershonites (Gershuni) are his descendants. Moses called his first-born Gershon, because "I have been a stranger in a strange land" (in Hebrew, Ger Shom). The biblical name appears in several spellings, preserving its phonetic identity, but in the course of Jewish migration and the impact of different languages spoken by the ethnic majorities in whose countries Jews lived in the Diaspora, Gershon/Gerschon has produced many family names which look and sound quite unlike the original and seem to be far removed from its initial significance. Abbreviated to Gersh/Gersch, and combining with the Greek Geronymos ("old man"), it created Gronim. Gersh/Gertz, derived from Gershon as well as the Slavic variant of the German Herz ("heart" and "hart" in German, a "secular equivalent" of Naphtali), fathered names like Gershovitz and Gerschmann. Merging with place names, it formed groups of family names comprising the German terms for "barley" (Gerste), "cherry" (Kirsche), and even "church" (Kirche). The original name Gershon is almost invisible in the 20th century French Carchamboin, derived from the equally distant Yiddish Karchenboym, but less veiled in the Russian Gershuni, the German Gerson, the English Gershwin and the 13th century French Garsonnet.
Spelling variants of the German Kirsch include the Yiddish/Polish Kersch, Kirsz, Kiersz and Kers. Kherson is a city in Ukraine, which had a large Jewish population in the early 20th century. It stands on the site of the ancient Greek colony Chersoneros, where some Jews went to live in the Roman period. Although certain families may have taken their name from this city, Kerson and its variants are generally derived from Gerson/Gershon. The diversification of the personal name is well illustrated by an American Kirschen family, originally from Seduva near Kaunas (Kovno) in Lithuania, who also called themselves Kirsh (an English spelling of the German Kirsch), Kerson (a spelling variant of Gerson), and Kirson (a form of Kerson/Gerson).
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Kirsch include the 20th century South African-born Israeli business executive, Henry Julius Kirsch, and the Afrikaans poet Olga Kirsch (1924- 1997).