The family moved to Mid-City, Los Angeles, in 1930. On April 23, 1923, they sailed from Bremerhaven to Baltimore, Maryland, where they settled. However, given the crippling postwar reparations being required of Germany, which led to a stagnant economy and high levels of inflation, he was unable to make a living and decided to move the family to the U.S. Afterwards, Bukowski's father became a building contractor, set to make great financial gains in the aftermath of the war, and after two years moved the family to Pfaffendorf (today part of Koblenz). Bukowski repeatedly claimed to be born out of wedlock, but Andernach marital records indicate that his parents married one month before his birth. He had an affair with Katharina, a German friend's sister, and she subsequently became pregnant. His father was German-American and a sergeant in the United States Army serving in Germany after the empire's defeat in 1918. īukowski's parents met in Andernach following World War I. As far back as Bukowski could trace, his whole family was German. Bukowski assumed his paternal ancestor had moved from Poland to Germany around 1780, as "Bukowski" is a Polish last name. A Jewish origin of Nannette Israel is sometimes assumed the name Israel is, however, widespread among Catholics in the Eifel region. His mother, Katharina Bukowski, was the daughter of Wilhelm Fett and Nannette Israel. The couple had four children, including Heinrich (Henry), Charles Bukowski's father. They married and settled in Pasadena, California, where Leonard worked as a successful carpenter. In Cleveland, Ohio, Leonard met Emilie Krause, an ethnic German, who had emigrated from Danzig, Prussia (today Gdańsk, Poland). His paternal grandfather, Leonard Bukowski, had moved to the United States from Imperial Germany in the 1880s. army of occupation after World War I and had remained in Germany after his army service, and Katharina (née Fett). Since his death in March 1994, Bukowski has been the subject of a number of critical articles and books about both his life and writings.īukowski's birthplace at Aktienstrasse, AndernachĬharles Bukowski was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Prussia, Weimar Germany, to Heinrich (Henry) Bukowski, an American of German descent who had served in the U.S. he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero." ĭuring his lifetime, Bukowski received little attention from academic critics in the USA, but was better received in Europe, particularly the UK, and especially Germany, where he was born. Regarding his enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal. In 1986, Time called Bukowski a " laureate of American lowlife". As noted by one reviewer, "Bukowski continued to be, thanks to his antics and deliberate clownish performances, the king of the underground and the epitome of the littles in the ensuing decades, stressing his loyalty to those small press editors who had first championed his work and consolidating his presence in new ventures such as the New York Quarterly, Chiron Review, or Slipstream." These poems and stories were later republished by John Martin's Black Sparrow Press (now HarperCollins/ Ecco Press) as collected volumes of his work. Some of these works include his Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window, published by his friend and fellow poet Charles Potts, and better known works such as Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career. īukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City. Bukowski's work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles. Henry Charles Bukowski ( / b uː ˈ k aʊ s k i/ boo- KOW-skee born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, German: Aug– March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer.