Oct 8, 2009, 15:16 GMT
Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German officials praised author Herta Mueller, 56, for winning the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, highlighting her efforts to ensure that the cruelties of communist dictatorship were never forgotten.
Mueller, who fled the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, and has lived in Berlin since 1987, is now a German national.
'We are so happy that she found a new home in Germany,' said Merkel in a brief appearance before the press. 'Her work is nourished from her own personal experiences. It attests to her fear, but also to her incredible courage.'
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, 'we're very thankful to her that her novels have consistently been against repression, terrorism and dictatorship.'
He praised her for keeping up her courage when she had been subject to persecution as a young woman in her native Romania, adding that she now represented the close links between Germany and Romania.
She is the 10th German to win the Literature prize. The previous German was Guenter Grass, who won the prize 10 years ago.
Merkel's chief culture aide, Bernd Neumann, said Mueller had kept the history of ethnic Germans in Romania alive and 'uncovered the wounds that the many years of the Ceausescu dictatorship inflicted on the people.'
Neumann, who is state minister for culture, said, 'I once met her at a reading by authors in the Chancellery. I was deeply impressed at her personality and her writings.'
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