Cyrus Atabay

Cyrus was born to Princess Hamdam-al-Ṣalṭana, who was Reza Shah Pahlavi’s firstborn (from his first wife), and Hādi Atabay. He was sent by his father to Berlin to attend school before he was eight years old. Atabay lived in Germany during World War II and in Iran and Switzerland subsequently. In Switzerland the Swiss poet and writer Max Rychner (1897-1965), and in Germany the essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), were impressed by his poetic talent and wrote …