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Willi Bredel

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File:Stamps of Germany (DDR) 1971, MiNr 1647.jpg
East German stamp from 1971 depicting Willi Bredel

Willi Bredel (May 2, 1901 – October 27, 1964) was a German writer and president of the Akademie der Künste. Born in Hamburg, he was a pioneer of socialist realist literature.

Soon after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Bredel was imprisoned at KZ Fuhlsbüttel, a concentration camp. After fleeing from Nazi Germany to Czechoslovakia and Moscow, where he lived at Hotel Lux, he published Die Prüfung (1934), a novel describing the Nazi concentration camp, which was read in many languages.

Bredel took part in the Spanish Civil War as commissar of the Thälmann Battalion[1] as well as the Second World War, in which he fought on the Soviet side. After the war, he returned to Germany as part of the Sobottka Group,[2] sent to lay the groundwork for the Soviet occupation of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He later lived in East Germany and died in Berlin.

Selected works

  • Die Prüfung
  • The Death of General Moreau and other stories
  • Verwandte und Bekannte Trilogy

References

  1. ^ Antifascism and Memory in East Germany - Remembering the International Brigades 1945-1989 - McLellan, Josie; Oxford Historical Monographs, Page 31
  2. ^ "Namensliste der drei KPD-Einsatzgruppen vom 27. April 1945" German Federal Archives. BArch NY 4036/517. Retrieved November 22, 2011 Template:De icon

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