Ernst Wiechert
Ernst Wiechert was a German teacher, poet and writer.
Biography
Wiechert was born in the village of Kleinort, East Prussia,.He was one of the most widely read novelists in Germany during the 1930s. He incorporated his humanist ideals in his novels among which Das einfache Leben and Die Jeromin-Kinder are the best known today.
Wiechert was strongly opposed to Nazism from the start. He appealed in 1933 and 1935 to the undergraduates in Munich to retain their critical thinking in relation to the national socialist ideology. This was rated as call to internal resistance. The minutes of the speech circulated illegally in Germany and reached Moscow in 1937 baked in bread. Here it was published in the influential exile magazine Das Wort. But Wiechert went even further and dared to openly criticize the imprisonment of Martin Niemöller by the Nazis in 1938. He was arrested shortly after the rigged plebiscite by which Germany absorbed Austria in April 1938.
In consequence of his criticism, he was interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp for four months. He wrote down his memories about his imprisonment and buried the manuscript; it was published in 1945 as Der Totenwald.
After the war, Wiechert was a critic of West German society. In 1948, he settled in Stäfa, Switzerland, where he died in August 1950 of cancer. He was buried in Stäfa.
Works
Die Flucht, novel,, 1916Der Wald, novel, 1922Der Totenwolf, novel, 1924Die blauen Schwingen, novel, 1925Der Knecht Gottes Andreas Nyland, novel, 1926 Der silberne Wagen, short stories, 1928Die kleine Passion. Geschichte eines Kindes, novel, 1929Die Flöte des Pan, short stories, 1930Jedermann, novel, 1931Die Magd des Jürgen Doskocil, 1932Geschichte eines Knaben, novel, 1933Das Spiel vom deutschen Bettelmann, radio play, 1933Die Majorin, novel, 1934Der Todeskandidat, short stories, 1934Der verlorene Sohn, play, 1935Die goldene Stadt, play, 1935Hirtennovelle, short stories, 1935Wälder und Menschen, childhood memoirs, 1936 Das heilige Jahr, short stories, 1936Von den treuen Begleitern, interpretations of poems, 1938Atli, der Bestmann, short stories, 1938Das einfache Leben, novel, 1939, Die Jeromin-Kinder, novel, 1945/7,, Die Totenmesse, short story, 1945/7Der brennende Dornbusch, short story, 1945Demetrius, short story, 1945Der Totenwald, Report from the concentration camp Buchenwald, 1946 Märchen 1946/7Der weiße Büffel oder Von der großen Gerechtigkeit, 1946 Der armen Kinder Weihnachten, play, 1946Okay oder die Unsterblichen, play, 1946Die Gebärde, short stories, 1947Der Richter, short story, 1948Jahre und Zeiten, memoirs, 1949, Die Mutter, short stories, 1948Missa sine Nomine, novel 1950Der Exote, novel, 1951Die letzten Lieder, poems, 1951Es geht ein Pflüger übers Land, short stories chosen by Lilje Wiechert, 1951Häftling Nr. 7188, diary entries and letters, 1966- Vom Trost der Welt, 1938