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Bruno Apitz (28 April 1900 – 7 April 1979) was a German writer and a survivor of the

Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or s ...

Life and career

Apitz was born in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, as the twelfth child of a washer woman. He attended school until he was fourteen, then started apprenticeship as a die cutter. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, he was a passionate supporter of German Communist Party leader

Karl Liebknecht Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag fro ...

. At 17, he made a speech in front of striking factory workers that resulted in his being sentenced to nineteen months in prison. In 1919, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and in 1927, the more radical

Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

(KPD). He took active part in the German November Revolution of 1918 and in opposition to the

Kapp Putsch The Kapp Putsch (), also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch (), was an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to undo th ...

of 1920. During the latter he published his first poems and short stories in Communist newspapers. He wrote his first play in 1924 and was later repeatedly imprisoned under Nazi rule in various

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...

s for spreading socialistic anti-war propaganda and being an active member of the Communist Party. From 1937 to 1945 he was an inmate of the

near

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg an ...

. It was this imprisonment that would later become the basis for his most famous novel, '' Nackt unter Wölfen'' (Naked among Wolves). After 1945, he worked for the East German state film company

DEFA DEFA (''Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft'') was the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) throughout the country's existence. Since 2019, DEFA's film heritage has been made accessible and licensable on the PRO ...

and as a radio play author. He was one of the founding members of the

Socialist Unity Party of Germany The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ; SED, ), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germ ...

(SED), which became the dominant party in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). In the early 1950s, Apitz worked as a guide to the former camp, Buchenwald, and was "actively involved in the plan for the earliest expedition to be shown there in 1952."Nevin, Bill. The Genesis and Impact of ''Naked among Wolves''. 2007. Note 30, p. 117. He was a member of the Academy of Arts and the PEN-Clubs of the GDR. Apitz's best selling novel ''Nackt unter Wölfen'' was first published in 1958 and then translated into over thirty languages, winning him worldwide recognition. The English translation, the only Apitz novel to have been translated into English, was by Edith Anderson and published by Seven Seas Books in 1967. The logline for this edition reads as follows: "Armies drive before them the rags of Hitler's might and news trickles through to the concentration camp inmates and a child is saved." Bruno Apitz's home town,

, named him a Citizen of Honour in 1976. He died on 17 April 1979 in

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

Books

* ''Der Mensch im Nacken'', 1924 * '' Nackt unter Wölfen'', 1958; English translation, ''Naked among Wolves'', 1967 * ''Esther'', 1959 * ''Der Regenbogen'', 1976 * ''Schwelbrand. Autobiografischer Roman'', Berlin 1984

References

1900 births 1979 deaths People from the Kingdom of Saxony Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians Communist Party of Germany members Socialist Unity Party of Germany members German male short story writers German short story writers German radio writers East German writers 20th-century German novelists 20th-century German dramatists and playwrights German male novelists German male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century German short story writers Communists in the German Resistance Buchenwald concentration camp survivors Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit (honor clasp) Recipients of the National Prize of East Germany Writers from Leipzig {{Germany-SED-politician-stub