Martha Albrand

Writer

• Born: September 8, 1914
• Birthplace: Rostock, Germany
• Died: June 24, 1981
• Place of death: New York, New York

Biography

Martha Albrand was born Heidi Huberta Freybe on September 18, 1914, in Rostock, Germany, to Paul and Paula Freybe. Growing up, Albrand studied under private tutors and attended private schools in France, Switzerland, Italy, and England, and continued her studies at the University of Zurich. In 1932, Albrand married Joseph M. Loewengard. After his death, she married Sydney J. Lamon in March of 1957. In 1937, Albrand immigrated to United States, and she became a naturalized citizen in 1947.

Albrand had always worked as a writer. She began her writing career as a journalist in Europe. She had her first novel published in 1935 (Das Frauenhaus), and would go on to write more than forty novels throughout her fifty-year career.

Albrand began her literary career writing romance novels, a popular genre in the troubling pre-World War II years because of the escape such novels offered readers. By the time she arrived and published her first novel in America, No Surrender (1942), a suspense- packed love story set within the Dutch underground of the war, her style had evolved into mystery and suspense fiction. This would become Albrand’s genre and what she would be known for writing.

Many of Albrand’s thrillers take place in Europe during the war and deal with spies, espionage, and lost loves. She had a wonderful ability to bring the background settings to life by incorporating her personal memories of prewar Europe into her settings and characters. Endure No Longer (1944) returns to prewar Germany, offering the reader a firsthand look at life in upper-class Prussia and examines the circumstances that led to Hitler’s rise to power and World War II. Desperate Moment (1951) follows a young man’s escape from a German concentration camp and his subsequent arrest, allegation, and trial for the murder of an American military police officer. The protagonist is transported from one type of prison to another due to circumstances beyond his control.

Albrand was attracted to the suspense and mystery genres because she saw them as vehicles for expressing her concerns and fears over personal freedom and its disappearance in society. She explores political as well as other freedoms in Whispering Hill (1947), focusing, as in other novels, on the effects of political decisions on the individual. Always concerned with contemporary issues and changes in society, Albrand’s books were consistently fresh and modern, and though she published a tremendous number of novels, she rarely if ever repeated a theme. Although reviews of her work are at times mixed, she has consistently been praised for her realistic settings and characters, as well as her mastership in creating and maintaining suspense and tension.

Albrand died June 24, 1981, in New York City. She received the Grand Prix de Literature Policiere for Desperate Moment in 1950. She was granted an honorary Ph.D. from Colorado State Christian College in 1972. Albrand’s greatest literary contribution was her ability to engage the reader through her novels’ settings while constantly building suspense through an intelligent and personal writing style.