Willi Bredel
Willi Bredel was a notable German writer and political activist, born as the eldest of three children in 1901. His early life was marked by his family's strong Social Democratic beliefs, which influenced his political engagement. Bredel's experiences during World War I, as well as his time in jail for political activism, shaped his literary career. Notably, he spent thirteen months in a concentration camp, an ordeal that inspired his acclaimed work, "Die Pruefung," reflecting on the harsh realities of prison life.
Throughout his life, Bredel was involved in various forms of media, including journalism and editing, and he played a role in the Spanish Civil War. After World War II, he settled in East Germany, where he became a prominent figure in the literary community, receiving several prestigious awards, including the National Prize for Art and Literature. Bredel was also involved in promoting Communist propaganda and served as president of the Academy of the Arts. He passed away in Berlin in 1964, leaving behind a complex legacy as both a writer of promise and a figure aligned with Communist ideologies.
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Subject Terms
Willi Bredel
Writer
- Born: May 2, 1901
- Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany
- Died: October 27, 1964
- Place of death: Berlin, Germany
Biography
Willi Bredel was the oldest of three children born to tobacconist Johann Carl Bredel (1877-1930) and his wife Frieda Bredel, née Harder (1879-1951). Both parents were Social Democrats. After World War I, Willi’s father helped found the Communist Party in Hamburg, Germany. During World War II, Willi’s mother did forced labor in a Hamburg munitions factory. When the war ended in 1945, Bredel brought her to live with him in East Germany.
Bredel loved opera, and until he was sixteen sang in the Hamburg Municipal Theater Choir. From 1908 to 1916, he attended the Spitalerstrasse School. His teacher for two years was Wilhelm Lamszus, author of the best-selling book Das Menschenschlachthaus (1912; the human slaughterhouse), that warned the working class of the coming war. Years later, Bredel described Lamszus in Unter Türmen und Masten (1960; under towers and masts).
Bredel was married twice. With his first wife, Lisa Callis, he had two sons: Victor (1925-1966), a physicist, and Erik (1931-), a cameraman and photographer. The children grew up in Moscow, where Bredel met his second wife, Maj Olsson (1914-2001), a Swedish translator and radio moderator. They married on July 4, 1951. With Maj, Bredel had one son, Claus (1947-), a radio moderator in Berlin. Bredel also adopted Maj’s daughter Anna-May (1937-).
When Bredel was fifteen, he left school and trained as a lathe operator. In 1923, at the age of twenty-two, he was sentenced to two years in jail for participating in the Hamburg workers’ October uprising. While in jail, Bredel wrote his study of Jean Paul Marat.
On his release, Bredel worked as a journalist, a sailor, and a lathe operator before becoming editor of the Hamburger Volkszeitung (Hamburg people’s newspaper). In 1929, he was again sentenced to two years in jail for criticizing the chief of police in Berlin. In 1933, Bredel was arrested by the Nazis. He spent thirteen months in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp outside Hamburg, enduring solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, and severe beatings. On his release, he fled to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he wrote Die Pruefung (1934; the test). It is Bredel’s best work, an accurate account of conditions in the concentration camp.
Bredel’s German citizenship was revoked in 1935; he was an exile. In 1936, he co-edited the monthly literary journal Das Wort with Bertolt Brecht and Lion Feuchtwanger in Moscow. From 1936 to 1937 Bredel fought in the Spanish Civil War, and from 1938 to 1939 he worked as an author, editor, and publisher in Paris. Bredel returned to the Soviet Union before the outbreak of World War II and wrote Communist propaganda for distribution to the German soldiers.
After World War II, Bredel moved to East Germany. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Rostock in 1945, the National Prize for Art and Literature in 1950, the National Prize and the Ernst Thälmann Medal in 1954, the Medal for Fighters Against Fascism in 1958, the Johannes R. Becher Gold Medal, and on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 1961, the Gold Medal for Service to the Fatherland. In 1962, Bredel was elected president of the Academy of the Arts, which now houses the Willi Bredel Archive.
Bredel was a self-taught writer who initially showed great promise, but later became a mouthpiece for the Communist Party. He died in Berlin on October 27, 1964.