Willi Bredel (2 May 1901 – 27 October 1964) was a German writer and president of the DDR Academy of Arts, Berlin. Born in Hamburg, he was a pioneer of socialist realist literature.
Life and career
Born in to the family of a cigar maker, after graduating from primary school he became a metal worker. From 1916 to 1917 he was a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth, from 1917 to 1920 of the Spartakusbund and from 1919 of the Communist Party of Germany. In 1923 he took part in the Hamburg Uprising and was sentenced to two years in prison. After his amnesty in 1925, he worked as a lathe operator in the Kampnagel factory while being the editor of various communist news outlets. Due to "Preparing literary treason and high treason", he was in 1930 sentence to two years imprisonment. He wrote his first novels while in custody.
Soon after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Bredel was imprisoned at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. He was released in spring 1934. Fleeing from Nazi Germany, he went to Czechoslovakia and then Moscow, where he lived at the Hotel Lux. He published Die Prüfung (1934), a novel describing the Nazi concentration camp, which was reprinted several times and translated into other languages. He also published accounts of his experiences in the Deutsche Zentral Zeitung, a German-language newspaper published in Moscow.
Bredel took part in the Spanish Civil War as commissar of the Thälmann Battalion as well as the Second World War, in which he fought on the Soviet side.
His propaganda material, along with those of Walter Ulbricht and Erich Weinert was used in an attempt to lure the 6th Army into surrendering at the Battle of Stalingrad.
After the war, he returned to Germany as part of the Sobottka Group, sent to lay the groundwork for the Soviet occupation of Mecklenburg. He later lived in East Germany and died in East Berlin.
Awards and decorations
1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
1956 Hans Beimler Medal
1960 Banner of Labor
1961 Patriotic Order of Merit in gold
1964 Burial at the Memorial of the Socialists (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery)