Alfred Andersch (4.2.1914 Munich – 21.2.1980 Berzona/Switzerland)

Alfred Andersch was the second of three sons born to a conservative right-wing book dealer (originally a veterinarian) in Munich. From 1924, he attended the Wittelsbach secondary school under its principal Joseph Gebhard Himmler, who was Heinrich Himmler’s father and who Andersch later made the main character in his last story The Father of a Murderer, which was published posthumously. Poor grades forced Andersch to leave school shortly before he was due to sit his final examinations, and he began an apprenticeship as a book dealer.

In 1929, following his father’s early death, he joined the Communist Youth League (KJV), becoming its organizational leader for Southern Bavaria in January 1932. In March 1933, aged 19, he became caught up in the first wave of persecution launched against opponents of the Nazi regime. However, it is not certain whether he was imprisoned in Dachau Concentration Camp. At all events, Andersch subsequently took the stance of ‘internal emigration’ and kept his political behavior discreet. In 1933, for example, he started working for the antisemitic publishing company J.F. Lehmanns Verlag. In 1935, he married his half-Jewish girlfriend, Angelika Albert. In April 1937, he went to Hamburg and worked as a copywriter, at which time he also began writing stories. In 1940, Andersch was drafted for military service. In 1941, after the French campaign, he was discharged on the grounds of his marriage to a ‘non-Aryan’ wife. He then worked for a cosmetics company in Frankfurt am Main, where he lived with the painter Gisela Gronauer, who later became his second wife. He divorced Angelika Albert in 1943 and was drafted again shortly afterwards.

In 1944, he deserted in Italy; he was then sent to the USA as a POW and became the editor of the POW newspaper The Call. With reference to his previous marriage, Andersch was permitted to return to Germany in 1945 and initially worked as an assistant on Erich Kästner’s Neue Zeitung (New Newspaper), before founding the monthly magazine The Call with Hans Werner Richter and establishing the literary circle Gruppe 47 shortly afterwards. Andersch worked as a radio editor from 1948 until 1958; afterwards, he emigrated to Switzerland as a form of protest against political and social developments in the Federal Republic. He became a Swiss citizen in 1972 and died there in 1980. He won multiple awards and remained one of the most influential personalities on the German literary scene until his death.