Bodo Uhse

Uhse, Bodo

 

Born Mar. 12,1904, in Rastatt; died July 2,1963, in Berlin. German writer (German Democratic Republic). Member of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic (1955). Member of the Communist Party of Germany from 1932.

The son of an officer, Uhse emigrated in 1933. From 1936 to 1938 he served as commissar of one of the international brigades in Spain. After 1938 he lived in the USA and Mexico and contributed to the antifascist newspaper Freies Deutschland. He returned to his homeland in 1948 and served as chairman of the Writers’ Union of the German Democratic Republic from 1950 to 1952.

Uhse began his literary career with the autobiographical novel The Mercenary and the Soldier (1935) and a book of essays on Spain, The First Battle (1938; Russian translation, 1942). Uhse’s most significant works are the novels Lieutenant Bertram (1944) and The Patriots (1954) and the short stories and novellas in the collections Saint Kunigunde in the Snow (1949) and The Bridge (1952). Uhse’s prose combined the traditions of H. von Kleist with the author’s experience in publicism and journalism. Uhse received the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic in 1954.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Iskry vo mgle. Moscow, 1960.

REFERENCES

Zegers, A. “Osnovnye voprosy sovremennoi nemetskoi literatury.” Innostrannaia literatura, 1956, no. 3.
Fradkin, I. M. Literatura novoi Germanii. Moscow, 1961.