Stefan Heym (1913–2001)

Stefan Heym was the pen name of Helmut Flieg, born to a Jewish merchant family in Chemnitz, Germany. He completed secondary school in Berlin, but fled Germany after the Reichstag fire in February 1933, shortly after the Nazi regime came to power. He emigrated to the USA and served in the special German-speaking unit of U.S. Military Intelligence in World War II known as the Ritchie Boys. He earned a degree at the University of Chicago and became a journalist for German-language newspapers, on staff and as a freelancer. In 1952, he moved back to the part of his native country which was then the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany. He published works in English and German at home and abroad, and despite longstanding criticism of the GDR, remained a committed socialist.