Stefan Heym

Stefan Heym, the bestselling German author, was Hitler's youngest literary exile. As a young man he had seen the Reichstag on fire in 1933, and after the war he returned to the shattered Reichstag as a survivor in American uniform. After fleeing Nazism for the United States and serving in the U.S. army, he found himself fleeing McCarthyism and circling back to what had in the meantime become the German Democratic Republic. After the takeover by West Germany he was elected to the Bundestag in...See more

Stefan Heym, the bestselling German author, was Hitler's youngest literary exile. As a young man he had seen the Reichstag on fire in 1933, and after the war he returned to the shattered Reichstag as a survivor in American uniform. After fleeing Nazism for the United States and serving in the U.S. army, he found himself fleeing McCarthyism and circling back to what had in the meantime become the German Democratic Republic. After the takeover by West Germany he was elected to the Bundestag in 1994 on the ticket of the Party of Democratic Socialism. Under East German rule, he had been a tolerated, and even honored, dissident, and yet once the German Democratic Republic dissolved he asked: "Are there not experiences of life in the former East Germany that would be useful for Germany's common future? Maybe the guaranteed job? The secure career? The sure roof over one's head?" See less