Ludwig Renn

German author, born a Saxon nobleman, he later became a committed communist and lived in East Berlin. He adopted the name Ludwig Renn in 1930, after becoming a communist, renouncing his noble title and taking the name of the hero of his first successful novel, Krieg (1928). His books Nachkrieg (1930) and Rußlandfahrten (1932) made him the most important German communist writer of the inter-war period.

From 1911 Renn served as an officer in a prestigious Saxon Guards Regiment, where he served under his friend Prince Friedrich August. Between 1914 and 1918 he fought in the First World War as a company commander, and a field battalion commander on the Western Front. His first book, Krieg (War), which appeared in 1928 brought him wide acclaim. After the war he was a captain in the Dresden security police, a paramilitary force set up during the Weimar Republic. In 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, Renn refused to open fire upon striking workers and left the police service shortly afterwards. This is recounted in the novel Nachkrieg (1930) but confirmed as a fact by some sources.

From 1920 to 1923 Renn studied law, economics, history of art and Russian philology in Göttingen and Munich. In 1923 he worked as an art dealer in Dresden during the time of hyperinflation.

During 1925 and 1926 Renn undertook a journey on foot through Europe and the Near East. In 1927 he undertook further studies in archaeology, art history and Chinese history in Vienna, returning to Germany in the same year to give lectures to workers on the history of China and Russia at the Volkshochschule Zwickau.

In 1928, the year in which he published Krieg, Renn became a member of the German Communist Party, a step which the novel Nachkrieg (1930) reflects. In the same year he joined the Roter Frontkämpferbund (Alliance of Red Front-Fighters) and from 1928 to 1932 was secretary of the Alliance of Proletarian-Revolutionary Writers in Berlin (BPRS).