Fritz Reck-Malleczewen

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen (August 11, 1884 on the Malleczewen Estate in Masuren – February 16, 1945 at the Dachau concentration camp) was a German author.

Friedrich, aka Fritz Reck-Malleczewen was the son of Prussian noble Hermann Reck. Though he originally wanted to be a musician, and at one point studied medicine in Innsbruck. He escaped military service due to diabetes, and married Anna Louise Büttner in 1908; they would have three daughters and a son before divorcing in 1930.

Graduating in 1911, he was a ship's doctor, in American waters, for a year. Thereafter he moved to Stuttgart to become a journalist and theatre critic for the Suddeutsche Zeitung, moving to Pasing, near Munich in 1914. In 1933 Reck converted to Catholicism, and in 1935 he married Irmgard von Borcke, with whom he had another three daughters.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Reck was also a novelist, mainly of children's adventure stories. One book, Monte Carlo has been filmed twice. Many of his books were banned by the Nazis, and more were not published until years after his death. Today, his best known work is Diary Of A Man In Despair, which is his memoir of life under Nazi rule (which he vehemently opposed), and which was published in English in 1970.

Reck was denounced for reviling German purity in December 1944. In January 1945 he was sent to the concentration camp of Dachau. There he was shot in the neck on February 16th 1945, though it was claimed for many years that he had died of typhus on the 17th.

Bibliography:

*Uradel, 1914
*Mit Admiral Spee. 1936 (Written in 1914/15)
*Aus Tsingtau entkommen, 1916
*Der Admiral der Roten Flagge. 1917
*Monteton. 1924
*Die Siedlung Unigtrusttown. 1925
*Frau Übersee. 1926
*Liebesreigen und Fanfaren. 1927
*Die Dame aus New York. 1928 )
*Sven entdeckt das Paradies. 1928
*Jean Paul Marat. 1929
*Bomben auf Monte Carlo. 1930
*Des Tieres Fall. 1931
*Hundertmark. 1934
*Krach um Payta. 1935
*Ein Mannsbild namens Prack. 1935
*Sophie Dorothee. 1936
*Bockelson. 1937
*La Paloma. 1937
*Spiel im Park. 1937
*Der grobe Brief. 1940
*Diana Pontecorvo 1944
*Das Ende der Termiten 1946
*Charlotte Corday. 1947
*Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten, Frankfurt. 1994, translated as Diary Of A Man In Despair

References:

*The introduction and translator's notes to the English translation of Diary Of A Man In Despair. *http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Reck-Malleczewen