Erich Weinert

Erich Weinert (August 4, 1890 - April 20, 1953 in Berlin) was a German writer, Communist, and member of the KPD.

Biography

Weinert was born in 1890 to a family with Social Democratic beliefs. He attended a boys-only school in Magdeburg and from 1908 to 1910 visited the arts, crafts and trade school in the city, then going to an art school in Berlin in 1912. He later joined the military, where he participated as an officer in the First World War. After the war, he went to Leipzig and worked as an actor and lecture artist, joining the KPD in 1929. During this time, he made various works.

From 1933 to 1935 Weinert, with his wife and daughter, went into exile in the Saar protectorate. He then went to Paris, France so he would be able to arrive in the Soviet Union. He became a member of the international brigades in the Spanish civil war from 1937 to 1939, where he was active as front correspondence.

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Weinert sided with the Soviets and began creating propaganda to encourage soldiers in the Wehrmacht to abandon their positions using methods such as poems printed on handbills that were thrown off behind the German lines. In 1943 he was selected as the president of the National Committee for a Free Germany

In 1946 he returned to Germany in a sickly state. Regardless, he served actively as vice-president of the Central Administration for National Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone. He continued to publish works until his death at the age of 62 in 1953.