Background
Willi Bredel was born on May 2, 1901, in Hamburg, Germany. Willi Bredel was the first son of Johann Carl Bredel and his wife Frieda Pauline Harder.
(Störtebeker - legendary pirate, protector of the poor and...)
Störtebeker - legendary pirate, protector of the poor and disenfranchised, foolhardy captain and leader of the fleet of the Vitalienbrüder. Willi Bredel tells how the young Klaus hired on the Sancta Genoveva, soon takes up the fight with the criminal shipowner Wulflam, resolutely organized a mutiny, captain of the ship and in the squadron of a pirate fleet begins a free, wild pirate life. The scenes of action range from Wismar and Stralsund to Sweden and Norway, from the Scottish coast to Friesland and Hamburg. The novel about the piracy in the German large waters, counts since its appearance in 1950 to the most popular works of the adventure literature.
https://www.amazon.com/Die-Vitalienbr%C3%BCder-Ein-St%C3%B6rtebeker-Roman-German-ebook/dp/B0725GL2W7/?tag=2022091-20
1950
(This is a non-fiction piece that recounts Bredel’s horror...)
This is a non-fiction piece that recounts Bredel’s horror and disgust at the atrocity and duplicity of which the Fascists - Spanish, German, and Italian - were capable.
https://www.amazon.com/Spanienkrieg-Begegnung-Ebro-Schriften-Dokumente/dp/B0018INN84/?tag=2022091-20
1977
Willi Bredel was born on May 2, 1901, in Hamburg, Germany. Willi Bredel was the first son of Johann Carl Bredel and his wife Frieda Pauline Harder.
Bredel left formal schooling at the age of fifteen to learn a trade.
While serving an apprenticeship as a lathe operator, he joined the Young Socialist Workers, and in 1919 became an early member of the Communist Party of Germany. Although he never returned to school, Bredel embarked upon a rigorous, self-designed course of study that ranged from the works of Marx and Lenin to the writings of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, and others. His revolutionary politics soon brought him trouble with the authorities - he was imprisoned in 1923, at the age of 22, for taking part in the rebellion that took place in October of that year. During his incarceration he composed Marat der Volksfreund, which was published the following year in Hamburg. This work also inaugurated Bredel’s career as sometime journalist, which he took up upon his release from prison in 1925.
From 1925 to 1932, Bredel combined dock work and a stint at sea with his journalist pursuits, writing for proletariat publications such as the Hamburger Volkseitung. These articles, criticizing labor conditions and the exploitation of workers, earned him a second two-year prison sentence - this time for literary high treason. Once again, incarceration proved to be a spur to his literary talents, and he produced two more books, this time novels, Maschinenfabrik N & K: Ein Roman aus dem proletarischen Alltag, and Rosenhofstraffe: Roman einer Hamburger Arbeiterstrasse, both of which concerned the workers’ struggle and presented the Communist party as the hope for the future.
By this time, Hitler had succeeded in his drive to power, and Bredel’s political writings were unacceptable. This still did not deter him - shortly after his release in 1932, Bredel brought out his third novel, Paragraf v zashchitu sobstvennosti (published in Moscow in 1933), which once again denounced the exploitation of workers. Upon release from the camp in 1934, Bredel saw the wisdom in flight. He left Germany, ultimately to arrive in the Soviet Union. Soon after his arrival there, Bredel fell into the company of Bertolt Brecht and Lion Feuchtwanger, and together with them began work on Das Wort (“The Word”), a monthly journal concerned with literature and political propaganda, published in German, dedicated to furthering the aims of the Communist party in the U.S.S.R. and Germany.
Bredel’s commitment to politics and his opposition to Fascism was not merely literary. During this first stay in the Soviet Union, he joined up with the Thalmann Battalion, serving as political officer and battalion commander in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1937. Some of his experiences at war provided material for Bredel’s Begegnung am Ebro (1939). When Bredel returned from Spain he found the Soviet Union a less than welcoming place - it was the time of the short-lived alliance between Hitler and Stalin. When Hitler showed his true colors by launching a surprise attack, Bredel once again donned a uniform, this time to fight at the Battle of Stalingrad.
Germany had revoked Bredel’s citizenship back in 1935, but with the end of World War II, he could consider returning home. In 1945, he traveled to East Germany, now under Soviet occupation, this time receiving a warm welcome. His work from this period onward showed none of his earlier outspokenness. Instead, he concentrated on works that were almost wholly propagandist in service of the state. Nonetheless, he did produce some effective historically based fiction, including Die Vaeter (1948), Die Soehne (1949), and Die Enkel (1953) - the three volumes that make up the trilogy Verwandte and Bekannte.
For the remainder of his life, Bredel continued to write, but his literary output was more and more given over to pure propagandizing for the interests of the Soviet state. Bredel died of a heart attack, on October 27, 1964, in East Berlin, Germany.
(This is a non-fiction piece that recounts Bredel’s horror...)
1977(Störtebeker - legendary pirate, protector of the poor and...)
1950From 1916 to 1917, Bredel was a member of the Socialist Workers Youth, from 1917 to 1920, of the Spartakusbundes and since 1919 the KPD.
Bredel was president of the DDR Academy of Arts, Berlin.
Bredel immigrated to the Soviet Union, in 1939, but was repatriated to East Germany, in 1945. In the West, Socialist writer Willi Bredel is largely unrecognized, but in East Germany and the rest of the Communist bloc prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, his writings, though often criticized, enjoyed immense popularity.
When criticized by his peers, he was more than willing to rewrite to suit the political and social needs of the day when Soviet critics took him to task - in sharp contrast to Bredel’s defiant outspokenness during Hitler’s National Socialist era. His commitment was to the Party, in the end, rather than to his personal opinions or vision.
Quotes from others about the person
"Bredel conceived all-embracing epic frames; but there was an unresolved conflict between his concepts and his narrative style.” - Georg Lukács
Bredel was married twice. In 1947, Bredel married his second wife, the Swedish journalist Olson Bredel (1914-2001).