Heym, Stefan
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Stefan Heym is representative of many intellectuals in the former East Germany who found themselves torn between loyalty to the ideals of their state and disdain for the reality. He was born into a secular Jewish family in Chemnitz. As a young man, he went to the United States to escape Hitler, where he worked for a while as a journalist. In 1943 he joined the American army. His first novel, The Crusaders (1948), became a best-seller. It was loosely based on his wartime experiences and filled with contempt not only for the Nazi government, but for virtually all of German culture. Distressed by the rise of McCarthyism in the United States and by Western tolerance of former Nazi officials, Heym emigrated to East Germany in 1953 and gave his enthusiastic support to the Socialist aspirations of his new homeland. His disillusionment with East Germany was far more gradual and, by his own account, more difficult than that experienced in the United States. In 1976 Heym protested the forced emigration of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann from the German Democratic Republic. Two years later he was fined and expelled from the East German Writers' Union for accepting royalties for work published abroad. Though Heym continued to believe that the GDR was the "better-half" of Germany, disillusion with the reality of socialism moved him to turn to his Jewish heritage for inspiration in novels such as The King David Report (1972) and The Wandering Jew (1984). In 1992 he became a founding member of the "Committee for Justice," a lobby representing the interests of former East Germans in a newly united Germany.
"Fantastic, witty, and impudent." —Heinrich Böll
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Hardcover. Condition: Very Good condition. Dust Jacket Condition: Good dust jacket. First American Edition. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1973. Very Good condition in a Good dust jacket. The jacket is bright and unfaded but has a few small edge chips and something removed (price sticker?) leaving a mark. NOT price clipped ($6.95). The jacket is protected by a removable Brodart clear-plastic sleeve. NO owner's name or bookplate. NOT a remainder. Pages are clean and unmarked. 1973. First US Edition with "First published in the United States of America 1973" so stated. Bound in the original lavender cloth, stamped in bright gold on the spine. Complete with dust jacket. . First American Edition. Hardcover. Very Good condition/Good dust jacket. 8vo. 255pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping. Seller Inventory # 026411
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Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st U. S. Edition. Seller Inventory # 089104
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