- Heym, Stefan
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▪ 2002Helmut FliegGerman writer and political activist (b. April 10, 1913, Chemnitz, Ger.—d. Dec. 16, 2001, Jerusalem, Israel), as the author of over a dozen novels, including The Crusaders (1948), provoked controversy with his dissident writings. Although he was an avowed Marxist-Leninist, he was a steady critic of East Germany's government throughout that regime's existence, and when German reunification came, he held out hope for socialism to prevail. To that end, he ran for election to the Bundestag (second house of parliament) in 1994, served for a year, and thereafter continued in his activist dissent.▪ 1995Never one to be inhibited by public opinion or government disapproval, the German writer Stefan Heym spent most of his life provoking controversy, and 1994 was no different. Running on the parliamentary slate of the Party of Democratic Socialism—the reformed Communist Party—the 81-year-old maverick became the oldest member of Germany's Bundestag (lower house of the parliament).Heym—the name is a pseudonym—was born Helmut Flieg in Chemnitz, Germany, on April 10, 1913. After being dismissed from his local high school for writing an ironic antiwar poem, he went to Berlin to finish school. When the Nazis seized power in 1933 and he learned that the Gestapo was searching for him, the 20-year-old fled into Czechoslovakia. Once safe in Prague he wrote to his parents to tell them where he was, but in order to shield them from danger he signed himself "Stefan Heym." (The name Heym, which he chose on the spur of the moment, means "home" and reflected his homesickness.)After managing to survive in Prague for two years by writing articles for the local German press, Heym won a scholarship offered by the University of Chicago. Living in a fraternity house, he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees with a thesis on Heinrich Heine. By 1942 he had become a U.S. citizen and published a novel, Hostages, written in English. This became a best-seller and was made into a Hollywood film.In 1945, toward the end of World War II, Heym returned to Germany as a soldier in the U.S. Army. Being a dedicated leftist, however, he opposed the army's policy on Germany's postwar future. After the war he tried to support himself as a novelist, but he found that he was blacklisted because of his political views. Unable to make a living in the United States, Heym moved to the German Democratic Republic and took citizenship there in 1953. Although he was genuinely supportive of the Communist "East German experiment," he was also committed to open discussions of controversial subjects, such as the crimes of Stalinism.Heym's notorious frankness prompted the continual surveillance he was given in East Germany. (Heym once offered coffee to the plainclothesmen who were keeping him under 24-hour watch.) Still, he continued to write in English, and his international prominence protected him to some extent from government wrath. Even after the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961, he was able to travel to the West in order to meet with publishers and give public readings. It was only in 1969 that he was forced to pay a steep fine for having one of his books printed in the West after it had been banned by the East German government.When the Communist regime collapsed, Heym became a prominent spokesman for those who wished to retain some form of "socialism with a human face." On these grounds he opposed the reunification of Germany. Elected from a Berlin district to the Bundestag in 1994, he was asked what he planned to say in his opening speech as parliamentary elder. The answer: "You can expect some surprises." (DIETLIND LERNER)
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Universalium. 2010.