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Willi Bredel
Willi Bredel
	Willi Bredel in 1951
President of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic
	In office; 1962–1964
Preceded by	Otto Nagel
Succeeded by	Konrad Wolf
Personal details
Born	May 2, 1901; Hamburg, German Empire
Died	October 27, 1964 (aged 63); East Berlin, East Germany
Resting place	Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery
Political party	Socialist Unity Party of Germany (1946–) ; Communist Party of Germany (1919–1946) ; Spartakusbund (1917–1919)
Awards	Patriotic Order of Merit, in Gold (1961) ; Banner of Labour (1960) ; Hans Beimler Medal (1956) ; Patriotic Order of Merit, in Silver (1955)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	Soviet Union (1941–1945) ; Spanish Republic (1937–1938)
Branch/service	People's Army of the Republic (1937–1938)
Unit	International Brigades (1937–1938) XI International Brigade Thälmann Battalion; ; ;
Battles/wars	Second World War ; Spanish Civil War ; Hamburg Uprising

Willi Bredel (2 May 1901 – 27 October 1964) was a German writer and president of the East German Academy of Arts, Berlin. Born in Hamburg, he was a pioneer of socialist realist literature.

Life and career

Born into the family of a cigar maker, after graduating from primary school he became a metal worker. From 1916 to 1917 he was a member of the Socialist Worker Youth [de], from 1917 to 1920 of the Spartakusbund and from 1919 of the Communist Party of Germany. In 1923 he took part in the Hamburg Uprising and was sentenced to two years in prison. After his amnesty in 1925, he worked as a lathe operator in the Kampnagel factory while being the editor of various communist news outlets. Due to "Preparing literary treason and high treason", he was in 1930 sentence to two years imprisonment. He wrote his first novels while in custody.^[1]

Soon after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Bredel was imprisoned at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. He was released in spring 1934.^[2] Fleeing from Nazi Germany, he went to Czechoslovakia and then Moscow, where he lived at the Hotel Lux. He published Die Prüfung (1934), a novel describing the Nazi concentration camp, which was reprinted several times and translated into other languages.^[2] He also published accounts of his experiences in the Deutsche Zentral Zeitung,^[2] a German-language newspaper published in Moscow.

Bredel took part in the Spanish Civil War as commissar of the Thälmann Battalion^[3] as well as the Second World War, in which he fought on the Soviet side.

His propaganda material, along with those of Walter Ulbricht and Erich Weinert was used in an attempt to lure the 6th Army into surrendering at the Battle of Stalingrad.^[4]

After the war, he returned to Germany as part of the Sobottka Group,^[5] sent to lay the groundwork for the Soviet occupation of Mecklenburg. He later lived in East Germany and died in East Berlin.