Werner Bergengruen

Writer, born in Riga, Latvia. He fought in World War 1 and the Baltic liberation struggle. In 1936 he converted to Roman Catholicism. His work, mingling imagination and realism in style, is generally religious in content, and features individuals in extreme situations. His best-known novels, opposing Christian consciousness to Nazi totalitarianism, are Der Großtyrann und das Gericht (1935) and Am Himmel wie auf Erden (1940). Other works include the trilogy Der letzte Rittmeister (1952), Die Rittmeisterin (1954), and Der dritte Kranz (1962); the novella Der spanische Rosenstock (1941); the stories Die drei Falken (1937), Das Feuerzeichen (1949) and Räuberwunder (1964); and the poems Dies irae (1945), Die heile Welt (1950), and Herbstlicher Aufbruch (1965).

Werner Bergengruen (born September 16, 1892 in Riga, died September 4, 1964 in Baden-Baden), was a German novelist.

After growing up in Lübeck attending the Katharineum, Bergengruen started studying theology in Marburg in 1911.

Bergengruen started writing novels and short stories in 1923 and decided to become a full-time writer in 1927. While his earlier works were of a more contemplative nature and pondered metaphysical and religious questions, the Nazis' rise to power led him to write more political works - his most successful novel, Der Großtyrann und das Gericht, published in 1935, is set in the renaissance era, but the story of a merciless tyrant playing with the weaknesses of his underlings was a clear allegory on Germany's current political situation.

In 1942, after his house in Munich was destroyed by bombs, Bergengruen moved to Achenkirch;