Ludwig Renn adopted the name Ludwig Renn in 1930, after becoming a communist, renouncing his noble title and taking the name of the hero of his first successful novel, Krieg.
14 Facts About Ludwig Renn
2.
From 1911 Renn served as an officer in a prestigious Saxon Guards Regiment, where he served under his friend Prince Friedrich August.
3.
In 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, Ludwig Renn refused to open fire upon striking workers and left the police service shortly afterwards.
4.
From 1920 to 1923 Ludwig Renn studied law, economics, history of art and Russian philology in Gottingen and Munich.
5.
In 1928, the year in which he published Krieg, Ludwig Renn became a member of the German Communist Party, a step which the novel Nachkrieg reflects.
6.
Ludwig Renn was editor of the communist journal, Linkskurve and the communist military police journal, Aufbruch.
7.
Ludwig Renn's growing commitment to communism saw him travel to the USSR in 1929 and 1930.
8.
Ludwig Renn was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment, serving 18 months.
9.
Ludwig Renn was in Madrid in November 1936 writing training booklets for the military command as the city became increasingly under threat.
10.
Ludwig Renn was driven out of the city to Cuenca by Claud Cockburn, a British communist journalist, under orders from the government and their Russian advisors.
11.
From 1952 Ludwig Renn lived in East Berlin, where he was a freelance writer and a member of the German Academy of the Arts.
12.
Ludwig Renn wrote directly about his own life in the work Adel im Untergang, as well as other works in the following decades.
13.
Ludwig Renn's final work, published posthumously in 1980, was an autobiography.
14.
On his return from exile in Mexico in 1947 Ludwig Renn settled at first in Dresden with his partner Max Hunger.