Heym, Stefan

Heym, Stefan shtā´fän hīm [key], 1913–2001, German writer, b. Chemnitz as Helmut Flieg. A Jew, he fled the Nazis (1933), moved to Prague, and settled (1935) in the United States, where he attended the Univ. of Chicago (B.A., M.A.). In New York, he edited an anti-Fascist newspaper in German (1937–39) and wrote his first best-selling novel, Hostages (1942). He fought in World War II and edited anti-Nazi newspapers. A Marxist, Heym was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, left the United States, and settled (1953) in East Berlin. There, he was frequently at odds with the East German regime. Heym's many novels include Goldsborough (1953), The Papers of Andreas Lenz (1963), The King David Report (1972), Ahasver (1981), and the autobiographical Obituary (1988) and The Gals Are Always Gone and Other Clever Sayings (1997).

See studies by P. Hutchinson (1992) and M. Tait (2001).

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