Walter Klein (writer)

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Walter Klein (born October 12, 1917 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died January 16, 1987 in East Berlin ) was an Austro-German diplomat of the GDR and a writer.

Life

Walter Klein's father ran a paper shop in Vienna. The brother Eduard Klein , born in 1923 , later also worked as a writer. After Austria was annexed in 1938, he fled with his father and brother Eduard to Czechoslovakia , from there to France in 1939 and from there to Chile . He worked in the Jewish aid organization HICEM and was a co-founder of the Chilean committee Alemania Libre .

In 1940 he was accepted into the Communist Party of Chile . In 1955 he returned to Europe and went to the GDR .

He found a job as Senior Consultant for the Middle East in the Chamber of Foreign Trade . In 1960/61 he was head of the GDR trade agency in Cuba and there until 1965 as a trade councilor at the GDR mission and embassy. From 1965 to 1968 he headed the representation of the Chamber for Foreign Trade in Brazil . From 1968 he worked in Berlin at the Ministry for Internal German Trade and Foreign Trade and was employed as chief of protocol at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR .

From the 1970s he and his wife, the translator and writer Lene Klein , wrote books for young people on Latin American topics. Klein was a member of the Writers' Union of the GDR and the SED . He received the Medal of Merit in 1964 and the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1968 .

Works (selection)

  • Young man from Vienna . Verl. Neues Leben, Berlin 1988.
  • with Lene Klein: The festival in the jungle . Children's book publisher, Berlin 1983.
  • with Lene Klein: The son of Sertão . New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1978.
  • with Lene Klein: Diary of the Chilean Federico W. Brockhaus, VEB, Leipzig 1977.
  • with Lene Klein: The palm kingdom . New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1975.
  • with Lene Klein: Brazilian mosaic . Brockhaus, VEB, Leipzig 1972.
  • with Lene Klein: encounter with Chile . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1971.

literature

  • Ursula Seeber (Hrsg.): Small allies: expelled Austrian children's and youth literature . Vienna: Picus, 1998 ISBN 3-85452-276-2 , p. 136.
  • Roland Berbig (ed.): In the matter of Biermann: minutes, reports and letters on the consequences of expatriation . Links, Berlin 1994, ISBN 978-3-86153-070-1 , p. 384 short biography
  • Heimo Halbrainer: Walter Klein: stranded in Senegal on the way to Chile , in: Margit Franz, Heimo Halbrainer (ed.): Going east - going south: Austrian exile in Asia and Africa . Clio, Graz 2014, ISBN 978-3-902542-34-2 , pp. 213-216.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roland Berbig: In About Biermann , 1994, p. 81, fn. 22; P. 91
personal data
SURNAME Small, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-German writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1987
Place of death East Berlin