Heinrich Theodor Böll (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈteːodoːɐ̯ ˈbœl] ; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll is a recipient of the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972).
Else Ury (1 November 1877 – 13 January 1943) was a German-Jewish novelist and children's book author. Her best-known character is the blonde doctor's daughter Annemarie Braun, whose life from childhood to old age is told in the ten volumes of the highly successful Nesthäkchen series.
The books, the six-part TV series Nesthäkchen (1983), based on the first three volumes, as well as the new DVD edition (2005) caught the attention of millions of readers and viewers. During Ury's lifetime Nesthäkchen und der Weltkrieg (Nesthäkchen and the World War), the fourth volume, was the most popular.Else Ury was a member of the German Bürgertum (middle class). She was pulled between patriotic German citizenship and Jewish cultural heritage. This situation is reflected in her writings, although the Nesthäkchen books make no references to Judaism. In 1943, Else Ury was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was murdered upon her arrival.
Heinz von Lichberg, real name Heinz von Eschwege (born 1890 in Marburg, died March 14, 1951, in Lübeck) was a German author and journalist, remembered chiefly for his 1916 short story Lolita. It has been argued that Vladimir Nabokov based his 1955 novel of the same name on Lichberg's story. The story was published in a collection of 15 short stories titled Die verfluchte Gioconda (The Accursed Gioconda).
Born to a family of Hessian nobility, he chose the pen name of Heinz von Lichberg after Leuchtberg near Eschwege, where many battles had been fought. He served in the cavalry during the First World War, and after the war worked as a journalist and author in Berlin. He reported from Graf Zeppelin during its record-breaking flight around the world in 1929, earning a name as a foreign correspondent. He became a member of the Nazi Party in 1933 and worked as a radio journalist and a culture journalist with the Völkischer Beobachter. He left the Nazi Party in 1938 and rejoined the military during the Second World War, serving in the Abwehr military intelligence department. After the war, he settled in Lübeck, where he worked for a Lübeck newspaper and died in 1951.
Lichberg was mostly forgotten, until literary scholar Michael Maar came across his "Lolita" short story and argued in several articles and a 2005 book that Nabokov had derived his story from Lichberg's work.
In Lichberg's "Lolita", the story takes place in Spain.
Peter Härtling (German: [ˈpeːtɐ ˈhɛʁtlɪŋ] ; 13 November 1933 – 10 July 2017) was a German writer, poet, publisher and journalist. He received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his major contribution to German literature.