Author and Poet. He is consider by many experts to be one of East Germany's most important and influential writers. He was in many ways an enigmatic figure, being both close to East German leaders like Honecker yet encouraging young rebels like Wolf Bierman. He was a strong Communist party supporter but was under suspicion by the Stasi, the East German secret police. He was born into a Jewish family and studied to be a printer. Joining the youth wing of the Communist Party in 1931, he became a member of the resistance but fled Germany in 1936. He lived in exile in Palestine, Spain, England, and Switzerland. He returned to Germany in 1945, first working in radio in Frankfurt before moving to East Berlin, where he took a position as an editor with the Soviet military authorities. He worked on a number of committees in the Soviet Zone, and became an influential writer after East Germany was formed in 1949. His best known poem, "Ashes of Birkenau", was written in that year, which was set to music by Günter Kochan. He was a close friend of East German leader Erich Honecker and publicly supported the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, yet in 1962 arranged a reading of poetry at the East German Academy of the Arts by young poets that initiated the so-call "Poetry Wave" of the 1960s in East Germany. As many of these poets were critical of the regime, this led to his losing his position in the Secretariat of the Academy. He also led the 1976 writers protest over the expulsion from East Germany of Wolf Biermann, and was thereafter under Stasi suspicion, yet he never left the Communist Party and remained a strong supporter. He saw himself as a mediator between literature and politics. He became a controversial figure after Reunification, as he was accused of having lied about the autobiographical aspects of his fiction writings. After 1960, he gave up poetry for the most part, moving to prose. His best known works of prose were "Time of Community", (1949), Lieutenant Yorck of Wartenburg (1954), and Evening Light (1979). He was awarded the National Prize of East German three times (1950, 1954, 1972), the Heinrich Heine Prize twice (1948, 1972), the FC Weiskopf Award (1958), and the East German Patriotic Order of Merit (1980).