Ernst Wiechert was a well known Prussian author, who was born in now Piers awek, Poland. He was one of the most widely read novelists in Germany during the 1930s. He incorporated his humanist ideals in his novels among which Das einfache Leben (The simple Life, 1939) and Die Jeromin-Kinder (The Jeromin children, 1945/47) are the best known today. Wiechert was strongly opposed to Nazism from the start. He disagreed with the national socialist ideology and critized it. In consequence of his criticism, he was interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp for four months. He wrote down his memories about his imprisonment and buried the manuscript; then published in 1945 as Der Totenwald (Forest of the dead). After the war, Wiechert was a critic of West German society. He died at Stf?a, Switzerland.