Adrienne Thomas (novelist)

Adrienne Thomas was the pseudonym of Hertha A. Deutsch, nee Strauch (1897–1980), a German autobiographical novelist.

[1] Hertha Strauch was born in St Avold in Alsace-Lorraine, then part of Germany, on 24 June 1897.

She grew up bilingual in German and French, going to school in Metz,[2] where her family owned a small department store.

During World War I she became a nurse for the Red Cross, at first in Metz and later in Berlin, where her family moved.

[2] Writing as Adrienne Thomas, she drew on her Red Cross experiences for her semi-autobiographical anti-war novel Die Katrin wird Soldat (Katrin Becomes a Soldier), the diary of a young Jewish girl serving behind the German lines as a relief worker.