Elfriede Brüning

[1][2] Forced to leave school after the tenth year to help support the family, she worked in offices; beginning in 1929, she was a secretary at a Berlin film company.

[5][6] Her first novel, Handwerk hat goldenen Boden, was a social criticism and was to be published in 1933 but was not because of the Nazi seizure of power; it appeared in 1970 under the title Kleine Leute.

[5] During the early years of the Nazi régime, Brüning participated in the Communist resistance, writing for the exile newspaper Neue Deutsche Blätter under the pseudonym Elke Klent and making trips to Prague, where it was published, as a courier for the Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors.

[3][4] On 12 October 1935 she was arrested and imprisoned in the Barnimstrasse women's prison, but was released after her trial for treason in 1937, since the Gestapo was unable to prove she had engaged in illegal activities.

[3] Brüning returned to Berlin in 1946, reactivated her KPD membership, and wrote for and edited news periodicals in what later became the German Democratic Republic.

Her novels often have an autobiographical element; they usually concern women's lives and even the four she published under the Nazis have female protagonists who are determined to go against the party line by pursuing careers.