Erich Fried

Born to Jewish parents Nelly and Hugo Fried in Vienna, he was a child actor and from an early age wrote political essays and poetry.

He fled to London after his father was murdered by the Gestapo after the Anschluss (i.e. annexation of Austria) by Nazi Germany.

He joined Young Austria, a left-wing emigrant youth movement, but left in 1943 in protest of its growing Stalinist tendencies.

In his annual review for 1961, Lindley Fraser wrote of him that 'Mr.Fried's contribution to the Soviet Zone programme is probably the most valuable single one we have'.

The composer Hans Werner Henze set two of Fried's poems for his song-cycle Voices (1973).

He died of intestinal cancer in Baden-Baden, West Germany, in 1988 and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.