Erich Kuby

After the end of the war the family moved to Weilheim where Kuby was enrolled in the "Gymnasium" (preparatory school for university).

On the contrary, I had already begun to turn into the family's black sheep, a son who showed only minimal interest when the father, shortly after the move to the nearest county town where he bought and operated a small farm, and built up a paramilitary organization called Citizen Defense.

Once, shortly before the Hitler-Putsch of 1923, Ludendorff even visited my father, and I remember them walking back and forth in our fruit orchard […]"In Munich Kuby took violin lessons.

However, he returned from there to Germany, alone, after a few months because he reportedly wanted to analyze from a close distance, but nevertheless intellectually from afar, the "process of decay" of the country.

In Russia in 1941, Kuby was brought before a military court because of a supposed infraction of sentinel duty regulations and sentenced to nine months in prison and reduced in rank from corporal to private.

He published his war experiences later in the works Demidoff; oder, von der Unverletzlichkeit des Menschen (Demidoff; or, On the Invulnerability of Mankind, 1947), Nur noch rauchende Trümmer (Nothing but Smoking Ruins, 1959), and his magnum opus Mein Krieg (My War, 1975).

In his articles the "Nestbeschmutzer von Rang" or "top ranked fouler of his own nest" (according to Heinrich Böll) occupied a political position between parties and was an important opponent of German rearmament.

Seven years earlier Kuby had criticized the use of the name "Free University" and therefore was not allowed to accept the invitation by AStA (General Students' Committee) to take part in a discussion panel.

His controversial radio play about the senseless defense of Fortress Brest in France by the Wehrmacht toward the end of the war earned him the accusation of slander by the responsible general Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke.

His fictional representation captured the Zeitgeist of the times so realistically that his hypothetical version of the background of the murder was largely accepted as truth by public opinion.

Even minor details, such as Rosemarie's supposedly red sports car (the legendary Mercedes-Benz 190SL), are treated in many accounts even today as being factual.

Until 2003 the "Homme de lettres" wrote columns under the byline Zeitungsleser ("Newspaper Reader") for the weekly magazine Freitag ("Friday").

Erich Kuby married twice, the second time with author and publisher Susanna Böhme (born 1947) with whom he had a son named Daniel.

[5] For a complete list of Kuby's works and their translations into other languages, see the catalog of the DNB (German National Library).