Ottwalt was born Ernst Gottwalt Nicolas in Zippnow, today Sypniewo, in the district of Deutsch Krone in the former West Prussia.
[2] In November 1930, Friedrich Neubauer staged his play Jeden Tag vier, about a mine disaster in Neurode in Silesia, at the Piscator Bühne.
Kurt Tucholsky wrote, "The career of an average German lawyer is portrayed through the means of an early naturalistic novel."
[4] In addition, his name was marked with an "x", identifying him as one of the "real vermin", along with Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernst Glaeser, Arthur Holitscher, Alfred Kerr, Egon Erwin Kisch, Emil Ludwig, Heinrich Mann, Theodor Plivier, E.M. Remarque, Kurt Tucholsky and Arnold Zweig, who were to be "stamped out of bookstores".
[8] An early radio play, it tells the story of Johann August Sutter, a Swiss who emigrated to America in the 19th century.
In 1933, Ottwalt and his wife, Waltraut, left Germany and went into exile in Denmark,[2][9] then, by way of Czechoslovakia, ended up in the Soviet Union.
Living in Moscow, Ottwalt wrote for the German exile magazine Internationale Literatur (published by Johannes R. Becher) and was an editor at Vegaar Bibliothek.
[11] The documents include poems, sonnets, manuscripts and correspondence between his widow and Lion Feuchtwanger, Wieland Herzfelde, Susanne Leonhard, Erwin Piscator and Wilhelm Sternfeld.