Gert Ledig, son of a merchant, spent his early childhood in Vienna.
His debut novel The Stalin Organ (Die Stalinorgel) was relatively positively received both in Germany and abroad.
Because of his war injuries and doubts whether he could call himself an author at all, he declined the invitation, stating he'd find it impossible to stand next to authors such as Ilse Aichinger, a member of the group, and Die Stalinorgel was "only a combat organ".
W. G. Sebald had been pointed towards his work Vergeltung as one of the few examples of a literary treatment of Allied air raids on Germany during the Second World War.
Sebald published a chapter on the responses to his Zürcher Vorlesungen ("Zurich lectures") of 1997 and the resulting discussion in the Germany media in his book On the Natural History of Destruction ("Luftkrieg und Literatur") in 1999.
Since 2016 there is an official Facebook page on which is planned to publish yet unpublished or lost stories of the author.