Heinrich Christian Stoll, his father, was a career soldier and, at the time he was born, a sergeant in the Second Great Ducal Mecklenburg Dragoon Regiment No.
[1]) The infant was baptised a Protestant, after approximately six weeks, on 22 January 1911 in the parish[4] and grew up, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the Grand Duchy of his birth.
[6] Stoll then served as a Lutheran vicar, his duties covering the parishes in and around Perlin bei Wittenburg, Ratzeburg, Neubukow and Wismar.
[1] For a young churchman the times had become acutely uncertain, following the coming to power in early 1933 of the Hitler government, quickly followed by the transformation of Germany into a one-party dictatorship.
Evidently antisemitism was to be no mere populist device for shrill street politicians but a core underpinning of government strategy.
[1][7] Between 1937 and 1943 Heinrich Alexander Stoll lived abroad, undertaking what one source identifies as "longer stays" in Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy.
Stoll was not one of these, but family papers that became available after 2017 indicate that he was in contact with the German embassy, evidently undertaking assignments that could be construed as "intelligence related".
The same commentator asserts that, measured by the number of death sentences carried out as a proportion of the overall population, Parchim suffered more than anywhere else in the Soviet occupation zone, presumably reflecting decisions taken by local military commanders.
[1] In 1946 Stoll was arrested by the NKVD, on behalf of the local military administrators, possibly on account of some overheard injudicious remark.
[3][a] After his release Stoll was again engaged prominently in the activities of the local branch of the National Cultural Association at nearby Schwerin.
[14] Following the availability of hitherto undisclosed family papers, there recent hints have appeared that he could have become a focus of suspicion among the townsfolk on account of his homo-sexuality.
[8] It has never become entirely clear, however, why he had been singled out for detention: his subsequent historical-biographical novel on the lives of Heinrich Schliemann and Johann Joachim Winckelmann nevertheless offers up clues, hints and some persuasive narratives.
An early indication of the changes to come was the release of large numbers inmates from the labour camps, among them many politically involved Germans who had for various reasons ended up in Soviet captivity during the fifteen years since 1938 and survived.
After this latest manifestation of hostility on the part of local officialdom he finally decided to leave Parchim, relocating in 1958 to Thyrow (Trebbin), near Potsdam, where he made his home between 1958 and his death in 1977:[8] According to one source Stoll had only one sibling, a sister who died young.
His literary estate (and reputation) are currently tended by the retired forester Burkhard Unterdörfer who also inherited and lives in Stoll's former home.