Jürgen Thorwald (born Heinz Bongartz, October 28, 1915 – April 4, 2006) was a German writer, journalist and historian known for his works describing the history of forensic medicine and of World War II.
Thorwald was a native of Solingen, Rhenish Prussia, and attended the University of Cologne.
He started his career in 1933 at age 18, during the Nazi era, writing for publications such as Die Braune Post ("The Brown Mail"), the SS journal Das Schwarze Korps ("The Black Corps") and the NSDAP paper National-Zeitung.
After the war he used the pseudonym Jürgen Thorwald in order to be able to work under allied occupation.
[1] Thorwald's book The Century of the Detective was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1966 in Best Fact Crime category but he lost to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.