Michael Tschesno-Hell

Born in Vilnius, Hell came from an impoverished petit bourgeois family that had emigrated to Germany after the First World War.

At the end of the war, he returned to the Soviet Occupation Zone and was appointed vice-president of the "Central Administration for Resettlers" in 1945.

In 1947, Hell was appointed head of the newly founded Verlag Volk und Welt [de] in East Berlin, which he himself had co-founded.

[2] The basic attitude of Tschesno-Hell's works was thereby the glorification of the Soviet Union and the Red Army as well as the heroisation of the communist movement and of functionaries of the KPD, such as Karl Liebknecht and Ernst Thälmann.

[5] Mit seiner langjährigen Ehefrau Ursula Tschesno-Hell schrieb er gemeinsam an Drehbüchern, darunter Die Mutter und das Schweigen.