PEN Centre Germany

PEN Centre Germany arranged its first international conference in Berlin in 1926 and the organisation flourished until the rise of Nazism.

[4] In 1933 the then president, Alfred Kerr fled into exile as soon as the Nazis took power and in January 1935, under difficult political circumstances, PEN Centre Germany became known as the Union of National Writers.

This organisation was supportive of Nazism and heavily criticised by PEN International for its failure to condemn the burning of books by the Nazis in 1933.

In response to these circumstances, in 1934 a PEN centre was set up for German writers in exile based in London, with Heinrich Mann as president.

Soon afterwards, when East and West Germany were created as separate states in 1949, PEN split into two organisations to reflect the new political reality.