In 1945 the family fled to Anklam in West Pomerania and in 1946 his father died in a Soviet internment camp (Fünfeichen).

Due to his failure to show support for the Communist regime of East Germany, he was suspended from the university on 17 June 1953, but he was later reinstated.

Beginning in 1953, Johnson worked on his first novel, Ingrid Babendererde, which was rejected by various publishing houses and remained unpublished during his lifetime.

[3] During the early 1960s, Johnson continued to write and publish fiction, and also supported himself as a translator, mainly from English, and as an editor.

The following year he was married, had a daughter, received a scholarship to Villa Massimo, Rome, and won the Prix International.

From 1966 to 1968, he worked in New York City as a textbook editor at Harcourt, Brace & World, and lived with his wife and their daughter in an apartment at 243 Riverside Drive (Manhattan).

and edited Das neue Fenster (The New Window), a textbook of German-language readings for English-speaking students learning German.

[4] Returning to West Germany in 1969, Johnson became a member of both its PEN Center and its Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts).

In 1974, Johnson, his wife and their daughter moved into 26 Marine Parade, a Victorian terrace house overlooking the sea in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Southeast England.

In 2020, a monograph by cultural historian Patrick Wright, The Sea View Has Me Again, was published by Repeater Books, focusing on Johnson's decade living in Sheerness.

On 27 February 1962, Johnson married Elisabeth Schmidt, whom he later (1975) accused of conducting a love affair with the Czech Mozart scholar Tomislav Volek.