The Baltic German author used to create much-read parable-like novels and novellas about historical subjects. He saw man in "eternal orders", shaped by the Baltic and loyal to the emperor. In his late narrative volumes "Der letzte Rittmeister" (The Last Cavalry Captain) he set a monument to his humanistic-Christian human ideal. Despite great recognition in the 1950s, his fame has faded today.
Bergengruen was a volunteer on the German side during World War I, later – financially independent – a freelance writer in Berlin, then in Solln near Munich. "Der Großtyrann und das Gericht" (The Great Tyrant and the Court) was read as a parable against the National Socialist dictatorship, which prohibited him from writing. The novel "Am Himmel wie auf Erden" (In Heaven as on Earth) (1940 with special permission) also tells a parable of the tyranny of a sovereign and the situation in Germany at that time.
Illustration:
Werner Bergengruen 1954
Photo: German Federal Government, Rolf Unterberg