NOTED GERMAN AUTHOR

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18355, 24 March 1934, Page 12

NOTED GERMAN AUTHOR

IN CONCENTRATION CAfajp FOUGHT DURING AVAR LONDON, Fob. 10. A plea for the life of a distinguished German pacifist, Herr Carl veil Ossietzky, author and journalist, tipiv. at death’s door in a concentration camp at Sohnenburg, is made iin tlio Times by Mr. Wickham Steed, editor and publicist. According to trustworthy testimftny, says Mr. Steed, Carl von Ossietzky is now a broken man and unlikely long to withstand the sufferings that have been inflicted upon him. Physical ill - treatment, under - nourishment, severe military exorcises, and repeated spoils of solitary confinement in a •'ark cell have broken his health—though not his spirit. DID DUTY AS A SOLDI Ell. The son of a Hamburg merchant and a convinced partisan of peace, even before the war, von Ossietzky nevertheless did his duty as a German spidier at the front and, after the peace, became the editor of a Liberal journal. With a few others he organ-

isiod the “Nb More War” movement, which for a time tagdo headway in Germany. He helped also to found two journals in support of the Weimar Koptihlic- Put his '.f'dtojb hs a writer \\ Ui, gained chiefly by . jtis remarkable work first as a contributor to and a forwards ,as. editor of the weekly teView Weltbiihhe. ~ ’Two.Gerftian institutions—the Social i)cmoeratic Party and the Reicliswehr —were the .chief obtests of his criticism, tthd .both of. them requited him frith especial animosity.. lit 1931 he was .charged with high treason before thh Supremo Court, at Leipzig fthd was sentenced to 18 ‘months’ imfor his strictures upon the Jteichswohr, but lie was not arrested. He declined to take refuge abroad and; in the spring of 1032, went to prison. A largo number of German writers escorted him to the prison door. In the winter of 1032-33 the government of General von Schleicher grunted an amnesty,, and though the Social Democrats disliked yon Ossictzky they insisted that lie too should benefit by it. Indeed a special paragraph was put into the amnesty law to this end—striking proof of the esteem and respect Which lie enjoyed. Ho had been nine months in prison. ARRESTED DAT ApTpR REICHSTAG EIRE. DespiVe adVicb to deb the country

aft/er the adyent of' the Hitler Government, von Ossietzky stayed at home anil was arrested on the morning after thje Eoichstnfe fire. . In the Reichstag trial the wildest accusations were j made against him but lie was not allowed to appear as a witness. Now, |in eonsotpienee of internment, with ( constant military exercises And insufficient food, he is at death’s door. If it is too much fo hope for his release, his claim to the sympathy of I the civilised world ought not to go entirely unheard.