Agnes Miegel

Personal

Vocation

Notable

German author, journalist and poet, best known for her poems and short stories about East Prussia, but also for the support she gave to the Nazi Party. Miegel received the honorary title Mutter Ostpreußen ("Mother East Prussia") from her Heimatvertriebene admirers. During the Third Reich she revealed herself as an ardent supporter of the regime. She signed the Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft, the 1933 declaration in which 88 German authors vowed faithful allegiance to Adolf Hitler. In the same year she joined the NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the Nazi Party. In 1940 she joined the Nazi party itself. In August 1944, in the final stages of World War II, she was named by Adolf Hitler as an "outstanding national asset" in the special list of the most important German artists who were freed from all war obligations. After World War II, Agnes Miegel mainly wrote poems and short stories about East Prussia, the land of her youth. She was considered the voice of the Heimatvertriebene, the German-speaking people who had lived before the war in Czechoslovakia and Poland and in parts of Germany annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after the war, who had to leave when Nazi Germany was defeated. She died on 26 October 1964, aged 85, in a hospital in Bad Salzuflen. Link to Wikipedia biography