Alex Wedding (1905–1966)

Alex Wedding was the pen name of Grete Weiskopf, born Margarete Bernheim to a Jewish family in Salzburg, Austria. At age 17, she moved to Innsbruck, where she worked in a department store and began writing. In 1925, she followed her sister Gertrud to Berlin, where she worked as a bank clerk, shorthand typist, and bookseller. She became a member of the German Communist Party (KPD) and published her first articles as a journalist. In 1928, she married the Czech-born writer Franz Carl Weiskopf, also a KPD member. In 1931, Grete published her first novel for young people, Ede und Unku, about the friendship between a 12-year-old Berlin worker's son and a Romany girl. It became a bestseller and her most successful work, though it was among the books destroyed in Nazi book burnings. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Grete moved with her husband to his native Prague. In 1939, following Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia, the couple fled to Paris and from there to New York City. Here they wrote for several émigré and American magazines and helped support friends who had stayed behind in Europe. Following the end of World War II, Grete's husband began working in the Czech diplomatic service. They moved first to Washington, D.C., and then in 1949 to Stockholm. From 1950 to 1952, they lived in Beijing, where Grete worked as a translator and journalist. From 1953 until her death, she and her husband lived in East Germany. After her husband died in 1955, she edited a ten-volume edition of his writings. In 1956, she was named a member of the Akademie der Künste (German Academy of Arts). Grete wrote several children's and young adult novels, as well as short stories and screenplays. She was considered a pioneer of socialist children's and youth literature, and Ede und Unku became required reading in East German schools. Four of her books were adapted into German films.