Editing Arno Schmidt (section)

==Biography==
Born in [[Hamburg]], the son of a police constable, Schmidt moved in 1928, after the death of his father (1883–1928), with his mother (1894–1973), to her hometown of [[Lauban]] (in [[Lusatia]], then [[Lower Silesia]], now Poland) and attended secondary school in [[Görlitz]] as well as a trade school there. After finishing school, he was unemployed for some months and then, in 1934, began a commercial apprenticeship at a textile company in [[Gryfów Śląski|Greiffenberg]]. After finishing his apprenticeship he was hired by the same company as a stock accountant. There, around this time, he met his future wife, Alice Murawski. The couple married on 21 August 1937; they had no children.

At the outset of World War II, in 1939, Schmidt was drafted into the ''[[Wehrmacht]]'', where his mathematical skills led him to be assigned to the artillery corps. He first served in [[Alsace]] and after 1941 in fairly quiet [[German occupation of Norway|Norway]]. In 1945, Schmidt volunteered for active front duty in Northern Germany, in order to be granted a brief home visit. As the war was obviously lost, he used this visit to organise his wife's and his own escape to the west of Germany, in order to evade capture by the [[Red Army]], which was known for its much harsher treatment of prisoners of war and German civilians. Schmidt gave himself up to British forces in [[Lower Saxony]]. As refugees, Schmidt and his wife lost almost all of their possessions, including their cherished book collection.

After an interlude as a British POW and later as an interpreter at a police school, Schmidt began his career as a freelance writer in 1946. Since Schmidt's pre-war home in [[Lauban]] was now under Polish administration, Schmidt and his wife were among the millions of refugees moved by the authorities to numerous places in what was to become [[West Germany]]. During this time of uncertainty and extreme poverty, the Schmidts were sustained by [[CARE Package]]s his sister sent them from the US (his sister Lucie had emigrated to the US in 1939, together with her husband Rudy Kiesler, a Jewish German communist). Temporary accommodations led the Schmidts to Cordingen (near [[Bomlitz]]), [[Gau-Bickelheim]], and [[Kastel-Staadt|Kastel]] (the latter two in the newly formed state of [[Rhineland-Palatinate]]). In [[Kastel-Staadt|Kastel]], he was accused in court of [[blasphemy]] and moral subversion, then still considered a crime in some of the Catholic regions of West Germany. As a result, Schmidt and his wife moved to the Protestant city of [[Darmstadt]] in [[Hesse]], where the suit against him was dismissed. In 1958, the Schmidts moved to the small village of [[Bargfeld]], where they were to stay for the rest of their lives, Schmidt dying in 1979, his wife Alice in 1983.