Herybert Menzel

Herybert Menzel (10 August 1906 – February 1945) was a German poet and writer in Nazi Germany as well as a member of the Bamberg poet circle. He was killed in action in the final months of the Second World War. Menzel was born in Obornik, the son of a postal secretary and grew up in the German-Polish border town of Tirschtiegel. After earning his Abitur in Crossen an der Oder he studied two semesters of law at the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau and the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin. He then settled in his hometown as a freelance writer. In 1926 he published his first independent publication, the volume of poetry Mond, Sonne und Stern und Ich. Kleine Lieder. The tensions between Poles and Germans in the border region of Poznań and West Prussia shaped his artistic work. Menzel described this conflict-laden atmosphere in his home region in the works Grenzmärkische sagas (1929), Der Grenzmark-Rappe. Grenzmärkische sagas, stories, ballads and poems (1933) as well as in his first novel Controversial Earth (1930).