Wilhelm Unger

Wilhelm Unger (4 June 1904 - 9 December 1985) was a German author, journalist and theatre critic.

He was also younger brother to the writer and dramaturge .

Wilhelm Unger was born in Hohensalza (today called Inowrocław), at that time a small industrial town in the Prussian Province of Posen which since 1945 has been in the centre of Poland. His father, Dr. Samuel Unger, was a Jewish physician originally from Cologne. His mother, Flora Unger, had been born in Russia. In 1907, when he was just 3, the family moved back to Cologne which is where Unger completed his schooling and an apprenticeship in publishing and the book trade. He then moved on to study Germanistics, Philosophy and Psychology at Cologne and nearby Bonn.

After this he worked for the and for the West German Radio service which had relaunched and relocated to Cologne from Münster in 1926. His first book, "Beethovens Vermächtnis" ("Beethoven's Legacy") was published in 1929 but fell victim to government book burnings in 1933.

The Nazi take-over in January 1933 ushered in twelve years during which antisemitism quickly became an integral underpinning of government strategy. As professional opportunities were closed off and racist street violence increased, many Jews fled abroad. The Unger family, initially, stayed in Germany. However, on 15 March 1939, as news services reported the German military invasion of Czechoslovakia, Wilhelm Unger fled to England, where his brother had been living since 1937. Their two sisters, Ella and Grete, would be murdered in concentration camps. The brothers discovered only in 1945 that their parents had outlived the Nazi regime, held in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

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