Helmut Flieg (April 10, 1913 - December 16, 2001) was a German-Jewish writer, known by his pseudonym Stefan Heym. He lived in the United States (or served in its army abroad) between 1935 and 1952, before moving back to the part of his now-partitioned native Germany which was the German Democratic Republic (GDR, "East Germany"). He published works in English and German at home and abroad, and despite longstanding criticism of the GDR remained a committed socialist.

Life
Helmut Flieg, born to a Jewish merchant family in Chemnitz, was an antifascist from an early age. In 1931 he was, at the instigation of local Nazis, expelled from the Gymnasium in his home town because of an anti-military poem. He completed school in Berlin, and began a degree in media studies there. After the 1934 Reichstag fire he fled to Czechoslovakia, where he took the name Stefan Heym.

Early life
In 1935 he received a grant from a Jewish student association, and went to the United States to continue his degree at the University of Chicago, which he completed in 1936 with a dissertation on Heinrich Heine. Between 1937 and 1939 he was based in New York as Editor-in-Chief of the German-language weekly Deutsches Volksecho, which was close to the Communist Party of the USA. After the newspaper ceased publication in November 1939, Heym worked as a freelance author in English, and achieved a bestseller with his first novel, Hostages (1942).
From 1943 Heym, now an American citizen, contributed to the World War II war effort. As member of the Ritchie Boys, a unit for psychological warfare under the command of émigré Hans Habe, he experienced the 1944 Normandy landings. His work consisted of composing texts designed to influence Wehrmacht soldiers, to be disseminated by leaflet, radio and loudspeaker. After the war Heym led the Ruhrzeitung in Essen, and then became editor in Munich of the Neue Zeitung, one of the most important newspapers of the American occupying forces. Because of his pro-Soviet inclinations Heym was transferred back to the US towards the end of 1945 and was demobed because of "procommunistic" mindset.
In the following years he worked as a freelance author once again. In 1952 he gave all his US-amarican military commondations back in reaction of the Korean War and moving first to Prague, and afterwords the following year to the German Democratic Republic (GDR, "East Germany").

GDR
In the years after reunification Heym was critical of what he saw as the discrimination against East Germans in their integration into the Federal Republic, and argued for a socialist alternative to the capitalism of the reunited Germany. At the federal elections in 1994 Heym stood as an independent on the Open List of the then Party of Democratic Socialism, and won direct election to the Bundestag from the seat of Berlin-Mitte/Prenzlauer-Berg. As chairman by seniority he held the opening speech of the new Parliament in November 1994, but resigned in October 1995 in protest against a planned constitutional amendment raising MPs' expense allowances. In 1997 he was among the signers of the "Erfurt Declaration", demanding a red-green alliance (between SPD and Greens) to form a minority government supported by the PDS after the 1998 federal elections. He died in Jerusalem in 2001 during a Heinrich Heine Conference.
Heym was honoured with honorary doctorates from the University of Bern (1990) and University of Cambridge (1991), and honorary citizenship of Chemnitz, his birthplace (2001). He was also awarded the Jerusalem Prize (1993) for literature 'for the freedom of the individual in society', and the peace medal of the IPPNW. Previously he had won the Heinrich-Mann-Prize (1953), and the National Prize of the GDR, 2nd class (1959).
He was buried in the Weißensee Cemetery.

After reunification

Written in English

The Wandering Jew (1984)
Schwarzenberg (1984) - about the Free Republic of Schwarzenberg