Uwe Wittstock is a literary critic and book author, was editor of "Focus", has worked as literary editor for the FAZ, as editor at S. Fischer and as deputy head of feature pages and cultural correspondent for the "Welt". He was awarded the Theodor Wolff Prize for Journalism.
In his successful non-fiction book "Februar 33. Der Winter der Literatur" (February 33: The Winter of Literature), he describes this month as a turning point in which everything was decided for writers in Germany who were critical of the regime. A few days earlier, the National Socialists had taken power; on 30 January, Reich President Hindenburg had appointed Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor. In just a few weeks, the brilliant literary life of the Weimar period gave way to a long winter and the net was tightened ever tighter for authors like Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, for Else Lasker-Schüler, Alfred Döblin and many others.