I have been to his house where he grew up in Dresden- it’s now a museum.
His story was pretty interesting- he opposed the Nazis, but stayed in Germany because he thought someone had to be a witness, and all his books were burned and banned. He actually showed up to his own book burning to try to embarrass them.
He survived though, and used to meet exiled writers over on the Swiss border and smuggle their work into Germany for them. When the Soviets looked like they were about to invade Berlin, he managed to get himself and some friends sent to an entirely fake film shoot in the Austrian Alps, because he was concerned about being captured by the Red Army. He lived to a ripe old age in Munich, which is pretty good going for somebody who spent the entire of the Second World War in Germany as an outspoken pacifist and anti-Nazi.
