Theatre director active in Republican diplomacy
His 1941 play ¿Qué quiere decir Irene? depicts figures fighting in the name of peace. Diplomatic experience became material for drama about war and non-intervention.
Spanish theatre director, playwright, and Republican diplomat. A brother-in-law of Manuel Azaña, he promoted theatre training and stage experimentation and served as consul-general in Geneva during the civil war. His diplomacy became entangled in tensions between the president and the government. Arrested while exiled in France and imprisoned in Spain, he later resumed theatrical work in Mexico.
Career timeline
- 1910Studied at the universities of Valladolid and Madrid, earned a law degree, and pursued doctoral study at the Spanish College in Bologna.
- 1917Directed Unamuno's Fedra at the Ateneo de Madrid, his first work as a stage director.
- 1928–1929Led El Caracol, his experimental theatre company at the Rex hall in Madrid.
- 1930–1935Directed and served as literary adviser in Margarita Xirgu's company, jointly running Madrid's Teatro Español.
- 1932Founded the Teatro Experimental del Español, a theatre school within the Teatro Español.
- 1934Was granted the Teatro María Guerrero and founded the Teatro Escuela de Arte (TEA) there.
- 1936–1939Served as consul-general in Geneva and was caught up in the theft of Azaña's private diaries.
- 1940sWas arrested in France and taken to Spain, sentenced to death by a Francoist court, then had the sentence commuted to thirty years and passed through several prisons.
- 1947After his release he went into exile in Mexico and resumed directing theatre and lecturing.
- 1953–1967Continued directing and lecturing in Mexico and Guatemala and died in Mexico in 1967.
Exiled writer who recorded children’s experiences of the Spanish war
She drew on children she met at an International Brigades home, seeking to represent their memories and emotions rather than treating them only as an audience for propaganda.
German Jewish writer for children and young readers. After fleeing Nazi Germany for France, she worked at the Ernst Thälmann children’s home established by the International Brigades in Spain. Children’s experiences informed her novel Vier spanische Jungen. Deported to Auschwitz in 1942, she is believed to have been murdered there; the exact date of her death is unknown.
Career timeline
- 1925–1929Studied law in Berlin and Heidelberg but left without a degree.
- 1931Published her first stories in the children's book series Sonne und Regen im Kinderland.
- 1932Published Müllerstraße, Jungens von heute, about the lives of working-class children in Berlin.
- 1934Her youth novel Janko, der Junge aus Mexiko, written in Parisian exile, was published in Strasbourg.
- 1937Tsao und Jing-Ling, Kinderleben in China appeared in a Swiss trade-union newspaper through Lisa Tetzner's advocacy.
- 1937–1938Travelled in Spain to research a children's book on the civil war on the side of the International Brigades.
- 1938Completed Vier spanische Jungen at the end of the year; the novel was published only in 1987.
The KGB-veteran writer who published Yezhov's case file wrapped in novelistic reconstruction
While still on active duty, writing spy novels under the pseudonym 'Vasily Timofeyev', he unearthed Yezhov's interrogation records before their declassification and reproduced them verbatim in his biography.
A Russian writer who came out of the Soviet state-security service (KGB). Drawing on investigation files before their formal declassification, he wrote the biography Yezhov: The Story of the "Iron" Stalinist People's Commissar (2001, "Special Archive" series). The book was an early publication of Yezhov's interrogation records and trial file, but it splices novelistic reconstructions of the interrogation room between the documents, blurring the line between source and fiction.
Career timeline
- 1969Graduated from the Moscow Polygraphic Institute
- 1971Graduated from the KGB school
- 1970s–Served as a state-security intelligence officer (colonel); worked as a TASS correspondent in Thailand and India
- 2001Yezhov biography published posthumously
