George Sylvester Viereck letters to Eric and Era Posselt

German-American poet, writer, and propagandist, George Sylvester Viereck, was born December 31, 1884, in Munich, Germany; died March 18, 1962, in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Prior to World War I, Viereck enjoyed some literary fame as a poet. His German heritage became a focal point of his prolific and varied career as a poet, propagandist, interviewer, essayist, playwright, and novelist, and he publicized his pro-German sentiments in a variety of self-run periodicals during World War I and World War II. Viereck maintained that bias due to his political activities prevented publication and fair reception of his work.

After the war, Viereck continued to write: in addition to his journalistic activities for the Saturday Evening Post and his work for his own periodical, Viereck published a study of propaganda, Spreading Germs of Hate (1930) and The Strangest Friendship in History: Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (1932). Viereck also became known for his interviews with famous contemporaries, many of whom he numbered among his personal friends, including Kaiser Wilhelm II, George Bernard Shaw, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein.

World War II renewed Viereck’s propagandistic activities; he wrote and worked for the German-American Economic Bulletin and helped found Today’s Challenge in 1939. Viereck’s public defense of Nazism and many of its policies during this period led to his arrest in October 1941 for violation of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. In 1942, Viereck was convicted and sent to prison, only to be released a year later when the Supreme Court overturned the decision. Yet in 1943, Viereck was again convicted and imprisoned until 1947. His incarceration inspired many poems and a memoir, Men Into Beasts (1952).

Viereck maintained that bias due to his political activities prevented publication and fair reception of his work; however, many of his poems were printed in Samuel Roth’s American Aphrodite .

Viereck’s literary pursuits also included plays and novels. With novelist Paul Eldridge, Viereck penned a trilogy of novels based on the theme of the Wandering Jew: My First Two Thousand Years: The Autobiography of the Wandering Jew (1929); Salome, The Wandering Jewess: My First Two Thousand Years of Love (1930); and Invincible Adam (1932). Viereck’s other fiction includes The House of the Vampire (1907) and The Nude in the Mirror (1953). Viereck died March 18, 1962, in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

"George Sylvester Viereck," http://www.anb.org (accessed September 27, 2006). Biographical information derived from the collection.

Eric Posselt was born in 1892 in the northern mountains of Bohemia. He attended the University of Prague, settled in New York working various jobs in theatre, on Wall Street, and in the publishing field. In 1950, Posselt edited a collection of Christmas stories entitled, The World’s Greatest Christmas Stories . His work appeared in print in both the United States and Germany.

Biographical information derived from the collection.

Era Posselt (Zistel) was an author and personal friend of George Sylvester Viereck. She has published work in the The Saturday Evening Post .

"George Sylvester Viereck," http://www.anb.org (accessed September 27, 2006). Biographical information derived from the collection.