Leopold Weber
At the outbreak of war in 1914, Leopold Weber volunteered for military service; he participated as a soldier on the German side in the First World War as an interpreter on the Eastern Front. From 1918 to 1923 he worked as a librarian at the Bavarian State Library in Munich. He then lived as a freelance writer in Munich and published numerous adaptations of Nordic-Germanic heroic sagas for young readers. These works received special support from the National Socialist authorities after 1933: The volume “Our Heroic Sagas” was published as a school textbook in Bavaria in 1936 introduced, and in the same year Weber received the “Hans Schemm Prize” for young adult literature, which was endowed by the NSDAP.
In November 1944, Leopold Weber disappeared under unclear circumstances on his way to visit a friend in Munich; according to rumors, Weber fell victim to an assassination attempt by the Gestapo. Leopold Weber’s estate includes, among other things , in the Bavarian State Library and in the Monacensia Collection of the Munich City Library. In the Soviet zone or In the early GDR, three of Weber’s works were on the “list of literature to be excluded”.