Egon Erwin Kisch

The journalist and essayist Egon Erwin Kisch was born and educated in Prague but worked in the interwar period for newspapers in Germany until he was arrested and deported to Czechoslovakia in 1933. He is often credited with elevating journalism to literature. Long concerned with the lives of the poor and the grittiness of urban life, he was radicalized by his wartime service in the Austrian army and became a communist in 1919 and later an operative of the Comintern. His party membership complicated his search for a refuge when war broke out, and he had to spend the war years in Mexico before returning to Prague in 1946.