Bergengruen, Werner (1892–1964)

German novelist and poet. A convert to Catholicism, he had his greatest success with the novel Der Grosstyrann und das Gericht/A Matter of Conscience (1935), which denounces human weakness and frailty in the face of temptation.

His technical mastery is also evident in his short stories: Der Tod von Reval/The Death of Reval (1939) and Novellenbuch/Book of Short Stories (1962). Two important collections of verse are Dies irae (1945) and Die heile Welt/The Healed World (1950).

Many of his works have historical settings, including Das Kaiserreich in Trümmern/The Empire in Ruins (1927), in which individuals fight out their destinies and search to anchor themselves amid the flux and insecurity of life. Human imperfection is a recurrent theme (Am Himmel wie auf Erden/In Heaven as on Earth 1940, Das Feuerzeichen/The Sign of Fire 1949), although Bergengruen's belief in ultimate divine grace enables him to discern meaning behind the world's apparent chaos.