author
Walther Georg Hartmann
1892–1970
A German writer, editor, and Red Cross official whose career crossed some of the most turbulent decades of the 20th century. His life joined literary work with public service, from magazine editing to leadership roles in the German Red Cross.
1 Audiobook
Wir Menschen: Gedichte
by Walther Georg Hartmann
About the author
Born in Strelitz on July 17, 1892, and later dying in Freiburg im Breisgau on October 18, 1970, Walther Georg Hartmann is listed in major German biographical records as a philosopher, Germanist, editor, writer, and secretary general. Those labels suggest a career that moved between ideas, publishing, and public institutions.
He became a full-time staff member of the German Red Cross in 1922 and worked as an editor for its publications. Sources on Red Cross history also credit him with helping to initiate the founding of the Youth Red Cross in 1925, showing how closely his writing and organizational work were linked.
During the Second World War he led the foreign office of the German Red Cross, and after the war he served from 1950 to 1957 as secretary general of the newly founded West German Red Cross federation. Because he is remembered mainly through institutional and biographical reference works rather than a broad literary profile, the surviving picture is of a writer-editor whose public role became central to his legacy.