Günther Weisenborn is mainly remembered not as a writer but as a resistance fighter during the Nazi period and as the editor of a standard work on the German resistance, Der lautlose Aufstand (The Silent Rebellion, 1953), based on materials collected by the writer Ricarda Huch. Weisenborn was, however, a noted playwright; a friend of Bertolt Brecht, with whom he collaborated on Die Mutter (1933; translated as The Mother, 1965); and a major figure on the German literary scene in the years after 1945. He may have been overestimated then, but his almost total neglect in recent years is certainly undeserved. He wrote several noteworthy plays and some novels with interesting plots, and his autobiographical novel Memorial (1948) stands out as a unique document. His works are hard to find, and there is little critical literature on him; even the information on his life is sketchy.

Weisenborn was born in 1902 in...