Friedrich Griese was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist. He was associated with the nationalist

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 literary movement during the Third Reich.

Griese wrote mostly about peasant

Peasant

A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

 life in northern Germany. His most important books were written before the advent of the Nazi

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 government in 1933, so he cannot be considered so much a proponent of Nazi ideologies as a precursor to them. He wrote his first autobiography, Mein Leben

Mein Leben

Mein Leben is the title of several German autobiographies, including those of the following people :...

, at the height of his popularity in 1934, his second one, Leben in dieser Zeit, in 1970.

Griese's novels are nostalgic both in their interest in medieval German literature

Medieval German literature

Medieval German literature refers to literature written in Germany, stretching from the Carolingian dynasty; various dates have been given for the end of the German literary Middle Ages, the Reformation being the last possible cut-off point....

 and their enthusiasm for an idealized conception of the spirit of the German peasant. In this sense they are solidly within the Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) school popular during the Third Reich. However, according to Charles Albert Schumann, he is more interested in connection to one's ancestors than in race as it was popularly conceived at the time. His best-known novels are Feuer, Winter, and Die Weissköpfe, all stories of agrarian life in 19th and 20th century Germany.

After the Second World War, Griese was briefly interned at the infamous Prisoner of War

Prisoner of war

A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

 camp at Fünfeichen. However, he was, after his release, able to write, principally as a scholar of Fritz Reuter

Fritz Reuter

Fritz Reuter was a novelist from Northern Germany who was one of the most prominent contributors to Low German literature.-Early life:...

, during the postwar years. He published one novel, Der Zug der Grossen Vögel, during this period. Like most popular Third Reich authors, he is largely forgotten in contemporary Germany, and his books can only be obtained second-hand.

In 1960, Griese became the first president of the newly established Fritz Reuter Gesellschaft (F. R. Society). In recent years the Literaturtage in Lehsten, a colloquium in Bad Doberan, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach, and the Fritz Reuter Literary Archive

Fritz Reuter Literary Archive

The Fritz Reuter Literary Archive in Berlin, Germany collects autographs and manuscripts by 19th century authors from Mecklenburg, as well as editions of their works. The collections primarily include Fritz Reuter , who wrote mostly in Low German, and Ida Gräfin Hahn-Hahn , who wrote primarily in...

 (Fritz Reuter Literaturarchiv) Hans-Joachim Griephan Berlin have paid scholarly attention to his works. A collection of his letters and manuscripts are one of the focal points of the Fritz Reuter Literaturarchiv which also keeps an index of the more than 600 letters from and to Friedrich Griese.

Fiction

• Feuer, 1921.
• Ur, 1922.
• Das Korn rauscht, 1923.
• Alte Glocken, 1925.
• Die letzte Garbe, 1927.
• Winter, 1927.
• Die Flucht, 1928.
• Tal der Armen, 1929.
• Der ewige Acker, 1930.
• Der Herzog, 1931.
• Das Dorf der Mädchen, 1932.
• Der Saatgang, 1932.
• Das letzte Gesicht, 1934.
• Die Wagenburg, 1935.
• Bäume im Wind, 1937.
• Das Kind des Torfmachers, 1937.
• Wind im Luch, 1937.
• Die Weißköpfe, 1939.
• Die Dörfer der Jugend, 1947.
• Der Zug der großen Vögel, 1951.
• Der Wind weht nicht, wohin er will, 1960.
• Das nie vergessene Gesicht, 1962.
• So lange die Erde steht, 1965.
• Eure guten Jahre, 1974.

Nonfiction

• Mein Leben, 1934.
• Rede, gehalten bei der Stehr-Feier der Deutschen Akademie der Dichtung, 1934.
• Fritz Reuter, 1938.
• Leben in dieser Zeit, 1970.