His father was a vice-sergeant major and regimental chief clerk in the Prussian army. Horst Lange was exposed from an early age to the warm comradeship of military life, as well as to its darker aspects β his father suffered a nervous breakdown on the front in World War One. Lange would later develop his own idiosyncratic brand of pacifism. His deep religious feeling and love of poetry stemmed from his mother and her Polish-speaking, Catholic family.
In , he ran away from home to join the Bauhaus school in Weimar, hoping to become a painter. His uncle, who taught architecture there, gave him an office job and introduced him to prominent teachers such as Paul Klee and Walter Gropius. Lange returned to Liegnitz to finish school, and began studying art history, literature and theater at the University of Berlin in He joined the Communist Party briefly, but could not reconcile its ideology with his pacifism.
In , after an interlude spent studying art history in Breslau, he returned to Liegnitz. There he met the poet Oda Schaefer, beginning a creative and emotional partnership that would last more than forty years. They had an open relationship, both pursuing other affairs which often served as inspiration for their writing. In , the couple moved to Berlin. They had been denounced by their neighbors. Its most sinister character is Smorczak, an innkeeper who heads a religious cult, surrounding himself with fanatical disciples and sowing discord among the villagers.
Especially around the time of the Olympics, the Nazi regime concealed its radical tendencies in an effort to improve its image in the eyes of the world and give Germans a sense of stability and normalcy. Lange had a strong supporter in his publisher, Henry Goverts, who was skilled at negotiating with the censors and assisting persecuted writers.
After the error was pointed out to the Propaganda Ministry, the book was cleared for publication. Lange was subjected to increasingly malicious scrutiny. The keys to the human condition are decay, vice, greed, lust⦠It is this view that calls to mind the problems of Dostoevski, Bernanos, Huysmans, Strindberg, Kafka and others⦠We are spared nothing as far as murder, sexual insatiability, alcoholism and revolting smut is concerned.
