Haas, Willy, 1891-1973.

Born and raised in Prague, Willy Haas was a film critic and screenplay writer in Berlin during the Weimar Republic and was co-founder with Ernst Rowohlt of the periodical Die literarische Welt. Of Jewish descent, he was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and returned to Prague, where he mostly worked as a film critic and editor. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, he fled to Italy and then emigrated to India, where he spent the remainder of the war years. Among other things, he wrote English screenplays for Indian films. In 1947 he went to England and in 1948 returned to Germany, having been offered an editorship at the newly-founded newspaper Die Welt, based in Hamburg. He also worked in radio and television. Haas was the ghostwriter of the German edition of Alma Mahler's memoirs, Mein Leben, for which he wrote a foreword. Herta Haas was the wife of Willy Haas. She was a German Jew who had emigrated to England, where she and Willy met and married in 1947. Herta had achieved a doctorate in Germany before her emigration; later she worked as a translator. Ida Sieburg was the widow of the poet Erich Sieburg (1878-1947); she addressed a letter to Willy Haas. Anne Uhde was Willy Haas's secretary at Die Welt.

From the description of Correspondence with Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel, and Adolf Klarmann, 1925-1974. (University of Pennsylvania Library). WorldCat record id: 155863400