Walter Kaufmann: A Life of Exile, Adventure, and Human Connections

Walter Kaufmann’s Turbulent Life Turned Displacement Into Unforgettable Stories

Walter Kaufmann lived a life shaped by displacement, adventure, and relentless self-reflection. Born in 1924, he fled Nazi Germany as a teenager, only to face internment and deportation before reinventing himself across continents. His experiences fuelled both his writing and his reputation as a magnetic storyteller who thrived on chaos.

Kaufmann was adopted at three by a Jewish couple in Duisburg. By 15, he had escaped to London on a children’s transport, leaving his parents behind. A year later, in 1940, British authorities interned him as an 'enemy alien' in Liverpool, then deported him to Australia.

There, he spent four years in the army before embracing a string of jobs—fruit picker, dockworker, sailor—each a chapter in his restless life. He later called disruption his 'raw material', the unpredictability that defined his work. Friends and strangers alike were drawn to his warmth and what many described as a rare 'gift for human connection'. In 1956, Kaufmann settled in East Germany, though the Stasi kept him under watch. He became chairman of the East German PEN Club from 1985 to 1993, a role he later dismissed as 'wasted writing time'. Until his death at 97, he kept publishing, including memoirs like In the Current of Time and My Longing Is Still on the Road. His stories mirrored his life: a search for meaning, tangled with egoism and moral questioning. Kaufmann never stopped seeking encounters or adventures. The man who fled as a boy became a writer who turned upheaval into art.

Kaufmann left behind a body of work as expansive as his travels. His books, shaped by exile and curiosity, remain records of a life lived in motion. The questions he wrestled with—about identity, displacement, and human connection—stay embedded in his writing, long after his final journey.