Anna Seghers (; born Anna Reiling, 19 November 1900 – 1 June 1983), is the pseudonym of a German writer notable for exploring and depicting the moral experience of the Second World War. Born into a Jewish family and married to a Hungarian Communist, Seghers escaped Nazi-controlled territory through wartime France. She was granted a visa and gained ship's passage to Mexico, where she lived in Mexico City (1941–47). She returned to Europe after the war, living in West Berlin (1947–50), which was occupied by Allied forces. She eventually settled in the German Democratic Republic, where she worked on cultural and peace issues. She received numerous awards and in 1967 was nominated for the Nobel Prize by the GDR. She died and was buried in Berlin in 1983. She is believed to have based her pseudonym, Anna Seghers, on the surname of the Dutch painter and printmaker Hercules Pieterszoon Seghers or Segers (c. 1589 – c. 1638). Life Seghers was born Anna Reiling in Mainz in 1900 into a Jewish family. She was called "Netty". Her father, Isidor Reiling, was a dealer in antiques and cultural artefacts. In Cologne and Heidelberg she studied history, the history of art, and Chinese. In 1925 she married László Radványi, also known as Johann Lorenz Schmidt, a Hungarian Communist and academic, thereby acquiring Hungarian citizenship. She joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1928, at a time when the Weimar Republic was moribund and soon to be replaced. Her 1932 novel, Die Gefährten was a prophetic warning of the dangers of Nazism, for which she was arrested by the Gestapo. In 1932, she formally left the Jewish community. By 1934 she had emigrated, via Zürich, to Paris. After German troops invaded the French Third Republic in 1940, she fled to Marseilles, seeking to leave Europe. One year later, she was granted an entry visa to Mexico and ship's passage. Settling in Mexico City, she founded the anti-fascist 'Heinrich-Heine-Klub', named after the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. She also founded Freies Deutschland (Free Germany), an academic journal. While still in Paris, in 1939, she had written The Seventh Cross. The novel is set in 1936 and describes the escape of seven prisoners from a concentration camp. It was published in English in the United States in 1942 and quickly adapted for an American movie of the same name. The Seventh Cross was one of the