Freidrich Reck-Malleczewen

Friedrich Percival Reck-Malleczewen was a German author.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Reck was also a novelist, mainly of children's adventure stories. One book, Bomben auf Monte Carlo, has been filmed twice. Many of his books were banned by the Nazis, and more were not published until years after his death. Today his best known work is Diary Of A Man In Despair (Tagebuch eines Verzweifelten), his journal of life under Nazi rule (which he vehemently opposed), which was published in English translation by Paul Rubens in 1970.

“But we must be completely clear...if nationalism is truly the hallmark of a people in the prime of its youth and energies, how does it happen that under its aegis morality decays, ancient customs die out---that men are uprooted, the steadfast derided, the thoughtful branded, the rivers poisoned, and the forests destroyed? Why, if this is a high watermark of our national life, has our speech been vulgarized in this unprecedented way?”