Uwe Johnson was born in Pomerania and, as an 11-year-old, was forced to flee with his family from the advancing Red Army. His father was arrested after the war and did not return from Soviet internment. In 1945 Johnson lived with his mother and his sister first of all in the Mecklenburg toen of Reckwitz and then in Güstrow.

In 1953 he began studying German language and literature at the University of Rostock. As a result of his resistance to a campaign vilifying the members of the youth organisation of the Evangelical church as Western spies he was exmatriculated for a short period. He used these experiences in his novel Ingrid Babendererde (1953) however, no publisher wanted to print it. The novel was published posthumously in 1985. Johnson graduated in 1956 in Leipzig.

His second novel, Mutmassungen über Jakob (Speculations about Jacob) was published in 1959 by the Frankfurt publisher Suhrkamp. Shortly before the novel was published, Johnson left the GDR because he anticipated difficulties with the State authorities because of its content. He rejected the terms "escape" and "exile" and instead spoke of "moving" or "relocation". He longed for the places of his childhood and youth in the GDR, which he revisited in subsequent years as a participant in a British tour group.

Between 1966 and 1968 the writer lived in New York, where he began work on his magnum opus, Den Jahrestagen (The Anniversaries). The first three volumes were published in 1970, 1971 and 1973 but 10 years elapsed before the publication of the final volume. In 1974 the award winning writer moved to England and lived in Sheerness-on-Sea until his death.

Selected works:
Mutmassungen über Jakob(1959)
Das dritte Buch über Achim(1961)
Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl. 4 Bd. (1970, 1971, 1973, 1983)
Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen. Begleitumstände“ (1979)

Further reading:
Berbig, Roland / Wizisla, Erdmut (Hg.): „Wo ich her bin…“. Uwe Johnson in der D.D.R. Berlin: Kontext Verlag 1993
„Die Katze Erinnerung“. Uwe Johnson – Eine Chronik in Briefen und Bildern. Zusammengestellt von Eberhard Fahlke, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1994
Grambow, Jürgen: Uwe Johnson. Reinbek: Rowohlt 1997 (= Rowohlts Monographien)
Ludwig Arnold, Heinz Ludwig (Hg.): Uwe Johnson. TEXT+KRITIK. Zeitschrift für Literatur, Heft 65/66, Neufassung, 2. Aufl. München: edition text + kritik 2001