Richard Plant

Who was Richard Plant?

Richard Plant was a German-American writer. He is said to have written, in addition to the works published under his own name, several detective novels or Kriminalromane, on which he collaborated with Dieter Cunz and Oskar Seidlin, and which were published under the collective pen-name of Stefan Brockhoff.

Richard Plant was born Richard Plaut in Frankfurt am Main to the family of the town councillor Theodor Plaut. His grandfather had been the Chief Rabbi of that city. His father was secular, no-religious, and a socialist medical doctor. Upon the accession of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933 and the zealous enforcement of the provisions of Paragraph 175 of the criminal code against homosexuality, he was obliged to leave Germany for Switzerland in concert with his partner, Oskar Seidlin. His immediate family did not leave, for "It won't be so bad," was their feeling. Here he obtained a doctorate from the University of Basel in 1935 with a dissertation on Arthur Schnitzler, written under the supervision of Franz Zinkernagel and Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer. Meanwhile, his dad and stepmother left Germany for California.