Wolfgang Hildesheimer

Novelist, playwright and painter whose 1977 biography of Mozart became an international best seller. Born in Hamburg, he emigrated to Britain in 1933. After training at Central School in the late 1930s, he worked as a stage designer and graphic artist before starting to write. After a stint as British information officer in Palestine, he served as an interpreter at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. His early novels reflect some of the haunting testimony he had had to translate.

He settled in Poschiavo in southeastern Switzerland where he was him an honorary citizen in 1982.

In the last few years he concentrated on his collages and other works of art that were shown at various international exhibitions.