File:Joris Ivens, Ernest Hemingway, and Ludwig Renn during the Spanish Civil War, 1937. (40810270211).jpg

From left to right, Dutch director Joris Ivens, American writer Ernest Hemingway, visiting the headquarters of the International Brigades, Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golsseneau, also known as Ludwig Renn, Chief of Staff of the XV Brigade, in a photo taken at the beginning of 1937. Renn was born Arnold Vieth von Golßenau into a noble Saxon family. However, he adopted the name Ludwig Renn in 1930, after renouncing his nobility status and titles. In 1911, Renn had enlisted as an officer in the famous Saxon Guards Regiment, where he had served under his friend Prince Friedrich August. When the First World War exploded, Vieth von Golßenau fought as a company and field battalion commander on the Western Front. In 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, Renn refused to open fire upon striking revolutionary workers and therefore voluntarily left the police. Then, he studied law, economics, history of art and Russian philology. Openly a leftist Communist, he was arrested by Aldolf Hitler’s regime and sentenced to 30 months of prison in 1934. In August 1935 he fled Nazism to the Republic of Spain. After Franco’s coup, he joined the International Brigades in support of the Spanish Republican cause as Chief of Staff of the XI International Brigade, as well as the 35th Division. After the Rebel victory, he exiled to Mexico and, after the end of World War Two, returned to Germany, where he died the 21th July 1979, in Berlin.

(Deutsches Bundesarchiv 183-84600-0001).