Writer (Germany? 1882? - Mexico, 27 March 1969). His most famous work is
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), which was later brought to a film with
Humphrey Bogart and directed by
John Huston (1948).
Almost nothing is known about the author B. Traven except his writings. His birthname and place are both unknown. It is claimed that Traven was born as Otto Freige, the son of a German pottery worker and worked variously as a manual laborer, actor, and the editor of an anarchist journal. He was also rumored to be the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Traven's widow announced in 1990 that he had been Ret Marut, a left-wing revolutionary in Germany during World War I and publisher of an underground anarchist magazine Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brick Thrower). Marut disappeared for a time, only to reappear in a British prison. After vanishing from London, a man calling himself B. Traven began sending manuscripts to a German publisher.
According to one theory, Traven was born in Chicago to Swedish parents, spent his youth in Germany, and settled in Mexico in the 1920's. The reason that not much is known about the identity of Traven is because he claimed that a writer should only be known for his writings, and nothing else is important.
Some of Traven's books: