Jürgen Thorwald was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, journalist and historian known for his great works describing history of Forensic medicine and Second World War.

Thorwald was born with the name Heinz Bongartz, but used the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Jürgen Thorwald in order to work more effectively in Soviet-occupied Germany after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. In 1947, he legally adopted the new name.

His book The Century of the Detective was nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1966 in Best Fact Crime category but he lost to Truman Capote

Truman Capote

Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

's "In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood (book)

In Cold Blood is a 1966 book by American author Truman Capote detailing the brutal 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a successful farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, his wife and two of their four children. Two older daughters no longer lived at the farm and were not there at the time of the murders...

".