Peter Bender

Peter Bender (30 May 1893 – 4 February 1944) was a German writer, religious leader, and Hollow Earth theory advocate. He died in the Holocaust.

Biography Bender was born in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1893. After graduating from high school and entering university to study philosophy, he volunteered for army service during World War I, serving as a pilot on the Eastern Front. He suffered a severe jaw injury in a plane crash. In the hospital, he met his future wife Charlotte Asch, whom he married in 1917; she came from a Jewish family of pharmacists. The couple settled in Worms and had two children, Gerhard and Maria.

Bender was involved in the socialist movement in Worms, co-founding and serving as a chairman in the local workers' council. In 1927, he published his only novel, Karl Tormann – A Rhenish Man of Our Time .

After the Nazi rise to power, Charlotte Bender, as a Jew, faced increasing restrictions on her daily life. Due to financial difficulties, the Benders moved to Frankfurt in 1935. In 1943, during World War II, Peter Bender was arrested by the Gestapo for allegedly criticizing the Nazi regime. He was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died on 4 February 1944. Charlotte died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in March 1943, while both Bender children survived the war.

Aftermath In 2023, Austrian writer Clemens J. Setz published Monde vor der Landing, a novel about Bender.