Alphons Paquet was born in to the family of a deeply religious Baptist glovemaker and was forced to train in his father's profession. In 1900 he won a prize for a short story and decided to move to Berlin and become a journalist. In 1901 he published his first volume of short stories and the following year a book of poems and songs. Soon after, he became editor of the Düsseldorf-based cultural magazine Die Rheinlande and from 1902 onwards he was able to finance his studies with various jobs, which he completed in 1907 at the
University of Jena with a dissertation in economic history. In 1903, Paquet began traveling, which would determine his entire subsequent life. He traveled through Siberia on the newly opened Trans-Siberian Railway. The following year, he traveled to the US for the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition. This year also saw the start of his work for the
Frankfurter Zeitung. On October 18, 1910, he married the Frankfurt painter Marie Henriette Steinhausen and moved with her to Dresden- Hellerau, where Paquet now worked for the
German Werkbund. In the years leading up to the
First World War, Paquet made several trips to Mongolia and China, a trip on the Baghdad Railway to Syria and various other destinations. He managed to secure his income as a journalist, and in 1934 he made extensive flights through Europe, about which he published a travel book. In 1935 he was briefly arrested in Berlin for because he was considered to be a communist by the Nazis. As a convinced pacifist, he became a permanent member of the
Quakers in 1933. Through this religious community, he maintained intensive contact with England and the US and received visits from foreign believers who wanted to get an idea of the situation in Germany. In 1943, his youngest son was killed on the
Eastern Front. Paquet, who had to witness the deportation of the Jews from Frankfurt - of whose murderous consequences he was aware - as a helpless observer, sank into deep dejection. During a bombing raid in February 1944, Alfons Paquet died of a heart attack in the basement of his house. == Works ==