Otfried Preußler’s poetry, written between 1945 and 1949 during his imprisonment in a Soviet camp, has not been considered in literary research. This poetry was discussed for the first time in the biographies Kind einer schwierigen Zeit. (Child of a Difficult Time, 2022), by Carsten Gansel, and Otfried Preußler. Ein Leben in Geschichten (A Life in Stories, 2023), by Tilman Spreckelsen. They interpret Preußler’s poetry as an expression of the feelings of the empirical author (Spreckelsen, Otfried Preußler. Ein Leben in Geschichten, 2023, 63) and as a „type of author“ (Gansel, Kind einer schwierigen Zeit. Otfried Preußlers frühe Jahre, 2022, 273). Using these and other statements, the article examines Preußler’s early poetry and, referencing theories of the ego in lyric poetry, discusses the extent to which the speaking authority can or cannot be associated with the empirical author and his feelings. The article proposes that the embedding of poetry in biographies should be interpreted as staging the author ex post or post mortem.