He wrote several war novels based on personal experiences in World War I, including "Durchbruch anno achtzehn: Ein Fronterlebnis"[2] ("Breakthrough 1918: A Frontline Experience"[3]) and other novels under his birth name.
After the war he started as a book-seller apprentice and became finally head of production in the publishing house Franckh-Kosmos in Stuttgart.
From 1929 until 1952 Steuben wrote stories on American Indians under his pseudonym. The eight volumes of his Tecumseh anthology follow the Shawnee chief Tecumseh from his childhood to his death. In 1937 Wittek moved to Neustrelitz, where he lived as an independent writer. In 1955 he moved again to Pinneberg, where he died.
Using the pen name Fritz Steuben, initially for his Native American Indian (Tecumseh) stories, he wrote many of his works under the influence of national socialism. However, contrary to the Western novels of Karl May, famous in Germany, yet temporarily discredited by false claims to authenticity, his fiction was based on real persons and comparatively serious use of sources available to him. In Germany his books had already achieved a circulation of 790,000 copies in the Thirties. After the Second World War the Tecumseh-anthology reappeared ideologically cleaned (or at least superficially politically corrected) by Nina Schindler and is still on sale in this form.
Secondary literature concentrates mostly on the ideological function and the corresponding developments after the war.
Barbara Haible: Indianer im Dienste der NS-Ideologie. Untersuchungen zur Funktion von Jugendbüchern über nordamerikanische Indianer im Nationalsozialismus. Hamburg: Kovac 1998. (= Schriftenreihe Poetica; 32) ISBN3-86064-751-2 ( an analysis of youth fiction on (Native American) Indians in the Service of NS-ideology)
Winfred Kaminski: Heroische Innerlichkeit. Studien zur Jugendliteratur vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main: dipa-Verlag 1987. (= Jugend und Medien; 14) ISBN3-7638-0127-8
Thomas Kramer: "Tecumseh und Toka-itho: Edle Wilde unter roten Brüdern. Zur Rezeption der Indianerbücher von Fritz Steuben und Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich in der DDR". In: Berliner Blätter. Ethnographische und Ethnologische Beiträge (noch im Druck)
Günter Waldmann: Die Ideologie der Erzählform. Mit einer Modellanalyse von NS-Literatur. München: Fink 1976. (= Uni-Taschenbücher; 525) ISBN3-7705-1332-0
^Kühberger, Christoph (2021). "Indianer spielen: Eine kulturhistorische Perspektive auf Österreich in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts". In Kühberger, Christoph (ed.). Mit Geschichte spielen (in German). Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. pp. 227–256. doi:10.1515/9783839453582-012.
^Wittek, Erhard (1 January 1933). Durchbruch anno achtzehn: ein Fronterlebnis. Stuttgart, Franckh. ISBN0023535326.
^Harvey, A. D. (2007). A Muse of Fire: Literature, Art and War. Hambledon Continuum. p. 229. ISBN185285524X.