Thomas Mann and the 'Inner Emigration'

VOLUME 12 NO.8 AUGUST 2012 Thomas Mann and the ‘inner emigration’ ast month’s article on Gerhart spell in Buchenwald. But others were Mann über die deutsche Schuld’ (‘Thomas Hauptmann contained a reference mere opportunists, pre-1933 opponents Mann on German guilt’), it exhorted its L to the so-called ‘inner emigration’, of the Nazis who made the necessary ‘German readers’ to acknowledge that a term used to describe those writers who compromises with them once they were the atrocities revealed in the camps, had been opposed to National Socialism in power and then, on the basis of having unique in their scale and horror, were not but chose to remain in Germany after made only limited concessions to the the work of a small group of criminals, 1933, conforming at least outwardly to regime, pronounced themselves resisters but that a large number of Germans had the dictates of the regime. The post- and anti-fascists after 1945. been involved in them. Everything and war confrontation between the ‘inner Prime examples of the latter type were everyone German, Mann maintained, emigrants’ and those writers who had Walter von Molo and Frank Thiess, who was affected by the revelations; the entire been driven out of Germany into real in 1945 became involved in a celebrated German people had been tainted by the exile ignited into a bitter public dispute crimes of National Socialism, which had in summer 1945, in a rare example of a been committed in its name; the atrocities literary controversy that assumed the were the shame of every German. Mann dimensions of a nationally significant was painfully aware of the lack of remorse moral and historical-political discussion among the German people, their failure about German guilt and German attitudes to accept responsibility for their part to the Nazi past. in Hitler’s accession to power and his Open opposition to the Nazi regime was subsequent appalling abuse of that impossible for writers after 1933: it would power. have meant immediate incarceration But the responses that Mann’s article in a concentration camp. But it was elicited from his fellow writers showed possible for writers to register a degree notably little contrition, shame or of non-conformity, if only negatively, awareness of the suffering inflicted on the by withdrawing into the private sphere victims of Nazism. On 4 August 1945, the and keeping their oppositional writings Hessische Post published an open letter to themselves. A number of authors, to Mann from Walter von Molo, which provided they were not Jews or prominent also appeared in the Münchener Zeitung opponents of the Nazis, were able to of 13 August. Molo, now forgotten, follow this course. ‘Inner emigration’ was a bestselling author whose novels implied that a writer was unwilling to glorifying Germany’s ‘great men’ had Thomas Mann, 1875-1955 put himself or herself at the disposal of failed to win him the favour of the Nazis. the regime, but did not openly oppose it. controversy with the most famous exiled So he responded to Mann in the pose After 1945 it became a means by which German writer, Thomas Mann. Mann had of a fellow victim of Nazism, a fellow those who had kept their heads down become the leading public spokesman German untainted by any association under the Third Reich sought to prove of the German exiles, thanks to his with its crimes. their anti-fascist credentials, claiming wartime broadcasts to Germany on the Molo issued a formal invitation to to have engaged in a form of covert BBC, ‘Deutsche Hörer’. He had acquired Mann to return to Germany, but not in resistance – in many cases so covert that the status of spokesman for the ‘other a spirit of remorse and self-criticism. little trace of it could ever be discerned. Germany’, those Germans who sought in Instead, he appealed for sympathy, even For that reason, ‘inner emigration’ has exile to preserve the values of a humane, pity for ordinary Germans: now that he become a discredited term. democratic Germany in opposition to stood on the side of the victors, Mann The writers classified under that National Socialism. In that capacity, Mann, could surely spare some compassion for category were a disparate group. Some after reading reports from the liberated the losers who had survived the ‘twelve could be seen as genuinely anti-Nazi, like concentration camps in Time magazine, terrible years that have been inflicted on Werner Bergengruen, whose Christian wrote an article intended to awaken the us’, for those millions of Germans who humanism made him unacceptable to conscience of his fellow Germans. had been unlucky enough to be unable the Nazis, or Ernst Wiechert, whose Published in the Hessische Post to leave a Germany that had become ‘one exhortation to an audience of Munich on 12 May 1945 under the title ‘Die huge concentration camp’, where there students to preserve a critical attitude Konzentrationslager’ and in the Bayerische were only jailors and inmates. One is left towards Nazi ideology earned him a Landeszeitung of 18 May 1945 as ‘Thomas continued overleaf AJR JOURNAL AUGUST 2012 Thomas Mann cont. from p1 dumbfounded by the grotesque self-pity emanating from these words and their wilful blindness to the sufferings of others. The description of Germany as a giant concentration camp conveyed the wholly false impression that Germans were victims of the SS state in the same way If you wish to attend, please complete the enclosed form as Jews and other enemies of the regime. and return it to us ASAP It was little surprise that this exercise in hypocrisy and self-exculpation provoked a damning response from Thomas population, leading to contrition and Pacific Palisades, California, was typical Mann, first published in the New York- the acknowledgment of a due degree of of exile life in general. Thiess remained based refugee magazine Aufbau on 28 responsibility. fixated on the hardships he had endured, September 1945. Incensed by Molo’s But the actual reaction was very citing hunger and air raids, but never attempt to equate the sufferings of different. While Mann was working on mentioning the Jews and never sparing Germans with those of their victims and to his reply to Molo, an article by Frank a word for the threat of persecution, make out that those who had been forced Thiess entitled ‘Innere Emigration’ dispossession, incarceration, deportation into exile had had it better than the ‘inner appeared in the Münchener Zeitung of 18 and death that had motivated his former emigrants’ in Germany, he flatly rejected August 1945. Thiess went much further fellow countrymen to flee abroad. Molo’s invitation to return to Germany and than Molo in discrediting the ‘emigrant’ Thiess claimed that the true patriots issued a root-and-branch condemnation writers – he never referred to them as were those who had stayed behind and of everything that had been published exiles, let alone refugees or ‘Vertriebene’ had not abandoned ‘our sick mother in Germany under the Nazis. Far from (expellees) – and in claiming the moral Germany’. This misrepresented the seeing the literature of ‘inner emigration’ high ground for those who had stayed refugees from Nazism as a group who as a literature of anti-fascist resistance, in Germany. In a notorious phrase, he had freely chosen to leave Germany for he declared that ‘in my eyes books that claimed to have justified his decision not an easy life abroad, thus avoiding the could be printed at all from 1933 to 1945 to emigrate with the argument that if he trials and tribulations visited upon those in Germany are less than worthless and ‘succeeded in surviving’ the Nazi years Germans who had remained. Thiess not fit to be handled. There is a stench of alive, he ‘would have emerged from them never addressed the question of the blood and shame to them. They should richer in knowledge and experience than responsibility of the Germans themselves all be pulped.’ if I had watched the German tragedy from for those trials and tribulations, nor that Mann’s dismissal of all literature the box seats and stalls of foreign lands’ of their guilt towards their ‘non-Aryan’ that had appeared in the Nazi years was (‘aus den Logen und Parterreplätzen des fellow countrymen. And after 1945, arguably too sweeping – it would have Auslands’). Jews from Germany continued for many included those of his own works that were The charge that the exiles had enjoyed years to be seen as outsiders to German published in Germany before his final an easy life compared to the sufferings of society, while those exiles who chose to break with the Nazi regime in 1936. Its those who had stayed in Germany was a return were systematically marginalised, wider significance lay in the fact that by contemptible distortion of the facts, made their sufferings trivialised and their extension it could be read as condemning possible only by the implication that the claims to moral restitution dismissed. everything done in Germany under the privileged life Thomas Mann had lived in Anthony Grenville auspices of the Nazis, thereby inculpating very large numbers of Germans. Mann Running with the Torch was not an advocate of the doctrine of collective guilt, rapidly discredited in the post-war years, but rather of collective shame: he hoped that the revelations from the camps would arouse a sense of moral shame among the German AJR Chief Executive Michael Newman Directors Carol Rossen David Kaye Head of Department Sue Kurlander Social Services AJR Journal Dr Anthony Grenville Consultant Editor Dr Howard Spier Executive Editor Andrea Goodmaker Secretarial/Advertisements Views expressed in the AJR Journal are not necessarily those of the Association of Jewish AJR member Hanneke Dye ran with the Olympic Torch in Harrogate on 19 June.

Load more