Volume XXXIV No. 5 May 1979 INFORMATION fSSUfD SY THE Assoaum OF JEVUSH REFU^S U OEAT BRITMI %on Larsen peared from the German scene: where and in what personal situation he worked was irrele­ vant. Even as a fanner he was still a writer. Another recent book on the subject is GERMAN LITERATURE-IN-EXILE Polififc und Literatur im Exil (Christian Ver­ The Last Chapter? lag, Hamburg) by Alfred Kantorowicz who emigrated to France, fought against Franco in ^ew topics in literary history have been dis- fred Durzak, Bloomington, who is also the Spain, fled to America and retumed, as a Com­ *^ussed, studied, written about all over the editor of the anthology) the success stories munist of long standing, to East Germany. But *orld as much as that of German Exilliteratur, are also rare, but some of them are quite the GDR tumed out to be the worst "exile" r'er since the buming of the books and the astounding: Vicki Baum, Lion Feuchtwanger, for him, and after a decade of frustration he "**ss exodus of writers from Nazi Gennany. Franz Werfel extended their former mainly left it to settle in the Federal RepubUc. He But the very diversity of attitudes to the German-language readership into a worldwide died in Hamburg two months ago. ^"Dject makes it difficult to define the term one from their American exile; Anna Segher's Kantorowicz starts his work—compiled for , "Winteratur. Does it mean anything produced Das siebte Kreuz achieved a sale of 600,000 the Forschungsstelle fur die Geschichte des J former Gennan writers outside their home- copies in the U.S. alone. Nationalsozialismus in Hamburg—with a state­ nd? Or only works on the subject of exile, The second part of the volume consists of ment which promises interesting elaboration: "6 situation of the refugees? How about the individual studies of exiled authors. Bertolt "Apart from opposition to Hitler there is no P^nod of exile: does it end in 1945? What Brecht's attitude is perhaps the most inter­ common denominator for the German-language „ put the works written and/or published after esting. "The best school of dialectics is emigra­ writers-in-exile." In a well-researched chapter J JS, the writers who remained in their coun- tion," he said in his Fliichtlingsgesprdche. he deals with refugee groups such as exiled "es of exile and began to produce works in Yet he did not like the term "emigrant": we Reich Chancellors, prominent Catholics, „ * languages? The writers who retumed to did not choose a new homeland for settling aristocrats. Communists and Social-Democrats, ^rmany or Austria and continued their there, he argued in some of his poems and prose and women Socialists who became victims of jj^^^rs there? One may come to the conclu- writings after 1933; we were banned and ex­ Stalin's terror. However, the remaining 200 ^^1 that the term Exilliteratur is so ambigu- pelled. "Aber keiner von uns wird hierbleiben," pages of the book are a grave disappointment; tio' ^° ill-defined, so open to misinterpreta- he prophesied. He was wrong. Paradoxically, they deal only with the little-known Schutzver­ j, 1 that precise studies are impossible; and some of his greatest works—such as Mutter band of German writers-in-exile, with abortive j"^t what is left is the hard, tragic core of Courage and GaJilct—were written in exile. congresses in Moscow and Paris, and with the dividual fates: of those who did not survive But can one call them exile literature? "Intel­ foundation of a short-lived. Communist-inspired ^|f exile, who were crushed by the calamities, lectually and artistically," writes another German "Freedom Library" in Paris in 1934, "° took their own lives in despair. Bloomington professor, Ulrich Weisstein, in his at which Kantorowicz himself played a leading gj.1^ studious attempt to combine the biblio- essay bn Brecht, "he found his true home only part. It was opened on May 10, the annivers­ J*Phical With the social viewpoint has been in exile." ary of the buming af the books; it was shut Jr^le in Die deutsche Exilliteratur 1933-1945, exactly six years later to the day when Hitler's ^j.^'^thology of 600 pages (Reclam, Stuttgart) Or could we range Thomas Mann's last work, tanks were rolling into France. In a way, and field '^°'^tributions by 40 specialists in that Felix Krull—now acknowledged as the greatest in a much more important capacity. Dr. Alfred », ?• most of them university professors, comic novel in the German language—among Wiener's library which he rescued to London lj,^"?ly in the USA (preponderantly at the literature-in-exile because its major part was in 1939 was the real answer to the Nazis' bar­ jlj l^^^a University, Bloomington), and nearly written in Califomia? To say nothing of Nelly barous destruction of the books. Kantorowicz j^ "1 their early middle age so that they had Sachs, whose case is a very different one. does not even mention it in his own book. "Persecution and emigration," writes Profes­ Pow, even been bom when Hitler came to But he touches upon a development which, er. One part of the book deals with the sor Albrecht Holschuh (Bloomington), "did he says, complicates the evaluation of exile Pal "^ of the exiled writers in their princi- not separate Nelly Sachs from Germany's literature: the manifold, involved, unexplored con/^??"^ries of refuge, and here we find a few intellectual life: she had never taken part in it, changes of the refugee writers' Weltan­ subi " ^**^ first-hand knowledge on the either actively or passively. Even the schauung. Many, he says, experienced their '^Ifr^^' ^"^ ^" ^'•ossmann on Czechoslovakia, Ministry of Propaganda seems to have re­ exile as a phase of their intellectual lives. On to Kantorowicz on Spain, Gabriele Tergit garded her as so harmless that a few of her They changed countries of residence, often ^England. poems could appear until 1938. No doubt, she their opinions, nationalities, creeds, and some­ in '"^J^S the academic accounts of conditions was persecuted as a Jewess, not as a writer." times the languages in which they wrote. ^^nn countries, Tergit's contribution The most relevant essay of the anthology Agnostics became Orthodox Jews, Communists Us j?^ out as a human document, for she gives may be the last one, on Zuckmayer's Devil's tumed into Catholics, bourgeois liberals into ivher '•^umbnail stories of her fellow writers, General. Volker Wehdeking, professor at the Marxists, social critics withdrew into ivory aiti il^^y came from, how they got to Brit- University of Kansas, calls it an "exile towers, pacifists became militant anti-Nazis. sti^ *."at they did here; their failures and drama!" yet starts his contribution with the It is certainly a subject worthy of study. thejfS'es, their contacts among the English, sentence, "At first sight it does not look as Tucholsky is again the object of the exile- ^itle ^ "^ t° mobilise public opinion against though the most important work from Zuck­ literature cult in a publication that does not all ci,^^^ t° explain why they were here at mayer's years of exile has very much to do enhance his memory: Die Q-Tagebiicher 193^ ^^itnat analyses the changes of the official with the consequences of exile," but the entire 35 edited bv his widow Mary Gerold and itite-J^ ^"^ quotes the puzzled remark of an rest of the essay tries to prove that it has. Gustav Huonker (Rowohlt). "Q" stands for shouji''^^nt camp commander in 1940: "I True, Zuckmayer's years in America reflected "ich quatsche." It is the sad spectacle of an ina^-,'''lever have believed that there are so the situation of so many refugees: after fail­ exiled writer in his mid-forties who refuses to tio^/^azis among the Jews!" And she men- ing to find literary work in Hollywood he was contribute to the anti-Nazi joumals which Ufe . *^ichard Friedenthal's splendid book on throughout the war years a farmer in Vermont, need his work but, right to the day of his Afajj^l an internment camp, "Die Welt in der while Ernst Toller, faced with the same failure, suicide, cannot stop himself pouring out his •^ehtlv ^•" '^^'^^ ^^^^ 'ler contribution, quite killed himself. But just as Zuckmayer wrote thoughts, guilt feelings, bitter witticisms and Wfjtgi^. with a few success stories—of his Hauptmann von Kopenick in Germany, long nonsense jokes in private letters to a woman How V?""?"exile who made good in Britain, after the militarist Wilhelminian establish­ friend. Yet he himself wrote repeatedly that ''erseif ."^ Permanent homeland. Today, she ment he derided in that play had gone, he these scribblings should not be published! I^ 3f IS one of them. could have written his Devil's General after This is indeed scraping the barrel of German ^1e United SUtes (writes Professcn- Man­ his return from exile when Hitler had disap­ literatiu-e-in-exile. Page 2 AJR INFORMATION May 1978 RENT/RATE REBATES AND GERMAN PENSIONS GERMANY AND AUSTRIA We understand that in the calculatitm of the income of an applicant for rent allowance or rate FOLLOW-UP ON "HOLOCAUST" STATUTE OF UMETATIONS rebate, several Greater London Boroughs and A spokesman for West Gennany TV said during In answer to the letter of the "Council of Jews possibly some provincial ones disregard, among a conference of the Evangelical Academy at from Germany", quoted in our previous issue, the other pensions paid for certain disablements, tne Tutzing, thc importance of the showing of the ofiice of the Federal Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, German and Austrian pensions paid to Nazi vic­ "Holocaust" film in Germany was to be seen in stated that the Chancellor welcomed the initiative tims.