Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2011 The long road home: Alfred Andersch, Hans Werner Richter, and the German search for meaning in catastrophe Aaron Dennis Horton Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Horton, Aaron Dennis, "The long road home: Alfred Andersch, Hans Werner Richter, and the German search for meaning in catastrophe" (2011). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3836. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3836 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. THE LONG ROAD HOME: ALFRED ANDERSCH, HANS WERNER RICHTER, AND THE GERMAN SEARCH FOR MEANING IN CATASTROPHE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History By Aaron D. Horton B.A., East Tennessee State University, 2003 M.A., East Tennessee State University, 2005 May 2011 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study owes debts to numerous individuals and institutions, and I hope in my effort to list them all I do not omit anyone. First, I would like to thank the helpful and knowledgeable professors at Louisiana State University who have given me a tremendous amount of support and guidance over the past several years. This includes my dissertation advisor, David Lindenfeld, as well as the members of my dissertation committee: Suzanne Marchand, David Culbert, and Thomas DiNapoli. I would also like to thank Meredith Veldman and Paul Hoffman for their assistance on my general examination committee. I would be remiss not to mention Doug Burgess, Stephen Fritz, Mel Page, Colin Baxter, Junko Tezuka-Mathis, and the late Christa Hungate at East Tennessee State University for their invaluable guidance during my undergraduate, graduate, and teaching careers there. For the present project, I would also like to thank the helpful and friendly staffs of the United States National Archives II in College Park, Maryland and the Prescott Memorial Library at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana for their assistance in sifting through what often seemed like an endless array of boxes and folders. Thanks are also due to the staff of the interlibrary loan department of Ottenheimer Library at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where I am employed as a Visiting Professor at the time of this writing. In a timely and efficient manner, they acquired countless rare books and articles for me over the course of my research. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family, who never stopped believing in me, even when I was unsure of myself. My wife Suzie, in particular, deserves a tremendous amount of praise for her unending support and patience during the grueling process of writing this dissertation. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................ ii ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2: GERMAN PRISONERS OF WAR IN THE UNITED STATES DURING WORLD WAR II: AN OVERVIEW ........................................................................................ 11 CHAPTER 3: ALFRED ANDERSCH AND HANS WERNER RICHTER .............................. 48 CHAPTER 4: DER RUF : THE CALL GOES OUT ................................................................. 80 CHAPTER 5: OCCUPATION, OPTIMISM, AND OPPOSITION: ANDERSCH, RICHTER, AND THE SECOND VERSION OF DER RUF ...................................................................... 120 CHAPTER 6: GROUP 47 AND BEYOND: AN EXTENDED EPILOGUE .......................... 212 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................... 265 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 271 VITA ...................................................................................................................................... 279 iii ABSTRACT The primary subjects of this dissertation are the post-World War II German authors Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter. Drawing from a mixture of the authors’ writings and previously-researched as well as new archival sources, this study will examine their roles as editors of the U.S. Army-sponsored POW newspaper Der Ruf , as founders of the postwar West German journal, also titled Der Ruf , and, most famously, as founding members of the influential postwar West German literary circle Group 47. Each of these developments led directly to the next, and this study will explore the various processes that linked them together. Existing studies have offered various interpretations, ranging from the belief that the authors’ time in America strongly impacted their development as writers to claims that their later careers were strongly informed by desires to distance themselves from accusations of “collaboration.” Most works tend either toward an exclusively historical or literary focus, but this study seeks to unite previously disconnected areas of scholarship in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of the authors’ roles in the emergence of post-World War II West German literature. iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The legacies of Nazism and World War II have undoubtedly impacted German cultural development. Countless politicians, scholars, writers, artists, filmmakers, and many others have struggled to come to terms with the events of 1933-1945. Those who experienced personally the dual catastrophes of Nazism and World War II often were particularly and understandably fixated on comprehending the causes, character, and consequences of that brief but pivotal twelve-year period. The range of experiences for Germans intellectuals was broad. Some, such as Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, fled into exile to avoid Nazi persecution. Others, including socialist politician Kurt Schumacher, remained in Germany and suffered accordingly through internment in concentration camps. Like many others of their generation, the subjects of our study, Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter, remained in Germany despite their internal misgivings about Hitler’s regime. Where Mann or Brecht had already achieved notoriety before the Nazis came to power, Andersch and Richter would achieve their fame after the war as voices of postwar West German literature, using their wartime experiences as primary evidence of their credibility and authority to speak for the postwar generation. Those wartime experiences would be fundamental to the emergence of both Andersch and Richter as prominent figures in the postwar literary scene. Both were former communists who ended up serving in the Wehrmacht , both were captured in Italy, and both were, like 372,000 of their countrymen, transported to the United States, where they were held captive for the remainder of the war. The future authors were given their first, experimental opportunities to produce for an audience, however captive it may have been, when each was selected to take part in a secret project to promote American democracy to German POWs through a nationwide 1 camp periodical called Der Ruf (“The Call”). Their sometimes reluctant participation in the production of Der Ruf would inspire both men to continue their efforts to promote a new, democratic direction for Germany that would combine elements of Western democracy with the socialist principles of their communist backgrounds. When they returned to Germany, they helped found a political journal, also named Der Ruf . Published by Curt Vinz’s Nymphenburger Verlag, this new Ruf would begin with a powerful sense of optimism, built on the notion that the devastation of the war had provided Germany an opportunity to rebuild a completely new political, economic, and social structure that would ensure lasting peace in Europe. This optimism soon gave way to frustration, as Andersch and Richter realized that their hopes were unfeasible in light of postwar political realities, most notably the emerging Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The authors’ increasingly sharp criticisms of the Allied occupation resulted in their dismissal from Der Ruf in April 1947 after a refusal to comply with American censors’ requests to “tone down” the paper’s content. Vinz complied with American demands for the authors’ removal for fear of losing his publishing license, a common occurance during the U.S. occupation when German publications violated official guidelines. Andersch’s and Richter’s dismissal from Der Ruf led ultimately to their foundation of Group 47, a postwar literary circle that became a launching pad for several prominent authors including Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll. While there are numerous studies of the American POW camps, and several biographical and literary studies of Andersch and