SUSI EISENBERG-BACH Dutch Publishers of German Exile Literature Without Any Exile Publishers There Could Exist No Exile Literatu

Home , Arnold Zweig, Carl Sternheim, Die Sammlung, Ernst Toller, Ernst Weiss, Ferdinand Bruckner

SUSI EISENBERG-BACH

Dutch publishers of German exile literature

Without any exile publishers there could exist no exile literature, that is the literature in German language outside of Germany between 1933 and 1950. Those books that could no longer be printed in Germany were at first published in Austria and then also in Switzerland, in France, in England, in Sweden and above all in the Netherlands. At that time, books in German were also printed in Russia, Czechoslovakia as well as in North and Latin America. The most intense publishing activity, however, took place in Holland. Already in April 1933-even before the burning of the books in Berlin and other German cities which happened on 10 May 1933-Querido and Allert de Lange began their activity. It was Emanuel Querido himself who took the initiative. In April 1933 the translator Nico Rost visited, in the name of Emanuel Querido, Fritz Helmut Landshoff who was then still living in Berlin. He was one of the directors of the publishing firm Kiepenheuer. Rost asked Landshoff whether he was willing to direct a publishing department for German books in Amsterdam. He explained that Querido had the intention to print literary works by German-speaking authors, literary as well as other works which were forbidden in Germany, as a new department of his Dutch publishing firm. For Landshoff this proposition came like a gift from heaven because he could no longer stay in his apartment which had been searched by the Nazis a few days before. Therefore, after Rost's visit, he took the night train to Amsterdam and already on the day of his arrival in Amster- dam everything was settled and Landshoff became the director of the Ger- man department of Emanuel Querido Uitgeversmaatschappij at the Keizersgracht. It was about the same time that Hermann Kesten was asked by Gerard de Lange (who had become managing director of Allert de Lange's after his father's death in 1932) to direct the German department of his publishing firm. He very gladly agreed and took over the literary section of that publisher, whereas Walter Landauer was its technical director. Emanuel Querido as well as Allert de Lange had been firm adversaries of fascism from the very beginning. With these new activities they meant to give to the exiled authors a new field of activity and means to survive. At Querido's Landshoff got the help of Klaus Mann who soon founded 217 his periodical Die Sammlung-which existed from 1933 to 1935-under the aegis of Heinrich Mann, Aldous Huxley and Andr6 Gide. It was at first a mainly literary periodical, but a little later it printed also political articles which aroused strong opposition. After 24 issues it died owing to lack of funds. At Allert de Lange's Leopold Schwarzschild issued Das Neue Tagebuch in Amsterdam as well as also in Paris. It survived from 1933 to 1940 (both these periodicals became later available as Kraus reprints). Each of these two publishing firms had 'their' authors, though a few ap- peared in both. Here are the principal authors (literary ones) at Querido's: Vicky Baum, Georg Bernhard, Bernard von Brentano, Emil Bernhard Cohn, Alfred Doblin, Albert Einstein (Mein Weltbild), Lion Feuchtwanger, Bruno Frank, Leonhard Frank, Alexander M. Frey, Ernst Glaeser, Oskar Maria Graf, Martin Gumpert, Konrad Heiden, Thomas Theodor Heine, Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Henry William Katz, Kurt Kersten, Hermann Kersten (but only after the war), Irmgard Keun, Annette Kolb (also after the war), Emil Ludwig, Erika Mann, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Konrad Merz, Robert Neumann, Rudolf Olden, Alfred Polgar, Anna Reiner, Erich Maria Remarque, Joseph Roth, Leopold Schwarzschild, Anna Seghers, Wilhelm Speyer, Carl Sternheim, Ernst Toller, Jakob Wassermann, Ernst Weiss, Victoria Wolf, Alfred Wolfenstein, Otto Zarek, and Arnold Zweig. Allert de Lange's authors were: Schalom Asch, Georg Bernhard, Franz Blei, Bert Brecht, Max Brod, Ferdinand Bruckner ( = Theodor Tagger), Hans Flesch-Bruningen (alias Vinzenz Brun), Jolan Foldes, Sigmund Freud, Georg Hermann, bd6n von Horvath, Henry William Katz, Gina Kaus, Herman Kesten, Irmgard Keun, Egon Erwin Kisch, Annette Kolb, Alma Mahler, Hans Natonek, Alfred Neumann, Leo Perutz, Theodor Pli(e)vier, Alfred Polgar, Joseph Roth, Rene Schickele, Annemarie Selinko, Adrienne Thomas, Karl Tschuppik, Friedrich Walter, Christa Winsloe, Theodor Wolff, Stefan Zweig. I may mention that I did not find these lists of authors anywhere else, but that they are the result of my own research: each filing card represents a physical book which went through my hands. Thomas Mann does not appear in any of these two lists, but before the publication of the first volume of his Joseph tetralogy he had intended to have it published by Querido: 'This morning I wrote a letter to him (i.e. Gottfried Bermann of S. Fischer in Berlin which at that time, on the 24th of August of 1933, still existed there) ... where I admonished him very 1 earnestly to realize the situation and to give this volume to Querido. ' 1 Klaus Mann, Briefeund Antworten,I (1922-37) (Munich, Ed. Spangenberg/Ellermann, 1975), p. 124.