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Home , Exilliteratur, Franz Werfel, Marta Feuchtwanger

Weimar on the Pacific WEIMAR AND NOW: GERMAN CULTURAL CRITICISM Edward Dimendberg, Martin Jay, and Anton Kaes, General Editors Weimar on the Pacific

German Exile Culture in and the Crisis of Modernism

Ehrhard Bahr

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • University of California Press, one of the most distin- guished university presses in the , enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its ac- tivities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and in- stitutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd. London, England

© 2007 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bahr, Ehrhard. Weimar on the Pacific : German exile culture in Los Angeles and the crisis of modernism / Ehrhard Bahr. p. cm.—(Weimar and now : 41) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-25128-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Modern (Aesthetics)—California—Los Angeles. 2. German—California—Los Angeles—Intellectual life. 3. . German—California—Los Angeles—Intellec- tual life. 4. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Intellectual life— 20th century. I. Title. bh301.m54b34 2007 700.89'31079494—dc22 200700207

Manufactured in the United States of America

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 10 987654321

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Contents

List of Illustrations vii

List of Abbreviations ix

Preface xiii

Introduction 1

1. The Dialectic of Modernism 30 2. Art and Its Resistance to Society: Theodor W. Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory 56

3. ’s California Poetry: Mimesis or Modernism? 79

4. The Dialectic of Modern Science: Brecht’s Galileo 105 5. Epic Theater versus Film Noir: Bertolt Brecht and ’s Anti-Nazi Film Hangmen Also Die 129

6. California Modern as Immigrant Modernism: Architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph M. Schindler 148

7. Between Modernism and Antimodernism: 172 8. Renegade Modernism: Alfred Döblin’s Novel Karl and Rosa 197

9. The Political Battleground of Exile Modernism: The Council for a Democratic Germany 223

10. Evil Germany versus Good Germany: ’s Doctor Faustus 242

11. A “True Modernist”: 265

Conclusion: The Weimar Legacy of Los Angeles 289

Chronology 301 Appendices I–V III. Addresses of Weimar Exiles and Exile Institutions in Los Angeles 309 III. Filmography: Hangmen Also Die 311 III. Text of the Kol Nidre 313 IV. Lord Byron’s “Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte” 315 IV. Text of Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor of Warsaw 319

Bibliography 323

Index 347 Illustrations

1. Goethe-Schiller Monument by Ernst Rietschel (1857) in front of the National Theater in Weimar 2 2. during the 1940s 31 3. Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt/Main during the early 1930s 34 4. Theodor W. Adorno at his writing desk, circa 1947 57 5. Theodor W. Adorno’s duplex apartment house 59 6. Bertolt Brecht in 1938 81 7. Bertolt Brecht’s house, Santa Monica 86 8. Charles Laughton as Galileo in 1947 106 9. Coronet Theatre, Beverly Hills 120 10. Fritz Lang 131 11. Still photo from Hangmen Also Die, circa 1943 138 12. Rudolph M. Schindler 149 13. Richard Neutra and Julius Shulman at the Tremaine House 150 14. Schindler Studio House 154 15. Lovell House, designed by Richard Neutra 158 16. Kester Avenue Elementary School Building, designed by Richard Neutra 162 17. Thomas Mann’s house, Pacific Palisades, circa 1941 170

vii 18. Franz Werfel, circa 1945 173 19. Franz Werfel’s house, Beverly Hills 178 20. Alfred Döblin, circa 1940 198 21. Alfred Döblin’s house, Hollywood 201 22. Salka Viertel’s house, Pacific Palisades 225 23. Paul Tillich, circa 1954 237 24. Thomas Mann in 1941 243 25. Arnold Schoenberg, circa early 1940s 266 26. Arnold Schoenberg’s house, Brentwood 269 27. : Lion and ’s house, Pacific Palisades 291 28. Census map of Los Angeles showing distribution of foreign-born residents from , Germany, and Hungary 299 Abbreviations

AT Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, newly trans. and with a translator’s intro by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Berman Berman, Russell A. The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. DE Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. DF Mann, Thomas. Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn As Told by a Friend. Trans. John E. Woods. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. GBA Brecht, Bertolt. Werke: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe. Ed. Werner Hecht et al. 30 vols. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1988–2000. GW Mann, Thomas. Gesammelte Werke in dreizehn Bänden. 13 vols. 2nd, rev. ed. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1974. Leppert Adorno, Theodor W. Essays on Music. Trans. Susan H. Gillespie, with introduction, commentary, and notes by Richard Leppert. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

ix MM Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Trans. E. F. N. Jephcott. London: Verso, 1978. PMM Adorno, Theodor W. Philosophy of Modern Music. Trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley W. Blomster. New York: Seabury Press, 1973. Poems Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913–1956. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the cooperation of . New York: Methuen, 1976. Emigration is the best school of dialectics. Refugees are the sharpest dialectic thinkers. Bertolt Brecht, Refugee Conversations, 1940

Preface

After completing my graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1966, I accepted a teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles. I loaded my graduate-student library onto the backseat of my Volkswagen bug and drove to Southern California. When I turned into a gas station in Westwood, the Los Angeles suburb where the university is located, the gas station attendant commented on one of the books in the car, a collection of Thomas Mann’s short stories with a lavender book jacket. I vividly recall the gas station attendant involving me in a lengthy discussion of Mann’s Magic Mountain. I took it as a good omen. What better welcome to Los Angeles could there be for a teacher of ? I was aware that Thomas Mann had lived in Los Angeles and had left the city only fourteen years earlier. Until June 1952 he had often visited his beloved Westwood to have his hair cut—visits that were regularly recorded in his diary: “Gone to Westwood for a hair cut” (Nach West- wood zum Haarschneiden). But in 1966, when I arrived, his diaries had not yet been published, although I had heard from his son, Michael, who taught German at U.C. Berkeley, that they were ready for transcription and the first volume was scheduled for publication in 1975. I was un- aware, however, that in the 1940s Thomas Mann had planned to retire in Los Angeles; it was here he wanted to see his grandchildren grow up. In 1952 McCarthyism inspired him to change his plans. Personal attacks on him, including in Congress, had made him apprehensive, and he

xiii xiv Preface feared that the history of the would repeat itself in the United States. He returned to Europe in June 1952 and settled in Switzer- land, where he died three years later. I still recall listening to his Schiller address on the radio in in 1955. Although I was trained in the history of German literature, I was not aware in 1966 that so many canonical authors of modern German liter- ature had lived in exile in Southern California and produced their major works here. My experience at the gas station in Westwood, however, had alerted me, and for the next thirty years I researched this phenomenon that was so important not only to German literature, but also to German modernism more generally, including architecture, film, music, and phi- losophy. I eagerly met Marta Feuchtwanger, one of the last representa- tives of the German exile group of the 1940s, and I became acquainted with the second- and third-generation exiles, including the children of Arnold Schoenberg, Nuria, Ronald, and Lawrence; Schoenberg’s daughter-in-law, Barbara, who was the daughter of the exile composer Erik Zeisl; and Lawrence Weschler, the grandson of the exile composer Ernst Toch. I also made the acquaintance of Walter Wicclair, director of the Freie Bühne, the only German-language theater in Los Angeles, who kept alive the memory of many of the exile writers in his public readings in the 1960s and 1970s, and Marta Mierendorff, who was the most ded- icated chronicler of the German-speaking exiles in Los Angeles. At first this research was simply the subject of personal interest rather than my main scholarly pursuit, as my primary field of research at the time was German literature of the eighteenth century. My first book was about irony in the late works of Goethe, although my work was influ- enced by Thomas Mann’s view of Goethe as an ironic writer. I changed my research focus when John M. Spalek of the University of Southern California established exile research as a legitimate field in the study of German literature in the United States. I was only too happy to join his group and contribute an article to his Deutsche seit 1933: Kalifornien, the authoritative work on German exile literature in Los Angeles. My article dealt with the participation of Thomas Mann and in a writers’ conference at UCLA in 1943, a confer- ence that was devoted to the recruitment of literature, film, and music in the war against the Axis powers. In the 1980s, my interests expanded to include exile culture in general, and I added architecture, film, music, and philosophy to my fields of research. This shift was influenced by the trends in German studies in the United States that I helped to initiate as a member of the American Eighteenth-Century Studies Society and the