This book is an account of what happened to some of the best German writers and journalists after they fled the Nazi terror to find shelter in France. It is a tragic intellectual drama that unfolds over seven years, and features writers such as Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Stefan Zweig, and Joseph Roth, as well as H. G. Wells, AndrÃ?Â?Ã?Â(c) Malraux, Aldous Huxley, and AndrÃ?Â?Ã?Â(c) Gide. It recounts how persecuted writers settled in a colony in the south of France; how they tried to counter-attack, aided by British and French writers; how they quarrelled among themselves; and how they sought to alert the West to Nazi plans for military conquest and warn the German people that Hitler was plunging the nation into ruin.
This book is an account of what happened to some of the best German writers and journalists after they fled the Nazi terror to find shelter in France. It is a tragic intellectual drama that unfolds over seven years, and features writers such as Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Stefan Zweig, and Joseph Roth, as well as H. G. Wells, AndrÃ?Â?Ã?Â(c) Malraux, Aldous Huxley, and AndrÃ?Â?Ã?Â(c) Gide. It recounts how persecuted writers settled in a colony in the south of France; how they tried to counter-attack, aided by British and French writers; how they quarrelled among themselves; and how they sought to alert the West to Nazi plans for military conquest and warn the German people that Hitler was plunging the nation into ruin.
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
A magisterial history of the artists and writers who left Weimar when the Nazis came to power In 1933 thousands of intellectuals, artists, writers, militants and other opponents of the Nazi regime fled Germany. They were, in the words of Heinrich Mann, “the best of Germany,” refusing to remain citizens in this new state that legalized terror and brutality. Exiled across the world, they continued the fight against Nazism in prose, poetry, painting, architecture, film and theater. Weimar in Exile follows these lives, from the rise of national socialism to their return to a ruined homeland, retracing their stories, struggles, setbacks and rare victories. The dignity in exile of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Hanns Eisler, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig and many others provides a counterpoint to the story of Germany under the Nazis.
Julius Fein examines the French response to the large number of German refugees between 1933 and 1938. Fein demonstrates how the Quai d’Orsay sought a compromise between the Republican canon, which said France must help the persecuted, and the factors that limited its willingness to accept refugees, including economic depression, mass unemployment, anti-Semitism, and anti-German sentiment.
Hundreds of German-speaking film professionals took refuge in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, making a lasting contribution to American cinema. Hailing from Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine, as well as Germany, and including Ernst Lubitsch, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder, and Fritz Lang, these multicultural, multilingual writers and directors betrayed distinct cultural sensibilities in their art. Gerd Gemünden focuses on Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934), William Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), Bertold Brecht and Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die (1943), Fred Zinneman’s Act of Violence (1948), and Peter Lorre’s Der Verlorene (1951), engaging with issues of realism, auteurism, and genre while tracing the relationship between film and history, Hollywood politics and censorship, and exile and (re)migration.
This volume deals with authors in exile - those writers who were forced to leave their home country after the National Socialists seized power in 1933. Although many of the authors have continued to receive recognition in their particular fields, whether film or adult literature, one group of artists has been overlooked - the authors and illustrators of children's literature. Now for the first time German Children's and Youth Literature in Exile, 1933-1050, has recorded and made accessible a wealth of information on these German-speaking authors and illustrators who emigrated to many different countries and regions of the world. German Children's and Youth Literature in Exile, 1933-1950, contains biographies of 101 authors and illustrators of children and youth literature as well as bibliographies of the books written and illustrated by them that were published in exile between 1933 and 1950. Included are authors who were born before 1918 in Germany or in areas of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and who lived or worked in Germany or Austria until 1933. Many of them were forced to emigrate because their lives were endangered. Some of them left before the repressive measures of the National Socialists were implemented, in order to maintain their intellectual and artistic freedom. The exile countries they chose were the United States, Great Britain, Switzerland, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Australia, Canada, China and Palestine/Israel. Among the authors listed in this volume are Kurt Held (Die rote Zora und ihre Bande 1941), Irmgard Keun (Nac.
Before Hitler comes to power, Otto Abetz is a left-wing Francophile teacher in provincial Germany, mobilising young French and German idealists to work together for peace through Franco-German reconciliation and a united Europe. Abetz marries a French girl but, after 1933, succumbs to the Nazi sirens. Ribbentrop recruits him as his expert on France, tasking him with soothing the nervous French, as Hitler turns Germany into a war machine. Abetz builds up a network of opinion-moulding French men and women who admire the Nazis and detest the Bolsheviks, and encourages them to use their pens to highlight Hitler's triumphs. In 1939, France expels Abetz as a Nazi agent. The following year he returns in triumph with the German army as Hitler appoints him as his ambassador in Paris. During the war, Abetz (apart from 'securing' works of art and playing a role in the deportation of Jews) manoeuvres three of his French publicist friends -- Jean Luchaire, Fernand de Brinon, Drieu la Rochelle into key positions, from where they can laud Nazi achievements and denigrate the Resistance. A prime question the author addresses is why these writers, and two others, Jules Romains and Bertrand de Jouvenel -- all of whom had close Jewish family connections -- supported the Nazi ideology. At the war's end, Drieu commits suicide, while Luchaire and Brinon are tried and executed as traitors. Abetz, charged with war crimes, pleads that he has saved France from being 'Polonised', but a French court finds him guilty and he is imprisoned. Released early, he dies in a mysterious car crash -- a saboteur being suspected of having tampered with the steering.
Willi Münzenberg was a towering figure in the anti-fascist movement during the first half of the twentieth century. He was acquainted with many of the leading left wing activists and thinkers of his day including Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Karl Radek. He also played a foundational role in several important transnational organisations such as the Socialist Youth International, the largest anti-war movement in opposition to the First World War, the International Workers’ Relief organisation, and the League against Colonialism and for National Independence. As a film distributor and promoter, he brought modern Soviet films to western Europe. As a publicist and manager, he built up the most influential left-wing media empire in the Weimar Republic and initiated the pioneering use of photography and photo montage. He was also a long-time member of the Reichstag. He was a pioneer in the use of a variety of media and the way he gained the support and collaboration of progressive politicians, artists and intellectuals ensured that he would become the leading, and most effective, opponent of Hitler’s and Goebbels’ propaganda machine, as he exposed the venality and brutality of the Nazis. Late in life, his turn against Stalinism almost certainly led to his mysterious death. This is the first detailed biography in English to give coverage to the full range of Münzenberg's activism. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from the book about the best ways to counter fascism which are powerfully relevant to our contemporary political situation. It should be of great interest to activists, scholars and those studying the history of the radical left.
Modern Germany explores life, society, and history in this comprehensive thematic encyclopedia, spanning such topics as geography, pop culture, the media, and gender. Germany and its capital, Berlin, were the fulcrum of geopolitics in the twentieth century. After the Second World War, Germany was a divided nation. Many German citizens were born and educated and continued to work in eastern Germany (the former German Democratic Republic). This title in the Understanding Modern Nations series seeks to explain contemporary life and traditional culture through thematic encyclopedic entries. Themes in the book cover geography; history; politics and government; economy; religion and thought; social classes and ethnicity; gender, marriage, and sexuality; education; language; etiquette; literature and drama; art and architecture; music and dance; food; leisure and sports; and media and pop culture. Within each theme, short topical entries cover a wide array of key concepts and ideas, from LGBTQ issues in Germany to linguistic dialects to the ever-famous Oktoberfest. Geared specifically toward high school and undergraduate German students, readers interested in history and travel will find this book accessible and engaging.
