Exile Literature and Literary Exile: A Review Essay

South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Exile Literature and Literary Exile: A Review EssayReview by: Siegfried MewsSouth Atlantic Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 103-109Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3200340 .

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Exile Literature and Literary Exile: A Review Essay

SIEGFRIED MEWS

IN HIS NOVEL EXIL, first published in 1938 in the Moscow publication Das Wort, exiled novelist Lion Feuchtwanger used the term "Gr6oBe und Erbdirmlichkeit des Exils" to characterize the situation of writers and intellectuals who were forced to leave Germany or who left voluntarily after Hitler became chancellor on 30 January 1933. The exodus included virtually all writers of prominence, and so the exiles soon began to conceive of themselves as representatives of the "other," better Germany whose traditions had been perverted by the Nazis. During the early years of the Nazi regime, the exiles tended to stay close to home; that is, they selected Germany's neighboring countries as their temporary domiciles. They advanced their claim of moral superiority over the Nazis and proffered their analyses of Hitler's rise to power in the publications of the exile press that were centered in Prague and Paris--Czechoslovakia and France were the most important host countries for exiles before the beginning of World War II. As a result of the outbreak of World War II and Germany's invasion of European countries, the exiles fled Europe, and the vast majority of literary journals they had edited ceased publication.

Apart from the discussion of topical issues in periodicals, the experience of exile found expression in literary works of the late 1930s and the 1940s; perhaps the most compelling fictional account of the rootless exiles' existence is to be found in Anna Seghers's novel Transit (1944). But research interest in exile literature--or, in a more encompassing sense, exile studies-was slow in developing. Al- though research libraries and archives in the Federal Republic such as the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt am Main (founded in 1947) and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar (founded



104 Siegfried Mews

in 1955) established collections of works published in exile and sys- tematically collected the literary remains of exiled authors, the first edition of the major reference work Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933-1945, edited by Wilhelm Stemfeld and Eva Tiedemann, met with an unen- thusiastic response. But the change in the political and intellectual climate of the Federal Republic that occurred in the mid- and late 1960s as a result of the student movement heightened public aware- ness of the necessity for exile studies--an academic discipline that soon evolved into an endeavor both interdisciplinary and international. The scholarly and media attention to exile studies in the Federal Republic has spawned a considerable body of literature on the various facets of the exile phenomenon.

A significant part of these scholarly works--reference works, monographs, collections of articles, essays in periodicals--was published in Germany; however, as a consequence of the United States' significance as a host country for the refugees from Hitler's Germany, exile studies have gained a strong foothold in this country. The US-based Society for Exile Studies, which has sponsored numerous symposia on various facets of exile studies, has served as a forum for scholarly communication for more than two decades; Exilforschung, an international yearbook, has been published under the auspices of the Society and its German affiliate, Gesellschaft fiir Exilforschung. Not surprisingly, the research interests of American scholars have tended to focus on the lives and works of those writers who tempo- rarily or permanently settled in the United States; in fact, the first of the works to be discussed in the following deals with precisely such a group of writers.

It is indicative of the long-lasting effects of exile that, among the contributors to the second, formidable volume (in two parts) on the exile of German writers in the United States during the Hitler era, there are several exiles or their offspring. It is perhaps also indicative of the economic, editorial, and other difficulties attending the publication of a major work of encyclopedic scope that the second volume appeared after a hiatus of considerably more than ten years. In accordance with the settlement patterns of exiles, the editors adopted a geographical principle as a structuring device; hence the first volume, Deutsche Exilliteratur seit 1933 (1976), was justifiably devoted to California, sanctuary to such renowned exiles as Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. The second volume deals with writers whose residence and center of activities was in New York City or on the East coast. The title of the second volume has been slightly changed to Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur so as to reflect the fact that not all exiles



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hailed from Germany proper; some came from Austria and other German-speaking areas of Europe.

In their totality volumes 1 and 2 represent an impressive opus not only in quantitative terms; volume 2, with close to 2,000 pages, is almost twice as hefty as volume 1. Although quantitative factors are by no means the ultimate yardstick for assessing scholarly achievement and academic merit, such factors cannot be entirely ignored in an enterprise of this nature. First, the sheer magnitude of the collec- tive project that, inevitably, had to rely on many collaborators and contributors, necessitates summary comments rather than detailed analysis. Second, and more important, a scholarly undertaking that is driven in part by the moral imperative of Wiedergutmachung cannot be exclusively judged in qualitative terms. After all, the monumental editorial goal of not only elucidating the exile experience of the famous and illustrious but also of rescuing from oblivion those whose flourishing literary careers were terminated, changed, or interrupted by being forced into exile, those whose beginning careers did not have a chance of developing, and those whose careers could not be resumed after the end of World War II demanded comprehensive coverage. Hence it is appropriate to provide some quasi-statistical information in order to indicate the scope of the volume, which emphasizes inclusiveness rather than selectivity based on the elusive criterion of literary merit.

The brief preface (ix-xxi) describes the parameters and problems related to the concept of "Exilliteratur," such as the origin of the authors discussed, the language(s) they used as their medium of expression, their preference of genre, their arrival in the United States, and the end of their exile via return (or attempted return) to Europe after World War II or continued residence in the United States. A useful tabulation, "eine nahezu vollstiindige Liste der Exilanten ..., die mit Literatur und Publizistik als Autoren oder Vermittler zu tun hatten" (xxii), of approximately 375 literati provides an indication of the comprehensive coverage the two volumes offer. The contributions on individual authors, which comprise the bulk of volume 2 and total nearly eleven hundred pages, number eighty-six. The sheer number of these contributions serves as an impediment to their detailed discussion; a few cursory remarks must suffice. Penned by contributors from both the United States and Europe, they are arranged in alphabetical order and range from Martha Albrand and Rose Auslinder to Carl Zuckmayer and Stefan Zweig. Usually written in the biographical-interpretive mode, these contributions necessarily differ in emphases and approaches (e.g., in



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terms of the purely biographical versus the articulation of the exile experience in literary texts); in part their unevenness is attributable to the great variety of writers discussed. Generally speaking, contributors on well-established authors could rely on a body of secondary literature commensurate with the respective author's renown; in the case of less familiar or nearly unknown writers and other figures vital to the literary enterprise in New York City, archival materials, interviews, and the like assumed a correspondingly higher degree of importance.

The initial "Autoren" section is followed by nine so-called "Sam- melaufsatze" that explore various generic modes of writing in exile (poetry, by K. Weissenberger; drama, by B. Kehrmann; prose, by C. ter Haar) and discuss groups of exiles defined by their professions (journalists, by S. Schneider; Germanists, by O. Best and J. Mehl; translators, by H. Zohn; literary and theater agents by P. Macris) or ideological persuasion (Marxist writers, by V. Diirr). Also included is K. Giirttler's survey of exile writers in Canada--in contrast to the United States not a refuge because of restrictive immigration policies. Occasional overlapping with essays in the preceding section was unavoidable; at the same time, these "Sammelaufsaitze" establish the broad context that constituted the literary scene for exiled writers.

This context is also in the center of the following section, enigmati- cally entitled "Thematische Aufsitze." Strictly speaking, only M. Winkler's essay on the city of New York as an-underrepresented- theme in exile literature and, perhaps, G. Stem's disquisition on exile as a topic in contemporary American letters qualify as thematic essays. Particularly Stem's essay implicitly postulates the open-endedness of the exile phenomenon that extends beyond the duration of the erst- while refugees' physical exile in that they and their experiences have left their traces in the texts of American writers of subsequent generations. Other contributions in this section discuss important publications and institutions such as the monthly (later weekly) Aufbau (C. Eykmann), the Leo Baeck Institute (W. Schaber), the role of colleges and universities (G. Probst), and the reception of exile writers in the liberal American press (C. Paul-Merritt). E. Bahr deals perceptively with one of the major political/cultural controversies among the exiles, the debate about the existence of the "other" Germany, one that, in contrast to the Germany of the Nazis, represented the humanistic tradition with which most of the exiles identified.

Two further sections conclude volume 2. "Exiltheater in New York" gives a general survey of exile theater in that city (H. Marx) as well as accounts of prominent-though not necessarily successful-




playwrights and directors: Bertolt Brecht (J. Lyon), Erwin Piscator (H. H. Rudnick), Max Reinhardt (G. Brokoph-Mauch), and Franz Werfel (A. H. E. Brown). "Weitere Repraisentanten des deutschsprachigen Exils in New York" appears to be a bit of a catch-all section in that it is not quite clear why some of the authors discussed were not included in the first section of "Autoren." W. Koepke discusses Albert Einstein's relations to exiled writers; further contributions are on Hannah Arendt (M. Tatar), the philosopher Erich von Kahler (E. J. Engel), publisher Kurt Wolff (W. Miiller and S. Schuyler), Stefan Zweig's former wife, the writer Friderike Maria Zweig (H. Zohn), theater critic Julius Bab (H. Bergholz), journalist and editor Kurt Pinthus (W. B. Lewis), and Ernst Toller (J. M. Spalek).

Without doubt, in conjunction with its predecessor, Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur seit 1933 constitutes a meritorious achievement that provides not only an immensely useful and valuable reference tool but is clearly destined to become the standard work on the subject. All criticism must pale in view of a comprehensive project that required the perseverance, ingenuity, and business acumen of editor John M. Spalek, his collaborators, and his staff to bring it to fruition.

If Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur seit 1933 addresses primarily the reader who is conversant with German and confines itself essentially to the politically motivated exile of writers from the German-speaking countries during the Nazi period, Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century is designed for an English-speaking audience. It takes an extraordi- narily encompassing view of exile in its attempt "to provide both a general survey of the field of literary exile and detailed analytic entries on representative writers of exile from different parts of the world" (vii) in that, in some instances, it dispenses with the criterion of political coercion and resultant geographic (and linguistic) disloca- tion. The latitudinal approach is evident, for example, in the coverage of "Gay and Lesbian Writers in Exile" (10-22; among them Erika and Klaus Mann); even more striking is the inclusion of authors "who reflect a profound state of psychic exile that permeates their con- sciousness" (vii). Thus Franz Kafka merits an entry as the "archetypal figure of psychic exile" (360); Rainer Maria Rilke, in an incongruously short entry of ten lines, is characterized as a writer who expresses "a sense of invidious displacement" (577); and Giinter Grass is de- scribed as "an exile from his past" (287). Such an encompassing view emphasizes the editor's perception of exile as "one of the most deeply rooted characteristics of the modem era" (xxiv). At the same time, such a view appears questionable in the face of the more restrictive concept underlying Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur. Yet "group entries"



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ranging from "American Expatriates in Europe, 1900-1990" to "Yiddish Writers" have been added in an endeavor to establish the concrete, historical context of specific exile situations. The selection criteria employed for these "group entries" are difficult to fathom, however, in that the entries differ in length, methodology, and quality. Above all, it is not quite clear what constitutes a "group" of exiles. There is, for example, a short, two-page essay (with bibliography) on "Britain as a Center for German-Language Writers in Exile [during the Nazi period]." But despite a considerable body of extant secondary literature, including the volumes discussed above, there is no essay on the United States--or on any other country that harbored refugees from Hitler's Germany.

In keeping with the editor's latitudinal concept, Literary Exile also devotes a brief essay to the situation in the "Two Germanys" after World War II, that is, the voluntary or involuntary exile of mostly East German writers who, before the opening of the Berlin Wall and the inner-German border on 9 November 1989, settled in West Berlin or West Germany. Regrettably, the essay does not do justice to the main cause for this kind of exile, that is, the repressive cultural policies of the German Democratic Republic. Factual inaccuracies and linguistic inventiveness (e.g., Ernst Honecker for Erich Honecker [41] and Deutsches Demokratic Republik for Deutsche Demokratische Re- publik [42]) do not enhance the reader's confidence in the soundness of the essay.

As in Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur, the bulk of Literary Exile is comprised of some 550 alphabetical entries on individual authors (written by several contributors). These entries constitute a compen- dium claiming to offer "a representative survey of the modem writer in exile" (viii). Indeed, as demonstrated by the rather numerous entries on writers from the German-speaking countries--from Theo- dor Adomo, Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht to Carl Zuckmayer, Arnold and Stefan Zweig, and Gerhard Zwerenz-such a claim is not without justification. Needless to say, in instances of authors discussed in both Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur and Literary Exile, the comparatively short entries of the latter volume are usually less substantial than those in the former work. The alphabetical entries are generally unexceptionable; the frequency of misspelled German titles, names, and the like is discon- certing, however.

Literary Exiles concludes with several appendices (on waves of exile in the twentieth century, on the exiles' points of departure and arrival, and on categories of exile) that underline both the pervasive-




ness of exile and the difficulties of coming to grips with such a pervasive and complex phenomenon within the confines of a single- volume handbook. Appendix D, "Exile by Category," in particular reveals the problems inherent in an all-inclusive definition of exile. Although political exile is by far the largest category, other categories such as "personal/social exile"--a category that includes, for example, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, Giinter Grass, Peter Handke, and Hermann Hesse-tend to subvert the poignancy of political exile in general and that of the writers during the Nazi period in particular. While this meritorious compilation provides English-speaking readers access to exiled writers, prominent among them those from the German- speaking countries, the serious student of exile literature may prefer to supplement the information gleaned from Literary Exilewith that gathered from other, specialized sources such as Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

WORKS CITED Spalek, John M., and Joseph Strelka, eds. Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur seit 1933. Volume

2 in 2 parts: New York. Bern: Francke Verlag, 1989. xxx + 1817 pp. Tucker, Martin, ed. Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century. An Analysis and Biographical

Dictionary. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. xxiv + 854 pp. $99.50.



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Exile Literature and Literary Exile: A Review Essay