[In the following excerpt, Pfeiler examines the circumstances that led to the creation of a German literature in exile and comments on some of its main characteristics and figures.]

The unprecedented political upheaval following Hitler's assumption of power, specifically after the Reichstag fire in February, 1933, manifested itself to Germany's neighbors dramatically by the early exodus of tens of thousands of people who, for “racial” reasons or political nonconformity, thought it wise to leave the realm of the Third Reich, where freedom and lives were endangered. The steady flow of fugitives never stopped; they were called emigrants or émigrés if their goal was permanent settlement abroad and if “legal” sanction for going abroad was given by the Nazi authorities; refugees or exiles, if their ultimate hope was a return to the fatherland after the restoration of a German Rechtsstaat. For both types the term exile came into common use.¹ The flight reached its peak after the annexation of Austria and the pogroms of November, 1938. Despite the misery and wretchedness awaiting the large majority of exiles—only comparatively few individuals were able to transfer substantial values to the lands of their refuge—they were fortunate when one considers the fate of those who by choice or necessity stayed behind and who later had to die by untold numbers in the process of planned extermination.

At first, only Germany's neighboring countries were “invaded” by the stream of fugitives; later practically no part of the globe failed to get its share of the victims of Nazi persecution. Between 1933 and 1941 perhaps from 450,000 to half a million people left Germany and Austria, an exit still being possible then, and of these about twenty percent fled, not for racial but definitely for political reasons. The great majority of the refugees were of Jewish origin; about eight to ten percent of the total number were not.

In this mass flight from Germany, the intellectuals of various professions constituted a historically unprecedented high percentage in the host of expatriates. As to the representatives of literature, never before in history had the élite of the cultural life of a nation departed on such a scale. It left the homeland almost depleted of its internationally recognized cultural stock. To the world it looked as if a whole literary generation had withdrawn almost in a body. Hardly any writers of world-wide reputation were left.² Although handicapped in their profession more than expelled people in any other occupation—for their tools were the words of their native tongue in an environment alien in language, tradition and custom and often bitterly hostile—many exiled writers persisted in their work with such a tenacious devotion and remarkable success that it would elicit universal admiration if the world knew of it. Even in the Germany of today, which vigorously endeavors to make good the past and to catch up with the twelve long years lost, the knowledge of this so-called Emigrantenliteratur is spotty, often superficial and vitiated by emotionally rooted prejudices.³

An immense German literature came into being abroad, regrettably unübersehbar now because of the failure to create biographic and bibliographic centers that could have recorded systematically the names of exiled German authors and their works. It has become almost impossible to obtain a complete bibliography of the German literature created abroad in the years of Nazi rule, a job nevertheless now undertaken by W. Sternfeld in London under the sponsorship of the Deutsche Bibliothek and its director, Hanns W. Eppelsheimer. However, it must be recognized that early some remarkable bibliographic efforts were made, for which present and future researchers will be indebted. Since 1937 Kurt Pinthus had tried in vain to have various institutions start systematic collections of titles and data about exiled authors. He and F. C. Weiskopf for many years gathered important bibliographical data which to some extent were made accessible in the latter's readable survey of the German literature that had been written “under foreign skies.”⁴

Walter A. Berendsohn in Stockholm started early to gather primary material for his introduction to the German Emigrantenliteratur, stressing especially its militant-humanist character.⁵ Richard Drews and Alfred Kantorowicz published biographies with selections of writings of authors who had been suppressed in Germany for twelve years and whose works had been “banned and burned.”⁶ In his “Literature as History,” Paul E. Lüth also devoted some space to the literature in exile.⁷ It is a hopeful sign for the slowly growing attention paid to the neglected field of German exile literature when a book of general reference like the Deutschland-Jahrbuch includes an article on emigrated authors which—while it has to be brief and compact—gives fair recognition to their work. It gives sympathetic emphasis to the fact that the literary achievements of the exile belong legitimately to German Literature proper.⁸

Such a view, of course, was at the time totally unacceptable to the Nazi guardians of the German Schrifttum, and even though these may—or may not—have entered well-merited oblivion, the question of whether the Emigrantenliteratur “belongs” is by no means universally answered in the affirmative.⁹

Speaking of a German Literature in Exile, one may ask: How is this literature to be defined? What is meant by it? The answer could be simply this: German literature in general is the body of writing in the German language; it is differentiated by the character of its creators, who, by native endowment, tradition, environment and numerous other factors, some not always easily comprehended in rational terms, give substantial expression to their reactions to the world about or within them. Literature in Exile is a part of the German Literature and is, above all, a formale Kategorie. It is the literature created by authors who were forced or chose to leave their native land and who continued their work in German no matter where they might find themselves. Of course, the writing done in exile assumed features which reflected the specific circumstances of their existence. But it is part and parcel of German literature as a whole. The domicile of a writer is not and never was a decisive, qualitative criterion concerning his belonging to a certain literature.

While this statement may have the naive charm of simplicity, it should not be taken as more than it claims to be. The character of exile literature, as that of any literature, is complex and has given rise to lively theoretical discussions. As Thomas Mann pointed out early, the boundary line between “emigrated” and “non-emigrated” literature cannot be drawn easily, but it certainly does not coincide with territorial boundaries.¹⁰

Attempts to come to definitional terms about the literature in exile started early. In line with the objective of this study, to give in an expository fashion a picture of the currents and problems of the German literature abroad, some of the efforts toward analyzing and clarifying it may be recounted.¹¹

In 1934, the Dutch writer Menno ter Braak, in an article “Emigranten-Literatur,” called to task exiled writers and critics, who in their indulgence in adoration mutuelle, failed in what the objective of a true literature in exile should be.¹² He denied that there was anything “essential” in practically any literature, and doubted that literature per se expresses “values of life”; it rather presents a distortion of them, owing to the process of artistic shaping. In many respects, German literature before Hitler's reign had been a concern of the literati only, and the impression was now that the emigrants simply “continue their business.” The new situation was, if different at all, noticeable only in the choice of Motive. Yet these were not decisive criteria in a valid appraisal of literature. A rousing indignation as, for instance, that of Ernst Toller was more welcome than “smooth literature.” Writers regard their own work rather naively, in that they take their disguises, their gestures, their “airs” as essence, and thus no surprise should be registered when the writers who had been driven out of their land now developed Kritiklosigkeit into a complex. In the necessity of defending himself against degrading calumny, against the Nazi idiocy that palmed itself off as mysticism, the writer necessarily resorted to defensive armor and weapons, and this well-understandable fact made him supersensitive to any criticisms toward himself and his colleagues in a similar position. Hence the mutual gushing praise observed in the reviews of works of emigrants. But the Emigrantenliteratur should be more than a perpetuation of the old modes and attitudes. The refugee writer should get a firmer grasp of his European mission and not permit the domineering influences that were generated by the fight against the false mysticism of the blood-and-soil idolatry. Criticism should have as its standard the genius of great personalities, not the smooth skill of the literary craftsman.

The article stirred up a vigorous response. Erich Andermann, in his refutation of the charges, arrived at some formulations which seem to have validity beyond the discussion at the time.¹³ The implicit premise of ter Braak that the grievous experience of the refugee writers should have had a stimulating rather than a paralyzing effect was unacceptable, aside from the fact that there was no such intellectual-spiritual (geistige) entity as Emigrantenliteratur. The common experience of exile, to which its participants were led by far from uniform reasons, created at best a “community of fate” and nothing more. To challenge this heterogeneous group to a fulfillment of a European mission would first require a specific clarification of this term. Meanwhile, what else could reasonably be expected from the writers other than the continuation of the work begun at home? A certain leniency in criticism of their books was imperative under the extreme jeopardy of publishing in foreign lands. At home, adverse judgments could be absorbed and, indeed, with profit, because of the vast audience an author potentially enjoyed there; however, any adverse criticism in exile might mean the death knell not only for an author's work but for his very physical existence.

Ludwig Marcuse, one of the most prolific and vigorous writers of the exile, now professor at the University of Southern California, also rejected the reference to an Emigrantenliteratur because, as a generic concept, it was void of a “deeper, factual justification.”¹⁴ He called this literature the sum of all books by authors writing in German who either could or would not work at home under Hitler's rule. There was no correlation between the commonly shared fact of living in exile and literary communality. He rightly raised the question: Why should a writer outside of Germany not continue his earlier work in the same spirit and manner as he had done before? It speaks for his intellectual solidness and integrity when he does so. The fact was that the world view of the exiled writer stood the acid test of uprooting and transposition, while, on the other hand, the attitude of many authors remaining at home in Germany had to undergo radical changes if they wanted to stay in good health.

Another reaction to ter Braak came from Hans Sahl.¹⁵ He went beyond Andermann's assertion that the writer's task was to cultivate the German language and be the guardian of the true German spirit. Sahl asked for more lucid and more obligating challenges; he insisted that categories other than the aesthetic ought to be used to determine the value of existence of a literature; it could be reduced to a common denominator just as little as the whole of the emigration from Nazi rule. He felt certain that this exile literature would bring forth what any literature would: the good, the trifling and the bad and, yes, maybe even something truly great. This, however, was not the salient point. The decisive question to be asked was: Is a sense, a meaning, being found for or given to the phenomenon of emigration? Certain works published had already attempted to give an answer to this question. The expatriated German literature would overcome the geographic distance from its native soil by proximity of the spirit; and it would assist in the building of a new Germany by everywhere securing cadres of her true representatives.

In challenging the free writers to tasks clearly outside the concept of an art per se, Sahl touched upon a theme that, as will be seen, was to engage considerable attention of writers and critics during the years of exile. Book after book, as well as significant articles in periodicals, appeared in German, a fact which gave substance to the claim that the center of the German cultural sphere might not necessarily be any longer found inside the territorial boundaries of Germany but had shifted outside the borders of the Reich.

The first general survey of the “free German book” was published in January, 1935, less than two years after the beginning of the exile.¹⁶ Far from complete, and with emphasis on Soviet orientation, the Almanach was the result of the cooperation of sixteen publishers; it offered the view of a rich and vigorously unfolding literature in its summary of titles and the compact, if not always reliable, synopsis of the books.

About two years later, in November, 1936, the Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller in Paris, the protective association of German writers—which had aimed to establish a tradition of commemorating the ignominious day of Nazi book-burning on May 10, 1933, by founding exactly a year after this date the German “Freedom-Library”—provided the first concrete evidence of a vast German literature abroad by sponsoring in Paris a remarkable exhibition Das freie deutsche Buch.¹⁷ Extensive bibliographies of publications followed year after year at a pace that soon made it extremely difficult to keep track of all the literary work done. Had there been adequate finances to subsidize the collecting and administering of this literature of the unhampered German mind as had been advocated by Kantorowicz, Pinthus and others, there would be a much better chance to study what is now “gone with wind.”¹⁸

The first two noteworthy attempts for a general comprehension of this, by now, great body of literature in terms of serious categories and interpretative literary history appeared about five years after the exile began in 1933.

Odd Eidem, a young Norwegian writer who, from the start, had followed the events with sympathetic concern, wrote a study which, in a mainly sociologically determined approach, found the common denominator of the Emigrantenliteratur in the “universal unfortunate political fate” of its representatives.¹⁹ He saw a militant literature emerging as the mouthpiece of an enslaved and silenced Germany, a literature that would become the standard-bearer in the fight for freedom. As such, it concerned even non-Germans to a high degree.

The primary objective of Eidem's study was to describe this fight. After briefly outlining the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the taking over of power by the Nazis and the initial effects on the cultural life of the nation, Eidem submitted to the reader not only a generally sympathetic picture of the fate of the exiled authors, but he also desired to have their situation and struggle comprehended in terms of history. In this manner, he presented the Emigrantenliteratur as a historical phenomenon.²⁰ While wholly aware of the heterogeneity of the exile literature (always referred to as Emigrantenliteratur), Eidem arrived at some semblance of order by giving special consideration to three distinct groups. The chapter on Jewish nationalism pointed out that the Jewish people constituted the largest component among the exiles; their writings were mainly of a polemic and confessional character. The national-conscious Jews could clearly be recognized as a separate group, an assertion against which the critic Werner Türk pointed to the indubitable fact that, for example, Arnold Zweig and Alfred Döblin not only were Jewish ideologists but also very definitely, and “above all,” German authors.²¹ In another chapter, Eidem dealt with the socialist writers of the emigration. Since the “essential” part of German refugees consisted of persons who had left for political reasons, the socialist writers gave more adequate expression to the general mentality of the German emigration. Their characteristic trait was optimism, despite the extraordinarily heartbreaking conditions under which they had to do their writing.

The non-socialist, individualistic authors were discussed by Eidem in a chapter entitled “The Emigrant Writer and History.” These lacked the firm intellectual-spiritual (geistig) basis which the writers of the other two groups could claim. The individualists had turned to history in order to find parallels for the contemporary situation.²² Biographies and historical novels were therefore preponderantly their domain. It might be of interest to note that Eidem included in his list of exiled writers some Austrians, who did not have to go into banishment until a few months later.

The preliminary character of Eidem's mainly sociological appraisal was recognized by the critics; it was frankly conceded even by the author himself when, for example, he named Lion Feuchtwanger as one who would fit into each of his three classes of writers. However, Eidem's pioneering essay was the first serious and informative introduction to the intellectual and political currents and points of view prevalent within the literature of the German refugees. Its drawback was that the author's eagerness to give a view of contemporary German history in vividly presented book summaries resulted in an unevenness of presentation not commensurate with the importance of the individual writers and the specific literary merits of their works.²³

The literary situation in Germany before 1933 as he saw it was the starting point of Alfred Döblin's almost debonair survey of the German literature in exile, an essay that claimed as its core a “dialogue between politics and art.”²⁴ From what is called a “historical point of view,” Döblin perceived three great contemporary “classes” in German literature since 1900: first there were the feudalists, the agrarian and expansive-bourgeois conservatives whose gaze was turned backward and who were inclined toward “classicism.” Then we would find the humanists with liberal, progressive and conciliatory middle-class tendencies. Finally, the intellectual-revolutionary group would come into view, alert to the present but with accents often quite contradictory. There were either political and non-political rationalists or mystics beholden to no definite political creed. This group especially represented the younger generation.

Such, then, was the situation in 1933. When, at that time, German Literature broke apart, the question was: Did this happen along lines predetermined according to the above grouping of the literary forces? The answer of Döblin was: in part, yes. The conservatives found in Nazism much to their liking. To be sure, the Caliban manners of the new masters thoroughly startled them, and Nazi reality had little in common with their own dreams of a new Reich shaped according to the romantic ideas of a Richard Wagner. Yet most of the “conservatives,” if “racially” in the clear, stayed home.

Harder hit were the humanists. Their nature revolted against totalitarianism and dictatorship; to them Gleichschaltung, coordination, seemed, of course, out of the question. But was this so with all of them? Quite a few were scions of the well-to-do middle class who liked their comfort—and would not the realm of ideas and ideals always be free? So many remained at home and learned to hold their tongues, for they long since had become incapable of straightforward, honest hatred and hostility anyway. Those who did not succumb were pushed out or left on their own, branded by the Nazis as liberals, reactionaries and Judenknechte. In consequence, many of the authors of the cultured middle class were found abroad.

The class of intellectual revolutionaries was sharply torn asunder. There were those who shared with the conservatives the contempt for the liberal and humanist ideas that had “grown stale”; again, others had a certain affinity toward the mystic and the irrational. The rightist radicals among the Geistesrevolutionäre swung, for a while at least, into the Nazi orbit. However, the exodus of leftists occurred in great numbers.

The result of the break-up of German literature in 1933 was, then, that inside the Third Reich the conservatives and feudalists, rightist radicals and a few, very few, cryptohumanists carried on, even though they were under constant pressure. Abroad were found, besides a few splinter elements of group one, the block of the humanists and the greater part of the intellectual revolutionaries. The question of “aryan or non-aryan” was, of course, an important factor not to be forgotten.

After its severance from the Reich, the German literature abroad was by no means a torso. No matter how indigent and handicapped in innumerable ways the authors might have been, they continued to develop and grow in their craft. They were not necessarily “leftist” when they insisted on working “as they pleased.” Freedom was indispensable for creative literary work; if it was denied, true art had to die. Literature in exile was free, yet Döblin contended that this fact in itself gave but a modicum of encouragement. Like cultures of bacteria, the writers had been transplanted into a different, and highly dubious, new “nutrient solution.” Free German-writing authors had only parts of Switzerland and Russia for an immediate clientele, in addition to sporadic readers in Holland, Scandinavia and the U.S.A. But there was more to the exile than this material shrinkage of an audience. A writer in his native country absorbed, according to Döblin, consciously or unconsciously, the thousand impacts and vibrations of his fellow countrymen, which induced in him an ever-changing field of tension and would call forth an energy that made him grow and prosper in his art. How different the situation in exile! A total change in the environment brought almost complete social isolation, and even the close circle of his friends and “fellows in fate” was of little help because they, too, were involved in the same compulsive process of desperately trying to come to terms with a new world.

If this sad plight would now lead an observer, continued Döblin, to expect with apprehension a creeping anemia of the German literature abroad, his alarm would be groundless. In vain would future historians look for signs of weakness as a mark of this literature. Each in his individual way, most writers in exile went about their task with courage, with loyalty to themselves and their calling. Exile was more than a crushing blow of fate; it was the acid test for a man to prove his mettle. As the banishment dragged on and on, as it turned more and more into a long and wearisome march through waste and desert lands, the character was steeled and the work continued, even if it meant the critical tapping of irreplaceable reserves. The suffering, the strength and greatness of this literature thrown out of its native land was worthy of songs of high praise. It was, Döblin stated, German literature, not just a “literature of emigrants.”

This literature now became subject to attacks from various quarters, not to mention the absolute and vicious hostility of the Nazis. The primarily politically minded people levelled the charge against it that its preoccupation with historic topics of past ages and of various climes ignored the burning issues of the day, and that it thus turned into a kind of escape from reality. The answer that literature might very well deal with peoples and epochs of the past and yet in doing so report passionately on the burning issues of the present was brushed aside; the imperious demand was made that literature in general, and especially this one of the exile, should not deal with aesthetic or psychological questions of a private nature, but stress political and social values above all. The response of Döblin was that the writers produced and did whatever was in their might and talent; they continued, each one individually, as they had done at home, spinning the thread of their work. The deepest misery in exile could not change the basic facts of their existence which were the indispensable presuppositions and conditions for all art and literature. They worked at long range; they were concerned with man and the world in their totality; and they had to follow their own creative impulses. The “practical man” and the “political man” may counter: You writers own a weapon greatest force, the living word. Do not use it in artful play while the world seems doomed to perish; use it to give direction and aim to the forces that will heal the world, else your art may go hang.

The confrontation of these views is, or course, a simplification and, at the same time, is overlaborated in its formulation. An artist, a writer, truly could not and should not cultivate “private” concerns to the exclusion of considerations of vital communal interest. He has, indeed, to put up with some curtailment of the self-sovereignty as an artist and examine his position. But fundamentally this was the artist's—Döblin's—answer:

Each artist, each writer, carries the community in which he lives along into his deepest solitude. Through language, judgments, images and concepts the community has a share in the artist's creative process. The writer is by no means struck dumb when in his solitude. He carries on innumerable ‘conversations’ all around, merging with them his inspiration.”²⁵ Isolation or communal contact was therefore not a question for an author, but the problem was, what kind of society has generated the directive force even into his most private sphere.

Many German writers, in contrast to French authors, had carried only wretched miniature editions of their society into their solitude, showing a very low degree of communality spirit, Gesellschaftlichkeit. There were determining predelections for the abstract and morally arrogant (and stupid) contempt for the everyday life, the Alltag; instead, “eternal problems” were the exclusive concern; the interest in the fullness of human life for which Goethe once had raised his voice had gone by the board. A short circuit into mysticism often took place, a Kurzschluss in die Mystik.

The secularization of German literature, a process somewhat parallel to the gradual lowering of political barriers, had been infinitely slow. But pushing too hard in this direction had led to another short circuit, that one into the ephemeral problems of the day and into party politics, a danger to which French and English literature also had begun to succumb. Tolstoy and Gorki, Flaubert and Keller were able through their work to stir up a sense of social awareness because their hearts gave truth and completeness to their stories, not party platforms and a desire to accommodate politicians. It was ridiculous and provoking to Döblin when theoreticians, critics and writers solicited in exile the creation of antifascist works. The writers ought to be left strictly alone in their work. They were The German Literature abroad, and they should not tolerate indoctrination by politicians. It was they who continued the free German literature and they had to be on guard not to fall prey to compulsory neuroses. Cliques of the German political parties, irresponsible and detestable, had tried in exile to elbow their way into literary criticism. For their own selfish purposes they began to classify “friendly” and “hostile” authors, and they also singled out those to be ruined by the “silent treatment.²⁶

The sensible attitude, so Döblin continued, would be to encourage free German writers to aim at a closer attachment to society and to have them develop a spirit of communality, Gemeinschaft. An author would find far deeper satisfaction if he would enter the complex web of human relations, rather than explore his own private sphere to the point of exhaustion. But no political program could animate the working toward such a goal, only the slow-working impact of personal experience. Political formulae and manifestos are intellectual abstractions; in the field of art they amount at best to labels and slogans and nothing more.

The world was a world of horror, and even if the authors could not help but be incorrigible glorifiers and lovers of life and would never give up that which they knew was its depth and magic, more than heretofore they would have to deal with the “tiger face” of the world, whose features were composed of evil, harshness and war. Insignificant as he may have felt, the writer had to put greater trust in the “gentle and great” power of art and the creative word, and be convinced that he was the guardian of a fire through which the “tiger” had to be tamed and conquered. His field was the world and not just the drawing rooms of the—after all not so—mighty ones. While he himself kept aloof from politics and the struggles for power, inasmuch as they are manifested in society as well as in private lives, he had to recognize the forces at work and react to them positively through his creative art.

In concluding the theoretical discussion of the literature in exile, Döblin wanted to make it clear that his negative criticism was mainly aimed at the contempt of “reality” and of “the human community”; he wanted to score the clinging to bloodless phantoms and abstractions that posed as Mystik but were, in fact, only indications of hollowness, disillusionment and degeneration. Religion, genuine Mystik, was part of the creative basis of a new humanity, and literature was to share in the great process of recovery and restitution in the degree to which it penetrated into the ancient core of life from whence radiated all the forces of creation.

In the second part of Döblin's book, about forty writers pass in review, among them, naturally, the best known. Brief samples of some of their works illustrate the points Döblin wanted to make. His comments are presented in a style that is as compact as it is elegant and fluent, if not without caprice. The impression left by Döblin is that the body of literature created by the German writers abroad was true German literature in its proper sense; it was not a questionable branch to be stigmatized by derogatory overtones which, intended or not, would brand it inferior and illegitimate.²⁷

A vigorous brief against classifying the work of authors in exile as a “literature of emigrants” was presented by Hermann Kesten in the same year in which Döblin's study appeared.²⁸ Point by point he examined and rejected the arguments in favor of using qualifying terms for the literature produced abroad, although he recognized that Hitler's murderous persecution of the free spirit resulted from the start in a “double-entry bookkeeping” concerning literature. A Chinese wall arose between the censored and the free book. Numerically the greater part of writers, of course, remained in the Third Reich, but nowhere do quantitative terms mean less than in the realm of the spirit. A very significant group of authors went into exile or returned to their homelands: Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia. A magnificent and prospering literature turned its back for a while on a dishonored motherland. Yet there did not run a truly deep schism between the Nazi-corralled literature and the Emigrantenliteratur.²⁹ Neither exile nor membership in the Reich's official chamber of writers separated die “beiden deutschsprachigen Literaturen” (sic), the two German-language literatures. Along with writers of genius and character, scoundrels and amateurs also went into exile, and within the Reich remained upright patriots and charming talents beside “chained dogs” and lick-spittles. The dividing line between the living free German literature and the National-Socialist Gräberliteratur, the literature of the tombs, ran straight through the Reich and through the exile as it did through those free countries where German was the mother tongue or one of the mother tongues.

No German Emigrationsliteratur existed, according to Kesten, in the sense in which this word was often employed, either in a hateful attitude or with a benevolent intent. Nobody had succeeded in postulating one single valid and unifying principle by which the term “literature of emigrants” could be justified. For what, besides the German language, had the writers of the emigration in common? Certainly not German citizenship nor the place of domicile. Or should, perhaps, the fact that their works were banned in Germany unite them? Hermann Hesse was still published there, and Thomas Mann was until recently; they were humanists both and deadly enemies of Nazism, but Otto Strasser, whose work clearly revealed fascist tendencies, was banned also. Were perhaps the inner and external factors of exile a common denominator? The great divergencies in the fate of many proved this argument illusionary. The firmly stated conclusion of Kesten was that no common character for the Emigrationsliteratur existed, just as there was none for the literature in the Reich. The fact of exile or the banishment of his works did not create a literary postulate and criterion for judging a writer. The exile left traces as did any experience, but no single experience was sufficient in itself to have art and literature named after or classified by it, nor was any experience significant enough to require it.

In a review of Döblin's study especially aimed at what he considered the questionable and faulty application of sociological principles, Ferdinand Lion shared with Kesten the thesis that style and form immanent to the artistic creation had to provide the evaluating criteria; they afforded the drawing of much sharper lines of demarcation than a social grouping into feudalists, humanists and revolutionaries—if a classification of literature was possible at all in the desire for getting a grasp of the creative spirit in terms of rational comprehension. Contrary to Kesten, however, Lion “cannot get rid of a feeling that one deals with a compact body that is fighting and feels solidarisch.”³⁰ In literature, the decision about a new intellectual-spiritual German existence, and hence a new definitional category, could be made only when a “new style” would make an appearance. Caution was advisable for the history of the European Mind abounds in quickly succeeding theses, antitheses and syntheses of styles which, in fact, mark the caesuras of the Mind's “real revolutions.” The magic formula of such a “new style” might be created even by someone who was still in the camp of the opposition, maybe now living within the Reich, but whom to welcome into exile would be an honor. Lion acknowledged by inference the oneness of German literature in its essence, although he was aware that there was a body of literature outside the Reich even if a common denominator for it was lacking.

The eloquent and often violent objections to the term Emigrantenliteratur, based on theoretic, aesthetic, political and historical arguments, may have had a much simpler fundamental cause. In torrents of slander and abuse, Goebbels tried to hammer this term into the minds of the German people as a concomitant to venomous hate, treachery and revulsion. Vicious persecution was directed against the free German literature wherever the organs and agencies of Nazism had a chance, not only inside but also outside the Reich. No wonder the exiles resented this term with such deadly enmity; they could not help but hear it with a sense of shame and deepest indignation. Furthermore, German literature in exile, with its achievements and free cultural tradition that stemmed from many roots, could not be qualified so narrowly as to be just a “literature of emigrants.”

In view of these facts, Berendsohn and others had a losing battle on their hands in favoring the concept of a German “literature of emigrants.” Berendsohn's definition and interpretation which aimed at dispelling the detestable connotations of the term and having it turned into a badge of honor may have been made in the same spirit as the Dutch adopted the term gueux against their Spanish oppressors, but it never seemed to have found general acceptance.³¹ Aside from serious theoretical objections, the resentment against this designation was too bitter. Prejudice and aversions against Emigranten still do exist in some quarters in Germany even today; it is not uncommon to see Emigrantendeutsch and Emigrantenliteratur used there as terms of derogation. It explains why, if for no other reasons, Berendsohn's advocacy of the term Emigrantenliteratur might be without success.

Theoretical discussions about whether there was a German literature abroad and what it should be called subsided during the war years and the time immediately after. But when conditions became somewhat more settled, interest began to develop, if only slightly, in the work of exiled German authors. The year 1933 was recognized as not having a specific qualitative meaning in literature, although it was the date when Nazism got into power and when a far-reaching relocation of writers got under way. But their creativity and production had suffered no really fatal break in continuity.³²

Oskar Maria Graf concluded a cogent analysis of the situation in exile and its specific problems for a German writer with a pointed warning against accepting the concept of a divided German literature: “Whoever tries—no matter whether in malice or in blindness—to break up today our much-harassed, great literature, which is now but slowly recovering, into an emigrated part and into one that stayed at home, yes, or even into a Western and an Eastern half, he commits as dastardly a crime as did Hitler and his helpers. He betrays the wholeness of our spirit and of our people. Our literature, the noblest and the unique medium for our common understanding, is as indivisible as the language that joins together all of us.”³³

While “German Literature in Exile” cannot be considered an entity per se and while it is part and parcel of the greater German Literature, it seems justified as a factual term of simple, convenient reference. But it is more. As the national currents of literature in Europe around 1880 began to form a mainstream of greater European significance within which German literature, however, retained characteristic features of its own—in no small measure the result of the political happenings of the time—so it was with the literature in exile after 1933. This literature continued, outside the Reich, the development that was already in progress before under the all-covering term German Literature. It was inside Hitler's realm where the break was almost complete with a rich and chaotic, contradictory and paradoxical, spiritual-intellectual creative field of force which German Literature had encompassed. Impulses welling from deepest indignation about a cruel persecution, re-enforced by political passions and understandable “group hatred,” even led to assertions that the exile literature was the German Literature of the day; such a conclusion, however, is simply not borne out by facts. Many upright and competent authors and, of course, poets remained in Germany and, despite the loathsome rush with which opportunist writers after the war claimed “hibernation” into innere Emigration (inward emigration), this term stands for a reality, often deeply tragic. The men and women of the “emigration within” represent “rightfully an essential part of the German intellectual-spiritual (geistig) life” during the years of the Nazi regime.³⁴

Art and literature signify peculiar ways of creative man's coming to terms with the world about and in him. The exile, with everything this word suggests, exerted influences, scarcely perceptible in some, greatly in the case of others. The exiled writer was attacked when he continued his work “as usual,” and was berated as well when, self-conscious and under compulsion, he tried to break with the past and plow new fields. The awareness of his existence in a given environment peculiar to him is the start for any writer and artist. His experiences give and modify the direction to his aims and they furnish the substance for his formative genius. The creative mind can never be wholly fathomed nor fully understood, yet certain facts are clear. The writer-artist must be intelligent in his own line; he must have a power of discrimination and judgment. Experiences move him more than ordinary people; yet in a way he is detached and objective about them. This power of detachment is vital. The experienced event can be quite trifling in itself, or it may be a series of stirring happenings, almost anything. Some inner awareness registers the events, thoughts, feelings and actions; there is perhaps a flash of recognition and empathy, and then all may sink down for a while below the threshold of consciousness. This “sinking down” is of crucial importance, for far below—in “the abyss of the soul”—a mysterious process is going on which may cause the matter to come up again in a new guise, so that the original emotional-intellectual experience is juxtaposed with other material, and the whole fused into something “new.” What was an isolated instance or a fragment of outer or inner experiences becomes now “part of a whole.” With slowly growing momentum, insight spreads. Along with this, a coldly critical faculty takes over, aware of everything pertinent or extraneous to the project on hand, which is: to translate the inner world through words into an objective creation. The vision within is unerringly right for the artist, and it is only when some veil or curtain of “foreign” origin comes between him and the deep well of his awareness that he may fail and become a fraud; he is a fraud when he tries to be an artist. What comes out may be poetry or drama or an epic creation; it can be anything. In the process of artistic creative action, two acts occur simultaneously: the material wells up as from a volcano, and it may often stimulate a search for elements of affinity not yet grasped, but at the same time, organization, sorting and ruthless rejection also take place. Many a writer has failed in this work of self-criticism because he found equally good whatever the inner volcano poured forth. Some with only little creative fire are able to manipulate with great skill their limited talent to the point of perfection. The real genius has the great fire burning inside together with a coldly critical eye for whatever comes forth, and no mercy is shown toward his own work if it fails to meet his standards.

Keeping these facts of the creative process in mind, it is obvious that the exile had to leave its mark on the writer. While it might be right and fitting not to speak of a divided German literature, the de facto situation must be recognized. Kesten and others who reject, and rightly so, the concept of Emigrantenliteratur must refer to this body of literature somehow. They do so by using, as a way out, the term in quotation marks. But they do use it, and have to, if some kind of reference is to be made at all to the work done in exile.

But the designation Literature of Emigrants will not do for the reasons stated; to speak of the Literature in Exile, however, seems justified. If it fails to suggest a common intellectual-spiritual denominator and cannot stand as a concept for a homogeneous literary substance, one may ask: When did German Literature ever exact such definitional basis? What have Mörike and Heine, Schnitzler and Kafka, Albrecht Schaeffer and Döblin, Stefan George and Arno Holz, Thomas Mann and Herman Stehr, Barlach and Zuckmayer, and countless others in common which permits speaking of them as belonging to one literature? The language, indeed! But even here how different the style and diction, the imagery and point of view and values, the Gehalt und Gestalt. Why then not speak of a literature in exile? It did exist, although without a common unifying principle. In fact, one may ask: When has such a vigorous principle been in effect in any literature?

The concept of a German literature in exile as used in this study refers to a specific body of writing and as such is first of all a term of reference. It embraces works of high and low quality; it is the creation of a host of writers of most divergent genius, talents, tendencies and beliefs. Their fate as writers in exile, when viewed in the light of history, was not as unique as it might seem at first. The portent of exile could almost be called a professional hazard for many masters of the pen. A long and proud record from the days of the Greeks and Romans up to modern times tells the story of authors whom tyranny had driven from their native soil and forced onto the “battlefield of exile.”³⁵

A frequently heard charge against the German Literature in Exile since 1933 is that it could not claim authenticity because of its removal from the “mother soil” and its being cut off from the “eternal spring of folkdom.” In variations, the indictment runs like this: You emigrants claim to be the guardians of German culture, yet you live far away from the land whose language you speak. You can cultivate this language in but narrow circles; your work is overshadowed by the bitterness of the fact that your presence is barely tolerated by your hosts; you have been torn from your native soil which sustained you, and now the contact with the living community which furnished the substance of your being is severed; through the telescope of emigration you see what happens at home only in dim outlines, and the years abroad will ever more confuse your view of your compatriots and their lives in Germany.

On close examination these arguments are as hollow as they are superficially intriguing. History tells how in all ages strong personalities had found exile, while rich in tension and bitter disappointments, a challenge for creative and abiding work. Some of the great masterpieces of the world's literature were produced in exile: the Septuagint, the Koran, Dante's Divina Commedia, the pedagogic works of Comenius, great works of Lord Byron and Victor Hugo, to name just a few. So far as German Literature is concerned, from Ulrich von Hutten onward, the exiled writer was by no means an exceptional figure. The hackneyed arguments against the quality of the literature in exile fall flat in view of the existence of a body of writing that is as strong, vigorous and sometimes great as it was free. There never ceased to be a deep feeling of oneness and understanding with the people at home that lived under the swastika. There was a correct, precise knowledge and a keen awareness of what was going on at home; a constant alert guard was mounted from many vantage points of observation throughout the years of exile, which to many writers meant just a temporary shelter. They “carried Germany within” wherever they went, to quote a statement by Thomas Mann. Coelum non animum mutant qui transmare currunt is as true today as it was in the days of Horace (Ep. I, 11, 27). The exile meant an uprooting from customs and environment and lifelong associations, but the minds that left Germany suffered no severance from the rich intellectual-spiritual substance of her cultural history. In an essay on the history of political emigration, Arthur Rosenberg concluded that by far the largest part of the “thinking and intellectually creative Germany” was found in exile, and that this part had as the true basis for its work the community of the people at home. Each volume of poetry, each novel or political book that the exile brought forth with such vigor, intensity and effectiveness was one proof more that the abiding cultural-political forces were not aligned with the Nazi world at home; they were underground there. “The heart and mind, the eye and the pen” did not stop at the Reich's boundaries; in writing, the authors in exile always had the beloved homeland and its people in mind, and the results of their labor were works of lasting artistic merit and humanist-political enlightenment.³⁶

The German literature in exile can justly claim to be German Literature, and while its freedom was the conspicuous great asset, other aspects of it should not be overlooked. To quote again a shrewd observer like Hermann Kesten, he says: “The break-up of German Literature by tyranny and exile muddled up all shades of literary fashions and schools and falsified the artistic rank. Added to this must be the peculiar tendencies toward a stagnation of attitudes found in the sealed-off group of emigrants who, so to speak, put their judgments, dispositions, quarrels and prejudices on ice. …”³⁷ This was indeed true to a high degree, and it is recognized. There were many discussions of the advantages, as well as of the limitations, of the writer in exile. Soul-searching and self-examination were favored practices among the many conscientious ones, but there was also inflexibility of spirit and stubborn dogmatism. Exaggerated recognition was claimed on the ground of the praiseworthy antifascist spirit of a work, regardless of literary merits. So the picture of the literature in exile is far from uniformly positive. Top performance was as rare in exile as it is everywhere. True artists may have both talent, perhaps genius, and ethical integrity, that is to say, character. But this is not necessarily so, and the history of the literature in exile gives evidence of this fact.³⁸

However, arrogance and boastfulness were rare among the more significant writers. In a speech at the opening of the book exhibition of the organization of free German writers in Paris, Heinrich Mann said—and the tragic overtones are saddening indeed—“Perhaps these works give witness of an exile that might be forgotten soon, and they will be just the traces of an era which otherwise will leave no other mark—we must be prepared to face the fact that the tomorrow will not know of us any more.” Having conceded this, H. Mann, with the unconquerable fortitude that was his, went on to express the hope that nevertheless, one day, the Hingabe an Ideen, the devotion of the exile writers to ideas, might yet be recognized, for it was from these very ideas that a better future world could arise.³⁹

O. M. Graf saw in the exile an intensified challenge to return to that “readiness to take in the world” which had always marked the true German spirit; it meant to a writer “proving his mettle to himself.” Graf's evaluation of the situation is representative of that of many exiled German writers. Exile demanded being on constant guard and squaring one's own intellectual and emotional endowment with whatever seemingly alien elements rushed into the writer's sphere, thus creating crises often more hazardous and dangerous to the writer than the daily battle for material existence.

Those refugees who were most deeply rooted in what might be called specifically German culture were in greatest danger of turning small and petty in their outlook. They were not only incapable of absorbing intelligently the foreign elements about them—they fought tooth and nail against an unprejudiced appraisal of their new surroundings. Only with difficulty did they realize how much such a stubborn rejection of their new world made them appear nationalistic, arrogant and overbearing fools, nor did they perceive how this attitude made them sink ever deeper into utter forsakenness and mental desolation, a status in which no positive answer would come forth any longer to any question.

The crisis usually began with an acute, indescribable nostalgia, with a longing for all that once had given stimulus and energy and faith for work. It ended with “going to the dogs,” and it was not until then that the exile became an emigrant in the saddest meaning of the word. Now they belonged nowhere, not even into their “own time.”

Graf pointed to the high number of suicides in exile. Few of these were disappointed for political reasons. Neither lack of recognition or literary success nor material want was always the decisive factor. Tucholski, Toller, Stefan Zweig and, of late, the tragic figure of Klaus Mann never suffered from these. What brought about the breakdown in some was a human factor tied indissolubly to artistic creative impulses. They were German writers; they were the “prisoners of their own language”; their thinking had been formed and shaped by it. The transfer to other modes of thought was far from simple, and some writers would need decades to grasp fully the “fluidity of reasoning” in the inflections and nuances of another language. Many were tormented by paralyzing doubts as to whether “their word” continued to be heard and hit the mark; to make sure, Klaus Mann and others resolved “the flight into another tongue.” To be translated into other languages, even successfully, was small consolation for a Toller and a Stefan Zweig. It did not help their enervating impatience and sense of frustration which they finally carried to the point where voluntary death seemed the only choice left.⁴⁰

Isolation in one form or another was the lot of all exiled writers, yet the majority labored on under conditions which would appear totally inhibitive to creative work. The narrowing and stultifying effects of the exile are often discernible; they also became, of course, material of literary objectification. But the main work in exile reveals a remarkable evidence of the effective humanistic front which free German writers formed in the struggle against the tyranny over the minds and bodies of men. This is one of the functional features of the exile literature, and it might be found, if only in traces, even in the work of authors who, with Kesten, subscribe to the principle that true creative art is “beyond tendency and purpose, politics and morality.” It is a fact beyond dispute that, while within the boundaries of the Reich, German Literature had to coordinate itself somehow if it wanted to deal with freedom and human problems of relevance beyond the framework of Nazi Weltanschauung, “hundreds and hundreds of German poets, authors and journalists, adequately or inadequately, have given loud and frank testimony as to the existence of another, non-national-socialist Germany, and thus maintained … the continuity of German autonomous culture.”⁴¹

The present study does not assign to the German literature in exile qualities of integration which it does not have. The time has not come to say anything about it with a claim for finality; the forces and passions that animated it still reach out into the present day, and, according to partisanship and Welt- und Kunstanschauung, judgments will differ. Here the traditional ideal of scholarly objectivity as far as it is consistent with a firm commitment to a liberal-humanist faith will be adhered to, and it is the hope of the writer that the exposition of the problems connected with the writings in exile and the issues that gave them substance and direction will be at least of some value to literary-cultural history.⁴²

Notes

1. This terminology is not undisputed. For definition of terms, statistics, literature and information about help rendered to the fugitives see: Kurt R. Grossmann and Hans Jacob, “The German Exile and the ‘German Problem’” in Journal of Central European Affairs, IV, 2, pp. 165-185; Sir John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem (London, 1939); Stephen Duggan and Betty Drury, The Rescue of Science and Learning (New York, 1948); Paul Frings, Das Internationale Flüchtlingsproblem 1919-1950 (Frankfurt/Main, 1951); D. P. Kent, The Refugee Intellectual (New York, 1953); W. Rex Crawford, ed., The Cultural Migration (Philadelphia, 1953); Norman Bentwich, The Rescue and Achievement of Refugee Scholars (The Hague, 1953); Helge Pross, Die deutsche akademische Emigration nach den Vereinigten Staaten: 1933-1941 (Berlin, 1955).

2. Kent, op. cit., p. 135. In the course of my studies, I counted more than 450 names of exiled writers who at some time during the Hitler regime published in German outside of Germany. This included, of course, authors of any kind of writing, literary or otherwise, from short book reviews to the well-known works of Thomas Mann. The actual number of writers is, of course, higher than the above figure.

3. German critics, until recently, have hardly concerned themselves with the literature created in exile. In Germany, some exiled authors have been published again with success. In the Soviet Zone of Germany, the publishing of exiled writers of leftist and communist persuasion has been promoted with special vigor. Here greater critical, if dogmatically fixed, attention has been paid to the literature of the exile than in Western Germany. For a typical comment see: H. E. Holthusen, Der unbehauste Mensch (München, 1952) pp. 142 ff. Some outstanding histories of German literature of recent date either fail to mention or pay scant attention to the exiled writers and their works; for instance: Annalen der Deutschen Literatur, ed. by H. O. Burger, (Stuttgart, 1952); Wolfgang Pfeiffer-Belli, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, (Freiburg, 1954); Herbert A. Frenzel, Daten deutscher Dichtung, (Köln/Berlin, 1953). Works which, within the framework of their intellectual-spiritual pattern, give recognition to the exile and to some of its authors are: Deutsche Literatur im XX. Jahrhundert, ed. by Hermann Friedmann and Otto Mann, (Heidelberg, 1954); Wilhelm Grenzmann, Deutsche Dichtung der Gegenwart (Frankfurt/Main, 1953); Paul Fechter, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, (Gütersloh, 1952). Important American books with analyses and bibliographies are: Harry Slochower, No Voice Is Wholly Lost …, (New York, 1945) and Victor Lange, Modern German Literature, (Ithaca, N. Y., 1945). See also the articles on German writers in exile by Karl O. Paetel, W. Sternfeld, Harold von Hofe and others as listed in the bibligraphies of the PMLA, etc. (See introductory note to the Bibliography).

4. F. C. Weiskopf, Unter fremden Himmeln (Berlin, 1947).

5. Walter A. Berendsohn, Die Humanistische Front, Vol. I, (Zürich, 1946). I had the privilege of reading the manuscript of the second volume in London and derived not only valuable information from it but found corroborative support for much of my own findings. Berendsohn's second volume now deposited in the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt/Main will be published presently.

6. Verboten und Verbrannt, ed. by Richard Drews and Alfred Kantorowicz, (Berlin and München, 1947).

7. Paul E. Lüth, Literatur als Geschichte, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1947).

8. F. Martini, “Dichter der Emigration” in Deutschland-Jahrbuch 1953 (Essen, 1953), pp. 601 ff.

9. On several occasions I was counselled by colleagues not to bother with this “insignificant, non-German” literature. After they had become acquainted with the scope and character of the literature in question, they regretted their earlier unfamiliarity with the field.

10. Quoted in Das Wort, I, 1, p. 4. Heinz Rabe accepted the refer ence German Emigration 1933 as a sociological-political phenomenon only as a formale Kategorie (Neues Tagebuch, 1934, 17, p. 403). The same might be said of the term “Literature in Exile” when a first definition is attempted. For details of periodicals quoted, see bibliography.

11. In order not to have this study burdened with a tiring and—in view of the publications already cited—needless catalog of names and titles, I limited myself to material personally examined. From it I drew what appear to be reliably representative data. Some exceptions in the use of secondary sources are carefully noted.

12. Das Neue Tagebuch, 1934, 52, pp. 1244 ff. Quoted as NT.

13. NT, 1935, 1, pp. 1267 ff.

14. NT, 1935, 2, pp. 43 ff. In parenthesis Marcuse allows, of course, the existence of some kind of German “literature in exile”; by implication he permits the conclusion that it has at least one distinguishing mark: its emphasis on indignation.

15. Ibid., p. 45.

16. Almanach für das freie deutsche Buch (Prague, 1935). About one-fourth of the authors mentioned in this publication were not German; among these were many Soviet writers. The almanac also announces literature in the field of social and natural sciences and is not confined to so-called belles-lettres.

17. The driving force in the activity of the German writers in Paris was Alfred Kantorowicz. See Berendsohn, op. cit., p. 63 f.

18. For compendious bibliographies, see the summaries and titles in NT, Das Wort, Internationale Literatur, Die Sammlung, Der Aufbau (New York), and periodicals listed in the bibliography; Fünf Jahre freies deutsches Buch (Paris, 1937); Das Buch (Paris, 7 issues, 1938/1939). In addition to the bibliographies found in the postwar works already mentioned, attention may be called to the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Ergänzung I (Leipzig, 1949). Among its 5495 titles are a great number of “exile works.” See also W. Sternfeld, “Die ‘Emigrantenpresse’” in Deutsche Rundschau, 1950, pp. 250-259; and his articles in The Wiener Library Bulletin (London), Vols. III and IV.

19. Odd Eidem, Diktere i Landflyktighet (Oslo, 1937). My information about this work is not firsthand; my discussion is mainly based on Berendsohn, op. cit., and a few other secondary references.

20. Cf. Werner Türk, “Dichter im Exil” in Das Wort, III, 5, pp. 122 ff.

21. Ibid., p. 124.

22. Cf. Berendsohn, op. cit., p. 69.

23. Ibid., and Türk, op. cit., pp. 123, 125.

24. Alfred Döblin, Die deutsche Literature: Im Ausland seit 1933 (Paris, 1938). I call attention to the critical review by F. Lion in Mass und Wert, 1939, 6, pp. 854-858, and the scathing attack on Döblin by Kurt Hiller in 1939, reprinted in Köpfe und Tröpfe (Hamburg/Stuttgart, 1950), pp. 127-135. In a study of a pronounced religious-irrational character published after his return from exile, Döblin, then a Catholic convert, retained the earlier basic classification of German literature but recommended “a new tuning of its harps.” See “Die deutsche Utopie von 1933 und die Literatur” in Das Goldene Tor, (Lahr im Schwarzwald), 1946, October/November, pp. 136-147, and December, pp. 258-269.

25. Ibid., pp. 22 f. “In die tiefste Einsamkeit nimmt jeder Künstler, jeder Schriftsteller die Gesellschaft, in der er lebt, mit. Sie ist es, die mit ihm zusammen dichtet und formt, in der Sprache, in den Urteilen, Bildern und Begriffen, die er mitgenommen hat. Nicht stumm ist der Schriftsteller in der Einsamkeit. Ein tausendfaches Gespräch führt er nach allen Seiten und trägt in dieses Gespräch seine Eingebung hinein.”

26. Ibid., p. 29. In summarizing the ideas of Döblin, and those of others, I had to go beyond mere literal transcriptions in order to render an interpretatively correct picture.

27. Döblin does not state this explicitly, but his implication is clear. For an enumeration of the reasons pro and con regarding the term Emigrantenliteratur, see Berendsohn, op. cit., pp. 69-75. Berendsohn himself and also Odd Eidem favor it.

28. “Fünf Jahre nach unsrer Abreise …” in NT, 1938, 5, pp. 114-117.

29. Ibid., p. 115. Kesten himself uses the term against which he protests simply as a matter of necessary reference. After all is said and done, referral has to be made to this body of literature, and de facto Kesten, too, speaks of two literatures. Henry W. Nordmeyer used in his indispensable annual bibliography in Germanics the parenthetical reference: “(Reich and non-Reich).” PMLA, LIV, p. 1313 et al. Martin Gumpert chooses the term “Exile Literature” for the survey of German literature in the New Int. Year Book, Vol. 1939, p. 312. George N. Shuster speaks of “Emigré Literature,” ibid. 1938, p. 287.

30. Op. cit., pp. 854 ff. See note 24.

31. Berendsohn, op. cit., pp. 75 et al.

32. Cf. Werner Milch, Ströme. Formeln. Manifeste (Marburg, 1949) pp. 81 ff.

33. O. M. Graf, “Die Unteilbarkeit der deutschen Literatur” in Deutsche Beiträge, 1950, 6, p. 447. Holthusen (op. cit., pp. 142 ff.) describes the difficulties for the “two literatures” growing together again and concludes “… it will require a high degree of tact, patience and mutual concessions in order that the two German literatures, the emigrated and the non-emigrated, can again grow into one.”

34. Karl O. Paetel, “Das deutsche Buch in der Verbannung” in Deutsche Rundschau, 1950, p. 755; and “Deutsche im Exil” in Aussenpolitik (Stuttgart), September, 1955, pp. 584 f. See also his monthly Deutsche Gegenwart. Ein Informationsbrief. Published from January, 1947, to December, 1948.

35. A phrase coined by Freiligrath, quoted by Oswald Mohr in his Das Wort der Verfolgten (Basel, 1945), p. 14. This work is a valuable anthology of German voices of the exile in historical order, from H. Heine to Th. Mann. See also a related collection, Dies Buch gehört der Freiheit, edited by Erwin Reiche (Weimar, 1950).

36. Arthur Rosenberg, “Zur Geschichte der politischen Emigration” in Mass und Wert, II, 3, pp. 371 ff. A typical view to the contrary is expressed by Ernst Jünger in his Strahlungen (Tübingen, 1949) p. 550, quoted approvingly by Holthusen (op. cit., p. 143). Jünger states: Der Schritt in die Emigration führt immer in ein schwächeres Element (The step into emigration always leads into a less potent realm). Jünger's well-authenticated opposition to the dictatorship at home and his rank as a writer will not be disputed. But his dictum, made when he considered the possibility of staying behind in France as the Germans retreated from that country in 1944, was based on a fantastically different situation from that of the true exiles. Jünger no doubt realized that the Allies would not receive as an “emigrated writer” an officer who almost until the end had served under Hitler, no matter with what sincere mental reservations. His judgment about exile writing is colored by the rationalization of his situation. He shows no knowledge of the nature and the achievement of the literature in exile. By not giving the background of the statement, Holthusen's quotation is misleading. As a veteran officer of World War I of highest distinction and fame, Jünger held for a long time a unique position of immunity; by going back into the army, he went into “the aristocratic form of emigration.” (This phrase was coined by Gottfried Benn; see his Doppelleben [Wiesbaden, 1950] p. 110. See also the reference to Edmund Wilson in note 9, ch. II.)

37. Hermann Kesten in Klaus Mann zum Gedächtnis (Amsterdam, 1950) p. 85.

38. Cf. Hermann Kesten “Der Preis der Freiheit” in Die Sammlung, (1933/34) pp. 238-244.

39. Quoted in Neue Weltbühne (1937), 32, pp. 988 ff.

40. O. M. Graf, op. cit., pp. 438 ff.

41. Karl O. Paetel, “Das deutsche Buch in der Verbannung,” op. cit., p. 760.

42. Concerning my approach to literature, see Wm. K. Pfeiler, War and the German Mind: The Testimony of Writers Who Fought at the Front (New York, 1941), pp. 319 f.