Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America - Hardcover

Palmier, Jean-Michel

4.33

21 ratings by Goodreads

9781844670680: Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844670686 ISBN 13: 9781844670680

Publisher: Verso, 2006

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The artists and writers who left when the Nazis came to power were “the best of Germany.” Palmier weaves their diverse stories into a history of magisterial scope.

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.

They emigrated to Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Oslo, Vienna, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Mexico, Jerusalem, Moscow. Throughout their exile they strove to give expression to the fight against Nazism through their work, in prose, poetry and painting, architecture, film and theater. Weimar in Exile follows these lives, from the rise of national socialism to the return to their ruined homeland, retracing their stories, struggles, setbacks and rare victories.

This absorbing history covers the lives of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Doblin, Hans Eisler, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig and many others, whose dignity in exile is a moving counterpoint to the story of Germany under the Nazis.

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About the Author:

Jean-Michel Palmier was Professor of Aesthetics at Universit� Paris I, specializing in German artistic movements of the 1920s and 30s. He is the author of, among other works, L’Expressionnisme et les arts and Retour � Berlin. Weimar in Exile was awarded the Prix Eug�ne Piccard for a work of modern history by the Acad�mie Fran�aise.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. One of the many sobering lessons of the Third Reich was the failure of Germany's intellectual elite to stop the rise of Hitler. Starting in 1933, with Hitler's assumption of power, German poets, philosophers, playwrights, artists and scientists—including Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin, Stefan Zweig and thousands of others—seeing the writing on the wall, packed up and found new homes. French scholar Palmier has written a well-nigh exhaustive work on this cultural diaspora. His staggering achievement is to portray the exquisite poignancy of these exiles' situation: powerless Germans forced to watch their country implode from abroad. Palmier's deceptively straightforward structure cloaks a far more cunning and generous approach. "Europe" ends in Barcelona, while the American phase ends with McCarthy; thus, he shows, these cultural stalwarts were learning new forms of political disappointment with each passing day. Palmier's command of this vast subject is truly breathtaking; he finds space to address exiles in Turkey, China and Latin America; exiles in American academia; and the legal problems they faced. And all the while, the story of these exiles is really, by indirection, the story of the Third Reich itself constantly agitating against them. (July)
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