Volkmar ZÖ¼hlsdorff. Hitler's Exiles: The German Cultural Resistance in America and Europe. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. xv + 240 pp. $22.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8264-7324-0.

Reviewed by Deborah Vietor-Englaender (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
Published on H-German (February, 2006)

To Keep Reminding the World that Hitler Was Not Identical with Germany

Volkmar Zühlsdorff's book is a rich eyewitness account from one of the last survivors of the group who tried to demonstrate that Germany and Hitler were not identical (p. 123). Zühlsdorff was born in 1912, and ninety-three years later his historical account has a great deal to offer an English-speaking audience interested in first-hand information on the phenomenon of the German Academy in Exile, of which he was a founding member. He begins with an overview of the riches of the theater, film, art, music, science, sociology and criticism in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in order to demonstrate what Germany lost--in Peter Gay's words, by the forcing into exile of the "greatest collection of transplanted intellect, talent and scholarship the world has ever seen."[1] He then describes the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom and the German Academy of Arts and Sciences in Exile, their formation, their sponsors and their development. Zühlsdorff is slightly more concerned with the organization he was most intensely involved with (the Academy). He is also somewhat bitter about how quickly it was forgotten after the war and troubled that no one ever made the gesture of inviting its members to return to Germany: "The Academy in Exile had its headquarters in New York, and offices in Vienna, London and Paris. Its 100 senators and members and the 163 recipients of its scholarships, scattered among 27 countries, considerably enriched the arts and sciences in their respective host nations. After the war they contributed towards a modern, cosmopolitan culture in Germany, even if no German federal government, regardless of its political hue, ever made the gesture of inviting them to return" (p. 186). Given this tone, it is surprising that the word "forgotten" is omitted from the title of the English translation, since the title of the German original, Deutsche Akademie im Exil. Der vergessene Widerstand, reminds the reader of "the forgotten opposition." Zühlsdorff finds this forgetfulness particularly astonishing because the Academy's archive has survived intact and is available to scholars at the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt am Main. The only major initiative to remember this group, he says, was an exhibition in 1993 with an accompanying catalog: German Intellectuals in Exile: Their Academy and the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom (1993). This catalog is indeed outstanding and the result of the exhibition has been to increase scholarly interest in the archive in Frankfurt since 1993.

The book's expressed aim is "to help broaden and deepen people's awareness that the Third Reich was not just a period of culprits and victims, but also of countless men and women who opposed the regime with their bodies and souls, often at the cost of their lives" (p. 186). It is comprised of fifteen chapters and an afterword, entitled "Resistance by Cultural and Intellectual Means." Zühlsdorff includes photographs and facsimiles (for example, a letter from Freud to Prince Löwenstein with translation), original lists of applicants for subsidies and, at the end, appendices listing, among other things, the recipients of German Academy in Exile scholarships and the participants in the Academy's literary contest.

This contest was intended to prove that "Germany's true identity had nothing to do with pernicious Nazi ideology" (p. 146). The overall level of the entries was very high. But the clause included by Little, Brown & Company insisting that the winning entry be suitable for the American market and the fact that the jury could not come to a unanimous decision meant that the jury's onerous work in reading the 177 entries (of which 30 failed to qualify for formal reasons) was to no immediate purpose, as the winner's book was not published. While, at the beginning, considerable international interest came from publishers in Amsterdam, London, Warsaw, Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, wartime events eliminated all the publishers except the British. The winner, Es ist später denn ihr wisst (The Farm by the Lake) by Arnold Bender, never became well known. It was not published in the United States, but in England in 1943. Rudolf Frank's entry was not published until 1998 (p. 153). Oskar Maria Graf's entry, on the other hand, was published by another New York publisher in 1940 as The Life of My Mother and later became one of his most successful works in German.

After the outbreak of war, the American Guild provided as much emergency assistance and practical help as they possibly could. Affidavits and escape routes were needed, residence and work permits had to be obtained, and, in addition to the scholarships, financial aid was provided wherever possible to those in desperate need. "The two organizations did their utmost for them," the author remarks (p. 158). Zühlsdorff provides lively and original portraits of such notable exiles as Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein, the "Red Prince"; Richard Arnold Bermann alias Höllriegel; Rudolf Olden; the very prickly Thomas Mann; the rascal Bertolt Brecht and the endearing Sigmund Freud, whose professional ethics even applied to Hitler (p. 76).

All in all, the eyewitness perspective is this account's strength and the translation is excellent. The translator provides original German titles and English translations where available. He translates the texts themselves when necessary. Also, unlike the German original published in 1999, the translation includes an index, albeit an incomplete one. Occasional factual errors in the German edition recur in the translation, however; for example, Alfred Kerr was not, as here claimed (p. 88), the president of the German PEN club when he fled Germany in 1933, although he was a member. Kerr became president of the German PEN in exile in London. All in all, however, this is a most valuable publication for all English-speaking readers who are interested in the phenomenon of Hitler's exiles.

Note

[1]. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. xiv.

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Citation: Deborah Vietor-Englaender. Review of ZÖ¼hlsdorff, Volkmar, Hitler's Exiles: The German Cultural Resistance in America and Europe. H-German, H-Net Reviews. February, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11431

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