Eva Herrmann: Caricature portrait of Albert Einstein (circa 1931)
Eva Herrmann’s drawing of Albert Einstein was likely produced in 1931. It is possible that the painter and the physicist made each other’s acquaintance in New York.
“Ausrüstungsbogen für Knaben” issued by the Youth Aliyah (1935)
On 19 November 1935, Henrietta Szold, Director of the Youth Aliyah office in Jerusalem, sent this “Ausrüstungsbogen für Knaben” (form listing provisions for boys) to journalist, bookseller and photographer Walter Zadek in Tel Aviv. Zadek had been living in Palestine since 1933 after fleeing there from Berlin by way of the Netherlands.
A Night of Refugee Stars, concert programme (1939)
A few months after his arrival in the USA, violinist Friedrich Polnauer appeared alongside other artists such as pianist Martha Pollak and cellist Leo Rostal in a concert titled A Night of Refugee Stars given at the Institutional Synagogue in New York. The concert was one of a series organised by the Placement Committee for German and Austrian Musicians.
A note from Gustav Wolf containing thoughts on Manhattan (undated)
The painter and graphic artist Gustav Wolf emigrated from Germany to New York in 1938. His decision - which had a drastic effect on his work - was a direct consequence of the escalation of Nazi harassment and restrictions on Jews since 1933.
A piece of notepaper with some weary thoughts by Lili Schultz about bureaucracy (circa 1958)
Paper warfare in West Germany
Accounting document from Querido publishing house for Konrad Merz (1937)
The author Konrad Merz would have never existed if it were not for his exile. First, the name is a pseudonym, a cover for Kurt Lehmann, who would never have created Konrad Merz if he had not been persecuted by the Nazis.
Accounts of the Gin Rummy Benefit, 9 December 1940
The European Film Fund was established by a group of German emigrants in Hollywood’s film industry in 1938 to support destitute immigrant colleagues. The Fund did not have much money to distribute, and at the same time the number of people in need was growing.
Address book with telephone numbers: Eric Zeisl
Networks on the West CoastTo make in impression in Hollywood, one had to throw parties. The pianist and composer Zeisl accepted this, but otherwise distanced themselves from such events: “[.
Affidavit of Sponsorship for Ilse Bing and Konrad Wolff (1940)
The process described here as “prepared” by the writer Hermann Kesten, volunteer adviser at the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), was in fact an enormously laborious procedure. Every refugee applying for an emergency visa for the United States with the help of the ERC had to provide not only a financial guarantee, a curriculum vitae and proof of political persecution, but also an affidavit of sponsorship.
Affidavit of Support for Eric Schaal (1935)
The photographer Eric Schaal received his Affidavit of Support from Schye Schmidt, who worked in the wholesale butter and egg business in New York. According to the document, he was Schaal's cousin.
Affidavit of Support for Hanns Eisler (1938)
After the Nazis seized power in January 1933, the composer Hanns Eisler embarked on a period of exile in which he was constantly on the move for five years with stops in various European countries including Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, France, Britain and the Soviet Union. In February 1935, Eisler travelled to the United States for the first time to give a series of lectures and concerts in New York.
Affidavit of Support from Thomas Mann for Heinrich Mann (1941)
When Thomas Mann went to meet Heinrich Mann at New York’s port on 13 October 1940, he thought his newly-arrived older brother to be exhausted and in need of rest. His state, however, was not only down to the physical strain of the long journey.
Akbar Behkalam: Berlin Kreuzberg, picture series (1981)
The Iranian painter Akbar Behkalam used his picture series Berlin Kreuzberg to express his sympathy with the aims of the so-called renovation occupancy movement.
Akbar Behkalam: from the Persepolis series of paintings (1977-1979)
Iranian painter Akbar Behkalam arrived in Berlin in 1976, the impressions of the despotic regime of the Shah still fresh in his mind. He soon began painting pictures of the human rights violations that had been taking place since the beginning of the dictatorship under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1941.
Akbar Behkalam: Justice in Allah’s Name, series of paintings (1984)
In the middle of the 1980s, the painter Akbar Behkalam worked on his series Justice in Allah’s Name, which deals with human rights violations in the Iran of Ruhollah Chomeini. In 1979, Chomeini toppled the monarchist dictatorship of the then Shah – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and established the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Albert Bassermann: Letter fragment (1934)
Leaving the "Guild of the German Stage" (Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnen Angehöriger)The actor couple Else and Albert Bassermann were to give a guest performance at the Schauspielhaus Leipzig in 1934 as in previous years. From the correspondence of the literary estate it is apparent that Bassermann had written to Leipzig in the course of his preparations to say that their membership cards of the Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnen-Angehöriger for the year 1934 had not yet arrived.
Albert Bassermann: Letter to Paul Kohner, 8 May 1939
The producer Paul Kohner, who had founded his own artists' agency in 1938, was an attentive observer of the exile German film scene in the United States. Following the start of the Second World War he became a tireless escape helper.
Albert Ehrenstein: Letter to his brother Carl (1941)
Two weeks after the traumatic voyage and arrival in New York, Albert Ehrenstein wrote this first letter to his brother Carl in London. In addition to describing the immigrant ship conditions, Albert Ehrenstein reported about his first impressions and new found freedom; about the hope to collaborate on journals and possible publications in German; and also about Switzerland and Spain, among other things.
Albert Ehrenstein: Navemärtyrer (1941)
It was literally in the last moment that Albert Ehrenstein was able to get the required visa to leave Switzerland in the summer of 1941. At the end of his journey through Spain and Portugal, he boarded a converted freighter ship, the “Navemar”, which took him to New York.
Albert Ehrenstein: Postcard to his brother Carl (1937)
During his stay in Switzerland, Albert Ehrenstein lived primarily in Brissago. From here he corresponded, among others, with his brother, who had lived in London since 1928 and had been trying to make his way as a literature agent and translator.
Albert Ehrenstein: Rezension zu Paul Mayers Exil und zu Ludwig Renns Adel im Untergang (1945)
One of the few occupational opportunities open for Albert Ehrenstein in his American exile was reviewing books for German language newspapers and journals. One of his reviews examined two books, which were written in exile in Mexico: Paul Mayer’s poetry collection Exil and Ludwig Renn’s autobiographical-driven novel Adel im Untergang.
Albert Ehrenstein’s Czechoslovakian passport (May 17, 1938)
With the exception of a few travels within Europe, Albert Ehrenstein lived primarily in Switzerland from 1933. During that time, he developed a knack for undercutting as much as possible the strict regulations of the Swiss border police.
Alexander Granach in the role of the Russian commissioner
in the film Ninotchka, photograph (1939)Just a few months after arriving in the USA, the actor Alexander Granach was already offered a big role by his friend from his Berlin days, Ernst Lubitsch. He was to play a Russian commissioner alongside Greta Garbo.
Alexander Granach: Da geht ein Mensch, typescript (1942-1945)
The autobiography of actor Alexander Granach Da geht ein Mensch was released in 1945. However, he did not live to see its publication.
Alexander Granach: Letter to Lotte Lieven, presumably from Hollywood (7 September 1941)
The actor Alexander Granach wrote more than 300 letters from exile to his great love, the actress Lotte Lieven. When they first met in 1920 and fell in love, she was training to be an actress in Munich, while Granach was the main character actor at the theatre Schauspielhaus München.
Alexander Moritz Frey to Florianna Storrer-Madelung, Salzburg, 30 March 1936
“The dreary road to the land of starvation”This letter by Alexander Moritz Freys vividly documents the financial straits of a writer forced into exile, particularly his disheartening attempts to have his works printed by publishers and in the features section of newspapers. Frey’s “misery letter”, as he called it, was written from exile in Salzburg to Florianna Storrer-Madelung, who from 1930 was the assistant editor of the features section of the National-Zeitung newspaper in Basel.
Alexander Moritz Frey, letter to Ossip Kalenter, 1945
Contemporary studies of exile literatureF. C.
Alexander Moritz Frey’s notebooks
Hell and heaven in exileThe Swiss Literary Archives (SLA) hold a fragmentary estate of Munich-born author Alexander Moritz Frey who fled to Austria in 1933 then moved on to Switzerland following the annexation of Austria in 1938. It consists solely of two boxes of notebooks and notebook transcripts prepared by a third person, all of which await further research.
Alfred Kerr: Page from the Melodien volume of poetry (1938)
In the poem Die illegalen Kämpfer in Deutschland, Alfred Kerr, who continued his flight in 1936 to Britain, struck an elegiac tone in honour of the resistance movement in Germany. He selected this page from his volume of poetry Melodien for an exhibition of the Freier Deutscher Kulturbund aimed at informing British citizens about the resistance in Germany.
Alfred Neumann's house in Nice, photograph (1938/39)
"Our Apt. Prom d. Angl. 62 "On 17 September 1938 the writer René Schickele wrote to Alfred Neumann: "My Dear Friend, Young Wolff has hopefully written to let you know that an apartment is about to become available in number 63 Promenade des Anglais which is just what you are looking for [..
Alfred Neumeyer: Letter to Oskar Kokoschka, carbon copy (8 February 1937)
In February 1937 Alfred Neumeyer thought that he would soon become personally acquainted with the painter Oskar Kokoschka. Neumeyer had asked the artist, who was living in exile in Prague, to conduct a summer school at Mills College in California.
Alfred Neumeyer: Magie, manuscript (Christmas 1945)
In June 1935, Alfred Neumeyer was excluded from the Reich Literature Chamber because of his Jewish ancestry. The Nazis had already tried to frustrate his promising initial success as an author.
Allert de Lange Publisher: Complete catalog 1939
In 1933 a new German language department was opened in the renowned publishing house Allert de Lange in Amsterdam. Numerous German titles were published until 1940, above all the works of exiled authors.
Alma Mahler-Werfel: Letter to Eric Zeisl (19 September 1946)
Alma Mahler-Werfel wrote from 610 N. Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.
andcompany&Co: Orpheus in der Oberwelt. Eine Schlepperoper (2015)
The work of the Andcompany&Co. artist collective is often about boundaries.
Angelika Domröse: Still photograph from the film Die zweite Haut (1981)
A DEFA project only possible in the westAfter leaving the DDR together the actors Angelica Domröse and Hilmar Thate, a married couple, filmed their first movie for West Germany broadcaster “Westdeutscher Rundfunk” in 1981. Under the DEFA director Frank Beyer, who had fallen into disgrace in the GDR but who possessed a work permit for the Federal Republic of Germany, they took the main roles in Die zweite Haut (The Second Skin), a marital drama with a screenplay by the writer Klaus Poche who had himself emigrated from the East in 1979.
Angelika Domröse: Still photograph from the film Verfehlung (Misconduct) (1991)
Return of an exile to DEFAImmediately after the fall of the wall Heiner Carow, who had repeatedly challenged the GDR leadership as the director of such thematically provocative films such as Die Legende von Paul und Paula (The Legend of Paul and Paula, 1973) and Coming out (1989), began preparations for one of the last DEFA productions. The material, a tragic love story between an East German cleaning lady and a West German port worker, was also a personal farewell to the now defunct GDR.
Anna Riwkin-Brick: Dancer Jula Géris (Jula Isenburger) (1936)
Before going into exile, Jula Isenburger, alias Jula Géris, worked as a solo dancer at the Salzburg Festival, at the theatre of Max Reinhardt as well as at the dance theatre of Mary Wigman. In exile in France she was initially a member of a local dance group and later became a solo dancer.
Anna Seghers: Das siebte Kreuz [The Seventh Cross (1942)], first German edition, published in Mexico (1942)
Book production under adverse conditionsThe El Libro Libre publishing house, which published the first German-language edition of Anna Seghers’ novel Das siebte Kreuz, had been established in May 1942 by German writers and intellectuals who were in exile in Mexico.
Anna Seghers: Transit (1948)
Anna Seghers’ novel Transit is one of the most important literary works focusing on exile as its theme, in which the author worked through the impact of her own escape. It was written from 1941 to 1942 and was published initially in 1944 in English and Spanish.
Anna Seghers’ American press pass (1946)
Anna Seghers had become a renowned author in the USA after her novel The Seventh Cross was chosen for the Book of the Month Club in 1942 and adapted for a Hollywood film by Fred Zinnemann.
Argentinian Passport of Carl Meffert
An identity document bearing his original nameFrom around 1932, the graphic designer Carl Meffert lived for some time in Switzerland. After the Nazis took power in Germany, he finally abandoned his life in Berlin.
Arno Kikoler: symphony orchestra of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden [Cultural Federation of German Jews], photograph (c. 1934-36)
It is not known exactly when photographer Arno Kikoler took this photograph of the symphony orchestra of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden [Cultural Federation of German Jews] in Berlin. The photograph shows 38 members of the ensemble with their conductor Josef Rosenstock, who was appointed the orchestra’s director when it was founded in 1933 and continued in this post until 1936.
Arnold Schönberg: address book (1936)
Notable on this double-page spread from the address book of composer Arnold Schönberg is the number 70 written by hand behind many names. This probably refers to invitations that Schönberg sent to various people for his 70th birthday on 13 September 1944.
Arnold Schönberg: Canon for Thomas Mann on his 70th birthday (1945)
Arnold Schönberg dedicated a canon bearing this inscription to the author Thomas Mann on his 70th birthday, which he celebrated on June 6, 1945. Schönberg and Mann probably met each other in Hollywood in 1938, although they had already been exchanging letters since 1930.
Arnold Schönberg: certificate of membership of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (1939)
The composer Arnold Schönberg regularly attended the membership meetings of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP for short. It was established in 1914 and still takes care of the financial interests of American musicians today.
Arnold Schönberg: Concert leaflet from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1934)
The concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was one of the first that composer Arnold Schönberg presented to the American public. He conducted the orchestra and the second half of the concert was dedicated purely to his own compositions.
Arnold Schönberg: Letter to Else Lasker-Schüler, October 3, 1937
The composer Arnold Schönberg lived in exile in the US from 1933, and established himself in California. Yet facing the fact that the American public showed only minor interest in his atonal music, he went so far as to compose “old-fashioned“ pieces.
Arnold Schönberg: Letter to the photographer Eric Schaal, 30 January 1941
Photographer Eric Schaal, who emigrated from Munich to New York in 1936, began work for the Pix agency in 1937, making portraits of numerous artists, including Arnold Schönberg. A busy man, after the shoot Schönberg let Schaal wait some time before deciding on a selection of shots that he wanted to use for himself.
Arnold Schönberg: one of his address cards (ca. 1938)
The composer Arnold Schönberg had two children from his first marriage: his daughter Gertrude (Trudi), born in 1902, and his son Georg, who was born in 1906. Gertrude married the composer Felix Greissle and their names are the main entries in this index card from Schönberg’s directory of addresses.
Arnold Schönberg: self-portrait, watercolour, 1935
Autumn 1935 was a very trying time for Arnold Schönberg both privately and professionally: financial worries, bureaucratic irritations and poor health exacted their toll. A concert in Los Angeles arranged by director Otto Klemperer that Schönberg was able to direct and which was dedicated exclusively to his music, seemed to offer some hope.
Arnold Schönberg: Song of the Wood-Dove, audio recording (1934)
In the first few months after arriving in the USA, composer Arnold Schönberg was often completely exhausted as he had numerous tasks to perform: He taught pupils in New York and Boston, was invited to conduct concerts and composed. The conductor Otto Klemperer, who Schönberg much admired, and who had emigrated to the USA before him, had prepared several contacts.
Arnold Schönberg: Violin concerto op. 36 (1936)
The Violin Concerto Op. 36 is the first large composition that Arnold Schönberg completed in exile in the USA.
Arnold Zweig (documentary film, GDR 1962, excerpt)
Documentary film directed by Joop HuiskenDirected by Joop Huisken and with a screenplay by Renate Drescher, the documentary film Arnold Zweig was released in 1962. Viewers were presented with the most significant events in the life of the writer Arnold Zweig and his artistic oeuvre.
Arnold Zweig in Haifa
Barely two years after his emigration to Palestine, the author Arnold Zweig penned these harsh words criticizing his new homeland in a letter to Sigmund Freud. Writing in 1936, the formerly staunch Zionist could now barely contain his disappointment.
Arnold Zweig: Insulted and Exiled: The Truth about the German Jews 1933, manuscript (1933)
(Bilanz der deutschen Judenheit)In spring 1933 Arnold Zweig wrote down the first ideas and outlines of a book that he intended to take stock of German-Jewish relations. In face of the Jews’ dramatic situation in Germany, Zweig wished that his work would meet with more interest abroad.
Arnold Zweig: Letter to Hedwig Michaelis (1 November 1935)
In 1934 and 1935, Arnold Zweig and his wife Beatrice exchanged letters with Hedwig Michaelis in New York, the wife of the chemist Leonor Michaelis, on several occasions. The families had probably met in 1933 in Sanary-sur-Mer through Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger.
Arnold Zweig's membership card of the Association of German Writers (Paris 1936)
From 1929 to 1930, the author Arnold Zweig was the first chairman of the Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller (SDS) [Association of German Writers]. The association, which was originally founded as a writers' trade union, had around 2,000 members in the 1920s, among them renowned authors such as Thomas Mann.
Arthur Kaufmann: The Intellectual Emigration (Die geistige Emigration), painting (1938-1964)
When one looks at the painting The Intellectual Emigration by Arthur Kaufmann, one notices the accurately painted faces that dominate the work. In the left section of the painting, which with its swastika visibly symbolises Germany, one sees a stream of people without recognisable facial features.
Austrian identity card of Paul Celan (1947)
Flight from Soviet occupationAfter several failed attempts to flee Stalinist Romania, at the end of November 1947 the author Paul Celan managed to reach Vienna after crossing the Romanian-Hungarian border on foot. On the day of his arrival at the Rothschild refugee camp, he was issued with this identity card under his birth name Antschel.
Austrian passport of Richard A. Bermann (March 1938)
During the period of Austrofascism in Austria from 1933, the NSDAP and other Nazi organisations were fast to gain many new members. Vienna, the birthplace of journalist and writer Richard A. Bermann alias Arnold Höllriegel was still his main place of residence at this time, interrupted by periods of stay in Great Britain and the USA.
Benedikt Fred Dolbin: Drawings for The Eternal Road in the magazine Stage (1936)
In early 1936, newspaper illustrator and caricaturist Benedikt Fred Doblin was able to accept a large job for the first time during his period of exile in New York. The then prominent theatre magazine Stage published a two-page article by Max Reinhardt about the rehearsals for the oratorio The Eternal Road - Doblin produced drawings of almost everyone involved in the production for this article: The composer Kurt Weill wrote the music, writer Franz Werfel the libretto, Lotte Lenya played one of the main parts and Max Reinhardt directed it.
Benedikt Fred Dolbin: Kurt Weill (1936)
During the rehearsals for The Eternal Road in 1936, cartoonist Benedikt Fred Dolbin, along with creating portraits of the actors hired for the oratorio, also sketched its creative director, the composer Kurt Weill, of whom Dolbin created many portraits.Dolbin's “collection of heads” comprised around 100,000 drawings and drafts.
Benedikt Fred Dolbin: Letter to Stefan Ehrenzweig, 31 January 1936
In this letter to his colleague Stephan Ehrenzweig, the newspaper illustrator and caricaturist Benedikt Fred Doblin describes the crossing from Europe to the USA and his arrival in New York in 1936. Dolbin had prepared his step into exile carefully after Nazi banned him from carrying out his profession as an illustrator in spring 1935.
Benedikt Fred Dolbin: Thank-you card (9 December 1935)
On 9 December 1935, after attending a concert conducted by Otto Klemperer, the illustrator Benedikt Fred Dolbin wrote a card in which he expressed his thanks for the “finest music” performed there. The card was most likely addressed to the conductor himself.
Berthold Viertel’s film Little Friend (GB 1934)
Following the Reichstag Fire at the end of February 1933, theatre and film director Berthold Viertel fled via Prague to London. He was contracted there in 1934 by the Gaumont British Picture Corporation, which had just filmed the elaborate costume drama Jew Süss with another well-known Jewish refugee, the actor Conrad Veidt.
Bertolt Brecht before the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) (30 October 1947)
Audio tape recording On 19 September 1947, writer Bertolt Brecht, who had lived in the US since 1941, was summoned to appear before the “House Committee on Un-American Activities” (HUAC). Numerous artists and intellectuals such as Hanns Eisler and Thomas Mann were called before the committee during the McCarthy-era under suspicion of being members or sympathising with the communist party.
Bertolt Brecht: Auf der Flucht vor dem A., manuscript (1941)
This poem by the writer Bertolt Brecht was first discovered over 50 years after his death in the presumably last unknown partial bequest by Brecht, the collection of Victor N. Cohen.
Bertolt Brecht: Driven Out With Good Reason, typescript (1939)
In this poem, which was written in exile in Denmark in 1939, the writer Bertolt Brecht depicts himself as a political refugee who had been “driven out” of Nazi Germany “with good reason”.He describes the reasons why he was persecuted as follows:“and their informers told them that I sit with those who have been robbed when they / are planning the uprising.
Bertolt Brecht: Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, production photograph (1938)
The world premiere of Bertolt Brecht's Fear and Misery of the Third Reich in the form of a selection entitled 99% was held on 21 May 1938 in the Salle d'Iéna in Paris. A year earlier Brecht had already explored the idea of a fallen aviator brother in the Svendborg poems upon hearing about the deployment of the German Condor Legion in 1937 in Spain.
Bertolt Brecht: Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth, covert text (1935)
Bertolt Brecht’s treatise Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth was published in April 1935 in the journal Unsere Zeit which appeared in Paris, Basel and Prague. One part of the edition was distributed in Germany as a covert text under the title Statute of the Reich Association of German Writers, the approved writers’ association in Germany.
Bertolt Brecht: Hollywood Elegies, typescript (1942)
Brecht writes songs about the dream factoryThe writer Bertolt Brecht saw life in Hollywood as one dominated by consumer goods and money. He had never experienced capitalism, which he fought against in Germany, in this form before.
Bertolt Brecht: Kaelbermarsch [March of the Calves], typescript (1943)
The lyricist Bertolt Brecht wrote the satirical song Kälbermarsch [March of the Calves] in September 1933, during his French exile. Later, Brecht incorporated it into his play Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg [Schweyk in the Second World War], which he wrote between 1941 and 1944.
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder
First rehearsals after returning from exile (1948)Erich Engel and Bertolt Brecht co-directed Brecht's drama Mother Courage and Her Children from November 1948 to January 1949 in Berlin. Helene Weigel took the lead role.
Bertolt Brecht: Svendborg, typescript (1938)
This poem comes from the collection, The Svenborg Poems, by writer Bertolt Brecht, which was published in Copenhagen in June 1939 under the title Poems in Exile. Besides observations concerning the political situation in Germany following the Nazi seizure of power, there are repeated references to his life on the run in Denmark, to the landscape and the house “under the Danish thatched roof”, in which he lived from 1933 to 1939 and which became a meeting place for many of his friends.
Bertolt Brecht: Thoughts About the Duration of Exile, typescript (1937)
The writer Bertolt Brecht wrote the poem Thoughts About the Duration of Exile in 1937 in the Danish town of Svendborg. Brecht by no means chose this place of exile by chance.
Bertolt Brecht: Work diary, 1938-1942 (1973)
The writer Bertolt Brecht was a tireless diarist. In addition to his private diaries, he also kept a work diary, which his wife Helene Weigel later designated his Arbeitsjournal [work diary].
Bil Spira: Caricature of Joseph Roth (1939)
“[…] I am the last heir of this moustache. J.R.” This is Bil Spira’s (Wilhelm Spira) recollection of his encounter with writer Joseph Roth. They met each other in exile in Paris and met up a number of times in Roth’s local, the Café Tournon.
Bil Spira: caricature of Joseph Roth (1939)
“Wie er leibt und trinkt” [A passionate drinker]The illustrator Bil Spira (Wilhelm Spira), who had worked for the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung, escaped to Paris in August 1938 after being interned in Vienna's Gestapo prison in Karajangasse and worked in Paris under the pseudonym Willi Freier.Joseph Roth and Spira met one another in the Café Le Tournon, Roth's regular café, during their period of exile in Paris.
Bill from the Hotel Splendide in Marseille for Walter Mehring (1940)
After the invasion by the German Armed Forces in Belgium, Holland and France, like countless other refugees, Walter Mehring rescued himself by escaping to the unoccupied zone in the south of France and came to the crowded city of Marseille after several weeks of being on the run.
Billy Wilder: A Foreign Affair (1948)
The director Billy Wilder had volunteered for the US Army in 1942, but had not been enlisted. Only after the end of the war in 1945 was he sent as a film envoy to war-ravaged Germany. With his knowledge of the local film scene, he was charged with reconstruction and denazification of the the German film industry.
Billy Wilder: Film noir Double Indemnity (1944)
This still photo from the film noir classic Double Indemnity (Ger. Frau ohne Gewissen, 1944) by Billy Wilder contains a logical error that the director had to accept due to the camera position.
Birthday letter from Walter Reisch to Albert Bassermann, September 1942
The actor Albert Bassermann had his 75th birthday on 7 September 1942 in American exile. On his birthday, he received numerous letters from his long-time friends and colleagues in Europe and new acquaintances from the Hollywood movie scene.
Bodo Uhse: Die erste Schlacht, camouflage publication (1938)
Bodo Uhse’s report about the battalion that was named after the German communist Edgar André who was executed in 1936, which fought in the Spanish Civil War in the 9th and later on in the 11th International Brigade, was released in 1938 as a book published by the Strasbourg publisher Editions Prométhée. Brought to Germany and disseminated there, this literary chronicle of the events could only be released in the form of a camouflage publication.
Bodo Uhse: Lieutenant Bertram, book cover (1944)
In 1944 the New York publishers Simon & Schuster released the American edition of Bodo Uhse's novel Leutnant Bertram under the title Lieutenant Bertram. A novel of the Nazi Luftwaffe, translated by Catherine Hutter.
Bodo Uhse: Mexikanischer Garten, manuscript
What surprised the German writers Bodo Uhse, Egon Erwin Kisch or Anna Seghers (who had emigrated to Mexico in 1940) about the country's landscape was its otherness. Everything was subject to constant change, each volcanic eruption could alter the profile again.
Booklet containing the programme of the concert to mark the foundation of the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom (23 September 1936)
In the summer of 1936, Prince Hubertus zu Loewenstein and Richard A. Bermann organised a benefit concert for the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, which had been set up one year before.
Brecht und Feuchtwanger in front of Villa Aurora, photograph (1947)
This photograph shows the last meeting between the two writers and friends Lion Feuchtwanger and Bertolt Brecht in 1947. The picture was taken by writer and photographer Ruth Berlau, who had worked together with Brecht on several plays.
British sketching permit for Helmut Krommer (4 March 1943)
Artist or Spy?Great Britain did not present a threat to Helmut Krommer’s well-being during the Second World War. However, without the support of the British authorities, he would have been unable to pursue his work as a freelance artist.
Brochure from Malik Verlag presenting the books of Oskar Maria Graf (1937)
In 1936 and 1937 the publisher Malik Verlag published three books by Oskar Maria Graf. Graf had known the publisher Wieland Herzfelde at least since the 1920s when the memoir of his youth Frühzeit (Early Days) and the short stories Zur freundlichen Erinnerung (A Friendly Reminder) were published by his Berlin publishing house Malik Verlag.
Brochure: Saratoga Spa Treatments (1939)
Richard A. Bermann at Yaddo artists‘ colonyThe “manor house” to which the author Richard A. Bermann is referring here, is the Yaddo estate in Saratoga Springs in New York State which was built at the end of the 19th century.
Brown Book about the Reichstag Fire and Hitler’s Terror (1933)
A protest book with far-reaching consequencesJuly 1933 saw the release in Paris of the Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror (Brown Book about the Reichstag Fire and Hitler’s Terror). The authors, with writer Arthur Koestler among them, remained anonymous and were acting under the auspices of Communist publisher Willi Münzenberg.
Bruno Frank: Cervantes (1934, reprint 1944)
The German-language first edition of Bruno Frank’s novel “Cervantes” was published by Querido Verlag, Amsterdam, in 1934. Translations were published in Sweden, the UK, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, the USA, Chile and Spain.
Bruno Frank: Telegram to the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom (1939)
In 1938, author Bruno Frank – together with Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Alfred Neumann, Rudolf Olden and Richard A. Bermann – was one of the panel that judged the literary competition organised by the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom.
Bruno Taut: Construction plans for his residence in Istanbul, 1937
For the two years preceding his sudden death at Christmas 1938, architect Bruno Taut was in exile in Turkey. He was responding to an offer to take up a position as professor of architecture at the University of Istanbul, an offer which he owed above all to an old German associate: the former Berlin town planner Martin Wagner, who had executed a number of major projects with Taut, and had been in Turkey since 1935 working as an urban development advisor to the Atatürk government.
Bruno Taut: Sketch of Fuji
Architect Bruno Taut only intended to visit Japan for the cherry blossom time in 1933 before continuing on to the USA. But events in Germany turned the world lecture tour into a flight: it wasn’t one month, but rather three and a half years that Taut and his companion spent in Japan – their onward travel was hindered by problems in obtaining visas as well as money woes.
Business card of the architect Richard Paulick in Shanghai (around 1946)
At the address Bubbling Well Road, which is printed on this business card, Richard Paulick rented in 1937 an office with his company Modern Homes. The company employed interior designers, designers and art dealers who worked on furniture, interior decorations, wood fixtures, paintings and graphics.
Calendar sheet belonging to Heinrich Mann, 21 February 1933
By writing the simple note “departed” on his calendar on 23 February 1933, Heinrich Mann documented his flight from his homeland and the start of his exile. At this point in time he had no idea that he would never return to Germany again before his death.
Camp money from the Isle of Man Internment Camp (1940/41)
The internees in the Isle of Man camps developed an extensive system of self-administration.This included the production of small handicrafts such as shoemaking and a barber shop to agriculture, building toys and organising cultural events.
Carl Rabus: Aufschrei in der Qual (c. 1941/45)
The coloured woodcut Aufschrei in der Qual by the painter and graphic artist Carl Rabus shows a large head of a man whose face is contorted in pain. The angle of the tilted-back head and the bent position of the hand are unnatural.
Carl Rabus: Passion, linocut series (1945)
Memories of imprisonmentThe painter Carl Rabus fled from Germany in 1934 to Austria and from there to Belgium in 1938 where he was arrested in 1940 as an "enemy alien" and interned in the Saint-Cyprien camp in southern France. In 1942 he was arrested on a charge of "racial defilement" and imprisoned in Vienna.
Carl Rabus: Saint-Cyprien (1940)
The Saint-Cyprien print by the painter Carl Rabus shows a section of the beach in the southern French town Saint-Cyprien on the Mediterranean Sea. At first glance it looks like a holiday scene.
Carl Rabus: Sonett aus dem Gefängnis (Sonnet from prison - 1943)
The painter and graphic artist Carl Rabus lived from 1938 in exile in Belgium. From 1940, however, he was monitored by the Gestapo, who eventually arrested him for "racial defilement" due to his relationship with the Jewish photographer Erna Adler.
Censorship confirmation for Lisa Tetzner: Sie können nicht mehr nach Hause (You can no longer return home)
The nine-volume “children’s odyssey” Die Kinder aus Nr. 67 is today widely considered to be Lisa Tetzner’s most important work. The story takes place between 1931 and 1945 and centres around three neighbourhood children living in a tenement building who experience entirely different fates during the era of Nazi power.
Certificado de residencia para Extranjeros für Manfred Henninger (1935)
On 13 March 1935 Manfred Henninger was issued an identity document on Ibiza. Containing a photo and stamps it certified that the painter was a German citizen residing on the Spanish Mediterranean island.
Certificate of Registration von Walter Gropius (1935)
According to the Aliens Order of 1920, emigrants in the UK received a Certificate of Registration, a kind of residence permit for aliens. This had to be presented whenever holders of the permit changed their place of residence in the UK or wanted to leave the UK, whenever they went to a police station in connection with any matter relating to their registration or when a police officer or an immigration official demanded the presentation of the card.
Chanan Frenkel, blood bank in Jaffa, architectural model (1953-1956)
To ensure the supply of blood in the event of emergencies, the aid organisation Magen David Adom, founded in Tel Aviv in 1930, established the first blood bank in Palestine in 1947. For the construction of the blood bank in Jaffa the organisation commissioned architect Chanan Frenkel, who had studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau in the early 1930s.
Charlie Chaplin's telegram of condolence on the death of Richard A. Bermann (20 September 1939)
Richard A. Bermann died on September 5, 1939. Soon after his niece Clementine Bern received a telegram of condolence from Charlie Chaplin.
Chocolates Catherine, business card (c. 1944)
Erich Arendt and Katja Hayek-Arendt’s companyIn late 1943, Anna Kipper, head of the press agency Agence France-Press in Columbia’s capital Bogotá, was making preparations for a major reception. She turned to her neighbours, the German writers Erich Arendt and his wife Katja, for help.
Clément Moreau: La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland (1937/38), part 1 to 8
[Night over Germany] 107 Linocuts on Japanese tissue (gampi)
First published in the newspapers Argentinisches Tageblatt and Argentina Libre, 1940 Clément Moreau created his linocut cycle La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] in Argentina in 1937 and 1938, after fleeing Switzerland where he had lived illegally from 1933 to 1935.
Clément Moreau: La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland (1937/38), part 23 to 33
[Night over Germany] 107 Linocuts on Japanese tissue (gampi)
First published in Argentinisches Tageblatt and Argentina Libre, 1940A man in a black SS uniform and the skull emblem stands in the doorway of the prison cell. He hands the prisoner the rope: A rope with which to hang himself (figure 23).
Clément Moreau: La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland (1937/38), part 34 to 37
[Night over Germany] 107 Linocuts on Japanese tissue (gampi)
First published in Argentinisches Tageblatt and Argentina Libre, 1940These four cuts depict the wife and son of a prisoner. The individual cuts recall the Fürsorgeerziehung [corrective training] portfolio from 1929.
Clément Moreau: La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland (1937/38), part 38 to 52
[Night over Germany] 107 Linocuts on Japanese tissue (gampi)
First published in Argentinisches Tageblatt and Argentina Libre, 1940One of the men is just about to be released from prison (figure 39). Under his left arm he holds a bundle with his belongings.
Clément Moreau: La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland (1937/38), part 53 to 77
[Night over Germany] 107 Linocuts on Japanese tissue (gampi)
First published in Argentinisches Tageblatt and Argentina Libre, 1940Two male figures flee (figure 68). The second man is still in the unprotected glowing white; his long shadow extends diagonally across the picture.
Clément Moreau: La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland (1937/38), part 78 to 107
[Germany over Germany] 107 Linocuts on Japanese tissue (gampi)
First published in Argentinisches Tageblatt and Argentina Libre, 1940One of the men has succeeded in escaping (figure 78). With fearful facial expressions, balled fists and forceful movements, he is seen in the foreground of the block.
Clément Moreau: La comedia humana/Nacht über Deutschland (1937/38), part 9 to 22
[Night over Germany] 107 Linocuts on Japanese tissue (gampi)
First published in the newspapers Argentinisches Tageblatt and Argentinia LibreThe ninth linocut marks the beginning of ‘the interrogation’. The next cut shows a man being led into a glaringly lit, windowless room.
Clément Moreau: Wer auf einen Tiger reitet, kann nicht absteigen (1939)
Antifascist caricaturesUpon arrival in exile in Argentina, Clement Moreau became involved in the anti-fascist movement "Das andere Deutschland" ("The Other Germany"), and founded the cabaret and theatre group "Truppe 38" ("Troop 38"), which raised funds for anti-fascist work with its socially critical repertoire.As a caricaturist he also created hundreds of drawings which revealed the ridiculous nature of fascism and also unmasked its facade.
Concert programme by the “International Women’s Service Groups“ (1942)
During World War II, pianist and composer Hilde Loewe-Flatter took part in a number of cultural events organised by various charitable organisations. She performed at various venues including the Austrian Centre in London, a meeting point for Austrian émigrés which opened in March 1939 and offered counselling and job placement services as well as cultural events and a library.
Confirmation of the deportation of Oskar Pastior, 22 June 1965
In January 1945, Red Army soldiers deported the 17-year-old Oskar Pastior to the Soviet Union. Members of the German minority in Romania were held co-responsible for the Second World War and had to do forced labour.
Conrad Veidt as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942)
The Ufa star Conrad Veidt, who had left Germany out of moral conviction, going first to the UK in 1940, then into exile in Hollywood, met the same fate as many of his fellow actors. As a committed anti-fascist he had to play the German villain in American anti-Nazi productions.
Contract between Rowohlt Verlag and Mascha Kaléko (1934)
In preparation for publishing Little Reader for Grown-UpsFollowing the success of her first book The Lyrical Shorthand Pad, which appeared in January 1933 in the Berlin-based Rowohlt Verlag, the prestigious publisher was keen to secure the young poet Mascha Kaléko for future publications as well. For the follow-up Little Reader for the Grown-Ups, which went on sale in late 1934, she was able to negotiate markedly more favourable terms.
Contract between the architect Richard Paulick and St. John's University Shanghai (1946)
From the winter semester in 1943 to the end of the summer semester in 1949, the architect Richard Paulick taught interior design and urban planning at St. John's University in Shanghai, which had been founded by American missionaries in the late 19th century.
Curriculum vitae of Ilse Bing (1940)
When the Emergency Rescue Committee attempted to help the photographer Ilse Bing get an emergency visa for the USA in September 1940, the aid organisation had to provide a curriculum vitae for Bing as part of the application documents. The entrepreneur Gerardo E. Neisser, a friend of Bing’s husband Konrad Wolff, sent this CV along with a financial guarantee. Curt Trepte: The Deutsche Staatstheater (German State Theatre) in Engels, photograph (circa 1936)
Erwin Piscator’s emigrant theatre in the years 1935 to 1936The Soviet city Engels, capital of the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, had a large theatre, the Deutsches Staatstheater from 1931 with seating for an audience of 800. The director Erwin Piscator had the idea of establishing a centre for German-language emigrant theatre there.
Czechoslovakian alien's passport for Oskar Maria Graf (1938)
Oskar Maria Graf was stateless for twenty-four years, from his expatriation from the German Reich on 30 March 1934 until he was conferred American citizenship in 1958. Although he was tolerated in the US and Czechoslovakia, the countries of his exile, he was unable to travel to other countries and could not expect to be let back into these countries after he had left them.
Danish driving license of Helene Weigel (1934)
Even in exile, the actress Helene Weigel organised everyday family life largely on her own. In June 1933, while her husband Bertolt Brecht stayed in Paris for rehearsals, she travelled with her two children and housekeeper by ship to Denmark via France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Das Wort. Literarische Monatsschrift (1936 – 1939)
Das Wort was founded in 1936 in Moscow as a new exile literary magazine, after Die Sammlung (Amsterdam) and Neue Deutsche Blätter (Prague), both 1933-1935, had ceased publication. It was issued monthly from July 1936 to March 1939 with a circulation of 5000 to 7000 copies by the Jourgaz publishing house of Mikhail Koltsov.
David Ludwig Bloch: Hanging, linocut (1977-1980)
The observer sees a close-up of the hanging feet of someone who has been executed. A faceless mass of people witnesses the anonymous death.
David Ludwig Bloch: Reception-Deception, linocut (1977-1980)
Reception-Deception is part of a series of pieces about the Holocaust, created by painter David Ludwig Bloch in America forty years after his imprisonment in Dachau. He also uses the motif in a painting with the same name.
David Ludwig Bloch: Schirmverkäufer [umbrella salesman], woodcut (1948)
This woodcut is from the Yin-Yang series, which the painter David Ludwig Bloch made in 1948 during his exile in China. In Chinese philosophy, the two terms describe the balance that exists between two opposing forces which are nonetheless interrelated.
David Ludwig Bloch: Shanghai Ghetto, wood carving (1946)
This emigrant in Shanghai's ghetto is surrounded by a confusing jumble of regulations for stateless refugees. He is presenting his identity papers tightly enclosed by phrases in italics such as “Designed Area”, “Punishment” or “Extension” that seem to narrow his path.
David Ludwig Bloch: Zirkel von Rikschas, die zu einem Kunden eilen [Circle of Rickshaws Rushing to a Customer], woodcut (1941/1942)
Practically before the couple has had the chance to discuss the possibility of taking a rickshaw, the rickshaw coolies scramble to offer their services from all directions. The occasionally pushy efforts to win customers, the steps of the drivers that set the rhythm of the city, but also their everyday existence, became one of Bloch's favourite subjects in Shanghai.
Decision. A Review of Free Culture (1941-1942)
After emigrating to the USA, Klaus Mann intended to bring out a new magazine towards the end of 1939 which was to have a similar format as his other magazine Sammlung which was no longer being published. Following a planning phase of more than a year, January 1941 finally saw publication of the first issue of Decision with the sub-heading, Review of Free Culture.
Detlef Sierck, Final Accord (feature film, D 1936, film excerpt)
Final Accord was Detlef Sierck's first melodrama and pointed stylistically towards the great melodramas to come, for which he became famous in American exile. Originally from the theatre, Sierk saw his fourth film as a decisive milestone in his film work, because in it he tried out forms of expression using the visual image in a way that only the medium film can offer.
Detlef Sierck, Wilton's Zoo, (Spielfilm, NL 1939, Filmausschnitt)
Jan Grovers (Annie van Ees) along with his friend Pietje (Guus Brox) commit all kinds of scams in the streets of Rotterdam. A priest tries to take the boys from poor backgrounds under his wing and show them the right path.
Deutsche Ansprache. Appell an die Vernunft [An Appeal to Reason] (1930)
Writer Thomas Mann was actually invited by the Verband Deutscher Erzähler to read a few chapters from his new novel in Berlin in October 1930. But in light of the drastic gains by the NSDAP in the Reichstag election of September 1930, the newly-minted literature Nobel laureate decided to hold an additional event in Berlin's Beethovensaal.
Die versunkenen Welten des Roman Vishniac (Documentary film, Switzerland 1978, excerpt)
Documentary by Erwin Leiser about the photographer who chronicled Jewish historyRoman Vishniac, born in 1897 in Saint Petersburg, was a microbiologist, inventor, philosopher, university lecturer, art historian – and photographer. He already took his first photographs in 1906 showing the leg of a cockroach seen through a microscope.
Do you know where Mr. Kisch is? (documentary film, GDR 1985, excerpt)
About the writer and reporter Egon Erwin KischWriter and reporter Egon Erwin Kisch, who was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, was one of the most important reporters of the 20th century. Kisch reported in the 1920s from Asia, North Africa and the Soviet Union and published in 1925 his reports in the book The Raging Reporter whose title became a catchword for himself and his work.
Donation stamp for the five-year anniversary of the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain (c. 1944)
The Free German League of Culture in Great Britain issued donation stamps to mark its fifth anniversary. They were illustrated with portraits of figures who were associated with the League of Culture either in an organisational or more abstract way: the painter Oskar Kokoschka was one of the four presidents of the League of Culture and the most present in the public eye.
Doorplate of the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom
Office at Vesey Street 20, New YorkAn unassuming, hand-painted sign made of cardboard, affixed with nothing but a string, served as the official doorplate of the now famous organisation the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom. It's a testament to the austere conditions under which the organisation worked.
Draft advertisement for Oskar Homolka
Of the numerous émigré actors who were represented by agent Paul Kohner in Hollywood, Oskar Homolka was among the more successful ones.
Edgar Weil: Letter to Grete Weil (31 August 1941)
After a failed escape attempt in May 1940, Edgar and Grete Weil had planned to emigrate from Holland in the summer of 1941 with a Cuban tourist visa. While the writer and photographer had her visa already, her husband planned to collect his on 11 June 1941 in Rotterdam.
Eduard Korrodi: Deutsche Literatur im Emigrantenspiegel [German Literature as Reflected by Emigrants] (1936)
With his article German Literature as Reflected by Emigrants, which appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 26 January 1936, the Swiss literary correspondent Eduard Korrodi (1885-1955) provoked Thomas Mann to write an open letter in response, in which he made his contempt for the Nazi regime public for the first time.
Egon Erwin Kisch: Discoveries in Mexico (1945)
The essays and reports of Egon Erwin Kisch published in Mexico City in 1945 by El Libro Libre entitled Entdeckungen in Mexiko were his second book by this publisher; in 1942 he had already released Marktplatz der Sensationen (1942). The reports collected in his second book had been published in exile magazines since the early 1940s, especially in the magazine Freies Deutschland.
Ellen Auerbach: Beach near Tel Aviv, photograph (1934)
When the photographer Ellen Auerbach emigrated to Palestine in December 1933 she had previously mainly worked as a studio photographer in Berlin. She had trained under Walter Peterhans, who later became a lecturer at the Bauhaus art school.
Ellen Auerbach: Buenos Aires after the Rain (1946)
Photographic portrait of a new dawn?For those who emigrated to North or South America, exile didn’t simply come to an end in 1945. Anyone wishing to return required departure and entry permits, which could take several years to come through.
Ellen Auerbach: Photograph of Little Dorrit’s Playground (1936)
The working style of photographer Ellen Auerbach underwent a sustainable transformation in Palestine. Instead of still lives, she began choosing everyday scenes and people as the motifs for her photographs.
Ellen Auerbach: Photograph of Oxford Circus (1936)
When the photographer Ellen Auerbach left Palestine for London in 1936, she met up with her colleague and friend Grete Stern there, with whom she had run the ringl+pit photo studio in Berlin since 1929. Auerbach took on some commissioned works for Grete Stern‘s photo studio, and she also portrayed many well-known people like Bertolt Brecht, for example.
Ellen Auerbach: photograph of Studio Ishon (circa 1935)
After some initial hitches in Palestine, where Ellen Auerbach had emigrated to in December 1933, she opened a photographic studio in Tel Aviv with her friend Liselotte Grschebina in 1934. The two photographers had known each other since their childhood in Karlsruhe.
Else Lasker- Schüler: Letter to Emil Raas (1933)
After the National Socialists took power in January 1933, the poet Else Lasker-Schüler immigrated to Switzerland, where she was allowed to stay for a few years. The destitute foreigner, who was never granted a work permit, nonetheless faced many obstacles.
Else Lasker-Schüler: Chaluzim kommen aus den Orangenhainen (c. 1935)
Prince Jussuf and his friends come to lifeElse Lasker-Schüler was in exile in Switzerland from April 1933. Her drawings were removed from the Berlin National Gallery in the wake of the "Degenerate Art" policy in 1937.
Else Lasker-Schüler: Drawing of Die verscheuchte Dichterin (presumably between 1935-1942)
This drawing, one of the last by the poet, can be seen as a resume of Else Lasker-Schüler’s life in exile. The ficticious comment about the origin being 1933, with the unique quotation from the poem Müde and the motif itself, depicts the poet herself as she seeks support and consolation from an oriental-looking man.
Else Lasker-Schüler: Letter to Emil Raas (1939)
In 1939, the poet Else Lasker-Schüler took her third trip to Palestine. She intended to return to Switzerland, as she normally did.
Else Lasker-Schüler: Mein blaues Klavier, first edition (1943)
The last book published by the Prince of ThebesElse Lasker-Schüler's last book, Mein blaues Klavier, was published in 1943 in a print run of 330 copies, one and a half years before her death. A collection of poems in which the poet found haunting words for her life in exile and her grief for everything that had been lost.
Else Lasker-Schüler: Obeisances (about 1940)
This is a rather unique text from the poet’s collections in its confident lightness. Else Lasker-Schüler, in an almost aphoristic manner, describes some of the personalities of Jerusalem in the early 1940s.
Else Lasker-Schüler: Obituary for Ernst Toller (1939)
When the author and one time social revolutionary Ernst Toller took his life in his New York exile in May 1939, it caused a stir with many other exiles. Toller’s suicide was motivated mainly by the despair about the growing facism in Europe and the resulting hoplessness.
Else Lasker-Schüler: Typescript: Hebräerland, 1935
The prose piece "Das Hebräerland" by the poet Else Lasker-Schüler, is the most comprehensive piece that she wrote throughout her exile since 1933. She was enthralled by her first trip to Palestine, which she took during her Swiss exile in 1934.
Else Lasker-Schüler’s passport
Else Lasker-Schüler had been in Swiss exile since 1933. She was only granted leave to remain and her hopes of receiving a residence permit remained unfulfilled. This situation lasted for over six years.
Emil Ludwig, Resident Alien’s Identification Card, 1944
Ludwig’s years of exile in the USAFrom 1906, Emil Ludwig lived in Moscia, in the Swiss municipality of Ascona. After becoming a Swiss citizen in 1932, he spent the first years of the Nazi dictatorship in Switzerland.
Emine Sevgi Özdamar, reading from Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (The Bridge of the Golden Horn), 1992
From Istanbul to the women's hostel in Berlin Emine Sevgi Özdamar reads the beginning of Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (1992, englisch: The Bridge of the Golden Horn, 2007). It is 1966, and the eighteen-year-old Özdamar, who tells her story in the first person, has just travelled from Turkey to work in a radio factory in Berlin.
Emy Roeder: Letter to Otto Herbig (10 December 1942)
Sweets for the homelandBy late 1942 the sculptor Emy Roeder had lived for several years in Florence. A scholarship had brought her there in 1936 that allowed her to spend a year studying at the local Villa Romana.
Emy Roeder: letter to Otto Herbig (22 february 1943)
To receive a letter from a place where the fruit trees bloom in February and there was 30 degrees heat may have seemed odd to its Berlin recipient in the winter of 1943, during the war. Its author did not live there voluntarily however.
Eric Isenburger: Paul Westheim, painting (circa 1932)
Eric Isenburger moved to Berlin in 1931, and between then and 1933, his output primarily took the form of portraits of his intellectual contemporaries and artist friends. Among them is the oil painting Paul Westheim, which depicts the successful art critic, art historian, publisher and collector of modern art.
Eric Isenburger: Porträt Eva Marcu (1937)
In the early years of their exile, Eric and Jula Isenburger lived off an inheritance and had no financial worries. This was particularly helpful since the painter Eric Isenburger was suffering from a creative crisis.
Eric Isenburger: Release document Les Milles (1940)
Internment and escapeIn September 1939, Eric Isenburger responded to a nationwide call for foreigners in France to report themselves for registration, whereupon he was interned in the Les Milles camp. Just under five months later he managed to secure his release with the help of the camp doctor.
Eric Schaal: Draft letter on Das Antlitz des schöpferischen Menschen (undated)
The incomplete artistic balance sheet of the photographer's lifeThe estate of photographer Eric Schaal holds letter templates in several languages for his book project Das Antlitz des schöpferischen Menschen. In these letters, he asked artists and scientists for handwritten material for the planned book.
Eric Schaal: Photograph of Salvador Dalí (1939)
To coincide with the 1939 World's Fair, the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí designed a gigantic underwater fantasy: a pavilion entitled Dream of Venus. During the preparations, Dalí criticised the organisers of the World's Fair bitterly for their narrow-mindedness, because they hadn't allowed him to give Botticelli's Venus the head of a fish.
Eric Schaal: Photograph of William Faulkner for the front page of Time (1939)
Even before emigrating, Eric Schaal had been engaged intensively with photography and taken portraits of artists. In 1936, he emigrated to the USA, where he made photography his profession.
Eric Schaal: Photographic portrait of Vicky Baum (ca. 1940)
The author and screenwriter Vicky Baum had come to live in the USA in 1932; she enjoyed a successful career there from the beginning of the 1930s. In 1939 and 1940 she travelled several times from her home in Hollywood to New York to prepare the Broadway première of her play Summer Night.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph by Arnold Schönberg (1940)
Eric Schaal's photographic portraits of Arnold Schoenberg were likely taken in December of 1940. The composer was in New York for the world premiere of his Chamber Symphony No. 2, Op 38, which was performed for the first time on December 15 under the direction of Fritz Stiedry.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Alfred Döblin (1939)
At the end of April 1939, the author Alfred Döblin sailed from Le Havre to New York to attend the world conference of the PEN Club. He arrived in New York on 6 May. There he saw his son for the first time, who had emigrated to the USA in 1935.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Bruno Walter (1939)
In March and April of 1939, conductor Bruno Walter was in the United States trying to break into the concert scene as a guest conductor in New York and Washington. Walter, his wife Elsa and his older daughter Lotte, who had come with him, were horrified at the news reports coming out of Europe.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Ernst Krenek (1937)
In October 1937, the composer Ernst Krenek travelled to the United States for his first time. While still in Austria, Krenek experienced a strange episode with a photographer in connection with his trip to America, during which he was to accompany an opera troupe on its tour.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Ernst Toller (1938)
In late January, 1938, the author Ernst Toller decided to move from Hollywood to New York. Toller had emigrated in 1933, spending periods in Switzerland and England before finally moving to the United States in 1936.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Paul Hindemith (1937)
After Paul Hindemith quit his post on March 22, 1937 at the Berliner Musikhochschule in protest against the defamation of his music in Nazi Germany, he set off on his first trip to the United States. There, he gave concerts as a soloist, conductor and composer in Washington, Boston, New York City, Chicago and Buffalo.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Stefan Zweig (1939)
A pocket calendar of the photographer Eric Schaal includes an appointment on February 25, 1939, for a photo session with the author Stefan Zweig. On a postcard sent to Schaal, Zweig himself had suggested the date and his hotel as a meeting place.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Thomas Mann (1937)
The photographer Eric Schaal took several portraits of the author Thomas Mann. One photo taken in Princeton in the spring of 1937 carries Mann's inscription to Schaal: "To Mr. Eric Schaal, the best portraitist I can remember. New York 21.IV.37 Thomas Mann“.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photograph of Thornton Wilder (1938)
It is impossible to determine the occasion on which Eric Schaal took portraits of the narrator and playwright Thornton Wilder in New York in 1938. An undated letter in which Wilder replies to Schaal's request for a photo session does provide some indications, however.
Eric Schaal: Portrait photography of Arnold Zweig (1939)
In April 1939, the writer Arnold Zweig travelled from Palestine to New York to attend the world conference of the PEN Club, which was taking place in New York to coincide with the World's Fair. He was accompanied by his eldest son Michael.
Eric Zeisl: Motion Picture Employee Identification Card (issued on 18 June 1942)
The writer Hans Kafka, who Eric Zeisl knew from Paris and who later wrote the libretto for the opera Hiob, brought the pianist and composer Eric Zeisl from New York to Los Angeles on the West Coast “at the shortest notice” as a “movie composer”. Kafka gave him tips in letters about the film industry also providing him with a breakdown of the costs of moving to Los Angeles.
Erich Arendt’s journey through exile as an illustrated menu (1943)
What to do when you’ve finally found a place to stay after ten years in exile?
Erich Maria Remarque: Der Funke Leben [Spark of Life] (Typoscript, circa 1951)
In August 1943, dressmaker Elfriede Scholz, youngest sister of writer Erich Maria Remarque, was denounced in Dresden and arrested. The accusation was "undermining the war effort".
Erich Maria Remarque: Flotsam (Novel, 1941)
The novel Liebe deinen Nächsten by author Erich Maria Remarque (published in English under the title Flotsam) follows the fortunes of three émigrés who meet in different circumstances while travelling through various European cities in 1936/37. They are all fleeing persecution by the Nazis.
Erich Mendelsohn: Design for the Schocken villa and library, Jerusalem
The architect Erich Mendelsohn had already worked for the successful businessman and art lover Salman Schocken a number of times: in the 1920s three of the Shocken company’s largest department stores – in Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Chemnitz – were built to his designs.
Erich Mendelsohn: Letter to his wife Luise on 3 February 1933
The extensive correspondence between Erich and Luise Mendelsohn (née Maas), almost all of which has survived, begins in 1910 shortly after their first meeting and ends with Mendelsohn’s death in 1953. The couple were geographically separated time and again – largely due to the successful architect’s professional obligations – and therefore reliant on written exchange.
Erich Salomon: Photograph of the composer Hilde Loewe-Flatter at a fancy dress ball in London (1937)
Première of a Viennese song in exile.Photographer Erich Salomon took this photograph at a fancy dress ball held at the Austrian embassy in London in December 1937. The second person from the right is the pianist and composer Hilde Loewe-Flatter, who had been living in exile in London since 1934.
Erika and Klaus Mann: The other Germany (1940)
After the success of their jointly published 1939 book Escape to Life, Erika and Klaus Mann swiftly began working on a follow-up project, which was issued by the New York publisher Modern Age Books in early 1940 under the title The Other Germany. Complementing their numerous lectures – educational talks about Germany, which they held across the USA – the siblings used their programmatically titled book to pursue the goal of convincing the Anglophone public of the existence of an “other Germany” beyond the Nazi regime.
Erika Mann: Reportage Waiting for the Lifeboat (1940)
At the end of August 1940 Erika Mann travelled via Lisbon to London. She accepted an offer from the British Minister of Information Duff Cooper to work on the BBC's German broadcasts as part of the broadcasting propaganda effort.
Erika Mann: Zehn Millionen Kinder (School for Barbarians), first edition (1938)
At the beginning of 1938 the New York publisher Modern Age Books released Erika Mann's first book in exile, the documentary report, School for Barbarians. The book was a study of methods of upbringing and education under the Nazis.
Erika Mann's identity card as a War Correspondent of the US Army (1944)
On 24 June 1943 Erika Mann received her first ID card from the War Department of the US Army as a news correspondent for the liberal weekly Liberty Magazine (New York) and the Toronto Star Weekly. Thus began a new chapter in her fight against the dictatorship of the Third Reich.
Erika Mann's pass for the international war crimes trials in Nuremberg (1945)
In mid-June 1945, one month after the end of the war, Erika Mann travelled for the last time in her capacity as a war correspondent to Europe. She remained until April 1946.
Erika und Klaus Mann: Escape to Life / Escape to Life. Deutsche Kultur im Exil (1939/1991)
After Klaus Mann had published a book with his one-year-elder sister Erika about their around-the-world trip in the late 1920s, the American publisher Houghton Mifflin offered the two close siblings another chance to work together on a book beginning in 1938.
Erna Adler: Photographs from Belgium (1937/38)
The photographer Erna Adler was a promising talent in the field of art portraiture in Vienna. In 1937 she had to start from the beginning again in exile in Belgium.
Erna Pinner: Curious Creatures (2. Ed. 1953, orig. 1951)
Erna Pinner's decades of experience as an animal illustrator, her scientific interests and the ability to make close observations of natural phenomena which she had cultivated during her travels with writer Kasimir Edschmid all flowed into her book Curious Creatures (1951). Pinner's book is the first of her works in exile for which she both drew the illustrations and wrote the text.
Erna Pinner: List of her illustrated books published in exile (circa 1945)
It was about 1945 when painter and illustrator Erna Pinner began this list of works she had illustrated and in some cases also written while in exile. Pinner wrote the list using a typewriter and subsequently added entries by hand at various times.
Ernst Krenek: Confirmation of a scholarship from the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom (1938)
On May 26, 1938, the board of the American Guild came together to decide on new applications for scholarships and extensions of scholarships. At this meeting, the composer Ernst Krenek was awarded the scholarship mentioned in the letter.
Ernst Krenek: Lamentatio for mixed choir (1940/1941)
A composition after the Lamentations of JeremiahThe composer Ernst Krenek recalls the period from 1940 to 1941 when he composed Lamentatio. The high complexity of the work is an expression of the gloomy circumstances Krenek found himself in during his exile in the United States: the composer was deeply convinced that there was no solution to the personal and social dilemmas around him.
Ernst Krenek: Letter to Eric Schaal (30 November 1937)
Ernst Krenek arrived in New York on 17 October 1937 to accompany the Salzburg Opera Guild on tour. It was the composer’s first time in the USA.
Ernst Lubitsch: To Be Or Not To Be (1942)
Two years after Charlie Chaplin’s very successful satire The Great Dictator (first German showing 1958), the famous director Ernst Lubitsch filmed his intelligent comedy To Be Or Not To Be in 1942 (first German showing 1960).
Ernst May: "Delamare Flats" residential complex (plans 1938-39)
"Frankfurt kitchen" in KenyaOne year after registering as an architect in Kenya Ernst May won the contract to design a residential complex in Nairobi. The so-called "Delamare Flats" were intended as attractive blocks of flats for Europeans living in Kenya.
Ernst May: Aga Khan girls' school in Kisumu (1949)
In 1949, Ernst May took on a construction project for the Ismaili religious community in his East African exile. He was charged with building a girls' school for the community in Kisumu on Lake Victoria.
Ernst May: certificate of registration as an architect in Kenya (1937)
Under the sign of the compasses againThree years after his emigration from German to Africa Ernst May, took an important step towards returning to his earlier vocation. On 30 June 1937 Kenya's Chamber of Architects and Surveyors confirmed his registration as an architect in the country with this certificate.
Ernst May: Floor plan of the house he designed himself near Nairobi (1936-37 and 1946)
A house opposite the Ngong hillsAfter a number of years as a farmer in Tanzania, Ernst May returned to his former career as an architect in Nairobi, Kenya. One of his first construction projects was designing a home for himself and his family.
Ernst May: Hook-on-slab building prototype (c. 1945)
Prefabricated houses for AfricaIn his Kenyan exile, Ernst May wanted to be an architect, but not only for wealthy Europeans or significant clients. Even in his Frankfurt years, affordable housing for lower income groups had been a concern of his.
Ernst May: Layout of his farm in Tanzania (c. 1934)
From urban planner to farm ownerUpon arriving in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) Ernst May was not able to start work immediately as an architect and urban planner. In the first years of their exile, May, his wife and their two sons lived the life of farmers.
Ernst May: Letter to his wife from British internment (1942)
Imprisonment and a new beginningThe Second World War arrived in East Africa in the summer of 1940. Thereupon Britain interned German citizens in its East African colonies.
Ernst May: Photograph of a POW camp during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya (c. 1953)
Yearning for GermanyThe small photo shows a disturbing scene. Kenyans crowded behind barbed wire.
Ernst May: Villa project for the third Aga Khan, photograph of model (1951-52)
The architect Ernst May, who had emigrated from Germany, worked for one of the most important men in the African continent for a number of years. May created a girls' school and a maternity clinic for the third Aga Khan and his foundation.
Ernst Toch: Letter to Prince Hubertus zu Loewenstein (7 February 1939)
After stints in Paris, London and New York, the composer Ernst Toch, who had gone into exile in 1933, and settled in Los Angeles in 1936. There he hoped to establish himself as a film composer.
Ernst Toller: Eine Jugend in Deutschland, first edition (1933)
In the first months of exile, which he spent in the house of the writer Emil Ludwig, Ernst Toller finished his autobiography Eine Jugend in Deutschland. He had worked on the manuscript with interruptions since 1929.
Ernst Toller: Letter to Klaus Mann, 6 March 1938
Ernst Toller’s letter to Klaus Mann from 6 March 1938 comes from the time of his return from California to the American east coast. In Hollywood, in February 1937, Toller had signed a lucrative year-long contract as a scriptwriter with MGM Studios.
Ernst Toller: Letter to Klaus Mann, Dubrovnik, 17 July 1933
On 28 May 1933, eighteen days after the book burnings in Germany, the annual congress of the international PEN Club took place in the Yugoslav town of Dubrovnik (Ragusa). The German PEN members had at this time already been “cleansed”, in the Nazi sense, of Jewish and politically unwelcome writers.
Ernst Toller: Open Letter to Joseph Goebbels, Manuscript (1933)
Ernst Toller’s text, Open Letter to Joseph Goebbels, which was produced under the impression of the book burnings of 10 May 1933, appeared at the end of July 1933 in the Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror [Brown Book about the Reichstag Fire and the Hitler Terror].
Erwin Piscator: Letter to Bertolt Brecht (spring 1949)
The whole caboodle or literally “china shop” with a roof spanning two continents mentioned by Erwin Piscator in this letter to the writer Bertolt Brecht is his life after the end of the Second World War.
Erwin Piscator: War and Peace – after the novel by Leo N. Tolstoy, adapted by Erwin Piscator, score by Boris Blacher (1955)
Erwin Piscator had harboured the desire to put on Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace as a stage production for years. The director had become a pacifist and first engaged with the novel as a soldier in World War I.
Eva Herrmann: Bertolt Brecht caricature (circa 1937)
The portrait of Bertolt Brecht is probably part of a collection of around 30 different sketches and preliminary studies that Eva Herrmann made of the poet. The sketches show a drawing technique in which the artist used her preliminary studies to draw the core of what she would later depict in one of her caricatures.
Eva Herrmann: Caricature of Arnold Zweig (circa 1933)
The caricature of Arnold Zweig was likely drawn in the fishing village Sanary-sur-Mer. Zweig was working there on the manuscript of Bilanz der deutschen Judenheit.
Eva Herrmann: caricature of Joseph Roth (circa 1935)
Eva Herrmann and Joseph Roth likely met with each other in Sanary-Sur-Mer and in Paris. In 1935, the young painter visited her sister Thea, her sister’s husband, the painter Wilhelm Thöny, Klaus Mann and the actress Sybille Binder in Paris.
Eva Herrmann: caricature of Lion Feuchtwanger (circa 1934)
Eva Herrmann and Lion Feuchtwanger met one another in July 1933 at a party in William Seabrook’s house in Sanary-sur-Mer. A large bundle of letters and Feuchtwanger's diary give indications of the nature of their intimate relationship.
Eva Herrmann: dust jacket design for Lion Feuchtwanger’s book: Exil (presumably January 1939)
This drawing is from a series of cover designs by the painter Eva Herrmann. The long-time friend of author Lion Feuchtwanger designed the book covers for his novel Exil.
Eva Herrmann: Letter to Johannes R. Becher (19 October 1939)
Written to Conte di SavoiaJohannes R. Becher and the painter Eva Herrmann had become acquainted in 1922 in their hometown of Munich.
Even Today He'd Speak His Mind (documentary film, GDR 1975, excerpt)
About the poet Erich WeinertDirected by Volker Koepp and based on a screenplay by Klaus and Vera Küchenmeister, the 1975 documentary Even Today He'd Speak His Mind was about the poet Erich Weinert.Autobiographical notes and poems together with archival material, documents and interviews show the life, views and work of the poet and his fellow communist activists.
Extension of deadline for departure from Switzerland for Kurt Hirschfeld, 1941
Like other émigrés in Switzerland, dramaturge and director Kurt Hirschfeld had to comply with the strict regulations imposed by the Swiss Federal Aliens Police. He was obliged to renew his residence permit at regular intervals.
Felix Bressart: List of questions to his agent Paul Kohner (9 January 1940)
Actor Felix Bressart, resident in the USA since 1938 and a client of the Paul Kohner Agency, had drawn the winning ticket: a six-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) which now awaited his signature.
Felix Nussbaum: Mastenwald, painting (1935)
Bidding farewell to Ostende, Belgium, Felix Nussbaum painted the painting Mastenwald. The painter had spent several months in the port city in 1935 before moving on to Brussels.
Felix Nussbaum: Orgelmann, painting (1943)
The last survivor of the catastrophe sits with his back to an apocalyptic urban scene: an organ grinder, the melancholy alter-ego of the painter Felix Nussbaum. He is leaning against the long since silenced organ and looks contemplatively into the emptiness.
Felix Nussbaum: Selbstbildnis mit Maske und Schalltrichter [ Self-Portrait with Mask and Paper Horn], painting (ca. 1936)
During his years of exile, masks took on a central role in the self-portraits of the painter Felix Nussbaum. Even before, Nussbaum had used masks as a metaphor to give expression to the two-faced character of reality.
Felix Nussbaum: Self-portrait with Tea Towel, painting (1935)
The effect of exile on one’s own facial features was the subject of a series of self-portraits by painter Felix Nussbaum which were created in front of a mirror beginning in 1936. Under the deformation of his face and the external reality laid over his face like a grimace, Nussbaum sought an inner, undisguised self.
Felix Nussbaum: Triumph des Todes (Triumph of Death), painting (1944)
The painting Triumph of Death, which is reminiscent of a medieval Dance of Death is the last known work by painter Felix Nussbaum. A torn-off calendar page on the right-hand edge of the painting provides information about the date when the painting was completed: 18 April 1944.
Film clip from Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [The Testament of Dr. Mabuse] (1932/33)
The third of Fritz Lang’s films about the genius criminal Dr. Mabuse was also his last German directorial work before the Second World War.
Film clip from Der Kongress tanzt [The Congress Dances] (1931)
During the Vienna Congress, at which European ambassadors are negotiating the realignment of the continent, not only Prince Metternich (Conrad Veidt) has his own agenda; glovemaker Christel (Lilian Harvey) also has an ambitious strategy for selling her gloves. But then she falls in love with the Russian Czar Alexander (Willy Fritsch), who has her picked up in his coach and taken to a villa.
Film clip from Der Ruf [The Last Illusion] by Fritz Kortner
Under the direction of Josef von Bákys and based on the screenplay by Fritz Kortner, the remigration film Der Ruf was made in 1948/1949. Kortner's own experiences undoubtedly flowed into this work and make the film a personal document of the exiled actor.
Film poster for Der Ruf [The Last Illusion] (1949)
After his return from exile in the US, actor Fritz Kortner wrote the screenplay for this semi-autobiographical film: a film document of German remigration.After 15 years of exile in the US, Professor Mauthner returns to Germany against all reservations expressed by his fellow exiles.
First Expatriation List, 1933
The “Gesetz über den Widerruf von Einbürgerungen und die Aberkennung der deutschen Staatsbürgerschaft” [Law regarding the revocation of naturalization and the deprivation of German citizenship] came into force on 14 July 1933, allowing the Nazi regime to immediately revoke the citizenship of many “unwanted” individuals and thus make them stateless.
Flier brochure Die andere Seite [The other side] (Number 3, 1943)
The pamphlet Die andere Seite was published from 1942 by British war propaganda in collaboration with German emigrants. Four issues appeared by the end of 1943.
Flyer for a protest rally against the Pfeffermühle (1934)
Riots broke out during the November 1934 Pfeffermühle performances in Zurich. The third exile show, which had premiered a month before in Basel, had become significantly more barbed.
Flyer for lectures by Erika Mann (1938)
Erika Mann's career as a lecturer or public speaker began on 15 March 1937 before approximately 23,000 people at Madison Square Garden. Billed at the rally of the American Jewish Congress as an "exiled German playwright", Erika Mann read a greeting telegram from her father Thomas Mann and spoke on the subject of "Women in the Third Reich".
Forged carte d’identité for painter Leo Maillet (early 1940s)
This forged French identity document, made out in the name of Théodore Maillet, helped painter Leopold Mayer escape from France to Switzerland. After narrowly escaping extradition to the German-occupied zone in the autumn of 1942, from where he would have been deported to Auschwitz, Mayer had to go into hiding in the south of France, where he used a false name and worked as a shepherd in the Cévennes.
Forged passport of Iwan and Charlotte Heilbut (1940)
A Czechoslovakian consul as escape agent in FranceThe Czechoslovakian Consul in Marseilles, Vladimír Vochoč, who effectively represented a country which no longer existed, helped numerous people to flee France with forged passports. They included Heinrich Mann, who travelled with one of these passports under the false name of Heinrich Ludwig.
Four in a Jeep (1951)
Hans Sahl’s collaboration on the scriptThe author Hans Sahl suffered from a lack of money and also a lack of professional prospects in exile in America. He was therefore very glad to receive the offer to collaborate on the screenplay of a Swiss film production.
Franz and Alma Werfel: Letter to Albine Werfel (23 July 1940)
“Please write only my second name”Letters Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler-Werfel sent to Werfel's parents accompany their road into exile in the years 1938 to 1942 without mentioning the hardships, hunger and constant fear. Instead, in this letter from 23 July 1940, the lines bespeak the intimacy within the family: “It is still impossible to know anything, to foresee anything.
Franz Werfel: Letter to Else Lasker- Schüler, 1936
The author Franz Werfel wrote this letter to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler a few weeks after his first trip to the United States, where he was welcomed and celebrated as a famous author. With awareness to the meaning of the above mentioned citation – the loneliness and encumbrances of the exiled – Werfel returned to his politically-divided homeland, Austria.
Franz Werfel: Letter to Willy Haas (20 January 1941)
“My dear Willy we're alive!”Writers Franz Werfel and Willy Haas had known each other since their school days in Prague. In exile, they were separated by the distance between India and the south of France.
Franz Werfel: Letter to Willy Haas (January 1940)
“Word from you at last!”This was the first letter that Franz Werfel wrote, in 1940. He sent it from Sanary-sur-Mer to his friend Willy Haas in India. The two writers had been close since their shared schooldays. Now they were separated by exile and distance.
Fred Dolbin: Drawing of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (presumably 1935)
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill began working together in the late 1920s. From their collaboration came pieces such as the Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) and the ballet Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins).
Fred Dolbin: Drawing of Lotte Lenya at rehearsals (1936)
At the start of 1936, cartoonist Benedikt Fred Dolbin produced a series of sketches at the rehearsals for Kurt Weill’s oratorio The Eternal Road – Der Weg der Verheißung. It was a rewarding assignment for the illustrator, as the premiere of the work had a cast of 60 main actors, 30 dancers and a large choir.
Fred Dolbin: Zeichnung von Otto Klemperer (vermutlich 1935)
Illustrator and journalist Benedikt Fred Dolbin was already interested in music in his youth. For a concert by Otto Klemperer, who as conducting Alban Berg’s 1935 Lulu Suite in New York’s Carnegie Hall, he requested press tickets and later reported enthusiastically on the singer Lotte Lehmann, who made “unity of sound, word and meaning” a reality.
Fred Stein: Hannah Arendt, photograph (1944)
Philosopher in a contemplative poseFred Stein photographed the philosopher Hannah Arendt several times between 1941 and 1966. After fleeing the Nazis Arendt lived for some time in Paris. In 1941 she emigrated with her second husband, Heinrich Blücher and her mother to New York.
Fred Stein: Italy surrenders, photograph (1943)
An image of war from New YorkThe image Italy surrenders is one of Fred Stein's most famous street scenes from New York. It shows a portrait of a family reading the newspaper.
Fred Stein: Willy Brandt as a correspondent in Spain (1937)
Willy Brandt and Fred Stein were both members of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD) and met during Stein's years in exile in Paris. This encounter turned into a life-long friendship, which is also reflected in a few portrait shots. In 1937, Stein took photographs of the future leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and chancellor in Barcelona.
Frederick Kohner: Draft screenplay Burning Secret (1938)
The melancholy of farewells was the underlying tone of Brennendes Geheimnis in 1933, a film version of Stefan Zweig’s novella of the same name. Frederick Kohner had written the script and the film was directed by director Robert Siodmak.
Friedrich Hollaender: Letter to Marlene Dietrich (undated)
The first collaboration between Friedrich Hollaender and Marlene Dietrich had already shown what a good team the two made: The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel - 1930), was an international success for both the actress and the composer. Dietrich subsequently moved to Hollywood, Hollaender became a busy film composer.
Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht: Hangmen Also Die (1943)
The anti-Nazi film Hangmen Also Die was made in Hollywood in 1943 as a collaboration between Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht. Since the 1973 publication of Brecht’s Journals written in the forties, attention has not only focused on the film, but also on the relationship between the two artists.
Fritz Lang: The Film Noir Scarlet Street (1945)
Scarlet Street (1945), after The Woman in the Window (1944), was Fritz Lang’s second film in his so-called “Black Series”. Once more it was Edward G.
Fritz Lang’s Passport (1931)
Joseph Goebbels is said to have admired him for his two-part silent film The Nibelungs (1924) and Metropolis (1926), while his legendary work M (1931) has been voted by film historians as the most important German film of all time. Fritz Lang was unquestionably among the most notable and influential filmmakers in Weimar Republic Germany.
Fritz von Unruh in Frankfurt’s St. Paul's Church, photograph from von Kurt Röhrig (1948)
This photograph taken by Kurt Röhrig shows the author Fritz von Unruh on 18 May 1948 during his commemorative address to mark the reopening of Frankfurt’s St. Paul’s Church after its destruction in the Second World War.
Georg Kaiser, Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“], manuscript
A children’s tragedyGeorg Kaisers immense creative power remained in full spate after 1933 and during the seven years of his exile in Switzerland. Between 1938 and 1945, he wrote nine dramas in all; these were premièred at theatres in Basel and Zurich and published by Querido and Oprecht.
Georg Kaiser: Notes on the Lenz publishing house (1944)
My own publishing project in Swiss exileIn April 1944, Georg Kaiser informed his businessman friend Julius Marx about his plans for the future, namely "founding a publishing house and theatrical distribution agency". In a letter to Marx from October 1944, he describes the project as his "second mission in life", a position which he also maintained in the following months with vehemence.
Georg Kaiser's Das Floss der Medusa (1945) in the Theater-Zeitung Basel
Announcement of premiereGeorg Kaiser's drama Das Floss der Medusa, named after the painting by Théodore Géricault, was premiered on 24 February 1945 at Stadttheater Basel. The fact that the director Robert Pirk dared to stage it with an ensemble made up entirely of school pupils was deemed a "courageous effort" by Kaiser, who had long waited in vain for a stage performance.
Georg Kaiser’s membership card, issued by the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Chamber of Literature)
Member 11160On 5 May 1933, Georg Kaisers was excluded from the Prussian Academy of the Arts. The NSDAP newspaper Völkische Beobachter had previously anathematised the famous Expressionist dramatist, claiming that the play Der Silbersee [The Silver Lake], set to music by Kurt Weill and successfully premièred in Leipzig in February, was “un-German” and “cultural Bolshevist” propaganda.
Georg Meistermann: Der Maler (The Painter, 1941 – 1943)
Georg Meistermann was a student at Düsseldorf’s Art Academy when it was forced to toe the Nazi line in 1933. However, Meistermann did not want to fit in.
Georg Netzband, Der Sieger (Mai 1939)
For the painter Georg Netzband, life in Nazi Germany meant living with state repression. The indignities included surveillance and interrogations, house searches, defamation as a “degenerate” artist and bans on exhibiting his work and on foreign travel.
Georg Netzband: Knarre und Maid – Rekrutenzeit (1938)
A work on the “list of damaging and undesirable writing”Due to supposed political unreliability, Georg Netzband was subjected to repression in the form of interrogations as well as searches of his house and studio. The situation escalated to such a point over the years that he began to seek a means of temporarily escaping the persecution. So in 1938, he took part in a military exercise lasting several weeks.
George Grosz: portfolio Bagdad-on-the-subway, watercolour (1935)
In 1932 the painter and illustrator George Grosz visited the US for the first time. Fascinated by the bustling city, Grosz wandered the streets of New York with a pencil and notebook recording every detail.
George Grosz: Portfolio of Lithographies Interregnum (1935)
With his Interregnum portfolio, three years after his permanent emigration to the US in early 1933, the painter and illustrator George Grosz published his last works that were directly connected to his political works in the Weimar Republic. In the portfolio, Grosz included drawings made between 1928 and 1935.
George Grosz: The Musterbook – Textures (1940-1958)
In America as well, George Grosz never stopped creating collages out of photos and pictures from newspapers. This technique was above all associated with his work on the DADA scene after the First World War during his time in Berlin, when Grosz worked together with John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann and other DADA artists.
Gerda Taro: Ernst Busch, Erich Weinert and other participants at the Second International Writers’ Congress in Defence of Culture in Valencia (1937)
Already before her emigration, the photographer Gerda Taro had made contact with socialist groups in Germany and had started to become politically active. She continued her commitment to politics after she went into exile in Paris and decided, together with her partner, the photographer Robert Capa, to document the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side.
Gerda Taro: Republican militiawoman training on the beach outside Barcelona, photograph, 1936
For a long time the photographer Gerda Taro was simply thought of as the beautiful lover of the great photographer and war correspondent Robert Capa – unfairly, as we know now thanks to many years of intensive research. The spectacular rediscovery in 2007 of a cardboard box containing 126 rolls of film, which has become known as the “Mexican Suitcase”, confirmed Taro’s skills as a photographer in an impressive fashion.
Gerhard Ortinau's passport for stateless persons (1980)
The writer Gerhard Ortinau received this passport for stateless persons on 19 January 1980 when he emigrated from Romania to Germany. Its validity expired the same year.
Gerhard Ortinau’s Securitate file
Surveillance photos from the year 1979The public authority Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității (CNSAS), which was established in 1999 and had the job until 2013 of looking into the surveillance activities of the Rumanian secret service Securitate, which operated from 1948 to 1990, provided surveillance victims with access to their files. The writer Gerhard Ortinau made use of this opportunity and requested to see his file.
German Academy for Language and Literature: questionnaire for Vicki Baum
In the mid-1950s, the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung [German Academy for Language and Literature] commissioned Germanist Wilhelm Sternfeld and librarian Eva Tiedemann to compile a biographical bibliography of German-language exile literature. They accordingly sent out a questionnaire to collect information about the biographies and literary output of exiled authors, about many of whom only a little was known at this time.
German PEN in Exile: Letter to the International Executive Committee, 15 December 1933
“representing free German literature”After German PEN had realigned itself to the ideology of the Nazi regime and resigned from the international association in November 1933, German-language writers in exile joined forces to set up a new German PEN Club in exile. The founding members Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernst Toller, Rudolf Olden and Max Hermann-Neisse wrote this letter to the international PEN Committee informing it of their intention and explaining that they saw themselves as representatives of free German literature.
Gina Kaus: “Katharina die Große“ (Catherine the Great) (1935)
Gina Kaus‘ biographical novel “Katharina die Große“ (Catherine the Great) was published in 1935 by the Amsterdam-based publishing company Allert de Lange, which had previously published Kaus’ “Die Schwestern Kleh” (The Kleh Sisters) in 1933. The book’s design was provided by graphic designer Paul Urban.
Gina Kaus: Letter to William S. Schlamm (3 July 1940)
The defining topic of this letter from author Gina Kaus to publicist William S. Schlamm is the situation of relatives and mutual Austrian friends still living in France.
Gisèle Freund: Photographic portrait of Walter Benjamin (1937)
The philosopher and literature critic Walter Benjamin was not simply an occasional chess partner for the photographer and doctor of sociology Gisèle Freund; as German émigré Jews in exile in Paris, they also shared a common destiny. Benjamin, whom Freund had met and admired as a student in 1932 and with whom she developed a friendly relationship, wrote a positive review of her dissertation.
Gisèle Freund: Portrait photograph of Anna Seghers at the International Congress of Writers (1935)
The photographer Gisèle Freund had been invited to the First International Congress of Writers in Defence of Culture by the writer André Malraux. It was held in June 1935 in Paris, where she was living in exile.
Grete Stern: Portrait of Clément Moreau (around 1936/1938)
The photographer Grete Stern and the painter and graphic artist Clément Moreau met in Argentina, where both were living in exile. Grete Stern had married her fellow student at the Bauhaus, Horacio Coppola, in 1935.
Grete Weil: Letter to Bruno Frank (26 August 1945)
Almost four months after the liberation of Amsterdam by the allies, Grete Weil made contact with the author Bruno Frank and told him about her circumstances and the events of the last years. Bruno Frank and his wife Liesel were good friends of the Dispekers, Grete Weil’s family from his time in Munich. Grete Weil: Portrait photograph of Franz Werfel (1938)
Before she emigrated to the Netherlands in December 1935, Grete Weil completed her training as a photographer with the famous Munich photographer Eduard Wasow. In spring 1938 she took over the workshop of photographer Edith Schlesinger, who had emigrated to the US.
Grete Weil: Tramhalte Beethovenstraat, manuscript (1963)
After the poor reception of her first publication, the story Ans Ende der Welt (To the End of the World) by the East Berlin publishing house Volk & Welt in 1949, Grete Weil worked as a playwright and wrote, among other things, the libretto for Hans Werner Henze's opera Boulevard Solitude. Her prose text Antigone, which she had written at the beginning of the 1950s, remained unpublished.
Grete Weil’s armband from the Jewish Council for Amsterdam (1942/43)
In early summer 1942, Grete Weil received a call to “report to work” – the announcement of her imminent deportation. In order to not have to go underground and to be able to continue to support her mother, she accepted a position in the Jewish Council in Amsterdam.
Grete Weil’s registration certificate for Jews in the Netherlands (1941)
A few weeks after German troops invaded the Netherlands, the occupation authorities began with preparations to record the Jewish population. In January 1941 the “order of the Reichskommisar for the occupied Dutch areas concerning the obligation of persons who are entirely or partly of Jewish blood to declare themselves” came into effect.
Group photo of Albert Bassermann’s birthday party (1942)
Many German emigrants in America were heartened by the news of actor Albert Bassermann’s arrival in New York on 15 April 1939. One of the greatest character actors was now among them, not out of necessity, but out of principle.
Group photo taken at the Yaddo artists’ colony (1939)
An encounter between people and languagesThe Yaddo artists’ colony wasn’t only a “comical writers’ foundation”, but also a place where writers, composers and translators could establish contact with one another and work together. Since 1926, the foundation had been providing scholarship holders from areas of the arts with the chance to spend 8 weeks working at the colony.
Gustav Wolf: Emigranten, a poem (12 January 1942)
During the initial years of his New York exile artist Gustav Wolf was provided helpful support through his friendship with Max Fischer. Like Wolf, he had also fled Nazi Germany.
Gustav Wolf: Letter to Carl Zigrosser (July 12, 1941)
In July 1941, Gustav Wolf attempted to promote his flagging artistic career in American exile. He wanted to have a secure income, at least for a period of time.
Gustav Wolf: Letter to Lola Steiner (14 June 1939)
After his emigration to the United States, the painter and graphic artist Gustav Wolf had to earn a living by working for a period of time on a poultry farm. It was from there that in June 1939 he sent an illustrated birthday greeting to a student who had also emigrated to America, Leona Steiner, known as Lola.
Gustav Wolf: sketch of the Manhattan skyline on the back of a German calendar sheet (undated)
On 8 April 1938, Gustav Wolf emigrated from Germany, arriving by ship at his destination: New York. Artistically productive though by no means financially successful, in the following years the painter and graphic artist engaged with the subject of his new home.
Gustav Wolf: The Book of Job, woodcut illustration (1943/44)
In the summer of 1942, the artist Gustav Wolf left the metropolis of New York, which he so hated, and moved to the countryside. His friend, the emigrant Jacob Picard, had advised him to come to Cummington, Massachusetts.
Gustav Wolf: Vision of Manhattan, graphic series (1942)
In 1942 Gustav Wolf published a twelve-part graphic series on his former residence: Manhattan. The motifs do not make cheerful viewing.
Handbill for the Pfeffermuehle (Pepper Mill) Cabaret's tour of the Czechoslovakian Republic (1936)
In 1935 and 1936, the Pfeffermühle Cabaret completed three tours of the Czechoslovakian Republic. A number of these performances took place under difficult circumstances in a heated political atmosphere.
Handwritten notes by Max Reinhardt on A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Max Reinhardt's production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1934 at the famous 18,000-seater "Hollywood Bowl" was a huge success. William (Wilhelm) Dieterle had the idea of making a film from the stage work; he was a pupil of Max Reinhardt and at this time under contract as a director at Warner Bros.
Hanns Eisler / Ernst Busch: Das Moorsoldatenlied (Peat Bog Soldiers; 1937)
A song goes around the worldThe Moorsoldatenlied (Peat Bog Soldiers) is one of the world's most famous resistance songs. It was not only sung by its creators, the prisoners of the Börgermoor concentration camp in Emsland. The text and musical score were smuggled out of the camp, copied multiple times, translated and reinterpreted.
Hanns Eisler: Birthday canon for Lion Feuchtwanger, manuscript (1944)
The composer Hanns Eisler and his wife Lou arrived in Los Angeles in April 1942. They had relocated from New York because Eisler harboured hopes of landing music composition work in the Hollywood film industry.
Hanns Eisler: Deutsche Sinfonie [German Symphony], music score (1938)
Hanns Eisler carried out his work on the German Symphony in different phases of his life. He began it on his first big concert and lecture tour of the USA in 1935.
Hanns Eisler: Letter to the director Erwin Piscator (11 August 1941)
In a letter to the director Erwin Piscator, the composer Hanns Eisler expresses his concern regarding writer Bertolt Brecht. He had arrived in the US via Finland in July 1941.
Hanns Eisler: Song of the United Front, score (1935)
This is how the composer Hanns Eisler described his impressions of the Reichenberg music festival in summer 1935. Eisler, who had fled from the Nazis in 1933, went on various work and concert tours in Europe and Russia during this time.
Hanns Eisler: The Woodbury Songbook (1941)
20 songs for a girls' choirComposer Hanns Eisler and his wife Lou spent summer 1941 in Woodbury – a small town in the American state of Connecticut. They were the guests of their fellow emigrant – the author Joachim Schumacher.
Hanns Eisler: Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben, Manuscript (1941)
[Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain]The composition Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain (Vierzehn Arten, den Regen zu beschreiben) is closely linked to Hanns Eisler' s situation in exile. The piece, today among Eisler’s most important compositions, was originally film music.
Hanns Kralik: Das Moorsoldatenlied, song sheet (1933)
Singing as an act of resistanceCommunal singing by inmates was an everyday act of self-assertion and an identity and community-building strategy. Several hundred songs are now believed to have been composed in the camps.
Hans Casparius: photograph of Richard A. Bermann in the Libyan desert (1933)
Photographer Hans Casparius had already accompanied writer and journalist Richard A. Bermann (alias Arnold Höllriegel) on numerous journeys and taken photos for his reports.
Hans Fallada: Letter to Carl Ehrenstein (1935)
Despite the hostilities of the National Socialists, the author Hans Fallada could never bring himself to leave Germany and go into exile after 1933. In the early years of Hitler’s regime his books were almost entirely rejected by the Nazi functionaries, including his novel Altes Herz geht auf die Reise, alluded to in the following letter.
Hans Fallada: Letter to Carl Ehrenstein (1937)
The author Hans Fallada could never bring himself to leave Germany and go into exile after 1933. He rather opted for a sort of “inner exile,“ associated with a passive aversion of the NS system.
Hans Grundig: Das Lied der Wölfe, etching (The Song of the Wolves, 1938)
The couple Hans and Lea Grundig began an underground life in 1933, withdrawing into a domestic exile. They entertained thoughts of escaping but the two anti-fascists saw their task as supporting resistance within Germany.
Hans Günter Flieg: last photograph in Chemnitz and first photograph in São Paulo (1939)
The photographer Hans Günter Flieg emigrated to Brazil with his family in 1939. Some time later he discovered a strip of negative film which contained the last photograph he had taken in Chemnitz and the first one in São Paulo right next to one another.
Hans Günter Flieg: Photograph of São Paulo (1940)
This photo, which the then 17-year-old Chemnitz-born photographer Hans Günter Flieg took in Brazilian exile in 1940, offers a view of central São Paulo and its Avenida Nove de Julho. It came just a year after the Jewish Flieg family had emigrated from Germany to Brazil.
Hans Hauska: photograph of a performance at the Deutsches Gebietstheater Dnjepropetrowsk (1935)
The musical comedy Where is Emily?Performing for the farmers during harvest time posed certain challenges for the programme of the Deutsches Gebietstheater Dnjepropetrowsk (German Regional Theatre Dnjepropetrowsk). Popular among the villagers were lively and comedic pieces in which they could find a reflection of their own daily life, albeit in somewhat exaggerated comic figures and scenarios.
Hans Natonek: Der Schlemihl (1936)
After the writer Hans Natonek had become stateless through denaturalisation and left only with his Jewish identity through the laws introduced by the Nazis, he grappled intensively with the meaning of identity. While still living in Germany, Natonek wrote the novel Der Schlemihl between early 1934 and autumn of the same year.
Hans Natonek: Letter to Hermann Kesten (24 October 1940)
The port city of Marseille became an important centre for refugees in the 1930s as ships bound for overseas locations called at the port. The refugees received assistance in travelling onwards from relief organisations such as the Emergency Rescue Committee.
Hans Natonek: Letter to the Emergency Rescue Committee (12 February 1941)
Job-seeking in exileWhen Hans Natonek arrived in New York with the refugee ship Excambion on 20 January 1941, he was 48 years old, had four dollars in his pocket and wondered to himself: “How many times can you start a new life?” (Serke, Böhmische Dörfer, 1987, p. 87)From the National Refugee Service he received an eight-dollar allowance per week, just enough to rent a small flat.
Hans Natonek: Unpublished works, typescripts (no year)
Hans Natonek's literary works in exile in the USDuring his exile in America, Hans Natonek first published some smaller works in 1941. Letzter Tag in Europa and Der erste Tag were published by the Aufbau publishing house.
Hans Purrmann: Interior with Two Women, probably completed in 1933
Hans Purrmanns works show the influence of many different artistic movements. Paul Cézanne, and the Expressionists and Fauvists provided artistic inspiration, yet elements of abstract art and Cubism are also discernible.
Hans Purrmann: Triptych for the council chamber in Speyer (1932)
In May 1931, Hans Purrmann was commissioned to design the front side of the district assembly's council chamber in Speyer. He decided on a triptych portraying an allegory of art and science.
Hans Sahl: Diary entry from 15 April 1941
Hans Sahl, who had garnered attention in Berlin in 1925 with his striking film and theatre reviews, actually wanted to be an author. His diary, which he began when he was living in Prague, the first city he lived in during his exile, in the following years became a medium for stylistic experimentation.
Hans Sahl: Film outline for 1000 Dollar Belohnung! (1939)
In 1938 Hans Sahl wrote a film script entitled 1000 Dollar Belohnung! while in France. It was a romantic comedy with Cinderella elements - the heroine is trying to find the person who saved her life from a jacket left behind at the scene of an accident.
Hans Sahl: Letter to Ernst Lubitsch (15 March 1941)
Before he left Europe for the United States on 1 April, 1941, Hans Sahl worked for several months in Marseille for Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee. Visas and affidavits needed to be procured and money and the ship passages had to be organised.
Hans Sahl: Vincent, film script (undated)
The writer Hans Sahl worked in exile for several years, probably starting in 1937, on a biographical film about the painter Vincent Van Gogh, to whom he felt connected in his loneliness but also in his creative drive.In all the texts that Sahl composed for this project and all the letters that he wrote about it, one can clearly feel how close this idea was to his heart.
Hein Heckroth; drawing for Kurt Jooss’ ballet Pandora (1943)
An ornamental design for a mythical figureThe 26 January 1944 saw the premiere of Kurt Jooss' ballet Pandora in the Arts Theatre in Cambridge. The choreographer, who had emigrated in 1933, continued with the socially critical productions that had seen his greatest successes in the 1930s.
Heinrich Heine-Klub: Announcement of the premiere of Ferdinand Bruckner's Denn seine Zeit ist kurz (1944)
Ferdinand Bruckner's play Denn seine Zeit ist kurz received its world premiere by the Heinrich Heine Theater Klub on 30 September 1944 in the Teatro de los Electricistas in Mexico City. It was the most recent work of the Austrian playwright who emigrated in 1936 to the United States.
Heinrich Mann: Brief to Lou Albert-Lasard dated 24 February 1934
In this short letter written on 24 February 1934, the author Heinrich Mann, who was living in exile in France at the time, congratulated painter Lou Albert-Lassard on a lithography of hers he particularly liked. He also informed her about where Lion Feuchtwanger was living in Paris.
Heinrich Mann: La Haine / Der Haß (1933)
In his 1945 autobiography Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt, Heinrich Mann poignantly and ironically describes the purpose of publishing his volume of essays, Der Haß, twelve years prior: “In 1933, the inaugural year of the thousand-year Reich, I lost no time in honouring it; today I could only make it longer, not add anything to it.” The collection of essays was published – just months after Mann's move into his French exile – by Paris-based publisher Gallimard.
Heinrich Mann: Letter to Rudolf Olden (20 January 1934)
German PEN, which had taken on a completely new direction after Hitler came to power, left the international association following the 11th International PEN Congress in Ragusa at the end of May 1933. On 28 December 1933, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernst Toller, Rudolf Olden and Max Herrmann-Neisse issued a circular letter from London stating their intention of forming a new German PEN Group in exile.
Heinz Liepman: Das Vaterland, manuscript (1933)
Heinz Liepman's novel Das Vaterland was released in November 1933 by the Amsterdam publisher Kampen & Zoon. Liepman wrote the novel in France.
Heinz Liepman: Müssen wir wieder emigrieren? Manuscript extract (1963)
In his radio broadcast for Norddeutscher Rundfunk at the end of January 1963, the writer and journalist Heinz Liepman criticised the West German mentality which refused to confront its own Nazi past. Liepman regarded the everyday antisemitism which he encountered as less of a threat than the renewed resolve of those who permitted no criticism of the current social climate.
Heinz Trökes student ID card from Krefeld (summer semester 1940)
Immediately following the outbreak of World War Two, Heinz Trökes had to make a very difficult decision. He ended his exile in Switzerland and returned to Germany.
Heinz Trökes: Adriatische Landschaft mit 4 roten Inseln [Adriatic landscape with 4 red islands], painting (1938)
After completing his training under Johannes Itten in Krefeld, Heinz Trökes began working for a textile company in Augsburg. He liked this practical application of his skills, but still continued to draw and paint a lot at the same time.
Heinz Trökes: Griechische Landschaft [Greek landscape], watercolour (1939)
When Heinz Trökes returned to Germany from a trip to Yugoslavia in 1938, he found his studio completely empty – cleared by the Gestapo. The Nazis vilified his art as “degenerate”.
Heinz Trökes: Grüner Turm von Ravensburg [Green tower of Ravensburg], pencil drawing in the artist’s diary (6 September 1939)
At the beginning of September 1939 the painter Heinz Trökes faced a difficult decision in his Zurich exile. Firstly, he had finally received the post he had been longing for stating that his application for residency in “Dutch India” had been approved! At almost exactly the same time, he received a second piece of correspondence with strict official orders to return to Germany immediately.
Heinz Trökes: Zurich, pencil drawing in the artist’s sketchbook (6 July 1939)
After being forced to leave Germany, Heinz Trökes started to get a feel for Zurich, his new place of residence. He took his sketchbook with him on long walks, filling it with the motifs of his emigration during the summer of 1939.
Heinz Trökes' diary entries from 6 and 18 July 1939 in Zurich, typescript
After being banned from painting and exhibiting by the Nazis, the artist Heinz Trökes was forced in 1939 to go into exile. In the medium term, his plan was to continue further and build up an existence overseas.
Heinz Trökes’ German passport (1937 – 1942)
In the summer of 1939, the painter and textile designer Heinz Trökes left Germany and emigrated to Switzerland. Moving to the city of Zurich was his first step away from harassment by the Nazis, who considered Trökes to be a “degenerate” artist.
Helga Michie: Concord, etching (1979)
Concord was the title given by Helga Michie for her etching depicting a pair of twins looking out of a house window. In view of her own family history and her strong connection to her twin sister, the author Ilse Aichinger, and their separation before the war, it is obvious that the picture is autobiographical in nature.
Helga Michie: Letter to mother and sister (22 September 1942)
The correspondence between Helga Aichinger (now Michie), who escaped to London with the Refugee Children Movement in July 1939, and her family in Vienna is very patchy. In her first few months in England, even after the war started in September, the 17-year-old was able to send long reports home.
Helga Michie: postcard to her family (5 July 1939)
On July 4, 1939, seventeen-year-old Helga Michie (at the time Aichinger) had to leave her family. Her aunt, who had emigrated to England the year before, was able to reserve a place for her on a so-called “Kindertransport” (Childrens Evacuation) train.
Hellmuth Weissenborn: Bombsite London (1941)
Hellmuth Weissenborn was set free from the Hutchinson Camp internment camp on 26 December 1940 and returned to London. The city he returned to lay in ruins, as German forces had started an aerial bombardment on 7 September 1940.
Helmut Krommer: drawing in the guest book of the Constance Home in Guildford (23 November 1939)
A station of exile in England
Helmut Krommer: Dubrovnik, Drawing (9 June 1939)
From Prague to England via the BalkansIn March 1939 German military forces succeeded in annexing Czechoslovakia. The many artists who, in the years previously, had fled the Nazi regime, could no longer go about their lives safely in the newly annexed nation.
Helmut Krommer: Glücklicheres Neues Jahr 1933, etching (1932)
“In winter and in summer. Etchings by Krommer”.
Helmut Krommer: Invitation to his Yugoslavia exhibition in Berlin, etching (April 1933)
Das Jahr 1933 brachte dem Maler und Grafiker Helmut Krommer anfangs beruflich noch das, was er seinen Freunden auf einer Neujahrskarte gewünscht hatte: Glück und Erfolg. Krommer zeigte im April 1933 in Berlin Ölbilder, Aquarelle und Grafiken mit jugoslawischen Motiven.
Helmut Krommer’s calendarentry noting the end of the Second World War (7 May 1945)
On 7 May 1945, according to the artist’s calendar entries, Helmut Krommer‘s wife, Valerie, purchased a brown suitcase from a certain “Mr. Tinsey”.
Helmut Krommer’s delegate card for an anti-fascist conference in London (16/17 October 1943)
Political Statements in ExileThe painter and graphic artist Helmut Krommer was a committed social democrat. His support for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) quickly brought him to the attention of the Nazis.
Herbert Bayer: Collage as Christmas Greeting Card (1942)
This spoiled print, featuring a design by Herbert Bayer, is a fragment of a brochure Bayer produced for the General Electric Company in 1942. This information booklet was designed to inform readers about the functions, the impact and the future applications of electronic technology, using a combination of graphic and photographic representations.
Herbert Bayer: Fluttering Wings (1945)
Herbert Bayer, who established an international reputation as a typographer, commercial artist and exhibition designer during the 1920s and 30s, ultimately considered himself a painter.
Herbert Bayer: Gift Package Design (1940)
Arriving in New York in 1938, Herbert Bayer soon found work as an advertising graphic designer for the Container Corporation of America (CCA) - a packaging company run by the business executive Walter Paepcke - an American of German descent.
Herbert Fiedler: [Polder near Eemnes] (1937)
From an artistic viewpoint, the years of exile in Laren were fertile ones for the painter Herbert Fiedler, yet unlike 1926 to 1934, they were years without any travel, exchange, recognition or financial success. The first works of this period breathe liberation, openness, artistic perspectives.
Herbert Fiedler: Air Raid, Diary entry 1944
The painter, Herbert Fiedler, drafted into the German Armed Forces, painted the bombing of the Royal Air Force as a bridge guard in Rotterdam on 29 November 1944, which began at around noon “[g] egen 1200” [at about 12.00].
Herbert Fiedler: Bombardement von Rotterdam [The Bombing of Rotterdam] (1940)
The bombing of Rotterdam by the German Air Force on 14 May 1940, four days after the invasion of the neutral Netherlands by the German Armed Forces, led to the surrender of the poorly equipped armed forces followed the next day. The exile, Herbert Fiedler, and the Dutchman, Henk Chabot, both immortalised the events of 1940 in an oil painting.
Herbert Fiedler: M.J. Kosterstraat im Winter [M.J. Kosterstraat in Winter] (1942)
The fascination of the painter, Herbert Fiedler, for the city with all its facets was revived in Amsterdam. “Strolled along the Singel to Central Station this evening.
Hermann Broch: Der Tod des Vergil (The Death of Virgil) (1945)
Hermann Broch's novel “The Death of Virgil” (Der Tod des Vergil) (1945) is set during the collapse of the Roman Republic and reflects on two themes that greatly preoccupied the author during his time of exile: the psychology of the masses and the crisis of art.The poet Virgil is returning from Athens to Brindisi.
Hermann Broch: Letter to Volkmar von Zühlsdorff (6 Mai 1942)
The light-hearted tone of this letter from Hermann Broch to Volkmar von Zühlsdorff reflects the author’s relief at the prospect of a stable income, at least for a while.In April 1942, Broch had won the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for the third version of his manuscript for the novel “Tod des Vergil” (The Death of Virgil).
Hermann Kesten: Letter to Annette Kolb (18 May 1940)
In mid-April 1940, Hermann Kesten planned to travel to the United States on a U.S.
Hermann Kesten: Letter to Eric Isenburger (1941)
During his detention in Les Milles Eric Isenburger had already contacted the Emergency Rescue Committee to apply for a visa for the United States, but for a long time nothing happened. Even after fleeing from the camp, there were months of waiting during which the Isenburgers hid in a boarding house in Nice.
Hermann Kesten: Letter to Ernst Toller (23 March 1933)
Hermann Kesten's letter to Ernst Toller dated 23 March 1933 was probably Kesten's first letter from exile. He had left Berlin two days earlier, on 21 March, with several suitcases for Paris.
Hermann Kesten: Letter to Klaus Mann (27 May 1939)
Exile turned the acquaintance between Hermann Kesten and Klaus Mann into a close friendship. Hermann Kesten was one of the first who, in May 1933, invited Klaus Mann to contribute to his magazine Die Sammlung.
Hermann Kesten: Letter to Walter Landauer (3 June 1938)
On 3 June 1938 Hermann Kesten wrote a dismayed letter to his friend and publishing colleague Walter Landauer about the death of Ödön von Horváth, who had been killed two days earlier on the Champs Elysées in Paris by a falling branch during a storm. One year previously Ödön von Horvath's novel Jugend ohne Gott had been published by Allert de Lange.
Hermann Landshoff: Max Ernst at Peggy Guggenheim’s townhouse, New York (1942)
At his first place of exile in Paris and later on in New York, the photographer Hermann Landshoff mainly earned his living taking photographs for large fashion magazines, however, after emigrating he nevertheless portrayed many important personalities from the art scene, among them numerous artists in exile. The artists’ portraits that Landshoff took in those years focused on the fates of European emigrants.
Hermann Landshoff: New York, infrared photograph (1941)
In 1940/41 the photographer Hermann Landshoff, member of the Foreign Legion in North Africa at that time, managed a complex escape via the Moroccan cities of Bled and Meknès to Marseille and then to Capvern-les-Bains in the Pyrenees. From there he continued his escape through Franco’s Spain, on to Lisbon and finally to New York.
Hermynia zur Mühlen: Kleine Geschichten von großen Dichtern [Little Stories by Great Poets] (1945)
In her correspondence with Hubertus Prinz zu Löwenstein during the summer of 1938, writer Hermynia zur Mühlen several times expressed a wish to publish a collection of "children's novellas". "But who would print it?" (Letter to Hubertus zu Löwenstein, 2 August 1938).
Hermynia zur Mühlen: Letter to Rudolf Olden, 26 July 1939
On 26 July 1939, shortly after her arrival in Britain, Austrian writer Hermynia zur Mühlen contacted publicist Rudolf Olden, secretary of the German PEN Group in Exile, with a special request. Radio Strasbourg had broadcast her one-hour radio drama Die Brücke [The Bridge] a few months before.
Herta Müller: Reisende auf einem Bein (1989) [Travelling on One Leg, 1998]
Reisende auf einem Bein (1989) [Travelling on One Leg] is the first volume of prose to appear in the wake of Herta Müller’s migration from Romania to Berlin. The text is the author’s literary attempt to come to terms with this upheaval.
Hilde Domin: Poem for her husband’s birthday, 1949
During their years in exile, Hilde Domin worked primarily for her husband, the archaeologist Erwin Walter Palm. She proofread his writing, translated his academic works and documented his research in photographs.
Hilde Domin’s Dominican Republic Residence Permit
Because of the war, in 1940 the couple Hilde and Erwin Walter Palm decided to leave England, their second place of exile, and flee overseas. Through personal contacts they got visas for the Dominican Republic.
ID card issued by the Oakland Defense Council for Alfred Neumeyer (1942)
Alfred Neumeyer had already made clear during his naturalisation process that he wanted to do something for his adopted country. A document from his everyday life in exile, his identity card for the “Oakland Defense Council”, testifies to that desire.
Identity card for Thomas and Katia Mann (1934)
In 1933, while in exile in Switzerland, Thomas Mann attempted in vain to renew his German passport which had expired on 1 April of that year. As the authorities insisted this would require the author to return to his home country, which he had left for political reasons, he sought to obtain a so-called tolerance permit from the police department for foreign nationals in the canton of Zurich.
Ilse Bing: New York – The Elevated and Me, photograph (1938, reprint 1988)
Along with still-life compositions, cityscapes and fashion photography, one of the main areas of photographer Ilse Bing’s artistic oeuvre was the self-portrait. Mirrors and reflections were key elements of her work.
Immigration Card for Arnold Schönberg (1935)
The immigration card dated 13 November 1935, issued at the Mexican-Californian border town Calexico, was more than just an official document for composer Arnold Schönberg – it was the key to better health. Schönberg suffered from asthma and had experienced frequent asthma attacks and serious colds since his arrival in the US in October 1933.
In Memoriam Joseph Roth [and] Ernst Toller, programme (1939)
A memorial service held by the Free German League of Culture in Great BritainIn May 1939, two important exiled literary figures died within a few days of one another: Ernst Toller on 22 May – by suicide – in New York and Joseph Roth on 27 May in Paris.
Indictment against Heinz Liepman (16 February 1934)
It is thought that the writer Heinz Liepman fled from Germany in the summer of 1933: first to France, then to the Netherlands. He was arrested there in February 1934.
Interview mit Herta Müller und Liao Yiwu (2013)
Herta Müller and Liao Yiwu met for the first time in 2010, during a visit to Germany by the Chinese author. In this interview they speak about how they came to know one another and what influence life in a dictatorship had on their writing.
Interview with Fritz Kortner (SFB, 1957)
Until the end of 1956, Fritz Kortner worked on his staging of Hamlet in Berlin for the Schillertheater (premiere 13 March 1957). He was asked about this in an eight-minute radio interview.
Interview with the Cuban writer Amir Valle (2013)
In an interview on August 2013, the writer and journalist Amir Valle, who was no longer allowed to re-enter Cuba following a 2006 lecture tour in Spain because of a book he wrote criticising prostitution in his home country, spoke about his emigration to Germany. He arrived in Langenbruch near Cologne in March of that year as the holder of a scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation and was welcomed by a thick layer of snow – the first he had ever seen.
Interview with the exile researcher Claus-Dieter Krohn (2016)
As the author and editor of numerous studies on exile, the historian Claus-Dieter Krohn has made a major contribution to research into the history of exile. He taught Cultural and Social History at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg until 2007.
Interview with the Iranian painter Akbar Behkalam (2013)
In August 2013, the Iranian painter Akbar Behkalam gave an interview in Berlin. In it the artist, who has been living in Berlin since 1976, described the political and intellectual climate in Iran that moved him to leave his home country.
Interview with the Iranian writer Khalil Rostamkhani (2013)
The writer Khalil Rostamkhani served two periods of several years’ imprisonment in Iran as a dissident. In March 2003, he was able to emigrate to Germany with the help of German diplomatic efforts, among others by the then President of the German Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse.
Interview with the literary scholar Doerte Bischoff (2016)
The German philologist Doerte Bischoff is a Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Hamburg where she heads the Walter A. Berendsohn research unit into German exile literature.
Interview with the painter Agi Straus (2013)
From Vienna to São PauloAgi Straus (actually Agathe Deutsch) emigrated to Brazil via France with her sister and their parents following the annexation of Austria. There she finished secondary school, began working initially as a writer and illustrator of children's books and later studied painting, sculpting and graphics.
Interview with the photographer Hans Günter Flieg (2013)
Hans Günter Flieg, born in Chemnitz in 1923, emigrated with his family to Brazil in 1939. While still in Germany he had taken a private course with Grete Karplus, photographer for the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Interview with the writer Gerhard Ortinau (2013)
In this interview given by the writer Gerhard Ortinau in Berlin on 1 August 2013, the Romanian-German writer first talks about the history of the literary collective Aktionsgruppe Banat. In 1972 Ortinau was a founding member of the political group of secondary school pupils and university students who wrote texts in the German language.
Interview with the writer Roberto Schopflocher (2013)
“Flowing” from one language to the otherThe writer Robert Schopflocher, born in Fürth in 1937, tells of his exile in Argentina, which, in his own estimation, went "smoothly" for him. Initially pushed by his father into the profession of a farmer, he finally took a path as a writer.
Interview with Valeska Gert (1977)
Excerpt from Volker Schlöndorff's documentary film Nur zum Spaß, nur zum Spiel – Kaleidoskop Valeska GertThe dancer and actress Valeska Gert revolutionised the performing arts in 1920s Berlin and Paris. In Volker Schlöndorff's documentary Nur zum Spaß, nur zum Spiel – Kaleidoskop Valeska Gert from the year 1977, the 84-year-old artist described herself as “really and to be precise the wildest act back then”.
Interview with Volkmar von Zühlsdorff (2005)
Engaged for the American Guild for German Cultural FreedomIn 2005, Volkmar von Zühlsdorff, then 92 years old, gave this previously unreleased interview. In it, he talks about the foundation and responsibilities of the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom.
Invitation to Helmut Krommer’s one-man show in Boston, etching (October 1954)
The painter and graphic artist Helmut Krommer did not return to Germany after the collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945. After his period of exile in Czechoslovakia and England, the artist decided to spend his later years residing close to his daughters in the USA.
Invitation to the opening of an exhibition by László Moholy-Nagy (1934)
On 24 November 1934, an exhibition took place at the Stedelijk-Museum in Amsterdam showing works by László Moholy-Nagy, with the card above used as an invitation. Paintings, photograms, photomontages and stage set designs were presented at the exhibition.
Invoice from the municipality Sanary-sur-Mer sent to Hermann Kesten (1933)
Before fleeing to the United States in 1939, Hermann Kesten lived mostly in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Ostend. He also spent some time in Nice and Sanary-sur-Mer on the French Riviera.
Irene Heymann on Paul Kohner and the European Film Fund (interview excerpt)
In 1938 the agent Paul Kohner, described by his long-time secretary Irene Heymann as a man with a big heart, founded the European Film Fund along with various German filmmakers already established in Hollywood, including Ernst Lubitsch, William (Wilhelm) Dieterle, Walter Reisch and Billy Wilder.Heymann recalled in an interview that, in the early days, Kohner forced his clients to donate part of their fee to the charity - later this levy became common practice.
Irmgard Keun: Nach Mitternacht (1937)
First edition of the novelIrmgard Keun’s novel Nach Mitternacht (“After Midnight”) was published in 1937 by the Dutch publishing company Querido Verlag, based in Amsterdam. It is seen as one of the most important fictional works in the genre of exile literature.
Itineraries. An interview with Emine Sevgi Özdamar, 2012
Language is one of the central themes in Emine Sevgi Özdamar's literature. Time and again, she engages with the importance of one's mother tongue when moving towards a new language.
Iwan Heilbut: Die Überlebenden (Zugvögel) [The Survivors (Birds of Passage)], typescript (1942/43)
Ivan Heilbut’s novel Die Überlebenden (literally “The Survivors”), published in 1943 by the American company Doubleday, Doran & Co. under the title Birds of Passage, is based on the author’s own experiences in France between 1939 and 1940.
Jakob Haringer: Das Fenster [The Window], poetry typescripts
The scrap paper poetJakob Haringers poetry makes references to Expressionism, but its ballad-like style and the moods evoked by its musicality place it more in the tradition of François Villon, and particularly of Romanticism. In 1934, while in exile, Haringer published his poem Deutschland-Ode [Ode to Germany] in the exile newspaper Neuen Tage-Buch This work leaves the reader in no doubt of his anti-Fascist sentiments and concludes with an optimistic look ahead to the time when the country would finally be liberated: “The blitz.
Jakob Haringer’s refugee identity document, 22 January 1944
Hide-and-seek with the authoritiesThe refugee identity document of Jakob Haringer, whose German citizenship was revoked in July 1936, bears eloquent witness to the regular, thorough checks by the Aliens Police to which exiles in Switzerland were subjected between 1933 and 1945. Haringer played hide-and-seek with the rigid Aliens Police for several years.
Jan Tschichold: Schatzkammer der Schreibkunst (1945)
In July 1933, the typographer and book designer Jan Tschichold – after release and detention – succeeded in fleeing to Switzerland. With a partial work permit, he taught at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basel and took on design jobs from publishers.
János Reismann: member of the Deutsches Gebietstheater Dnjepropetrowsk, photograph (1935/36)
A wandering troupe in Soviet exileThe Deutsche Gebietstheater Dnjepropetrowsk (German Regional Theatre Dnjepropetrowsk) was founded in 1935 at the encouragement of the culturally-interested politician Mendel Chatajewitsch in Dnjepropetrowsk, a Ukrainian industrial town between Kiev and Odessa. In this region there was a population descended from German immigrants who had never experienced German theatre before.
Jean Leppien: Dust jacket for Mit uns die Sintflut by Georg Friedrich Alexan (1935)
The painter Jean Leppien painted very little after fleeing from Germany to France in 1933. He tried to earn a living for himself and his girlfriend (the former Bauhaus student Suzanne Ney) by taking on work such as creating photomontages, designing posters, decorating shop windows and other odd-jobs.
Jean Leppien: Ein Blick hinaus (1987)
Jean Leppien's wife Suzanne was arrested on 21 March 1944 by the Germans. This is the day on which his autobiography begins.
Jo Mihaly upon setting up the “Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller” in Switzerland, list of names (1944)
In 1944, the dancer and author Jo Mihaly began establishing contact with German writers who had fled to Switzerland. Her goal was to reform the Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller (or “SDS”; English: “Association of German Authors”), a defunct labour union entity that had protected the interests of authors in Germany.
Jo Mihaly: 10 Monate im zerstörten Deutschland, speech manuscript (26 November 1946)
[10 months in ravaged Germany]Directly after the end of the Second World War, the writer and dancer Jo Mihaly decided to get involved in the cultural rebuilding of Germany. The schweizerisch-deutsche Kulturvereinigung Basel [Swiss-German cultural association] collected over 14,000 books and educational materials for Germany.
Jo Mihaly: Blume im Hinterhof, photograph (1931)
In this solo dance, which lasts just over two minutes, the dancer Jo Mihaly shows how a flower blooms in a dark courtyard, how it stands there pitifully for a time and dies shortly thereafter. Long stretches of the dance are performed kneeling.
Jo Mihaly: Fische fürs Volk [Fish for the People], Photograph (1935)
Upon emigrating with her husband, the actor Leonard Steckel to Switzerland in 1933, the dance performer Jo Mihaly was refused a work permit, as was the case with many German immigrants at the time. Mihaly could thus only continue to give her performances in private circles.
Jo Mihaly: Speech at the farewell event of the Kulturgemeinschaft der Emigranten in Zürich (1945)
The dancer and writer Jo Mihaly knew well that the lives of many emigrants were marked not just by material need. They also experienced a kind of “spiritual privation”.
Johannes R. Becher: Der Glücksucher und die sieben Lasten (1938)
Johannes R. Becher was the most-published German-speaking exile author in Moscow.
Johannes R. Becher's membership card of the All-Union Radio Committee of the USSR (1942)
The author Johannes R. Becher emigrated to the Soviet Union and worked from March 1942 as a writer for the Soviet State Radio, the All-Union Radio Committee.
Johannes Urzidil: Letter to Felix Weltsch, (1945)
Johannes Urzidil and Felix Weltsch knew each other from the days of the "Prague Circle,“ long before the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Urzidil, who was active as an author, publisher, and a translator, was able to flee a few months earlier than Weltsch to the USA, via Great Britain.
John Grane [i.e. Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz]: Der Reisende (The man who took trains), Typescript (1938/39)
In November 1938, author Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, who was living in Brussels at the time, began writing his novel “Der Reisende” (The man who took trains) under the profound influence of the news of the November pogroms. He finished it just a few weeks later.
John Heartfield: Book Cover of the Inventors’ Scrapbook (Lindsay Drummond, 1947)
Because of the bad state of his health, graphic artist John Heartfield was released from an English detention centre in August 1940, after which he started looking for work. He held talks for the Freie Deutsche Kulturbund [Free German League of Culture] and designed sets for plays.
John Heartfield: Durch Licht zur Nacht (1933)
Durch Licht zur Nacht (tr. Through Light to Night) was one of the first photomontages produced for the left-wing newspaper, the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ) by the graphic artist John Heartfield after fleeing to exile in Prague.
John Heartfield: Göring, der Henker des Dritten Reichs (September 1933)
A blood-stained Hermann Göring in a butcher's apron is standing in front of the burning Reichstag. This was the September 1933 cover page of the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ), which was published by Willi Münzenberg.
John Heartfield: Montage for the poetry collection Und sie bewegt sich doch! Freie Deutsche Dichtung (1943)
In 1943, the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain published a poetry anthology titled Und sie bewegt sich doch! Freie Deutsche Dichtung. The anthology included works by Wieland Herzfelde, Johannes R.
John Heartfield: Reservations (1939)
At the beginning of his time in exile in Britain, the graphic artist John Heartfield worked for various British newspapers. He produced photomontages on current events in which he commented on the Nazis and the course of the war.
John Heartfield: Wie im Mittelalter … so im Dritten Reich (1934)
A photo montage for the AIZ, with actor Erwin Geschonneck as modelIn the spring of 1934, the actor Erwin Geschonneck and the graphic designer John Heartfield lived in the same emigrant district in Prague. Heartfield was working on a photo montage for the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ), in which he juxtaposed a medieval window sculpture of the Tübingen Stiftskirche (showing the martyr George bound to a wheel) with a photograph of a victim of National Socialism (symbolically tied to the arms of a swastika).
Josef Albers: Concentric Squares (1941)
Albers described the aim of his teaching in 1970 as follows: “To open eyes. […] Not to just let things wash over you passively, but to see for yourself, to search, find, discover and experience. Yes: You can learn to see creatively!” (ed. trans.)
Josef Albers: Letter to Alfred Neumeyer (15 August 1938)
It took time for many émigré artists to be able to live from their art while in exile. Even well-known personalities found themselves cast back to their laborious beginnings.
Josef Albers: Letter to Gertrude Maud Grote (14 October 1941)
Josef Albers: Letter to Ludwig Grote (2 September 1951, presumed)
At first glance, it appears to be a wartime document. Josef Albers dated his letter to Ludwig Grote "II.
Josef and Anni Albers: Letter card to Charlotte Hesse (c. 1949)
Josef Albers had made a name for himself in Germany as a designer of glass paintings with an abstract, geometric design vocabulary, as shown in the picture on the letter card. The drafts were produced during his time at the Bauhaus and were made for an industrial production.
Josef and Anni Albers: Letter to Charlotte Hesse (1947)
The letter from the painter and graphic artist Josef Albers and his wife, the textile designer Anni Albers, comes from the estate of the former Dessau housemaid Charlotte Hesse. The correspondence allowed them to maintain contact between their old and new homeland.
Josef and Anni Albers: Postcard to Charlotte Hesse (1933)
Anni and Josef Albers, who were both Masters at the Bauhaus in Berlin, lost their work when it closed. In spite of her Protestant faith Anni Albers, who was born Anneliese Fleischmann in Berlin, was regarded by the Nazis as a Jew.
Josef Scharl: letter to a photographer named Schiff (14 July 1942)
Writers forced into exile by Hitler’s oppression were able to rapidly distribute new works by circulating manuscripts among friends and publishers. A manuscript, after all, can be easily sent through the post. Paintings, on the other hand, must first be photographed. For the painter Josef Scharl, in New York exile in 1942, this meant resorting to pleading.
Josef Scharl: Letter to Alfred Neumeyer (16 July 1950)
The painter Josef Scharl was indebted to writer and art historian Alfred Neumeyer for a sensitive interpretation of his work. The appraisal appeared in 1945 in Karl Nierdendorf’s Scharl monograph. The two German emigrants continued to correspond afterwards.
Josef Scharl: Letter to Heinrich (or Ulrich) Lechleitner (2 March 1939)
A quarter of a year after he migrated to the USA, painter Josef Scharl got in touch with a friend in Munich. The tone of the letter, a “sign of life”, is joyful and optimistic. After experiencing years of distress under the Nazis, everything now seemed to point to a fulfilling creative period in exile.
Josef Scharl: Letter to Ulrich Lechleitner (25 December 1939)
In late 1939 Josef Scharl, living in New York without his family, sent a letter to Munich. His first year in exile was drawing to a close. The recipient of these lines, Scharl’s friend Ulrich Lechleitner, had recently married. Along with New Year’s greetings, Scharl extended his congratulations on the marriage.
Josef Scharl: Portrait of Albert Einstein, painting (1944)
The Nobel laureate Albert Einstein and the painter Josef Scharl first met in Berlin in the 1920s. A decade later, scientists and artists were no longer welcome in Germany in the worldview of the Nazis.
Josef Scharl: The massacre of the innocents, painting (1942)
Josef Scharl emerged from the First World War with traumatic memories. The collapse of a trench had left the painter’s right hand paralysed. It was only in the last year of the war that he finally managed to get it treated.
Joseph Hahn: In Memoriam Franz Peter Kien, typescript (1991)
The artist and writer Joseph Hahn dealt critically in his work with social problems and historical events. One aspect he looked at closely throughout his entire work was the Holocaust.
Joseph Hahn: Zum Gedenken an den großen, jungen Franz Peter Kien (In memory of the great, young Franz Peter Kein, 1953)
Remembering a dead artist and friendJoseph Hahn had spent seven years in exile in America when he presented his first works in an exhibition. His first solo exhibition followed just one year later (1953).
Joseph Hahn: Zum Gedenken an meine Eltern, (In memory of my parents), manuscript (2004)
In 1939 Joseph Hahn lost his homeland in a very literal sense; the Sudetenland no longer existed by fact of its occupation. But it was not just the country that he had lost.
Joseph Roth in the Parisian Café Le Tournon (circa 1938)
When the Nazis came to power, Joseph Roth went into exile in Paris, living initially in the Hôtel Foyot, where he had also stayed during previous trips to Paris. After having to watch his domicile be torn down, the Hôtel de la Poste and the Café Le Tournon, which was part of the hotel, became his new place of refuge and where he did his writing.
Joseph Roth: Beichte eines Mörders. Erzählt in einer Nacht, manuscript (1936) [Confession of a Murderer. Told in One Night. (published in English in 1937)]
Joseph Roth had been working on his novel Confession of a Murderer since 1935. The first chapter appeared with the title Der Stammgast as an advance release in Das neue Tagebuch and was then published by the Amsterdam publishing house de Lange in 1936.
Joseph Roth: Das Haus des Herrn Kristianpoller, manuscript (presumably 1934)
Unpublished preliminary work for Tarabas (1934)In only one sentence Joseph Roth draws his readers right into the heart of the East-Galician environment in which his main character Joel Kristianpoller lives, a wealthy Jew from Brody, where the story takes place and which was also Roth’s birthplace and a city with a long Jewish tradition. The occurrence he describes here plays a key role in the novel Tarabas.
Joseph Roth: Der Antichrist, first edition (1934)
At the beginning of September 1934, the publisher Allert de Lange published Joseph Roth’s cultural-philosophical book Der Antichrist (published in English as the Antichrist). Roth, who had originally agreed with the publisher to a different project with the title “Die Juden und ihre Antisemiten” (“The Jews and their Anti-Semites”), which he abandoned in the end, began to work on Antichrist in January.
Joseph Roth: Die Kapuzinergruft, first edition of the novel (1938)
In the novel Die Kapuzinergruft [The Emperor's Tomb, 1938] by writer Joseph Roth, the end of the Danube Monarchy is described from the perspective of the nobleman Franz Ferdinand Trotta. He is unable to cope with the new world order and escapes into nostalgic mourning for the “old world”.
Joseph Roth: Letter to Moshe Yaakov Ben Gavriel, November 4, 1933
Already months before the National Socialists‘ rise to power, the author Joseph Roth predicted the fate of those who would oppose the new regime. As a result, he left Germany in early 1933.
Joseph Roth: Questionnaire filled out for the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom (31 May 1937)
The question under item e) on the American Guild for German culture freedom questionnaire reads: “What facts, events or private convictions lead you to consider yourself among German exiles?” Joseph Roth's answer is, “Neither burnt nor banned, but has effected his own ban in Germany by writing an article about Hitler entitled Ich verzichte [I Abstain (ed. trans.)]”.
Joseph Roth: Report to the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom (presumably August 1938)
The writer and journalist Joseph Roth corresponds from his exile in Paris about the completion of his work Die Kapuzinergruft [The Emperor's Tomb, 1938, published in English in 1984]. Roth was one of the first scholars of the German Academy in Exile, each of whom received a monthly working scholarship of 30 dollars.
Journal Die Sammlung (Issue 1 / September 1933)
Die Sammlung was established in September 1933 by Klaus Mann, who – for some time without pay – functioned as the publisher of this literary monthly. A total of 24 issues were published by Querido Verlag Amsterdam under the auspices of André Gide, Aldous Huxley and Heinrich Mann.
Józef Wittlin: Letter to Hermann Kesten (2 November 1940)
On 31 October 1940, the Polish writer Józef Wittlin arrived with his family in Lisbon. There he made contact with Hermann Kesten, whose initiative it had been to place him on a list for an emergency visa from the Emergency Rescue Committee.
Julien Bryan: Documentary film Entartete Kunst (Degenrate Art), Munich (1937)
The 16-minute documentary Inside Nazi Germany was broadcast as part of the US newsreel The March of Time on 20 January, 1938. Most of the images were created by the documentary filmmaker Julien Bryan, who went to Germany for seven weeks in 1937 to film and take photographs of everyday and cultural life.
Klaus Mann, letter to Steinberg Verlag, December 1948
Andre Gide and the Crisis of Modern ThoughtAndré Gide was one of Klaus Mann's early literary inspirations, possibly even the lodestar of his literary life, as Mann himself makes clear in his eminently readable autobiography Der Wendepunkt (“The Turning Point”, 1952): “What he had to offer me, what drew me to him, was a kind of moral, intellectual ‘authorisation’: a spiritual legitimation and artistic objectification of my subjective restlessness and uncertainty.” Mann’s lifelong – albeit extremely one-sided – admiration of Gide’s work and character, which in Mann’s view embodied the essence of the good European, was expressed in several essays and culminated in the monograph André Gide and the Crisis of Modern Thought, initially published in English by New York publishing company Creative Age in 1943.
Klaus Mann: Correspondence with Gottfried Benn (1933)
In February 1933, only a few weeks after Hitler had been appointed Chancellor (Reichskanzler), Klaus Mann’s uncle, Heinrich Mann, had been put under political pressure and forced to resign from the Prussian Academy of the Arts. Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) was appointed as acting President of the Poetry Department; this poet was one of only very few artists of standing who remained in the institute which had been “gleichgeschaltet” (brought into line with Nazi doctrine).
Klaus Mann: Der Vulkan. Roman unter Emigranten, first edition (1939)
In his diary, Klaus Mann described his seventh novel, Der Vulkan, published by Querido Verlag Amsterdam in 1939, as his “most important” work. In it he presents a fictionalised examination of the life of emigrant groups in contemporary exile centres such as Paris, Zurich, Prague, Amsterdam and the US.
Klaus Mann: Diary Entries from 1 January 1933 to 8 August 1933
Klaus Mann’s diary notes from the first few months of 1933 are a document of an intensifying political situation in Bavaria. The author began his entries on 1 January 1933, shortly before the end of the Weimar Republic, by commenting on the successful premiere of Die Pfeffermühle (The Peppermill), a political cabaret by his older sister Erika.
Klaus Mann: Diary Entries from 5 June 1940 to 11 December 1942
In September 1938, Klaus Mann left Europe permanently and travelled by ship to New York, where he began his period of exile in America. In the USA the author underwent a linguistic transformation as he increasingly drifted away from his native tongue toward English.
Klaus Mann: Europe’s Search for a New Credo / Die Heimsuchung des europäischen Geistes (1949/1950)
About two months before he took his own life on 20 May 1949, Klaus Mann completed the manuscript for his essay – written in English – which was published in June of that year in the American magazine Tomorrow. The author titled the piece Europe’s Search for a New Credo and it gave expression to his publishing legacy.
Klaus Mann: Letter to Else Lasker-Schüler, June 28, 1934
The writer Klaus Mann founded the notable journal "Die Sammlung" in his exile in the Netherlands. It was published by the Querido-Verlag and had an open political agenda against the National Socialist tyranny.
Klaus Mann: Letter to Rudolf Olden (19 January 1934)
After the 11th International P.E.N. Congress in Ragusa at the end of May in 1933, German PEN left the international association and undertook a dramatic realignment taking it in an extremely “völkisch” nationalist direction.
Klaus Mann: Mephisto. The Novel of a Career (1936)
Klaus Mann’s most well-known novel Mephisto was published by the German section of the Amsterdam publishing house Querido in 1936. The story of the ambitious actor Hendrik Höfgen, who surrenders himself and his art to fascism despite diverging political ideals, was interpreted as a roman à clef shortly after its appearance.
Klaus Mann: The Turning Point / Der Wendepunkt (1942/1952)
Klaus Mann’s autobiography Der Wendepunkt, which first appeared in English as The Turning Point in 1942, was first published in an expanded German version in 1952, two years after the author's death. The over-500-page book was Mann's second detailed autobiography after Kind dieser Zeit (1932).
Klaus Mann: To the subscribers of Die Sammlung, manuscript (1935)
In the summer of 1935 Klaus Mann was forced to inform the readers and subscribers of his magazine Die Sammlung that the journal was to cease publication for economic reasons. To the last, he and Fritz H.
Klaus Mann's press card in the Spanish Civil War (1938)
In the summer of 1938 Klaus Mann travelled together with his sister Erika to Spain. The civil war seemed almost lost to the Republican Army at this time.
Klaus Modick: Sunset, novel (2011)
In his novel Sunset, Klaus Modick deals with the friendship between the writers Lion Feuchtwanger and Bertolt Brecht. The narrative begins with the news of Brecht’s death and the invitation to his funeral, which reach Feuchtwanger in his villa in California.
Kohner Agency advertisement for Felix Bressart (1945)
Felix Bressart, who made his way to the USA in 1938 via stops in Switzerland, Austria and France, was lucky: he was one of the few émigré actors on the books of the newly established Paul Kohner Agency who readily found engagements upon alighting in the New World.
Kolisch-Quartett: Vierter Satz aus Arnold Schönbergs Streichquartett Nr. 4 op. 37, Tonaufnahme, 1937
The violinist Rudolf Kolisch, head of the Kolisch Quartet, wrote in this enthusiastic manner to the composer Arnold Schönberg. The Kolisch Quartet had already performed the premiere of a string quartet by Schönberg nine years earlier.
Konrad Püschel: list of names (around 1972)
Searching for Bauhaus alumniOn the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Bauhaus Building in Dessau in 1976 and in order to plan colloquiums, the former Bauhaus student and later professor at the University for Architecture and Civil Engineering in Weimar, Konrad Püschel, collected the addresses of former Bauhaus teachers and students. Under the heading “Bauhaus teachers and students who evaded fascism by emigrating to (knowlege gap): USA, Israel, France, South Africa“ he created an overview of the countries to which his former teachers and classmates had emigrated.
Konrad Wachsmann: factory building design for the General Panel Corporation (around 1945)
On 8 August 1944, the architects Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann successfully registered a patent for their prefabrication General Panel System (GPS) during their exile in America. The so-called “Wachsmann-Knot”, a metallic connecting node, was used to join wooden panels.
Konrad Wachsmann: L’ affaire X, autobiographical notes, 1980
Architect Konrad Wachsmann wrote his memoirs about his flight from Nazi Germany in 1980 in Californian exile. On six pages, he describes the various stations of exile, with the years in France outlined very impressively in particular.
Konrad Wachsmann: Letter to his mother (8 February 1935)
The architect Konrad Wachsmann sent this letter to his mother in February 1935 from Italian exile; she was living in German at that point. Wachsmann had gone to Italy in 1932 on a scholarship from the Villa Massimo.
Konrad Wachsmann: telegram to Jerome Hard (14 January 1941)
On 14 January 1941, the architect Konrad Wachsmann sent this telegram to the American Jerome Hard. The US consulate in Marseille had offered Wachsmann and his fiancée Anna Krauss quota visas if both could present at the same time a notarized affidavit of sponsorship and a notarized affidavit of support.
Kuno Fiedler: Photograph of the Mann family in Munich 1932
The photograph shows the family of the author Thomas Mann on 14 October 1932 in front of the patio door of his house in Poschinger Straße in Munich. Standing next to the author and his wife Katia are their two eldest children Erika (1st from right) and Klaus (1st from left) and the two youngest, Elisabeth (2nd from left) and Michael (3rd from left).
Kurt Gerron: Letter to Paul Kohner (24 January 1938)
For any artist whose primary tool is language, the use of the native tongue carries particular existential importance. Wordplay, allusions and double entendres are only truly ever mastered by a native speaker.
Kurt Hirschfeld: speech marking the 50th birthday of publisher Emil Oprecht, typescript (1945)
Theatre director Kurt Hirschfeld used the 50th birthday of publisher Emil Oprecht on 23 September 1945 as an occasion to look back. Hirschfeld’s speech emphasised the many facets of Oprecht’s character, his helpfulness and cosmopolitan outlook, his diverse contributions to political and cultural life.
Kurt Jooss: Note on the ballet Chronica (1939)
Chronica was written in exile in England in spring 1939 and fits in with many of the works of choreographer Kurt Jooss in its examination of power and sovereignty structures.
Kurt Schwitters, Certificate of Registration (1941)
Kurt Schwitters’ flight from Germany to Great Britain unfortunately culminated in the artist’s internment. Schwitters reached Edinburgh with his son on 19 June 1940, shortly after the British government had decided to hold all “enemy aliens” in impromptu detainment camps.
Kurt Schwitters, photograph of Schwitters reading Ursonate (1944)
Kurt Schwitters’ most significant works, according to the artist himself, were his Merzbau installation – a sculpture in his parents’ home in Hanover that spanned several rooms – and the Ursonate, a sound poem comprising three musical movements. While he was forced to abandon his Merzbau construction forever upon his flight from Germany in 1937, Ursonate, a poem he recited countless times from the 1920s onwards, remained part of his repertoire in exile.
Kurt Schwitters: Letter to Helma Schwitters (24 December 1940)
Kurt and Helma Schwitters decided to separate temporarily in 1937, a move that became necessary when the Nazi regime classified Kurt Schwitters’ art as “degenerate”. Kurt travelled with the couple’s son to Norway, while his wife remained in Germany for a period, caring for her sick parents and her mother-in-law, while also organising the shipment of the couple’s furniture and art collection to Norway.
Kurt Schwitters: Letter to Helma Schwitters (30 May 1941)
Kurt Schwitters wrote a series of letters to his wife Helma in Germany from the British internment camp in Douglas on the Isle of Man. The correspondence was subject to the examination of both British and German military authorities.
Kurt Schwitters: Nebel in Djupvasshytta (Fog in Djupvasshytta), 1937
In 1937, Kurt Schwitters took the decision not to return to Germany from his sojourn in Norway. His reasons are still the subject of some speculation today.
Kurt Schwitters: Portrait of Rudolf Olden, painting, 1940
During his period of internment, Kurt Schwitters created 200 to 250 works. He drew and painted his surroundings using the few materials available to him and his interred artist colleagues.
Kurt Schwitters: Portrait of the Sculptor Charoux, 1940
Branded an “enemy alien” upon his arrival in Britain, Kurt Schwitters was held in an Isle of Man internment camp from July 1940 until November 1941 but was still able to continue his work as an artist thanks to the support of camp commander and art enthusiast Captain H. O.
Kurt Schwitters: Relief wall, part of Merz Barn (1947)
For their creator, the artist Kurt Schwitters, the “Merzbauten” (“Merz constructions”) series of abstract installations were of great significance. They not only reflected the artist’s artistic style through their sprawling sculptures, which spanned several rooms – they also endured a similarly tragic fate.
Kurt Schwitters: Untitled (portrait of Fred Uhlmann) (1940)
While detained at the Hutchinson Internment Camp on Isle of Man, jokingly nicknamed the “artists camp” due to the great number of artist detainees, Kurt Schwitters met a host of like-minded characters. The majority of the internees were displaced Germans and Austrians or other opponents of the Nazi regime.
Kurt Weill: And What Was Sent to the Soldier’s Wife?, song (1942)
The composer Kurt Weill, in exile in the US, set Bertolt Brecht’s poem And What Was Sent to the Soldier’s Wife? to music for singing voice and piano. The seven verses describe the things that a soldier sends to his wife from various stops.
László Moholy-Nagy: Letter to Paul Citroen (1936)
László Moholy-Nagy enjoyed a productive phase in the summer of 1936. A number of orders for film and photojournalistic essays such as "The Street Markets of London" gave him a measure of financial stability.
László Moholy-Nagy: photogram untitled (1943)
László Moholy-Nagy started working on photograms in the 1920s. In his book vision in motion (1946) the artist describes the technique.
Lea Grundig: Blick auf den Hafen von Haifa von der „Patria“, graphic (View to the Harbour from the Patria, 1940)
The sinking of a refugee shipThe artist Lea Grundig did not want to go into exile in 1939 but she was deported by the Nazi authorities. She began an odyssey through Europe that finally ended in 1940 on the refugee ship SS Pacific in the sea off Palestine (in Haifa).
Lea Grundig: Flüstern und Lauschen, etching (Whispering and Eavesdropping, 1936)
This etching – titled Flüstern und Lauschen (Whispering and Eavesdropping) – is from the 20-part series Unterm Hakenkreuz (Under the Swastika) (1936) by the artist Lea Grundig. In this work she depicts the conditions of life under the Nazi dictatorship.
Lea Grundig: Night in the Atlit Camp, watercolour (August 1941)
Working as an artist in the Atlit detainee campThe artist Lea Grundig reached Palestine in November 1940 as a survivor of the shipwrecked SS Patria and thus as an illegal immigrant. The British Mandate government interned her in the Atlit detainee camp.
Leaflet: Derby International Centre (c. 1943)
The Derby International Centre was founded in 1943 in the English city of Derby, home of the Rolls Royce automobile and aircraft plants which were crucial to the British war effort. Theo Balden established it as a kind of new version of the "Oskar Kokoschka Bund" in Prague.
Legal charter of the Artists' International Association (c. 1943)
Founded as an association of artists committed to international artist cooperation and to peace and democracy, the Artists' International Association (AIA) organised exhibitions. The 1937 exhibition Twentieth Century German Art featured works by exile artists living in the United Kingdom; it thus served as a counter-exhibition to the Nazi propaganda exhibition of Degenerate Art.
Leo Maillet: Ganz Ohr [All Ears], etching (1982)
The broken faceSelf-portraits were a prominent part of painter Leo Maillet’s oeuvre during the period from 1940 to 1945. These works mostly took the form of small-format drawings and watercolours.
Leo Perutz: Klage um einen Toten (1939)
Obituary for the author Richard A. BermannFriends and peers around the world were shocked to learn that author Richard A. Bermann (alias Arnold Höllriegel) had died suddenly while in exile in America, just a few days after the beginning of the Second World War.
Leo Perutz: Letter to Richard A. Bermann (11 September 1939)
When Leo Perutz wrote this letter to author Richard A. Bermann (alias Arnold Höllriegel), he was unaware that his best friend, who was living in exile in America, had passed away just a few days earlier.
Leo Perutz: Letter to Richard A. Bermann (15 May 1939)
While living in exile in Palestine, Leo Perutz was unable to match the literary successes he enjoyed in Europe prior to the Nazis' ascension to power. In this letter to his friend and fellow author Richard A. Bermann, Perutz not only recounts his difficulty finding a linguistic home in exile, but also tells of the "forced" reprinting of his novel Zwischen neun und neun [Between Nine and Nine, 1918] in a Hebrew newspaper.
Leo Perutz: Mientras dan las nueve (Between Nine and Nine)
Cover of the Argentinian edition (1945)The novel Zwischen neun und neun [Between Nine and Nine] by Leo Perutz tells the equally tragicomic and suspenseful story of Stanislaus Demba. In handcuffs, he falls from a garret while fleeing from the police at nine o'clock in the morning – and survives.
Leo Perutz: Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke (Meisls Gut), Manuscript (1951)
[By Night under the Stone Bridge]Leo Perutz’s novel Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke [By Night under the Stone Bridge] was first published by the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt in 1953. The story of its origins stretches back to the period before Perutz’ exile.
Leonard Steckel: Letter to Erwin Piscator, 1947
As the actor Leonard Steckel suggests in this letter to director Erwin Piscator, he sought to return to Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. The actor and the director had become friends while working together at the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin.
Leonhard Frank: Letter to Hermann Kesten (1 October 1940)
In September 1940, the writer Leonhard Frank fled from Marseilles to Lisbon, whence he travelled on to the United States. Upon arrival in Portugal he still had no visa for the United States and so he wrote a worried and panic-stricken letter to Hermann Kesten in New York on 1 October 1940.
Letter from Benedikt Fred Dolbin to Arnold Schönberg (14 October 1937)
Before the newspaper illustrator Benedikt Fred Dolbin became a professional illustrator and made portraits of celebrities, he had completed an engineering degree in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. During his studies, Dolbin began to develop an interest in the arts, joining the “Nachtlicht” cabaret for a year as a balladeer and studying composition with Arnold Schönberg in 1908 and 1909.
Letter from Benedikt Fred Dolbin to his sister Bella Paalen (21 February 1937)
In this letter from newspaper illustrator Benedikt Fred Dolbin to his sister Bella Paalen from 21 February 1937, he speaks of his difficulties making his livelihood as an illustrator in the US. Again and again, Dolbin asked the Viennese opera singer, who had stayed in Austria, to lend him money or procure jobs for him in Austria.
Letter from Berthold Viertel to Wieland Herzfelde, 21 October 1943
When writer and director Berthold Viertel and the Malik publisher Wieland Herzfelde met one another for the first time in Berlin in the 1920s, they were both very successful in their professions. In 1939 they met again as stranded refugees in New York: Viertel had tried to establish himself as a theatre director on Broadway without success, while Herzfelde sold stamps.
Letter from Heinrich Mann to Rudolf Olden (19 April 1934)
On 16 April 1934 Rudolf Olden, secretary of the German PEN Group in Exile, asked the writer Heinrich Mann if he would like to take on the post of President of the newly established group and also asked him if he would travel as one of two delegates to attend the international PEN congress in Glasgow in June 1934. Heinrich Mann already filled the posts of Honorary Chairman of the writers’association ‘Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller’ and President of the German Freedom Library.
Letter from John Heartfield to the Czech Refugee Trust Fund (1 April 1941)
Letter from John Heartfield to the Czech Refugee Trust Fund (1 April 1941)In the winter of 1938, John Heartfield fled by plane from Prague to Great Britain. He was able to flee thanks to his Czech passport and with help from the Czech Refugee Trust Fund.
Letter from László Moholy-Nagy to Paul Citroen (1936)
The letter was written by the constructivist László Moholy-Nagy, who had come to London in 1935 shortly after the birth of his second daughter, Claudia.László Moholy-Nagy worked as art director for industrial firms, designed shop windows, advertising posters, books, invitation cards and trade fair stands.
Letter from László Moholy-Nagy to Paul Citroen, (1937)
László Moholy-Nagy was appointed director of the New Bauhaus in 1937 by the Association of Arts and Industries. The contact was established by Walter Gropius who was earmarked for this post but could not accept because he was already committed to Harvard.
Letter from Lion Feuchtwanger to the Emergency Rescue Committee (1940)
Shortly after his arrival in New York, Lion Feuchtwanger sent this letter on 26 November 1940 to the aid organisation Emergency Rescue Committee, which played an important role in rescuing the writer from France and preparing his entry into the USA. As the letter indicates, there was some degree of uncertainty on the part of Feuchtwanger concerning the number of helpers who were involved in his rescue.
Letter from Ludwig Winder to Carl Ehrenstein, 1940
In this letter from the writer Ludwig Winder to the literary agent Carl Ehrenstein, Winder expressed his hope to be able to travel on to the US in the near future. As he reports here, the cramped accommodation conditions in exile in England evidently made it impossible for him to write.
Letter from Max Beckmann to Stephan Lackner, 4 August 1937
On 4 August 1937, Max Beckmann writes from Amsterdam to writer and collector Stephan Lackner that he will have a new studio at his disposal the next day, also explaining: “I want to stay here for now, then maybe move on to Paris later on. For the interim, Amsterdam is not bad.
Letter from Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture to Alfred Neumeyer, transcript (24 July 1935)
On 24 July 1935, the university associate lecturer Alfred Neumeyer was granted holiday leave by the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture. For Neumeyer however, the reason for applying for leave was not the prospect of a pleasant holiday. The application was a pretence to leave Berlin.
Letter from Richard Paulick to Walter Gropius (1945)
From exile in Shanghai, the architect Richard Paulick re-established contact with his colleague at Harvard, Walter Gropius, in this letter. Between 1927 and 1930 Paulick had worked in Gropius' Dessau office and was appointed manager in 1928.
Letter from Rudolf Olden to Richard A. Bermann (4 June 1938)
Rudolf Olden and Richard A. Bermann knew one another from their editorial work at the democratic newspaper Der Neue Tag and had worked together with the Editor-in-Chief and founder Benno Karpeles.
Letter from the English-Speaking Union War Relief to Helmut Krommer (22 February 1943)
A work of art by way of saying thanksDuring World War II numerous organisations worked on behalf of people in need in Europe. This support was a welcome relief for the beneficiaries and their families, among whom there were many emigrated artists without regular incomes. While in exile in London Helmut Krommer received such a charitable handout in February 1943.
Letter from the German Society of Sciences and Arts to Hugo Steiner-Prag (7 February 1939)
Discrimination in the already abandoned Prague exileOn 7 February 1939, Hugo Steiner-Prag was informed of his immediate exclusion from the German Society of Sciences and Arts for the Czech Republic in a short letter. However, the letter, which was addressed to his Prague place of residence, did not reach the artist there.
![Painting: Akbar Behkalam, Lebensraum [Living Space]](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/behkalam-akbar-kreuzberg-01-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Painting: Akbar Behkalam, Lebensraum [Living Space]")
![Manuscript: Arnold Zweig, Bilanz der deutschen Juden[heit] 1933](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/zweig-arnold-bilanz-manuskript-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Manuscript: Arnold Zweig, Bilanz der deutschen Juden[heit] 1933")
![Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] Fig. 1](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/moreau-clement-nacht-ueber-deutschland-001-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] Fig. 1")
![Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 23](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/moreau-clement-nacht-ueber-deutschland-023-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 23")
![Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 34](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/moreau-clement-nacht-ueber-deutschland-034-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 34")
![Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 38](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/moreau-clement-nacht-ueber-deutschland-038-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 38")
![Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 53](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/moreau-clement-nacht-ueber-deutschland-053-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 53")
![Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 78](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/moreau-clement-nacht-ueber-deutschland-078-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] fig. 78")
![Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] Fig. 9](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/moreau-clement-nacht-ueber-deutschland-009-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Linocut: Clément Moreau: Nacht über Deutschland [Night over Germany] Fig. 9")
![Manuscript: Georg Kaiser, Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“]](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/kaiser-georg-das-floss-der-medusa-manuskript-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Manuscript: Georg Kaiser, Das Floss der Medusa [„The Raft of the Medusa“]")
![Das Lied von der Einheitsfront [Song of the Unified Front]](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/eisler-lied-der-einheitsfront-01-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Das Lied von der Einheitsfront [Song of the Unified Front]")
![Typescript: Iwan Heilbut, Die Überlebenden [Birds of Passage]](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/heilbut-iwan-die-ueberlebenden-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Typescript: Iwan Heilbut, Die Überlebenden [Birds of Passage]")
![Manuscript notes: Jakob Haringer, Das Fenster [The Window]](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/haringer-jakob-das-fenster-gedichttyposkripte-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Manuscript notes: Jakob Haringer, Das Fenster [The Window]")
![Self-portrait: Leo Maillet, Ganz Ohr [All Ears]](/KIE/Content/EN/Images/objects/maillet-leo-selbstportrait-en.jpg?__blob=thumbnail&v=1 "Self-portrait: Leo Maillet, Ganz Ohr [All Ears]")
