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German Exilliteratur (, exile literature) is the name for works of German literature written in the German diaspora by refugee authors who fled from Nazi Germany, Nazi Austria, and the occupied territories between 1933 and 1945. These dissident writers, poets and artists, many of whom were of German Jews or held antinazism beliefs, fled into exile in 1933 after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany and after Nazi Germany annexation Austria by the Anschluss in 1938, abolished the freedom of press, and started to prosecute authors and ban works.
Many of the European countries, where they first found refuge, were later invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany, which caused the refugees to look for safety elsewhere again, for example by fleeing occupied Europe, taking cover in the "Resistance", or within Inner emigration.
Like anti-communist Russian writers and publishing houses in Berlin, Paris, London, and New York after the October Revolution, some anti-Nazi German writers and intellectuals saw themselves as the continuation of an older and better Germany, which had been perverted by the Nazi Party.Mews, Siegfried. “Exile Literature and Literary Exile: A Review Essay”. South Atlantic Review 57.1 (1992): 103–109. Web
With this in mind, they supplied the German diaspora with both literary works and with Alternative media critical of the regime, and, in defiance of censorship in Nazi Germany, their books, newspapers, and magazines were smuggled into the homeland and both read and distributed in secret by the German people.
Bertolt Brecht, a refugee member of the Communist Party of Germany, ended up in Los Angeles and noted in his poem "The Hollywood Elegies", that the city was both heaven and hell.Rosenthal, Michael A. "Art And The Politics Of The Desert: German Exiles In California And The Biblical Bilderverbot". New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies 118.(2013): 43–64. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.
Other exiled German writers often had difficulty expressing what they were truly feeling. In his political thriller The Blond Spider (1939), Hans Flesch-Brunningen, writing under the pseudonym Vincent Burn, wrote a story involving two Germans.
Flesch-Brunningen an older, wiser, and somewhat mysterious German in the character of Martino. He is the archetypical, valiant antifascist and spared any of the ambiguities of Borneman's ultimately vanquished Müller. Yet, as committed and exemplary as Martino may be, he occupies a limited role, overshadowed by the brutal antics of the central German character, the Nazi spy Hesmert. As much as the simple fact of Martino's existence in the novel is indicative of the author's desire to raise British awareness of a "good" Germany, his marginality in the plot may well be equally suggestive of Flesch-Brunningen's sense of caution in dwelling upon a nonpopularist view of German culture.Brunnhuber, Nicole. "Explaining The Enemy: Images Of German Culture In English-Language Fiction By German-Speaking Exiles In Great Britain, 1933–45." Seminar – A Journal of Germanic Studies 42.3 (2006): 277–287. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.
In his book Moskau 1937, Feuchtwanger had lavishly praised life in the Soviet Union under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Feuchtwanger also defended the Great Purge and the Moscow show trials which were then taking place against both real and imagined members of the anti-Stalinist Left and other alleged enemies of the state. Feuchtwanger's enthusiastic praise of Stalinism triggered outrage from fellow anti-Nazi exiles Arnold Zweig, Franz Werfel, Feuchtwanger and Exile Studies Journal 34-2021 and, over the years since, from Trotskyites, who have called Feuchtwanger naive at best.H. Wagner, Lion Feuchtwanger, p.57f. See also Jonathan Skolnik, "Class War, Anti-Fascism, and Anti-Semitism: Grigori Roshal's 1939 Film Sem'ia Oppengeim in Context," Feuchtwanger and Film, Ian Wallace, ed. (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 237-46.
During the McCarthyism, Feuchtwanger was investigated as an alleged Stalinism propagandist by the House Un-American Activities Committee of the U.S. Congress. Fearing that he would not be readmitted if he travelled abroad, Feuchtwanger never left the United States again. After years of immigration hearings, Feuchtwanger's application for naturalization as an American citizen was finally granted. Ironically, the letter informing Feuchtwanger of the fact only arrived on the day after his death in 1958.
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