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Weimar in Exile:The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America
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A magisterial history of the artists and writers who left Weimar when the Nazis came to power
In 1933 thousands of intellectuals, artists, writers, militants and other opponents of the Nazi regime fled Germany. They were, in the words of Heinrich Mann, “the best of Germany,” refusing to remain citizens in this new state that legalized terror and brutality.
Exiled across the world, they continued the fight against Nazism in prose, poetry, painting, architecture, film and theater. Weimar in Exile follows these lives, from the rise of national socialism to their return to a ruined homeland, retracing their stories, struggles, setbacks and rare victories.
The dignity in exile of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Hanns Eisler, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig and many others provides a counterpoint to the story of Germany under the Nazis.
Reviews
A magisterial study.
Jean-Michel Palmier’s book establishes more fully than any other the extent of emigration of Germany’s greatest minds and talents, and that neither the exiles nor Germany ever fully recovered.
A monumental study, an impressive testament to the experiences, achievements and far-reaching influences of the refugees.
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Jean-Michel Palmier published books on Georg Trakl, Hegel, Lenin, Lacan and Marcuse, as well as studies on German expressionism and a great work on the fate of anti-Nazi intellectuals, Weimar in Exile, celebrated by the Académie française. Everything fascinated him. He was a scholar who anxiously, almost mystically, quested after knowledge, and reminded one of a medieval philosopher even more than of a Renaissance man of letters. He was obsessed with art and culture. He was a surveyor of the past who tracked its faintest traces.
Le Monde Diplomatique -
A monumental work
Le Monde -
This is an extraordinary book: in its historical breadth, its command of literature, documents, and archival material, its ambitious scope, and its sweeping judgments.
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