Charmian Brinson – författare

This is an unusual book, telling a story which has hitherto remained hidden from history: the surveillance by the British security service MI5 of anti-Nazi refugees who came to Britain fleeing political persecution in Germany and Austria. Based on the personal and organisational files that MI5 kept on political refugees during the 1930s and 1940s – which have only recently been released into the public domain – this study also fills a considerable gap in historical research. Telling a story of absorbing interest, which at times reads more like spy fiction, it is both a study of MI5 and of the political refugees themselves. The book will interest academics in the fields of history, politics, intelligence studies, Jewish studies, German studies and migration studies; but it is also accessible to the general reader interested in Britain before, during and after the Second World War.

This is an unusual book, telling a story which has hitherto remained hidden from history: the surveillance by the British security service MI5 of anti-Nazi refugees who came to Britain fleeing political persecution in Germany and Austria. Based on the personal and organisational files that MI5 kept on political refugees during the 1930s and 1940s – which have only recently been released into the public domain – this study also fills a considerable gap in historical research. Telling a story of absorbing interest, which at times reads more like spy fiction, it is both a study of MI5 and of the political refugees themselves. The book will interest academics in the fields of history, politics, intelligence studies, Jewish studies, German studies and migration studies; but it is also accessible to the general reader interested in Britain before, during and after the Second World War.

The exodus of men, women and children fleeing from the Nazi regime was one of the largest diasporas the world has ever seen. It sparked an international refugee crisis that changed society and continues to shape our culture and community today. The years between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi era in Germany, and the war years, 1939 to 1945, were a time of destruction, upheaval and misery throughout Europe and beyond. Displacement and death, whether in war or civilian life, became everyday experiences, for young and old alike. Families were torn apart by enforced emigration or deportation. Parents were separated from their children, husbands from wives, brothers from sisters. Interned in camps that spread across the globe from Shanghai to the United States of America to the Isle of Man, they became strangers in a foreign land and often the only link they had to their former lives were letters exchanged with friends and family. These scarce postal communications, therefore, assumed huge significance in the lives of both sender and receiver, one that is hard to imagine today in the age of instant communication. Fleeing from the Führer is an unusual collection of correspondence that shows the incredible nature of this worldwide emigration and the indomitable spirit of these refugees. Each postcard, envelope and item of ephemera tells its own unique story and is reproduced in full colour, making this a fascinating resource for anyone wanting to understand this poignant part of our international history.

The Austrian Centre was established in London in 1939 by Austrians seeking refuge from Nazi Germany, of whom 30,000 had reached Britain by the outbreak of World War II. It soon developed into a comprehensive social, cultural and political organisation with a theatre and a weekly newspaper of its own. A Communist-influenced organisation, it also followed a distinct political agenda. In the first book on the cultural and political life of Austrian refugees in Britain, Out of Austria assesses and evaluates the Austrian Centre's activities and achievements, while also examining the Austrians' often fraught relations with their British hosts. It gives a fascinating insight into such figures as Sigmund Freud, who became the Centre's Honorary President during his final months and the poet Erich Fried, then an unknown seventeen-year-old, and sheds light on the interaction of politics and culture against the background of exile in wartime Britain.

«With its meticulous documentation, this multifaceted volume brings a range of individual lives and networks to the fore, outlining their inestimable contributions to British culture. It is an inspiring and timely intervention into the fields of exile and childhood studies, demonstrating just how inextricably the two are linked.»(Professor Kiera Vaclavik, Director of the Centre for Childhood Cultures, Queen Mary, University of London)　The essays that make up this book cover a diverse range of subjects, all broadly on the theme of child refugees from Nazism in Britain. The book’s three sections – on displacement, children in art, and children in education and play – indicate the various topics considered in the study. The authors come from different academic fields – including German and Austrian exile studies, art history, language and literature, and education – so each chapter offers a depth of research as well as adding to the breadth of the overarching theme. Thus far, there has been no study dedicated to examining both the experience of these refugee children and those who worked with them, and yet they and their own children live on, marked in different ways by their experience and making their own mark in British art and literature too.

This new volume in the series Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, entitled Exile and Gender: Literature and the Press, edited by Charmian Brinson and Andrea Hammel, focuses on the work of exiled women writers and journalists as well as on gendered representations in the writing of both male and female exiled writers. The contributions are in English or German. The seventeen contributions set out to both celebrate and critically examine the concepts of gender and sexuality in exile in a wide range of texts by well-known and lesser known authors, and throw light on many different aspects of gendered authorship and gendered relations. Our volume also looks at two bibliographic rarities: exile newspapers intended for and directed at a female readership.Dieser neue Band der Serie Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies mit dem Titel Exile and Gender I: Literature and the Press, herausgegeben von Charmian Brinson und Andrea Hammel, enthält Beiträge zu den Werken exilierter Schriftstellerinnen und Journalistinnen und zu geschlechtsspezifischen Darstellungen in den Texten von Exilschriftstellern und Exilschriftstellerinnen. Die Beiträge sind entweder in deutscher oder englischer Sprache. Die siebzehn Beiträge haben zum Ziel, die Erfolge dieser SchriftstellerInnen zu feiern und die Gender- und Sexualitätskonzepte in den Werken von bekannten und weniger bekannten Schreibenden kritisch zu untersuchen. Weitere Themen sind das weibliche Schreiben und die Beziehungen der Geschlechter im Exil. Der Band bespricht auch bibliografische Neuheiten: Exilzeitschriften, die von und für Exilantinnen publiziert wurden.Contributors are: Hiltrud Arens, Montserrat Bascoy Lamelas, Wiebke von Bernstorff, Charmian Brinson, Rosa Marta Gomez Pato, Andrea Hammel, Birgit Maier-Katkin, Trinidad Marin Villora, Aine McGillicuddy, Katharina Prager, Ester Saletta, Rose Sillars, Jörg Thunecke, Christine Ujma, Benedikt Wolf, Amira Zmiric, Veronika Zwerger.

Volume 18 in the series Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies is entitled Exile and Gender II: Politics, Education and the Arts. It is edited by Charmian Brinson, Jana Barbora Buresova and Andrea Hammel, and is intended as a companion volume to Volume 17, which focused on literature and the press. This new volume considers the life and work of exiled women politicians, academics and artists, among others, examining the ways – both positive and negative - in which their exile affected them. The sixteen contributions, which are in English or German, set out to throw new light on aspects of gendered relations and experiences of women in exile in Great Britain and Ireland.Contributors are: Jana Barbora Buresova, Rachel Dickson, Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Gisela Holfter, Hadwig Kraeutler, Ulrike Krippner, Dieter Krohn, Gertrud Lenz, Bea Lewkowicz, Sarah MacDougall, John March, Iris Meder, Irene Messenger, Merilyn Moos, Felicitas M. Starr-Egger, Jennifer Taylor, Gaby Weiner.