Richard Dove - Böcker

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.

Political changes between 1918 and 1939 had important implications for German writers. The essays in this volume focus on questions such as the writers' relationship to political parties and ideology, their treatment of the legacy of World War I, and their response to the rise of fascism.

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.