Exile Studies – serie

Awarded the Honorary Silver Medal of Jan MasarykThe study of Czechoslovak women refugees in Britain is noticeably missing from current research and Anglo-Czechoslovak historiography. This book explores the diverse experiences, dilemmas and contributions to Britain of these women within a socio-political context, commencing with the 1938 Munich Agreement that precipitated exile. An essential difference between this and many other studies of exile is the focus on nationality (Czechoslovak) and gender (women), rather than either element alone. Moreover, archival research is complemented by oral interviews with former refugees, presenting a more detailed and nuanced approach to their experiences, including wartime roles in the armed services, Czechoslovak Red Cross, women’s organizations and patriotic cultural societies.

Before Nowhere in Africa won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002, the fate of German-Jewish exiles in Africa was not widely discussed. The film, based on the autobiographical work of Stefanie Zweig, tells the story of the Zweig family, who escaped the perils of Nazism and found refuge in the British colony of Kenya. Taking Zweig’s written works Nowhere in Africa and Nirgendwo war Heimat: Mein Leben auf zwei Kontinenten [Nowhere was Home: My Life on Two Continents] as a point of departure, and drawing on extensive sources – including previously unexplored government files from the Colonial Office and other archival records, correspondence, first-person accounts and personal communication with former refugees – this book provides a detailed historical look at German- Jewish emigration to Kenya. The volume explores British immigration policies and the formation of the Plough Settlement Association, under whose auspices German-Jewish refugees were to be settled in Kenya as farmers. It also traces the difficult lives of refugees, both adults and children, within the complex dynamics of British colonial society in the Kenya of the 1930s and 1940s, paying special attention to the experiences of children in the colony.

«In this first Walbrook biography, Downs perfectly captures the private story and the public persona of a greatly underexplored performer, combining facts, such as when Walbrook first obtained his trademark moustache, with deeper textual analysis of his screen work. An excellent read for any fans of Walbrook, German cinema, film stars or movies in general.» (Gillian Kelly, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 42.1, 2022) «Few leading actors of classic cinema remain as enigmatic as Anton Walbrook, the subject of this very readable, frank and thoughtful biography. Despite Walbrook’s indelible performances in films such as the original Gaslight (1940), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), The Red Shoes (1948) and La Ronde (1950), this is his first full-length biography, which makes it all the more welcome. There is much to discover in these pages about the Viennese-born star of German and British cinema with the ability to ooze charm or villainy at will, sometimes in the same breath.» (Pamela Hutchinson, Sight and Sound, June 2021) «James Downs presents a fascinating and meticulously researched biography of a charming and darkly beguiling star who deserves our attention. It is enriched by archival evidence and images that illuminate Walbrook’s work as well as his equally intriguing, but carefully sequestered, private life; all refracted through his experience of exile.» (Professor Michael Williams, University of Southampton) «It is often difficult to separate the elements of personal life and dramatic performance that create the star persona, but that of the stage and screen actor Anton Walbrook presents a unique and fascinating challenge. In his richly researched biography, James Downs brings a scholar’s authority and a fan’s enthusiasm to his subject, illuminating not only the career of one of British cinema’s most reserved stars, but the political and production background of his stage, screen and television performances in the UK and Germany.» (Mandy Merck, author of Cinema’s Melodramatic Celebrity: Film, Fame and Personal Worth, 2020) Viennese-born actor Adolf Wohlbrück enjoyed huge success on both stage and screen in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, becoming one of the first truly international stars. After leaving Nazi Germany for Hollywood in 1936, he changed his name to Anton Walbrook and then settled in Britain, where he won filmgoers’ hearts with his portrayal of Prince Albert in two lavish biopics of Queen Victoria. Further film success followed with Dangerous Moonlight and Gaslight, several collaborations with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – including his striking performance as Lermontov in The Red Shoes – and later work with Max Ophuls and Otto Preminger.Despite great popularity and a prolific career of some forty films, alongside theatre, radio and television work, Walbrook was an intensely private individual who kept much of his personal life hidden from view. His reticence created an aura of mystery and «otherness» about him, which coloured both his acting performances and the way he was perceived by the public – an image that was reinforced in Britain by his continental background.Remarkably, this is the first full-length biography of Walbrook, drawing on over a decade of extensive archival research to document his life and acting career.

«In this insightful book, Stephanie Homer interrogates how different genre conventions (memoir, autobiographical fiction and novels) influence the representation of the Kindertransport. Her theoretical approach is sophisticated, her selection of texts judicious and representative. Homer’s contribution to the study of the reception history of the Kindertransport is important and timely.» (Bill Niven, Professor of Contemporary German History, Nottingham Trent University)«An immensely valuable intervention into studies of Kindertransport representations, this book invites readers into the ambiguities of memory. With clarity and confidence, the book explores the liberating creative potential of autobiographical fiction and polyphonic fictional voices which have reimagined the places and perspectives on Kindertransport as a migratory experience and literary compulsion. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Kindertransport literature as a genuinely transnational genre of witnessing and re-witnessing.» (Dr Simone Gigliotti, Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London)With the dwindling number of Kindertransportees alive today, the living memory of this rescue operation is being transformed into cultural memory, a trend noticeable in the publication of popular Kindertransport fiction since the beginning of the twenty-first century. This change in memory invites the following questions: how is the child refugee’s experience remembered, represented and reimagined in literature? And, consequently, what understanding of the Kindertransport is being transmitted to the following generations?Drawing on understandings of genre, narratology and empathy, this book examines works in English, German and Dutch from three literary genres: memoirs and autobiographical fiction by Kindertransportees and recent fiction by authors with no first-hand experience of the Kindertransport. This study exposes the various conventions, tensions and reader expectations attached to each genre and how these influence the author’s construction of the text and, in turn, the nature of the representation. This topical research engages in debates at the heart of current discussions on Holocaust and Kindertransport memory, such as the limits of representability, the «unspeakability» of trauma, and issues of ethics and aesthetics.

Women writers offer us rich and diverse perspectives on exile, yet they remain relatively unexplored in the scholarship. This book aims to address this omission by illuminating the life and work of four German-speaking writers exiled in Britain after 1933. Gerda Mayer, Gabriele Tergit, Ruth Feiner and Eva Priester, in different and unique ways, all articulate ideas of (national) identity and home in their work, opening up new ways of understanding the impact of exile and gender on belonging.Using Heimat theory, nomadic subjectivity and transnationalism, the women’s works are interrogated to encourage a reassessment of traditional conceptions of Heimat and belonging for refugees, exiles, and those distanced – whether physically or emotionally – from «home».

«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.

«Dr. Laima Vincė Sruoginis, an established author, academic, and life-long part of the North American Lithuanian diaspora, courageously faces Lithuania’s difficult historical legacy in her ground-breaking book. She researched her community’s refugee ancestors, drawing both from personal interviews and dusty academic sources, confronting uncomfortable truths.»(Philip S. Shapiro, President, Remembering Litvaks, Inc.)As World War II ended, refugees fled Soviet-occupied Lithuania, finding shelter in the displaced persons camps of Europe. By 1949, most had emigrated to North America. They brought with them opposing narratives about the Nazi occupation (1941–1944) when 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jewish community was annihilated. Trauma narratives were passed down to the second and third generations through collective memory. Through postmemory, cultural memory, and trauma theory, Vanished Lands analyzes literary works by North American Jewish and Lithuanian writers who speak over the silence of decades, seeking answers.

Forced to flee Germany, the eminent drama critic, poet and fiercely vocal anti-Nazi journalist, Alfred Kerr, settled in London in 1935 and became deeply attached to the calm and decency he found in the «island people».With much dry wit and some perplexity, his journal, translated here from German for the first time, savours the quirks and foibles of the enigmatic nation, wondering whether it will emerge at long last as the saviour of civilisation.His humorous and perceptive observations span society – from aristocrats, politicians and literary figures like G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells to the characters in pubs and courtrooms.Enriched by his expertise in German classical culture, the journal traces the agony of an emigré following Britain’s prolonged attempts to appease the «brown war-menace», shrewdly interwoven with attempts to understand the British, «a mystery, even to themselves».This is the longest ever thank-you letter from a migrant to Great Britain.

My previous book in the Exile Studies series, Vanished Lands: Memory and Postmemory in North American Lithuanian Diaspora Literature, explored the collective intergenerational trauma of the past. This companion volume, Heritage, Connection, Writing: Conversations with North American Lithuanian Diaspora Writers, is about hope for a shared future that holds the lessons of the past in balance. This collection presents perspectives on what it means to hold onto Lithuanian and Litvak heritage while living in North America and writing in English. The writers and poets interviewed in this book discuss their integration of this unique heritage and cultural memory into their literary work. With birth years spanning from 1933 to 1985, the authors present the voices of a cross-section of three generations. Containing conversations with 27 authors and including excerpts from their poetry and fiction, this book is a valuable resource for gaining insight into North American Lithuanian writing and heritage.

“Albrecht Dümling’s rich documentation of this groundbreaking Berlin jazz band with its sensational show power is both a moving testament to the impudent creativity of youth and a warning against timeless strains of bigotry and terror.” — Alan Lareau, Professor Emeritus of German, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, USA Founded in Berlin in 1924 by the pianist and drummer Stefan Weintraub, the Weintraubs Syncopators were Germany’s most popular jazz band until 1933. They enjoyed success on concert and variety stages, in theatre and film, and in recordings, and were painted by Max Oppenheimer. Forced into exile by the Nazis’ seizure of power, the group, consisting mainly of Jewish musicians, was initially able to continue to perform under difficult conditions in Europe, the Soviet Union and Japan, before temporarily finding a new home in Australia in 1937. The Second World War and internment ended their career. This comprehensive book on the subject, published for the first time in English, traces the fascinating artistic development and moving lives of the Weintraubs Syncopators. The accompanying website brings the versatile art of this jazz band to life in annotated audio and video files.

Languages of Exile examines the relationship between geographic and linguistic border crossings in twentieth-century literature. Like no period before it, the last century was marked by the experience of expatriation, forcing exiled writers to confront the fact of linguistic difference. Literary writing can be read as the site where that confrontation is played out aesthetically – at the intersection between native and acquired language, between indigenous and alien, between self and other – in a complex multilingual dynamic specific to exile and migration.The essays collected here explore this dynamic from a comparative perspective, addressing the paragons of modernism as well as less frequently studied authors, from Joseph Conrad and Peter Weiss to Agota Kristof and Malika Mokeddem. The essays are international in their approach; they deal with the junctions and gaps between English, French, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and other languages. The literary works and practices addressed include modernist poetry and prose, philosophical criticism and autobiography, DADA performance, sound art and experimental music theatre. This volume reveals both the wide range of creative strategies developed in response to the interstitial situation of exile and the crucial role of exile for a renewed understanding of twentieth-century literature.

As Europe experienced tumultuous change after the Second World War, two Polish exiles, Jerzy Stempowski (1893–1969) and Andrzej Bobkowski (1913–1961), discussed and redefined their ideas of the continent in the pages of Kultura, the Polish émigré review. Highlighting the changes in their writings about «the West», «the East» and «civilization», this book pieces together the evolution of their own self-understanding as Europeans, the overlooked shifts of accents along with silences and falsifications. By following these two writers’ accounts of the events that led them from Poland and Ukraine to France, West Germany, Switzerland, the United States and Latin America, this study shows the tension between changing discourses and individual lives, between the wider concept of Europe and the experience of exile, emigration and belonging.

About 9,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany settled in Australia between 1933 and 1945, a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands who fled. Although initially greeted with a mixed reception as «enemy aliens», some of these refugees remained and made a significant impact on multicultural Australia. This book traces the difficult journey of the orchestral performers, virtuoso soloists, singers, conductors and composers who sought refuge on a distant continent. A few were famous artists who toured Australia and stayed, most notably the piano virtuoso Jascha Spivakovsky and the members of the Weintraubs Syncopators, one of the most successful jazz bands of the Weimar Republic. Drawing on extensive primary sources – including correspondence, travel documents and interviews with the refugees themselves or their descendants – the author depicts in vivid detail the lives of nearly a hundred displaced musicians. Available for the first time in English, this volume brings to light a wealth of Jewish, exilic and musical history that was hitherto unknown.

This book is the first comparative study of the novels written by five German-speaking women – Anna Gmeyner, Selma Kahn, Hilde Spiel, Martina Wied and Hermynia Zur Mühlen – who had to flee National Socialist Central Europe. Gmeyner, Spiel, Wied and Zur Mühlen found refuge in Britain and thus added – together with male colleagues such as Stefan Zweig and Robert Neumann – an important but rarely investigated new dimension to the British literary landscape. The aim of this study is to reassess the women refugee writers’ narrative strategies and integrate their work within feminist literary studies. The author investigates the five writers’ narrativisation of everyday life, used to subvert the dominant discourse, and their portrayal of the intersection between class, racial and gender oppression. She also shows their innovative ways of picturing the gendered tension between the experiences of exile and exile as a modernist metaphor as well as their search for ways to refute the Nationalist Socialist rewriting of history. The book situates the novels within the theoretical discussions surrounding exile studies, social history and women’s writing.