Exile literature

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Exilliteratur , even emigrants literature that is literature of writers referred to the need to seek refuge in a foreign land involuntarily, because their person or their work is threatened at home. Mostly political or religious reasons are decisive for the flight into exile .

The term “exile literature” is the more commonly used. While emigration neutrally describes the change of place of residence from one country to another, exile rather means the country that becomes a place of refuge. Sometimes the term is also used for literary works that have to appear as forbidden literature in exile publishers, even if their authors stay in their home country, i.e. are not emigrants.

Exile literature in antiquity and in the Middle Ages

Already in the ancient writer of goods censorship and persecution by the state power, so they wrote their works in exile, so Hipponax or Ovid , in the Middle Ages u. a. To name Dante Alighieri .

Exile literature from modern times to the 20th century

Exile literature as a general phenomenon emerged with the religious wars of the 16th century, when numerous Protestant poets had to leave their Catholic homelands. Until the 17th and 18th centuries, exile literature was largely religious literature ; Political exile literature gained in importance at the end of the 18th century.

In the 19th century the German exiled writers Heinrich Heine , Ludwig Börne , Ferdinand Freiligrath , Karl Marx and Georg Büchner published in Paris and London respectively . Adam Mickiewicz , Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński are among the best-known Polish writers in exile in Paris , and Turgenew from Russia should be mentioned. Victor Hugo went after the coup of the later Napoléon III. by Guernsey into exile and did not return until after Napoleon's downfall. Napoleon III Before he came to power, he wrote several theoretical works in exile in London and New York.

Modern exile literature from the 20th century

In the 20th century, exile literature grew into a worldwide phenomenon. Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa are the starting points for numerous exiled authors.

Exile literature in Russia

Until 1917 there were authors in exile in Russia who opposed tsarist rule ( Lenin , Maxim Gorki ); After the October Revolution , their opponents had to leave the country to write, some of them returning later ( Shklowskij , Andrei Bely , Alexei Tolstoy ). IA Bunin (1933), Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1970) and Joseph Brodsky (1987) were awarded the Nobel Prize. After 1945 writers such as Andrei Amalrik (1976) and Solzhenitsyn (expelled 1974) went into exile.

German exile literature

The German exile literature was 1933-1945 as the literature of the opponents of Nazism . The book burnings on May 10, 1933 and the German attack on neighboring countries in 1938/39 played a decisive role. Emigration centers sprang up in Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Zurich, Prague, Moscow, New York and Mexico, where publishers were founded under mostly difficult conditions. Well-known publishers for exile literature were z. B. in Amsterdam the Querido Verlag and Allert de Lange Verlag , in Zurich the Europa Verlag of the bookseller Emil Oprecht . Outside Europe there were z. E.g. in Mexico the publishing house El libro libre (The free book) founded in 1942 under the direction of Walter Janka and in New York in 1944 the Aurora publishing house by Wieland Herzfelde .

The most famous authors in exile included Bertolt Brecht , Ernst Bloch , Hermann Broch , Ferdinand Bruckner , Elias Canetti , Alfred Döblin , Hilde Domin , Lion Feuchtwanger , Bruno Frank , AM Frey , Anna Gmeyner , Oskar Maria Graf , Heinrich Eduard Jacob , Marta Karlweis , Hermann Kesten , Egon Erwin Kisch , Annette Kolb , Siegfried Kracauer , Maria Lazar , Emil Ludwig , Heinrich Mann , Klaus Mann , Thomas Mann , Robert Neumann , Balder Olden , Rudolf Olden , Erich Maria Remarque , Ludwig Renn , Alice Rühle-Gerstel , Otto Rühle , Hans Sahl , Alice Schwarz-Gardos , Anna Sebastian , Anna Seghers , Adrienne Thomas , B. Traven , Käthe Vordtriede , Peter Weiss , Franz Werfel , Bodo Uhse and Arnold Zweig . Germanists like John Spalek have dedicated themselves to these writers.

The authors Ernst Toller , Walter Hasenclever , Walter Benjamin , Kurt Tucholsky , Stefan Zweig , and Ernst Weiß died in exile by suicide , Klaus Mann a few years after the end of the Second World War after he could no longer settle in post-war Germany.

On the other hand, there remained writers in Germany who retreated into internal emigration , such as Frank Thiess , Stefan Andres , Gottfried Benn , Reinhold Schneider , Werner Bergengruen , Erich Kästner , Ernst Kreuder , Gertrud von Le Fort , Ernst Wiechert and Ehm Welk .

Estonian exile literature

Around 70,000 people left Estonia towards the west towards the end of the Second World War . The proportion of intellectuals in them was disproportionately high, so that after the war almost a third of the better-known Estonian authors were in exile. They came mainly to Sweden and Germany , later larger exile communities arose in Canada , the USA and Australia . Several publishing houses were founded in exile ( ORTO , Eesti Kirjanike Kooperatiiv ), and book production was higher than in Stalinist Soviet Estonia until well into the 1950s . The best-known representatives of Estonian exile literature are August Gailit , Bernard Kangro , Karl Ristikivi , Gustav Suits , Marie Under and Henrik Visnapuu .

Jewish exile literature

Jewish exile literature forms a special direction . Her best-known representatives include, for example, Nelly Sachs (Nobel Prize 1966), Else Lasker-Schüler and Maria Lazar . Jewish exile literature also plays a role in Yiddish-speaking centers in the United States. The best known representative is Isaac Bashevis Singer (Nobel Prize 1978).

The Eastern European exile literature is also rich as a result of developments in the former Eastern Europe.

Exile literature in Czechoslovakia

In Czechoslovakia there were two large waves of emigration in the 20th century - and thus twice the unwanted replenishment of exile literature. In 1948, after the Communist Party seized power, over 60,000 Czechs and Slovaks left their country. The emigration mainly left behind the liberal magazine Svědectví (German: witness ), which was published by Pavel Tigrid in Paris . About 250,000 residents left the country after the Prague Spring was crushed in August 1968. In addition to many publishers that published the banned works by Czech and Slovak writers, the most important of which was the 68 Publishers founded in 1971 in Toronto by Josef Škvorecký and his wife Zdena Salivarová and led by her, the mainly politically active periodicals Listy (published in Rome under the direction of Jiří Pelikán) and the much smaller magazine informační materiály (published anonymously in West Berlin ).

Federal Republic and GDR

Calling the works of authors who moved to the FRG (e.g. Günter Kunert , Sarah Kirsch , Jürgen Fuchs ) from the GDR as exile literature is controversial. In the West, these writers often had neither publication nor language problems, and therefore apparently switched from cold to warm water. But Wolf Biermann summed up his soul as an exiled GDR writer in the drastic words: From the rain to the manure.

Exile literature in the United States

Migrant writer

One area within contemporary German literature is German-language migrant literature . Some of their authors can be attributed to the literary exiles, and some of the reasons for their migration can be found in the recruitment of labor since the 1950s or in other social and economic areas. Here you can find the authors of the literature referred to as guest worker literature from a wide variety of countries of origin. Analogous to the recruitment of foreign workers , writers of Italian origin were initially the most important group, later authors of Turkish origin in particular attracted a lot of attention.

Today, such migrant writers are among the most important German-speaking authors, such as Yōko Tawada , Ilija Trojanow , Emine Sevgi Özdamar , Feridun Zaimoglu , Galsan Tschinag or Wladimir Kaminer and many others. The Robert Bosch Stiftung awards the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize every year to authors whose mother tongue is not German.

literature

  • Eva Bloch u. a. (Ed.): Basic concepts and authors of East Central European exile literature 1945–1989. A contribution to systematisation and typology . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-08389-8 .
  • Siglinde Bolbecher , Konstantin Kaiser : Lexicon of Austrian exile literature. Deuticke, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-216-30548-1 .
  • Richard Drews, Alfred Kantorowicz (ed.): Forbidden and burned. German literature suppressed for 12 years , Heinz Ullstein, Kindler, Berlin / Munich 1947 ( DNB 450999203 ); NA: 1983, ISBN 3-463-00860-2 .
  • Manfred Durzak (Ed.): The German Exile Literature 1933-1945 . Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-15-010225-1 .
  • Brita Eckert: The Beginnings of Exile Research in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945-1975. An overview (56-page PDF document), in: Sabine Koloch (Hrsg.): 1968 in German literature / topic group “Post-war German studies in criticism” (literaturkritik.de archive / special editions) (2020).
  • Wolfgang Emmerich: Poetry of Exile . Reclam, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 978-3-15-008089-4 .
  • Konrad Feilchenfeldt : German Exile Literature 1933–1945. Commentary on an epoch , Winkler, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-538-07040-7 .
  • Manfred Hammes : Tell me about the south . With numerous contributions on the life and work of German-speaking exile authors, particularly in Sanary-sur-Mer and Marseille . Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 978-3-88423-230-9 .
  • Ludwig Hoffmann: Art and Literature in Exile 1933–1945 , seven volumes, Reclam, Leipzig 1987, ISBN 3-379-00229-1 .
  • Carsten Jakobi: The small victory over anti-Semitism . Representation and interpretation of the National Socialist persecution of Jews in the German-speaking period of exile 1933–1945. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-484-35106-3
  • jour fixe initiative berlin (ed.): Fluchtlinien des Exils . Unrast , Münster 2004, ISBN 3-89771-431-0 .
  • Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Journalism in exile and other topics. (= Exile research. An international yearbook. Volume 7). edition text & kritik, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-88377-321-2
  • Wolf Köpcke, Michael Winkler (ed.): Exile literature 1933–1945 . Wissenschaftlich Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1989, ISBN 3-534-01756-0 .
  • Kurt Köster (Ed.): Exil-Literatur 1933–1945 Exhibition by the German Library, Frankfurt am Main, May to August 1965 (special publication by the German Library No. 1). Commissioned by the Booksellers Association Frankfurt am Main 1965.
  • Martin Mauthner: German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940 , Vallentine Mitchell, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-85303-540-4 .
  • Avid Pike: German writers in Soviet exile 1933–1945 , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-03856-7 .
  • Valerie Popp: "But everything was different here ..." Pictures of America from German-language exile literature after 1939 in the USA . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3831-0 .
  • Birgit Schmidt: When the party discovers the people. Anna Seghers , Bodo Uhse , Ludwig Renn u. a. A critical contribution to the popular front ideology and its literature . Unsrast , Münster 2002, ISBN 3-89771-412-4 ( Dissertation Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg 2001 under the title: ... who wouldn't be human if he didn't love his country? )
  • Claudia Schoppmann (Ed.) The language in flight luggage. German-speaking women writers in exile, Orlanda-Frauenverlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-922166-78-4 and Fischer TB 1995, ISBN 3-596-12318-6 .
  • Hans J. Schütz (Ed.): I was once a German poet. Forgotten and misunderstood authors of the 20th century , CH Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-33308-7 .
  • Jürgen Serke: The burned poets. With photos by Wilfried Bauer. Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim / Basel 1979, ISBN 3-407-80757-0 .
  • Peter Stahlberger: The Zurich publisher Emil Oprecht and German political emigration, 1933–1945. Preface by Jean Rudolf von Salis . Europa Verlag, Zurich 1970, DNB 458210978 (Dissertation University of Zurich, Philosophical Faculty I, Zurich 1970. 407 pages, 8).
  • Wilhelm Sternfeld, Eva Tiedemann: German Exile Literature 1933-1945, A Bio-Bibliography , Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1970 ( DNB 458233188 ).
  • Hans-Albert Walter (Ed.): Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1950 , Volume 7 Exilpresse, Luchterhand Collection 1974, ISBN 3-472-61136-7 .
  • Ruth Werfel (Ed.): Rushed. Southern France 1940. German writers in exile . NZZ Libro, Zurich 2007, ISBN 3-03823-308-0 and Fink, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7705-4573-5 .
  • Klaus Ulrich Werner: poet exile and poet novel. Studies on the hidden issues of exile in German exile literature 1933-1945 , Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1987, ISBN 3-8204-8685-2 .

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Exile literature  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

notes

  1. ↑ Jean Firges offers a time-spanning comparison of three well-known exiles : Büchner, Lenz , Celan . The walk through the mountains. Conversation in the mountains. Exemplary series literature and philosophy, 29th Annweiler 2010
  2. ↑ Raimo Raag: Eestlane väljaspool Eestit. Tartu 1999, p. 62.
  3. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : History of Estonian Literature. From the beginning to the present. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, p. 545.
  4. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt: § 39: The consolidation of the exile community, in: Ders .: History of Estonian literature. From the beginning to the present. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, pp. 562-581.