Free German League of Culture in Great Britain

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Free German League of Culture in Great Britain (FGLC), also Freier Deutscher Kulturbund in England , Freier Deutscher Kulturbund in Great Britain (FDKB) or Freier Deutscher Kulturbund - Great Britain was an organization of German emigrants in the United Kingdom , which existed from 1939 to 1945. The Kulturbund saw itself as non-partisan, but had close ties to the KPD .

History and activities

It was founded in March 1939 on the initiative of German communists, including Johann Fladung , Jürgen Kuczynski , Marguerite Kuczynski and Hans Schellenberger . Its first president was the writer Hans Flesch-Brunningen . In 1942 or 1943 he was replaced by Fladung.

The inaugural meeting was held at the Quaker House in London. Already in the first year the organization grew to over a thousand members and founded a writer, a painter and a cabaret group "24 black sheep". Speakers at the events included Alfred Kerr , Oskar Kokoschka , JB Priestley , Ludwig Renn , Henry Wickham Steed , Berthold Viertel and Stefan Zweig .

From January 1940, the Free German Cultural Association had a clubhouse at 36 Upper Park Road in the London borough of Hampstead . The house had been made available to the Kulturbund by the Anglican Church and had function rooms, a library, a café and a restaurant as well as a small theater.

From 1940 to 1945 the magazine Freie Deutsche Kultur was published as a newsletter of the Kulturbund, from November 1941 until it was discontinued it was edited by Max Zimmering .

In the summer of 1942 the Free German Cultural Association opened the exhibition "Allies inside Germany" in London, which was then shown as a traveling exhibition under the title "We accuse - Ten years of Hitler Fascism" in many places in Britain:

“It provided information about the situation in Germany, about persecution, oppression and the resistance in all its facets, from civil and religiously motivated resistance to the underground activities of social democrats and communists. This exhibition was one of the most notable activities of the German emigrants organized in the Free German Cultural Association in Great Britain, along with a hitherto hardly noticed appeal by the FDKB to redress the injustice against European Jews. "

In 1943 there was a spin-off directed against the communist dominance of the FDKB, which from then on traded under the name Club 1943 and continued to work after the end of the Second World War (later with the addition of the Anglo-German Cultural Forum ). The reason for this split was a resolution brought in by Alfred Meusel in an FDKB meeting, with which Winston Churchill was to be asked to immediately open a “ second front ” in order to relieve the Soviet Union under attack by the Germans. This was seen by some members of the FKBD as inadmissible interference in British war policy, which first caused Alfred H. Unger to leave the FDKB. Unger quickly joined other emigrants:

“According to Unger, the playwright Hans José Rehfisch , who had also resigned from the FGLC, came to see him on January 1, 1943. When they considered forming a breakaway association, they simply named it after the dawning New Year. The founding members of Club 1943 included some of the cream of the refugee community's intellectual and artistic talent: alongside Rehfisch, its first chairman, and Unger, these included writers like the latter's brother Wilhelm and Hans Flesch , the painter Fred Uhlman , the journalist and literary scholar Grete Fischer, the theater critic Monty Jacobs , the lawyer Hermann Friedmann , the theater owner Arthur Hellmer , the literary historian of the exiled writers Wilhelm Sternfeld and the theater producer, author and philosopher Karl Wollf (so spelt). Those admitted to the Club early on included the poet Erich Fried , the Goethe biographer Richard Friedenthal , the journalist Hans Jäger and - after a spat characteristic of the Club - the novelist Gabriele Tergit . "

Despite these internal disputes and the loss of prominent colleagues, the FKBD continued to play an important role among German-speaking emigrants in Great Britain. In 1943/1944 he was the initiator and important supporter of campaigns in favor of German émigré children and their preparation for a return to Germany after the end of the war, and with them he was able to build on the successes with the previous exhibition "Allies inside Germany".

The Theydon Bois School

The Theydon Bois School was founded towards the end of the Second World War, probably in 1943, on the initiative of the Free German Cultural Association and directed by Hans Schellenberger. A few references to Schellenberger can be found in Feidel-Mertz and Schnorbach: “Schellenberger, Johann, geb. 1907. Teacher. KPD. 1933-35 imprisonment. March 1936 emigration CSR. Leading member of the Czechoslovak national group of the Union des instituteurs allemands émigrés. Expatriated in 1938 on List 31. 1940 England. Collaboration in the national group of German trade unionists in the UK and in the Freíen German Cultural Association in the UK. "

The name Theydon Bois School could refer to the village of Theydon Bois in the Epping Forest district of Essex , a few kilometers northwest of London. After the end of the Spanish Civil War there was a colony for Basque children who, similar to the Kindertransporte , had been brought from Spain to England in 1937. It is not known whether the Theydon Bois School continued this tradition. It is the least researched of the schools in exile . There are few references and hardly any documents to their existence.

The Theydon Bois School was oriented towards building Germany and Austria after the end of the war. Integrated into the political exile movement and work in exile, it should serve to prepare the young German and Austrian refugees for the time after their return home. A leaflet from 1943 states:

“These children who want to return to Germany after the war need a certain amount of instruction in German language, writing, literature, history and geography if they want to be able to play their part in the building up a new and better Germany and we count on you that you will help us to build up this school. Every contribution is one step nearer to achieving our aim which is to prepare these children to play their full part in a free and democratic post-war world. "

“These children, who want to return to Germany after the war, need a certain degree of instruction in the German language, writing, literature, history and geography if they want to do their part to build a new and better Germany, and we are counting on you for that You will help us build this school. Every contribution brings us one step closer to our goal of preparing these children to play their full role in a free and democratic post-war world. "

In the same leaflet, the financial requirement for the first year of school was estimated at £ 2,000. In addition to donations, this money was mainly acquired through exhibitions that the Free German Cultural Association equipped with children's drawings.

The War as Seen by Children

In 1941 the “Refugee Childrens' Evacuation Fund” put together an exhibition entitled Children's Art from all Countries , which contained children's drawings from twelve nations. It took place in the clubhouse of the FDKB in Hampstead and was opened there with lively public participation by Julian Huxley , who later became the first director general of UNESCO . The success gave the impetus to organize an even bigger exhibition. For this purpose, children of emigrants were asked to paint and do handicrafts and to make the results of their work available for sale. The response was great and the already mentioned Basque émigré children also took part.

Based on this fund of works, the much larger exhibition The War as Seen by Children was opened on January 4, 1943 in the London “Cooling Galleries” (New Bond Street). The main speaker at the opening was Oskar Kokoschka . He and John Reed also helped to design further exhibitions from the entire material. Three traveled through Britain, one was brought to the USA by plane - always combined with a request for donations for the German emigrant children. Fladung speaks of 62 exhibition locations and around four million visitors.

The small book The War as Seen by Children emerged from the exhibition. It appeared in 1944 with a selection of children's drawings and together with Oskar Kokoschka's speech at the opening of the exhibition, again published by the “Refugee Children's Evacuation Fund”.

These actions were very successful. Through it both children of emigrants in homes could be supported and the financial basis for the development of the Theydon Bois School was created.

post war period

A selection of the works created by the children for the exhibitions and the book came to Germany with the support of the British military authorities after the end of World War II and could be exhibited in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Free German Cultural Association itself, which was repeatedly attested to be very close to the Communist Party, dissolved in the spring of 1946:

“In retrospect, its importance is assessed very differently by former members. Some artists who re-migrated to the Soviet occupation zone or the GDR attached political importance to their commitment to the FDKB, as they were able to prepare for their future participation in the rebuilding of the GDR. For those members who were not thinking of returning to Germany, however, the Kulturbund had more of a social and cultural purpose by safeguarding "the social and societal interests of the refugees", as stated in the statutes. "

literature

  • Charmian Brinson , Richard Dove: Politics by Other Means: The Free German League of Culture in London 1939-1946. Vallentine Mitchell, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-85303-862-7
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz : Integration and Formation of Identity: Exile Schools in Great Britain. SHOFAR, Volume 23, No. 1, 2004 (electronic publication via JSTOR)
  • Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Education in exile after 1933. Education for survival. dipa, Frankfurt 1990, ISBN 3-7638-0520-6 .
  • Johann Fladung : Experiences. From the Empire to the Federal Republic. Ed., Einl. Josef Schleifstein , Röderberg-Verlag , Frankfurt 1986, ISBN 3-87682-808-2
  • Anthony Grenville, Andrea Ilse Maria Reiter (Ed.): "I didn't want to float, I wanted to belong to something." Refugee Organizations in Britain 1933-1945. Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 10. Rodopi (now Brill), Amsterdam 2008, ISBN 978-90-420-2567-7 ISSN  1388-3720 ; therein Marian Malet: Oskar Kokoschka and the Freie Deutsche Kulturbund: The 'Friendly Alien' as Propagandist. Also: Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove: The Continuation of Politics by Other Means: The Freie Deutsche Kulturbund in London 1939-1946.
  • Peter Seibert: "The War as Seen by Children?" Children's drawings and exile. In: Günter Helmes, Ariane Martin, Birgit Nübel, Georg-Michael Schulz (eds.): Literature and life: Anthropological aspects in the culture of modernity. Festschrift for Helmut Scheuer on his 60th birthday. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-8233-5883-9 , pp. 387-398

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The Free German Cultural Association in Great Britain ( Memento from August 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on arts in exile
  2. ^ Fladung, Johannes In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  3. ^ Jürgen Kuczynski: Memoirs. Cologne 1983, p. 300 f.
  4. ↑ It is difficult to find biographical data on Hans Schellenberger. In the Pedagogical-Political Emigration (PPE) holdings in the exile collections, the documents for the German Educational Reconstruction Committee contain an application for expatriation from the Secret State Police (Gestapo) dated February 26, 1938. This shows that Johannes Gottfried Schellenberger was in Dresden was born and was a teacher by profession. In their application, the Gestapo accused him of:
    a) At the end of March 1933, he was arrested after a house search in which Communist writings were found, as well as a dagger and a pistol. Sentenced to seven months in prison by a special court in Freiburg. After serving the term of protective custody until December 20, 1935 in the Sachsenburg protective custody camp.
    b) Immediately after his release he took over the management of the illegal Red Wehr in the Vogtland.
    c) On March 19, 1936, he fled to Czechoslovakia because he feared his arrest. He stayed in the Strasnice emigrant camp near Prague (today: Strašnice in the Prague administrative district) and worked in the camp management.
    The German legation in Prague informed the Foreign Office in Berlin on March 18, 1938 that there were no concerns about the expatriation.
  5. ↑ A more detailed presentation of the work of the FGLC in English is available at: The Free German League of Culture
  6. ^ Report by Hans Flesch-Brunningen in the newsletter of the Kulturbund from December 1939, cited ibid, p. 301.
  7. ↑ A picture of the clubhouse can be seen on the website Free German League of Culture - Visual Artists in Exile in England .
  8. ↑ Free German League of Culture - visual artists in exile in England
  9. ^ Club 1943 . For the further history of the club in 1943 see also: Jens Brüning: Caravanserai of Old Europe. The history of the club in 1943. In: A. Grenville and A. Reiter (Eds.): I didn't want to float. Pp. 67-88.
  10. ↑ Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove ( Politics by Other Means. P. 14) refer to him as a former teacher.
  11. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach: teachers in emigration. P. 234. The Union des instituteurs allemands émigrés is the association of German teacher emigrants founded at the end of 1933 (ibid., P. 97)
  12. ^ Basque Children of '37 Association UK
  13. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Pedagogy in Exile after 1933. P. 149.
  14. ↑ The Refugee Childrens' Evacuation Fund, which had the same address as the FDKB, was named as the contact person for donations. The secretary of the "Fund" was Hans Siebert (1910–1979), who after 1947 headed the school department of the Central Committee of the SED and later - after a temporary suspension - accompanied a professorship for education at the Technical University of Dresden. For this: Klaus-Peter Horn: Educational science in Germany in the 20th century: On the development of the social and technical structure of the discipline from initial institutionalization to expansion. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn / Obb, 2003, ISBN 978-3-7815-1271-9 , pp. 346-347.
  15. ↑ Hans Fladung: Experiences. P. 271.
  16. ↑ Aid campaigns should be supported from the sales proceeds.
  17. ↑ Peter Seibert: 'The War as Seen by Children' ?. P. 392. Seibert's question mark is derived from his question of the extent to which pictures of children are “children's art” and what Kokoschka contributed to the “ennobling” of the two exhibitions in London. In Oskar Kokoschka's book Mein Leben (Verlag F. Bruckmann, Munich, 1971, ISBN 3-7654-1377-1 ) these exhibitions and their subsequent publications play no role.
  18. ↑ Hans Fladung: Experiences. Pp. 271-272. What is striking is that in the detailed study by Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove, Politics by Other Means , the above-mentioned exhibition “The Allies inside Germany” takes up a lot of space (pp. 123–125), but not by Theydon Bois School is still talking about the exhibitions with the children's drawings or the book The War as Seen by Children . Since the two authors were familiar with Fladung's book (it is listed in their bibliography on p. 237), this once again brings the insufficient research on the Theydon Bois School into focus.
  19. ↑ At least as described by Hans Fladung: Experiences. Pp. 271-272. Specific information about these actions cannot be found.
  20. ↑ Hans Fladung: Experiences. P. 273. Fladung leaves the exact time open, but points out that he gave the opening speech, as he did at the exhibition opening in London.