Literature in the time of National Socialism

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The literary creation of German-speaking authors and dealing with literature on the Nazi era were either strongly marked by the influence of the Nazi regime or compromised.

General

Shortly after the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, writers such as Alfred Döblin , Leonhard Frank , Klaus and Heinrich Mann went into exile . Thomas Mann stayed in France after a lecture tour.

Book Burning in Berlin (May 1933)

On May 10, 1933 , book burnings of unpopular authors, organized by the German student body , took place in almost all German university towns. Works by Sigmund Freud , Erich Kästner , Karl Marx , Heinrich Mann , Klaus Mann , Carl von Ossietzky , Erich Maria Remarque and Kurt Tucholsky, among others, went up in flames.

Numerous intellectuals committed themselves to National Socialism at an early stage . In 1933 Gottfried Benn explicitly sided with “the new state” and attacked the literary “emigrants”. The Germanist Benno von Wiese joined the NSDAP in May 1933 . The National Socialists found support in existing right-wing organizations such as the nationalist "Working Group of National Writers", a sub-association of the " Protection Association of German Writers " and the national-conservative " German Poet Academy ".

In the context of the so-called Gleichschaltung , writers' organizations were banned or brought together in the Reich Chamber of Literature founded in October 1933 . In order to become a member, one had to submit a so-called Aryan certificate . An exclusion meant a professional ban. The Union of National Writers emerged from the German PEN Center in 1934 at the instigation of Hanns Johst and Gottfried Benn . The Association of German Writers Austria was founded in Austria in 1936 , and it worked vigorously towards the Anschluss .

The cleansing of Public libraries, bookstores and libraries as early as 1933 based on the criteria of the list of harmful and undesirable writings . At the beginning of the 1940s there were over 4,000 individual titles, 500 authors and all writings by Jewish authors (or those by so-called "half-Jews" ) on the index. The waiver of official full censorship meant that publishers and authors would have had to send their works to the Gestapo for appraisal in cases of doubt and were thus intimidated into self-censorship.

Since the pogroms on November 9, 1938 , official pressure was extended to other authors such as Günter Eich , Peter Huchel and Ernst Kreuder .

Literature in the service of the National Socialists

novel

The typical historical novels of National Socialism mostly had Eastern colonization , the Peasants' War , Prussian history or the wars of liberation against Napoleonic France as their theme, with the historical legitimation of the Third Reich being the main objective. These included Wolter von Plettenberg (1938) by Hans Friedrich Blunck or The First German (1934) by Hjalmar Kutzleb about Hermann the Cheruscan . Charismatic leaders were usually chosen as protagonists in order to provide evidence of the legitimacy of the leadership state . Examples in contemporary novels were works such as Ein Trupp SA: A Piece of Contemporary History (1933) by Waldemar Glaser or party member Schmiedecke (1934) by Alfred Karrasch .

Peasant novels contained popular backward-looking, romanticizing depictions of rural lifestyles. The depiction of a conflict-free village community followed the idea of ​​an intact national community , as implemented in Shylock among farmers (1934) by Felix Nabor or Der Bannwald (1939) by Joseph Georg Oberkofler .

Settler novels arose from the blood-and-soil myth, which wasprogrammatically portrayedin Volk ohne Raum (1926) by Hans Grimm . They reported on the life of German minorities and the life of German settlers in the eastern regions in order to justify the National Socialists' claim to expansion. Examples of this are the novels Kompost (1934) by Ulrich Sander or Volk auf dem Weg (1930–1942) by Josef Ponten , who, like Gottfried Rothacker , particularly spread the Heim ins Reich ideology. They were marked by strong anti-communism , like And God is silent ...? (1936) by Edwin Erich Dwinger . The Canadian novels by the author Ilse Schreiber between 1938 and 1943 also propagated the racial superiority of Germans abroad who subjugated the wilderness of Canada.

War novels glorified the front-line experiences of the veterans from the First World War . In addition, there were war poets meetings in Berlinin 1936. The contents were mostly clichéd tirades of hatred against the opponent and a constantly asserted certainty of victory. For the glorification of war served u. a. the novels Volk im Feuer (1934) by Otto Paust or Panzerführer. Daily papers from the French campaign (1941) by Edwin Erich Dwinger.

The women's novels of the National Socialists reflected the traditional image of women as housewives and mothers. The emancipatory image of women in the 1920s was reversed and women were presented as the “birthing machine” for the Führer . For example, Kuni Tremel-Eggert's great success work Barb, Roman einer Deutschen Frau (1933) or Wilhelm Schmidtbonn's Anna Brand (1939) stands for this.

drama

The drama played a special role under National Socialism due to its high degree of mass influence. It was both heavily subsidized and controlled by the Reich Dramaturgy. Thematically it was mostly about historical martyrs that celebrated the “front-line community” and the “courage to fight”. After the turn of the war in 1942/43, the drama was finally put into the service of perseverance propaganda. Examples of this are the dramas Schlageter (1933) by Hanns Johst and the so-called “Prussian Cycle” by Hans Rehberg between 1934 and 1937.

Thing game

A new kind of performance was the so-called Thingspiel under National Socialism . Mass choirs, emotional performances and ritual events were supposed to create a feeling of community . In the sense of an old Germanic people's court, a judgment of the people was often pronounced at the end. After Eberhard Wolfgang Möller's performance of the Frankenburg dice game during the 1936 Summer Olympics, interest in this genre fell and state funding was discontinued. Another typical example of the Thingspiel is the German Passion 1933 (1933) by Richard Euringer .

Poetry

Lyric poetry in the Third Reich mainly relied on classical-romantic traditions. Due to the pompous use of language, the blood-and-soil ideology, an extremely flat traditionalism and pathos, part of the lyric involuntarily showed comical traits.

The community song was a very popular medium . Often going back to older soldier and folk songs, this form made its simple sentence structure, its constant repetitions, imperatives and catchy rhythms easy to remember. The purpose of this lyric was to convey a collective experience and the transfiguration of the regime as well as the pseudo-religious veneration of the Führer . The songs Im Marching Step of the SA (1933) by Herybert Menzel , Des Blutes Gesänge (1935) by Herbert Böhme or We May Serve (1937) by Gerhard Schumann are examples of this genre.

Literature of Political Resistance

Quite a number of authors, mostly communists or socialists, joined the active resistance during the rule of the regime and had to continue their work in illegality. They saw their main task here in the duty to provide information about the true conditions in Germany. Traditional forms of literature were largely useless in underground work, so main media such as leaflets, posters, sticky notes, wall slogans or anti-fascist newspapers were used. The works were often created as so-called "disguised literature", as anonymous publications. The main groups of the resistance included the union of proletarian revolutionary writers and the Schulze-Boysen / Harnack group , the “Red Orchestra”.

Inner emigration

Exile literature

Many authors whose life in Germany was directly threatened (Jewish descent, communists, etc.) fled abroad. But also those who would have liked to be used as figureheads by the National Socialists left Germany. The most prominent example of the latter is the Nobel Prize winner for literature Thomas Mann , who went into exile in February 1933 .

The number of so-called exile authors was around 1,500. As a rule, the writers first fled to neighboring European countries such as Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands or Czechoslovakia. The Querido publishing house was founded in Amsterdam and dedicated itself specifically to German exile literature . Because of the increasing danger on the European continent before the German invasions, there was a wave of emigration to the United States, South America, the Soviet Union and today's Israel between 1939 and 1940 . What the heterogeneous group of authors in exile had in common was their opposition to the regime and the claim to want to represent the “other Germany”. This is how Klaus Mann found :

“The German writer in exile saw his function as twofold: On the one hand, it was about warning the world about the Third Reich and explaining the true character of the regime, but at the same time with the 'other', 'better' Germany, the illegal one to keep in contact with those who are secretly opposing and to provide the resistance movement in their homeland with literary material; On the other hand, it was important to keep alive the great tradition of the German spirit and the German language, a tradition for which there was no longer any place in the country of their origin, and to develop it through one's own creative contribution. "

- Klaus Mann

However, there were only limited opportunities for publications in German in literary magazines or publishers. The writers in exile lived in very different material circumstances. Few were able to maintain their standard of living. Most of the authors had problems securing their material existence. Furthermore, the work was often characterized by difficulties with the bureaucracies of the host country. Entry was mostly made with forged or soon-to-expire passports. The German citizenship was withdrawn from the authors, and many had to endeavor to obtain tolerance from the immigration authorities. In many places, work in exile was characterized by the permanent fear of deportation, the threat from Nazi agents, the rejection by the population and the deprivation of literary livelihoods. Many of the authors fell silent in loneliness and despair. There were few exiles without mental trauma. One consequence was the large number of suicides among the exiled authors.

General characteristics of exile literature

The predominantly style-conservative attitude of most authors can be explained by the emergence of the New Objectivity in the Weimar Republic . The literature was hardly shaped by expressionist influences. Added to this was the decline in the desire for formal experimentation and the turn to social and political problems. Most of the exiled writers continued on the path they started before 1933. So also the most famous, Thomas Mann , who brought out many of his works during these years. Among them was his story Das Gesetz , in which he implicitly refers to National Socialism. There is no common and specific style of exile.

Exile prose

The preferred genre was the novel. This form of literature met the reading needs of an international audience and thus had higher publication chances. While a large part of the publications were directed directly against the National Socialist regime, there was still relatively non-political literature to a lesser extent.

The time novels differed according to the setting.

Exile novels primarily pursued the purpose of educating people about the Third Reich in the form of documentaries and reports. Later there were two typical variants. On the one hand, the prehistory of the Nazi regime was presented in novels such as Anna Segher's Der Kopflohn and Die Rettung or Maria Lazar's The Natives of Maria Blut . On the other hand, the model-like depiction of National Socialist Germany took place in novels, for example in After Midnight by Irmgard Keun . In the novels, the exile situation was processed literarily. The most famous example is probably Anna Segher's work Transit .

On the other hand, Alfred Döblin analyzed the failed revolution of 1918 and the resulting lack of democratization in Germany as the cause of the Third Reich in his November 1918 novel cycle .

Historical novels enjoyed great popularity among the writers who were expelled from Germany. The readership went far beyond the ranks of the exiles. The flood of historical novels sparked debate among exiles. However, it is to be criticized that this form of literature was often an escape from the problems of the present and thus a surrender to the political enemy. The historical novels were often based on fables and stories borrowed from history with strong parallels to developments in Germany, such as Lion Feuchtwanger's Der Falsche Nero . It often contained satirical allusions to leading Nazi politicians. Many historical novels also dealt with Jewish history.

Utopian novels were based on an imaginary future. A clear cultural pessimism can be observed here, for example in Das Glasperlenspiel by Hermann Hesse or in Stern der Unborn by Franz Werfel .

A large number of autobiographical epoch balances from this period reveal the authors' need to work through their own life in a literary way. They document the awareness that was widespread at the time that we were at a turning point. Examples of such autobiographies are Zuckmayer Pro Domo , Klaus Mann's The Turning Point (dt. The turning point ) or Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday . Memories of a European . Furthermore, the autobiography of the Jewish journalist Käthe Vordtriede is “There are times when you wither”. To name my life in Germany before and after 1933 , which only became known posthumously . Her work was part of a Harvard University writing competition in 1939 and was lost until the late 1990s.

Exillyric

The poetry is quantitatively modest compared to the prose of exile. Publication options were almost only available in the exile press. Around 200 volumes of poetry by individual poets were published in exile countries, but the far greater part of them did not appear until after 1945. The overall picture was determined by poets who had already emerged before 1933 ( Bertolt Brecht , Johannes R. Becher , Karl Wolfskehl , Else Lasker-Schüler ).

Exile drama

The exile situation was particularly difficult for playwrights, and what they wrote usually had no prospect of performance. Nevertheless, there are around 420 verifiable dramatists with 500 to 700 plays. Time pieces were initially considered the most important dramatic genre in exile. The era of the Zeitstück began at the end of November 1933 with the publication of Ferdinand Bruckner's Die Rassen . A typical representative is also Friedrich Wolf's Professor Mamlock . By publishing historical dramas, comedies and parables, authors in exile wanted to gain access to foreign theaters that was usually denied them with anti-fascist episodes.

See also

literature

  • Christian Adam : Reading under Hitler - authors, bestsellers and readers in the Third Reich , Galiani, Berlin 2010 ISBN 978-3-86971-027-3 : as paperback: Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-596-19297- 7 .
  • Jan-Pieter Barbian : Literary politics in the Nazi state. From 'Gleichschaltung' to ruin , Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-596-16306-9 .
  • Wolfgang Beutin, Klaus Ehlert, Wolfgang Emmerich: German history of literature. From the beginnings to the present , 6th improved and expanded edition, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01758-3 .
  • Albrecht Götz von Olenhusen: “The treasure in the Silbersee” as a bestseller in the “Third Reich” . In: Mitteilungen der Karl-May-Gesellschaft No. 143/2005 (online version) , pp. 34–39.
  • Sebastian Graeb-Könneker (Ed.): Literature in the Third Reich: Documents and Texts , Reclam, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-15-018148-8 (= Reclams Universal Library , Volume 18148).
  • Wilhelm Haefs (Ed.): Hanser's Social History of German Literature from the 16th Century to the Present , Volume 9: National Socialism and Exile 1933–1945 , Hanser, Munich / Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-446-12784-5 .
  • Paul Riegel & Wolfgang van Rinsum: German Literature History , Volume 10: Third Reich and Exile 1933-45 , dtv, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-03350-9 .
  • Timothy W. Ryback : Hitler's books: his library - his thinking (original title: Hitler's private library , translated by Heike Schlatterer, with a foreword by Norbert Frei ), Fackelträger, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-7716-4437-6 .
  • Hans Sarkowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. A biographical lexicon. Extended new edition, Europa, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-203-82030-7 .

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