Alexander Moritz Frey, letter to Ossip Kalenter, 1945
Alexander Moritz Frey, letter to Ossip Kalenter, 1945
Die Nazis trieben, wie wir schon zu Beginn unseres Abrisses hervorhoben, nicht bloß eine Anzahl von Schriftstellern, sondern eine Literatur ins Exil. Diese Literatur zählte Schriftsteller ganz verschiedener Tendenzen, Weltanschauungen, Temperamente und Methoden zu den ihren. […] Aber trotz der Vielfalt von Formen und Temperamenten, von Kunst- und Lebensanschauungen einte den Kern der exilierten Literatur das Bewußtsein, Erbe einer großen, von den Nazis schmählich verratenen und geschändeten humanistischen Tradition zu sein.
[As we emphasised at the beginning of our outline, the Nazis forced not only a large number of writers into exile but also a whole branch of literature. Among the ranks of this literary offshoot were writers of widely varying tendencies, world views, temperaments and styles. [...] Yet despite their diversity of form and temperament, their differing views on art and life, what united the writers who made up the core of exile literature was the awareness of being heirs to a great humanist tradition that had been shamefully betrayed and desecrated by the Nazis. (trans. ed.)]
F. C. Weiskopf in his study of German-language exile literature, 1947
F. C. Weiskopfs book Unter fremden Himmeln (“Under Foreign Skies”, 1947/48) is one of the earliest literary and historical studies of German-language exile literature between 1933 and 1945. In it, Weiskopf discusses a number of exile-related topics and turning points, sheds light on individual genres and writing styles, and mentions authors, publishers and journals that played pivotal roles in the field of exile literature. Weiskopf, who compiled the study between 1944 and 1947 in New York and Cape Cod, was both able and obliged by necessity to draw on primary sources, as can be seen in the acknowledgements. One of his sources was writer Alexander Moritz Frey, who lived in exile in Basel; he is mentioned several times in the book and also sent several letters to fellow Swiss exile Ossip Kalenter asking him for information for Weiskopf’s book. From 1945, Kalenter held office as the secretary of the Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller im Ausland (Association for the Protection of German Writers Abroad), and it was in this function that Frey wrote to him. Kalenter in turn delegated the research work to others, including – as a pencilled annotation in the top margin of the letter indicates – Bruno Kaiser, resistance fighter and former editor of the Vossische Zeitung newspaper, who later became a departmental director at Berlin State Library. Frey’s letter is revealing evidence of how authors who themselves felt the impact of exile actively cooperated on this early, extremely meticulous appraisal of the dark times in German literary history ushered in by the Nazi regime.
Further reading:
Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933–1945. Hrsg. von Claus-Dieter Krohn u.a. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2008.
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