Thomas Mann, Frank Thieß, Walter von Molo: Ein Streitgespräch über die äußere und die innere Emigration (1946)
Thomas Mann, Frank Thieß, Walter von Molo: Ein Streitgespräch über die äußere und die innere Emigration (1946)
Auch ich bin oft gefragt worden, warum ich nicht emigriert sei, und konnte immer nur dasselbe antworten: Falls es mir gelänge, diese schauerliche Epoche, (über deren Dauer wir uns freilich alle getäuscht hätten) lebendig zu überstehen, würde ich dadurch derart viel für meine geistige Entwicklung gewonnen haben, daß ich reicher an Wissen und Erleben daraus hervorginge, als wenn ich aus den Logen und Parterreplätzen des Auslands der deutschen Tragödie zuschaute.
[I have often been asked why I did not emigrate, and I could only give the same answer each time: if I succeeded in surviving this horrible age (whose duration we admittedly all misjudged), I would emerge from it having gained so much for my intellectual development that I would be richer in terms of knowledge and experience than if I had been a spectator of the German tragedy from the loges and parterres abroad. (ed. trans.)]
Frank Thieß, Die innere Emigration, 1946
In a piece for the Hessische Post from 4 August 1945, the writer Walter von Molo (1880-1958), the former head of the poetry section of the Prussian Academy of Arts, called on Thomas Mann and with him all other exiled artists to return to Germany. Mann reacted to the public appeal by his colleague with an essay in the Neue Schweizer Rundschau. Its title left no room for speculation: Why I will not return to Germany. In his text, the Nobel laureate describes his alienation from his homeland, in which he confesses that he fears the German ruins – the “ones of stone and the human ones”. He also said that he was afraid that reaching understanding between one who experienced the witch's sabbath from outside and those who “joined the dance and waited on Squire Urianus” would be very difficult.
The exchange of letters led to a public dispute between exiles like Mann and representatives of the concept of inner migration, i.e. artists who opted to remain in Germany during the NS period in spite of personal restrictions and chicanery. One of their chief proponents was Latvia-born writer Frank Thieß (1890-1977), who was later the vice president of the German Academy of Language and Literature in Darmstadt.
The pictured brochure, an artefact of this most important literary debate of the post-War years in Germany, was published in Dortmund by Druckschriften Vertriebsdienst in 1946.
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