Although little other than a cover address in Breslau is known of Jakob Haringer’s life in exile in the years from 1933 to 1935, his exile work opens in spectacular fashion. In his Deutschland-Ode [Ode to Germany] published in 1934 in the exile publication Neuen Tage-Buch, Haringer strikes the tone of sharp, emotional indignation typical of this early period of anti-Fascist exile poetry and pours condemnation on the new rulers: “The brown plague has crept in and suffocated you, / In cowardice they have gagged and bedevilled you - / My most beautiful country.” It is therefore hardly surprising that Haringer soon encountered fierce hostility from writers loyal to the regime, who in the autumn of 1936 condemned him in publications such as the Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte [National Socialist Monthlies] as a “desecrater of our German language, one of the worst exponents of literary trash”. Haringer had already been expatriated shortly before. The writer, variously described as the German successor to François Villon, spent most of his time in Salzburg until the “annexation” of Austria. After spending a short time in Prague in April 1938, he emigrated to Switzerland, where he quickly went into hiding and initially crossed the border to France on several occasions. This was followed by years playing hide-and-seek with the Swiss Federal Aliens Police, several stays in internment camps, begging letters to various benefactors, and finally special status as a “private internee”, who from 1943 was able to live with friends in Bern who acted as his guarantors. In 1946, he moved to Köniz, near Bern. Haringer’s most important work, the poetry anthology Das Fenster [The Window], was published by Pegasus-Verlag that same year.

Selected works:
Hain des Vergessens (Gedichtband, 1917)
Dichtungen (Gedichtband, 1925)
Das Schnarchen Gottes (Gedichtband, 1931)
Das Fenster (Gedichtband, 1946)

Further reading:
Jakob Haringer. Aber des Herzens verbrannte Mühle tröstet ein Vers. Ausgewählte Lyrik, Prosa und Briefe. Hg. von Hildemar Holl. Mit einem Nachwort von Wulf Kirsten. Salzburg/Wien: Residenz Verlag 1988.
Jakob Haringer. Du bist für keinen Stern, kein Glück geborn! Leben, Prosa & Lyrik. Eingeleitet und ausgewählt von Dieter Braeg. Berlin: Die Buchmacherei 2018.