After a brief internment, during which his manuscripts were also confiscated, the author and journalist Iwan Heilbut fled Berlin in 1933, going into exile in France via Czechoslovakia. In Paris, he worked as a theatre critic and feature writer for the Basel-based National-Zeitung, as well as writing for the Das neue Tage-Buch magazine. After being interned for a few weeks in May 1940, he managed to flee from the German-occupied part of France together with his wife Charlotte and his eight-month-old son Francis. From Marseilles, the Heilbuts organised their onward flight to the USA, which they achieved in late 1940.

Once in New York, Iwan Heilbut initially depended on financial support from aid organisations. He had to work in a factory at times. In 1943, he published the autobiographical novel Birds of Passage, which was based on the experiences of his escape and became his greatest literary success in exile. Following the end of the war, he was appointed as a lecturer in literature at New York’s Hunter College in 1945, which provided him with a proper livelihood for the first time since his time in Paris. Heilbut became a US citizen in 1947.

In 1950, Iwan Heilbut returned to Germany with his family, were he taught and worked as a journalist for newspapers and radio stations. His novel 1933, his second major work dealing with exile and war, was only published shortly before his death, appearing in serialisation in the Das Parlament magazine. Heilbut’s final years were shaped by ill health and he moved around a lot, mainly staying in hotels.

Selected works:
Die öffentlichen Verleumder (Essay, 1937)
Meine Wanderungen (Gedichte, 1942)
Birds of Passage (Roman, 1943)

Further reading:
Asmus, Sylvia: Was bleibt? Zeugnisse von Passagen aus der Sammlung des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945, in: Passagen des Exils, hg. von Burcu Dogramaci und Elisabeth Otto, =Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, 35, 2017, S. 39-53
Berg, Nicolas: Archivspuren einer Denkfigur. Der „amerikanische Goethe“ als Exil- und Projektionsmetapher des deutsch-jüdischen Schriftstellers Iwan Heilbut. In: Asmus, Sylvia/Bischoff, Doerte/Dogramaci, Burcu (Hg.): Archive und Museen des Exils. Berlin: De Gruyter 2019, S. 30-57