Georg Kaiser went into exile comparatively late, especially considering his rejection of Nazism had been discovered some years previously and he had been excluded from the Prussian Academy of Arts as early as May 1933. After years of seclusion, Kaiser finally left Grünheide in the summer of 1938, just before the Gestapo came to search his house, travelling in the direction of Amsterdam by train and arriving in Switzerland on 19 August. That same year, several of his works appeared on the Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums (List of Harmful and Undesirable Writings). Compared to other writers in exile, Kaiser led a relatively privileged life in Switzerland despite being constantly plagued by financial difficulties. Dramatist Cäsar von Arx in particular was a friend and supporter who acted as his representative when dealing with the Swiss Federal Aliens Police and enabled him to stay at Parkhotel Sonnenberg in Engelberg. Julius Marx was another close confidante, to whom Kaiser soon confessed: “I should like more than anything to work in Hollywood. Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer offered me a contract many years ago, but I felt much closer to Germany at the time. Nowadays, the country seems as remote as Sirius. Back then, I sent a representative; today, I would go myself.” Kaiser’s efforts to emigrate to the USA were unsuccessful. Although his productivity never faltered, the writer increasingly suffered under the conditions in exile and from his own loss of importance. He also felt ill at ease living in Switzerland, and died there in Ascona on 4 June 1945, shortly after the end of the war.

Georg Kaiser’s partial estate in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern consists of documents dating from his exile in Switzerland. The bulk of his estate is housed in the literary archives of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Selected works:
Von morgens bis mitternachts (Stück, 1912)
Die Bürger von Calais (Stück, 1912-13)
Gas (Stück, 1913)
Der Silbersee (Stück, 1933)
Der Soldat Tanaka (Stück, 1940)
Das Floss der Medusa (1940-43)

Further reading:
Mittenzwei, Werner: Exil in der Schweiz. Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg-Verlag 1979, S. 267-281.
Kunst und Leben. Georg Kaiser (1878–1945). Hg. von Sabine Wolf. Berlin: Akademie der Künste 2011.