women in exile in great britain

Gcrman Lifc and Lettcrs 47:l January 1994 0016-8777

WOMEN IN EXILE IN GREAT BRITAIN

J. M. RITCHIE

For a long time the only name known to Exile Studies, as far as Britain was concerned, was that of Gabriele Tergit. Not only did she write one of the first surveys of the exile situation in England:’ she was herself a writer with a considerable reputation from the days of the Weimar Republic. Despite her essay, exile in Britain tended to take a back seat compared with the apparently greater significance of Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands and the United States. Attention naturally focused on the few famous German authors who had found refuge in Britain for short periods. Austrians were overlooked and Sudeten Germans were largely ignored. While this was generally the case even as regards men writers, it was even more the case with women writers. Since then the situation has changed. Books have appeared with titles like Frauen im Exil and Vcrbrunnt, verboten, vergessen.2 In addition to this ‘Kleines Lexikon’ there is now a computerised index of women writers in exile3 and there have been conferences on the ~ u b j e c t . ~ And yet enough has not been done, and in particular enough has not been done with respect to women in exile in Great Britain. There are, for example, very few British exiles in the book Frauen irn Exil and altogether from existing sources it is very difficult to build up an overall picture of who was in exile in this country, what conditions they operated under, how successful they were, or even from a feminist point of view to establish whether or to what extent they were disadvantaged vis-a-vis the men. I t is a well-known fact that Mrs. Brecht (i.e. Helene Weigel) did all the house- keeping, that she sacrificed her career for her husband. It has also been argued that in exile in England Mrs. Kerr (i.e. the wife of the famous theatre critic Alfred Kerr) sacrificed hcr career for him, by taking menial secretarial jobs. I t would be her daughter, Judith Kerr (the creator of When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit), who would become the famous writer, and not she.

‘ Cabriele Tergit, Elfingers, Frankfurt a.M. 1982; E b m Seltenes iiberhaupt. En‘nncnmgen, Frankfurt a.M. 1983; Kiiccbin erobert den KurjZrstmdamm, Berlin 1988 and her essay on ‘Die Exilsituation in England’, in Die Dmfscht Exilliferatur 1933-1945, ed. Manfred Dunak, Stuttgart 1973, pp. 135-44. See Susanne Mittag, ‘In der Fremdc ungewollt zu Haus’, in E d . Forschung Erkmfnisse - Ergebnissc, 1981, pp. 4%56 and Heike Klapdor-Kops, ‘Frauen im Exil’, ibid., pp. 69-74.

Gabriele Kreis, Fraum im Exil. Dichtung und Wirklichkeif, Diisseldorf 1984; Renate Wahl, Verbrannt, verbofen, wrgessen. Klrincs Lcxikon deulschsprachigrr Schri~sfellerinnen, 1933 b u lM5, Cologne 1988. See also The Germanic Review, 62/3 (1987), Special Issue: Women in Exile.

Computerkartei zu Autorinnen und Kiinstlerinnen: Prof. Dr. Luke Pusch, Jakobistrde 9, 30163 Hannover. ‘Frauen im Exil Conference, Bad Miinstereifel, 28-30 Oct. 1991; Frauen im Exil Conference, Gesellschaft fur Exilforschung, Katholische Akademie Hamburg, 23-25 Oct. 1992. in Tokyo Deborah Vietor-Englander gave a paper on ‘Frauen im englischen Exil’, published in A k h dcs YIII. Intcmationolm Gcrmonisfen-Kongresses, Tokyo I 9 w , VIII, Munich 1991, pp. 276-83, dealing with Elisabeth Castonier and Julia Kerr. 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd 1994. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road. Oxford OX4 UF. UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge. MA 02142, USA.

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Presumably it was Alice Herdan Zuckmayer who looked after domestic matters when the Zuckmayers fled to London and their daughter was placed in a boarding-school there. Fortunately Mrs. Meidner did manage to keep on painting when the Meidners were in London.

Perhaps the simplest way is to proceed alphabetically, making connections and interpreting the material as it comes to light. By this method the first name on the list would appear to be that of Evebn Anderson (born in 1909 in Frankfurt, died in London in 1977). One complication of Exile Studies immediately becomes apparent, namely the question of the name, which for various reasons often had to be changed. Evelyn Anderson was born Lore Seligmann. After studying economics and being associated first with the Communist and then with the Socialist Party in Germany, she became a journalist in Berlin. In exile in London after May 1933 she worked on broadcasts for the ‘Sender der Europaischen Revolution’, was an adviser to Aneurin Bevan and subsequently from 1943 to 1952 wrote for Tribune. In later life she covered Eastern Europe for the BBC. Among the elements in her fascinating career common to many are the use of radio as an anti- Nazi activity and the extent to which left-wing journalists and intellectuals such as she were able to co-operate with left-wing political organisations in Britain. She became known to the wider British public through her books: under the name Evelyn Lend for The Underground Struggle in Germany (London, Fact, 1938); under the name Evelyn Anderson for Hammer or Anvil. The story of the German working-class movement (London, Gollancz, 1945). Another authoress who used a pseudonym was Fraeiska Becker. Born in Baden-Baden in 1908, she emigrated to Britain in 1933 and remained there until her return to Germany in the 1970s. She first came to prominence in 1938 through the publication of her novel Barbara und die Englander in the exile journal Parker Tageszeitung, using the pseudonym Rolly Becker. Apart from that, she gained fame for translating Robert Neumann, Arthur Koestler, Nevi1 Shute and others into German.’ Kathe Braun-Prager (born 1888 Vienna, died 1967 Vienna), the poet sister of Felix Braun, also made her mark as a translator: she too had work accepted by the BBC. After her return to Austria in 1951 she became a freelance writer and among the prizes she won for her considerable literary output was the highly regarded Art Fund Award of the City of Vienna for 1959. Of particular interest from the exile point of view is the diary she kept while in exile.6 Her brother Felix Braun, a friend of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and great expert on Grillpaner, also kept a record of his English exile and on his return to Austria he too became a highly regarded freelance writer and literary prize-winner.

While the names of Franziska Becker, Kathe Braun-Prager and Felix Braun may no longer be familiar even to the most educated and widely-

’ See Robert Neumann, Ein k h t e s Lcbn. Bnichf ubn nuh srlbsl und Zzitgmossm, Vienna/Munich/Basel 1963. ’ Rcisc in die Niht, ed. Felix Braun, Vienna 1972. 0 Basil BlackwcU Ltd 1994.


read, Elisabeth Castonier (born in Dresden in March 1894, died in Munich in 1975) was able to demonstrate that it was possible to survive by the pen in exile, even as a woman. Born Elisabeth Borchardt, she married the Danish singer Paul Castonier in 1923, and kept her married name after they separated some years later. By marriage she had a Danish passport which later made it easier to enter the U.K. After emigrating to Austria in 1934, this journalist contributed to the Pariser Tageszeitung like Franziska Becker; from 1938 onwards she wrote for the New Statesman, as indeed did many other exiles; and after emigrating to England via italy and Denmark she joined the staff of the News Chronick. She too tried translation work, but real fame and success came with children’s books like Shippy the Tortoise,

Jim &he Goat, Em@ the Toad, After the war she became an even bigger hit in Germany with her charming stories of life in England, especially down on the farm to which she had withdrawn: Drei taube Tanten and the Mill Farm stories. Significantly, however, like Evelyn Anderson, she was also one of the first to record religious resistance to National Socialism in her book The Eternal Front (London 1942); and her memoirs present both a lively and satirical picture of life in Germany right up to the Nazi takeover and an amusing account of her exile in England.’ Her extensive correspon- dence with Mary Tucholsky completes this picture with further insights into the day-to-day problems of an exile.

Elisabeth Castonier was by no means the only woman writer in exile to adopt the solution of escape from the horrors of the age either into a bucolic idyll or into the world of the child. The most successful of them all was the Viennese graphic artist, author and illustrator of children’s books Bettina Ehrlich, nte Bauer ( 1903-75), generally called simply ‘Bettina’, her pen- name. After emigration to the United Kingdom in 1938, Bettina soon had orders to design scarves for Liberty of London, and from 1940 onwards she was writing and illustrating children’s books for Britain and the United States. Titles like Poo-Tsee, the Water-Tortoise give something of the flavour of her work. But before she is dismissed as a producer of harmless nonsense, and without giving too much credit to her husband, it should perhaps be remembered that he was the Viennese artist Georg Ehrlich, active member of the ‘Freie Deutsche Kulturbund’, member of the editorial staff of Dcr Zeitspiegel, the journal of the Free Austrian Movement, and contributor to ‘Artists Aid Jewry’ and ‘Fight for Freedom’.8 Altogether books about children and animals have always been popular with the British public, and exile writers are not to be blamed for realising this. Before this area is left, and although it means breaking the alphabetic sequence, mention should also be made of E m Pinncr (born 1893, died ? ). She had had considerable grounding in the arts and literature before she was forced to leave Germany for England in 1935. She had studied with Lovis Corinth in Berlin and at

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Elisabeth Castonier, Sftirmisch bis hciter: Mmiren eiiur A+citnin, Munich 1964. * Kumt im E d in Gr$?brifam’m 1933-1945, ed. Hartmut Krug and Michael Nungesser, Berlin 1986, p. 123.

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the AcadCmie Ranson in Paris. She accompanied Kasimir Edschmid on his extensive world travels, and, like him, wrote travel books. In England she became the illustrator for countless English books on zoology and palaeontology, but without doubt her greatest claim to fame lies in the illustrations she did in London for Barnbi's Childrcn, the sequel to Felix Salten's Bambi. This particular book became so famous for Erna Pinner's 33 illustrations that in 1976 the Souvenir Press Ltd (London) issued a special commemorative e d i t i ~ n . ~

Altogether it is easy to be misled by some of the titles some of the women writers in exile in Great Britain gave to their books. Cat across the Path (London 1935) or Thrcc Cups of Coffec (London 1941) do not sound like the works of a politically aware writer, but Ruth Fcincr (born Stettin 1909, died in Switzerland 1954) was exactly that. This journalist and author who emigrated to England in 1933 was also the author of the exile novel Fircs in May (London 1935), which was the name given to the great demonstration in the Scala Theatre in May 1943 to mark the tenth anniversary of the Nazi Book Burning. After readings from those authors whose works had been flung into the flames in the Berlin Opera House Square, the second part of the proceedings was given over to a shortened version of Becher's Wintcrschfacht, the play about the defeat of the German army in Russia. Feiner was also an important contributor to the official exile organ Die Zcitung. After 1945 she lived in Switzerland. Her books were translated into many languages. Yet another regular contributor to Dic Zeitung was Cretc Fischcr (born Prague 1893, died London 1978). She emigrated to England in 1934, worked for the BBC and Die Zeitung and became one of the co-founders of Club 1943, the counter-organisation to the dominant, Communist-controlled Free German League of Culture. She is known to Brecht specialists for her lively memoirs." In this book she gives details of how the Club 1943 became the realisation of an initiative from the dramatist Rehfisch for a 'Vereinigung der Geistigen gegen allen Ungeist', before moving on to describe the group assembled by Midia, the young widow of the philosopher Oskar Kraus after his death in Oxford. According to Grete Fischer, Midia collected people like others collect stamps - which can sound amusing, but in fact one of the distressing aspects of exile existence was the forming of groups and counter-groups, with outbursts of bitter feuding and back-biting among the members. To be an equally dispassionate member of all groups was apparently well-nigh impossible. Later in life, Grete Fischer published a collection of poems, some of which contain reminders of her life in London. In an earlier volume there are more echoes of her life in England:

Claus K. Netuschil, 'Tierillustrationen von Erna Pinner. Dcr Kiinstlerin zum 90. Geburtstag', in Iffurfrufim, 63/1, 23-9, with bibliography. See also Kunrf im Ex-il, p. 149. l o Grew Fischer, D i m t b o h , Erechf und andcrc Zui~genussm in Prag, Berlin, London, Freibug i . Br. 1966. 0 Basil Elactwell Ltd 1994

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Coventry 1940 Die Sonne starb in Rauch und Ziegelstaub; Der Wind erstickt und meine Bache schweigen; in toten Garten hangen in den Zweigen verkohlte Fetzen im verkohlten Laub. Mein Atem ist in Brand und Schmerz versteint; zertreten und zerfetzt ist mein Gesicht; das Blut vor meinen Augen rinnt so dicht, daB mir die Welt in Blut versunken scheint. Im Nebel hebt sich aus Geroll und Glas der Schatten meiner toten Kathedralen und meiner toten Hauser in die Nacht, doch neue Geister hat der Wind gebracht: es mengt sich schwarz in meinen Feuer Strahlen mein Schatten mit den Schatten Guernicas.”

By her own account, Grete Fischer had to be persuaded by Monty Jacobs, the drama critic, and Adele Schreiber, the famous battler for women’s rights, to have anything at all to do with the creation of Club 1943. She was not a clubbable person. But Adele Schreiber-Krieger (born Vienna 1872, died Zurich 1957) was not someone who would take no for an answer, for she already had a long career in political activity behind her before she arrived in Britain in 1939 after six years of exile in Switzerland. Inspired by August Bebel’s book Die Frau und der Sozialismus, she joined the SPD early on and by 1904 was Vice-president of the ‘Weltbund fiir Frauenstim- menrecht und staatsburgerliche Mitarbeit’. Throughout the Twenties and Thirties she continued to be in the vanguard of the women’s movement, and by 1928 was in the Reichstag. Activity of this kind was not likely to appeal to the Nazis, and exile was inevitable. Modern feminists will be interested in her books in view of titles like Unsere Dichterinnen und die neuen Frauenideale ( 1 910) and Hedwig Dohm als Vorkampferin und Vordenkerin neucr Frauenideale (1914). In London she made her mark as one of the co- authors of In Tyrannos, the anti-Nazi book published in English by Lindsay Drummond in London, in 1944. She was a very powerful woman indeed. As Research Director in the Wiener Library she was able to devote her intellectual energies to the cause dearest to her heart. Significantly, too, she was Austrian and not German, a useful reminder that Vienna had been Red Vienna, and Austria at that time was by no means populated by conservative, Catholic, proto-fascists. The presence of other Austrian women intellectuals in London makes the same point. Those who are familiar with the associates of the young Erich Fried in London will have come across the name of Kitty Gum, a student from Vienna, who, like other educated exile women, could get work only as a housemaid. She nevertheless found

” Grete Fischer, Die Schld der Cnechtm, Darmstadt 1974 and Aus Krieg und Nachkrieg, Vienna n.d. 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd 1994.


time and energy to publish poetry in exile journals. In Mut. Ccdichtc junger Osttrreicher, published by the Verlag Jugend Voran (London 1943), poems like her 'Londoner Park' appear immediately after similar poems by Erich Fried:

Grauer Hirnrnel - ein Baum im Schnee, zwei Schwlne auf einem vereisten See, rauhreifvenauberte Halme blitzen mit scharfen lanzenartigen Spitzen.

Rote Sonne im grauen Flor lugt zwischen kahlen Baumen hewor. Hagebutten wie roter Regen in schwarzcn Ranken blinken verwegen.

Hungrige Spatzen mit piepsenden Klagen traumen von Wiirmern und Sommertagen.

Even more remarkably, Mut also contains poems by Eva Aschner and Lily Spandorf, Viennese women working in munitions factories in Glasgow.

T o some it may appear excessive to draw attention to poems in exile journals by housemaids and munitions workers. Some may doubt that there are any real discoveries to be made in research of this kind. Recent feminist critique of the male literary canon, however, does suggest that some important figures have been overlooked, including at least one significant dramatist from the Weimar Republic who spent the last part of her life in exile in Great Britain, namely Anna Gmcyncr, who is of interest not only because she was an Austrian writer who wrote successful plays during the Weimar Republic and also one of the most remarkable German novels in exile - namely, Manja - or because she was involved in important films like Pabst's Kamcradrclrafi and later worked with the Boulting Brothers in Britain." She is also of interest because she demonstrates another problem of exile and successfully overcomes it: the language-switch problem. Anna Gmeyner wrote three plays: Automatenbufett, Zchn am FfieJband and Hcer ohm Hcfdcn. All were successfully produced, but it is the last of the three which perhaps deserves special attention, because in the 1920s Anna Gmeyner was in Edinburgh with her husband, and from there was able to observe at first hand the Great Miners' Strike of 1926. This is the subject of her play and this is what made her the perfect scriptwriter for Pabst's Kamcrad- schafl, one of the most famous mining disaster films of all time. After K a m r d c h a f t she remained in France with Pabst to make Don Quixotc, a film with the Russian signer Chaliapin. The film company was in Nice when the Nazis seized power. Anna Gmeyner, who later remarried, left France for England with her husband and remained there for the rest of her life. She worked with Conrad Veidt on the film The Passing of th Third Floor Buck (1936) and on the film of Toller's Pastor Huff (1939). Thereafter

'* Anne Stiiner, Dramalikninnn und Zeilttiicke. Ein Vngessncr Kapi&l drr Thcalcrgeschichte von dn Wtimarrr Rcpublik bis cur Nachklirgsztit. Ergcbnissr d n Frawnforschung, Hamburg 1993.

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she switched to writing novels and, after Manja and Cap du Dome, wrote only in English. Her work in English is extensive. Not all of it has been published, but what was published was well received. This latter point is one which perhaps needs to be stressed. It is quite wrong to assume that only Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Stefan Zweig and Lion Feuchtwanger were known in Britain. Writers of the Weimar Republic, especially if they were writing novels about life in National Socialist Germany and the consequences of persecution and exile (like Horvith and Irmgard Keun), were immediately translated into English and widely commented on in the press. Anna Gmeyner's Manja and Ca& du Dome were also translated. Nevertheless the pressure to change language was there, and, like many of her fellow exiles, she did.I3

Before finally leaving forgotten dramatists of the Weimar Republic, mention, however brief, must be made of Christa Winsloe (born Darmstadt 1888, died France 1944). With this author we are once more dealing, not with a forgotten figure from the past, but one who at one time had world-wide acclaim. Her success came with the play Gestern und hcute, which was adapted for the film Madchm in U n f o m (1931) and the book of the film Dm Madchen Manuelu (Leipzig 1933).'* English translations of both the play and the novel appeared shortly afterwards. Christa Winsloe's books were banned by the Nazis and she went into exile. Mystery surrounds her death, because according to her friend Klaus Mann, she was executed by the French Resistance for having had contacts with German officers. Be this as it may, a world-wide audience will have formed lasting impressions of how girls were moulded in German schools by images from the film Miidclren in Unifnn.

It is easy to assume that only writers of the Weimar generation were caught up in the excesses of the National Socialists, and that members of the previous generation would be immune. Some little reminder is therefore needed that the Nazis, after some hesitation, decided that Expressionism was undesirable. For those associated with Expressionism this could mean exile or death. In his bibliography of German Expressionism in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Brian Keith-Smith lists over fifty names of those who lived here. Paul Raabe, in his bibliography of the books and authors of literary Expressionism, also lists those who died here.15 He was also the first to draw attention to the fact that Hcnriette Hardenberg, the wife of Alfred

l 3 Anna Gmeyner (or Reincr or Morduch), Manja. Ein Roman um fiinf Kinder, Amsterdam 1938 (reprinted with preface by Heike Klapdor Kops, Mannheim 1984), Anna Reiner, Cap du Donu, tr. Trevor and Phyllis Blewitt, London 1 9 4 1 . Reprinted three times in 1941. " Christa Winsloe, LiJi Begins, tr. Agnes Neill Scott, London 1933; Children in Unijoonn. A Pray in i%ee Acts, English adaptation by Barbara Burnham; The Child MaRIulo (the novel of Miidchn in Uniform), tr. Agnes Neill Scott, London 1934. Is G m n &pr~szionism in I/u Unitcd Kingdom, ed. Brian Keith-Smith, Bristol 1986; Paul Raabe, Die Anlorn und Biicher des Exfwessionismur, Stuttgart 1985.

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Wolfenstein by her first marriage, is still alive and living in London.” A volume of her poetry has been reprinted and she has recently read from her works at the University of London’s Germanic Institute. Here is one of her poems, again on the favourite exile theme of the London park:

Regents Park In der Abendstunde, wenn der Druck der Arbeit sich lost, Und die ganze Erde leichterer Atem bewegt, Heben auch die Blumen im Park ihre Glieder i n den kuhleren Himmel. Nicht so leuchtend wie unter der Sonne, Aber verlockender stehen sie in verschwimmenden Farben, Und ihr Duft streift schmeichelnd Die wandelnden Paare in den Alleen. Wie singt das Blut musikhaft, Zu Schwarmerei und Umarmung getrieben. So schon ist der Abend, Dein Haar, Deine Haut, Und eines Baumes hingegebene Andacht uber Liebenden.

Other ‘Expressionistinnen’ were not to live as long as Henriette Harden- berg. Elisubeth Janstein (born Iglau 1891, died Winchcornbe 1944) is described by Jiirgen Serke in his survey of Czech German writers as ‘ein fast hoffnungsloser Fall’.I7 In England the once-famous poet wrote nothing, though some poems from her literary estate were published in exile journals. No-one in Winchcombe or elsewhere in England remembers her presence. An even greater silence has engulfed Sylvia von Harden, once famous as a warning example of the decadent feminist. Fame of a different kind has been hers recently, because the famous portrait of her was used for the poster advertising the Otto Dix Exhibition sponsored by Beck’s beer! She died near London in 1964.18 Mela Hartwig (born Vienna 1893, died London 1967) was first discovered as a writer by Alfred Doblin. She belonged to the same generation as Sylvia von Harden, but was not so closely associated with Expressionism, though her volume of stories Eksfasen (Vienna 1928) does bring her into this orbit, by reason of both the style and the sexual extravagance of the subject matter. Her second book Das Weib ist ein Nichts (1929) clearly follows the same pattern. For these two books she was awarded one of the great literary prizes of Vienna. Her third book Daf Wunder von Ulm had to be published in an exile series in Paris. In 1938 she left Paris for London and remained there for the rest of her life. Interestingly, she formed a friendship with Virginia Woolf, which raises another pressing question. How much did English writers know about what

l6 Henriette Hardenberg, Dichtungn, cd. Hartmut Vollmer, Zurich 1988. See also Hartmut Vollmer, ‘Rainer Maria Rilke und Henriette Hardenberg, Dokumentation einer Freundschaft’, Eyphorion, 871 1 (1993), 69-89. I’ Jiirgcn Serke, Bcihmisch Do+. Wandmutgm durch tint wrlassmr ti&ransrh Landrcharff, Vienna/Ham- burg 1987, p. 411.

According to Brian Keith-Smith (op. hf., p. 8) Sylvia von Harden came 10 England in 1933 and died near London on 4 June 1964. To date her thirty-one years in England have not been researched. 0 Baul Blackwell Ltd 1994.


was happening to their German, Austrian and Czech colleagues? The answer is: a great deal. A good example is the very close friendship between Iris Murdoch and Franz Baermann Steiner. Through organisations like PEN, through clubs and personal contacts, writers knew about writers. Mela Hartwig was a poet as well as a novelist, an artist as well as a writer. She is now being rediscovered: a reprint of Ekstasen has appeared, and maybe one day the unpublished novels in her literary estate will also be published. l9

In the same way as certain authors are associated with the young Erich Fried in London, so too interest has been growing recently in other poets associated with the Austrian poet Theodor Kramer. Anna Kromwr falls into this category. Until 1933 resident in Berlin, she emigrated to Prague in 1933 and moved on to the United Kingdom in 1939. From 1940 to 1943 she studied at the Technical College in Guildford, Surrey, where Theodor Kramer was the librarian. In London she was active in Sudeten-German circles. After 1952 she settled in the United States and became an American citizen. Her poetry has been published in Vienna. As for Theodor Kramer, his stature as a poet has grown enormously in recent years but he was recognised at the time. Eva Priester, the poet and translator who lived for a time with Erich Fried in London, reported on a ‘Theodor Kramer Abend’ in the London/Austrian newspaper Der Zeitspiegel (8 August 1942) and Hilde Spiel was one of his most devoted admirers. Altogether it has to be recognised that the Austrians were more numerous than the Germans; and the Austrian Centre was bigger, and in some areas more influential, than the Free German League of Culture or the Rudolf-Fuchs-Haus (28 Dawson Place, W2) in which some of the FDKB functions took place. Women played their part in all these exile organisations. Some saw their work taken up by the FDKB: Elisabeth Karr, about whom little is known at present, had a reading from her novel Alles ist umgekehrt at one of the first meetings; Rita Hausdorfl came to Great Britain in 1939, having spent two years in prison for anti-Nazi activities.*’ In Prague, the first place of refuge for many victims of Nazi oppression, she worked with others on the volume called Deutsche Frauenschicksale. In London she did similar work for the journal Frau in Arbeit. This was a remarkable journal produced by the women members of the Sudeten-German Committee. It appeared monthly from July 1940 till February 1945, bearing the English sub-title ‘Periodical of the Working Refugee Women’. Some of Erich Fried’s earliest poems appeared in this journal. As a Communist Party functionary, she published regularly and was noted for her Silesian story, The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany, published by the Free German League of Culture in London in 1944. The FDKB even published a special number devoted to Women under the Swastika, and though much of it was written by men, some women were included. Viewed overall, the Austrians do seem to predominate in Great

Mcla Hartwig, Eksta~m. Nourllen, ed. Hartmut Vollmer, Frankfurt a.M. 1992. Volker Kaukoreit, Friihc Sfationen des Lyrikcrs Erich Fried, Darmstadt 1991, p. 524.

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Britain. Joe Lcdcrcr, the Viennese writer, had made a name for herself with the novel Das M i d c h George ( 1928).2' She was in Britain from 1938 until 1956, when she returned to Germany to continue a successful career as a writer. Gitta Deutsch (born Vienna 1924, and still living there) was active in the Free Austrian Movement in Cambridge.22 Her poetry, published much later in Salzburg, attracted the attention of Erich Fried, who wrote a postscript to one of her volumes. In 1985 she was the first ever recipient of the Wystan Hugh Auden Translator Prize. Anna Maria Jokl (born Vienna 191 1) was first in exile in Prague, where she became an active member of the Bert Brecht Club and published both in Czechoslovakia and in Austria.23 In London her plays for children, especially Die bohmischt Polka, were often performed during the war by Young Czechoslovakia. She later achieved greater prominence through her literary work than through her admirable work with children. Her novel Die Perlmutterfarbe. Ein Kinderroman f u r fast alle h t c (1948) caused something of a sensation after the war in East Berlin when, two months after she got there for the filming, she was forced to leave the country. Stella Rotenberg (born Vienna 1916) also worked with children; still living in Leeds, and far removed from the exile organisations of London, she has emerged as a poet in her own right. Understandably, many of her poems deal with the theme of exile:

Der Dichter im Exil Mir mu0 Vergessenes reichen; mit Verschollenem hake ich Haus. Aus Verdammemdern klaube ich Scherben von Silben zu Wortern heraus. Das sind noch gesegnete Tage. Scherben sind endlicher Hort. Wo hole ich wenn die Verstummung kommt Buchstaben f i r mein Wort?

One of the stereotypes associated with Exile Studies in the past was that exile literature had to be anti-fascist. This has proved a considerable restriction and constraint. Just as there were Protestants, Catholics, atheists and agnostics among exiles, as well as Jews, so too there were liberals, conservatives and royalists as well as socialists and communists. Some exiles, however, were anti-fascists, and one who caught the world's attention was h g a r d Litten (born Halle 1879, died East Berlin 1953). With the help of Rudolf Olden, the liberal lawyer involved in the Ossietzky case (later an exile activist in Britain), Irmgard Litten fought a famous battle for the release of her son from a Nazi concentration camp. After the government

*'Joe Ledercr, Lrxitmr h h r p r a c h i g e r SchnJ2sfellerinnm 18ao-1915, ed. Giscla Brinker-Gabler, Karola Ludwig, Angela Wiiffen, Munich 1986, p. 189. "Gitta Deutsch, An rim Tag im F c b w r (mit einem Nachwort von Erich Fried), Salzburg 1988; Bikklingstra&-E&gu, Vienna 1993. 23 Anna Maria Jokl in A d , Sic schrtibm Dcutsch? Siographim dnrtschspachigcr Autorrn da AusLndr-Pen, ed. Karin Reinfrank-Clark, Gcrlingen 1986, p. 58. @ Buil BIxkwcll Ltd 1991.


claim that he had committed suicide in Dachau, she emigrated to Britain with the help of the Quakers, and there published her story in a version which caused an enormous stir: A Mother Fights Hiticr (London 1944). The German version, Die Hollc sicht dich an. Dcr Fail Littm (Vonuort Rudolf Olden), came out the same year in Paris. In London she was in touch with Kurt Hiller and his ‘Gruppe Unabhangiger Deutscher Autoren’, with PEN and the FDKB. Hiller, the Expressionist and polemicist, was to be in exile in London for twenty-six years. Anybody associated with Hiller was bound to fall out with the communists, and she did. Nevertheless, after the war she returned, to the GDR, and settled in Berlin-Schonefeld.

Irmgard Litten can truly be described as a fighter against fascism. An exile story from rather a different quarter is that of Princess Mcchtildc Lichrww- sky (nCe Duchess von Arco-Zinnemann, born Schonburg, Bavaria 1879, died London 1958). From 1912 to 1914 the Princess was in London with her husband, the German Ambassador. Remarkably, despite such diplomatic restrictions, she contributed to expressionistic periodicals like Die wciim Blatter and a t = Echo. Later, back in Germany and following the rise to power of National Socialism, she refused to apply for membership of the ‘Reichsschrifttumskammer’ and in 1937, after her second marriage, to an English officer, she emigrated to the United Kingdom. In 1939, during a visit to Germany, she was surprised by the outbreak of war and, despite her British citizenship, was prevented from returning to Britain. She is, therefore, rather an unusual exile and anti-fascist. Everything she wrote after 1941, when she was banned from publishing in Germany, had to await her return to London in 1946.25

As ladies from the ambassadorial level are being considered, perhaps this is the moment to introduce Hcmynia zur Miihlcn (born Vienna 1883, died Radlett, Hertfordshire 1951), another writer Paul Raabe places in the Expressionist ambience. Hermynia was descended from the highest levels of Austrian aristocracy - her father Victor Graf Crenneville, for example, was Ambassador to Hungary - but from her literary career one would be hard pressed to deduce this. The name zur Muhlen is that of her husband, but because of political differences the marriage to this Baltic nobleman did not last long. Throughout the Twenties, Hermynia moved steadily further and further left until by the Thirties she was a Communist and contributing to Rcvolutioniir, Rote Fahnc and Jungc Gcnossm. Needless to say, Hermynia has attracted the serious interest of present-day feminists. She certainly repays serious attention. She, too, for instance, was a phenomenal translator (one bibliography lists 150 book titles); in particular she became famous for her translations of socio-political writers like Upton Sinclair. She was also classified as ‘dangerous’ by the authorities, so much so that a charge of literary high treason was brought against her for her novel

Stella Rotenberg, ‘Autobiographical Sketch’, in Exil. Forschung Erknnlnirsr, Ergcbnirse, 1983, I, pp. 614. ’’ Lcxikon deutschspachign Schnflstelktinnen 16W-1945, p. M I .

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Schupomann Karl Miller. The charges were eventually dropped, but a memor- andum in zur Muhlen’s file warned that the story was dangerous ‘because its author so effectively used literary weapons to activate readers to direct political action’. Clearly there was no place for a radical writer like Hermy- nia zur Muhlen in Nazi Germany. From 1938 till her death in 1951 she worked furiously, translated unceasingly and only just managed to keep her head above water. Her novel Ein Jahr im Schatten (Zurich 1935) is not readily available. Came the Stranger is available in English and in an East German paperback. We Poor Shadows exists only in English. As Sylvia Patsch has pointed out, the literary reputation of exile writers who changed language has suffered most. Authors who changed to English do not exist as far as the histories of German literature are concerned. Certainly Hermy- nia zur Miihlen deserves an honoured place in any history of German or Austrian literature.26

One comment often made about literary exile in Great Britain is that the really famous exiles all passed through, leaving only small fry behind. This is largely true, but if it is not possible to claim Thomas and Heinrich Mann, who made their way to America, a little part of Erika Mann (born Munich 1905, died Zurich 1969) can perhaps be claimed. She was first married to Gustaf Griindgens, but her second marriage (in 1935) to W. H. Auden gave her that most precious possession, a British passport. With this vital document she was able to travel widely, to lecture in the United States, or report on the Civil War in Spain. In 1940 she was in London, where she, like many other exiles and refugees, worked for the BBC. She also contributed to various newspapers, including the London Evening Standard. Marriage to Auden may have been a marriage of convenience; but he was a famous poet, refugees were aware of his work, and he was aware of their plight. After the war he continued the Austrian connection; indeed, he settled in Austria. Here is a refugee translation of Auden’s ‘Refugees Blues’, in which the importance of the passport is prominent:

Refugees Blues Die Stadt zahlt, so heil3t es, rund zehn Millionen, die teils in Palais, teils in Lochern wohnen: aber fijr uns ist kein Platz da, meine Liebe, aber fur uns

Wir hatten wie Ihr eine Heimat zu eigen, holt, bitte, den Atlas, ich will sie Euch zeigen: Jetzt aber konnen wir nicht hin, meine Liebe, jetzt aber

ist kein Platz da.

konnen wir nicht hin.

26 Ibid., pp. 340-2; Lynda King, ‘From the Crown to the Hammer and Sickle’, in W o r n in German Yearbook 4. Fminirf Studies in C m Culture, ed. Marianne Burkhard and Jeanette Clausen, Uni. Press of America 1988, pp. 125-54. See also Sylvia Patsch, I)stencichuche Schnffstcilcr im Exil in GroJbrilannien. Ein Kupikl uergusnn ostrnrithuclur Litmutur. Romanc, Aubbiographim, Tatsachcnbcnchte auf cngflih und dculrch, ViennaMunich 1985, pp. 102-13. In addition to Hilde Spiel, Sylvia Patsch also discusses Ilsa Barea’s exile in Great Britain. @ B a d Blackwell Ltd 1994.


Auf dem Platz an der Kirche stehen alte Eiben, die immer in Lenz neue Bluten treiben: Ein alter ReisepaR bringt’s nicht zustande, meine Liebe

ein alter Pa6 bringt’s nicht zustande.

Der Konsul ricf, wir hatten’s verdorben, ohne gultigen PaR sei ein Mensch wie gestorben: Wir aber leben nun einmal, meine Liebe, wir aber leben

nun einmal. Ich kam zum Kommittee, habe Platz dort genommen; Ich mocht doch ma1 nachstes Jahr wiederkommen: Wo aber sollen wir heute hingehn, meine Liebe, wo

aber sollen wir heute hingehn?

Ich besuchte ein Meeting, da rief einer grade: ‘Wir haben das Brot nicht fiir sie in der Lade!’ Von Dir und mir hat er gesprochen, meine Liebe, von Dir

und mir hat er gesprochen.*’

63

That contacts did exist between refugees and British intellectuals and political figures, sometimes at the highest level, is demonstrated by the lives of Hilda Monte (born Vienna 1914, died 1945), Lilo Linke and Eva Reichmann. Hilda Monte went to school in Berlin, where she came under the political influence of Hans Litten and became active in the ‘Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund’. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 she was studying in Great Britain, and remained there as a student after 1934. She continued to be active for the ISK and undertook trips into Nazi Germany as a courier, organising escapes, and engaging in illegal activities. Hilda Monte was her cover name. In order to be allowed to remain in Britain with a genuine passport, she entered into a marriage of convenience with the anarchist writer and artist John Olday. Thereafter she wrote for various left-wing and exile newspapers in London. After a split from the ISK over the question of direct action against Germany, she was involved with the Central European Joint Committee planning the assassination of Adolf Hitler. She worked with the radio station ‘Sender der europaischen Revolution’ and by the end of the war was with various groups preparing for OSS operations in Germany. In the end she went through Switzerland to make the first contacts with resistance groups in Austria. Publications like How to conquer HitIer (London, Jarrolds, 1940) and He& Germany to Revolt. A Letter to a Comrade in the Labour Party (London, Gollancz, 1942) show just how committed she was, and she did have comrades in the Labour Party and the Fabian Society. Hilda Monte was killed on the Austrian border in 1945. A volume of her poetry has been published posthumously.28 Another adventurous woman writer was Lilo Linke

17 ‘Refugees Blues’ in Ein Wisicnder Soldat. Gedichte und Schn9n aus don NachlqB, London 1943, p. 41. z8 For Hilda Monte and Eva Reichrnann see Bibliographuches Handbuch d n Dnrtschspachigen Emigrafion Mch B33, Munich/New York/London 1980, I, pp. 507 and 592. For Lila Linke sce Karl Holl, ‘Lilo Linke (1906-1963)’ in Exilfarschung. Ein In&mafionales Jahrbuch, V , 1987, pp. fj8-89.

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(1906-63). In 1931 she came to the Labour Party Conference at Scarbor- ough to see how aware the Labour Party was of the problems in Germany. There she got to know the English writer Storm Jameson. This connection was to prove very helpful for Lilo Linke when she found herself in exile in England in June 1933. Storm Jameson encouraged her to write her first book, Tale without End, though she knew hardly any English, and her second book, Restless Flags, when she knew a little more. The book was a considerable success, as was her translation into English of Wolfgang Langh- offs Die M O O Y S O f d a l C n , one of the first accounts of concentration camp life. Lilo Linke moved on to travel books like Allah Dethroned, about Turkey. She then proceeded to South America, about which she wrote academic books of great authority. Eva Gabriele Reichmann had an even more remarkable career. Somehow she found time to complete a doctorate at the London School of Economics and have her dissertation published as a book under the title Hostages of Civilisation. The Social Sources of National-Socialist Antisemi- tism (1950). Under this and the German title Flucht in den HaJ i t has been reissued many times. She too was a member of Club 1943; she too worked for the BBC. As a writer and lecturer she developed a wide range of interests and was particularly active in the sphere of cooperation between Jews and Christians.

However prominent they were, neither Hilda Monte nor Eva Reichmann could be described as primarily literary figures. This is precisely what the next four individuals were, though that is not to exclude political or social commitment. Anna Sebastian, alias Fried1 Benedikt (born 1916 Vienna, died Paris 1953), daughter of Moritz Benedikt, the editor of the Viennese Freie Neue Presse, who came to public attention with three novels in English, The Momter and Let T7y Moon Arise (both published in London in 1944), and The Dream (London 1950), has not yet been rediscovered or re~earched.~’ Let Thy Moon Arise is, however, dedicated to that other long-term exile Elias Canetti ‘in gratitude and admiration’, and it is known that she enjoyed his encouragement and protection. Far better-known is Hilde Spiel (born Vienna 1911, died Vienna 1990).30 In 1936 she emigrated to Great Britain to join her fiance, and in fact was to be married, successively, to two of the most prominent figures of literary exile in London, namely Peter de Mendelssohn and Hans Flesch-Brunningen, the Expressionist. Both were actively involved with the BBC, and Hilde Spiel also worked there. In addition she wrote for Die Zeitung, but from 1944 to 1958 was more closely associated with the New Statesman. Hilde Spiel is of great interest to Exile Studies, not only because her memoirs covering her exile in London have just been published, but also because of the linguistic interest of her novels, of which there can be two versions, one written in English and another in German - both versions by herself. In her later years she became the grande

29 Volker Kaukoreit, op. cit., p. 521. 3o On Hilde Spiel and other women writers in exile, see Sylvia M . Patsch, ‘Und alles ist hier fremd’, in DCU&I~ Liferatvr uon Frount, 11, Munich 1988, pp. 304-17.

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dame among literary personalities in Vienna, though there were indications that she was not completely happy there and still looked back wistfully to her years in Great Britain. Her recent death was mourned as a great loss. By contrast Alexandra Wexbr (born St. Petersburg 1902, died London 1964) has no such rich oeuvre to offer; but she was nevertheless a significant figure on the London exile literary scene. A co-founder with Hans Jost Rehfisch and others of the Club 1943 and a contributor to yet another exile journal, Deutschc Nuchrichten (London), her works are still scatttered throughout this paper, or various anthologies and occasional publications of the Free Ger- man League of Culture, and have so far not been collected and reprinted.31 Martina Wied (born Vienna 1882, died Vienna 1957) was fifty-six when she emigrated to the United Kingdom and already had a considerable reputation as an author before she left Austria, especially for contributions to expressionistic journals like DGT B r ~ n n e r . ~ ~ She was also in close touch with such contrasting figures as Paul Ernst and George Lukics. In Britain she had little or no contact with the main refugee organisations, and little of her work appeared in their journals. She never changed language and wrote only in German. Despite the hardships of a miserable life as a casual teacher in poor schools in different parts of the country, she did nevertheless manage to complete three novels in exile, all of them published after her return to Austria. One of them proudly proclaims that it was begun in St. Margaret’s Tower, Edinburgh in April 1940 and completed in the Cloister of the Merciful Sisters, Glasgow in October of the same year. Exile in Scotland had clearly been not without influence on her, for the novel is about Bonnie Prince Charlie - though, sadly, it is about Charlie later in life when he is fat, no longer bonnie and living in exile in Italy. Despite the fact that her novels were published, and despite the return to Vienna, there was no triumphant comeback and she never regained the acclaim and respect she enjoyed before exile. The ‘Fahrt ins Exil’ for her, as for so many of her contemporaries, was to be the journey into oblivion.

Fahrt ins Exil Feurig, in Funkenmantel saust Der Zug, auf schmalen Boschungsrand. Das Echo seines Stampfens braust Von Felsenwand zu Felsenwand. Schwarzlaubige Krone, rot umzuckt, MilchweiBer Schwaden, schnell verweht: Die Halle hat uns eingeschluckt, Noch einmal schnaubt der Zug und steht. Die blaue Bogenlampe schwankt Gespiegelt auf dem nassen Stein, Wo es Dich hinzog angelangt -

” International Biographu of Central European Emigrir, 1933-1945, XIf2, p. 1241. ’’ For Martina Wied in England, see Sylvia Patsch, Ostcrrcichirchc SchnJs&tler im E d in GroJbritannien, pp. 155-62.

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Was, gehst Du nicht zur Stadt hinein? Dort ragt vor jungem Sickelmond Als Schattend ein alter First: Das Haus worin Du einst gewohnt - Das Du niemehr betreten wirst. Niernehr im dunklen Laubengang Geht f i r Dich auf - o trostend Licht! Ein unvertrautes Lebensland TMlich geliebtes Angesicht. Auf dieser Scheibe dampfbehaucht 1st blitzhaft und gewitterklar Vorbeigezuckt, hinabgetaucht Ein Schicksal, das Dein eigenes war. Was, starrst Du noch? Langst braust der Zug Durchs Dunkel, felseniiberdacht, Betrauft von goldenern Funkenflug - Feurige Trinen weint die Nacht.

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women in exile in great britain

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