Weimar in Exile ─ The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America

The artists and writers who left when the Nazis came to power were “the best of Germany.” Palmier weaves their diverse stories into a history of magisterial scope.

In 1933 thousands of intellectuals, artists, writers, militants and other opponents of the Nazi regime fled Germany. They were, in the words of Heinrich Mann, “the best of Germany,” refusing to remain citizens in this new state that legalized terror and brutality.

They emigrated to Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Oslo, Vienna, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Mexico, Jerusalem, Moscow. Throughout their exile they strove to give expression to the fight against Nazism through their work, in prose, poetry and painting, architecture, film and theater. Weimar in Exile follows these lives, from the rise of national socialism to the return to their ruined homeland, retracing their stories, struggles, setbacks and rare victories.

This absorbing history covers the lives of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Doblin, Hans Eisler, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig and many others, whose dignity in exile is a moving counterpoint to the story of Germany under the Nazis.

Jean-Michel Palmier was Professor of Aesthetics at Universite Paris I, specializing in German artistic movements of the 1920s and 30s. He is the author of, among other works, L’Expressionnisme et les arts and Retour a Berlin. Weimar in Exile was awarded the Prix Eugene Piccard for a work of modern history by the Academie Francaise.