Home Literary Studies "Escape to Life"
book: "Escape to Life"
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

"Escape to Life"

German Intellectuals in New York: A Compendium on Exile after 1933
  • Edited by: Eckart Goebel and Sigrid Weigel
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2012
Download eBook (PDF)
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill
Explore this Subject How to publish with us

About this book

After 1933, New York City gave shelter to many leading German and German-Jewish intellectuals. Stripped of their German citizenship by the Nazi-regime, these public figures either stayed in the New York area or moved on to California and other places. This compendium, adopting the title of a famous volume published by Klaus and Erika Mann in 1939, explores the impact the US, and NYC in particular, had on these authors as well as the influence they in turn exerted on US intellectual life. Moreover, it addresses the transformations that took place in the exiled intellectuals’ thinking when it was translated into another language and addressed to an American audience. Among the individuals presented in this volume, are such prominent names as T.W. Adorno, H. Arendt, W. Benjamin, E. Bloch, B. Brecht, S. Kracauer, the Mann family, S. Morgenstern, and E. Panofsky.

The authors of the essays in this compendium were free to choose the angle (biography, theory, politics) or aspect (a single work, a personal constellation) deemed best to illuminate the given intellectual’s work. Acclaimed NYC photographer Fred Stein, a German-Jewish refugee from Dresden, produced numerous portraits of exiled intellectuals and artists. A selection of these compelling portraits is reproduced in this book for the first time.

  • A compendium on exile in and about the city of New York
  • With contributions on, among others, Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer
  • Includes portrait photographies by Fred Stein, incl. Marlene Dietrich, Albert Einstein and Alfred Döblin

Author / Editor information

Eckart Goebel, New York University, USA; Sigrid Weigel, Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin, and Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.

Supplementary Materials

Topics

  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Frontmatter

    i
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Contents

    v
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Introduction

    1
    Eckart Goebel and Sigrid Weigel
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    “Sticking to our language” / “an unserer Sprache festhalten:” Adorno in NYC

    9
    Birgit R. Erdle
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Adorno’s Monsters

    27
    Jacques Lezra
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Sounding Through – Poetic Difference – Self-Translation: Hannah Arendt’s Thoughts and Writings Between Different Languages, Cultures, and Fields

    55
    Sigrid Weigel
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    From Königsberg to Little Rock: Hannah Arendt and the Concept of Childhood

    80
    Liliane Weissberg
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Erich Auerbach’s Second Exile

    100
    Karlheinz Barck
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Walter Benjamin’s Farewell to Europe

    111
    Vivian Liska
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    No Place Yet: Ernst Bloch’s Utopia in Exile

    128
    Falko Schmieder
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Losey, and Brechtian Cinema

    142
    Robert Cohen
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    “Without knowing America, you cannot say anything valid about democratic politics.” Hermann Broch and the Ethics of Exile

    162
    Daniel Weidner
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    “Lesen Sie before the letter:” Oskar Maria Graf in New York

    182
    Robert Stockhammer
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Eclipse of Reason: Max Horkheimer’s New York Lectures, 1944

    195
    Eckart Goebel
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    I’m Not There: New York as Displaced Psychogeography in Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage

    208
    Michael W. Jennings
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Bodies: Ernst H. Kantorowicz

    221
    Paul Fleming
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Siegfried Kracauer: The Film Historian in Exile

    236
    Anton Kaes
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Identifying the Impulse: Alfred Lion Founds the Blue Note Jazz Label

    270
    Stephan Braese
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    A Flaschenpost Recast: Leo Löwenthal’s Late Writings

    288
    Jerome Bolton
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    On An Eastward Trajectory Toward Europe: Karl Löwith’s Exiles

    305
    Rodolphe Gasche
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Ethics of Imagination: On Erika Mann’s Works in Exile

    331
    Jonathan Kassner
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    You Can’t Go Home Again: Exiles in Klaus Mann’s The Volcano

    353
    Nicola Behrmann
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Voyage with Don Quixote: Thomas Mann between European Culture and American Politics

    371
    Anne-Kathrin Reulecke
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    The Returns of Herbert Marcuse

    391
    Elke Siegel
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Exile is a Flop: Soma Morgenstern over Central Park

    414
    Paul North
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Stranger in Paradise: Erwin Panofsky’s Expulsion to the Academic Parnassus

    429
    Andreas Beyer
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    The Flight Into Orgonomy: Wilhelm Reich in New York

    445
    John T. Hamilton
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Reinventing the Canonical: The Radical Thinking of Jacob Taubes

    457
    Martin Treml
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    “Almost American:” Ernst Toller Abroad

    479
    Thomas Stachel
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    “Inter, but not national:” Vile´m Flusser and the Technologies of Exile

    499
    Chadwick Smith
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Fred Stein (1909–1967): A Retrospective

    510
    Dawn Freer
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Portraits

    521
    Fred Stein
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    About the Authors

    547
    Download PDF

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
May 29, 2012
eBook ISBN:
9783110258684
Hardcover published on:
May 18, 2012
Hardcover ISBN:
9783110258677
Paperback published on:
October 17, 2013
Paperback ISBN:
9783110332063
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
8
Main content:
553
Illustrations:
30
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110258684
eBook ISBN: 9783110258684
Hardcover ISBN: 9783110258677
Paperback ISBN: 9783110332063
Keywords for this book
German Exile Literature; New York / Literary History
Audience(s) for this book
Academics (Literary Studies, Cultural Studies), Institutes, Libraries
Safety & product resources
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2026 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 27.2.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110258684/html
Scroll to top button