The German Exile Enclave in Vermont

To me (as a New Englander) it is fascinating that tiny Vermont played an important role as a refuge for German émigrés fleeing European fascism.  Here are some names of prominent émigrés I've come across recently:

Heinrich Brüning: the last democratically elected chancellor of Germany before the Nazi seizure of power.  Brüning had the misfortune of becoming Germany's leader just as the nation was plunged into the Great Depression.  His austerity measures earned him the nickname Der Hungerkanzler (the starvation chancellor).  His role in the demise of the Weimar Republic remains controversial today - did he capitulate too readily to the right-wing extremist forces?  Brüning settled in Norwich, Vermont, where he died - lonely and embittered - in 1970.

Carl Zuckmayer: The great German playwright owned an operated a farm in Barnard, Vermont during the war years where he raised goats and vegetables.  Zuckmayer came to Vermont after first working in Hollywood as a scriptwriter (which he despised) and then as a drama teacher in New York City. Many luminaries of Weimar Germany passed through rural Barnard to visit Zuckmayer (including a surprise visit by the prototypical Großstadtmensch Bertolt Brecht). It was on his Vermont farm that Zuckmayer wrote his great play Des Teufels General (The Devil's General) which revived German theater in the immediate postwar years.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:  German Jewish philosopher from Breslau, who fled Nazi Germany in early 1935. Rosenstock-Huessy settled in Norwich, Vermont and was soon tapped by President Roosevelt to set up a special Civilian Conservation Corps in Vermont for elite students from Harvard and Dartmouth - instilling a new value of idealistic service to country.  This is often cited as as precursor to the Peace Corps. In Vermont Rosenstock-Huessy wrote his masterpiece Out of Revolution , an interdisciplinary musing on contemporary history, which, published in 1938, offers an eerie foretelling of the Holocaust.

Freya von Moltke: Wife of the conservative German anti-fascist activist Heinrich von Moltke. Freya herself was an active member of the Kreisau Circle of resisters. After Heinrich was executed by Hitler, Freya made her way to Norwich, Vermont, where she lives today.

How did such an illustrious group of German anti-fascists end up in tiny Vermont? With the exception of Brüning, they were all brought to the Green Mountain State by the indefatigable Dorothy Thompson. Thompson and her husband, Sinclair Lewis, bought an estate in Barnard, which soon became an east coast Weimar-in-exile.  (Thompson's friendship with Heinrich von Moltke, which resulted in her 1941 book Listen, Hans! is the subject of a future post.)

Comments

[Raymond Huessy]

Yes, Carl Zuckmayer was able to enter the US on the basis of Dorothy Thompson's sponsorship, but the statement that the others "were all brought to the Green Mountain State by the indefatigable" Thompson" is nonsense.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy came to Vermont when he became a professor at Dartmouth, several years before he met Dorothy Thompson. It was his Boston friends Henry and Rosamund Greene who helped him to that position.

Freya von Moltke came to Vermont to live with Rosenstock-Huessy; she made only two visits to Vermont before she moved to Norwich, and both were visits to the Rosenstock-Huessys' house, called "Four Wells." (It was to be her home for 49 out of the 98 years of her very long life.)

Word is still out on Bruening, but like Rosenstock-Huessy, he had also taught at Harvard before moving to Vermont. There is not a single mention of Thompson and Bruening together online, which is admittedly inconclusive.

(And the man addressed in "Listen, Hans!" was Freya von Moltke's husband, HELMUTH James von Moltke.)

[David]

Thanks for this information.

Much has been written about the exile community in southern California, but virtually nothing about this group in northern New England. Material for a book?