The Fallacy of 'Inner Emigration'

Last week I wrote about Art and Tyranny, looking at two different artistic careers during the Nazi era.  Leni Riefenstahl used National Socialism to realize her film making ambitions and in the process achieved an apotheosis of the fascist aesthetic.  Wolfgang Koeppen remained in Germany but refused to use his literary genius to further the Nazi cause - he remained silent. But was there a Third Way?  Was it possible to continue to write and publish under Nazi tyranny and still retain a degree of moral integrity?

The writer Frank Thiess coined the term "Inner Emigration" to describe those writers who chose to remain in Germany and publish. It was their duty, Thiess claimed, to remain in the country they loved and continue to write for their public.  Moreover, Thiess insisted that writers who stayed were able to send subtle messages to German readers that were critical of the Nazi regime. (Reading these works today the messages seem so subtle that they are invisible.) After the war Thiess ignited a major literary controversy when he claimed that he and his fellow "Inner Emigrants" were morally superior to Thomas Mann, who watched the German tragedy unfold from the splendid opulence of Pacific Palisades.

“Ich glaube, es war schwerer, sich hier seine Persönlichkeit zu bewahren, als von drüben Botschaften an das deutsche Volk zu senden, welche die Tauben im Volke ohnedies nicht vernahmen, während wir Wissenden uns ihnen stets um einige Längen voraus fühlten.” (open letter from Frank Thiess to Thomas Mann)

The words drip with contempt for Thomas Mann and all the other emigrants who abandoned Germany in its time of need.  But let us consider the example of another, more famous writer.

  The writer Hans Fallada is forgotten today, but he was Germany's most successful writer at the end of the Weimar Republic - a John Grisham of his time.  His novel Kleiner Mann, Was Nun?  (Little Man, What Now?) became an international bestseller.  This sentimental tale of the German lumpenproletariat tugged at the heart strings so insistently that Hollywood made a feature film of the book. Fallada despised the Nazis, but, like Koeppen and Thiess, elected to remain in Germany, retreating to a farm in Mecklenburg.  Like Thiess, but unlike Koeppen, he continued writing and publishing.

We catch an interesting glimpse of Fallada on his farm in 1935 in Martha Dodd's book Through Embassy Eyes. Martha Dodd, the daughter of the US ambassador to Germany, and her American friend Mildred Harnack (the only American woman to be executed by the Nazis) paid a visit to Fallada and his family.  Fallada was basking in the success of his most recent novel, which had already sold 20,000 copies and was in its third printing (most likely Wir hatten mal ein Kind - 1934). But Fallada's mood turned sour when Martha (never one to hold back) asked him about the foreward to book, where the novelist praised the activities of the SA. Fallada became enraged and claimed that the "stupid Americans" had no concept of what it took to get published in Germany. "I saw the stamp of naked fear on a writer's face - for the first time," Martha recalled in her book.

Fallada died of drug addiction after the war, and today his books gather dust in antiquariat bookstores. Books by Frank Thiess can only be found in research libraries.  The writers of "Inner Emigration" are nothing more than a historical footnote. New editions of Thomas Mann's books continue to be published in every language and he is celebrated around the world.  Was anything of lasting value published in Germany between 1933 and 1945?

Comments

[Scott]

One name to mention is Erich Kaester...he wasn't able to continue with adult books like "Fabian" but many of his best children's books were written during this time.

Another is Ernst Juenger--a true master of the German language.

Basically, any literary work was either censored by the Nazis or is became defamed by association with the Nazis (like Fallada). But certainly plenty of good stuff was written and not necessarily published.

[Hattie]

I have been getting interested in this topic again, as I notice people retreating from the political scene into the minutiae of their private lives.
Might write something more about this sometime.