Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present by Andiony Heilbut (review)

In "Can You Go Home Again? Sinclair Lewis: Main Street and Paris," Roger Forseth discusses where some of Lewis' troubled relations with his literary contemporaries began: in his inability or unwillingness to get along with the expatriate community around Gertrude Stein. Not surprisingly, the Americans in Paris did not always like each other very well, though many ofthem were able to share a dislike for "Red" Lewis. Given that Lewis and Hemingway, for example, had quite different, but perhaps equally valid, ideas about the novel, it does seem unfair that the admirers ofthe one wrote more eloquently than the defenders ofthe other. The volume concludes widi an extensive annotated bibliography by Sally E. Parry and Robert L. McLaughlin. The list covers the period from 1977 to 1996 and runs for nearly fifty pages — not exactly evidence of critical neglect. This volume, however, demonstrates that there are still vital things to be said about Sinclair Lewis' work and that he clearly belongs in that ever-growing pantheon of authors who deserve to be much better known. ^ Andiony Heilbut. Exiled in Paradise: German RefugeeArtists and IntellectuaL· in Americafrom the 1930s to the Present. 2nd edition. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1997. 524p. George Bridges University of Idaho As a general introduction to the topic, or even as a broad overview ofintellectual and artistic life in this country during and after the war, this book by Anthony Heilbut, first published in 1983, is very useful. Heilbut claims a lot for the men and women he writes about, but not unjustifiably. Few would disagree that this group ofrefugees had an influence on American culture quite out ofproportion to their actual numbers. Since they came to this country as adults, with "European sensibilities" and a political perspective determined by recent European history, it is not surprising that Heilbut shows us in more detail what they brought with them and "gave" to America than what America gave to them. As refugees they had one diing in common : they all had fled the country of their birth because of fascist persecution. For this reason alone it would not be surprising ifthey —Jews and non-Jews alike — had all been leftists, politically speaking. And in fact many, ifnot most, were, and continued to be after they becameAmerican citizens. (Actually, Heilbut's book presents very little evidence that America was "paradise" for any ofdiem.) But the surprise is that there was great diversity in their political outlooks, ranging from Henry Kissinger on the right to Hannah Arendt on the left. 98 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * FALL 1999 In the case ofGerman refugees from the left, it would seem diat what America "gave" them, as far as their further intellectual and artistic development was concerned , was minimal. Leftist refugees associated with academic institutions in this country, for example, continued their work from perspectives they had already gained in Europe. Heilbut writes at some length about individual refugees connected with the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (for example: the art historian Erwin Panofsky, the archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, and Albert Einstein), the New School for Social Research in New York (where many if not most ofthe refugee associates were former non-Marxist German Social Democrats), and die Institute ofSocial Research, the former Frankfurt School, whose collaborators were Marxists of a special stripe: Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, the legal scholar Otto Kirchheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm. German refugee historians, social critics, and political and economic analysts ofa more or less conservative bent — and here the main figures talked about are the historian Hans Kohn, the political philosopher Leo Strauss, business analyst Peter Drucker, the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, and the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim — found less to criticize in American culture than their counterparts on the left. Heilbut leaves the impression that America's influence on this group manifested itselfmainly in a rejection ofideological thinking in general. [Heilbut gives the radicals on the left the last word, however: is there such a thing as nonideological thinking? For a social scientist to adopt American methods, for example , meant adopting a "willful blindness to the forces of social control" and calling it "common sense" (203; 211-212)]. The question just...