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  • Die Flucht der Dichter und Denker: Wie Europas Künstler und Wissenschaftler den Nazis entkamenby Herbert Lackner
  • Vincent Kling
Herbert Lackner, Die Flucht der Dichter und Denker: Wie Europas Künstler und Wissenschaftler den Nazis entkamen. 2nded. Vienna: Ueberreiter, 2017. 208 pp.

As the tone of his title reveals, Herbert Lackner's book, covering "everybody who was anybody" among artists and thinkers fleeing the National Socialist regime, is clearly more journalistic, even popular, than scholarly. That comment is anything but a relegation; specialists—literary critics, historians, documentary chroniclers of exile above all—would be forfeiting vital information and insight if they skipped it for that reason. While almost all the material presented here has been treated in more detail elsewhere, there is no book this reviewer knows of that gathers together in one volume virtually all the refugees, making Lackner's work a "one-stop" compendium that is organized cogently. As Lackner himself writes, "Die Geschichte dieses Entkommens—und allzu häufig Scheiterns—wurde bisher noch nicht zusammenhängend erzählt" (11). It presents its subjects candidly, warts and all, such as a frank discussion of the enduring anti-Semitism and misplaced fastidiousness of Alma Mahler Werfel (46–49).

As he follows the expulsions and forced wanderings of his subjects ("Dieses Buch folgt Flüchtlingen, deren Namen jeder kennt, auf ihrer verzweifelten Stampede in überfüllten Zügen, in Viehwaggons, und auf Schiffen, von denen man nicht sicher sein konnte, dass sie ihren Zielhafen erreichten," 7–8), Lackner adds a convincing dimension by drawing comparisons to more recent refugees: "Szenen, wie sie sich heute an den Rändern des zunehmend befestigten Europa ereignen, auf der Balkanroute oder im Mittelmeer, spielten sich damals in der Mitte des Kontinents ab" (7). He maintains this parallel throughout, in that way humanizing a contemporary problem that many would prefer to remain slightly more faceless.

Aside from following the perilous journeys of many individual refugees through Western Europe and on board cramped ships to America, Lackner details "die Geschichte einer spektakulären Rettungsaktion, initiiert vom damals berühmtesten deutschsprachigen Schriftsteller, Thomas Mann" (8). Only expert specialists might have known previously how decisive, how intrepid, how generous Mann was in calling into being a complete aid organization. But how many readers were aware that Mann's action started with an appeal in the form of a desperate telegram from Walter Mehring, Hertha Pauli, and Ernst Weiss pleading for help as the Germans were about to [End Page 112]enter Paris in July of 1940 (96)? Lackner describes in skillful "you are there" fashion the first fundraising luncheon at the Hotel Commodore in New York, under the honorary patronage of Eleanor Roosevelt—her husband shied away from the problem in an election year—and with the main addresses delivered by Reinhold Niebuhr and Erika Mann. The chapter may have a rather histrionic title ("Geheimtreffen im 'Hotel Commodore,'" 96–102), but it is justified, and the content is beautifully researched.

Two somewhat forgotten players are introduced in this chapter. The first is the American Federation of Labor, advised in its financing of the new Rescue Committee by the Jewish Labour Committee; both groups "legen die Namen von flüchtenden Sozialdemokraten und Gewerkschaftlern aus Deutschland und Österreich vor" (99); it was not only creative artists who were being helped. The second player is an individual who has never been prominent in the telling, Varian Fry: "Rund 2000 Menschen haben Fry und seine Helfer beim Herannahen der Nazis das Leben gerettet, darunter die noch in Europa ausharrende Kulturelite" (8). They were officially equipped with no more than a good word from the First Lady to the American consul in Marseille (101). And in keeping with his historical parallel, Lackner adds of these rescuers, "Heute würde man sie Schlepper nennen" (8).

One figure stands out in the brilliance of his concealment, as it were. Bill Spira, former caricaturist for the Arbeiter-Zeitungin Vienna, is memorialized in a chapter aptly titled "Papiere müsste man haben" (103–18). As a master forger, he falsified and created documents for dozens of refugees. Caught and imprisoned in a series of concentration camps, he lived in Paris until 1999...

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