I Am from Austria: Czech, Ukrainian, and Slovakian Refugee Poets in New York

When we hear the terms "refugee crisis," "migration" and "Austria" today, we naturally think of Europe's refugee influx of the last several years. This article focuses on an earlier twentieth- century Austrian refugee crisis: that which sent some 35,000 European refugees through Austria to the United States in the 1938–1945 period, specifically a group of authors publishing poetry in German in New York during those years. Self identifying as Austrian exiles, these poets formed literary groups and publications for German- speaking readers. Yet Rose Ausländer, Anna Krommer, Gertrude Urzidil, and Franz Carl Weiskopf, while publicly framing their personal experiences as both Austrian and American, often turn to more regional themes in their verse, poeticizing a lyric identity that is more broadly "European" or specific to their home regions, namely Prague, Slovakia, or formerly Habsburg Ukraine.