Exile and Division

German Literature

Course 1 · Chapter 9 · Exile, Division & the Postwar Voice

The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 broke German literature in two: a literature in exile and a literature at home under censorship. After 1945 the country was divided, and writers in East and West had to decide how to speak about what had happened. This chapter handles that history factually, with attention to what writers did and how they wrote about it. It covers the book burnings, exile, the "zero hour" debate, Gruppe 47, Böll, Celan and Grass in the West, and Brecht and Christa Wolf in the East. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

1933 and Exile

Book burnings

On 10 May 1933 students and Nazi organisations burned books by Jewish, left-wing and other writers in Berlin and other university towns (check). Authors affected included Heine, who had long been dead (Chapter 6), Mann, Remarque, Kästner and many others.

Writers in exile

Thousands of writers left Germany and Austria. Thomas Mann went to Switzerland and then the United States, Brecht to Scandinavia and then the US, Stefan Zweig to Britain and later Brazil, where he died in 1942 (check). Exile publishers in Amsterdam and elsewhere kept German-language writing alive.

Murdered and silenced

Many Jewish writers were persecuted, deported or killed in the Holocaust, and others were imprisoned or silenced (check examples). Their loss is part of the story of German literature and not a footnote.

  • Writing at home. Some writers stayed in Germany and published under censorship. Later, a debate arose about "inner emigration", the claim that some had kept their integrity by internal withdrawal. Mann and others disputed this in 1945 (check the details of the debate).
  • Judging individuals. The record of each writer under the regime varies from active support to quiet resistance, and should be checked person by person, not assumed (check).

The West After 1945

Writer and work (check each)Note
Gruppe 47A loose circle of writers around Hans Werner Richter that met from 1947 to read and criticise new work, and set the tone of West German literature for two decades (check).
Heinrich Böll (1917 to 1985)A soldier in the war who wrote short stories and novels on the war, ruins and the postwar Federal Republic. Nobel Prize 1972 (check).
Paul Celan (1920 to 1970)A Romanian-born Jewish poet writing in German. "Todesfuge" (1948), a poem of the camps, is among the best-known poems of the century. He died in Paris in 1970 (check).
Günter Grass (1927 to 2015)Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959), a novel narrated by a boy who stops growing, through Danzig and the Nazi years. Nobel Prize 1999. In 2006 he disclosed that he had served in the Waffen-SS as a teenager, which caused controversy (check).
How to write after 1945 Writers faced the question of whether a literary language compromised by propaganda could be used at all. Celan answered by changing the language, writing compressed, broken poems that refuse easy consolation. Böll and Grass answered through narrative, one with plain stories of ordinary people, the other with comic exaggeration. The "zero hour" (Stunde Null) idea of a clean start was always debated, since many people and institutions continued after 1945 (check).

The East

  • Division. From 1949 two states existed, the Federal Republic in the West and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the East, and literature was shaped by their different systems (check).
  • Brecht. He returned to East Berlin and founded the Berliner Ensemble in 1949 (check), working within a state that praised and watched him.
  • Christa Wolf (1929 to 2011). Her novels, including Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven, 1963) and Kassandra (1983), were widely read in both states. A debate in 1990 over her short book Was bleibt and her past contacts with the state security service (Stasi) became part of a wider argument about how to judge writers of the GDR (check the details).
  • Censorship and expulsion. The state controlled publishing, and the singer-poet Wolf Biermann was stripped of his citizenship in 1976 while on tour in the West (check), after which some writers left.
  • 1989. The fall of the Wall in November 1989 and reunification in 1990 opened a new phase, which Chapter 10 picks up.
A British comparison There is no close British parallel. The nearest points are the exile and return of British and European writers during the Second World War, and the Cold War experience of writers from the Eastern bloc who settled in Britain (check). Orwell's essays on language and politics are a useful comparison for the German question of what words could still be trusted.
Check the details This history is sensitive and the facts matter. Dates, prizes and individual writers' records (including Grass and Wolf) are from general knowledge and have been revised by later research and archives. Verify with scholarly sources and survivors' accounts, and avoid slogans in either direction.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe the effect of 1933 on German-language literature, covering the book burnings, exile and writers who stayed.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Compare how Celan and Grass respond in their writing to the Nazi past, with one work from each.

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Exercise 3

Explain why judging writers of the GDR, or writers of the Nazi years, requires evidence about each individual, and describe the evidence you would seek.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • 1933: book burnings, exile, inner emigration debate (check)
  • West: Gruppe 47, Böll, Celan, Grass
  • East: Brecht, Christa Wolf, Biermann 1976
  • Question: how to write after catastrophe
  • The caution: check each writer's record; avoid slogans