First Letters After Exile by Thomas Mann, Hannah Arendt, Ernst Bloch, and Others

248 Pages·2021·2.015 MB·English

by  David Kettler (editor), Detlef Garz (editor)

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First Letters after Exile by

Thomas Mann, Hannah Arendt,
Ernst Bloch, and Others
ii
iii
First Letters after Exile by

Thomas Mann, Hannah Arendt,
Ernst Bloch, and Others
Edited by David Kettler
and Detlef Garz
iv
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2021
by ANTHEM PRESS
75– 76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© 2021 David Kettler and Detlef Garz editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters © individual contributors
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-i n-P ublication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933863
ISBN- 13: 978- 1- 78527- 671- 2 (Hbk)
ISBN- 10: 1- 78527- 671- 9 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e- book.
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CONTENTS

Preface vii
Chapter 1. The “First Letters” Exile Project: Introduction 1
David Kettler
Chapter 2. “That I Will Return, My Friend, You Do Not
Believe Yourself”: Karl Wolfskehl – Exul Poeta 21
Detlef Garz
Chapter 3. “I Do Not Lift a Stone”: Thomas Mann’s
“First Letter” to Walter von Molo 45
Leonore Krenzlin
Chapter 4. Faust Narrative and Impossibility Thesis: 
Thomas Mann’s Answer to Walter von Molo 65
Reinhard Mehring
Chapter 5. “That I Am Not Allowed for a Moment to Forget
the Ocean of Blood”: Hans- Georg Gadamer and
Leo Strauss in Their First Letters after 1946 75
Thomas Meyer
Chapter 6. Return into Exile: First Letters to and from
Ernst Bloch 95
Moritz Mutter and Falko Schmieder
Chapter 7. A Postwar Encounter without Pathos: Otto
Kirchheimer’s Critical Response to the
New Germany 107
Peter Breiner
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vi CONTENTS
Chapter 8. An Exile’s Letter to Old Comrades in Cologne:
Wilhelm Sollmann’s Critique of German Social
Democracy and Conception of a New Party in
Postwar Germany 115
Marjorie Lamberti
Chapter 9. First Letters: Arendt to Heidegger 139
Micha Brumlik
Chapter 10. Denazification and Postwar German Philosophy:
The Marcuse/ Heidegger Correspondence 153
Thomas Wheatland
Chapter 11. “It Would Be Perhaps a New Exile and Perhaps
the Most Painful”: The Theme of Return in
Oskar Maria Graf’s Letters to Hugo Hartung 161
Helga Schreckenberger
Chapter 12. Social Constellation of the Exile at the End of
the Second World War and the Pragmatics of
the “First Letters”: An Objective Hermeneutic
Structural and Sequence Analysis 177
Ulrich Oevermann
Notes on Contributors 231
Index 233
vii
PREFACE

This book contains a selection of studies from the second phase of two decades
of work by international collaborators engaged in a reconsideration of the
sources and literature on the exiles from Germany during the Hitler era. The
first phase began with a workshop and conference, both held at Bard College
in 2001 and 2002, under the general heading of “Contested Legacies,” a
theme that referred, above all, to the development in exile of the contrasts
and conflicts that had marked German intellectual life during the first decades
of the century between the proponents of methodical science embodied in
rigorous disciplines and the advocates of Bildung and/ or civic education as the
locus of national renewal.1 That work opened questions about the choices for
exiles in the postwar period.
While beginning to research these questions in the German Literary
Archives in Marbach, Kettler came upon some letters written to and from
exiles early in the postwar period, and these seemed to him to bear especially
clearly on key issues confronting both exiles and those who had remained
behind. Letters provide evidence that is especially valuable in situations most
common among the kinds of cases studied, where the breached contacts being
tested were largely of an informal, quasi- professional kind, symbolized by peri-
odic conversations in favored coffee houses, more or less tinctured by personal
friendships. This applies no less to “open letters” under these circumstances as
it does to direct personal contacts.
1 David Kettler and Thomas Wheatland (eds), “Contested Legacies: Political Theory
and the Hitler Era,” European Journal of Political Theory 3, no. 2 (April 2004); David
Kettler, “ ‘Et les émigrés sont les vaincus.’ Spiritual Diaspora and Political Exile,” Journal
of the Interdisciplinary Crossroads, 1, no. 2 (August 2004); David Kettler and Gerhard
Lauer (eds.), Exile, Science, and Bildung. The Contested Legacies of German Intellectual Emigres
(New York: Palgrave, 2005).
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viii PREFACE
After publishing a preliminary article that essayed some illustrations of the
analytical possibilities of this approach,2 Kettler was able to organize a con-
ference on the theme at the German Literary Archives in May 2008, with
contributions from leading German-s peaking scholars, as well as a sequel at
Trinity College in November of that year for colleagues resident in North
America. Detlef Garz provided opportunities and collaboration for detailed
follow- up. The two volumes in German resulting from these workshops are
the source of the present collection.3 As the articles show, the study of exile
addresses questions that are not limited to the interests of regional specialists,
with local- language skills. The translations from German follow the lead of
linguistic practice in English- language usage in this field of study. In view of
the exploratory and interpretative character of the focus and the recognized
special qualifications of the contributors, no attempts were made to homog-
enize the approaches.4
2 “«Erste Briefe» nach Deutschland. Zwischen Exil und Rückkehr,” Zeitschrift für
Ideengeschichte, II, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 80– 108; “First Letters: The Liquidation of
Exile?,” in David Kettler (ed.), The Liquidation of Exile. Studies in the Intellectual Emigration
of the I930s (London: Anthem, 2008), pp. 109– 46.
3 Primus Heinz Kucher, Johannes F. Evelein, and Helga Schreckenberger (eds.), Erste
Biefe/ First Letters aus dem Exil 1945– 1950. Unmoegliche Gespraeche. Fallbeispiele des Literarischen
und Kuenstlerischen Exils (Munich: Edition Text+Kritik, 2011); Detlef Garz and David
Kettler (eds.), Nach dem Krieg!— Nach dem Exil? Fallbeispiele aus dem Sozialwissenschaftlichen
und Philosophischen Exil (Munich: Edition Text+Kritik, 2011).
4 The articles by Krenzlin, Mehring, and Schreckenberger were published in German
in Primus-H einz Kucher, Johannes F. Evelein, and Helga Schreckenberger (eds.), Erste
Briefe/ First Letters aus dem Exil 1945– 1950. (Un)mögliche Gespräche’ (München: Edition
Text+Kritik, 2011). All other articles were published in German in Detlef Garz
and David Kettler (eds.), Nach dem Krieg!— Nach dem Exil? Erste Briefe/F irst Letters
(München: Edition Text+Kritik, 2012).  Translations of texts unavailable in English
were the responsibility of David Kettler.
1
Chapter 1

THE “FIRST LETTERS” EXILE
PROJECT: INTRODUCTION
David Kettler

On October 13, 1947, the prominent Weimar cultural critic and Nazi-e ra
exile living in New York, Siegfried Kracauer, composed the following letter to
Wolfgang Weyrauch in Germany, whom he had evidently known years earlier,
when Weyrauch was a student in Frankfurt and an occasional contributor to
Kracauer’s Frankfurter Zeitung:
I have received your letters—i ncluding the last one—a s well as the books. I am
surprised that you now insist on a quick reply, after you never thought to keep
up your connections with me throughout the Hitler years and even the years
before. Since you overlook this circumstance, I am compelled to mention it. In
the meantime things have happened that you know about—t hings that make it
impossible for me simply to resume connections with people over there without
being altogether certain of them. Such things are not forgettable. And if it is at all
possible to restore trust, it is a far more difficult task than you seem to assume. You
also seem to harbor illusions about our life: it has been and it is hard and difficult.1
Six days later, he rewrote the as- yet- unmailed letter. In the revision, Kracauer
replaces the colloquial suggestion that contact might resume after a while
with a more personal and concrete—b ut also less companionable— choice of
language, telescoping two of his earlier thoughts, by turning directly to the
“things” whose occurrence make it “infinitely difficult to regain trust in people
from over there from whom I have not heard in such a long time.” Finally,
replacing his statement about the hardships of exile, he simply concluded
with: “I do not want to say anything more. There is too much in the way.”
1 DLA Marbach Handschriftenbestände. Signatur Kracauer. Zugangsnummer
72.1905– 72.1906.