i 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. v 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 vi 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). newgenvprieiipdf 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.