Weimar in Princeton

Reviews / Votes

Weimar in Princeton is an authoritative, stylistically adroit, fully engaged work that, with a subtle wit, guides readers in the most pleasant way across an ideal university campus. ... It is a new, irreplaceable standard work on Thomas Mann's intellectual biography and a major contribution to transatlantic literary history. (Bloomsbury translation) * Monatshefte * The real magician here is Stanley Corngold, who has pulled Weimar in Princeton: Thomas Mann and the Kahler Circle out of his Mind in Exile hat. With the focus on Mann's brother exiles in Princeton-Erich Kahler, Hermann Broch, and Albert Einstein--the book has been released in the Bloomsbury series, New Directions in German Studies. -- Stuart Mitchner * Town Topics Newspaper * With verve, elegance, and inimitable wit, Corngold provides indispensable insights into the crucial first phase of Thomas Mann's American exile by focusing on the electrifying circle of artists, intellectuals, and scientists at Erich Kahler's home in Princeton. Astonishingly rich in ramifications, Weimar in Princeton is an eminently readable and inspiring exploration of this most luminous collective caught within the century's darkest epoch. * John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA * Stanley Corngold's brilliantly nuanced book is a pendant to his The Mind in Exile and completes his in-depth exploration of this important part of Thomas Mann's intellectual journey. This account of Mann's everyday intercourse with figures like Einstein, Hermann Broch, and especially Erich Kahler is enlightened and enlivened by Corngold's sly wit and engagingly elicits the civility, intellectual breadth, and sense of community Mann experienced during the Princeton years. Corngold writes for the "happy few" who relish the life and works of Thomas Mann. Weimar in Princeton will surely enlarge that fortunate circle. * Ruth V. Gross, Professor of German and Head, North Carolina State University, USA * Zeroing in on a particular place during a brief moment of time, Stanley Corngold uncovers a wealth of cultural, political and personal interactions never before adequately explored. The specific grain of sand in which he discovers this forgotten world is Princeton, New Jersey between 1938 and 1941, where a remarkable group of Central European exiles coalesced around the towering figures of Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Hermann Broch, and Erich Kahler. Corngold fashions a moving and insightful account of their struggles to cope with the loss of their old culture and meet the challenges of the new. Weimar in Princeton is a sprightly, always engaging micro-narrative of a unique moment in twentieth-century trans-Atlantic intellectual history. * Martin Jay, Ehrman Professor of European History Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, USA *