Nonconformist Writing in Nazi Germany
The Literature of Inner Emigration
Published on 1. September 2015
Book
Hardback
464 pages
978-1-57113-909-2 (ISBN)
Description
An innovative, critical, historically informed, yet accessible reassessment of writers who remained in Nazi Germany and Austria yet expressed nonconformity - even dissent - through their fiction.
2016 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Studies of literary responses to National Socialism between 1933 and 1945 have largely focused on exiled writers; opposition within Germany and Austria is less well understood. Yetin both countries there were writers who continued to publish imaginative literature that did not conform to Nazi precepts: the authors of the so-called Inner Emigration. They withdrew from the regime and sought to express theirnonconformity through camouflaged texts designed to offer sensitized readers encouragement, reassurance, and consolation.
This book provides a critical, historically informed reassessment of these writers. It is innovative inscope, in its use of little-known sources, in placing authors and texts in a detailed social and political context, and in analyzing seminal topoi and tropes of oppositional discourse. One of the most extensive studies of the topic in German or English, it provides a state-of-the-art text for literary historians, scholars, and students of German literature, but also, thanks to its accessibility and translation of all material, serves as an introduction for English-speaking readers to this poorly understood group of writers. Two contextualizing chapters are followed by chapters devoted to Werner Bergengruen, Stefan Andres, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Gertrud von le Fort, Reinhold Schneider, Ernst Juenger, Ernst Wiechert, and Erika Mitterer.
John Klapper is Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, UK.
2016 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Studies of literary responses to National Socialism between 1933 and 1945 have largely focused on exiled writers; opposition within Germany and Austria is less well understood. Yetin both countries there were writers who continued to publish imaginative literature that did not conform to Nazi precepts: the authors of the so-called Inner Emigration. They withdrew from the regime and sought to express theirnonconformity through camouflaged texts designed to offer sensitized readers encouragement, reassurance, and consolation.
This book provides a critical, historically informed reassessment of these writers. It is innovative inscope, in its use of little-known sources, in placing authors and texts in a detailed social and political context, and in analyzing seminal topoi and tropes of oppositional discourse. One of the most extensive studies of the topic in German or English, it provides a state-of-the-art text for literary historians, scholars, and students of German literature, but also, thanks to its accessibility and translation of all material, serves as an introduction for English-speaking readers to this poorly understood group of writers. Two contextualizing chapters are followed by chapters devoted to Werner Bergengruen, Stefan Andres, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Gertrud von le Fort, Reinhold Schneider, Ernst Juenger, Ernst Wiechert, and Erika Mitterer.
John Klapper is Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Reviews / Votes
The debate about inner and outer emigration was one of the foundational intellectual debates of postwar West German culture, and hence Klapper's effort to revisit it, and to take a new look at inner emigration during the Nazi period, is useful and welcome. . . . [T]his is an important and much-needed book. -- Stephen Brockmann * MONATSHEFTE * [G]enuinely indispensable, even to readers well versed in the topic of 'inner emigration.' The two initial chapters . . . are disproportionately powerful distillations of research in literary history, genre criticism, social analysis, and factual-archival investigation. . . . [A] monumental study. . . . * AUSTRIAN STUDIES * [N]uanced . . . . [S]ucceeds in its aim of providing much-needed detailed textual and historical analysis of ostensibly ambivalent writings about humanist values that passed or evaded Nazi monitoring of writing and publication. . . . [C]ontributes a remarkable amount [to] the ongoing excavation of this subcategory of nonconformist writing . . . . * FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES * John Klapper's monograph combines a general introduction to the literature of the so-called 'inner emigration' with exemplary textual analyses. . . . As a whole the study -- which is not only directed at scholars in the field -- offers a good overview . . . . * GERMANISTIK * 2016 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title * . * Klapper's detailed efforts to historicize the reception history of the inner emigration, and to expand the imaginative scope within which twenty-first-century readers might re-engage with it, offer a blueprint for enriching new departures in this area. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES * [A] seminal study that provides even a non-German-speaking readership a detailed view of this interesting topic. . . . Recommended. * MITTEILUNGEN DER STEFAN-ANDRES-GESELLSCHAFT * [A] comprehensive analysis . . . . Klapper's book gives evidence of an intensive engagement with works of the inner emigration and arrays before the reader readily comprehensible and engaging interpretations that inspire one to want to read-or re-read-the texts. * DER LITERARISCHE ZAUNKOENIG * In this important and comprehensive study, John Klapper convincingly argues for a reassessment of nonconformist literature and National Socialism. . . [A] useful and important addition not only to literary studies but to the investigation of the arts under National Socialism in general. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW * In this compelling, well-researched study-a major contribution to the field-Klapper presents a thorough reassessment of [the] so-called inner emigrants and develops models for untangling the contradictions in their writing. . . . Highly recommended. * CHOICE *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Columbia, MD
United States
Publishing group
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
10 s/w Abbildungen
8 b/w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 242 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 42 mm
Weight
843 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-57113-909-2 (9781571139092)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
03/2019
Camden House Inc
€56.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
E-Book
09/2015
1st Edition
De Gruyter
€48.99
Available for download
Person
John Klapper
Content
Introduction
Nazi Germany and Literary Nonconformism
The Writers of the Inner Emigration and Their Approaches
Werner Bergengruen: "The Fuehrer Novel"?
Stefan Andres: The Christian Humanist Response to Tyranny
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen: The Snobbish Dissenter and His Tale of Mass Insanity
Gertrud von le Fort: Religious Wars and the Nazi Present
Reinhold Schneider: Indios, Jews, and Persecution
Ernst Juenger: Spiritual Opposition as Resistance?
Ernst Wiechert, the Principled Conservative: From Public Dissent to the "Simple Life"
Erika Mitterer: Witch Hunts and the Power of Evil
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Nazi Germany and Literary Nonconformism
The Writers of the Inner Emigration and Their Approaches
Werner Bergengruen: "The Fuehrer Novel"?
Stefan Andres: The Christian Humanist Response to Tyranny
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen: The Snobbish Dissenter and His Tale of Mass Insanity
Gertrud von le Fort: Religious Wars and the Nazi Present
Reinhold Schneider: Indios, Jews, and Persecution
Ernst Juenger: Spiritual Opposition as Resistance?
Ernst Wiechert, the Principled Conservative: From Public Dissent to the "Simple Life"
Erika Mitterer: Witch Hunts and the Power of Evil
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index