EXILED IN PARADISE: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America, from the 1930s to the Present

by Anthony Heilbut ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1983

Happily, unlike other recent books on the emigres (Taylor, p. 169; Cook, 1982, p. 1270), Heilbut doesn't emphasize superficial anecdotes and over-familiar ironies. In fact, if anything, this study of the German speaking emigres tries to cram too much serious material into a single volume--and the result is a rich yet poorly organized book, more successful in bits and pieces than in the aggregate. Heilbut begins with a vivid, thoughtful picture of Berlin intellectual life pre-1933: the interplay between German/ Jewish traditions, the ""concentric circles that gathered at the Berlin cafes."" Then, most impressively, he evokes the emigre reaction to arrival in America: the refugee ""needed the sophistication of maturity and the buoyancy of youth in order to relearn almost everything--from spatial directions to verbal idioms to social customs to political temperament. . . ."" After that, however, in disjointed chapters focusing on particular emigres, Heilbut often loses his declared drift (""the curve of the emigres' romance with America"")--while attempting both to outline and evaluate complex work. There's extensive discussion of the social researchers, Marxist and non-Marxist--with special attention to Adorno (his influence, his conflict with Lazarsfeld, his misguided attacks on jazz). There's brief treatment of artists and composers, the contrasting careers of Weill and Eisler. Brecht receives relatively (perhaps blessedly) short shrift; Peter Drucker shares a chapter with liberal historian Hans Kohn, conservative scholar Leo Strauss, and Bruno Bettelheim (""the most celebrated example of the emigre expert bullying his audience into submission""). Heilbut is solid on the film-directors (film noir as a reflection of their own feelings of ""entrapment""), unconvincing in his paean to Klaus Mann, sympathetic to Thomas (Doctor Faustus ""may be the supreme literary distillation of the themes of exile""). And the final chapters turns to postwar guilt, the Bethe-Teller H-Bomb wrangles, the HUAC, Einstein as a genuine hero--and the influential thinking through the 1960s of Arendt, Erikson, and Marcuse. Enough intellectual matter for 20 books, in other words--but if Heilbut never manages to make shapely sense of it all, he rarely cheapens his subject or forces connections; and the result is an ambitious, overloaded smorgasbord, served up with enough intelligence and style to invite rewarding, selective sampling.

Pub Date: May 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION