Nonconformist Writing in Nazi Germany: The Literature of Inner Emigration

John Klapper

Research output: Book/ReportBook

Abstract

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. Yet in 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 their nonconformity 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 in scope, 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 Jünger, Ernst Wiechert, and Erika Mitterer.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationRochester, New York
PublisherCamden House
Number of pages453
ISBN (Print)9781571139092
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2015

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