Brief Description
Studies of literary responses to National Socialism 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 noncomformity through camouflaged texts designed to offer sensitized readers encouragement, reassurance, and consolation. This book provides an innovative, critical, historically informed, yet accessible reassessment of these writers --
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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 Junger, Ernst Wiechert, and Erika Mitterer. John Klapper is Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Review Quotes
1. 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
