German Literature 1933-1938

German Literature 1933-1938
Author(s): Frank Mankiewicz

Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Nov., 1939), pp. 179-191
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German
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GERMAN LITERATURE 1933-19381
Frank Mankiewicz
City College
WE CAN hardly understand the development of German literature

after the advent of the "Dritte Reich" or its present condition unless
we recall, however briefly, the main tendencies which had character-
ized this literature during the preceding three decades.
A classification of these tendencies according to their literary
peculiarities is, no doubt, of importance and interest for the student of
literature, but it seems of little value for our purpose which is to see
whether and why the year 1933 ushered in an important division of
German literary activity, creating what is generally referred to as
"Literature within the Reich" and "Emigrantenliteratur" (literature
of the emigr6s) and, if possible, to arrive at a characterization and
an evaluation of these two developments. (When speaking of Ger-
man literature I am referring only to what is known as "schine
Literatur" and am not considering at all writings or writers con-
cerned in the main with political, economic, religious and scientific
topics.)
Thus instead of following the interesting but for our purpose un-
suitable classification of writings as naturalistic, impressionistic, sym-
bolistic, new classical, expressionistic, "Neue Sachlichkeit," etc., let
us adopt an arrangement made use of by Alfred Dbblin in a very
recent survey of German literature.
This arrangement recognizes for the first 30 years of our century
three contemporary movements in German literature corresponding,
by and large, to three great historical developments in Germany. It
recognizes
1) a conservative group of writers with feudal, agrarian, and
patrician tendencies, with reactionary leanings and a devotion to
the classics.
2) an intermediary group believing in humanism, progress and
a middle-class conciliatory attitude.
3) an intellectually revolutionary group, very modern, now po-
litical, now unpolitical, sometimes rationalistic and then again mys-
tic.
1A lecture delivered at the University of California at Los Angeles, July 17.

1939.
179
180 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
Of course, membership in one of these groups of whom I shall name

some representatives does not mean that all of the works of a writer
show the tendencies indicated; the development of the author some-
times "graduates" him from one group into another.
To the first group belong writers like Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer,
Paul Ernst, Wilhelm von Scholz, Herman Stucken, Hans Friedrich
Blunck, Herman Stehr, Joseph Ponten, Stefan George, Hans Carossa,
Hans Grimm, Hans Fallada, a.o. They reach out into the past of
German history for their subjects, depict the life of the middle ages,
of guilds and soldiery, they are intensely proud of two sides of Ger-
man life, the idyllic and the heroic, and they show the pride in their
race. I am, of course, aware of the fact that some of their works do
not fit into this picture at all but treat of the problems of their time
as e.g. Hans Grimm in his Volk ohne Raum, Fallada in Kleiner Mann,
was nun?
The intermediary group comes in the main from bourgeois circles.
They believe in the humane and humanistic ideals of the classical
period, they carry on traditional impressionism with due emphasis
on psychological insight, they are interested in problems nearer to
their own time, and they treat of questions which are not bound to
the German soil but touch problems inter-European and interna-
tional in character. To this group belonged a.o. Heinrich and Thomas
Mann, Schnitzler, Wassermann, Bruno Frank, and Hoffmannsthal.
Even Gerhart Hauptmann may be included in this group though in
some of his works he reaches out into the proletarian milieu and
adheres in their presentation to the forms of naturalism.
For the intellectual-revolutionary group it is difficult to find a
formula which for a large majority of them would include more than
one definite and outspoken characteristic. It is true that they have
"ein neues Weltgefiihl," a new philosophy of life, and new world-
consciousness but their literary expressions of it differ widely. Some
of them follow the dictates of Neue Sachlichkeit in their treatment
of modern technic and industry, of political, economic and social
conditions, others become almost mystic in their abhorrence of real-
ities. But they are all united in their negation of the importance of
traditional values. Dbblin points out correctly that this attitude is
not due to a lack of understanding of the past but to a different un-
derstanding of it. Refusing to acknowledge in general the greatness
or importance of the past they find for their revolutionary spirits
outlet and form in what is known as futurism, expressionism and
GERMAN LITERATURE 181
"die neue Sachlichkeit" of which I spoke before. To this group be-

long Ernst Toller, Georg Kaiser, Alfred D5blin, Else Lasker-Schiiler,
Franz Werfel, Alfred Wolfenstein, Leonhard Frank, Franz Kafka,
Karl Sternheim, Fritz von Unruh, Bert Brecht and many more.
In order to round out the picture of German Literature during
the first 30 years of our century somewhat (and I would like to empha-
size that word s o m e w h a t) I shall quickly recall some of the
main topics with which the writers of this period were concerned. I
have mentioned those which refer to the life of the German past in
its different aspects and somewhat connected with these we find the
group of topics which increased materially the field of "Heimat-
kunst." "Zeitromane" such as Thomas Mann's Zauberberg in which
rather objectively the different and opposing currents of his time
are presented with their fatal influence upon bourgeois Europe were
comparatively rare. Definite, sometimes sharply defined problems
of the economic and social status of society were preferred, care-
fully investigated as to their psychological basis and drastically pre-
sented. And the psychological novel did by no means fight shy of
the great problem of Weltanschauung. The way to God became just
as frequent a topic as the relation of father to son, of child and
school, of the unemployed (and the employed) to society, of the ex-
soldier to his country, of the workingman to the capitalist, of the
discharged criminal to the community, of husband to wife, and so
on.-And this is characteristic and of importance in all of these
writings that the problem is always treated with careful considera-
tion of the individual traits of the hero, always recognizing and em-
phasizing his rights as an individual. This is even true where the
hero's relation to the "Vaterland" and his patriotic duty is stressed,
as e.g. in the works of Hans Grimm, Hans Blunck and others. Though
a wholehearted adherence to and pride of things German is preached
and praised and demanded by these authors, still the individual's
own sense of justice, own right of judgment is upheld.
It is this persistent recognition of man's individuality with the
logically following right of creating his own ideals in which we will
find a clear distinction in the writings of the two groups which we
are considering today.-Their physical separation resulted from dif-
ferent reasons.
What brought about this separation is well known to all of us.
Many writers had to leave the country of their birth and of their
love, their fatherland, for political, racial, and religious reasons, some
others left of their own free will because they felt they would be
hampered in their productivity by restrictions which were inherent
in the newly adopted state-philosophy of Germany. Many stayed and
only in a very few cases have we a right to presume that they adopted
the new ideology with any mental reservation.
What were, what are these new conditions under which literature
is to flourish in Germany?
We all know the main tenets of the "Drittes Reich." A Nordic
Totalitarian state with strictly enforced "Gleichschaltung" of all
social, economic and cultural agencies for the support of clearly de-
fined unchangeable ideals, with uncompromising subordination un-
der the will of the Fiihrer. Literature plays an important part in this
gigantic structure. Hence the directives governing literary produc-
tion are clearly stated, are to be rigidly enforced.
Let us see what the first president of the "Reichsschrifttumskam-
mer," Hans Friedrich Blunck, has to say about these directives and
about the future tenor of German Literature. The "Reichsschrift-
tumskammer," i.e. the body into whose hands the supervision and
organization of literature has been committed, is a part of the "Kul-
turkammer" which supervises all creative art in Germany. Blunck
was the first president of the subdivision, which comprises booksel-
lers, publishers and writers. When he resigned after two years of
organization work, he became honorary president. We have a good
right to expect of him an interpretation of the work of this body in
the spirit of its founders.
I am taking the following remarks from the introduction to his
collected works. He has called this preface the "Rechtfertigung vor
Freunden" and discusses in it not only his own development and
his own writing, but as I said before, also the newly created, the new
official organization.
Blunck states that the government has acted very wisely in cre-
ating the "Schrifttumskammer" but qualifies that statement by say-
ing that we must take a long viewpoint to see this wisdom. He feels
that the new formation has done much to strengthen the self-respect
of the writing fraternity, inasmuch as they have been invited to
co6perate in the work of building up the new order instead of just
standing aside dissatisfied and ready to criticize. He claims that the
"Kammer" is to advise with the state government, to work at and
for the objectives and the tasks of the state, to give counsel and to
answer when asked for counsel.
If the new doctrines of the state will have been accomplished,
then, Blunck says, the state will not have anymore direct control of
the work of the writers but will leave such control (which we gen-
erally call censorship) to the group as organized in the "Reichs-
schrifttumskammer." Blunck discusses further a few rather conven-
tional duties of the new official body of artists and sums up his dis-
cussion by saying of and to his colleagues: "I know today that only
future days can bring realization of many plans and hopes, that
many expectations, reaching perhaps too far ahead, had to be
abandoned. But I believe that we can be proud of a professional or-
ganization which may take decades to mature, but which guarantees,
at long last, glory and independence of 'volksgewachsene Kunst' in
a manner in which no other state can do it."
Two points are especially noteworthy in considering Blunck's
remarks. First: He does speak of the expected co6peration of the
whole body of Germany's writers in the solidifying of the German
Reich, but he does not mention the fact that they neither had nor
have any right to determine the new ideology.
Secondly: Blunck himself feels and says repeatedly that good
results for literature and writers cannot be expected before decades
pass, pointing out that individual plans and hopes cannot be real-
ized at this time. Is it not a fair implication that these hopes did
not fully coincide with the plans of those who created the dogma of
the Third Reich?
To this official statement of directives we may well add what
Van Stockum and Van Dam say about present tendencies in their
recent book Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. These two Dutch
scholars who show a "benevolent objectivity" in their treatment of
the literature within the Reich, recognize three aspects of the new
tendencies as essential:
1) Literature, especially the lyric and the drama must express
the attitude of the German people towards life, not that of the in-
dividual. Van Stockum and Van Dam recognize in the "Thingspiel"
(community play) the chosen vehicle for this tendency, stating cor-
rectly, however, that this form of the drama is by no means new.
2) The new literature is to find its main-spring in the essential,
undiluted part of the German people, in the peasantry; the literature
under the influence of the life in large cities is to be rejected as "hot-
house literature" ("Asphaltliteratur").
3) The attitude towards life shall not be pessimistically humble,
mournful or passive, but brave, optimistic, heroic.
Without considering for the moment further the significance or
the justification of these directives and of the tendencies established

or to be established it seems selfevident that they could not be ac-
cepted by all those writers who believed that freedom of thought and
form were the essentials of creative literature and that the latter
could not exist without the lifeblood of the former; that the political
ideology of the state was not the business of writers who see in free-
dom of thought and freedom-though not license-of expression the
inalienable gospel of their work and who recognize the value of the
time honoured maxim of "l'art pour l'art."
Along these lines, the cleavage in the literary community of Ger-
many took place.
Of the three groups of which I spoke as existing up to 1933 the
first one, the conservative, willingly gave allegiance to the new doc-
trine. About one half of the second group could bring its ideals in
rapport with the new regime; the other half went (or was sent) into
exile and with it almost all of those whom we classified as belong-
ing to the third group, the intellectually revolutionary writers.
And along these lines of this partition the twin-sisters of German
literature exist today, twin-sisters for they have the same mother,
the German language and the German past with all its manifold
achievements, but separated because historical events have parted
their ways; the future will determine if the twain shall ever meet
again.
To attempt a comparison of the value and the significance of lit-
erary works produced within and without the Reich seems valueless
and unfair. It is valueless because a proper standard, a reliable "scale
of measurement" is missing. It has been attempted to use as such
measure the number of translations into the foreign language of
books written since 1933. An investigation shows that a large num-
ber of books written by those in exile have been translated into
many foreign tongues and have been received with great acclaim by
critics and public. On the other hand, the works of those within the
Reich have hardly ever been translated and especially very rarely
into English. It has been pointed out in this connection that the ex-
port of books from Germany which until 1914 was the greatest in
the world had diminished by about 50% by 1937 and is hardly any
greater now.
While these facts are, no doubt, of interest they do not in my
opinion permit a valid conclusion as to the literary value of the
books published.
The fame which many writers now in exile enjoyed in foreign

countries long before 1933 has surely influenced the demand for their
books in German or in translations, the antipathy of the great democ-
racies against the ideals of the Third Reich, to which the literature
within the Reich is committed, has lessened the interest in the prod-
ucts of its present writers. It is especially for these reasons that the
method I spoke of cannot give us satisfactory results.
Another and different attempt to arrive at a comparative evalua-
tion has also proven unsatisfactory. It was believed that the criticism
of foreign, i.e. most likely objective critics might furnish a clue
to such evaluation. But serious students of literature fight shy of
pronouncing literary judgment on contemporary-and especially
young-contemporary writers. This attitude is, for instance, not only
taken by the Dutch literary historians Van Stockum and Van Dam
of whom I spoke before but also by reputable scholars within the
Reich such as Christian Jenssen. In his very recent book Deutsche
Dichtung der Gegenwart (1938) he says: "Not sufficient time sepa-
rates us from the poetic works of the present period to obtain a
clarified view of it. We are directly in front of the overflowing ple-
thora of poetical-and presumably poetical-creations which history
and criticism of literature can sift and evaluate only in a very mod-
erate measure, just because the picture of present day literature does
not offer as yet any well definable outline; it has not yet achieved
permanent form and is subject to constant change and inner growth."
Thus it seems just and prudent for us not to attempt to evaluate,
"nicht zu w~igen und nicht zu richten," but in order to get a fair pic-
ture of the situation to use the short time at our disposal to sketch
the specific task which the Third Reich has assigned to its writers,
to recall (with short characteristics) the names of those writers
within the Reich who are not only well-known of old to German
literature but whose recent works deserve attention, to name those
among the younger generation who have given evidence of excep-
tional ability and then to pay due homage to those writers in exile
whose literary activity justifies their recognition as German writers
of standing.
For obvious reasons I must confine my short list to the outstand-
ing numbers of each group, knowing fully well that my selection
does commit "faults of omission."
The great work which the Third Reich has entrusted largely to
its writers is to create or to strengthen racial feeling, to stress and
intensify the union of blood and soil, to unearth and to preserve the
heritage of the early forefathers, their ethical, if not their religious
belief, to perpetuate their songs and their customs, to give new in-
terpretations to the history of the country, in fact to create an abid-
ing faith and a defiant pride in all things German and a commensur-
ate disdain of the achievements of all other peoples. Such "Leitmo-
tive" have created in the Reich new standards for the evaluation
and approval of writers. Thus, for instance, Gerhart Hauptmann is
being rejected especially in his later works, because (I am referring
to Christian Jenssen) they have no more relation to the Silesian or
the German soil, because they take place in classical antiquity or
treat of the fate of an Italian priest, play in modern European so-
ciety or discuss purely private conflicts which have no meaning for
those who experience the rejuvenation of Germany.
In spite of this ostracism I wanted to mention Hauptmann as
one of the outstanding writers within the Reich because of all of
these he is internationally best known. From among the others I am
mentioning those whom Albert Soergel in his recent publication
Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit names as leaders. They are Rudolf
G. Binding, Hans Grimm, Hans Carossa, Erwin G. Kolbenheyer,
Max Mell, Hans Franck, Will Vesper, Ina Seidel, Friedrich Schnack,
Hans Friedrich Blunck and Friedrich Griese. This list could be en-
riched by many other well-known writers such as Jacob Schaffner,
Josef Ponten, Hanns Johst, Wilhelm Schiifer and others. Prac-
tically all of these writers have written their most important books
before 1933, but they have in different forms favored the topics to
which I referred before as the Leitmotive of the present literary
movement. Thus they were its forerunners though one is not justified
in identifying them by this fact with all the tendencies and all the
slogans of contemporary German literature.
If some of the writers I mentioned are not known to the literary-
minded American public, we can find the reason for it in the rather
specific, i.e. nationalistic character of their topics. Younger writers
especially suffer from this condition although of their very large
number some have shown sufficient talent to deserve the attention
of the student of contemporary literature. Of these I would like to
mention Karl (Benno) von Mechow whose Vorsommer shows an ex-
traordinary psychological insight and an unusual creative power;
Friedrich Griese of whom I spoke above and in whose present novels
the fate of the village becomes the symbol of the fate of all Ger-
many, and Richard Emmiger who shows in his The Unemployed

an almost prophetic spirit.
I cannot possibly discuss many modern German writings at this
time, but if I were asked to mention one of the best and most rep-
resentative products of "die schbne Literatur" within Germany I
would from the field of prose fiction pick Georg Kolbenheyer's
Das angelobte Herz. It is the story of a young Catholic girl of the
pre-reformation period who as a child was dedicated by her mother
to become a bride of Christ. The beautifully told Werdegang of this
girl-Kolbenheyer uses in masterly fashion the German of the mid-
dle ages-the development of her inner life from self-negation to
self-assertion, the powerful description of the rise and reign of mys-
ticism, all this shows that while complying with at least some of the
literary demands of the Third Reich, a really great writer can make
a lasting contribution to German literature. It may be pointed out
in this connection, however, that Kolbenheyer in this work as in all
of his novels-and especially in his greatest work, the epic novel
Paracelsus-does not emphasize the tenets of the Dritte Reich un-
less it be in his insistence on joyous self-assertion in the service of
mankind, a philosophy of life which, according to the author, robs
death of his terror and power.
So much about the prose writers of this group. A much larger
contingent form the younger writers of lyric poetry. They are very
definitely enthused by the new ideology and through their poems
runs the avowal of their union with the beloved German blood and
German soil. It would be valueless and perhaps misleading to name
them. They are at this time practically unknown to the outside world
and they have not yet given sufficient proof of their poetical genius
to justify an important rank in German literature.
Within the Reich, in a larger or smaller measure secularization
of literature, without the Reich the continued belief that literature-
like religion-is an independently creative agent in the evolution of
civilization and humanity. This latter thought is the confession of
faith of the emigrds. They believe in the sovereignty of literature.
They object as much to the gagging and muzzling of the press and
the writers during the first 15 years of the Soviet Union as they re-
ject the attempt to compel literature to serve any definite political
ideology. They have as yet no historians of literature to fight their
battle, they have no political or economic power to increase the num-
ber of their readers, to spread their gospel. It has only been set forth
in occasional articles, in small leaflets. But they prove their fidelity

to their convictions by continuing to treat in their own individual
way the topics of their own choice.
Who are some of these writers, who are loyal to their conception
of literature, even in exile? I know fully well that many of them did
not become emigres on account of their convictions, but that racial
and political reasons damned them to exile. But when we concede
intellectual honesty to the conformers within the Reich we must by
the same token make an equal concession to the others. And this
concession is the more justified, since many of them left their father-
land without any outward pressure. (To my knowledge only one of
them, Ernst Glaeser, whose novel Jahrgang 1909 earned deserved ap-
plause, has returned to Germany.)
We find in exile Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann, the first by
general acclaim regarded as the most important German writer of
today, his brother Heinrich, the writer whose mastery of the Ger-
man language has earned him the title of the German D'Annunzio.
Of the others I shall mention only those whose publications since
1933 have become known. Their books are forbidden on German soil,
and the sale of their original productions is proportionally limited
but most of their works have been translated in many languages, es-
pecially English and French, with the result that their names are still
well known to the reading public. To this group belong in addition to
the brothers Mann, Stephan Zweig, Bruno Frank, Alfred Dbblin,
Georg Kaiser, Ren6 Schickele (now writing in French), Leonhard
Frank, Arnold Zweig, Lion Feuchtwanger, Georg Herrmann (Bor-
chardt), Emil Ludwig, Rudolf Borchardt, Karl Sternheim and of
the somewhat younger generation: Franz Werfel, Carl Zuckmayer,
Erich Maria Remarque, Johannes Becher, Bertold Brecht and many
others. This list contains but a few names-there are at least 100
other well-known German writers in exile. But I have confined the
list not only to those who have published during the last five years
but have also omitted the names of all writers not mentioned in his-
tories of literature which list only those of first rank. I must, how-
ever, recall a few who died in exile, Jakob Wassermann and Joseph
Roth. Ernst Toller and Kurt Tucholsky committed suicide. Odan
von Horr th, the winner of the Kleist prize of 1931, one of the most
gifted of the young writers, was killed in a tragic accident about a
year ago. And it is the last novel of this writer, published a few days
before his death, which I consider characteristic of "Emigranten-
literatur" and of which I shall give you an outline in a few paragraphs.
The book is called Jugend ohne Gott.-It is the tragedy of youth,

which grows up without love to God or respect before man, holding
in contempt everything that was sacred to former generations. And
it is the story of a teacher who under the rule of the state, in conflict
with his own conscience, is to educate this youth without being per-
mitted to inculcate in his wards his own humane ideals, based on the
teaching of Christianity.
The utter absence of a feeling for justice creates an atmosphere
of cold egotism among the youngsters which leads one of them to the
murder of a comrade and then, because he knew that the teacher had
been a witness of his deed-to suicide. The teacher is called upon to
clear up the circumstances leading to murder and suicide, and his
confidence in the final victory of truth shows him the way to unravel
a complicated situation.-To do this he has to employ means which
are not in conformity with rigid official instructions, but he follows
the dictates of his conscience, his belief in eternal justice-and wins
out.
His unorthodox behavior leads to his dismissal from his school,

brings about his ostracism by his colleagues. And thus he decides to
leave his fatherland, to go to Africa and-let me quote the last line
of the story: "Der Neger fiihrt zu den Negern." (The ostracized goes
to his fellow-men.)
I have tried to give a very rough outline of the status and the
tendencies of German fiction-literature within and without the Reich.
Before I now attempt to draw any conclusions as to the future of
German literature, let me summarize very briefly the situation as
we find it.
Within the Reich a considerable remnant of older writers who
even before the advent of the Third Reich had stressed certain Ger-
man characteristics which fit into its new ideology, who continue in
the old tenor of their ways and who-for this reason-do not run
counter to present German censorship, and a large group of young
writers--especially lyric poets-whose great and as far as we know
honest enthusiasm for this new ideology is apparent in almost all of
their works and makes them valuable coworkers for the new system.
Against their favorable recognition on the part of the outside world
stand two facts, the one that they are too young and too "present"
as to be adjudged critically, the second that the cause they represent
does not appeal to the great mass of readers, which German literature
formerly found in the great democracies of the world.
In the "Emigrantenliteratur" we find a large number of German
writers of well-established renown and a small group of newcomers.

Their literary ideals are freedom from political and national ideol-
ogy, they look upon their art as a free master who must not become
the vassal of any political or economic idea. Their influence in for-
eign countries is at this time greater than that of their fellow-writers
within the Reich, because the topics they had chosen even before
their emigration had and have an international appeal, their treat-
ment of them had been of high character; and their present predica-
ment finds a sympathetic response among all those who recognize
in them victims of a political system which is obnoxious to their
readers.
To claim that one of the two groups and not the other represents
German literature shows a narrow-minded literary viewpoint. Who
would want to deny the literary importance of Ulrich von Hutten
or of Friedrich von Spee, representatives of two entirely different
ideologies or who would disclaim as German writers Gottfried Keller
or Conrad Ferdinand Meyer? Is Adalbert von Chamisso no German
poet because he was born of French ancestors and in France? Will
we reject the oldest examples of Germanic poetry because they were
written at a time when there were neither Germans nor Germany in
our concept of these words?
No. German literature is everything that is written in German
and is the product of German culture and German intellectual life.
Thus we have to recognize both groups as representatives of this lit-
erature. Lasting influence upon the "Geistesleben" within and with-
out Germany does and will determine the rank and standing of the
writers.
And now, in conclusion, let us attempt to glance into the future,
to find perhaps the factor or factors which will determine the future
development of German literature.
If the present regime remains in Germany as it is today, the
Emigrantenliteratur is for obvious reasons bound to die out within
a generation, in spite of the heroic efforts that are being made to
perpetuate it. The works it has created and is creating may-and
some of them certainly will-always remain important if not monu-
mental contributions to literature.
The older standard-bearers within the Reich will share the fate
of their colleagues in exile. Within a few decades their work will be
ended. The literary future of the younger generation-I am thinking
of those who have a genuine talent and will develop it--is closely
bound to the fate of the political ideology to which they give alle-
glance.
The claim that there cannot be true literature where freedom of
thought and of expression is lacking may be disputed. Ideologies
have changed in this world and have found great supporters, great
interpreters in all branches of art. But this much seems to be cer-
tain: While the poets of the present German ideology may rise to
well-deserved renown among the believers in their political and na-
tionalistic ideals, while they may become great factors within Ger-
many, they will not rise to the importance which their literary fore-
fathers have gained for themselves and for German literature among
other nations of the world. Even if there were the possibility of a
world-wide victory of the totalitarian-nationalistic idea, German
literature would through this very victory lose its international in-
fluence.
We still treasure, and I think the world will always treasure,
products of German literature which give us new approaches to or
increase our understanding of cultural ideals which Germany had in
common with the world at large. We were always grateful to the
literary period of Romanticism in Germany, which to a large extent
brought German literature into the cycle of world literature. But
when a literature becomes openly and avowedly a propaganda me-
dium for definite nationalistic ideals it must be prepared to lose its
influence among the great cultural factors of the world. From our
American viewpoint at least we can welcome as cultural influences
only those agencies which help in the achievement of our democratic
ideals.

German Literature 1933-1938

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German Literature 1933-1938

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German Literature 1933-1938

Author(s): Frank Mankiewicz

WE CAN hardly understand the development of German literature

1A lecture delivered at the University of California at Los Angeles, July 17.

Of course, membership in one of these groups of whom I shall name

"die neue Sachlichkeit" of which I spoke before. To this group be-

the justification of these directives and of the tendencies established

The fame which many writers now in exile enjoyed in foreign

many, and Richard Emmiger who shows in his The Unemployed

in occasional articles, in small leaflets. But they prove their fidelity

The book is called Jugend ohne Gott.-It is the tragedy of youth,

His unorthodox behavior leads to his dismissal from his school,

writers of well-established renown and a small group of newcomers.

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