Inner emigration

Inner emigration (German: Innere Emigration, French: émigration intérieure) is a controversial concept of German writers, poets, and intellectuals who agreed with the writers of Anti-Nazi Exilliteratur from the German diaspora, yet chose to continue living in Nazi Germany, often while outwardly pretending to conform.

The term inner emigration was coined by novelist Frank Thiess in response to Thomas Mann's BBC broadcast which argued in favor of German collective guilt for The Holocaust. Thiess replied that Mann, who had spent the Nazi years as a writer of Exilliteratur from the relative safety of Switzerland and the United States, had not experienced the police state tactics used by the Gestapo to enforce blind obedience and conformity and had no right to pass judgment on the compromises made by those who had. Thiess further argued that many Germans who had outwardly pretended to conform had proven far more heroic than political refugees like Mann, who now passed judgment on them after spending the Nazi years in other, freer countries.

The similar term internal emigré was used in the Soviet Union as an insult towards Soviet dissidents, by suggesting that they had the same opinions as anti-communist White émigré writers in the Russian diaspora.

The concept also applies to political dissidents who feel both critical towards and dissociated from their country and its culture, particularly under a police state, and who secretly violate the accompanying censorship of literature and the arts. This concept is a regular theme in dystopian novels.

Origin of the concept

Delphine de Girardin, wrote in 1839 about the French nobility during the July Monarchy:

Young people from the best circles of society, who bear the most famous names, display feverish activity heightened still further by their inner emigration and political aversions. They dance, they gallop, they waltz, the way they would fight if we had a war, the way they would love if people today still had poetry in their hearts. They do not attend the parties as court, ugh! There they would meet their lawyer or their banker; instead they prefer to go to the Musard, there they might at least meet their valet or their groom; wonderful! It is possible to dance in front of such people without compromising oneself.

Living in exile in the United States in the 1940s, the German writer Thomas Mann was concerned with the issue of German collective responsibility for World War II and the Holocaust. He wrote several essays on the subject, including "Deutsche Schuld und Unschuld" ("German Guilt and Innocence") and "Über Schuld und Erziehung" ("On Guilt and Education"). After reading about the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps in 1945, Mann said in a German-language BBC broadcast:

Our disgrace lies before the world, in front of the foreign commissions before whom these incredible pictures are presented and who report home about this surpassing of all hideousness that men can imagine. "Our disgrace" German readers and listeners! For everything German, everyone that speaks German, writes German, has lived in Germany, has been implicated by this dishonorable unmasking.

Frank Thiess argued that only those who had experienced life under the police state that was Nazi Germany had any right to speak for the German people about their guilt, and that, if anything, the "innere Emigranten" ('inner emigrants') had shown more moral courage than those who had observed events from a safe remove. In response, Mann declared that all literary works published under Hitler stank of "Blut und Schande" ('blood and shame') and should be destroyed. As a result of this controversy, German literature of the period is still judged and categorized based on the authors' moral status, rather than the political content or aesthetic value of their writings.

Controversy

The moral issues surrounding inner emigration have long been a subject of debate. Some argue that political dissident writers who stayed behind in Germany criticized the regime in ways subtle enough to get through censorship in Nazi Germany. while Others contend that such criticisms were "so subtle that they are invisible". The debate is further complicated by the varying degrees to which different writers were under threat, and the varying strength and nature of their protests. Some writers who later claimed to be inner emigrants appear to have done quite well for themselves during the war, while others had their works banned, or were imprisoned.

Still others like Bishop Clemens von Galen, Sophie Scholl, and her fellow members of the White Rose, wrote openly of their real opinions of the regime and took the enormous risk of circulating those writings in a Nazi-era equivalent to the Samizdat literature that was written, copied, and circulated by Soviet dissidents.

At the 1998 Deutscher Historikertag Peter Schöttler, Götz Aly, and Michael Fahlbusch were involved in the debate concerning the role of German historians during the Third Reich. The trio challenged the defense of Theodor Schieder, Werner Conze and Karl-Dietrich Erdmann in terms of inner emigration arguing that they were more complicit with the Nazi regime than had been recognised by the next generation of German historians, many of whom were their students.

Other uses

The concept may apply more broadly to include others, such as visual artists, as well as writers. It can also apply to a situation more generally or metaphorically to mean a mental dissociation from one's country or surroundings. For example, Anglo-Irish people whose loyalties still lie with the British Empire rather than the Irish Republic have been identified as inner emigrants, and to residents of a 1960s commune.

On 31 October 1958, the Union of Soviet Writers held a trial behind closed doors as part of Nikita Khrushchev's ongoing campaign against Soviet dissident Boris Pasternak and his Nobel Prize-winning novel Doctor Zhivago. According to the meeting minutes, Pasternak was denounced as an internal emigré and as a Fascist fifth columnist. Afterwards, the attendees announced that Pasternak had been expelled from the Union. They further sent a signed petition to the Politburo, demanding that Pasternak be stripped of his Soviet citizenship and exiled to, "his Capitalist paradise."

See also

Notes

  1. ^ de Girardin, Delphine (1860–1861). Oeuvres complètes de madame Émile de Girardin, née Delphine Gay.... Tome 4 / [introduction par Théophile Gautier]. Gallica. Retrieved 2015-07-14.
  2. ^ Fleming, William (June 1986). Arts and Ideas. Harcourt School. ISBN 9780030056697.
  3. ^ Chevalier, Tracy (2012). Encyclopedia of the Essay. Routledge. p. 526. ISBN 9781135314101.
  4. ^ Wyman, David; Rosenzveig, Charles (1996). The World Reacts to the Holocaust. JHU Press. p. 413. ISBN 9780801849695.
  5. ^ Watanabe-O'Kelly, Helen (2000). The Cambridge History of German Literature. Cambridge University Press. p. 443. ISBN 9780521785730.
  6. ^ Grenville, Anthony (August 2012). "Thomas Mann and the 'inner emigration'". The Association of Jewish Refugees.
  7. ^ Kleineberger (1965), p. 175.
  8. ^ "The Fallacy of 'Inner Emigration'". Dialog International. 24 March 2007. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  9. ^ Kleineberger (1965), p. 172.
  10. ^ Kleineberger (1965), p. 178.
  11. ^ Sims (2005), p. ?.
  12. ^ Wenke (2005).
  13. ^ Gray, Billy (Summer 2009). ""The Lukewarm Conviction of Temporary Lodgers": Hubert Butler and the Anglo-Irish Sense of Exile". New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua. 9 (2): 84–97. doi:10.1353/nhr.2005.0038. JSTOR 20646499. Their emotional withdrawal from Ireland led to a profound sense of social and political dislocation, which in turn encouraged a communal retreat, a loss of power, and a form of 'inner emigration' among the Anglo-Irish.
  14. ^ Gildea, Robert (2013). Europe's 1968: Voices in Revolt. Oxford University Press. p. 198. ISBN 9780191651274.
  15. ^ Olga Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak pp. 251–261.

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