Pacific Palisades
Edition DAH in collaboration with the Buddenbrook House Lübeck, Bremerhaven, mare buch verlag Hamburg, 2006.
Prize: 11,80 €
Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Lion Feuchtwanger – just three of the many German-speaking writers who went into exile at the onset of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany. Anticipating a swift return, most authors initially settle in European neighboring countries. However, the advance of German troops in Europe soon forces them to flee again. The most common destination for emigrants is now America. Pacific Palisades – a significant meeting point for German-speaking authors on the Californian West Coast north of Los Angeles – becomes ‘Weimar under Palms.’ But this paradise has its darker sides.
This book reflects, among other things, the decision-making and detachment processes, the experiences of flight, the life-saving journey, living and working conditions, as well as the confrontations with the events in Germany in essays by historians and German scholars, and in quotes from the writers Theodor W. Adorno, Vicki Baum, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Lion Feuchtwanger, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Ludwig Marcuse, Walter Mehring, and Franz Werfel.