Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 2009
Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America, by Jean-Michel Palmier, transl... more Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America, by Jean-Michel Palmier, translated by David Fernbach. London and New York: Verso, 2006. 852 pp. $55.00. This is an extraordinary book: in its historical breadth, its command of literature, documents, and archival material, its ambitious scope, and its sweeping judgments. The study was initially published in French in 1987 with support of the French Ministry of Culture. It took nearly twenty years for the English translation to follow. Much has happened since 1987: in 1989 the fall of the Berlin wall signaled the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the socialist system, and in 1998 Palmier, a professor of aesthetics at the Sorbonne, died, only 53 years old. The end of state socialism is highly relevant here: would Palmier have written a different book after 1989? Would he have written a study on antifascist exile at all when antifascism as a close ally of socialism was fast going out of favor? Palmier's book preceded some of the most comprehensive and encyclopedic volumes on exile that provide today's scholars with a vast amount of data: the International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigres 1933-1945 and its German counterpart, the Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933, both conceived of as complementary parts, published in New York and Munich in 1999. In addition, many smaller studies focusing on the emigration of professional groups like historians, musicians, theatre people, etc. have been written. This is not a book about exile per se; the title indicates that we are looking at a specific part of exile: intellectuals and artists fleeing Germany. Weimar stands for the ideals of the short-lived German republic that was destroyed by Hitler and the Nazis in 1933. It is dedicated to those "who died in concentration camps or were murdered by the Nazis,""who took their own lives in exile," and "all the German antifascists who never saw Germany again." Its more than 800 pages are organized into two main sections: Exile in Europe 1933-1940 and Exile in America 1939-1945. Chapters within these two parts discuss stages of exile and the countries to which refugees fled, support networks, organizations and institutions such as newspapers or theatre companies, the beginning of World War II, the integration of refugees into professional life-or their failure, the breakup of the political emigration and the beginning of McCarthyism in the United States. Palmier states that within a few months of the Nazi ascent to power German culture was bleeding to death; Germany was drained of its intellectuals, its cultural life. The importance that Hitler gave to the arts as a means to subvert the Germanic racial state provided the basis for and justified the cause of the destruction of Weimar. It was a state crusade that turned its mighty force into institutional as well as personal persecution-the goal was to win the struggle against "degeneration," in this case "degenerate" art and related intellectual expressions. It was the implementation of a systematic program that organized the assassination and elimination of unwanted intellectual life on every level and in every sphere of German life. The book burnings of 10 May 1933 became the signal that the Nazis were serious and that exile was the only answer for those who represented Weimar intellectualism. Those who fled had many reasons to do so, but exile was as much a choice to save one's own life as it was the refusal to become an accomplice of a murderous regime. …
Mary Wigman, one of the best-known and most revered of modern dancers, choreographers, and teache... more Mary Wigman, one of the best-known and most revered of modern dancers, choreographers, and teachers, has stood in the center of attention for a long time. Which modern dancer would not like to trace her training and artistic roots back to Wigman, if only through a ...
Two new studies by American scholars on the performer, dancer, and choreographer Loie Fuller have... more Two new studies by American scholars on the performer, dancer, and choreographer Loie Fuller have been published; both appeared in the same yearan odd coincidence that signals new interest in a hitherto marginalized historical person. Ann Cooper Albright's ...
Mark Morris: Musician-Choreographer by Stephanie Jordan is unusual in many ways, and there are ha... more Mark Morris: Musician-Choreographer by Stephanie Jordan is unusual in many ways, and there are hardly any volumes to which it can be compared. That alone sets this study apart from other recent titles on choreographers and their works. Jordan's book was published by Dance Books; yet, it is about music more than anything else—a choreographer's relationship to music, his formation and evolution as a dancer and dancemaker through music, the exploration of music through dance, and eventually Mark Morris's arrival in music as a conductor.
This chapter examines how dancers during the years immediately following World War II negotiated ... more This chapter examines how dancers during the years immediately following World War II negotiated the terrain of divided Germany. It argues that the careers of Mary Wigman, Gret Palucca, Marianne Vogelsang, Jean Weidt, and Fritz Böhme prove that there was no Stunde Null in dance—there was no successful de-nazification process. Nazified dance concepts—together with their proponents— continued well into the 1950s until a new generation gradually emerged to face the burden of the Nazi past with its ideological baggage; some carry that baggage of their teachers to the present day. The two most thoughtful, reflective, synthetic, and least ruthless artists, Vogelsang and Weidt, failed. Dance had no intellectual apparatus comparable to literature, music, or theater and remained one of the most impoverished arts in East Germany.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon's French empire conquered much of E... more At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon's French empire conquered much of Europe, the German patriot Friedrich Ludwig Jahn invented the first German national gymnastics program known as Turnen. The idea was to create a new German body and a new form of national discipline. Walking for bodily fitness, to instill national awareness, training on special equipment and rediscovering ancient German dance forms all became part of the new body culture. It is out of this movement with its nationalist and later racist culture that much of the modern gymnastics and dance movements in Germany gained their ideologies. This article sketches some stages of this social and physical continuity, from the resistance to the French to the establishment of the racial state in 1933 and to the provision of a Nazi aesthetic by German modern dancers.
Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 2009
Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America, by Jean-Michel Palmier, transl... more Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America, by Jean-Michel Palmier, translated by David Fernbach. London and New York: Verso, 2006. 852 pp. $55.00. This is an extraordinary book: in its historical breadth, its command of literature, documents, and archival material, its ambitious scope, and its sweeping judgments. The study was initially published in French in 1987 with support of the French Ministry of Culture. It took nearly twenty years for the English translation to follow. Much has happened since 1987: in 1989 the fall of the Berlin wall signaled the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the socialist system, and in 1998 Palmier, a professor of aesthetics at the Sorbonne, died, only 53 years old. The end of state socialism is highly relevant here: would Palmier have written a different book after 1989? Would he have written a study on antifascist exile at all when antifascism as a close ally of socialism was fast going out of favor? Palmier's book preceded some of the most comprehensive and encyclopedic volumes on exile that provide today's scholars with a vast amount of data: the International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigres 1933-1945 and its German counterpart, the Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933, both conceived of as complementary parts, published in New York and Munich in 1999. In addition, many smaller studies focusing on the emigration of professional groups like historians, musicians, theatre people, etc. have been written. This is not a book about exile per se; the title indicates that we are looking at a specific part of exile: intellectuals and artists fleeing Germany. Weimar stands for the ideals of the short-lived German republic that was destroyed by Hitler and the Nazis in 1933. It is dedicated to those "who died in concentration camps or were murdered by the Nazis,""who took their own lives in exile," and "all the German antifascists who never saw Germany again." Its more than 800 pages are organized into two main sections: Exile in Europe 1933-1940 and Exile in America 1939-1945. Chapters within these two parts discuss stages of exile and the countries to which refugees fled, support networks, organizations and institutions such as newspapers or theatre companies, the beginning of World War II, the integration of refugees into professional life-or their failure, the breakup of the political emigration and the beginning of McCarthyism in the United States. Palmier states that within a few months of the Nazi ascent to power German culture was bleeding to death; Germany was drained of its intellectuals, its cultural life. The importance that Hitler gave to the arts as a means to subvert the Germanic racial state provided the basis for and justified the cause of the destruction of Weimar. It was a state crusade that turned its mighty force into institutional as well as personal persecution-the goal was to win the struggle against "degeneration," in this case "degenerate" art and related intellectual expressions. It was the implementation of a systematic program that organized the assassination and elimination of unwanted intellectual life on every level and in every sphere of German life. The book burnings of 10 May 1933 became the signal that the Nazis were serious and that exile was the only answer for those who represented Weimar intellectualism. Those who fled had many reasons to do so, but exile was as much a choice to save one's own life as it was the refusal to become an accomplice of a murderous regime. …
Mary Wigman, one of the best-known and most revered of modern dancers, choreographers, and teache... more Mary Wigman, one of the best-known and most revered of modern dancers, choreographers, and teachers, has stood in the center of attention for a long time. Which modern dancer would not like to trace her training and artistic roots back to Wigman, if only through a ...
Two new studies by American scholars on the performer, dancer, and choreographer Loie Fuller have... more Two new studies by American scholars on the performer, dancer, and choreographer Loie Fuller have been published; both appeared in the same yearan odd coincidence that signals new interest in a hitherto marginalized historical person. Ann Cooper Albright's ...
Mark Morris: Musician-Choreographer by Stephanie Jordan is unusual in many ways, and there are ha... more Mark Morris: Musician-Choreographer by Stephanie Jordan is unusual in many ways, and there are hardly any volumes to which it can be compared. That alone sets this study apart from other recent titles on choreographers and their works. Jordan's book was published by Dance Books; yet, it is about music more than anything else—a choreographer's relationship to music, his formation and evolution as a dancer and dancemaker through music, the exploration of music through dance, and eventually Mark Morris's arrival in music as a conductor.
This chapter examines how dancers during the years immediately following World War II negotiated ... more This chapter examines how dancers during the years immediately following World War II negotiated the terrain of divided Germany. It argues that the careers of Mary Wigman, Gret Palucca, Marianne Vogelsang, Jean Weidt, and Fritz Böhme prove that there was no Stunde Null in dance—there was no successful de-nazification process. Nazified dance concepts—together with their proponents— continued well into the 1950s until a new generation gradually emerged to face the burden of the Nazi past with its ideological baggage; some carry that baggage of their teachers to the present day. The two most thoughtful, reflective, synthetic, and least ruthless artists, Vogelsang and Weidt, failed. Dance had no intellectual apparatus comparable to literature, music, or theater and remained one of the most impoverished arts in East Germany.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon's French empire conquered much of E... more At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon's French empire conquered much of Europe, the German patriot Friedrich Ludwig Jahn invented the first German national gymnastics program known as Turnen. The idea was to create a new German body and a new form of national discipline. Walking for bodily fitness, to instill national awareness, training on special equipment and rediscovering ancient German dance forms all became part of the new body culture. It is out of this movement with its nationalist and later racist culture that much of the modern gymnastics and dance movements in Germany gained their ideologies. This article sketches some stages of this social and physical continuity, from the resistance to the French to the establishment of the racial state in 1933 and to the provision of a Nazi aesthetic by German modern dancers.
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