KEITH HOLZ & WOLFGANG SCHOPF: GERMANS IN EXILE, PARIS 1933-1941

Review par Simone Grahmann

In bilingual version, German and French. Translation from German by Nathalie RAOUX, Autrement Editions, 2003, 255 p. With the support of the Franco-German Office for Youth.

Original edition in bilingual version, German and English: Im Auge des Exils. Josef Breitenbach und die Freie Deutsche Kultur in Paris (1933-1941), Aufbau-Verlag GmbH, Berlin, 2001.

This work, devoted to the photographic work of Josef Breitenbach, represents a vast documentation of the destinies of numerous German intellectuals and artists during their exile in Paris in the 1930s. In his "Envoi," Peter C. Jones, president of the Josef Breitenbach Foundation and Trust, emphasizes the importance of the assembled documents that testify to this "ever-new, vital and visionary work" by Breitenbach from the artist's New York apartment. Inspired by these documents, gathered at the Josef Breitenbach Archives in Tucson/Arizona, the authors—Keith Holz, art historian at the University of Tulsa/Oklahoma (and one of the designers of the "Exiles + Emigrants" exhibition in Los Angeles), and Wolfgang Schopf, literature historian at the Goethe University of Frankfurt and specialist in exiled German literature—expose, through seven chapters, a selection of great artistic events organized by German exiles and immortalized by Josef Breitenbach's camera. Breitenbach's work, having miraculously survived the Second World War and other vicissitudes, reveals an artist even "more eclectic and important than he had predicted himself." Thanks to the richly documented work of the two authors and the numerous illustrations that accompany their texts, this work proves precious for its great artistic value but also for its character as documentation of the true German culture condemned to exile during the reign of the brown plague.

A first chapter relates Breitenbach's artistic beginnings, his career as a photographer who became famous thanks to his portraits of numerous personalities from the German theatrical and political scene (Karl Valentin, Franz von Papen, Albert Einstein, etc.). Then, with the rise to power of the National Socialists, the persecution by the SS, his departure from Germany during the summer of 1933 and his years spent in exile in Paris where he turned his lens on the most important cultural manifestations of German exiles. Breitenbach, obviously not an isolated case in the face of this veritable exodus of free German culture, settled in Paris which became the capital of this "other Germany" in exile: artists, intellectuals, scientists. He became their photographic chronicler, as testified by the numerous photographs of Brecht, James Joyce, Max Ernst, Vassily Kandinsky and so many others. It was in Paris that he met Max Ernst, of whom he created a series of portraits. This collaboration resulted in a friendship that the two men renewed a few years later in New York. Subsequently, Breitenbach tried his hand at photo-journalism and created illustrated chronicles, many of which remained unpublished.

The work reveals an artist, portraitist, reporter and teacher in his frenzied activity—camera in hand, he drew the precise and precious portrait of this free German culture wherever it deployed—in literature, in the arts, in theater or in politics. Through chapters II to V, the authors present important photographic material from Breitenbach's camera on different artistic events and exhibitions organized by exiled artists.

First there was the exhibition "The Free German Book," counter-demonstration, in 1936, to "German Book Week" of the Reich's literature chamber. This was a retrospective devoted to German literature in exile, organized by the German Library of Freedom (with Heinrich Mann as president), with the assistance of the German Society of Men of Letters. Breitenbach captured the image of the exhibition he visited as a true literature enthusiast to convince himself that literature is "anything but a prudent withdrawal above the fray." This exhibition took on the character of a "celebration" where "the exiled literary family celebrated its unity." Alongside free German literature (Roth, Toller, Heinrich and Klaus Mann), the books by which the exiles defied Nazi "truth," section intended to reveal German reality: Nazi propaganda publications, anti-Semitic and war preparation, Mein Kampf, the Bible of the 3rd Reich as the exiles called it.

A third chapter presents Breitenbach's documentation of the creation of Bertolt Brecht's plays in Paris and New York: Señora Carrar's Rifles, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich and The Private Life of the Master Race. The photographer made these works into a true reportage with numerous stage photos, portraits of actors including Helene Weigel, and above all he contributed to spreading the message of these plays: artistic creation can and must go hand in hand with a clear position and action in the face of a disturbing reality.

In February 1938, Breitenbach visited the exhibition "Five Years of Hitlerian Dictatorship." The exhibition, organized at the initiative of exiled artists in an agit-prop style and so provocative that the German ambassador protested to the Quai d'Orsay, presented in twelve panels the contemporary history of Germany and Nazi atrocities through events such as the Reichstag fire, the Leipzig trial, restrictions on religious freedom, the press and many other realities of this authoritarian and repressive regime: racism, book burning, concentration camps. The exhibition was intended to alert the public to the injustices and crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

In January 1938, Breitenbach immortalized, in duo with Robert Valançay, the International Exhibition of Surrealism (the "international surrealist exhibition" according to the translator) which was held at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts. He made contacts with the biggest names on the international cultural scene: Kandinsky, Ernst, Lady Norton, Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim who were in Paris to study the project of a modern art exhibition to respond to the Nazi exhibition "Degenerate Art" in Munich. The project became reality: the exhibition "Free German Art" took place in 1938 in the famous House of Culture of the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, presenting works by exiled German and Austrian artists and having benefited from the support of Aragon, president of A.E.A.R. It was inaugurated a month after the signing of the Munich agreements, in a context of French policy of "appeasement" toward Germany but also of exasperation of chauvinism and a violently "anti-Boche" sentiment in public opinion. It was a matter of both responding to the defamation of modern art by the Nazis and thumbing their nose at the London manifestation "German Art in the 20th Century" which it had endeavored to counter since any work of art even slightly "anti-fascist" had been firmly banned from it. "Free German Art" presented, alongside Kirchner, Kokoschka, Hofer, Lohmar, also Max Ernst whose support for engaged exiled German artists never wavered and who lent some of his works.

The authors evoke here a "considerable influence" of surrealist works on Breitenbach's artistic and documentary work, his reportage, in January 1938, devoted to the International Exhibition of Surrealism, his meeting, in the company of Lohmar, with Breton. They affirm that even in his artistic photographs, Breitenbach cultivated from 1937 surrealist practices and effects (photographing perfumes through his flower photos). His only contribution to the exhibition was nevertheless a recent portrait of Max Ernst.

Under the title "Yesterday's Germany, Tomorrow's Germany," chapter VI traces the attempts of exiled artists to conduct joint action in order to defend a free German culture abroad—after Paris, New York. The German Cultural Cartel, composed of artists, journalists, historians and grouping the Union of Free Artists, the German Society of Men of Letters and the Free German University, supported the project of addressing the American public on the occasion of the International Exhibition that was to take place in New York in 1939. On this occasion, the artists planned the creation of about thirty panels gathered under the title "Yesterday's Germany—Tomorrow's Germany," telling the traditions of a free German culture and the injustices and atrocities of Nazi Germany. It was a history of Germany from the Reformation to the 3rd Reich and the distressing reality of the latter. The artists exclaimed: "only two races exist: that of the civilized and that of the barbarians," appeal launched to freedom-loving Americans, to exiles and to Jews to close ranks against the Nazis. Breitenbach's shots taken of about thirty panels testify to this exhibition project that never took place since in New York, its organization was encouraged as long as the initiative remained private in nature and did not intend to represent a foreign nation. At the beginning of 1939, a "pavilion of freedom" at the Universal Exhibition was to welcome the panels from Paris, everything was prepared, including catalogs and brochures, but the project failed—the majority of the members of the organizing committee wanted at all costs to avoid any provocation toward the Nazi regime... Thus, we can look at Breitenbach's photographs as the obvious attempt to show what the authorities, only occupied, in 1939, with avoiding military confrontation, strove to make invisible.

The seventh and last chapter traces the vicissitudes of Breitenbach's departure for the United States as the only solution to survive. For German exiles, Paris was, from 1933 until the beginning of the Second World War, the refuge and the backstage of the staging of free German culture. But in 1939, the French government ordered by decree the internment of refugees including Breitenbach who shared their fate as a "national of an enemy power." Faced with increasingly close collaboration between Germans and French in the pursuit of Jews, it was necessary to leave. Like so many others, Breitenbach embarked for the United States... Through his destiny, the authors expose the destiny of these artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazi Germany, these "globe-trotters" in search of a host land and exporting the true culture of their homeland. The facts exposed there and the numerous illustrations say a lot...

Note

Let us note, finally, a small translation problem that occurred in the second chapter (p. 53-55) in which the anti-Hitlerian publications of the exhibition "The Free German Book" are evoked:

Das Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror is translated here as The Black Book on the Reichstag Fire and Hitlerian Terror, while "Braun" means "Brown" (reference to the color of German Nazism) and even the Bibliography indicates p. 248: "French edition under the title of Brown Book on the Reichstag Fire and Hitlerian Terror, published by the International Committee for Aid to Victims of Fascism, Paris, Éditions du Carrefour, 1934."

Das Weissbuch über die Erschiessungen des 30. Juni is correctly translated as The White Book on the Executions of June 30 (weiss = white) and das Schwarzbuch. Tatsachen und Dokumente as The Black Book. Facts and Documents (schwarz = black). We can therefore wonder why the translator opted for black and not brown when here, it is indeed a concrete political attribute, but she will perhaps enlighten us on this subject.