Refugee Archives : Theory and Practice [1 ed.] 9789401205931, 9789042024076

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Refugee Archives Theory and Practice

THE YEARBOOK OF THE RESEARCH CENTRE FOR GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN EXILE STUDIES

9 INSTITUTE OF GERMANIC AND ROMANCE STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Editorial Board

Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove, Anthony Grenville, Andrea Hammel, Bea Lewkowicz, Marian Malet, Jutta Raab-Hansen, Andrea Reiter, J. M. Ritchie, Jennifer Taylor

The aim of the Research Centre is to promote research in the field of Germanspeaking exiles in Great Britain. To this end it organizes conferences and publishes their proceedings, holds research seminars, and publishes its own Yearbook. Its members cooperate in the writing of scholarly studies, including Changing Countries: The Experience and Achievement of German-speaking Exiles from Hitler in Britain from 1933 to Today (London: Libris, 2002) and Wien-London hin und retour (Vienna: Czernin, 2004), a study of the Austrian Centre in London, 1939-1947. Though the Research Centre has primarily concerned itself with the German-speaking refugees from Nazism in Britain, it aims to extend its scope to include German-speaking exiles of other periods and comparable groups of European refugees. Given its location near the heart of the principal centre of settlement of the refugees from Germany, the Research Centre readily provides advice and useful contacts to scholars and postgraduates working in the field.

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Refugee Archives Theory and Practice

Edited by

Andrea Hammel and Anthony Grenville with assistance from Sharon Krummel

Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff Cover Image: Items from the German-Jewish Archives, Special Collections, University of Sussex Library (Photograph: Samira Teuteberg, 2008) The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2407-6 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

vii

Preface

ix

Introduction

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Ein Blick zurück und nach vorn – Das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 und die Sammlung Exil-Literatur 1933-1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Sylvia Asmus Von Thoor zu Wolf. Dokumente zum österreichischen Exil in Großbritannien an der Österreichischen Exilbibliothek, Literaturhaus in Wien Ursula Seeber The Wiener Library: A Repository of Schicksale Howard Falksohn Resources Relating to German-speaking Refugees in Ireland, 1933-1945 – Some Initial Thoughts and Results Gisela Holfter, Siobhan O’Connor, Birte Schulz Fifty Years of Exile Research in the USA: A Personal Overview John Spalek The Online Database of British Archival Resources Relating to German-speaking Refugees (BARGE) in Context Andrea Hammel

1

17

27

41

57

65

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Table of Contents

Exilpresse digital in Support of Researching Visual Material: Images in Die Zeitung Jutta Vinzent ‘Between Our Two Peoples’: The Archives of the Anglo-Austrian Society and the AngloAustrian Music Society Charmian Brinson ‘Now you see them, now you don’t.’ The Archives of the Refugee Committee of the British Federation of University Women Susan Cohen ‘Dein grosser Brief war ein Ereignis’: the private and professional correspondence of the refugee art historians Hilde and Otto Kurz Anna Nyburg Medical Refugees as Practitioners and Patients: Public, Private and Practice Records Paul Weindling Tylers Green Papers – The Unique Archives of a War-Time Hostel Bernd Koschland The relationship between oral history collections and community life: Impacts of the “Refugee Communities History Project” (RCHP) Zibiah Alfred Index

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95

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173 191

Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) who funded the international conference ‘Refugee Archives: Theory and Practice’ in April 2007 at the University of Sussex. The articles in this volume are largely based on papers given at the Sussex conference. The AHRC also supported this ninth volume of the Yearbook financially and we would like to express our gratitude. As the Yearbook is now a peer reviewed journal, we would like to thank everyone who has been involved in this process. Last, but by no means least, we would like to thank David Newton: his technical expertise gave the manuscript its shape. This volume is dedicated to Professor Hamish (J. M.) Ritchie on the occasion of this 80th birthday in July 2007. Without you, Hamish, none of this would have been possible.

Preface ‘Don’t keep archives in the basement!’ warned Dr Boaz Cohen in April 2007 during the conference at the University of Sussex on ‘Refugee Archives: Theory and Practice’, which forms the basis for this publication. This warning was timely for a number of reasons. Only a few years earlier the University had lost a substantial collection of books and papers at its depot in Lewes during the flooding of the River Ouse. However, it is not only for practical reasons that librarians are giving a higher priority to the preservation and accessing of archives. During recent years there has been a dramatic revival of interest in historical records, reflected by television programmes like the BBC’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ and – at a more theoretical level – by a spate of publications about the function of social memory. These developments have coincided with a technological revolution providing global access to archival materials that had been gathering dust for years in storage, scarcely consulted even by specialists. Ten years ago the Arnold Daghani Collection at Sussex, the largest body of work by a Holocaust survivor at any British university, was languishing in a storeroom. Now it is possible to log on the University’s website and access a wealth of the artist’s texts and images at the touch of a computer keyboard. At the national level developments are even more dramatic. For a modest fee you can log on to the Guardian Digital Archive and read the complete text of the Guardian and Observer newspapers from the early nineteenth century onwards. For German-Jewish studies, these developments have a special significance. According to Derrida’s Archive Fever, a book inspired by the Freud Museum in London, archives form a defence against the death drive, which threatens to reduce everything to nothingness. Sigmund Freud was indeed dying when he came to London as a refugee in 1938, bringing with him a large collection of letters and family papers (including his children’s school reports), over a thousand artefacts and almost three thousand books. But this impulse to save family possessions was not simply a personal matter. With the National Socialist regime intent on annihilating the Jews of Europe and erasing their heritage, courageous individuals saw the preservation of personal papers and historical records as a political

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imperative. Leading the way was Dr Alfred Wiener, founder of the Wiener Library in London, the archive documenting Nazi tyranny and the persecution of the Jews. The Library, as its archivist Howard Falksohn explains in his conference paper, continues to this day the task of documenting the dangers of fascism and preserving the testimonies of its victims. The Wiener Library is the one of the most significant among a wide range of public collections that form the focus of the BARGE project at the University of Sussex, the creation of a database of British Archival Resources Relating to German-Speaking Refugees, 1933-1950, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This project has been carried out by my colleagues at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, Dr Andrea Hammel, Samira Teuteberg, and Dr Sharon Krummel, who also planned and organized the conference. The database, which includes over 1200 collection descriptions and over 2000 individual biographies, can be consulted online at www.sussex.ac.uk/units/cgjs/barge. Not only public collections are included in the BARGE database, but also the papers of private families that are potentially available for research. At Sussex the most significant collection of this kind, the Elton/Ehrenberg Papers, is already accessible online. But the contributions to our conference drew attention to other collections, still in private hands, that are likely to prove equally illuminating. Who could fail to be moved by the letters of Hilde and Otto Kurz, which form the subject of the paper by Anna Nyburg? Their value lies not simply in the fascinating sidelights they throw on the experiences of émigré art historians. They also reflect the existential value of personal correspondence for refugees – and for those so tragically left behind. Making such collections accessible through databases or digitisation is only one aspect of the progressive archival practices documented in this volume. The original handwritten papers deserve to be preserved with equal care as a compelling testimony for future generations. Edward Timms, OBE, FBA Research Professor in History at the University of Sussex Centre for German-Jewish Studies Principal Investigator for the project on British Archival Resources Relating to German-Speaking Refugees, 1933-1950, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Introduction By its very nature, Exile Studies relies on archival material, which is often difficult to track down. Each successive generation of researchers seems to rely on more experienced scholars to advise them where to find material. The Online Database of British Archival Resources relating to German-speaking Refugees, 1933-1950 (BARGE) should ease this process. The BARGE database, now online, 1 was launched during the ‘Refugee Archives: Theory and Practice’ conference which took place from in April 2007 at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex, and aimed to further the dialogue between archivists and researchers as well as those working with online resources and databases. This volume will illustrate the three interlinked areas of refugee archives, research on migration and related databases and other resources. The articles investigate their interrelationship as well as the future challenges facing all three areas. The first three articles depict three individual archives. Sylvia Asmus writes about ‘Das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 und die Sammlung Exil-Literatur 1933-1945’, the largest collection relating to German-speaking refugees in Europe. Statistical information on visitors to this archive shows that although a great deal of research has been completed, there is room for further detailed examination of, for example, refugee musicians, refugee photographers and refugee artists. In parallel with the discussions within the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Exilforschung about a more inclusive approach to Exile Studies, which would look at refugees from National Socialism in comparison with other refugees, such as those fleeing the Spanish Civil War or Chilean political refugees who fled to Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, an extension of the acquisition policy of this archive located at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek is being considered. The Österreichische Exilbibliothek at the Literaturhaus in Vienna itself practises a combination of traditional archival and library development, focussing on topics relating to Austrian refugees on the one hand, and research and outreach work on the other. Both approaches result in frequent publication. Ursula Seeber shows how this has contributed to a dynamic atmosphere, in which crossfertilisation between archival material and research, as well as between research and the former refugees themselves, thrives.

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Howard Falksohn, the archivist of the Wiener Library in London, also describes the special relationship between archive and depositors: for example, for many refugees the archive can provide a home for cherished family documents as well as assisting with the finding of information relating to family members lost in the Holocaust. Falksohn shows the challenges an institution like the Wiener Library is presented with, as it houses the largest collection of Holocaust-related material and one of the largest collections of material relating to German-speaking refugees. (As a contributor to the Collection Descriptions of the BARGE database, the Library is only surpassed in numerical terms by the papers of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University). By contrast, Gisela Holfter, Siobhan O’Connor and Birte Schulz examine a small number of refugees and their documents: only around 300 German-speaking men and women are said to have found refuge in the Republic of Ireland. Holfter, O’Connor and Schulz describe the situation of these refugees and the development of Exile Studies in Ireland and give a comprehensive overview of where material relating to these 300 can be found, both in Ireland and elsewhere. The US researcher John Spalek is one of the founding fathers of Exile Studies. He devotes his article to the important question of acquisition: collections of relevant material were given to university archives in the US, where former German-speaking refugees had been members of faculty or where the academics employed at the institution had a special interest in refugee collections. In many ways, the three volumes of the Guide to Archival Materials edited by John Spalek et al can be seen as the US forerunner of the BARGE database. It was in conversation with Spalek that the idea of a research tool focussing on collections relating to Germanspeaking refugees in Britain was conceived. The decision to disseminate the information through an online database rather than a book publication is one aspect of project development among many discussed by Andrea Hammel in her overview of the BARGE project. The technical possibilities of an online database might be capable of revolutionising Exile Studies research, but it also becomes clear that relatively mundane limitations – such as a serious cataloguing backlog in many institutions – are holding back some projects. Jutta Vinzent uses an online resource, the Exilpresse Digital published by Das Deutsche Exilarchiv, for her research into images

Introduction

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from the exile publication Die Zeitung. She extols the advantages of this online resource with regard to accessibility and searchability, but points out that it is best used in conjunction with Lieselotte Maas’s Handbuch der deutschen Exilpresse for reliable results. The next five articles all refer to specific collections or groups of refugees: Charmian Brinson examines the archives of two societies with an Anglo-Austrian focus. She shows how their archives can provide a unique insight into the development of refugee identity from the early years before 1945 to the twenty-first century. The papers of the Anglo-Austrian Society and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society have had to move home several times and have not yet been catalogued, which clearly raises issues of accessibility. This general problem is emphasized by Susan Cohen in her article on refugee papers of the British Federation of University Women (BFUW) that are currently not accessible to researchers. As an organisation focussing on women, which is still an area where more research is needed, the papers of the BFUW will no doubt provide valuable insights into the lives of refugee women and their academic careers. One such woman academic was Hilde Kurz, who fled to Britain with her husband Otto Kurz, both art historians from Vienna. Anna Nyburg charts their experiences, both professional and private, through their correspondence. This collection, held by their daughter, is one of the many private collections which urgently need to be recorded to ensure their preservation. Paul Weindling offers a comprehensive overview of another professional group: refugees in the medical professions. He portrays the challenges such refugees faced because of the less than welcoming attitude of the British Medical and Dental Associations, which regarded them as a threat to their traditions and privileges. Weindling’s paper makes clear that these medical refugees played an important part in the transformation of the health service in Britain, and that the preservation of any records available should be of the utmost priority. British Exile Studies is fortunate in that it is able to draw on the work of researchers who were also eyewitnesses. This is the case of Bernd Koschland, who came to Britain on a Kindertransport from Fürth in Germany in 1939 and lived in the hostel in Tylers Green, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in 1941. He examines the papers relating to this hostel, charting the efforts of the Tylers Green Hostel Committee to give the young refugees in their care a good home, education and training. The material relating to the Tyler’s Green

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Hostel is in Bernd Koschland’s private collection, as there seem to be no official archives and most of the material relating to the many other hostels established in Britain during the late 1930s and early 1940s has been lost. It is clear that a great deal more effort needs to be made both to locate and to preserve archival material. The Online Database of British Archival Resources Relating to German-speaking Refugees, 1933-1950 (BARGE) will never be completely finished. Thus we welcome suggestions for further additions of collection descriptions of both public and private archival collections to our online listings. It is also clear that there are other groups of refugees whose experiences have not been comprehensively examined. Zibiah Alfred describes the ‘Refugee Communities History Project’, which aimed to document and publicise the diverse and extensive contributions refugee communities have made. Its scope is limited to London and starts in the year 1951, exactly one year after the period of investigation for BARGE ends. The inclusion of her article in this volume serves to show the extensive possibilities for comparative investigations of the histories of different groups of refugees. This volume of the Yearbook shows the need for more archival development work as well as research on individual collections and further efforts to improve accessibility; it also shows that all of these can only take place if researchers and archive practitioners remain in mutually beneficial dialogue. Andrea Hammel Centre for German-Jewish Studies University of Sussex October 2007

Notes 1

See http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/cgjs/barge

Ein Blick zurück und nach vorn – Das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 und die Sammlung Exil-Literatur 1933-1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Sylvia Asmus Dieser Beitrag stellt die Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek vor. Die neuesten Entwicklungen im Bereich der Erschließung von Nachlässen und Autografen und Digitalisierungsprojekte stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung. Es wird der Frage nach den Zukunftsperspektiven der Exilsammlungen nachgegangen und eine Einschätzung der zukünftigen Aufgaben gegeben.

Eine Einschätzung der zukünftigen Entwicklung der Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek erfordert zunächst den Blick zurück auf die Entstehungsgeschichte und die historisch gewachsenen Aufgaben der Sammlungen, die immer auch orientiert waren an der Entwicklung der Exilforschung selbst. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek besitzt zwei Exilsammlungen: die Sammlung Exil-Literatur 1933-1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek in Leipzig und das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 am Standort Frankfurt am Main. I. Die Sammlungen von ihren Anfängen bis heute Exilpublikationen Der Grundstock für die Sammlung Exilliteratur 1933-1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek in Leipzig wurde bereits während der Zeit der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur gelegt. Der allgemeine Sammelauftrag der 1912 gegründeten Deutschen Bücherei, alle auch im Ausland erschienenen deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen zu sammeln, umfasste auch die Exilliteratur. Die bibliografische Verzeichnung der Exilwerke erfolgte in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie bis 1936. Seit Mitte 1933 unterstand die Deutsche Bücherei dem Reichsministerium für Propaganda und Volksaufklärung. Drei Jahre später wurde vom Reichsministerium bestimmt, dass die Sammlung des deutschsprachigen Schrifttums fortgesetzt werden soll, in die

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Bibliographien jedoch nur das ‚deutsche Schrifttum‘ aufzunehmen sei. Ab 1939 wurden die Exilwerke in regelmäßig erscheinenden Listen der in der Deutschen Bücherei unter Verschluss gestellten Druckschriften verzeichnet. 1949 wurde die Anzeige der Bücher, die in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie nicht mehr angezeigt werden durften, in der Ergänzung 1 zur Deutschen Nationalbiographie nachgeholt. Nach 1945 wurde die Sammlung Exilliteratur systematisch weiter ausgebaut. Das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt am Main hat als Nachkriegsgründung eine gänzlich andere Entstehungsgeschichte. Hier waren es exilierte Schriftsteller und Publizisten selbst, die gemeinsam mit dem damaligen Direktor der Deutschen Bibliothek Hanns Wilhelm Eppelsheimer die Gründung der Exilsammlung bewirkten. Die ersten Aktivitäten zur Sammlung der Exilveröffentlichungen gingen vom Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller in der Schweiz aus: In einem Aufruf vom November 1949 forderte er seine Mitglieder und Freunde auf, die Deutsche Bibliothek bei der Gründung der Exilsammlung durch die Zusendung von Exilpublikationen zu unterstützen. Unter den ersten Einsendungen befanden sich z.B. Ernst Bloch: Erbschaft dieser Zeit,1 Konrad Heiden: Adolf Hitler. Eine Biographie,2 Freie Wissenschaft. Ein Sammelbuch aus der deutschen Emigration, herausgegeben von Emil Julius Gumbel, 3 Anna Seghers: Das siebte Kreuz4 und Jo Mihaly, Lajser Ajchenrand u. Stephan Hermlin: Wir verstummen nicht. Gedichte in der Fremde. 5 In den folgenden Jahren wurde die Sammlung kontinuierlich erweitert. Zu den Geschenken traten zunehmend Käufe. Von Beginn an war die Sammlung auf die gesamte im Exil entstandene Buchproduktion ausgerichtet. Die politische Publizistik trat gleichwertig neben die Belletristik. Auch die Werke prominenter Wissenschaftler und populärwissenschaftliche Werke wurden einbezogen, ebenso die gedruckten Zeugnisse der jüdischen Emigration. Neben der Sammlung ist die bibliographische Verzeichnung der Exilpublikationen eine wesentliche Aufgabe der Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. 1989 legte das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 den Katalog der Bücher und Broschüren6 vor, der die Erwerbungen bis zum Ende des Jahres 1985 verzeichnet.

Das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945

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Die Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands führte 1990 zur Zusammenführung der Deutschen Bücherei Leipzig und der Deutschen Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main zu der neuen Organisation Die Deutsche Bibliothek, heute Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. 2003 erschien der gemeinsame Katalog der Bücher und Broschüren des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 und der Sammlung Exil-Literatur 1933-1945.7 Außer den Neuerwerbungen der Jahre 1986 bis 1995 der beiden Exilsammlungen enthält er auch den Bestand der Sammlung Exil-Literatur bis einschließlich des Jahres 1985, soweit diese Bücher nicht als Bestand der Frankfurter Sammlung bereits im ersten Band verzeichnet wurden. Seit April 2005 erfolgt die Katalogisierung der Exilpublikationen in dem integrierten Literatur- und Tonträgersystem der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. Nachgewiesen sind diese Zugänge im Onlinekatalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. Die Publikationen der Leipziger Exilsammlung sind bereits komplett im Onlinekatalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek recherchierbar, von den Beständen des Deutschen Exilarchivs sind die Neuzugänge seit 2004 im Onlinekatalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek nachgewiesen. Digitalisierung Schon in den 1970er Jahren hat das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 – mit Unterstützung der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft – mit der Inhaltserschließung von Exilzeitschriften und Exilzeitungen begonnen und an den von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft unterstützten Gemeinschaftsprojekten der Grundforschung zur Sicherstellung und Erschließung der Quellen mitgewirkt. So war die Redaktion des bibliographischen Teils des Handbuchs der deutschen Exilpresse8 von Lieselotte Maas dem Deutschen Exilarchiv angegliedert. Der technischen Entwicklung folgend, arbeitet die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek seit 1997 auch an der Digitalisierung der ExilBestände. Im Rahmen des DFG-Programms Verteilte digitale Forschungsbibliothek hat das Deutsche Exilarchiv von 1997 bis 2003 30 ausgewählte Exilzeitschriften und Exilzeitungen aus seinem Bestand und dem der Sammlung Exil-Literatur im Projekt Exilpresse digital9 digitalisiert und ins Internet gestellt. Die 30 Titel, die einen Umfang von rund 100.000 Seiten haben, repräsentieren ein breites Spektrum der Exilpresse. Darunter befinden sich z.B. der Aufbau (New York), Das Andere Deutschland

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(Buenos Aires), das Pariser Tageblatt/Pariser Tageszeitung, Shanghai Jewish Chronicle (Shanghai) und Die Zeitung (London). Neben der Verbesserung der Zugänglichkeit war ein weiteres Motiv für die Digitalisierung der Bestandsschutz. Es wurden auch sehr seltene und in schlechtem Erhaltungszustand befindliche Zeitschriften digitalisiert (z.B. Exilpresse in Shanghai). Nicht digitalisiert wurden Zeitschriften, die als Reprints vorliegen, z.B. Das neue Tagebuch, Die neue Weltbühne und Die Sammlung. Die einzelnen Seiten der Zeitschriften wurden als Images gescannt. Zusätzlich wurden jedoch Metadaten erfasst (wie Nummer und Datum der Zeitschrift, Autoren, Titel und Untertitel der Beiträge, Bildunterschriften), die neben dem elektronischen ‚Blättern‘ in der jeweiligen Zeitschrift die gezielte Suche z.B. nach Titelstichwörtern oder Verfassern erlauben. Von den angezeigten Suchergebnissen führt ein Link zum Volltext. Auch eine Volltextrecherche für Suchbegriffe innerhalb der einzelnen Artikel ist möglich, da mit Hilfe einer OCRBearbeitung der vollständige Text des gesamten digitalisierten Zeitschriftenbestands erfasst wurde. Für die inhaltliche Recherche im Internet steht eine Suchmaschine zur Verfügung. Es kann gleichzeitig in allen verfügbaren Zeitschriften gesucht werden, aber auch in einzelnen oder in mehreren, speziell ausgewählten. Nach Abschluss des Projektes Exilpresse digital wurde 2004 mit der Digitalisierung jüdischer Periodika in NS-Deutschland10 begonnen. Projektgegenstand waren die wichtigsten in Deutschland nach der nationalsozialistischen Machtübernahme 1933 (oder kurz zuvor) gegründeten jüdischen Periodika, die meist Organe der Selbsthilfeeinrichtungen der jüdischen Gemeinschaft waren. Aufgrund der Überlieferungssituation ist der Zugang zu ihnen nur eingeschränkt oder unter großen Schwierigkeiten möglich. Die Auswahl der Zeitungen und Zeitschriften wurde in Absprache mit dem Compact Memory-Projekt11 der RWTH Aachen, der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M. und der Germania Judaica, Köln, getroffen. Digitalisiert wurden 25 Titel, der Gesamtumfang der digitalisierten Zeitungen und Zeitschriften beträgt ca. 30.000 Seiten. Es handelt sich um alle wichtigen in jener Zeit entstandenen Periodika wie Jüdische Wohlfahrtspflege und Sozialpolitik oder die Informationsblätter, die vom Zentralausschuss der Deutschen Juden für Hilfe und Aufbau herausgegeben wurden. Ferner wurden die Monatsblätter und Programme des Jüdischen Kulturbundes digitalisiert. Das Projekt wurde 2006 abgeschlossen.

Das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945

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Die Sammlung von ungedruckten Unterlagen Anfang der 1970er Jahre wurde im Deutschen Exilarchiv 1933-1945 in Frankfurt am Main auch mit der Sammlung von ungedruckten Unterlagen zur deutschsprachigen Emigration begonnen. Am Anfang stand die Erwerbung von Archiven von Exilorganisationen, etwa die Akten der Deutschen Akademie im Exil/American Guild for German Cultural Freedom und des Emergency Rescue Committee sowie das Archiv des deutschen PENClubs im Exil, weil hier der Exilbezug am stärksten ist. Seit Beginn der 80er Jahre werden verstärkt Personen-Nachlässe erworben. Wie auch bei den Exilveröffentlichungen ist es Anliegen der Archivaliensammlung, das Phänomen Exil in seiner ganzen Breite und Vielfalt zu dokumentieren. Gesammelt werden Nachlässe aller Berufsgruppen und Fachgebiete. Entsprechend stellt sich die Sammlung heute dar: Unter den 210 persönlichen Nachlässen und Teilnachlässen überwiegen diejenigen aus den Bereichen Publizistik, Literatur und Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. Beispielhaft sind hier die Bestände der Schriftsteller Raoul Auernheimer, Ulrich Becher, Soma Morgenstern, Leo Perutz und Gabriele Tergit und der Publizisten Margarete BuberNeumann, Walter Fabian, Fritz Lamm, Rudolf Olden und Karl Retzlaw anzuführen. Wie die Namen nahe legen, versucht das Deutsche Exilarchiv bei der Sammlung von Nachlässen politischer Publizisten das ganze Spektrum der politischen Parteien und Strömungen im Exil zu dokumentieren. Die umfangreichsten und bedeutendsten Wissenschaftlernachlässe sind diejenigen der Historiker Walter Mohr und Karl Obermann, des Politologen Ossip K. Flechtheim, des Anthropologen Paul Leser, der Soziologen Joseph und Alice Maier, der Literaturwissenschaftler Eugen Gürster und Ludwig Werner Kahn, des Altphilologen Ernst Moritz Manasse und des Finanzwissenschaflers Fritz Neumark. Aber auch aus den Bereichen Verlagswesen und Buchhandel (z.B. die Nachlässe von Susanne Bach, Alfredo Cahn, Barthold Fles, Hein Kohn), künstlerische Berufe (z.B. die Fotografennachlässe von Eric Schaal und Florence Homolka, die Nachlässe der Malerin Anna Frank-Klein und der Schauspielerin Erna Brünell, die Nachlässe der Musiker Paul Blumenfeld, Hilde Loewe-Flatter/Henry Love), Rechtswissenschaft (Leo Gross, Stefan Riesenfeld), Medizin (u.a. Paul Engel, Gundo Ewald Böhm, Alexander Herzberg) und anderen Fachrichtungen und Berufsgruppen besitzt das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 Bestände.

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Die Zahl der Nachlässe ist seit den 1990er Jahren sprunghaft angestiegen. Von 1953 bzw. aktiv von 1970 bis 1989 waren insgesamt 38 Neuzugänge zu verzeichnen, von 1990 bis 2006 kamen 182 Bestände zur Sammlung hinzu. Seit 1995 arbeitet das Deutsche Exilarchiv bei der Erwerbung von Nachlässen deutschsprachiger Emigranten in den USA mit dem Germanisten John M. Spalek zusammen. Er ist einer der besten Kenner der Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Emigration unter dem NS-Regime in den USA und verfügt aufgrund seiner Forschungsarbeiten über die wohl besten Kenntnisse der Nachlasssituation dort. In der Zeit von Dezember 1995 bis Dezember 2006 hat Professor Spalek dem Deutschen Exilarchiv 1933-1945 65 Nachlässe und Teilnachlässe nach den USA emigrierter Publizisten, Wissenschaftler, Schriftsteller und Künstler vermittelt und nach Frankfurt am Main gebracht. Darunter z.B. der Teilnachlass des Schriftstellers und Publizisten Raoul Auernheimer, die Nachlässe bzw. Teilnachlässe der Schriftsteller Hermann Borchardt, Iwan Heilbut, Gina Kaus, Lili Körber, Soma Morgenstern, Nomi Rubel und Wilhelm Speyer, der Soziologen Joseph und Alice Maier sowie Fritz Pappenheim, der Psychoanalytiker Siegfried Bernfeld und Ernst Schachtel, des Klassischen Philologen Ernst Moritz Manasse, des Rechtswissenschaftlers Leo Gross sowie das Archiv der deutschsprachigen jüdischen Wochenzeitung Aufbau/Reconstruction. Auch im Bereich der Archivalien hat sich die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek an der Entwicklung der Exilforschung orientiert. Auf den von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft 1987 eingerichteten Forschungsschwerpunkt Wissenschaftsemigration z.B. hat das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 mit der Erarbeitung des Inventars zu den Nachlässen emigrierter deutschsprachiger Wissenschaftler in Archiven und Bibliotheken der Bundesrepublik und einer verstärkten Erwerbung von Deutschland12 Wissenschaftlernachlässen reagiert. Die Erschließung der Autografen Bis 2004 wurden die Autografen im Deutschen Exilarchiv konventionell über Zettelkataloge erschlossen. Zwar wurde im Laufe der Jahre für die Katalogisierung eine PC-gestützte Erfassungsmethode entwickelt, für den Benutzer war eine Recherche jedoch nur vor Ort im Deutschen Exilarchiv 1933-1945 in Frankfurt am Main möglich.

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Seit 2004 wurde mit der Entwicklung eines neuen Katalogisierungssystems begonnen. Nach einer Analyse verschiedener Katalogisierungssysteme für Autografen fiel die Entscheidung zugunsten einer Integration der Nachlasskatalogisierung des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 in das Integrierte Literatur- und Tonträgersystem (ILTIS) der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek, einem integrierten Bibliothekssystems von OCLC-PICA. Für die Autografenkatalogisierung stand dabei die Anforderung nach einem flexiblen System, das verschiedene Erschließungstiefen darstellen kann, im Vordergrund. Komplett erschlossene, vorgeordnete sowie ungeordnete Bestände sollten im System darstellbar sein, denn der erfreuliche Bestandszugang der letzten Jahre hat zur Folge, dass bei der Nachlasserschließung große Rückstände entstanden sind; die Erschließung kann mit der Erwerbung nicht Schritt halten. Aber auch die noch nicht erschlossenen Bestände werden möglichst bald so vorgeordnet, dass sie für die Benutzung bereitgestellt werden können, sehen wir doch eine wesentliche Aufgabe der Exilsammlungen darin, die Bestände zeitnah für die Forschung zugänglich zu machen. Eine weitere Anforderung an das System war die aktive Nutzung der Normdateien: der Gemeinsamen Körperschaftsdatei – GKD und der Personennamendatei – PND, um so bereits vorliegende Informationen zu Personen und Institutionen für die Autografenkatalogisierung nutzen zu können. Die Katalogisierungsgrundlage für die Erschließung der Nachlässe und Einzelautografen des Deutschen Exilarchivs bilden die Regeln zur Erschließung von Nachlässen und Autografen13 – RNA, die 1997 von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft herausgebracht wurden. Unter der Federführung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz und der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek wird dieses Regelwerk momentan überarbeitet. Eine Neufassung steht kurz vor ihrem Abschluss.14 Der Anspruch, eine gründliche formale Erschließung, die sich in der Erschließungstiefe nach den spezifischen Eigenschaften des zu erschließenden Materials richtet, zu leisten, ist dabei zu vereinbaren mit der Notwendigkeit, aufgrund des raschen Anwachsens der Sammlung die Erschließung rationell voranzubringen. Das System sollte also Konvolutaufnahmen ebenso verwalten können wie detailliert beschreibende Einzelaufnahmen und flexibel sein in Bezug auf zukünftige Veränderungen in der Erschließungspraxis.

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Im Januar 2005 wurde das von der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek neu entwickelte System DEA-ILTIS-Archivalien fest eingeführt. Im Anschluss daran wurde mit der Entwicklung eines Onlinekatalogs begonnen, der im September 2006 freigeschaltet werden konnte. 15 Der Katalog umfasst momentan die Titelaufnahmen der Archivalien des Deutschen Exilarchivs seit 2005 sowie Kurzbeschreibungen der Bestände. Der Onlinekatalog der Archivalien des Deutschen Exilarchivs wurde im Hinblick auf die Anforderungen der Nutzer entwickelt, denn alle Unterlagen sollen – soweit Urheberrecht und Persönlichkeitsschutzrechte es erlauben – möglichst rasch zur Benutzung frei gegeben werden. Neben der Forderung, Nachlassrepertorien, also die Gliederungsstufen eines Nachlasses von der Grobstruktur bis zur Feingliederung, im System abbilden zu können, war die Optimierung der Recherchemöglichkeiten ein wesentliches Desiderat bei der Entwicklung des Kataloges. Vielfältige Sucheinstiege, z.B. die Recherche nach Personen in ihren unterschiedlichen Funktionen als Verfasser, Adressaten, dokumentierte Personen oder Bestandsbildner, nach Titeln, nach Orten und Exilländern sowie nach Zeiträumen bieten einen komfortablen Zugriff auf die Bestände. Die Abbildung unterschiedlicher Erschließungstiefen konnte ebenfalls realisiert werden. Nicht erschlossene Bestände werden mit einer Kurzbeschreibung präsentiert, die knappe Angaben über den Bestandsbildner sowie eine kurze Übersicht über das im Nachlass überlieferte Material enthält. Bei Beständen, die bereits vorgeordnet, aber noch nicht endgültig erschlossen sind, kann eine grobe Nachlassgliederung, die sukzessive verfeinert werden kann, den ersten Einstieg bieten. Fertig erschlossene Nachlässe sind – je nach enthaltenem Material – bis zur Ebene der Einzelbriefaufnahme abbildbar. Im Zusammenhang mit dem Onlinekatalog gibt es noch einige Desiderate, die es umzusetzen gilt. So wird gerade eine Möglichkeit entwickelt, weitergehende Information zu vorgeordneten Nachlässen als PDF-files in den Katalog zu integrieren. Solche Informationen können z.B. vorläufige Nachlassübersichten oder auch Informationen zu enthaltenen Korrespondenzen sein. Auch das Anhängen von ausgewählten Digitalisaten ist in Vorbereitung. Um einen möglichst großen Forscherkreis zu erreichen, ist das Deutsche Exilarchiv 1933-1945 mit seinen Nachlassbeständen auch in der Kalliope-Datenbank vertreten. Sie ist eine Fortführung der 1966 gegründeten Zentralkartei der Autografen; insgesamt sind ca. 500

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Bibliotheken, Archive und Museen aus Deutschland und verschiedenen anderen Ländern angeschlossen. Aktuell arbeitet das Deutsche Exilarchiv an der Entwicklung einer Schnittstelle zwischen dem neu entwickelten Archivalienkatalog und der KalliopeDatenbank. II. Der Blick in die Zukunft Retrokonversion Im Hinblick auf die Präsentation der Exilbestände der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek ist die Retrokonversion der konventionellen Kataloge das vordringlichste Desiderat – sowohl für den Bereich der Exilpublikationen des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 als auch für die Sammlung der ungedruckten Unterlagen der deutschsprachigen Emigration. Große Teile der Sammlungen sind bisher nur über konventionelle Kataloge bzw. über die gedruckten Bestandskataloge recherchierbar. Die Konversion dieser Kataloge ist in Vorbereitung und soll in absehbarer Zeit beginnen. Mit der Integration der konventionellen Kataloge in die bestehenden Onlinekataloge stünde ein umfassendes Rechercheinstrument zur Verfügung. Die Erweiterung der Sammlung Mittelfristig bleibt der Ausbau der Sammlung und die Erschließung der Exilpublikationen und der ungedruckten Unterlagen der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945 die primäre Aufgabe der Exilsammlungen. Im Bereich der Sammlung von Exilpublikationen ist heute, was die einzelnen Werke in der Originalsprache betrifft, bei der Belletristik und der politischen Publizistik Vollständigkeit nahezu erreicht. Übersetzungen belletristischer und politischer Schriften gehören jedoch noch immer zu den laufenden Erwerbungen, außerdem die von Emigranten illustrierten und/oder gestalteten Werke. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt der Erwerbung von Publikationen emigrierter Wissenschaftler. Auch im Bereich der Archivalien wird die Sammlung und Erschließung der Bestände die nahe Zukunft bestimmen. Die Erfahrung zeigt, dass die Anzahl der jährlichen Neuzugänge im Bereich der Nachlasssammlung nahezu konstant bleibt. Im Jahr 2006

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z.B. konnte die Sammlung um 10 Nachlässe erweitert werden. 2005 waren es ebenfalls 10 Nachlässe, 2004 9, 2003 13, 2002 9. Und 2007 sind bereits 5 neue Nachlässe eingetroffen. Dass von den 224 Beständen des Deutschen Exilarchivs viele nur vorgeordnet und erst 41 komplett erschlossen sind, zeigt, was an Erschließungsarbeit noch zu leisten ist – denn natürlich ist es das Ziel, auf lange Sicht alle Nachlassbestände des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 zu erschließen. Ein Blick in die Benutzungsstatistik der Archivaliensammlung der letzten Jahre belegt, dass die Bestände weiterhin, sogar leicht zunehmend, für Arbeitsvorhaben angefragt werden: 2006 wurden die Bestände zu 108 Forschungsvorhaben ausgewertet, 2005 waren es 97, 2004 86, 2003 85 und 2002 90. Die Arbeitsthemen waren dabei vielfältig: Biografische Forschungen, Länderspezifische Fragestellungen, Frauenthemen, übergreifende jüdische Themen. Auch für die Herausgabe von Briefeditionen und Werkausgaben wurden Bestände eingesehen. Der Bestandszugang, d.h. das Hinzukommen neuen Quellenmaterials, und die konstanten Benutzungszahlen sind für uns ein Zeichen dafür, dass die Exilforschung noch längst nicht an ihrem Ende angelangt ist. Gerade die Vielzahl der Neuzugänge bringt es mit sich, dass die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek bei der Nachlasserwerbung auf die Unterstützung durch Stiftungen und Sponsoren angewiesen ist. Das Fundraising macht heute einen immer stärkeren Anteil der Arbeit aus. Die Erwerbung umfangreicher Nachlassbestände, die Fortsetzung von Projekten, z.B. die Beschaffung von Nachlässen deutschsprachiger Emigranten aus den USA durch John M. Spalek, sind ohne diese Unterstützung kaum noch realisierbar. Auch die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit wird immer wichtiger. Über verschiedene Informationskanäle werden die Neuzugänge zeitnah bekannt gemacht. Ein Zugriff ist der bereits erwähnte Archivalienkatalog, aber auch in der Bestandsübersicht über die Archivalien des Deutschen Exilarchivs,16 die in der Onlineversion17 ständig aktualisiert wird, werden die neuen Bestände verzeichnet. Digitalisierung Digitalisierungsprojekte werden auch in Zukunft einen Arbeitsschwerpunkt der Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek bilden. Nachdem sowohl das Projekt Exilpresse digital als auch Digitalisierung jüdischer Periodika in NS-

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Deutschland von Exilforschern sehr gut angenommen wurde, ist ein weiteres Digitalisierungsprojekt im Bereich Exilpublikationen in der Überlegung. Angedacht wurde die Digitalisierung der Publikationen der Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. In dieser digitalen Bibliothek der Exilliteratur könnten sukzessive urheberrechtsfreie Publikationen über das Internet zugänglich gemacht werden. Neben der weltweiten Verfügbarkeit seltener Texte wäre dies andererseits ein wichtiger Beitrag zum Bestandsschutz, da die Originale nicht mehr für die Benutzung zur Verfügung gestellt werden müssten. Ausstellungen Bereits seit 40 Jahren haben die Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Ausstellungen zum Thema deutschsprachige Emigration 1933-1945 erarbeitet und damit die Exilforschung angeregt. Die Themen reichen von einzelnen Exilautoren (u.a. 1979 Joseph Roth, 18 1989 Leo Perutz,19 1995 Richard A. Bermann20) über Exilorganisationen und politische Gruppen (z.B. 1980 Der deutsche PEN-Club im Exil 1933-1945,21 1993 Deutsche Intellektuelle im Exil. Ihre Akademie und die American Guild for German Cultural Freedom22) bis zu einzelnen Asylländern (z.B. 1993 Deutsche Literatur im Exil in den Niederlanden,23 Deutschsprachige Schriftsteller im Schweizer Exil 200224) und thematischen Ausstellungen (Buchgestaltung im Exil25 und ‚Meinem besten Porträtisten‘. Porträtfotografien und –zeichnungen aus den Beständen des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933- 194526). Die erste Ausstellung Bücher der Emigration fand bereits 1947 in der damaligen Deutschen Bücherei in Leipzig statt. Mit der 1965 von Werner Berthold erarbeiteten Ausstellung Exil-Literatur 1933-1945 trug das Deutsche Exilarchiv wesentlich dazu bei, die Erforschung der Exilliteratur anzuregen. Impuls gebend für die Erforschung der jüdischen Emigration war die von Brita Eckert erarbeitete Ausstellung Die jüdische Emigration aus Deutschland 1933-1941. Die Geschichte einer Austreibung, die 1985 erarbeitet wurde. Auch in Zukunft wird es eine wichtige Aufgabe der Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek bleiben, mit Ausstellungen aus den eigenen Beständen und Begleitpublikationen auf die Bestände der Exilsammlungen aufmerksam zu machen, die Erforschung neuer Gebiete der deutschsprachigen Emigration 19331945 anzuregen sowie auf Forschungsdesiderate hinzuweisen. Gerade

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im Bereich der Ausstellungen ist eine stärkere Didaktisierung denkbar. Arbeitsmaterialien für Schüler und/oder Studenten könnten diesen den Zugang zur Exilthematik erleichtern. Neben den aufgezeigten Aufgaben, die für lange Zeit noch die Arbeit der Exilsammlungen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek bestimmen werden, stellt sich langfristig auch die Frage, wie sich die Exilforschung selbst entwickeln wird, denn neben dem Auftrag der Archivierung leisten die Exilsammlungen mit der Aufarbeitung und Bereitstellung der Bestände Zuarbeit für die Exilforschung. Auf der Tagung der Gesellschaft für Exilforschung 2006 in Zürich wurde die Frage nach der Zukunft der Exilforschung und damit auch nach der Zukunft der Gesellschaft für Exilforschung bereits gestellt und auf der Tagung im März 2007 wurde die Diskussion fortgesetzt.27 In der Exilforschung ist bereits vieles erreicht. Literatur- und Zeitgeschichte haben Exil und Emigration 1933-1945 integriert, die jüdische Emigration ist ebenfalls gut dokumentiert. Ein Ende der Exilforschung ist aber nicht in Sicht. Auf etlichen Gebieten ist noch Forschungsarbeit zu leisten. So etwa auf den Gebieten der Fotografie, Musik und der bildenden Kunst, auch wenn hier gerade in den letzten Jahren Arbeiten vorgelegt wurden. Im Bereich des literarischen Exils werden immer noch Autoren und Werke wieder entdeckt, vorhandene Quellen werden mit neuen Fragestellungen wiederholt genutzt und im Bereich der Wissenschaft sind disziplingeschichtliche Studien, die sich mit der Wirkungsgeschichte und der Akkulturation befassen, noch nicht für alle Fachgebiete vorgelegt worden. Länderstudien und biografische Studien sind in vielen Fällen noch zu erarbeiten und die Vielzahl der Neuerscheinungen und die Präsentation neuer Ausstellungen zeigen, dass es auf dem Gebiet der Exilforschung noch einiges zu leisten gibt. Wie bereits dargestellt, zeigt eine Analyse der BenutzungsStatistik des Bereichs Archivalien ein ähnliches Bild. Trotzdem denkt die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek längerfristig über eine Ausweitung des Sammelauftrages ihrer Exilsammlungen nach. Die Frage nach der Zukunft der Exilforschung ist ja nicht neu. Schon seit Jahren wird die Ausweitung der Exilforschung diskutiert: die Erforschung der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945 könnte im Sinne einer vergleichenden Exilforschung um die wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit Exilen aus anderen Ländern und aktuellen Exilen erweitert werden. Unter dem Titel Exile

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im 20. Jahrhundert erschien im Jahr 2000 das 18. Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Exilforschung. 28 Die ‚Tschechische politische Emigration in den Jahren 1938, 1939, 1948 und 1968‘, ‚Spanische Bürgerkriegsflüchtlinge nach 1939‘, ‚die ungarische Emigration nach 1956‘, Exilanten aus China in den 1990er Jahren sowie ‚Chilenische Exilanten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1973-1989)‘ waren Themen des Bandes. Auch auf den Tagungen der Gesellschaft für Exilforschung gehören die aktuellen Exile zum Spektrum. Einen ähnlichen Ansatz verfolgt das writers-in-exileProgramm des PEN-Zentrums Deutschland,29 das sich exilierten Schriftstellern und Journalisten in Deutschland annimmt. In diesem Zusammenhang liegt es nahe, darüber nachzudenken, in Zukunft Nachlässe von Emigranten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in die Sammlung des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 aufzunehmen bzw. Veröffentlichungen von heute in Deutschland im Exil lebenden Schriftstellern, Publizisten und Wissenschaftlern, die aufgrund des Sammelauftrages der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek bereits in der Sammlung vorhanden sind, im Katalog als Exilwerke kenntlich und recherchierbar zu machen.

Anmerkungen 1

Ernst Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Zürich: Oprecht, 1935). Konrad Heiden, Adolf Hitler: Eine Biographie. Bd. 1 und 2 (Zürich: Europa-Verlag, 1936 und 1937). 3 Freie Wissenschaft: Ein Sammelbuch aus der deutschen Emigration, Hrsg. von Emil Julius Gumbel (Strasbourg: Sebastian-Brant-Verlag, 1938). 4 Anna Seghers, Das siebte Kreuz: Roman aus Hitlerdeutschland (Mexiko: Editorial El Libro Libre, 1942). 5 Jo Mihaly; Lajser Aichenrand; Stephan Hermlin, Wir verstummen nicht: Gedichte in der Fremde (Zürich: Posen, 1945). 6 Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945: Katalog der Bücher und Broschüren. Redaktion: Mechthild Hahner (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1989), (Sonderveröffentlichungen der Deutschen Bibliothek; Nr. 16). 7 Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945 und Sammlung Exil-Literatur 1933-1945: Katalog der Bücher und Broschüren, Bearbeiterin: Mechthild Hahner (Weimar/Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003). 8 Lieselotte Maas, Handbuch der deutschen Exilpresse. Bd. 1-3 (München: Hanser, 1976 ff.). 2

14

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http://www.d-nb.de/wir/projekte/exilpresse_digital.htm. http://www.d-nb.de/wir/projekte/jued_periodika.htm. 11 http://www.compactmemory.de. 12 Die Deutsche Bibliothek: Inventar zu den Nachlässen emigrierter deutschsprachiger Wissenschaftler in Archiven und Bibliotheken der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, bearb. im Deutschen Exilarchiv 1933-1945 der Deutschen Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main, redaktionelle Bearbeitung: Gabriele von Glasenapp u. Barbara Brunn, Bd. 1 u. 2 (München u.a.: Saur, 1993). 13 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Unterausschuss für Nachlasserschließung; Deutsches Bibliotheksinstitut: Regeln zur Erschließung von Nachlässen und Autographen (Berlin: Dt. Bibliotheksinstitut, 1997). 14 http://kalliope.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de. 15 http://www.d-nb.de/sammlungen/kataloge/opac_dea.htm. 16 Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945, Frankfurt am Main: Archivalien des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945: Bestandsübersicht, Redaktion: Sylvia Asmus (Leipzig/Frankfurt am Main/ Berlin: Die Deutsche Bibliothek, 2005). 17 http://www.d-nb.de/sammlungen/dea/bestaende/index.htm. 18 Joseph Roth 1894-1939: Eine Ausstellung der Deutschen Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main. Ausstellung u. Katalog: Brita Eckert u. Werner Berthold (Frankfurt a. M.: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1979), (Sonderveröffentlichungen der Deutschen Bibliothek; Nr. 7). 19 Leo Perutz 1882-1957: Eine Ausstellung der Deutschen Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main. Ausstellung u. Katalog: Hans-Harald Müller u. Brita Eckert unter Mitwirkung von Werner Berthold (Wien/Darmstadt: Zsolnay, 1989), (Sonderveröffentlichungen der Deutschen Bibliothek; Nr. 17). 20 Richard A. Bermann alias Arnold Höllriegel: Österreicher – Demokrat – Weltbürger. Begleitbuch: Hans-Harald Müller u. Brita Eckert unter Mitwirkung von Werner Berthold (München/New Providence/London/Paris: Saur, 1995), (Sonderveröffentlichungen/Die Deutsche Bibliothek; Nr. 22). 21 Der deutsche PEN-Club im Exil 1933-1948: Eine Ausstellung der Deutschen Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main. Ausstellung u. Katalog: Werner Berthold u. Brita Eckert (Frankfurt a. M.: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1980), (Sonderveröffentlichungen der Deutschen Bibliothek; Nr. 10). 22 Deutsche Intellektuelle im Exil: Ihre Akademie und die American Guild for German Cultural Freedom. Ausstellung u. Katalog: Werner Berthold, Brita Eckert u. Frank Wende (München/London/New York/Paris: Saur, 1993), (Sonderveröffentlichungen/Die Deutsche Bibliothek; Nr. 18). 23 Deutsche Literatur im Exil in den Niederlanden: Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945, Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main, Redaktion: Frank Wende (Leipzig/Frankfurt a. M./Berlin: Die Deutsche Bibliothek, 1993), (Sonderveröffentlichungen/Die Deutsche Bibliothek; Nr. 20). 24 Deutschsprachige Schriftsteller im Schweizer Exil 1933-1950: Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 der Deutschen Bibliothek. Ausstellung und 10

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Begleitbuch: Frank Wende (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002), (Gesellschaft für das Buch; Bd. 8). 25

Buchgestaltung im Exil 1933-1950: Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 Der Deutschen Bibliothek. Ausstellung und Begleitbuch: Ernst Fischer unter Mitwirkung von Brita Eckert und Mechthild Hahner (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), (Gesellschaft für das Buch; Bd. 9). 2., durchges. Aufl. 2004. 26 „Meinem besten Porträtisten…“: Porträtfotografien und –zeichnungen aus den Beständen des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933–1945. Ausstellung und Begleitbuch: Sylvia Asmus und Brita Eckert (Leipzig/Frankfurt am Main/Berlin: Die Deutsche Bibliothek, 2005). 27 Vgl. hierzu: Claus-Dieter Krohn, ‚Quo vadis Exilforschung?‘, Neuer Nachrichtenbrief der Gesellschaft für Exilforschung, 27 (Juni 2006), S. 6. 28 Exilforschung: Ein internationales Jahrbuch. Bd. 18= Exile im 20. Jahrhundert (München: Saur, 2000). 29 http://www.pen-deutschland.de/htm/aufgaben/writers_in_exile.php.

Von Thoor zu Wolf. Dokumente zum österreichischen Exil in Großbritannien an der Österreichischen Exilbibliothek, Literaturhaus in Wien Ursula Seeber Die Österreichische Exilbibliothek dokumentiert Leben und Arbeit österreichischer Schriftsteller und anderer Kulturschaffender in Exil und Emigration seit 1933. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf Literatur, Publizistik, Kunst, Geisteswissenschaften und Verlagsgeschichte. Sie versteht sich als Arbeitsstelle und Informationszentrum für Forscher, Studierende, spezifisch Interessierte und für die Autoren selbst bzw. für deren Familien und Nachkommen. Sammlungen zum österreichischen Exil in Großbritannien nehmen hier breiten Raum ein. Die Exilbibliothek verwaltet etwa den Nachlass Jakov Linds und (Teil)Nachlässe sowie Sammlungen von Gitta Deutsch, Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Marnau, Herbert Steiner, Jesse Thoor und Edmund Wolf.

Die 1993 gegründete Österreichische Exilbibliothek, eine Abteilung der Dokumentationsstelle für neuere österreichische Literatur im Literaturhaus in Wien, dokumentiert das Leben und die Arbeit österreichischer Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller und anderer Kulturschaffender in Exil und Emigration seit 1933. Der Sammelschwerpunkt von Archiv und Bibliothek liegt auf Literatur, der interdisziplinären Ausrichtung der Exilbibliothek entsprechend werden auch Werke der Kulturpublizistik, Geisteswissenschaften, Geschichte und Politik, des Buchhandels und der Verlagsgeschichte dokumentiert; Werke zu Musik, Film, Photographie, bildender und angewandter Kunst, zur Architektur. Exilzeitschriften werden nach Maßgabe der Mittel und in Abstimmung zu den umfangreichen Beständen gesammelt, die das Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes bereits besitzt. Die Österreichische Exilbibliothek versteht sich als Arbeitsstelle und Informationszentrum für Forscherinnen und Forscher, Studierende und Lehrende, spezifisch Interessierte und für die Autorinnen und Autoren selbst bzw. für deren Familien und Nachkommen. Die Sammelrichtlinien des Deutschen Exilarchivs 1933-1945 an der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek waren für den Aufbau der Exilbibliothek richtungweisend und wurden für deren eigene

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Aufgabenstellungen modifiziert. Die Exilbibliothek erwirbt Publikationen österreichischer Autorinnen und Autoren in Exil und Emigration, die ab 1933 außerhalb Deutschlands bzw. ab 1938 außerhalb Österreichs erschienen sind, in allen Ausgaben und Auflagen (einschließlich Übersetzungen) ohne zeitliche Begrenzung zur Gegenwart hin. Darüber hinaus werden von österreichischen Emigranten übersetzte oder illustrierte Werke dokumentiert, ebenso Anthologien, die Produktion von Exilverlagen, an denen Österreicher mitgewirkt haben oder die vor 1938 in Österreich ihren Sitz hatten, wie der Bermann Fischer Verlag. Historische wie zeitgenössische Sekundärliteratur, Diplomarbeiten und Dissertationen, Ausstellungskataloge, Videos und Material in anderen Neuen Medien ergänzen den Bestand. Neben dem Aufbau einer Bibliothek und einer Dokumentation, eines Medienarchivs und der Erschließung von Vorund Nachlässen steht der ständige Ausbau einer praxisorientierten biobibliographischen Datenbank zum österreichischen kulturellen Exil im Mittelpunkt. Die Exilbibliothek versteht sich nicht als Verwalterin von Büchern und Archivalien. Mit einer eigenen Veranstaltungsreihe, mit Führungen, Tagungen, Ausstellungen und Publikationen präsentiert sie ihre Arbeit im Sinne einer ‚angewandten‘ Exilforschung der Öffentlichkeit.1 Nicht zuletzt weil Großbritannien ein bedeutendes Exilland war und auch die Forschung darüber vielfältig und anspruchsvoll ist,2 nehmen die Handschriften und Dokumente, Bücher, Zeitschriften, Lebensdokumente und Photographien, Veranstaltungen und Kooperationen zum österreichischen Exil in Großbritannien in der Exilbibliothek einen vergleichsweise großen Raum ein3 – Großbritannien war bei der jüngsten Evaluation der Benützerinteressen das am meisten nachgefragte Exilland. Diese Orientierung lässt sich in die Vergangenheit zurückverfolgen. 1975 organisierte der Leiter der Dokumentationsstelle für neuere österreichische Literatur, Viktor Suchy, gemeinsam mit dem Leiter des Dokumentationsarchivs des österreichischen Widerstandes, Herbert Steiner, in Wien das erste Internationale Symposium zum österreichischen Exil, eine Tagung, die als Wegmarke der österreichischen Exil- und der Remigrationsforschung gilt. Einen der Festvorträge, Psychologie des Exils, hielt die England-Remigrantin Hilde Spiel, auch er ein Grundlagentext über das Exil.4 An beiden Häusern blieb der Exil –

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wie auch im Besonderen der Großbritannien-Schwerpunkt bis dato erhalten. Herbert Steiner (1923-2001), als junger Mann selbst Flüchtling in Großbritannien, wo er in London Sekretär der Jugendorganisation „Young Austria in Great Britain“ war und als gelernter Schriftsetzer auch professionell an deren Publikationen im Verlag Jugend voran beteiligt war, übergab der Exilbibliothek Mitte 1993 einen größeren Bestand an Dokumenten (N1.EB-8)5 zum österreichischen Exil in Großbritannien aus seinem Privatbesitz – Materialien, die am Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes bereits vorhanden waren, für die neugegründete Exilbibliothek aber eine große Bereicherung darstellten. Es handelt sich um gebundene Jahrgänge und Einzelexemplare von Zeitspiegel, Freie Österreichische Jugend, Jugend voran sowie um Hefte der Kulturellen Schriftenreihe des Free Austrian Movement und Bücher, Broschüren und gedruckte Kleinmaterialien aus dem Umfeld des Austrian Centre; Originalausgaben österreichischer Exilautoren von Albert Fuchs und Erich Fried bis Paul Reimann mit einem Schwerpunkt auf Robert Neumann und Ernst Fischer; ein Konvolut von etwa 150 Originalphotos, fast alle unbeschriftet bzw. undatiert. Darunter sind bekannte Sujets wie Otto Tausig in Jura Soyfers Vineta, 1945 von der Spielgruppe von Young Austria aufgeführt, oder Erich Fried als Zuschauer beim Tischtennisspiel im Spielzimmer von Young Austria, aber auch zahlreiche Photographien von Veranstaltungen oder private Gruppenbildnisse. Zunächst in der fragilen Ordnung des Übergabezeitpunkts erhalten, wurde die Photosammlung Herbert Steiner nach und nach geordnet, die dargestellten Personen identifiziert und die umgebenden Ereignisse, soweit möglich, mit der Hilfe von Edith West, Witwe des Schriftstellers Arthur West und selbst eine der Frauen des Austrian Centre, zugeordnet. Gäbe es sie, die Zeitzeuginnen und Zeitzeugen, nicht, wäre die Arbeit des Archivs nicht nur viel weniger effektiv, sondern vor allem um jene Momente lehrreichen Dialogs und persönlicher Erinnerung ärmer, die aus einer Institution mehr machen als einen Datenspeicher. Fast alle Sammlungen und Archivalien wurden der Exilbibliothek durch Schenkung zuteil, manchmal in mehreren Tranchen, wie die großen Sammlungen aus dem Kontext des britischen Exils: die Nachlässe von Jakov Lind, Alfred Marnau und Edmund Wolf. Auf sie wird später noch Bezug genommen. Da Exilzeitschriften im Antiquariatsbuchhandel nicht häufig angeboten werden und außerdem teuer sind, sind einzelne Hefte

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willkommene Ergänzungen des Vorhandenen, etwa aus der Sammlung des nach Großbritannien emigrierten, 1946 nach Österreich zurückgekehrten Buchhändlers und Verlegers Kurt Mohl (N1.EB-32). Sie enthält nicht nur Hefte von Young Austria, sondern auch Einzelnummern oder Beilagen österreichischer Tageszeitungen von den frühen 1930er Jahren bis 1938 und fast 100 Einzelnummern englischer Zeitungen oder Beilagen aus den Tagen rund um das Kriegsende Mai 1945. Weiters hatte Kurt Mohl (1920-2002), der sich mit dem Mohl-Verlag auf Wiener Bezirksgeschichtsschreibung spezialisierte, bis in die 1960er Jahre österreichische Tageszeitungen zu den Themen 1945, Staatsvertrag und anderen politischen Ereignissen ausgewertet. Sammlungen wie diese, von den (oft nicht mehr deutschsprachigen) Nachkommen bisweilen geringgeschätzt und als Last empfunden, spiegeln eine persönliche Geschichte und spezifische Interessen eines Menschen wider, der nationalsozialistische Verfolgung und Vertreibung erlebt hat, und sie bestechen zugleich als individueller Kommentar zur Weltgeschichte wie als Archivmaterial an sich. Die Bibliothek selbst vergrößert sich nicht nur durch gezielten Ankauf zu Autoren und zu Themengebieten, es entstehen auch Schwerpunkte in der Folge von Projekten, etwa 1998 im Kontext der Ausstellung über emigrierte Kinder- und Jugendliteratur,6 die einen großen Zuwachs an Kinder- und Jugendbüchern des Exils brachte, zu nennen die Sachbücher, die Marie Neurath mit ihrem Mann Otto Neurath im Stil der noch in Wien entwickelten Methode der Bildstatistik Isotype entworfen hat, oder die von Bettina Ehrlich im britischen Exil illustrierten und teilweise auch verfassten Kinderbücher. Das gleiche gilt für den Bestand zu Anna Mahler und ihrem Umfeld (Ausstellung 2004) oder zur Sammlung des 1936 nach Großbritannien emigrierten Kameramanns und Photographen Wolf Suschitzky (Ausstellung 2006). 7 Suschitzkys eindrucksmächtige Ansichten der Charing Cross Road oder der zerbombten St. Paul’s Cathedral haben längst einen festen Platz im ikonographischen Gedächtnis des 20. Jahrhunderts, die zahlreichen Photobände über Kinder und Tiere und seine ‚photo-guides‘ sind hingegen weitgehend unbekannt. Diese thematisch und technisch innovativen Werke wurden meist bei Adprint in London hergestellt, einer Firma, die sich ursprünglich auf Farbdrucke und die Produktion von Grußkarten und andere kommerzielle Drucksorten spezialisiert hatte und als erster ‚book packer‘ Großbritanniens gilt. Selbst Gründung eines österreichischen Flüchtlings, Wolfgang Foges aus Wien, beschäftigte

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Adprint, dessen Geschichte noch ungeschrieben ist, zahlreiche Emigranten mit ihrem aus Kontinentaleuropa mitgebrachten Knowhow.8 Bekanntlich ebenfalls eine österreichische Gründung war der Phaidon Verlag, der von seinem Besitzer Béla Horovitz und dessen Mitarbeiter Ludwig Goldscheider nach Großbritannien gerettet werden konnte. Die Publikationen dieses bedeutenden Kunstverlags, die nach der Emigration seines Gründers im Ausland erschienen sind, fallen nicht unter die Sammelrichtlinien einer Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, hingegen unter die einer Exilbibliothek. Die über 50 Titel aus dem Phaidon Verlag von Ernst Gombrich bis van Gogh aus den Beständen der Exilbibliothek waren mit die Grundlage für ein Film- und Installationsprojekt von Jo Schmeiser und Simone Bader (Klub Zwei), das im Herbst 2005 in der Wiener Secession gezeigt wurde und im März 2006 beim Filmfestival Diagonale in Graz Premiere hatte. 9 In den Kontext angewandter Exilforschung fällt auch die Editions- und Publikationstätigkeit des Archivs. Seit 1997 erscheint im PICUS Verlag die Reihe Österreichische Exilbibliothek, in der programmatisch autobiographische Texte noch lebender Autorinnen und Autoren erscheinen. Den Beginn machte 1997 die autobiographische Trilogie von Jakov Lind Selbstporträt, Nahaufnahme und Im Gegenwind10, zum 70. Geburtstag des Autors wiederaufgelegt bzw. erstmals in deutscher Übersetzung veröffentlicht. Der autobiographische Familienroman des über Großbritannien nach Kanada emigrierten Germanisten Hans Eichner Kahn und Engelmann folgte (2000). Erinnerungen von Kindertransport-Kindern sind die deutschen Erstübersetzungen von Martha Blends A Child Alone unter dem Titel Ich kam als Kind (1998), und von Lore Segal Other People’s Houses unter dem Titel Wo andere Leute wohnen (2000). Die Datenbank der Österreichischen Exilbibliothek, die über Intranet im Literaturhaus zu benützen ist, weist im ersten Halbjahr 2007 Einträge zu 743 Personen des Exils in Großbritannien auf, darüber hinaus zu 538 Personen, deren Fluchtroute über Großbritannien führte. An welchen Standorten des Hauses (Hauptbibliothek, Pressedokumentation Handschriftensammlung, Photosammlung) das Material zu den jeweiligen Personen einzusehen ist, kann ebenfalls über diese Datenbank recherchiert werden. Der Umfang variiert vom lexikalischen Eintrag über Bücher und kleinere und größere Mappen bis zum (Teil-)Nachlass.

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Bei den Handschriften zählen die dem britischen Exil zuzurechnenden Sammlungen zu den quantitativ größten der Exilbibliothek. Die kleineren betreffen den Bildhauer Siegfried Charoux (N1.EB-23) und die Illustratorin Bettina Ehrlich (N1.EB-37). Die etwa 30 Aquarelle und Entwürfe, eine Schenkung ihres Nachlaßverwalters in Wien, beziehen sich unter anderen ihre Werke Cocolo (1945), Dolls (1962) oder Paolo and Panetto (1962). Neben der bereits beschriebenen Sammlung Herbert Steiner ist der Teilnachlass der Übersetzerin und Autorin Gitta Deutsch (N1.EB-20) zu nennen. Die Exilbibliothek verwaltet, wie erwähnt, den Nachlass von Jakov Lind (1927-2007), den Nachlass von Alfred Marnau (19181999) mit einem Kryptonachlass zu Jesse Thoor (1905-1952), und den jüngst durch Schenkung erworbenen Nachlass von Edmund Wolf (1910-1997). Jakov Lind ist im Februar 2007 verstorben. Seit 1994 war seine Sammlung in mehreren Tranchen an die Exilbibliothek gelangt (N1.EB-6). Der Nachlass ist teilweise geordnet und über die Datenbank abzufragen, teilweise vorgeordnet – die letzte Tranche kam Ende März 2007 nach Wien. Jakov Linds publiziertes Werk ist mit drei Autobiographien, Erzählungen, Romanen, einigen Hörspielen und Dramen überschaubar, umso reichhaltiger ist die Handschriftensammlung Lind. Sie spiegelt zum einen die vielen Varianten wider, in denen sich Jakov Lind mit seinem Lebensthema auseinandersetzt: mit den Katastrophen, die der Nationalsozialismus in den Köpfen und Herzen der Menschen angerichtet hat. Ein Romanstoff oder ein Reisetagebuch ist auch als Filmtreatment ausgearbeitet, eine Erzählung als Bühnenstück. Die Manuskripte sind in Variationen und korrigierten Fassungen meist mehrfach vorhanden. Aus der Frühzeit haben sich (meist unpublizierte) Texte und Entwürfe in deutscher Sprache erhalten, aus Linds letzten Jahren die Versuche, mit Entwürfen zu Anthologien (Fabeln, Lyrik) das Vorhandene neu zu bündeln und als Autor noch einmal in Erscheinung zu treten. Mehr als zehn Ordner mit Jakov Linds Arbeiten für die Presse und Rezensionen und eine Fülle von Belegexemplaren der Übersetzungen spiegeln die internationale Bekanntheit des Autors in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren, die Mappen mit Verlagskorrespondenz den elenden Kampf ums Auskommen als freier Autor. Zuletzt stellte seine Tochter Oona Napier der Exilbibliothek auch eine Sammlung von Aquarellen und Zeichnungen ihres Vaters zur Verfügung, meist Selbstporträts.

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Die Sammlung des Lyrikers, Erzählers und Übersetzers Alfred Marnau (N1.EB-18) gelangte ab 1998 in mehreren Tranchen an die Exilbibliothek, ebenfalls zunächst als Vorlass. Ihr Spezifikum ist eine Bibliothek mit über 800 Titeln, die zum großen Teil als Arbeitsbibliothek anzusehen ist: Kunstbücher, Werke zu religiösen Themen, Wörterbücher, englische, chinesische, französische, italienische, ungarische, tschechische/slowakische und deutschsprachige Belletristik aus drei Jahrhunderten, die Bücher von Alfred Marnau und die von ihm herausgegebene Zeitschrift New Road. Typoskripte seiner Romane, Dramen und Gedichtbände sind vor allem in Abschriften und Kopien der späteren Jahre vorhanden, denn Marnau, mit Deutsch, Ungarisch und Slowakisch aufgewachsen und als Übersetzer von John Webster oder Christopher Marlowe ein versierter Autor auch in der Sprache seiner späteren Lebensstation London, war ein strenger Kritiker seiner selbst wie auch seiner Verleger und überarbeitete seine Texte, selbst wenn sie schon gedruckt waren. Die Kommentare und Lektoratsvorschläge zu den bei Greno in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren erschienenen Neuausgaben von Der steinerne Gang oder Das Verlangen nach der Hölle etwa spiegeln dieses lebenslange work in progress und machen die Bücher auch zu reizvollen Ausstellungsstücken. Alfred Marnau war im britischen Exil, was man einen Netzwerker nennt, mit guten Kontakten zu britischen Autoren seiner Zeit wie Alex Comfort, Stephen Spender, Charles Wrey Gardiner, Herbert Reed oder Antonia White, außerdem war er mit Emigranten aus seiner Heimat, vor allem mit Oskar Kokoschka und mit Jesse Thoor, eng befreundet. 1948 betreute Marnau die erste Ausgabe der Sonette von Jesse Thoor und unterstützte später seine Witwe bei Rechtsstreitigkeiten mit Verlagen. Entsprechend umfang- und aufschlussreich sind die Dokumente zu diesen beiden Künstlern. Sie umfassen signierte und illustrierte Bücher (sie können über die Datenbank des Literaturhauses mit Herkunftsverweis aus der Sammlung Marnau ermittelt werden), Postkarten, Photos und Briefe von Oskar und Olda Kokoschka von Ende der 1940er Jahre an. Bei Thoor handelt es sich um Bücher, Druckbelege, Korrespondenz (etwa mit Prinzessin Helga zu Löwenstein über die Unterstützung Thoors durch die American Guild for German Cultural Freedom), Typoskripte der Sonette im selbstgestalteten Schuber, um Lebensdokumente wie Thoors Schreibmaschine und seine japanische Kopfstütze, von Thoor gefertigter Silberschmuck.

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Der Nachlass des Theaterautors, Filmemachers und BBCJournalisten Edmund Wolf (1910-1997) kam 2006 an die Exilbibliothek (N1.EB-36). Die 34 Boxen, derzeit vorgeordnet, umfassen persönliche Dokumente und Korrespondenz (u.a. mit Alfred Andersch), Videos, Tonbänder, Manuskripte und Text- und Drehbücher, Zeitungsausschnitte in deutscher und englischer Sprache. Aufschlussreich ist vor allem das Material aus Wolfs Korrespondentenjahren für Die Zeit (1958-1965) und Süddeutsche Zeitung (1970-1986) und die Arbeitsmaterialien seiner Fernsehdokumentationen wie LH615: Operation München oder Geheime Reichssache. Für Österreich ist der ehemalige Bühnenautor und Dramaturg des Volkstheaters Edmund Wolf erst wiederzuentdecken. Die Österreichische Exilbibliothek im Literaturhaus kann persönlich besucht und schriftlich oder telefonisch kontaktiert werden. Da sie eine Präsenzbibliothek ist, sind ihre Bücher, nicht zuletzt aus konservatorischen Gründen, nicht entlehnbar, hingegen gibt es die Möglichkeit, Kopien aus den Sammlungen zu bestellen. 11

Anmerkungen 1

Vgl. die website http://www.literaturhaus.at/lh/exil. Signaturen mit N1.EB- beziehen sich auf die Handschriftensammlung. Die Sammlungen der Exilbibliothek sind über die jeweiligen Datenbanken der Dokumentationsstelle website http://www.literaturhaus.at mit Standortverweis EB zu ermitteln. 2 Vgl. den Überblick bei Charmian Brinson and Marian Malet, ‚Austrian Exile Studies in Britain: Taking Stock‘, in Die Rezeption des Exils. Geschichte und Perspektiven der Exilforschung, hrsg. von Evelyn Adunka und Peter Roessler (Wien: Mandelbaum, 2003), S. 333-42. 3 Veranstaltungen aus Anlass von Neuerscheinungen siehe z. B. die Dokumentation ‚Zum Tee bei Hermynia zur Mühlen‘, 21.11.2002 unter: www.literaturtv.at, weiters die seit 1999 zweijährlich stattfindenden, von der Exilbibliothek bis 2005 mitorganisierten Erich Fried Tage: http://www.literaturhaus.at/autoren/F/Fried. 4 Österreicher im Exil 1934 bis 1945. Protokoll des Internationalen Symposiums zur Erforschung des österreichischen Exils von 1934 bis 1945, hrsg. von Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes und Dokumentationsstelle für neuere österreichische Literatur (Wien: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1977), darin Hilde Spiel S. xxii-xxxvii. 5 Herbert Steiner, ‚Die kulturelle Tätigkeit des Free Austrian Movement in Großbritannien‘, in Eine schwierige Heimkehr. Österreichische Literatur im Exil

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1938-1945, hrsg. von Johann Holzner, Sigurd Paul Scheichl und Wolfgang Wiesmüller (Innsbruck: Universität Innsbruck, 1991), S. 153-67. 6

Kleine Verbündete. Little Allies. Vertriebene österreichische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Austrian Children’s and Juvenile Literature in Exile, hrsg. von Ursula Seeber in Zusammenarbeit mit Alisa Douer und Edith Blaschitz (Wien: Picus, 1998). 7 Vgl. die Begleitbücher Anna Mahler. Ich bin in mir selbst zu Hause, hrsg. von Barbara Weidle und Ursula Seeber (Bonn: Weidle, 2004). wolf suschitzky photos, hrsg von/ed. by Michael Omasta, Brigitte Mayr und Ursula Seeber (Wien: SynemaPublikationen, 2006). 8 Für Informationen zu Adprint bin ich Anna Nyburg, Imperial College, London, sehr zu Dank verpflichtet. 9 Vgl. Klub Zwei, In Zusammenarbeit mit, hrsg. von/ed. by Secession (Wien: Secession, 2005). Klub Zwei, Phaidon. Verlage im Exil. Phaidon. Presses in Exile (A/ GB 2006). 10 Zuerst: Counting my Steps (1969), Numbers (1972) und Crossing (1991), letzteres in der deutschen Erstübersetzung von Jakov Lind mit Jacqueline Csuss. 11 Kontakt; Österreichische Exilbibliothek im Literaturhaus, Seidengasse 13, A-1070 Wien, Tel. +43 1 526 20 44/20, FAX +43 1 526 20 44/30, e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], http://www.literaturhaus.at/lh/exil.

The Wiener Library: A Repository of Schicksale Howard Falksohn This article emphasises the historical importance of the Wiener Library’s collections of the deposited papers of German-speaking Jewish refugees covering the first half of the twentieth century, especially the Nazi era and the Holocaust. It shows how the uniqueness of each collection is greatly valued, not only for the additional light it sheds on this dark period but also as residual evidence of a decimated culture. The close proximity in time of the events described and the often harrowing nature of the material content allow for the possibility for special relationships to be developed between the archivist and the depositor, who is often intimately connected to the people whose destinies are contained in the papers.

I have used the German word Schicksale to characterise the Wiener Library’s collections of papers deposited by refugees because it best encapsulates the idea of life stories governed by forces beyond the control of the individuals involved. These Schicksale document the fate of individuals, families and communities many of which ceased to exist as a result of the Holocaust. They record the fate of Europe’s Jews, predominantly those from the assimilated, middle-class and liberal tradition of Germany, Austria and Central Europe from the beginning of the twentieth century up to and including the Nazi era. In areas as far apart as Courland in Latvia, Bohemia and Moravia and Bukovina in Ukraine, German was the Lingua Franca among Jewish communities, many of which are now only a distant memory. Due to their comparatively high standard of education, letter writing came easily, and consequently a rich and varied correspondence has survived amongst those who managed to escape Nazi-occupied Europe to find safe haven in this country. Paradoxically, we may learn a lot more about the way they thought and felt than people will of us sixty years from now – the advent of email, text-messaging and telephony has massively increased our ability to communicate with each other, but no record of that communication is likely to be preserved for posterity. This paper will show how the Wiener Library has managed these collections over the years, what value their continued preservation has to the various stake-holders, and how the library reconciles the needs of researchers with the integrity of the material itself.

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The Wiener Library is one of the largest contributors to the BARGE database (Online Database of British Archival Resources relating to German-Jewish Refugees 1933-1950) in terms of the number of Collection Descriptions included – 217 to date, I believe. 1 This is not exhaustive, since the uncatalogued collections have not yet been searched. These could amount to many more. In fact, in recent years the volume of newly accessioned material has increased considerably. The library averages between fifty and sixty new collections each year, many of which would fall within the remit of the BARGE project. Whilst the Wiener Library has been collecting material documenting the fate of Jews before and during the Nazi era since the beginning of that era, it is only in relatively recent times that we have acquired collections of personal papers of refugees in any great numbers. This is largely due to the fact that this generation has kept close guard of these family papers, being the last physical reminder of long-since departed loved ones. Only now have many reached the point where they want to find a secure and appropriate place of deposit for them. Some had no children to whom to hand them on. In other cases their children, the second generation, did not always appreciate the material’s significance. Conversely, other secondgeneration family members take a particular interest in their family papers and recognise the need to provide a permanent home for them. Although the Wiener Library is not the only place of deposit for this kind of material – Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, the Berlin Jewish Museum, to name the most important, have a similar remit – it is probably the most appropriate in Great Britain, particularly for those who became naturalised British citizens. However, the following case in point serves as a sobering reminder that in all likelihood not all collections have been saved for posterity – although, by definition, it is impossible to know how many have perished. Several years ago a colleague was approached by a neighbour of hers, who, thinking she might be interested, alerted her to the existence of some boxes in a skip in the street around the corner from where they lived. On closer examination, there were nineteen boxes of original letters, photographs and other papers of a former GermanJewish immigrant, Ernst Levy, who had escaped Nazi Germany – all meticulously preserved in pristine condition. 2 The collection includes many photographs, some dating back to the nineteenth century, when

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members of an earlier generation had come to Bradford to set up business in the clothing trade, only to return to Germany before World War One. In addition there is a whole box of letters from friends and family sent to Ernst Levy while he served with an artillery battery in World War One. Other material concerns the fate of family members who perished in concentration camps during World War Two. One can imagine the delight felt by library staff on hearing of the rescue of this valuable collection. However, this was tempered by their concern at just how easily it had ended up in the skip. So the Wiener Library’s first priority is to ensure that material is safely brought in-house and accessioned. A certain amount of outreach work is conducted to advertise the library as a place of deposit. Individuals are contacted where it is thought that they have material that they might want to deposit with us. Talks are given to groups at the various branches of the Association of Jewish Refugees not just in London but throughout the UK. Other organisations such as the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre and the University of the Third Age have been invited to the library and given guided tours. In addition, advertisements are regularly placed in the AJR Journal and in the Library’s own newsletter. Whilst targeting the right people, these only have a relatively small circulation. The real challenge is to make ourselves known as a place of deposit to the second and third generations who may well have inherited family papers and are at a loss as to what to do with them. Notwithstanding the above, the library is still receiving collections on a regular basis, as mentioned earlier, and the process of accessioning material is taking up ever more time. Because of the very personal and often traumatic nature of the material content and the proximity in time to our own period, this process is frequently much more than a mere paper exercise. For one thing, if the depositor is of the first generation, i.e. one of the actors in the dramatic events, he or she is usually able to describe the family history in some detail. It is not unusual to spend several hours with a depositor, and after that further correspondence might ensue. It is vital to ensure that as much information about the collection is captured at the point of accession. There is no substitute for talking in person to one of the correspondents in a collection of family letters. The exchange of information can be a two-way process. Some first-generation depositors simply have not been able to face up to the horror of what happened to family members, and it is only in their twilight years that they at last want to know. There are a number of

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resources in the library that can assist in finding out about the fate of family members who perished in the Holocaust. Even sixty years after the event this can prove to be very painful and distressing to hear. More than a tear has been shed at some of these meetings. However, they can also provide closure. An Austrian Jewish lady who deposited her family papers with the library knew that her parents and young brother had perished in the Kovno Ghetto, but did not know whether they had remained together until the end. We were able to establish with some degree of certainty that they had in fact died as a family. This fact provided some consolation to her. The very act of gathering papers together in preparation for deposit can also be cathartic. On another occasion I visited an 85-yearold retired Jewish businessman and former refugee in Manchester. He had two suitcases full of personal papers, mostly documenting family life in pre-war Germany. Having spent the day with him and his niece going through the papers, I returned to the office, while he decided what he should give to us and what was to be retained in the family. It was arranged that his son would organise a van to bring the material to London. When I rang a week later to check on progress, I discovered that the old man had died in the meantime. It was almost as if he had had to tie up this one last detail in his life. Likewise, much time can be spent with second-generation depositors. Here the language can present problems. Not only is the material written in a language which they do not understand, it is also written in a script that appears indecipherable. Clearly, we are not able to provide a fully-fledged translation service. Even if we had the necessary resources, it would be well over and above what could be reasonably expected of a typical archive repository. That said, resources permitting, we do provide summaries in English of the contents of small collections. These summaries do not just benefit the depositors, but are of great value in providing a catalogue introduction. Readers also find them very useful. A couple of retired former refugees well capable of reading the old Gothic script do this work for us on a voluntary basis. In return, we ask depositors to make a donation to the library for this service. Once material has been accessioned, it may be some years before it is processed and made accessible to readers (as is the case with numerous archive repositories). This is due entirely to constraints on resources. The material is then sorted, arranged, numbered (if necessary), placed in acid-free folders and boxes, and then catalogued according to the international standard of archival description. The

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catalogue is then uploaded onto a database that can be searched online. At present there are some nine hundred document collection descriptions, many of which comprise papers from former refugees. With the document collection descriptions complete, readers can order collections or parts thereof for study in the reading room. In addition, the Wiener Library document collections have a presence comprising twenty catalogues on the A2A database, which is a central portal for catalogues to archives held in some four hundred UK repositories. We are also hoping to upload collection-level descriptions to most of our catalogued document collections onto AIM25, thereby significantly increasing access to the material. 3 With regard to copyright restrictions, the principle of ‘fair use’ applies, which allows for individual copies to be made for private research purposes. An agreement between the reader and the library to that effect is made. For any additional use, for example publication, application for permission must be made to the copyright holder or the owner of the originals. The library does all it can to make material available to researchers. Indeed, we would not agree to accept material if the depositor were to apply a blanket ban on access. On the other hand, it has been decided in certain instances to place an embargo on parts of collections where the potential harm caused to individuals mentioned is deemed to outweigh the academic interest of the content. Similarly, access may be denied to the originals where frequent handling is likely to damage the documents. In these cases surrogates, either in digital, paper or film format, have been created. I have already referred to the obvious sentimental value of the material to depositors and have indicated how we take special care to take account of their needs. I have also shown how eager we are to make collections accessible to bona fide researchers, but also how their needs are subordinate both to the physical preservation of the material and to any confidentiality issues which may arise. It now remains to provide a flavour of the intrinsic value of the collections. A common self-deprecating refrain from depositors goes something like this: ‘You couldn’t possibly be interested in my family’s story – you must have seen hundreds like this already.’ To which I reply, ‘Yes, but each story is unique and as such is valued as an additional narrative which can enrich our understanding of this particular historical period’. Nor can the interests of researchers always be second-guessed. What might present as a typical saga of a Jewish family in Berlin during the 1930s, for example, may be the

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only one from that particular suburb. The singularity of each collection of papers is of inestimable value. While the Jewish populations in certain parts of Europe covered by our collections are again approaching pre-war levels, mainly on account of the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union – not that this can ever replace those pre-war communities that were eradicated – there are other, once thriving Jewish communities of which barely a trace remains. I will conclude this paper by presenting some material taken from the document collection of a German-speaking Jewish family that lived in what is now Chernivtsi in South-western Ukraine, known as Czernowitz under Austrian rule and Cernauti under Romanian rule.4 These papers are the only extant remains of a once successful Jewish family who were forced to leave their home in Bukovina, managing to escape to Palestine via Istanbul as late as 1941, thereby avoiding extermination, the fate suffered by most of the Jews of Bukovina. Under Austrian rule, and particularly after the revolutions that swept across Europe in 1848, Czernowitz’s Jewish population flourished. By 1910 it was the largest of five principal ethnic minorities in a cosmopolitan city which thrived on harmonious coexistence and was said to be united not by German nationality but by German culture. Jews had moved out of the ghettoes and a burgeoning Jewish middle class was represented in most professions and trades, having a monopoly on certain businesses. In 1861 Bukovina had become an autonomous duchy with its own council.5 Even Jews could become elected members, as was the case with Max Fokschaner, the grandfather of the depositor, a respected member of the Jewish community and a practising lawyer. He worked tirelessly for the political, economic and social well being of Jews not just in Czernowitz, but in all Bukovina.6 Document 1 is an authenticated German translation of Max Fokschaner’s Wahlzertifikat which entitles him, as an elected member, to enter the Bukovina parliament, dated 1911. Document 2 is a decree announcing the appointment of Max Fokschaner to represent Israel Kranzdorf as advocate in a legal aid case in Czernowitz, 1905. Document 3 is a permit to travel from Vienna to Czernovitz – note that the nationality is Austrian, 1917. Bukovina became part of Romania during the inter-war years. Romania had been one of the most backward of European states with regard to the emancipation of its Jewish population. A new

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Document 6

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constitution of March 1923 granted Jews and other minorities full citizenship and this was extended in 1924 to Jews born to parents from the newly acquired territories of Bukovina, Bessarabia and Transylvania.7 Document 4 is an authenticated German translation of a citizen’s certificate from the mayor’s office of Itzcani, Kingdom of Romania, confirming Romanian nationality of Dr Wolfgang Fokschaner, lawyer in Czernowitz and son of Max. Jewish education in Romania generally continued to flourish, although the language and curriculum varied according to the region, particularly in the newly acquired provinces. Whilst Russian tended to be the main language of tuition for Jews in Bessarabia and Hungarian for those in Transylvania, German was most commonly used in Bukovina.8 Document 5 is the school certificate, dated, 28.2.1921, of Otto Fokschaner in German and Romanian. Note also how many languages were taught: Latin, Greek, Romanian, German, Hebrew and French. The years of tolerance towards Romania’s Jewish population came to an end with the assumption of power by the radical antiSemitic right at the end of 1937. From this time onwards, the Jews of Romania were the object of ever more severe restrictive legislation, culminating ultimately in their destruction or dispersal.9 Max Fokschaner, lawyer and politician, died in 1925. By the time his son Otto and his family were finally forced to leave, laws had been enacted to prevent Jews from owning land and working in many professions and trades, and expelling them from the education system. Increasing Romanisation of Romanian society resulted in the stripping of citizenship rights from a quarter of the Jewish population – those born to parents from the newly acquired provinces. After the annexation of Bukovina by the Soviet Union in 1940, the Fokschaner family moved to Bucharest, where they remained until emigration a year later. Document 6 is an affidavit in lieu of a passport, in the name of Otto Fokschaner, the depositor’s father, authorising passage to Palestine via Turkey, Syria and Iraq, dated 10 Feb 1941. This one small collection can be said to represent, in microcosm, the fate of Bukovina’s middle-class Jewish population, from the years of relative affluence and political freedom in the prerevolutionary Austria-Hungary to the community’s destruction at the hands of Romania’s violently anti-Semitic Fascist party in the late

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1930s and early 1940s. As such it is essential documentary evidence of a lost era.

Notes 1

Online Database of British Archival Resources relating to German-speaking Refugees 1933-1950, at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/cgjs/barg/. 2 Now accessioned as WL NB341. 3 AIM25 is a project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) to provide a web-accessible database of descriptions of the archives and manuscript collections of higher education institutions within the M25 area. 4 Now accessioned as WL 2007/2. 5 Andrei Corbea-Hoisie, ‘Czernowitz. Bilder einer jüdischen Geschichte’, in Czernowitz: Jüdisches Städtebild, ed. Andrei Corbea-Hoisie (Frankfurt a. M.: Jüdischer Verlag, 1998), S. 7-28. 6 Letter from the depositor, 3.4.2007. 7 Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 183-89. 8 Ibid., p. 199. 9 Ibid., pp. 207-8.

Resources Relating to German-speaking Refugees in Ireland, 1933-1945 – Some Initial Thoughts and Results Gisela Holfter, Siobhan O’Connor and Birte Schulz This article concerns itself with the recently established area of Exile Studies in Ireland. It gives a brief overview of work done so far and introduces the main resources, both the international archives as well as archives and resources that apply only to the Irish situation. Especially when evaluating government policy, Irish based English language sources are required. A number of idiosyncratic problems in this area are mentioned. The final part outlines our work in the area of oral history and comments on some of the problems we encountered when collecting information from or about former refugees. 1 Some states have a great deal written about them, others little or nothing, except in so far as their own nationals delve into their history. These states remain largely forgotten by the world at large, or merely footnoted. While Ireland does not fall quite into this category, crucial aspects of Irish history and policy have been glossed over or simply ignored by Irish, British and other authorities. Indeed, Ireland is in some respects a forgotten state, if not a forgotten nation.2

Though Trevor C. Salmon’s introduction to his monograph Unneutral Ireland was written nearly twenty years ago, it is still surprisingly relevant today. One example is the research into the question of German-speaking refugees coming to Ireland between 1933-1945. Indeed, Ireland has not yet been a part of international exiles studies. Work was started only relatively recently. The “German-speaking exiles in Ireland 1933-1945 Project” under the auspices of the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick has been a first attempt to have a comprehensive look at the situation of Germanspeaking refugees who came to Ireland. In 2004 a conference was organised on the topic in Limerick, the results of which were published in 2006 in a volume entitled German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945. This is a first attempt to give an overview of the German-speaking exiles from Austria, Germany and the CSSR. The volume also includes individual portraits and personal reflections of former refugees and their families.

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Of course the number of refugees who came to or at least through Ireland during these years has been very small in an international context. At present we estimate around 300 Germanspeaking exiles were in Ireland at some stage between 1933-45. They were the first major influx of immigrants into the Irish Free State and they had a tremendous, though hardly acknowledged, influence on their host country. Given the unfortunate lapse in time before any systematic research began it is too late now for many of their stories ever to be told. One can only marvel why Ireland’s case has been neglected for so long. Apart from the painfully small numbers of refugees allowed in, it is certainly of significance that no well-known German-speaking writer chose Ireland as a destination of exile. Had there been, the story of research into the Irish exile would surely be quite different. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that Ireland was not a particularly attractive or well-known destination in the German-speaking world. If anything it was associated with being a poor country with a high unemployment rate. The economic situation in the 1930s was far from ideal. Emigration was the fate for 22,000 Irish people in 1936; a year later the number had climbed to 26,000 people. 3 As the Irish population was less than 3 million at the time the Irish position at the international refugee conference in Evian-lesBains in 1938 of not being able to accommodate any refugees had arguably at least some justification – albeit difficult to accept for us, having the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of the holocaust. In any case, some people were let in, either through luck, or through the quota given to the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees, or as valued specialists that were needed. 4 Of the latter category, the best known refugee was probably physicist Erwin Schrödinger who enjoyed a comparatively privileged life, having been head-hunted by Irish Taoiseach Eamon de Valera for his new pet project the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. In any case, this project hopes to be able to piece together a good overview of their background, the Irish policy towards refugees and how their lives turned out in Ireland. Given the focus of this volume our intention here is to concentrate on the question of how to approach this research area. In the following article we will therefore give an introduction of the work done so far and give an overview of the most important resources for our work in Austria, Germany, England, Northern Ireland and of course Ireland. All of the below mentioned archives and repositories have been examined by the authors. The first section

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concentrates mainly on the international archives, the second part focuses on more particular issues in relation to archives and resources to be found in Ireland and the concluding part examines the situation regarding oral history. We hope to give an idea which resources in the context of German-speaking refugees in Ireland are of specific concern – and where there are particular challenges. We also want to gratefully acknowledge the support given by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and also the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Limerick Research Office. The following archives are fairly well known; in the main they are the standard resources in exile research. But at least they might give a good – though not complete – overview of where to start. It seems appropriate to begin with the Exilbibliothek in Frankfurt, as indeed our research evolved from there with the papers of John Hennig and his father-in-law Felix Meyer. The initial project was to gather John Hennig’s numerous publications on Irish-German relations, now published in a volume of nearly 600 pages including a long introduction about his life. 5 John Hennig arrived in Ireland in October 1939 and went on to become the ‘father of Irish-German Studies’; his publications on Irish-German topics were scattered in over thirty journals. On completion of the John Hennig project the question remained “what about the other refugees?” – so a new, and somewhat larger project was born. Sources in Germany include the so-called “Wiedergutmachungs-” or “Entschädigungsanträge”, the reparations files, on which Dr Horst Dickel has done most work for our project. Also of importance are the Bundes- and Landesarchiv in Berlin as well as the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at the Technische Universität in Berlin. Furthermore, the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes in Berlin has at least some useful files that were not destroyed. The archive of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften is a good resource on individual exiles such as Prof Ernst Lewy who came to Ireland in 1937. The archive of the Humboldt Universität can also provide extra information on individual exiles as can the archives from the Catholic and Protestant churches. Other Landesarchive, such as the Brandenburgische Landeshauptarchiv in Potsdam hold interesting information. Several approaches to get information from Polish resources have so far not met with any response; however, Dr Horst Dickel was more successful with trips to the Czech Republic.

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In Vienna the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA) is – not surprisingly – the main source for new information on the refugees from Austria. Among the collections that are helpful in the case of some individual refugees are those at the Diözesan Bibliothek, the Dokumentenarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes in the Wipplinger Straße and the Stadt- und Landesarchiv which was of particular use in learning the addresses of some refugees. For the academic refugees, first and foremost Erwin Schrödinger, the first director of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, one should go to the Schrödinger Institut and especially the Zentralbibliothek für Physik of the Universität Wien which is of prime importance. The Exilbibliothek at the Literaturhaus Wien and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG) also proved to be very helpful even if they had not many references to Ireland. Even the Bundesministerium für auswärtige Angelegenheiten can provide some further information on special honours for former refugees who were involved in the Austrian-Irish Society. References to Austrian exiles can also be found in the publications of the Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft and the Ludwig Boltzman Instituts. In London there are the Quaker library, the Imperial War Museum and its archive which have already been investigated for this project, and the Public Record office which promises to be informative but still needs to be visited. The Leo Baeck Institute, the Wiener Library and of course the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies are always worth a visit even if their resources in our specific area are not extensive. For any exiles who came to Ireland through the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, founded in 1933 as the Academic Assistance Council, known as Society for the Protection of Science and Learning since 1936, which devotes energy to assisting émigré scholars with short-term grants and help finding employment, the files in the Bodleian Library in Oxford are of supreme interest. In Belfast the prime resource is to be found in PRONI, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. Then of course there are private collections, such as the one in Zurich with wonderful material on Prof Walter Heitler, the second director of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS). This collection even includes Heitler’s unpublished autobiography. A further number of private collections are held with the families of exiles in Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and, for all we know, other countries.

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Moving from the international resources we will now concentrate specifically on the Irish situation. Part of our project is an analysis of Irish government policy and Irish public opinion toward German-speaking refugees who came or attempted to come to Ireland between 1933 and 1945. The interesting thing with regard to an evaluation of Irish government policy is that the German-speaking refugees were,the first large movement of people into Ireland, once an Irish elected government was given the autonomy to create its own legislation. Up until the 1935 Aliens Act, movement of non-Irish into Ireland was controlled by various pieces of United Kingdom legislation. In their dealings with those fleeing National Socialism, the Irish government could determine its own laws of migration and later refuge. Not unlike the rest of Western Europe, Ireland’s policy development was in reaction to the continually more restrictive legislation that was being passed in Germany and affecting an ever widening territory and subsequently larger populations. As such, in line with the rest of Europe, the policy that developed was not refugee friendly. 6 For example, there was the re-introduction of visas for Austrians and Germans thus ensuring only those who could return to German territory were permitted to land on Irish soil. Irish public opinion was divided. There was a determined, active group of people who assisted would-be refugees. Because of the relatively small number of people who applied for refuge in Ireland a good number of their individual stories are accessible and also the attitudes of the Irish people to them. An ideal starting point to unravel these stories is the Irish government archives. Government Archives The National Archives The National Archives of Ireland is the first place for any research related to the government. It is here that all official correspondences and files are retained; hence it is here that a thorough examination of the government of the day, in this case de Valera’s, can be carried out. The main focus for this research was the Department of External Affairs. Each applicant for a visa was given an individual file in the 102 and 202 series. These files allow the researcher to see the applicant as a person rather than a number because their correspondence was sometimes retained on file. One can also get a

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real sense of the civil servants processing these applicants on quite a personal level because of internal memoranda. A number of conversations are carried out and meetings were recorded in note form on file covers. Much of the related correspondence between different departments was retained on file hence without necessarily having access to the files of the other departments, the researcher has access to their official correspondence. Unfortunately access to these files was not challenge free, nor was the material always available. In the early stages of research in this area a large number of files were missing. When they did become available another problem arose. Despite the aforementioned care in recording information, it was often the case that documents that should have been in files were missing. Already in the 1930s a senior civil servant decried the mismanagement of the files in a note to his assistant secretary when he said: A minute should go to the Department of Justice asking for the return (or a copy) of the communication from the British passport control office at Brussels forwarded with our minute of the 30th September to them. This file is unintelligible without a copy of that communication. Generally speaking, our files will be valueless as records unless care is taken in each case to ensure retention on the file of either copies or the originals of the documents necessary for their proper understanding. 7

There is much evidence of missing documents, although they are not recorded as extracted as is the practice of the National Archives. However, if one considers the work of Gerard O’Brien8 one can more clearly see why, and also how lucky researchers are that they are there at all. He describes decades of general indifference and neglect regarding the public archive: In early December 1972, some three and a half decades after the 1936 Committee of Inquiry [on Public Records] had concluded its business, and some seven years after the failure of its prototype, the first meeting of the InterDepartmental Committee on Archives took place. But for those who imagined that this was the beginning of the end of the archives problem it soon became clear that the coming together of the Committee was no more than the end of the beginning […] The National Archives Act became law in 1986 and the 1990’s had begun before the new National Archives premises were in readiness. 9

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Despite these shortcomings the National Archives has been a treasure trove of information which is invaluable to our project. The Military Archives As is the case in a few other archives in Ireland the Military Archives does not hold a public database, the researcher has to ask for a specific file of a specific person – whether a file is held on that individual can only be ascertained at the point of inquiry. The Military Archives have become quite popular and since no more than five researchers per day are admitted the waiting time for an appointment can be up to two months. Garda Museum10 Unfortunately most of the personal case files that the Department of Justice kept are not accessible. However, the Irish academic Dermot Keogh was permitted to view these files and his analysis is published in his book Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland.11 In order to ascertain an idea of the opinion of an arm of the Department of Justice, one can go to the Garda Museum to see what resources they have from this period that might be relevant. What was most interesting in this context was The Garda Review, the official magazine. A lot of further duties were given to the Gardaí to deal with aliens particularly as legislation got more restrictive. However, they did not use their magazine to express any opinion on this matter, although there was a letters page. To keep their members informed the magazine contained a series called The Monthly Round, which gave a synopsis of European political events but only in a very general way. For example, there is no mention of the Nuremburg laws and their consequences in the issues in late 1935. The National Library In order to ascertain public opinion it is useful to utilise publications on general release at the time. The above mentioned Garda Review had, obviously, a more niched audience than the daily newspapers. Copies of these are stored on microfilm in the National Library. Of special importance are national newspapers, The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Irish Press. For this project five key events were chosen and reports on them were analysed regarding style and angle along with any reactions elicited from the general public evident in the

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Letters pages. Regional newspapers were also quite interesting. Away from the major political events, newspaper coverage rose and waned depending on other national and international issues. On occasions the stories were poignant and personal. One such example is the coverage in a regional newspaper, the Limerick Leader, of the suicide of Elsa Hoefler who, having lived in Vienna for most of her life, came as a refugee to Limerick in South West Ireland. She died in October 1938. Her death renewed interest in context. The actual article reporting her death is included alongside international pieces covering Jewish persecution in Germany and Austria.12 Another more niched periodical but one that had quite a large distribution was The Catholic Bulletin. Catholic publications of one kind or another were common in the houses of most Irish families. This one was at times anti-Semitic, pro-Hitler, Anti-British, but also at other times anti-Nazi and sympathetic toward the Jewish victims of the Anschluss. Religious Archives It was particularly religious organisations that took on the role of offering assistance to those seeking refuge in Ireland. Their archives vary with the amount of material that was useful to this research. However, what they do hold gave fascinating insights into the ethos behind their philanthropic actions in the assistance of refugees. Representative Church Body Library The Church of Ireland kept detailed records of their ‘Irish Auxiliary to the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews’ (often simply referred to as ‘Jews Society’). These were very useful in ascertaining who assisted particular refugees and what became of them once they arrived in Ireland. An interesting example was the Pick children who were assisted financially by a sub-committee to be brought over and attend school.13 Such information fleshes out the departmental files held by the government. Within the records of the committee an indication of who served and worked on it and how it was funded also becomes clear. The Diocesan Archive The strongest established religion in Ireland at this time was the Catholic Church. Its archive, held in the Archbishop’s House in

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Dublin, does not have a clear catalogue in the vein of the Military Archive; hence one must know what is there and how to ask for it. The archivist is informed in advance of the search and he will gather together all the documents which he believes are relevant. This archive was useful with regard to the establishment of the Catholic committee but not much information was to be had about its work once established. What one can also get is a hint of the prevailing attitude within the church and what was of most concern to them. 14 The Saint Vincent de Paul This is another Catholic organisation. It publishes annual reports outlining its work for the previous year. This was done in this time period. Within these reports reference is made to their work with refugees; for example they note their financial responsibility for 25 refugees in Ardmore and Cappagh,15 although no personal details are given. The Religious Society of Friends The Quakers were one of the international organisations who worked out of Ireland. Their work in assisting refugees at this time is well known because of the writing of people such as Hubert Butler.16 Their archive has newspaper articles and documents relating to its work in Europe rather than to the individual work done in Ireland for people aiming to come there. In 1938, all these committees joined together to form the Irish Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees, and what is most frustrating is that, to date, the combined paperwork of this umbrella committee has not been found. This committee is very important because it was given the responsibility to process and vet applications before they were submitted to the Department of Justice who had the final say in whether refuge was to be granted. Time Witnesses What one can find from the religious organisations’ files was names of time witnesses. We have spoken to a number of individuals who were able to give some anecdotes from their memories of the time. These are particularly important as it allows this work to move away from statistics, number and dates and to see, even if only briefly, the human aspect of this research.

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University Archives Permission was granted by the Irish government to allow a set number of students to come to Ireland to complete their studies, so long as they were not to be maintained by the state. Also leading academics were granted work permits to come to Ireland to teach in these universities. Universities hold various collections of private papers that researchers can access. Trinity College, Dublin Trinity College, Dublin holds the Frank Gallagher papers, for example. Gallagher was a close friend of de Valera and worked for the government. His papers are interesting because he personally intervened to assist one refugee family to escape German territory and become established in America. Apart from the personal papers which are catalogued, the archive demands that one must put in a particular request and the archivist will gather together all pertinent documents held. There were some very interesting letters from potential professors and students in Germany as well as papers relating to internal campaigns encouraging the provost to assist people from the stricken territories. University College Dublin University College Dublin holds the papers of Taoiseach Eamon de Valera. These papers are very interesting with regard to the diplomatic aspects of his career but not really with regard to the particular topic of refugees. UCD also holds the Theo Dillon papers. Although he figured prominently in the Irish Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees (ICCR), no records relating to it are held amongst his documents. They relate to his later career in the university. The records relating to this research are spread out over a wide area and at times are difficult to access. There is plenty of material in need of analyses and recording to ensure that its presence is known and its contents utilised.

Oral history and life writing In addition to the sources listed above we are also using the individual memories of former refugees in our attempt to tell the story of the

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German-speaking exiles who came to Ireland between 1933 and 1945, the story of their escape from Nazi Germany and the administrative and psychological difficulties they had to overcome. Since the late 1940s oral history has become increasingly important as a critical addition to the more traditional sources of historical documentation. As oral history depends upon human memory and the spoken word, the issues of the usefulness and validity of oral evidence have been a central theme in the debates surrounding the subject. Studs Terkel, for example, points out that often there is a gap between what a person remembers and what actually happened: ‘Sometimes the fact may not be literally so and yet be a truth to that person.’17 As part of our project we look at questions of identity, in which the subjective truth of the individual memory is more significant than the factual accuracy of its content. Paul Thompson, author of the now standard work The Voice of the Past: Oral History also defends oral history and its use of memory as a historical source. He emphasises the political dimension of such research: The merit of oral history is not that it entails this or that political stance, but that it leads historians to an awareness that their activity is inevitably pursued within a social context and with political implications.18

Thus, even if it is not the primary aim of this study to effect social or political change, it is necessary to consider the implications of using life stories alongside other sources to recover neglected experiences of the past. Not only does memory in the form of oral testimony or written autobiography play a vital part as a record of the past, but also in the re-building of identity. The theoretical explorations of, amongst others, Jerome Bruner have proved useful in this context. He argues that ‘[w]e seem to have no other way of describing ‘lived time’ save in the form of a narrative.’19 This narrative, he argues, does not refer to real life, but represents an interpreted subjective version of events: ‘There is no such thing psychologically as ‘life itself.’ At the very least, it is a selective achievement of memory recall; beyond that, recounting one's life is an interpretive feat.’20 But not only does narrative imitate life – if in quite subjective a fashion – he also maintains that life imitates narrative. According to Bruner we learn narrative and discursive structures that become so habitual that they become a formula for structuring experience and memory. Thus, the way we relate to past, present and future events conforms to the grammar of

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our self-narrative. This approach not only provides a useful additional tool in the analysis of individual memories, but it is also a starting point for reflections on the connections between memory and history, and between individual and collective historical consciousness. Problems relating to the collecting of oral and written testimonies While older written records relating to German-speaking exiles in Ireland are scattered and sometimes difficult to access, the collecting of oral and written testimonies from exiles who are still alive today poses its own problems and difficulties. The most obvious problem is that a lot of time has passed since the exiles fled from Germany, Austria and the CSSR to Ireland, so that it is too late for many of them to tell their stories. Consequently, there are only a handful of willing and able participants. As there were only some 300 German-speaking exiles in the first place the number of people we have actually managed to interview or to whom we have sent questionnaires is correspondingly and unsurprisingly small – the ‘Oral History Project’ of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies in London produced 34 interviews from originally about 80,000 refugees.21 There are practical and ethical issues that sometimes make it impossible to establish a perfect interview situation or do an interview in person at all. Some, while perfectly willing to talk to us, do not wish to be taped or have their statements recorded in any way, so that their stories can serve as useful background information, but are not available for academic investigation. In some cases prolonged illness makes it difficult or impossible to complete a set of interviews. In a few cases it was not feasible to travel and meet the exile in person, so that a written questionnaire was sent to the exile and filled in by them either by hand or on the computer. This was also the case when a personal visit was not desired by the exile. Naturally, written questionnaires lack the flexibility and personal aspect of an interview, but as long as the circumstances under which the particular memories have been obtained are made transparent and are taken into account in the analysis, the research should add an important aspect to the project whose aim is to give an extensive account of the German-speaking exiles in Ireland 1933-1945. In addition to the interviews and questionnaires we have conducted or drawn up respectively, there are of course written accounts by some exiles of their escape from the Nazi regime and their experiences in exile.

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These include the various autobiographical writings by Hans Reiss,22 an ‘anecdotal biographical note’ by Peter Schwarz (unpublished) and George Clare’s book Last Waltz in Vienna,23 which was re-launched in April 2007. Additional sources are of course the individual portraits and personal reflections of former refugees and their families contained in the volume entitled German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945, such as Ruth Braunizer’s ‘Memories of Dublin – Excerpts from Erwin Schrödinger’s Diaries’,24 Eva Gross’s ‘Personal Reflections on a New Life in Northern Ireland’ 25 and Monica Schefold’s ‘Childhood Memories in Ireland from 19391956’.26 This volume, which is based on the aforementioned 2004 Limerick conference, is only the first step towards an archive of resources that should facilitate future research in the area. The “German-speaking exiles in Ireland 1933-1945 Project” under the auspices of the Centre for Irish-German Studies at the University of Limerick will continue its work so that in a few years we should be able to give a nearly complete overview of resources relating to German-speaking exiles in Ireland 1933-1945: the lives they had had in their home countries, the Irish policy and public attitude towards them and to what extent they managed to make a new home in Ireland.

Notes 1

We want to thank the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) for supporting this research project in various ways, especially for granting the initial funding for the project which has supported Siobhan O’Connor, the PhD scholarship that was awarded to Birte Schulz and the Research Fellowship 2006/07 that was awarded to Gisela Holfter. 2 Trevor C. Salmon, Unneutral Ireland. An Ambivalent and Unique Security Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 1. 3 Joseph Lee, Ireland 1912-1985 (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), p. 187. 4 A more detailed analysis regarding the number of refugees in Ireland, whether there was top down guidance to keep the numbers of refugees so low, or if not, why it is not relevant are answered in other publications by the authors: for example Gisela Holfter, ‘German-speaking Exiles 1933-1945 in Ireland – an Introduction and Overview’, and Siobhan O’Connor, ‘“The Obliviousness of the Fortunate” – Policy and Public Opinion towards Refugees 1933-1945’, both in German-speaking Exiles in Ireland, ed. by Gisela Holfter (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2006). The focus of this article is an evaluation of the archives that hold the material to answer these questions.

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Gisela Holfter, Hermann Rasche (eds.), Exil in Irland – John Hennigs Schriften zu deutsch-irischen Beziehungen (Trier: WVT, 2002). 6 Indeed one could argue that it was not refugee friendly as Ireland was still guided by former policies and - here as well as later under assumed neutrality – it was pro-allies in many ways. Despite the contemporary belief of Winston Churchill and David Gray to the contrary, for the duration of the war Ireland’s neutrality was very much in support of the allies. The positive relationship between the British and the Irish is evident from Sir John Maffey’s correspondence in the Dominion Office archive held at Kew. He was the British representative in Ireland at this time. There are many publications outlining the complicated yet affirmative relationship between Ireland and the belligerent states along with many studies of Ireland and The Emergency. For further reference see Trevor C. Salmon (endnote 2) and J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge: University Press, 1989); for more recent publications Brian Girvin, The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939-1945 (London: Pan Macmillan, 2006), Dermot Keogh & Mervyn O’Driscoll, (eds.) Ireland in World War Two: Neutrality and Survival (Cork: Mercier Press, 2004), Mervyn O’Driscoll Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and Diplomacy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), Eunan O’Halpin (ed.) MI5 and Ireland, 1939-1945: The Official History (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003). 7 202/526 Internal Minute from Joseph Walshe to John Belton (no date but after September 1939). 8 Gerard O'Brien, Irish Governments and the Guardianship of Historical Records, 1922-1972 (Dublin, 2004). pp. 68-70. 9 Ibid. pp. 69-70. 10 The Garda Síochana, better known as the Gardaí, have been the national police force in Ireland since 1922. 11 Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002) 12 Gisela Holfter (ed.), German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2006), p. 11. 13 RCB MS 318 1.9 Minutes of Meetings. 14 These findings, along with others related to the research can be found in Gisela Holfter (ed.) German-speaking Exiles in Ireland cited in fn 13. Further evaluation of the findings and research questions will be published by Siobhan O’Connor, Birte Schulz, Gisela Holfter and Horst Dickel over the coming months and years as their research comes to an end. 15 Society of St Vincent de Paul Ireland: Report of the Council of Ireland for the Year 1938, p. 13. 16 Hubert Butler, The Children of Drancy (Mullingar: Lilliput Press, 1988). 17 Studs Terkel, ‘It’s not the Song, It’s the Singing: Panel Discussion on Oral History’, in Envelopes of Sound: the Art of Oral History, ed. by Ronald J. Grele with Studs Terkel, Jan Vansina, Dennis Tedlock, Saul Benison and Alice Kessler Harris (New York/ Wesport/ Connecticut/ London: Praeger, 1991), pp. 50-105 (p. 57).

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Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 2nd ed. (Oxford/ NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. viii. 19 Jerome Bruner, ‘Life as Narrative’, Social Research, 54 (1987), 11-32, (p. 12). 20 Ibid, p. 13. 21 Marian Malet and Anthony Grenville, eds., Changing Countries: the Experience and Achievement of German-speaking Exiles from Hitler in Britain, from 1933 to Today, (London: Libris, 2002), p. viii. 22 Hans Reiss, ‘Sieben Jahre in Ireland 1939-46: Mein Weg in die Germanistik’, in Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 40 (1996), pp. 409-432 (further autobiographical accounts are to be found in Experiencing Tradition: Essays of Discovery. In Memory of Keith Spalding (1913–2002), ed. by Hinrich Siefken and Anthony Bushell, (York: Ebor Press, 2003) which was reprinted in the Oxford Magazine in May 2003; see also Hans Reiss, ‘Exil oder Akkulturation? Zur Kontinuität der britischen und irischen Germanistik in der Zeit des ‘Dritten Reiches’ und in der frühen Nachkriegszeit’, in Modernisierung oder Überfremdung? Zur Wirkung deutscher Exilanten in der Germanistik der Aufnahmeländer, ed. by Walter Schmitz (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 1994), pp. 55-70 (plus pp. 71-84 which include a response by Konrad Feilchenfeldt and the following discussion with Reiss). 23 George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna, (London: Pan, 2007). 24 Ruth Braunizer, ‘Memories of Dublin – Excerpts from Erwin Schrödinger’s Diaries’, in German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945 (German Monitor Series), ed. by Gisela Holfter (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 265-74. 25 Eva Gross, ‘Personal Reflections on a New Life in Northern Ireland’, in Germanspeaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945, pp. 275-88. 26 Monica Schefold, ‘Childhood Memories in Ireland from 1939-1956’, in Germanspeaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945, pp. 249-64.

Fifty Years of Exile Research in the USA: A Personal Overview John Spalek This paper gives an overview of the development of archival collections of materials in the USA that can be used for research into the refugees from the Nazis who fled to the USA after 1933. It describes the early history of these collections, going back to 1955, and gives details of various categories of archives that have been built up across the USA. As the author played a leading role in this field, his account also draws on his own career and his life’s work over several decades.

I was originally supposed to speak about the collections at the State University of New York at Albany and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, but I decided not to limit myself to these two institutions. I would rather mention a variety of institutions throughout the country, both private and public, which hold papers of the post1933 émigrés from Europe. First, I would like to say that my report is rather personal; my life over the last more than 40 years has been devoted, and still is, to exile research, and in the last few years specifically to the saving and collecting of materials that document an émigré’s life and work. Secondly, I would like to describe the process of acquisition of émigré papers, rather than detailing the contents of collections. It should be remembered that this process is only a few decades old. The Leo Baeck Institute was founded in 1955 and the collection in Albany twenty years later, to mention two examples. In many cases there were individuals devoted to the preservation of the legacy of this generation of émigrés. Some examples are: Harold von Hofe and Stanley Townsend with the Lion Feuchtwanger Collection at the University of Southern California; Alfred Brooks with the Max Reinhardt Collection at the University at Binghamton; Robert Rie and Marion Sonnenfeld with the Stefan Zweig Collection at the State University College of New York at Fredonia; Helmut Pfanner with the Oskar Maria Graf Papers at the University of New Hampshire; Howard Gotlieb with the Twentieth Century Literature Collection at Boston University; and myself with the German Emigré Collection at the University at Albany. One could say that the collecting in Germany is also characterized by several

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individuals: Walther Huder at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin; Werner Volke and others at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach; Werner Berthold and Brita Eckert at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt; and Gero Gandert at the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. How did I get started in the process of acquisition? As a Germanist I did not intend to collect materials, but rather to edit volumes with essays on émigré writers. The need for materials and documents for such articles led me in many instances to contact individuals, and this applied especially to those who were less known. These contacts in turn led eventually to the collecting of papers. I would like to begin by briefly sketching the reasons for my becoming interested in émigrés in the US I can think of three main reasons. The first was my interest in the life and work of Ernst Toller; I spent approximately five years assembling facts and materials related to his life. In reconstructing his life, I moved from the period before 1933 to his exile years, which ended with his suicide in New York in 1939. The second reason was the first appointment that I had at an academic institution, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, in 1960. My work there gave me the opportunity of getting to know many émigrés, especially Marta Feuchtwanger, George Froeschel, Walter Reisch, Henry Koster and many others who were involved in the film industry and lived in the Los Angeles area. The third reason was my correspondence with Walter Berendsohn and his urging that research about the émigrés in the US needed to be done. (I still have his correspondence, which was an effective impetus in that direction.) I could summarize that without my interest in Toller, the fact of being in Los Angeles and the correspondence with Walter Berendsohn, I probably would not have become involved in exile research. My next comments offer a summary of what happened to the materials of former German-speaking émigrés in the US. The collections can be divided into several categories. It can be said that there are two collections, differing in age and size, which are devoted essentially to the post-1933 émigrés. The Leo Baeck Institute is devoted to the preservation of the materials of German-Jewish history and its representatives, dating from 1790 to the post-war era, including a unique collection of around 1300 memoirs. Due to the fact of the Holocaust and the emigration, the extensive collections of the Leo Baeck Institute include many émigrés: Julius Bab, Kurt Grossmann, Ernst Kantorowicz, Hans Kohn, Toni Stolper, Herbert A. Strauss (a

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recent acquisition), Robert Weltsch, the records of the American Joint Distribution Committee and many others. The German and Jewish Intellectual Emigré Collection at the State University of New York at Albany, much younger and more limited than that of the Leo Baeck Institute, is devoted specifically to the collection of materials by and about émigrés. While the LBI began its work in 1955, Albany began its work in the 1970s. Both institutions are actively continuing to collect materials today. The beginning of the collection in Albany was not planned or begun in any systematic way. It began with the acquisition of the papers of Fritz von Unruh and the records of the publisher Alexander Gode von Aesch, for the purpose of using these materials as the basis for articles. This was followed by contacts to the New School for Social Research in New York City, which, as we discovered, was not as yet actively collecting the papers of its members and thereby acknowledging its significant place in the history of the intellectual emigration. By the way, many of the members of the original group that represented the founding of this social science university were still alive in the 1970s: Arnold Brecht, Hans Staudinger, Erich Hula, Hans Speier, Alfred Kähler and Hannah Arendt. The fact that the papers of many of the members of the New School were available and could be collected was also the reason that the administration of the University at Albany was willing to establish a collection for the émigrés. A decisive role was played by President Emmet Fields, himself a historian, who understood the importance of such a collection and authorized its establishment in 1976. The collections of Fritz von Unruh, Alexander Gode von Aesch, Erich Hula, Karl Otto Paetel, Arnold Brecht and the records of the Emergency Rescue Committee formed the basis of the original collection. In the course of the next several years, such collections as those of John H. E. Fried, Walter A. Friedlaender, Hans Staudinger, Else Staudinger and the records of the American Council for Emigrés in the Professions, Hans Speier, Erich von Kahler, Friedrich Tete H. Tetens and Paul Leser were added. The collection has been added to regularly over the years and now boasts 113 individual collections. The second category contains several well-established prestigious institutions that have been collecting materials for a long time, i.e. well before 1933. I mean by this several universities on the East Coast: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and also the Library of Congress. They have not collected the papers of former émigrés because they were émigrés, but rather because they played an

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important role in their fields or were associated with these universities. In terms of collecting papers of its own faculty, Harvard is probably the best example, having assembled the largest number of papers: Paul Tillich, Walter Gropius, Ruth Fischer, Joseph Schumpeter, Heinrich Brüning, Wilhelm Reich, Erik Erikson, Richard von Mises and the Harvard Essay Contest of 1940, which included exemplary autobiographical statements of over 200 former émigrés. Also important is Yale University, which has not consistently collected materials of its faculty members but has assembled a prominent number of collections, including such names as: Hermann Broch, Paul Hindemith, Ernst Cassirer, Hajo Holborn, Ernst Toller, Josef Albers and many others. Yale has also specialized in the business of book publishing: Kurt Wolff and Pantheon Books. The collection at Princeton is largely the result of the fact that the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies appointed numerous émigrés to its staff. In the first place, Albert Einstein and his assistant Valentin Bargmann, Kurt Gödel, Erwin Panofsky and Eugene Wigner; the collections of Albert O. Hirschmann and Richard Ettinghausen are also destined for the Princeton Archives. In addition, there is the Library of Congress with two main areas of papers as far as the émigrés are concerned: music is represented by Ernst Krenek, Hugo Leichtentritt, Ernst Kanitz, E. W. Korngold and Hans Heinsheimer. The second area is psychology, with the Sigmund Freud Archives, which includes the papers of Siegfried Bernfeld, Kurt Eissler, David Rapaport and Alfred Adler. The Library of Congress also houses the papers of John von Neumann, Hannah Arendt, Hans J. Morgenthau, Waldemar Gurian and William Niederland. The third category is made up of a number of institutions that have specialized in specific fields: the Hoover Institution at Stanford, specializing in politics and social sciences in general, has over 1000 collections, many of them consisting of papers of individuals from Eastern Europe. As far as German émigrés are concerned, the collection holds the papers of Carl Landauer, Gottfried Haberler, Eduard Teller, Karl Frank, George Hallgarten, Fritz Machlup and Eric Voegelin. The Academy of the Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles specializes in the collection of papers of members of the film industry: Fred Zinnemann, Joseph Than, William Wyler, Paul Henried and Edgar Ulmer, as well as the major script collections of

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Paramount and MGM and smaller collections of numerous members of the film industry. Boston University’s Twentieth Century Literature Collection, a creation of Howard Gotlieb, contains the papers of Curt Siodmak, Eugene Vale, Ruth Landshoff-York, Bella Fromm, Hans Habe, Martha Albrand and Rudolf Bing. The remaining specialized collections worth mentioning are those at Indiana University (music); the University of Wyoming (film); Duquesne University (phenomenology and philosophy); Swarthmore College (Peace Collection); the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the California Institute of Technology. A number of universities and institutions are worth mentioning for the number and importance of their collections of materials of former German-speaking émigrés. Among them are the two university collections in Los Angeles: the University of Southern California with the very large Lion Feuchtwanger and Felix Guggenheim Collections and smaller collections in the fields of film and music; and the University of California at Los Angeles with the important Franz Werfel Collection. The University of California at Berkeley has a number of collections of its former faculty members (Richard Goldschmidt, Rudolf Minkowski, Stefan Kuttner and Albert Ehrenzweig), as well as those of musicians Alfred Einstein and Kurt Herbert Adler. Among the many collections on the East Coast, special mention should be given to the collections at Columbia University (including Paul Oskar Kristeller, Otto Rank, Paul Lazarsfeld, the Pantheon Book Collection and the Oral History Archives); a variety of collections at the New York Public Library (with such diverse collections as Erich Fromm, Bruno Walter, Max Wertheimer and Lotte Goslar); and New York University with several collections of its former faculty members (H. W. Jansen and Walter J. Derenberg). Outside of New York City are collections at Cornell University (former faculty members Hans Bethe, Paul Ewald, Herbert Dieckmann and Georg Winter); the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia (Wolfgang Köhler, Erwin Chargaff, Max Bergmann and Curt Stern); the University of Pittsburgh (with the collections of Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach); and Syracuse University (Robert Breuer, Miklos Rosza, Franz Waxman, Henry Koerner and the important Dorothy Thompson Collection). In the Midwest, the collections of the University of Chicago include James Franck, Leo Strauss, Emil Gumbel and Max Rheinstein.

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Scattered at various institutions across the US are important individual collections, such as Max Reinhardt at the University at Binghamton, New York, Stefan Zweig at the State University College of New York at Fredonia, Erwin Piscator at Southern Illinois University, and Ludwig von Mises at Hillsdale College in Michigan. As can be seen from these comments so far, the materials of the émigrés are distributed across the entire country, mainly in academic institutions where émigrés were members of the faculty, most of them being located on the East Coast and to some extent on the West Coast. The papers were also given to institutions that had on their faculty individuals actively interested in acquiring and preserving such materials. The collecting of émigré papers is still an ongoing process. While numerous papers have been placed with institutions, a large number of collections are still in private hands with the families of émigrés throughout the country. As a result, the United States remains the country where much of the research on the 1933-1945 emigration can be done. One crucial element I did not discuss so far was the question of funding the survey of materials that led to the publication of the three volumes of the Guide to Archival Materials. The initial impetus and funding was by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, followed by additional grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other sources. The initial step was taken in 1971 at my meeting with Hans Albert Walter and Werner Röder, members of the advisory committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, on the occasion of the second international conference on exile in Copenhagen. Completion of the survey of exile materials was originally planned for two years, but was continued for over fifteen years, with about five years devoted to work on each of the three volumes. Neither the representatives of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft nor myself began this project with a substantial amount of knowledge or preparation. There were at that time very few sources that we could consult: Laura Fermi, The Illustrious Immigrants (1968); Desider Stern, Werke jüdischer Autoren deutscher Sprache (1967); Wilhelm Sternfeld and Eva Tiedemann, Deutsche Exil-Literatur, 1933-1945 (1962, 1970); Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960 (1969, containing a list of 300 important émigré social scientists). The survey of materials began with the survey of libraries and continued with the survey of papers held privately. During the first

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year, the main part of the work was sending out letters to US libraries and archives, accompanied by hundreds of telephone calls. In the second year, we started visiting individuals who still had their papers and materials at home. The work continued for nearly five years and resulted in the first volume of about 300 archival reports, published in 1978 by the University of Virginia. This publication was taken over and continued by the K. G. Saur Verlag of Munich. After the publication of Volume I in 1978, a discussion began with the DFG about the continuation of the project. On the part of the DFG, there was some dissatisfaction that Volume I contained a disproportionate number of individuals in the areas of literature and film, with some natural scientists, but too few representatives of the ‘Wissenschaftsemigration’ of the social scientists and humanities. The second volume of the Guide to Archival Materials shows that we tried to respond to this criticism by concentrating more on the social and political sciences. In doing so, we are indebted to the help of several prominent scholars, such as Gottfried Haberler, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Wolfram Eberhard, Hans Staudinger and Will Schaber. The third volume of the Guide, which completed the survey of materials, was published in 1997. In conclusion, it can be said that without the support of the DFG, the survey of archival materials could never have been started and continued over the years. Without the information gathered in the course of the survey, the collection and acquisition of materials of the émigrés would not have been possible. Although it has been over fifty years since the beginnings of the collecting and preserving of Germanspeaking émigré materials, the work on the whole is far from finished. This applies particularly to the representatives of the medical profession, a profession that percentage-wise lost the largest number of individuals to emigration. The papers of a number of the most famous medical émigrés, such as those recognized by the Nobel Prize, have been preserved; however, by and large, papers of many prominent medical professionals have not yet been placed in archives. In terms of future research on the emigration, one should add, the importance of the Internet to archival research cannot be exaggerated. Since archives are now able to make their collections accessible to researchers almost anywhere via the Internet, there is growing evidence that research on archival materials has received a new impetus.

The Online Database of British Archival Resources Relating to German-speaking Refugees (BARGE) in Context Andrea Hammel This article seeks to explain the conception and compilation of the BARGE database in the context of interdisciplinary research in Britain and beyond. It examines the benefits and challenges of the project and investigates the interrelationship between archival collections, online resources and metadatabases and their future development and use.

Funded by the AHRC Resource Enhancement Scheme, the compilation of an Online Database of British Archival Resources relating to German-speaking Refugees, 1933-1950 (BARGE) started on 1 March 2004. The database aimed to record the variety of archival resources relating to German-speaking refugees who arrived in Britain between 1933 and 1950 and whose papers are located in public and private British collections.1 As the rich holdings of institutional archives and personal collections are widely scattered through the British Isles, and there was as yet no research tool that could be consulted, a great deal of research was being replicated by individual scholars and the younger generation of researchers had to rely on more experienced scholars to point them to the location of relevant archival collections. The project team aimed to include resources in any language and almost any format so that the database would reflect the cross-cultural influences of the refugees and the cross-fertilizations between continental and British culture. 2 The database was to record the names of individuals and the location of their papers along with brief biographical descriptions and make this information available via the Internet and thus accessible from all over the world. Here we will first show the scope and necessity for such a project, then outline some of the project history and finally use individual examples of the interrelationship between this chapter of refugee history and wider historical research. 3 At the outbreak of the war in September 1939, around 78,000 refugees, not including children who came with their parents, are said to have been resident in the United Kingdom. 4 As 10,000 had come to

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the UK and then left again, the final number of German, Austrian and Czech refugees who managed to escape by coming to the UK must be set at over 80,000. This figure makes the United Kingdom a country with one of the largest numbers of refugees admitted in proportion to its population. This has led to the myth of exemplary British hospitality, which in turn has been challenged by historians who point to the restrictive and inhumane aspects of British immigration policy.5 Louise London in Whitehall and the Jews has given this discussion detailed consideration, 6 attempting to move beyond its narrow focus and to integrate her findings about immigration policy and Jewish refugees into the wider context of British historiography. In her view both issues ‘are central to British history’.7 It is remarkable that there was still a need to make this statement at the turn of the twenty-first century, but we have to remember that the interest of the British public as well as that of a wider range of academics in the area is a relatively recent phenomenon. According to Anne Karpf, in her book The War After, ‘January 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was the occasion for an eruption of British […] media interest in the Holocaust.’8 The year 2001 was the first year when 27 January was marked as Holocaust Memorial Day. Although this focus of a memorial day on a specific historical event is by no means uncontroversial, it is symptomatic of an awakening of the British public and British officialdom to a period in European history which had hitherto mainly been looked at from the perspective of the British role in achieving victory in the war. Interest in those who fled National Socialist oppression has accompanied this new perspective. In the British media the focus has been on those who have made an obvious contribution to British public life such as the publisher George Weidenfeld, who has also written an autobiography, 9 or the judge Sir Michael Kerr.10 As an academic discipline the study of the history and culture of refugees from National Socialism has developed in Britain only since the early 1990s, much later than in Germany or the US. This delayed start of systematic research in the field compared with the US is perhaps surprising, given the numerical strength of the refugees as well as the fact that a number of refugees became prominent academics; however, it has often been explained by the different attitude towards immigrants in the two countries: scholars in the US embraced immigration as an integral part of its history, whereas interpretations of the history of the British nation were based on its

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homogeneity and isolation until well into the twentieth century. This, of course, has changed over the last fifty years and the connections between different groups of refugees are an important area for investigation. Initially the BARGE project had to deal with matters of definition. Were the individuals who had fled Central Europe under National Socialist domination to be referred to as exiles, immigrants, emigrants, refugees or exiles and what was the academic discipline called? Some speak of German-speaking exiles and the area of research is commonly known as Exile Studies following the German term ‘Exilforschung’, whilst others are critical of the term ‘exile’, for several reasons. Firstly, some argue that it implies the intention to return to the country of origin, which was only desired by a minority of those who fled to the UK. Secondly, it has been argued that the term ‘exile’ has elitist connotations, and that exiles are distinctly different from common refugees. For the purpose of the BARGE project it was decided that the term ‘refugee’ should be used, as individuals’ forced migration was the common denominator between them. The project also explicitly aims to show that the dichotomy between elitist exile and common refugee is not sustainable as even well-known refugees shared many problems with so-called ordinary refugees. The BARGE database tries to redress the imbalance created by excessive focus on the famous and successful by including material by less well-known refugees who have largely been ignored within the British cultural sphere. Internationally, Exile Studies as a discipline has been at a crossroads for a decade. Especially in Germany and Austria, academics have been taking stock during the last ten years: in 1996 the International Exile Studies Yearbook series published its fourteenth volume entitled Rückblicke und Perspektiven.11 In this volume Bernhard Spies outlines the fate of Exile Studies in connection with political and cultural changes in German Studies and in Germany. Focusing on the study of German literature, he points out that until the 1970s academic research into the works of exiles was received at best with indifference and at worst with intense suspicion. In the 1970s the political climate in Germany changed and a short period of intense interest and public awareness followed, fuelled by a desire to find and explore proponents of a different, ‘better’ Germany.12 The political changes in Germany since 1989 have had a marked influence, and the debate surrounding the so-called ‘normalisation’ of German society gave rise to a different focus within

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German academia. Now the experiences and texts of non-Jewish Germans during the time period of National Socialism became important again, which created problems as it seems to be difficult for the public debate to grasp the full complexity of the issue. Even if a number of non-Jewish Germans suffered greatly during the Second World War, it needs to remain clear that many non-Jewish Germans committed unspeakable crimes, thus the focus should not be shifted from one area of investigation to the other, but both areas need to be examined throroughly, individually and in their difficult interrelationship. The German Gesellschaft für Exilforschung repeatedly raises questions regarding the future of the discipline at its annual conferences, the main options being: (a) to retain the relatively narrow focus on the National Socialist enforced emigration researched within conventional biographical, socio-historical or literary-historical boundaries; (b) to broaden our research in the more general direction of refugee and migration studies; or (c) to shift the conceptual boundaries of the discipline towards a discussion of exile in connection with postmodern notions such as marginalisation, delocalisation, transit-culture and hybridity. The latter path towards a redefinition of ‘exile’ seems to be more prevalent in North American academia. The US academic Alexander Stephan argues that we should ‘open the gate a little onto the landscape where scholars from different fields [...] can apply concepts like diaspora, otherness, delocalization, estrangement, border-crossing or displacement productively to the analysis of the experience of refugees from Hitler’s Germany.’13 The case of Exile Studies within the British academic world is a very special one: I would claim that the study of those who were exiled from Central Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and made their home in Britain has only been systematically developed since 1990, when the Aberdeen Exile Symposium was organised by J. M. Ritchie and Donal McLaughlin, and the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies had been founded in 1988 in Aberdeen. 14 This is all the more surprising since a number of academics in the field of German Studies were former refugees themselves. On closer inspection there are possible explanations: in the same way as former refugees in other professional groups, these Germanists living in Britain defined themselves through their academic achievements and professional status.15 As we can see there are many as yet unresolved issues relating to this subject area, another indication that the research will need to be

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expanded rather than wound up. The tensions between the proponents of the different directions should be seen as productive rather than a sign of an exhausted research area. In a field that is by virtue of its subject necessarily international there are also inevitable differences in the approaches between the various national academies. British Exile Studies researchers have sometimes accused their Central European counterparts of having a museum-like approach to the subject, and have felt that they themselves, still in regular contact with ‘former’ refugees and their organisations such as the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) or Club 43, had a more direct or real approach to eyewitnesses. These differences should not be underestimated, and should be seen as an opportunity rather than a cause for insurmountable tensions. It becomes clear that Exile Studies researchers in Britain also have to make an effort to integrate their field of study into other research areas such as twentieth-century British history or Englishlanguage literature. British academia has opened up in many directions over the years and it is our duty to nudge it further in a more inclusive direction. The funding of the BARGE by the government-funded Arts and Humanities Research Council is surely a public recognition of this need. It is imperative to make sure that the outcome of this project is recognised and used beyond the confines of Exile Studies. The BARGE database is a metadatabase, which consists of three linked parts: a Collection Description Section, a Biography Section and an Administrative Section. Apart from decisions about terminology, the scope and boundaries of the material to be included in the database had to be decided in the initial phase of the project: the decision to adopt the time span 1933-1950 was relatively straightforward as 1933-1945 was considered too narrow. It seemed desirable to include archival material on individuals who came to Britain soon after the end of the Second World War, especially those who had survived a concentration camp or had lived in a DP camp. A prominent example of this biographical pattern is the writer and academic H. G. Adler: between August 1941 and April 1945 he was incarcerated in five concentration camps, among them Theresienstadt (32 months) and Auschwitz. He was liberated in LangensteinZwieberge in 1945, and, after returning to Prague in June 1945, he migrated to London in 1947. Also included on the database are refugees who migrated to Britain after finding earlier refuge in other countries. The social worker Kurt Pick, for example, escaped to

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Belgium and then to France, where in 1939 where he worked in a children’s home and only came to Britain after his marriage in 1947. Material relating to his life story is kept at the Imperial War Museum. Interestingly, challenges to the chronological scope of the project came in the second phase of the project, during the early archival visits. Material was found on some immigrants, mainly Jewish, who had come to Britain before 1933, sometimes as students or academics, but also for a variety of other reasons, as employees of British businesses or to stay with relatives. Should these individuals be included in the database even though their initial migration was not forced? It was decided that, as they had been unable to return after a certain point during the 1930s without facing persecution, their circumstances became that of refugees and archival material relating to them was to be included in the database. For example, the Wiener Library holds letters from individuals in Germany to a Mrs Ben Courts in Britain covering the period between March 1938 and June 1946. Mrs Ben Courts, née Ella Mayer, migrated to Britain in 1932, initially staying with a relative who had lived in Britain for many years. She married Ben Courts when under threat of deportation to Germany because her visa was about to expire, and subsequently lived with him in London. As many refugees did not remain in Britain for long, the question arose whether there should be a minimum duration of their stay before they could be considered refugees. This idea was eventually rejected, as it was the fact that they came to Britain as refugees rather than the length of their stay that was the overriding issue. Next the linguistic scope of the project needed to be considered: the database was limited to material relating to Germanspeaking refugees, but it was clear that the actual material to be included could be in other languages, in recognition of the fact that many refugees lived and worked in multi-lingual environments. For example, over twenty collection descriptions include material in French. It transpired that it was more difficult to decide who was a German-speaking refugee in the first place and who was not, especially as sometimes little was known about individuals. Regarding both the chronological as well as the linguistic scope, the project team decided to be as inclusive as possible in order to avoid excluding less well known individuals and unusual migration stories. What had to remain indisputable was the initial decision to include only material relating to refugees, thus excluding a great deal

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of Holocaust-related material which does not relate to people who came as refugees. The other aspect that remained the central defining factor of the project is that all material recorded must be based in a public or private collection in Britain, and not elsewhere. The BARGE database’s emphasis is on recording the existence and location of material, and thus providing a research tool for future generations, rather than on recording biographies and migration stories. The latter information is often fascinating, however, and it has often been difficult to remind ourselves that the biographies are there to illuminate the collection information and not the other way round. The BARGE database has an interlinked three-part structure: firstly, there are the collection descriptions that are recorded to the Dublin Core Metadata Standard, which is an international standard to describe resources, thus making the database internationally compatible and the information easily retrievable. 16 It is important to note that we undertook to describe the material at collection level, not item level, the latter being far too time-consuming for a four-year project with the equivalent of less than two full-time staff. The collections descriptions contain a record of collections of varying sizes, the smallest relating to one letter, the largest to a collection containing several hundred archive boxes. All formats of material are included on the database, from the more obvious manuscripts, letters, diaries and video and audio recordings to the more obscure such as shopping lists. The latter may seem ridiculous at first, but it has been shown that such documents of everyday life can be extremely illuminating. One of the better known refugees who came to Britain before his migration to the United States was the Bauhaus designer Walter Gropius, who arrived in London in 1934 with his wife Ise, having been invited by the British design entrepreneur Jack Pritchard. Pritchard accommodated Walter and Ise Gropius in his newly finished modernist London apartment block at Lawn Road. From the aforementioned shopping lists it can be deduced that the Gropius couple were quite demanding tenants, requesting various improvements to the accommodation. On 17 October 1934 an order was dispatched to Messrs Selfridges & Co for ‘4 pillowcases, 4 bath towels, 4 face towels, 1 bath mat’17 to be followed by numerous subsequent orders to different shops and tradesmen for curtains, electrical light fittings, curtain rails, hangers for the bathroom wall, coat hangers and more. Gropius also asked for a telephone to be installed, on 18 October 1934 it was arranged for the partition to be

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polished, in November an electrical fire and a desk were ordered. Clearly Gropius was treated as a celebrity. Jack Pritchard writes in his autobiography about his plans for collaboration with Walter Gropius: ‘When we invited Gropius to England, I had also high hopes for two building schemes in Manchester and Birmingham.’18 Unfortunately, for various reasons, some to do with finance, some with planning permission, none of these projects came to fruition. In April 1935 a more humble Walter Gropius wrote to Jack Pritchard to thank him for his support and ask him for further assistance: ‘All the more I am ashamed not to be on my own legs after six months work, but since Manchester had to be cancelled my budget collapsed... I should have to ask you whether you would be prepared to grant a delay in paying rent... may I ask you to give me your reply very frankly.’19 This shows that interesting conclusions can be drawn from the less obviously important format of material and that it all deserves to be recorded on the BARGE database. 20 Thus the Pritchard-Gropius case illustrates the blurring of boundaries between the migrant who had emigrated for professional reasons and the penniless refugee, and also between economically motivated patronage and altruistic patronage as Pritchard remained supportive even when the presence of Gropius did not quite lead to the expected rewards. Secondly, there is the Biography section of the database. Individual entries include details to varying degrees of depth. The content of a few of the biographical entries is minimal, only stating the name of the individual. The project team felt that this was nevertheless a useful record, especially since an entry can be expanded at any time. The possibility of expanding or altering entries was the main reason why an online database was chosen for dissemination rather than a book publication. This issue had been discussed during the planning phase of the project and the advantages of an online database outweighed the disadvantages, which are mainly linked to the maintenance of the database after the end of the initial project. Biographical information published on the Online Database is, of course, subject to the British Data Protection Act. This means that any personal information concerning a living individual can only be published with the individual’s permission. In many cases we have managed to obtain permission from living individuals, in other cases the date of death is known. This has been a laborious and by no means fault-proof method, and it is our policy to amend or even delete any entry if we are contacted by the individual concerned.

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Another contentious issue was the use of keywords in the biographical description. Potentially this could be a useful feature for the researcher. However, it quickly became very difficult to decide on the list of keywords. In the end we decided to have a very short list of keywords as otherwise this feature would become unmanageable. 21 Of course a certain randomness was inevitable in our choice, especially since the list had to be decided upon before the start of our archive visits, to avoid our having to go back to collections already visited in order to examine the material again with reference to a changed list of keywords. It was also decided not to include terms in our list of keywords that were hard to define. Although it would undoubtedly be of interest to some researchers whether a refugee was an Orthodox Jew or a Communist, it would be impossible to keep a consistent record. If the category of interest is among the keywords, the database user will be able to look up all biographies which have the keyword listed and from this information be able to find collection descriptions connected to these biographies. The collection descriptions also have a subject field which can be searched. It has to be noted, though, that the BARGE database will never be useable for statistical purposes, even if the category examined is among the list of keywords. As only information connected to collections held in the UK is recorded, one cannot deduce from a search, for example, what percentage of refugees came on a Kindertransport or how many male and female refugees came to Britain. Researchers will, however, be able to locate collections on subjects such as the Kindertransport. The third section of the database relates to administrative information, which in this case means addresses and access information regarding the public archives where collections are held. We also retain the addresses where private collections are held, but these are not published online. Researchers wishing to examine these collections will need to contact the research team and contact will be established through the University of Sussex. As is inevitably the case, our research methodology changed over the course of the project planning and its eventual execution. At the planning stage it was anticipated that much of the necessary research could be conducted entirely via the internet. Online catalogues are available for a large number of archives and other online resources exist such as the Archives Hub, which lists holdings in university archives; AIM 25, a catalogue of archival holdings located within Greater London, i.e. the area encircled by the M25

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motorway; and A2A, listing mainly holdings at local records offices. After the start of the project, however this methodology had to be revised significantly, for a number of reasons. Many archives in Britain have a significant cataloguing backlog. In fact, we were told by staff in one major British archive that if the papers were received after 1970, they would not have been catalogued yet.22 Sometimes this meant that we could not include collections on the BARGE database at all, sometimes the archives were willing to let us include material on the database with the caveat of restricted access for potential users. This was the case, for example, with the David Daube Papers held in Special Collections at the University of Aberdeen. David Daube left for England in 1933 and worked for a doctorate on Roman Law in Cambridge, which he obtained in 1936. In 1938 he managed to arrange for his brother Benjamin and his own and his wife's parents to come to England. He taught Roman Law at Cambridge from 1938 to 1951. In 1951 he became Professor of Jurisprudence at Aberdeen, and Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford from 1955-1970. Resigning the Oxford Chair in 1970, he relocated to California, where he was Professor in Residence at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, until 1981. He died in California, in 1999, but his extensive papers were given to the University of Aberdeen, which is trying to obtain funding to catalogue the collection. We will include an entry on the BARGE database on the David Daube collection, but until the collection can be catalogued, we will have to point out in the Administrative Section of the database that access is restricted. It is, however, impossible to say how many collections we might have missed because the exact content, and thus the potential relationship with our research aim, was not known. Due to the lack of financial and staffing resources, we experienced some reluctance from a small number of archives to let us ‘advertise’ their collections and thus encourage increased user demand, although the vast majority of archives were happy to have their collections described on our database. Another surprising problem arose in our efforts to track down relevant material: when we sent enquiries to archives about their holdings relating to German-speaking refugees we sometimes received a negative answer. Upon further enquiry and the mentioning of names of individuals who we knew had lived in the area or worked at a certain university or were simply known to have a connection with a certain archive, it turned out that the archives held papers on

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individual former refugees after all. This happened in the case of papers relating to Arthur Koestler, whose fame as an English-language writer obviously overshadowed his Hungarian-born, German-speaking past. Similarly, the collections of the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham Park, Reading, can only be searched if the name of an individual former refugee is known; they have no facility for searching for the category ‘German-speaking refugee’. In one case, the archive denied us permission to include collection descriptions on our database because it did not wish its collection to be publicly associated with our focus on Germanspeaking refugees, 1933-1950. The Warburg Institute states on its website that it ‘stems from the personal library of the Hamburg scholar Aby Warburg (1866-1929) whose research centred on the intellectual and social context of Renaissance art. In 1921 this library became a research institute in cultural history, and both its historical scope and its activities as a centre for lectures and publications expanded. In 1933 it moved from Germany to London to escape the Nazi regime, and in 1944 it was incorporated in the University of London.’23 Many of its earlier directors were former refugees and its archive contains a number of collections relating to refugee scholars who worked at the Institute in the 1930s and 1940s, which would be highly relevant to our database. Today the Warburg Institute prefers to focus on the fact that it is a research institute for the study of the classical tradition within European culture and not on the biographies of many of its associates in the first half of the 20th century. Both the case of Arthur Koestler and the case of the Warburg Institute are symptomatic of the difficulties facing research relating to German-speaking refugees in the context of British academic life. In the case of some well-known individuals who were successful after their migration to Britain there is a tendency to ignore the fact that they had initially come as refugees. Here a more integrated research approach is necessary, as the relevance of their biographies to their later choices of career as well as issues of pan-European intellectual cross-fertilisation are a highly topical, but still under-researched area within British historiography. The reluctance of some individuals and archives to be associated with the research topic of German-speaking refugees is also extremely interesting. Is Refugee Studies considered too marginal a discipline and research on German-speaking refugees not a sufficiently rigorous intellectual endeavour? Is it connected with the fact that British society as well as successive British governments did not acknowledge the fact that Britain has an extensive history as a

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country of immigration? Very few studies – the most notable exception being Katherine Knox and Tony Kushner in Refugees in an Age of Genocide – attempt a broader approach and include Germanspeaking refugees fleeing National Socialism in the long history of refugees in Britain, in this case ranging from Jewish refugees fleeing Tsarist oppression at the beginning of the twentieth century to asylumseekers from all over the world coming to Britain at the end of the twentieth century.24 The BARGE has its role to play with this integrative as well as comparative process: by displaying the locations of holdings on German-speaking refugees on our database, we will not only show the number of collections present in UK archives – so far there are over 1400 collection descriptions and over 2000 biographies on the BARGE database – we will also show how they fit in with other collections and that they are part of a wide variety of archival holdings. These range from the Vice-Chancellor’s Archive at the University of Manchester to the Manx National Heritage Library on the Isle of Man. The BARGE database will facilitate the study of German-speaking refugees within the context both of their professional careers and of their everyday lives, thus contributing a significant new dimension to migration research in Britain.

Notes 1

To access the database online, please visit http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/cgjs/barge. The research team working on the BARGE are Samira Teuteberg, Andrea Hammel and Sharon Krummel. The Principal Investigators are Edward Timms and J. M. (Hamish) Ritchie. I would like to thank Samira Teuteberg and Sharon Krummel who assisted with writing this article. 3 For an earlier project report, see Andrea Hammel, ‘Online Database of British Archival Resources Relating to German-Speaking Refugees, 1933-1950 (BARGE). Ein Projektbericht’, in Kinder und Jugendliche im Exil. Exilforschung. Ein Internationales Jahrbuch. Band 24, ed. by Inge Hansen-Schaberg (Munich: edition text+kritik, 2006). 4 There is no precise data for these figures, the British government’s attitude to statistics being haphazard, to say the least. (They did not count women and children who came with their husband or family, for example.) The figures mentioned are a conservative estimate. 2

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See A. J. Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich, 1933-1939, (London: Elek, 1973) and Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). 6 Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948. British Immigration Policy and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 7 London, Whitehall and the Jews, p.15. 8 Anne Karpf, The War After: Living with the Holocaust (London: Heinemann, 1996), p.289. 9 George Weidenfeld, Remembering My Good Friends (London: HarperCollins, 1995). 10 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘Kerr, Sir Michael Robert Emanuel (1921-2002), judge’, by S. Creney, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view /article/76844?_fromAuth=1, viewed 22 August 2007. 11 Rückblicke und Perspektiven. Exilforschung. Ein Internationales Jahrbuch. Band 14, ed. by Claus-Dieter Krohn, Erwin Rotermund, Lutz Winckler, Wulf Koepke (Munich: edition text+kritik, 1996). 12 Bernhard Spies, ‘Exilliteratur – ein abgeschlossenes Kapitel? Überlegungen zu Stand und Perspektiven der literaturwissenschaftlichen Exilforschung’, in Rückblicke und Perspektiven, ed. by Krohn et al, p. 17. 13 Alexander Stephan, ‘Introduction’, in Exile and Otherness. New Approaches to the Experience of the Nazi Refugees. Exile Studies 11, ed. by Stephan (Berne et al: Peter Lang, 2005), p. 14. 14 The First International Symposium on German and Austrian Exiles took place from 24-26 September 1990 in Aberdeen. In 1995 the London Group for Exile Studies joined forces with the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies to form a national research centre based at the Institute for Germanic Studies, now Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London. See also Siglinde Bolbecher et al (eds), Zwischenwelt 4. Literatur und Kultur des Exils in Großbritannien (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1995), especially pp.7-8. 15 Rodney Livingstone, ‘The Contribution of German-speaking Jewish Refugees to German Studies in Britain’, in Second Chance: Two centuries of German-speaking Jews in the United Kingdom, ed. by Werner E. Mosse (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1991), pp. 137-52. 16 See http://www.dublincore.org/ for more detailed information. 17 Letter from Isokon Ltd to Messrs Selfridges & Co, 18 October 1934, PP/24/3/80, Archives Department, The University Library, The University of East Anglia, Norwich. 18 Jack Pritchard, Views from a Long Chair (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 103. 19 Letter from Walter Gropius to Jack Pritchard, PP/24/3/80, Archives Department, The University Library, The University of East Anglia, Norwich. 20 For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Andrea Hammel, ‘Jack Pritchard, refugees from Nazism and Isokon Design’, in Cultural transfer at the Time of the

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Third Reich. Patronage and Exile . Mittel- und Osteuropastudien, ed. by Andrew Chandler, Katarzyna Stoklosa, Jutta Vinzent, LIT Verlag. 21 The list of keywords used for the BARGE database is as follows: Institutions (e.g. Society for Protection of Science and Learning, well-known individuals involved with refugees in the UK such as Rabbi Schoenfeld and Nicholas Winton), British Army, Child Refugee, Concentration Camp, Conversion to Christianity, Further Migration, Humanities, Industry and Commerce, Internment, Jew, Kindertransport, Literature, Medicine, Music, Naturalization, Performing Arts, Political Refugee, Psychoanalysis, Science, Social Science, Visual Arts, War of Independence (Israel), Working Permit, Zionism. 22 For information on uncatalogued UK collections in the North West, see http://www.northwestarchives.org.uk/logjam.htm. 23 http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/institute/institute_introduction.htm, viewed 1/9/07. 24 Katherine Knox and Tony Kushner, Refugees in an Age of Genocide: Global, National and Local Perspectives (London: Frank Cass, 1999).

Exilpresse digital in Support of Researching Visual Material: Images in Die Zeitung Jutta Vinzent This article evaluates the usability of Exilpresse digital: Deutsche Exilzeitschriften 1933-1945, accessible online since 1999, particularly for the research of visual images, taking Die Zeitung, one of the German newspapers published by refugees in Britain from 1941 to 1945, as a case study. It compares the digital tool, a project of the Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945 at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt am Main, with traditional research methods, suggests improvements to the tool and explores ways in which it supports and opens viable research projects, particularly those dealing with images.

In August 1997 the Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945 (housed in the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt am Main) started a digitalization project which involved the scanning of 15 representative newspapers and periodicals, followed by another 15 out of c. 900 (together c. 120,000 pages) which are owned by the archive; 1 missing numbers were taken from other holdings, particularly those belonging to the Sammlung Exil-Literatur at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Leipzig.2 Amongst the first 15 newspapers to be digitized was Die Zeitung,3 a newspaper published in German in Great Britain. It appeared from 12 March 1941 to 1 June 1945, first as a daily and from January 1942 as a weekly paper. The editorial staff (including Wolfgang von Einsiedel, Sebastian Haffner, Peter de Mendelsohn, Julius Oskar Reichenheim and Hans Uhlig) 4 was first headed by Johannes Lothar (1900-1944), formerly a board member of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and after Lothar’s suicide on 10 January 1944, by Dietrich Mende (1899-1990), private secretary and press officer to the Prussian Minister of Finance at the end of the Weimar Republic. 5 As a German newspaper published in war-time Britain, the Ministry of Information subsidized Die Zeitung6 and exerted control over it, appointing Richard Gilbert Hare (1907-1966) as liaison officer, ‘who would maintain close contact between the editorial staff and the Divisions of the Ministry.’7 According to Renate Seib, who was in charge of the project, Die Zeitung was selected to represent the newspaper category. The

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other examples of the British exile press included in the first group of 15 to be digitized were periodicals and newsletters, namely Kunst und Wissen, Freie Deutsche Kultur and Pem’s Personal Bulletin.8 In addition, unlike Das Neue Tagebuch or Die neue Weltbühne, Die Zeitung has not been reproduced and thus fulfilled the requirement of the funding body to select periodicals without a reprint version of any kind. This was one of the two reasons for being included in the first phase of digitalization, the other being frequency of use.9 From 1999 titles have been made available online successively so that since 2003, 29 of these 30 titles are searchable without password and free of charge (Fig. 1).10 The digitalization was based on originals, photocopies and/or microfilms, digitized in TIF (with a resolution of 400 dpi) and accessible in GIF format to allow the pages to load more quickly.11

Figure 1 The digitalization of these periodicals has several advantages: 1.

Being accessible online allows scholars to consult the periodicals wherever they have internet access. The digitalization also means that a series as complete as possible can be accessed through one source. The latter is particularly advantageous, since it is characteristic of exile periodicals to be scattered over several places and difficult to trace.12

Exilpresse digital in Support of Researching Visual Material 2.

Much of the material digitized is in a fragile, poor condition due to being printed in exile, some under most difficult circumstances on low -quality paper and carried around until they found their air-conditioned home in the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek;13 the digitalization guarantees better preservation of the originals, particularly in view of earlier conservation policies, particularly those involving laminating and binding periodicals. 14

3.

Furthermore the scanned text can be searched page by page and presented in PDF format and four different percentages on screen (25%, 50%, 75% and 100%).

4.

The online version also provides bibliographic information to each digitized periodical. This has been based on Lieselotte Maas’ seminal Handbuch der deutschen Exilpresse published in three volumes from 1976 to 1981. 15

5.

Finally, a search engine allows searching for contributions by article titles (including subtitles or illustration captions), authors (together with illustrators and translators) and/or key words within the text either in all or in a selection of newspapers. According to Renate Seib, these metadata were neither taken from Maas nor have they been compared with her indices after being assembled.16 Instead these were manually indexed on the basis of the Dublin Core metadata standards. 17 Outsourced during the first phase of the project, the results had been so unsatisfactory (as regards pseudonyms, correction of spelling errors, etc.) that the recording was then undertaken in-house.18

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While the project as such has been described elsewhere, 19 results of the search engine have not been compared with the indices provided by Maas, although her handbook was used for the bibliographic information given in the online version. Thus this article will compare both tools and explore how Exilpresse digital, particularly its search engine, supports research of visual material. Examples from Die Zeitung and its four types of images (drawings, photographs, maps and advertisement) will assist in evaluating the three search functions: authors/illustrators, titles/captions of articles and key words. With the search for author, statistics of who published in which periodical can be easily assembled. An author index including pseudonyms, however, is also published in the third volume of Maas’

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handbook,20 although the latter search takes longer, does not give the title or page number and does not allow one to view the contribution immediately as is possible with the online version; a click on the search result brings the user to the publication in the newspaper. Here, the online version supports traditional research methods. The names of major illustrators contributing to Die Zeitung appear in the secondary literature only once, namely in an early draft to the article Wilhelm Sternfeld published in 1951,21 where he mentions Walter Trier (1890-1951), Robert Ziller (pseudonym of Richard Ziegler, 1891-1992) and (Joseph) Otto Flatter (1894-1988) as permanent contributors.22

Figure 2 Indeed, when searching for Flatter’s contributions23 the online result shows that the artist published in only one of the 29 newspapers, namely in Die Zeitung; altogether ten caricatures appeared between 5 January and 27 April 1945, signifying a short period as contributor to Die Zeitung. All ten caricatures have a biting political meaning, such

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as Lebensraum für das deutsche Volk published on 9 March 1945 (Fig. 2); divided into two related pictures, it condemns the threatening and killing of defenceless people by the Nazis and problematizes the changeover from brutal Nazi to Austrian peacemaker. As outlined elsewhere, 24 the attacker in the right picture may well be a worker from Graz who joined the resistance groups fighting around Steinach and in Bavaria as reported in Die Zeitung on 23 February 1945, a few weeks before the drawing appeared. The cartoon was published next to ‘Die Galgenfrist’, an article by J. A. Bondy, who discusses the treatment of war criminals after the end of the war. Flatter questions as to whether they should be treated similarly to the way they behaved towards Jews and others – by killing them: the worker holds a gun in front of the former Nazi officer as pictured in the left part of the cartoon. However, he hesitates; he is not quite sure whether this is the right way, particularly since the man opposite him appears in traditional clothes, offers him peace and thus seems to appear a different person. Maas’ index mentions all those results from the search engine, but also two further contributions by Flatter, which indeed can be found in the scanned version of Die Zeitung:25 Weihnachtsgrüße der NSDAP published on 22 December 1944 and Prosit Neujahr 1945 from 29 December 1945. It is not entirely clear why these were omitted, since Margareta Berger’s article published in the same issue as the former cartoon is indexed in the online version; it may be that they were neglected because both cartoons appear at the bottom of the page, which is also the case in respect of Heartfield’s two photomontages discussed below. In any case, these lapses mean that Maas’ author index is more reliable than the online author search in the case of Flatter; other search results were congruent, as for example that for an artist who is not mentioned by Sternfeld: the Berlin-born Erich A. Bischof (18991990) who published ten landscape drawings in Die Zeitung between 30 March 1942 and 30 March 1945. This also goes for the author search for Margareta Berger (1902-1958), also known as Margareta Berger-Hamerschlag, who contributed two essays with humorous illustrations on 22 December 1944 and 26 January 1945.26 One has to add, however, that when searched under their titles, both of Flatter’s drawings come up, but as anonymous contributions.27 This means that the illustrations were indexed without the name of the artist. Apart from Bischof and Berger, Maas also lists a number of other artists who, however, do not come up in the digital search under

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author, although their names are given under their work in Die Zeitung: amongst them are two photomontages by the prominent artist John Heartfield (1891-1968) (Figs. 3 and 4).28 Altogether eight of 18 names mentioned under ‘graphic’ contributions in Maas’ alphabetical list to Die Zeitung do not appear when searched by author in the online tool.29 ‘Graphic’ is defined by Maas as ‘photo-montages’ and ‘drawings’, including also maps, but excluding photographs and advertisement;30 in her periodical index, she indicates with a ‘(Z)’ a contribution which is a drawing and with ‘(+Z)’ any article containing graphic work.

Figure 3 Another problem is the spelling of names. Milein Cosman (born in 1921), who is known for her studies of musicians, published two works, one under ‘Cosmann’ and the other one under ‘Kosmann’. Maas gives both publications under ‘Cosmann’ and cross-references ‘Kosmann’ with ‘Cosmann’. The online search only produces each publication under the spelling as it appears in Die Zeitung but without cross-referencing, as if produced by two artists.

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Figure 4 On the other hand, there are also some problems with Maas’ handbook. Her periodical index lists Margareta Berger’s name under contributions to Die Zeitung, but she does not indicate that her essay

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entitled ‘Meine Zuschauer’ include drawings.31 Hence, it is advisable to consult both Maas and the search engine of the online tool for the research of visual material. Despite the problems with both media, their usage can be beneficial. Both permit not only the discovery of contributions which have not been considered in secondary literature on the artist, as in the case of Bischof, 32 but also enable the researcher to trace artists who have been neglected so far; for example Nellie Rossmann. Rossmann published not only a map illustrating the ‘rise’ and ‘fall’ of the ‘Hitlerreich’ of 26 January 1945, but also wrote an article about the eighteenth-century émigré painter John Zoffany entitled ‘Ein Frankfurter Maler in England’ published on 23 July 1943. Although there is no entry for Nellie Rossmann in the International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945, her name appears there under that for the journalist Alexandre Rossmann as his first wife ‘Nelly’ Schwabacher who was born in Frankfurt in 1899, divorced him in 1937 and died in London in 1957.33 She had attended the Bauhaus before coming to Britain with her son Michael in 1939, where she worked in settlement houses in London’s East End. There is no reference that her husband worked for Die Zeitung. Despite this entry, Rossmann is not mentioned in the literature such as in the list of artists published in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933-1945 or in a more recent book on the topic written by Wilfried Weinke. 34 Here the statistics resulting from the search engine do not only complement research on artists already undertaken such as that to Berger-Hamerschlag, but also bring refugees to the fore who have been neglected so far. While the online search for authors allows comparing contributions of one person in different newspapers quickly, it is not possible to search for illustrations as such. As mentioned above, under each periodical in Maas’ handbook, however, the authors are not only listed, but provided with an indication as to whether the contribution is an art work or contains such work, defined by her as graphic work including maps and photomontages. Thus unlike the online tool, which does not provide any function for searching images alone, Maas’ handbook makes it possible to find drawings, photomontages and maps in a periodical. Anonymous contributions, such as maps, photographs and advertisement design in Die Zeitung, are not supported by Maas’ handbook or as such by the search engine. All those with a title, however, can be found indirectly through the latter under title or

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keyword search, as the example of Flatter above has demonstrated. Here the search engine is a more useful tool than Maas, who does not provide any title or subject indices.35 This goes particularly for drawings, including also maps which are usually printed next to political articles, illustrating old and new borders of nation-states and military advances. If there is no caption these can be found under the title of the associated article, as for example the anonymous map (taken from the Daily Telegraph as stated below the map) which accompanied an article on ‘Hitlers Befehl an die Balkanarmee’ published on 7 April 1941. Photographs form a particular problem for Maas’ indices; they are anonymous but constitute a major part of visual material published in Die Zeitung; at least one photograph appears in nearly every issue, the first in the third issue of Die Zeitung.36 Moreover, as is the case with the drawings, some photographs stand on their own without being directly related to an article on the same page. 37 Though anonymous, the photographs usually have a title, followed by a short description of the illustrated situation. According to Seib these titles should be indexed and searchable through the online tool.38 Indeed, numerous photographs could be traced in this way to establish whether they are directly related to exile, such as ‘Kleiner Refugee allein’ (24 March 1941) or not, as for example ‘Churchill im vorigen Krieg’ (10 November 1944). Although images accompanying text of adverts appear frequently, advertisements have not been considered by Maas or Exilpresse digital, except, in the latter case, those which refer directly to migration; Seib gives the example of the ‘Blaue Beitragskarte’ which appeared in Aufbau.39 She also says that key words/products in advertisements should be found via the keyword search.40 Though according to Seib, Exile Studies have neglected the role of advertisements in periodicals so far,41 pop artists abolished the distinction between art and popular culture as early as the 1960s and postmodernists have drawn our attention to it again in a different context. Indexing the advertisements by product would not only open new research fields such as consumer behaviour in exile, but may also contribute to the research on readership and financing of exile periodicals. If expanding the database by indexing the advertisements systematically, it might also be advantageous to add a field so that one can select a period for the search, as in the LexisNexis Executive database for international newspapers42 and also in the online version

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of Aufbau. Das jüdische Monatsmagazin (years 2005 and 2006). 43 Here the user can also choose between three different versions the way in which the search result can be displayed (i.e. relevance, chronology, the earliest first or at the end). Exilpresse digital offers a limited choice: the results are only given alphabetically and within each periodical chronologically. In conclusion, the examples mentioned above should indicate the extent to which quick computer-controlled references to images can aid traditional research methods, particularly the analysis of the understudied visual material in periodicals. Statistics on the contributions on the one hand can complement already existing scholarship; this goes especially for Berger-Hamerschlag, Bischof and Flatter, whose work can be compared with their other contributions and with each other more easily. On the other hand these tools can bring to light works of artists neglected so far as in the case of Nellie Rossmann. I have also shown that it is highly advisable to use both Maas’ handbook and the author search function, since neither tool is entirely reliable. For anonymous contributions, the online search for titles and subtitles offers a clear advantage over Maas’ handbook, which only gives an index for authors. If a research project is concerned with visual imagery in one periodical, Maas’ indication of the graphic work attached to each contribution provides a better starting-point than the online search, which does not allow searching for such contributions in the same degree of detail as The Times Digital Archive 1785198544, where one can search the ‘Picture Gallery’ and/or also ‘article with illustration’. However, it is not possible to find individual media (photographs, maps or other visual material) combined with a keyword. These omissions demonstrate that the search tool of Exilpresse digital supports text rather than visual material as is often the case with other such search engines of periodicals.45 The worldwide information company CSA has become aware of the need for socalled ‘deep indexing’, which would allow searching for illustrations, charts and graphs within journal articles; to this end, they are developing a special database called CSA Illustrata,46 but at the moment only medical and natural history sources are available. Arts and humanities resources are relegated to the bottom of their list of priorities due to copyright issues. The inclusion of a search button for visual material would be technically possible, 47 but may not be achievable due to legal issues.48 Therefore the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek tends to look at projects

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involving copyright-free works. The Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945 is interested in a digitalization project which would involve monographs by refugees for whom the archive receives permission or whose authors died 70 and more years ago such as Jacob Wassermann (1873-1934).49 Such a project is particularly relevant, since some copyrights will become free in the next years as for example those of Ernst Toller (1893-1939) and Joseph Roth (1894-1939) in 2009. List of Illustrations: Figure 1: Opening page of Exilpresse digital: Deutsche Exilzeitschriften 1933-1945, cf. http://deposit.ddb.de/online/ exil/exil.htm. Figure 2: Joseph Otto Flatter, Lebensraum für das deutsche Volk, in Die Zeitung, 9 March 1945. Figure 3: John Heartfield, Jugendkongress, in Die Zeitung, 25 September 1942. Figure 4: John Heartfield, Das Tausendjährige Reich, in Die Zeitung, 1 January 1943.

Notes I am grateful to Renate Seib for some of the information provided in this article. She was project leader of Exilpresse digital and responsible for its bibliographic part, supported by Annette Siegenthaler who looked after the technical issues. I am also indebted to Jennifer Taylor for editing and useful suggestions in general, David Pulford for the information on CSA Illustrata and Peter Zimmermann and Michael Krejsa (Heartfield Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin) for advice on John Heartfield. 1 Cf. Renate Seib, ‘Exilpresse digital. Deutschsprachige Exilzeitschriften 1933-1945’, Digitale Bausteine für die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung, 5 (2003), 173-86 (174) and Barbara Renate Seib ‘Digitalization of German Language Newspapers and Magazines Published in Exile in the Years 1933-1950’, in Newspapers in Central and Eastern Europe. Zeitungen in Mittel- und Osteuropa, ed. by Hartmut Walravens in cooperation with Marieluise Schilling (Munich: K.-G. Saur, 2005), pp. 161-64 (p. 161). The project was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft as part of its ‘Verteilte Digitale Forschungsprojekt’ (cf. Renate Seib, ‘Projekt Exilpresse digital. Deutsche Exilzeitschriften 1933-1945. Informationen zur Realisierung’, http//deposit.ddb.de/online/exil/pdfs/exil.pdf The number of digitized pages mentioned in these sources varies between 100,000 (stated in the 2003 contribution) and 120,000 pages (according to the 2005 contribution).

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Cf. Seib, ‘Digitalization of German Language Newspapers’, p. 162. Seib also mentions that numbers which were found after the project had ended have been added to the online version. 3 The other newspapers to be digitized first were Aufbau (New York), Acht-UhrAbendblatt (Shanghai), Das Andere Deutschland/La Otra Alemania (Buenos Aires/Montevideo), Der deutsche Schriftsteller (Paris), Gelbe Post (Shanghai), Internationale Literatur (Moscow), Jüdische Revue (Mukacevo et al.), Kunst und Wissen (London), Neuer Vorwärts (Karlsbad; Paris), Ordo (Paris), Die Tribüne (Shanghai), Über die Grenzen (Affoltern a. A.) and Zeitschrift für freie deutsche Forschung (Paris); cf. Seib, ‘Projekt “Exilpresse digital”’, pp. 3f. 4 Uhlig published under the pseudonym Peter Conrad; cf. Uwe Soukup, Ich bin nun mal Deutscher. Sebastian Haffner. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2001), pp. 101-28 (p. 110). 5 Cf. Renate Seib, ‘Die Zeitung. Bibliographische Angaben’ http://deposit.ddb.de/ online/exil/exil.htm (para. 2, 3 and 7 or 14). For the newspaper, cf. the articles by Charmian Brinson and Marian Malet, ‘Die Zeitung’, in Between Two Languages, ed. by William Abbey and others (Stuttgart: H.-D. Heinz, 1995), pp. 215-43; Donal McLaughlin, ‘Women only? The Feuilleton of Die Zeitung (1941-1945)’, in Aliens – Uneingebürgerte. German and Austrian Writers in Exile, ed. by Ian Wallace (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 237-51, and Waltraud Strickhausen, ‘Großbritannien’, in Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945, ed. by Claus-Dieter Krohn and others (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), pp. 251-70; for an autobiographical account, cf. Sebastian Haffner, Als Engländer maskiert. Ein Gespräch mit Jutta Krug über das Exil (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 2002), pp. 41-51, and Wilhelm Sternfeld, ‘Die Zeitung’, unpublished typescript, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Deutsches Exilarchiv 19331945, Frankfurt a.M., EB 54b/7 [another version is classmarked there as ‘Die Zeitung’, unpublished typescript, EB 75/177; the published version appeared as ‘Die Zeitung. A London Journal 1941-1945’, The Wiener Library Bulletin, 5 (JanuaryMarch, 1951), 6]. Sternfeld mentions in the unpublished manuscript (EB 54b/7, p. 2; a part deleted in the published version) in addition to those above Dr. Monty Jacobs as having belonged to the editorial staff for a few months. Jacobs was chief editor of the Feuilleton of the Vossische Zeitung before his emigration. 6 Sternfeld, ‘Die Zeitung’, EB 75/177, p. 1, writes that the financial basis of the newspaper was secured through the British Information Department. He, however, does not specify the amount or nature of the subsidization, neither does Waltraud Strickhausen who, like Sternfeld, only refers to the fact that the newspaper was subsidized by the British. Cf. Waltraud Strickhausen, ‘Großbritannien’, p. 263. 7 Cf. Brinson and Malet, ‘Die Zeitung’, p. 223. 8 Cf. Renate Seib, Email to author, 2 April 2007. 9 Cf. Robert Zepf, ‘Exilpresse digital. Ein gelungenes Digitalisierungsprojekt der Deutschen Bibliothek’, Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie, 47 (2000), 283-89 (285). For a full list of reasons see Seib, ‘Digitalization of German Language Newspapers’, pp. 161f. 10 Cf. http://deposit.ddb.de/online/exil/exil.htm. Apart from those mentioned already in the main text and endnote 5 above, the other digitized periodicals are Das blaue

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Heft (Paris), Der deutsche Weg (Oldenzaal), Freie Kunst und Literatur (Paris), Europäische Hefte (Prague), Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin (Berlin), Gemeindeblatt der Jüdischen Kultusgemeinde (Shanghai), The Jewish Voice of the Far East (Shanghai), Orient (Haifa; only the cover of the first page is accessible), Pariser Tageblatt (Paris), Pariser Tageszeitung (Paris), Das Reich (Saarbrücken) and Sozialistische Warte (Paris). Shanghai Jewish Chronicle and Shanghai Echo (both Shanghai) had not been released at the time of the publication of this essay. Exilpresse digital led to another digitalization project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft from 2004 to 2006: ‘Jewish periodicals in Nazi Germany’ was co-ordinated with ‘Retrospective Digitalisation of Jewish Periodicals in the German-Speaking Regions’ (‘Compact Memory’), another project of the German Research Foundation, so that no periodical was only digitized once. This database has been accessible under http://deposit.d-nb.de/online/jued/jued.htm since 26 June 2006 and uses the same programs and similar layout as Exilpresse digital. 11 Seib, ‘Digitalization of German Language Newspapers’, p. 163; cf. also Zepf, op. cit, 286 and Nils Schiffhauer, ‘Papier-Tempel’, Technology-Review, January 2005, 98f. (98). 12 Cf. Seib, ‘Projekt Exilpresse digital’, p. 1; cf. Seib ‘Digitalization of German Language Newspapers’, p. 161. 13 Cf. Seib, ‘Exilpresse digital’, p. 177. 14 Cf. ibid., 180f. 15 Cf. Lieselotte Maas, Handbuch der deutschen Exilpresse, ed. by Eberhard Lämmert, three volumes (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1976-1981). 16 Cf. Renate Seib, Email to author, 2 April 2007. 17 The data were entered into Image Access, a tool specially designed for Exilpresse digital, and then exported into a SGML structure. The SGML data have been stored in an index, which can be searched through a modified version of a search engine designed by Harvest Broker, cf. http://harvest.sourceforge.net. The presentation template for the search was designed by the IT department of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt (cf. Renate Seib, Email to author, 2 April 2007). 18 Cf. Seib, ‘Digitalization of German Language Newspapers’, p.163 and 'Exilpresse digital', 183. 19 Renate Seib, ‘Exilzeitschriften im Internet’, Dialog mit Bibliotheken, 10 (1998), 214; Renate Seib, ‘Digitalisierung von Exilzeitschriften’, Dialog mit Bibliotheken, 11 (1999), 9-11; Zepf, op. cit., 283-89; Seib, ‘Exilpresse digital’, pp. 173-86; Seib, ‘Digitalization of German Language Newspapers’, pp. 161-64; Schiffhauer, ‘PapierTempel’, 98. 20 Cf. Maas, Handbuch, vol. 3, pp. 669-929. 21 See endnote 5. 22 Sternfeld, ‘Die Zeitung’, EB 75/177, pp. 4f. 23

His works have been explored by Dorothea McEwan in the following articles: ‘Joseph Otto Flatter. The Politicisation of a Portrait-Painter’, in Austrian Exodus. The Creative Achievements of Refugees from National Socialism, ed. by Edward Timms and Ritchie Robertson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), pp. 104-19;

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‘From Portraiture to Propaganda: The Life and Work of Joseph Flatter’, German Studies Library Group Newsletter, 15 (January 1994), 21-31; ‘Vom Porträtisten zum Propagandisten. Leben und Werk des Malers Joseph Otto Flatter, geb. Wien 1894, gest. London 1988’, Mit der Ziehharmonika. Blätter der Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft, (May 1993), 15-19 and ‘Sein Kampf. Der Zeichner Otto Flatter (18941988)’, Tendenzen, 166 (April-June 1989), 60-65. 24 Jutta Vinzent, ‘Research Images of Austria in Die Zeitung’, Austria in Exile, conference organized by the Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, University of London, 14-16 September 2005. 25 Cf. Maas, Handbuch, vol. 3, p. 738 referring to vol. 2, p. 633. 26 Cf. ‘Meine Zuschauer’, Die Zeitung, 22 December 1944, 7 and ‘Ansichtskarten aus Syrien’, Die Zeitung, 26 January 1945, 7. For Berger-Hamerschlag, cf. the following literature (selection): Veronika Pfolz, ‘Künstler und Künstlerinnen im Exil’, in Vom Weggehen. Zum Exil von Kunst und Wissenschaft, ed. by Sandra Wiesinger-Stock et al. (Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2006), pp. 430-41; Veronika Pfolz, Lebensbedingungen österreichischer Künstlerinnen in der Zwischenkriegszeit und im Exil bis 1945, dargestellt am Beispiel von Sascha Kronburg und Margareta BergerHamerschlag, (Vienna: Phil. Diss., 2001). Pfolz mentions the artist’s contributions to Die Zeitung briefly. In an email (8 Aug. 2006), she suggests that the contact between Die Zeitung and the artist might have come through Erich Fried, who contributed to the newspaper 12 articles between 10 December 1943 and 27 April 1945. Fried worked for Orplid Glass, a company which produced buttons and brooches and was founded by Berger-Hamerschlag’s brother-in-law Fritz Lampl (1892, Vienna – 1955, London), who had married her sister Hilde and come to Britain from Vienna. Cf. Veronika Pfolz, ‘A clan of artists in exile. From Austria to Britain’, in Exile and Patronage. Cross-Cultural Negotiations Beyond the Third Reich, ed. by Andrew Chandler, Katarzyna Stoklosa and Jutta Vinzent (Münster et al.: LIT Verlag, 2006), pp. 33-44. 27 The online author search for S. Korry, another artist who contributed to Die Zeitung, also results in one contribution only (instead of three as indicated by Maas). 28 Maas, Handbuch, vol. 2, p. 634. When searched ‘Heartfield’ under title, the latter of the two photomontages appears. Heartfield’s Das Tausendjährige Reich was originally published in the AIZ (Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung), no. 38 of 1934. While ‘Der Lehrer’, the left photomontage of Jugendkongress, also came from the AIZ, no. 33 of 15 August 1935 (published there under Hitlers bester Freund. Streicher, der Schänder Deutschlands), ‘Die Schüler’, the right photomontage does not seem to have been published previously. In addition, the drummer in the photomontage does not appear in any of Heartfield’s work held by his archive in the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (cf. Michael Krejsa, Email to author, 16 May 2007). 29 These are the following artists: John Heartfield, Adolf Hoffmeister, Kem, David Low, Antonin Pel, R. Sachs, Stephen and Sidney Strube. 30 Maas, Handbuch, vol. 1, p. 46. 31 Cf. ibid., vol. 3, pp. 631f. 32 Cf. Erich A. Bischof. Leben und Werk, exhibition catalogue (Frankfurt/O.: Galerie Junge Kunst, 1982). Bischof is also mentioned in Widerstand statt Anpassung. Deutsche Kunst im Widerstand gegen den Faschismus 1933-1945, exhibition

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catalogue (Karlsruhe and Berlin: Badischer Kulturverein, 1980); International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 / Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigranten nach 1933, ed. by Herbert A. Strauss (New York) and Werner Röder (Munich), vol. 1 (Munich, New York, London, Paris: Saur, 1983), vol. 2, pp. 112f. and in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933-1945, ed. by Hartmut Krug and Michael Nungesser, exhibition catalogue (Berlin: Orangerie of Castle Charlottenburg, 1986), pp. 118f. 33 Cf. International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 19331945, vol. 2, p. 994. 34 Wilfried Weinke, Verdrängt, vertrieben, aber nicht vergessen: die Fotografen Emil Bieber, Max Halberstadt, Erich Kastan, Kurt Schallenberg (Weingarten: Kunstverlag Weingarten, 2003). 35 Her indices of ‘Organisations’ and ‘Countries and Places’ only refer to the editors of the periodicals and places where these were published respectively. 36 Was die Räder in Schwung brachte, photograph, Die Zeitung, 14 March 1941, p. 4. 37 For example, Britische Truppen sind in Albanien gelandet, photograph, Die Zeitung, 13 Oct. 1944, p. 5. 38 Cf. Renate Seib, Email to author, 2 April 2007. 39 Ibid. 40 However, I tried unsuccessfully to find the advert for Plesox, a natural remedy for poor digestion (repeatedly published from 8 October 1943) and Neverill, a drink for the morning to clean the blood and prevent rheumatism, published, for example, on 17 November 1944. 41 Cf. Renate Seib, Email to author, 2 April 2007. 42 Cf. http://web.lexis-nexis.com/executive. 43 Cf.http://www.aufbauonline.com/. 44 Cf. http://galeuk.com/times. 45 An exception is The Canadian Illustrated News 1869-1883 http://www.collectionscanada.ca/cin/index-e.html which allows searching by artist and subject, but seems to concentrate on the illustrations rather than the text. 46 Cf. http://info.csa.com/csaillustrata. 47 Cf. Renate Seib, Email to author, 2 April 2007. 48 Cf., for example, http://www.urheberrechtsbuendnis.de/. 49 Some of Wassermann’s books have been digitized and made available online by the Gutenberg Project, one of the earliest provider of eBooks (cf. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page).

‘Between Our Two Peoples’: The Archives of the Anglo-Austrian Society and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society Charmian Brinson The Anglo-Austrian Society (AAS) started life in Britain in 1944 as a political organisation founded primarily by exiled Austrian Social Democrats while the AngloAustrian Music Society (AAMS) was established two years earlier for the promotion of Austrian music and musicians in exile. This paper examines some of the issues emerging from the archives of the two societies, now held at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, ranging from refugee rivalries via problems of funding and identity to the fostering of Anglo-Austrian cultural relations over half a century.

Although the Anglo-Austrian Society and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society started out some sixty years ago as separate societies (and have remained so), the archives of these societies are today held together in thirty large, roughly sorted boxes at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies in London. They arrived there recently, after a brief stay at the Wiener Library, from the house at Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster, which was the home of the two Austrian sister societies from 1978 until 2002 (when they both scaled down their operations). The papers are made up of a mixture of committee agendas and minutes, reports, planning documents, memoranda, correspondence, newspaper cuttings, programmes, flyers, financial spreadsheets, photographs and other miscellaneous documents that cover the period from the 1940s to the 1980s (in effect, the heyday of the two societies). A few documents from the 1990s have also found their way into this collection, although more recent papers are still held by Peter Gieler, the present Secretary General of the AngloAustrian Society, and by Robert and Jane Avery on behalf of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society. It is Mr Gieler’s intention, as he stated recently, to make a further gift of papers to the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies in due course. The Anglo-Austrian Society, initially named the AngloAustrian Democratic Society, was set up in London in July 1944 as a political organisation by exiled Austrian Social Democrats together with other groups of a more centre-right orientation. 1 Looking ahead

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to the end of hostilities, still almost a year away, the Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society defined its aims as: 1.

to spread understanding of the importance of Austrian democracy for peace and progress

2.

to promote closer contact between British and Austrian democrats; to further cultural relations between Britain and Austria; and to promote in the liberated Austrian Republic knowledge and understanding of British democratic ideas and institutions.2

Leading Austrian exiles involved in the venture included the Socialists Friedrich Scheu, Wilhelm Rosenzweig and Marianne Pollak; Austrian Democratic Unionists Emil Müller-Sturmheim, Friedrich Hertz and Julius Meinl; and Franz Schneider of the Association of Austrian Christian Socialists in Great Britain (later the Austrian Christian People’s Party in Great Britain). Numbered among the influential British supporters were the Liberal MP Tom Horabin; the Labour MP John Hynd (who later, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was in charge of affairs in the British zones of occupation in both Germany and Austria) and the young Barbara Betts, soon better known under her married name of Barbara Castle. The Social Democrats, who were as much at loggerheads with the Austrian Communists in London exile as they had been in Austria before the war, set up their new Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society as a counterblast to a rival organisation, the Friends of Austria, which had been established the year before by the Communist-inspired Free Austrian Movement.3 And it was in the Communist camp that the Anglo-Austrian Music Society (formerly the Austrian Musicians’ Group) initially had its home. Founded in 1942, the Anglo-Austrian Music Society thus predated the Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society by two years. It was set up to support Austrian musicians and to promote Austrian music in Britain by three exiled Austrian musicians, Georg Knepler and Hermann Ullrich, who returned home after the war, and Ferdinand Rauter, who remained associated with the Music Society in Britain for the rest of his life; and it soon won the support of leading British musicians such as Sir Adrian Boult and Ralph Vaughan Williams.4 By 1946, when a number of the Austrian political activists were returning home, rivalries in Britain were becoming rather less acute, giving rise to a certain degree of collaboration between the

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Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society (renamed the Anglo-Austrian Society from 1947) and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society. When, however, in 1946 the Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society seconded two of its members, the musicologist Otto Erich Deutsch and the music critic David Josef Bach, to the Anglo-Austrian Music Society this was, as a memorandum makes clear, not just for musical reasons but also ‘to make more certain than in the past that that Society [i.e. the AAMS] confines its activities to music alone’!5 It was Otto Harpner, a lawyer associated with the (Liberal) Austrian Democratic Union, who, although not involved in the foundation of the Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society, became its first driving force and was as much as anyone responsible for drawing the two societies together. Certainly in December 1949, Harpner began to combine the Secretaryship of the Anglo-Austrian Society with that of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society (the latter jointly held with the music publisher Alfred Kalmus), and before long the societies would begin to share their premises and administrative provision. In return for this, the Anglo-Austrian Music Society made a regular contribution to the joint running costs which, especially during the 1950s, when the Anglo-Austrian Society was particularly short of money, served as something of a lifeline for the latter. Yet the two societies never merged, despite regular suggestions to do so – presumably an example of old suspicions dying hard!6 Indeed, the subject of refugee alliances and hostilities forms an ongoing theme throughout the earlier parts of these archives, in papers from both the wartime period and the immediate post-war years, when the Communist-influenced and highly successful Friends of Austria, Free Austrian Movement and Austrian Centre, the Austrian Labour Club, the Austrian Democratic Union, the Austrian Christian People’s Party, the Union of Austrian Journalists and other Austrian exile groupings were all still continuing their British-based operations. Uneasy partnerships were formed and then dissolved such as one between the Friends of Austria and the Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society for the purposes of their joint Aid to Austria Appeal Committee (since it was thought more appropriate, where the securing of British support was concerned, to maintain a show of unity). However, when on 19 February 1947 the Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society announced its intention to rename itself the Anglo-Austrian Society, this was, as it explained with some relief, largely as a result of the fact that ‘it is no longer necessary to distinguish itself from other Anglo-Austrian Societies in this country’. 7 In other words, with

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the closure of the Austrian Centre the month before, January 1947, and the return of the Free Austrian activists to Austria, the Friends of Austria – though still in existence at this point, certainly – had lost their political base and need no longer be viewed as a rival. Other significant subject areas covered by documents in these archives include the reestablishment of Anglo-Austrian relations after the war, particularly in the cultural and relief fields and both in Austria and in Britain; the securing of funding for the two societies’ work; the ‘threat’, as it was perceived by Harpner, that was posed by the establishment of the Austrian Cultural Institute in London; the regular day by day, year by year activities of the Anglo-Austrian Society (such as the organisation of German-language courses, exchanges, travel, and social and cultural events) and of the AngloAustrian Music Society (for instance, the organisation of concerts and the promotion of young musicians); preparations associated with a succession of high days and holy days in the lives of the societies (such as presidential visits or anniversaries); and lastly, what can loosely be described as ‘problems’ affecting Anglo-Austrian relations from time to time and thus impinging on the societies (for example, the Waldheim affair). Of course this list does not pretend to be exhaustive; indeed it is scarcely possible within the confines of this paper to examine the full range of issues arising from the AngloAustrian Society/Anglo-Austrian Music Society archives, even as given here in abbreviated form. At best, some idea can perhaps be offered as to these archives’ scope for further research. In April 1946, with conditions in Austria still critical, Otto Harpner was bemoaning the fact that: It is difficult to work for cultural understanding while it is not even possible to exchange newspapers and other printed matter and even less books […] How can reeducation in Austria start as long as the Austrians are cut off from the world to such a large extent?8

Yet by the end of that year, 1946, the Anglo-Austrian Society had made considerable progress in terms of practical exchanges in the form, firstly, of a food parcels scheme, intended to alleviate the postwar misery in Austria – orders for 800 parcels were placed in the first four weeks – and the establishment of the Austrian Children’s Reception Committee (this, too, was initially achieved through a not altogether easy alliance with the Friends of Austria).9 The Reception Committee brought to Britain children deemed to be in need of a recuperative holiday for, on average, three-month visits. Between

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1947 and 1951, i.e. ‘the years of greatest need in Austria’ as an AngloAustrian Society survey from January 1954 records, almost 2000 Austrian children were cared for in this way by British families.10 In 1946, too, the Anglo-Austrian Society took a significant step forward in forging cultural relations, with the foundation of a sister society in Vienna, the Österreichisch-Britische Gesellschaft.11 There is some interesting correspondence between Otto Harpner and his counterparts in Vienna on the subject of the Österreichisch-Britische Gesellschaft, for example on a lecture to be given to the Vienna society in October 1946 by J. B. Priestley on the subject of ‘The New Britain’. 12 The organisation of such a lecture by a leading British cultural figure at a time of great restrictions in occupied Austria was undoubtedly a cultural achievement of some significance. In Britain, too, as a large amount of correspondence and the minutes of many committee meetings make clear, Harpner was anxious to promote cultural exchanges, and indeed of the highest order. In 1946, Harpner had already tried to bring about a visit to Britain by the world-famous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the first since the war of course, which, if successful, would signify a major step in terms of cultural reconciliation between Britain and Austria. At a meeting of the Anglo-Austrian Society’s Entertainment SubCommittee, held on 10 May 1946, Harpner had been able to report that progress had been made with the British Council and the Foreign Office and that the Austrian Minister in London, Dr Heinrich Schmid, was also thought to have given the scheme his backing.13 The plan fell through the first time round – due, Harpner suspected, to the ‘Überlastung des Ministers Dr Schmid und seiner Umgebung’ 14 - but the following year, 1947, saw the first post-war visit to London of the Vienna State Opera and Orchestra, under the auspices of the AngloAustrian Music Society, and 1948 that of the closely associated Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, this time under the joint aegis of the Anglo-Austrian Society and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society. Meanwhile correspondence between Harpner and that third renowned Viennese musical institution, the Vienna Boys Choir, with the aim of bringing them over for the first time since 1938, started in 1948; this bore fruit in 1950 with a highly successful tour that included a BBC contract and concerts in the Albert Hall and concluded with a concert at Eton College. 15 There is, however, a glaring discrepancy apparent in these archives between the ambitious nature of such plans for international cultural cooperation and the often desperate financial plight in which

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the Anglo-Austrian Society – the cost of whose activities far exceeded its income from membership subscriptions and receipts from events – frequently found itself, especially in the early years (it should be noted that the Anglo-Austrian Music Society, with its capacity for raising money through musical events, seems generally to have fared rather better in this regard). An undated document, probably dating from around 1951, entitled ‘Information concerning the financial problems of the Anglo-Austrian Society’, set out the situation: during the 1940s, admittedly, when Austria itself had been in a difficult situation (for instance, with reference to foreign currency), the lack of financial support forthcoming from Austria had seemed more understandable. Since 1949, however, the Society had been led to expect a subsidy from Austria but had been repeatedly disappointed, despite the fact that ‘we have, for all intents and purposes, acted as “Austrian Council” in Great Britain’. As things had turned out, so Harpner continued, ‘for 1950 we were once again saved by a good series of miracles’, though it would not be possible to count on similar reoccurrences in the future. Moreover staff had of necessity been underpaid and the Society understaffed, compelling the staff, again me in the first instance, making constant non-stop overtime work, having no proper weekends, no proper holiday, things one cannot go on to do for ever. But it was also only made possible by my coming constantly to the aid of the Society, which I can not do any longer having sacrificed all my private means in the past years.16

During the 1950s, indeed, as is evident from the large amount of extant correspondence pertaining to financial matters, Harpner was forced to spend much of his time writing to Austrian official bodies on the subject of subsidies for the Society: to the Bundeskanzleramt, the Bundesministerium für Unterricht, the Bundesministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, the Bundesministerium für Verkehr und Elektrizitätswirtschaft, the Bundesministerium für Handel und Wiederaufbau, not to mention the Austrian Embassy in London. Even where subsidies were promised, they were often substantially delayed, and indeed in 1953 Harpner was informed by the Ambassador that no further subventions would be forthcoming from Austria (fortunately for the Anglo-Austrian Society, this decision was later revoked).17 It is apparent from the righteous passion with which Harpner invested his correspondence that, as a former exile from National Socialist Austria, he still considered Austria to be indebted to the Society for its wartime

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role in representing the ‘other Austria’ – and that this did not make him a particularly easy man for the Austrian authorities to deal with. Certainly Harpner’s successor Walter Foster, who took over as Secretary to both societies after Harpner’s death in 1959, was better both at establishing a more amicable tone in his correspondence with Austrian official bodies and at obtaining the required funding from them. There is a telling comment in this respect in a briefing note Foster sent to supportive British MPs regarding his dealings with the Bundesministerium für Unterricht: ‘I am very glad that relations with this Ministry are now so friendly – I inherited the worst possible relations with them from Dr Harpner.’18 One of the greatest frustrations suffered by Harpner as far as funding was concerned lay in his fruitless efforts to secure an ‘AngloAustrian House’. A document from 1950 sets out the Society’s ideal requirements: on the ground floor a restaurant accessible to the general public from the street; above the restaurant, club rooms consisting of a hall for concerts and lectures accommodating perhaps 150, a reading room and one or two members’ dining rooms; and in addition offices, and guest rooms to be let out to visiting members.19 Such a house would have offered members the same sort of generous facilities as had been provided during the war by the Anglo-Austrian Society’s former rival, the Austrian Centre (and it seems likely that this was the model Harpner had in mind); in hindsight, perhaps, one may question whether by the 1950s the remaining Austrian colony in London, who were clearly beginning to assimilate into the host population, could have supported such an ambitious venture. In any case, Harpner campaigned hard for some years to raise the necessary money: a letter appeared in The Times, signed by the Anglo-Austrian Society’s two current presidents, Dr Schmid and Lord Pakenham (the later Lord Longford), in an attempt to raise £5000,20 and suitable houses in Bryanston Square and Hyde Park Place were considered, but without success. By 1951, certainly, the two societies had revised their plan and had moved, for the time being at least, into office premises in High Street Kensington (to which a meeting room for cultural and social events and a library were then added in 1966).21 It is in the light of the Anglo-Austrian Society’s early financial struggles as well as in the Society’s claim to be Austria’s cultural representative in Britain – a claim with unmistakeable wartime roots to it – that one has to understand the near fury with which Otto Harpner greeted the news of the Austrian Government’s intention to establish an Austrian Cultural Institute in London, another

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theme that runs on over several years and through various files of the Anglo-Austrian Society/Anglo-Austrian Music Society archives. This was a move arising from the Cultural Convention signed between Britain and Austria in 1953 and, in the eyes of the exiles who still formed the major body of opinion within the Anglo-Austrian Society, constituted a blatant disregard for the work for Austria that they had been carrying out for the best part of ten years in Britain as well as a possible threat to their future income. To make matters worse, the Anglo-Austrian Society was scarcely drawn into the official intergovernmental discussion process (as a result of their protests, representatives of the Society were invited to attend a meeting on the subject for one afternoon session only). 22 In an undated internal document (from around 1952), Harpner set out his and the Anglo-Austrian Society’s viewpoint towards the proposed Institute: It would mean squandering all the good will created not only since the War, but started to be build up [sic] during the war. It would mean substituting for a body supported by British and Austrian (and British, former Austrian) Membership a State run Propaganda Institute. It would mean the loss of most if not all of the sources of income. It would mean, in fact, closing down rather than building up and expanding. 23

So bleak did the prospects appear, in fact, that by 1954 Harpner was writing to his old allies, Friedrich Scheu and his wife, both now back in Vienna, to ask them to intercede with Bruno Kreisky in the Foreign Ministry and to suggest – along the lines, apparently, of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ – that, while retaining his present position in the two societies, he himself should also take a job in the Cultural Institute, even if it meant not obtaining the top position there: ‘Da ich annehme, dass sich die OeVP die Stellung des Leiters des Instituts nicht wird nehmen lassen, bin ich auch bereit, mich mit der 2. Stelle zu begnügen.’24 Such a position was not forthcoming; and the Anglo-Austrian Society and the Austrian Cultural Institute did, of necessity, arrive in time at a satisfactory modus vivendi. Moreover, after Harpner’s death, the more diplomatic Walter Foster seems to have had relatively little difficulty in maintaining good relations as illustrated by a report from 1964 referring to the ‘very friendly and successful meeting that Foster and Mrs Harpner [i.e. Harpner’s widow] had had with the Director of the Institute’.25

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It would, of course, be misleading to suggest that the major part of the archives of the Anglo-Austrian Society and Anglo-Austrian Music Society is concerned with these sorts of difficulties and divisions; on the contrary, by the 1950s, and even more so by the 1960s, both societies had established their main areas of activity which they proceeded to pursue smoothly and efficiently year after year. The Anglo-Austrian Society set up its German-language courses at Christmas 1952, continuing with these every Christmas and Easter until relatively recent years.26 The children’s holidays, which had started in response to post-war conditions in Austria, soon turned into a programme of Anglo-Austrian exchanges for children and young people (after Harpner’s death, the Otto Harpner Memorial Fund was established to widen participation among youth in both countries). 27 As time went by, the Anglo-Austrian Tourist Agency and Austria Travel Ltd were founded as subsidiary companies, with only the educational travel remaining with the Anglo-Austrian Society (in keeping with its charitable status).28 An ambitious programme of events was put on each year by the Anglo-Austrian Society, including lectures, readings, dances and a social club (the last of these arising out of the Society’s 1959 St Nicholas-tide Krampus dance), not to mention the Spanish Riding School which the Society brought over regularly from Austria. The Anglo-Austrian Music Society, for its part, continued to promote Austrian music and musicians and AngloAustrian musical events, in part through the third subsidiary company, the Anglo-Austrian Concert Agency. After the death of Richard Tauber in 1948, it founded the Richard Tauber Memorial Scholarship to enable young singers to further their musical studies in Austria.29 Punctuating the regular timetable of events of both societies over the years there were a number of special occasions, each of which is documented to a greater or lesser degree in the AngloAustrian Society/Anglo-Austrian Music Society archives. These included, in 1966, the involvement of the Anglo-Austrian Society in the State Visit to Britain of Austrian President Franz Jonas, who took the opportunity to acknowledge the merits of the Society which ‘for over twenty years, has successfully worked to strengthen the relations between our two peoples’; 30 and in 1969 the 25th anniversary dinner of the Anglo-Austrian Society at which the Austrian Foreign Minister Kurt Waldheim – who would cause the Society certain headaches in years to come – likewise honoured the Society’s work, conveying to them the gratitude of the Austrian Government.31 The Anglo-Austrian Music Society, for its part, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1967

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with a Lieder concert in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, performed by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, both long-time friends of the Society. 32 And when, in 1973, the Anglo-Austrian Society opened a new Vienna office in the presence of Chancellor Kreisky, it flew out from London a party of no fewer than 55, including eminent British supporters and members of its Executive Committee. It is interesting to note that, in addition to the guests from Britain, the Society’s lists of Vienna-based guests for this event read like a roll-call of the former political émigré community in Britain: Friedrich and Herta Scheu, of course, and their fellow Socialists Walter Wodak, Wilhelm Rosenzweig and Alfred Magaziner; Julius Meinl, formerly of the Austrian Democratic Union; the very elderly Hermann Ullrich, one of the three founders of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society and erstwhile lynchpin of the Free Austrian Movement; the musician Erwin Weiss who, exceptionally, had managed for a time to retain a footing both in the Austrian Centre and in the rival Austrian Labour Club; and Herbert Steiner who, as a former leading Young Austria member, stemmed indubitably from the Communist camp.33 The Anglo-Austrian Society, it seemed, in its hour of success, could afford to make peace. Events did still occur, however, that ruffled the calm in Anglo-Austrian circles, as indicated by a brief note found in one of the archive boxes: ‘Austrian scandals/wine/Waldheim/Chernobyl/ Haider.’34 Only a part of the material referred to here appears to have been handed over to the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, although two crises that Walter Foster had to field in the mid 1980s, the Reder affair and the Waldheim presidency, are both fairly fully documented there, with collections of press cuttings and correspondence. The first of these was provoked by the return to Austria in January 1985 of former SS Major Walter Reder from an Italian gaol and, more particularly, by the welcome he received on this occasion from the Austrian Defence Minister, Friedhelm Frischenschlager. Wolfgang Georg Fischer of Fischer Fine Arts, a well known figure in Austrian exile circles, organised a protest to be teletexted to Chancellor Fred Sinowatz in Austria and a letter to appear in The Times, both of which were signed by some of the most prominent ex-émigrés in Britain – H. G. Adler, Alfred Brendel, Ernest Gombrich, Claus Moser, J. P. Stern and Lord Weidenfeld among them. 35 At the same time, Fischer wrote off to the Anglo-Austrian Society for its comments on the Reder affair as well as on neo-Nazi activities in Austria generally. Since, moreover, Frischenschlager was

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shortly due to be arriving in London on an official visit (to make matters worse, on 20 April, Hitler’s birthday), Fischer added: I wonder if the eminent members of the Anglo-Austrian Society board could perhaps use some very discreet influence to prevent him from coming on this date or even better for Austria from coming at all. 36

On 7 March 1985, that is before the appearance of The Times letter, Foster had already written to his Executive Committee to inform them of the concern expressed by his members37 – one letter, indeed, had been furious enough to suggest of Austria that ‘the country should have been left to the Russians’.38 Always the diplomat, Foster had answered these letters by admitting the affair to be ‘a setback’; however he had ‘great faith’, he continued, ‘in the healthy political instincts of the Austrian younger generation and I, for one, will continue to give them support in the direction of freedom and democracy’. 39 Hardly had the Reder affair died down, when the Austrian National Socialist past raised its head once again in the election to the Austrian Presidency of Kurt Waldheim, whose previously undisclosed wartime activities were revealed in 1986. One file in the AngloAustrian Society’s archives is entitled ‘Resignations (Waldheim)’ and contains correspondence from the years 1986 to 1988, while a further file is made up of press cuttings on Waldheim. Former Austrian exiles of some repute, such as the pianist Paul Lichtenstern and the writer George Clare, wrote in to register their disapproval in this connection and to resign from the Society. Once again, Walter Foster answered the letters individually, admitting that ‘the recent election campaign in Austria was undoubtedly a setback’ but affirming his belief ‘that this should cause us to increase our efforts – particularly those directed towards the younger generation’. Interestingly, at least two people wrote in to express their condemnation of attacks on Austria and President Waldheim. To one of these, who intended to resign from the Society, Foster replied: When times are fair and there are no political problems, membership of the Anglo-Austrian Society is of little importance. It begins to matter much more when there are real difficulties and misunderstandings between our two countries. Rather than withdraw, I feel that we should redouble our efforts.

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Charmian Brinson May I remind you of the original purpose of the AngloAustrian Society – ‘to assist in the reestablishment of a free and independent democratic Austria and to promote friendship and understanding between the peoples of Great Britain and Austria.’ Perhaps you too would like to reconsider your resignation. It is not your membership fee which we want. It is your support.40

One may presume that the person of Jörg Haider must have constituted a similar bone of contention between the Anglo-Austrian Society and some of its members, although these events are still too recent for the Society to have passed on any relevant papers to the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies. In any case, the original exile membership of the AngloAustrian Society and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society, if still alive, is exceedingly elderly now, and has been largely replaced by the second and even third generations, with their very different experiences and concerns. In recent years, both societies have fallen upon difficult times although – perhaps surprisingly – both are still in existence today and the Anglo-Austrian Society may even be experiencing something of a late revival.41 As for the archives of the two Anglo-Austrian societies, encompassing as they do the strenuous wartime years and the difficult post-war period as well as the subsequent years of relative calm and prosperity, these will offer anyone interested in Anglo-Austrian cultural relations in the second half of the twentieth century an invaluable and indeed unique source.

Notes I am indebted to Peter Gieler and the Anglo-Austrian Society and to Robert and Jane Avery of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society as well as to William Abbey and the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies for permitting me access to the archival material upon which this paper is based. 1 On this, see Frederick [formally Friedrich] Scheu, The Early Days of the AngloAustrian Society (London: 1969). 2 ‘Constitution of the Anglo-Austrian Society’, Archives of the Anglo-Austrian Society and Anglo-Austrian Music Society, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, London [AAS/AAMS], Box 15. 3 On the Austrian Communists in exile and their organisations the Austrian Centre, the Free Austrian Movement and the Friends of Austria, see Marietta Bearman,

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Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove, Anthony Grenville and Jennifer Taylor, Wien – London, hin und retour: Das Austrian Centre in London 1939 bis 1947 (Vienna: Czernin, 2004) (English-language version, Out of Austria, to be published by I. B. Tauris, London in 2007). 4 See If Music Be the Food of Love…: 50 Years Anglo-Austrian Music Society 19421992, preface by Walter Foster (London 1992). See also [Ferdinand Rauter], ‘Die Gründung der Anglo-Austrian Musikgesellschaft/Anglo-Austrian Music Society’, n.d., Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna, DÖW 8462, in which the role played by Georg Knepler and Hermann Ullrich is decidedly downplayed. 5 ‘Pro Memoria: Past and Future Activities’, [1946], AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 6 See Scheu, op. cit., p. 26. 7

Annual General Meeting of Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society, 19 February 1947, AAS/AAMS, Box 17. 8 Anglo-Austrian Democratic Society, ‘Pro Memoria for Mr L. J. Edwards MP’, April 1946, AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 9 ‘Memorandum A’, December 1946, AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 10 ‘Short Survey of the Society’s Activities on behalf of British and Austrian Children and Young People’, [January 1954], AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 11 See, for example, AAS/AAMS, Boxes 15 and 29. 12 See, for example, correspondence with Wilhelm Rosenzweig from September 1946, AAS/AAMS, Box 15. 13 AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 14 Harpner to Wilhelm Rosenzweig, 5 September 1946, AAS/AAMS, Box 15. 15 AAS/AAMS, Box 28. 16 AAS/AAMS, Box 3. 17 Ibid. 18 ‘Confidential memo for Sir John Langford-Holt MP and George Jeger MP for Visit to Vienna’, May 1962, AAS/AAMS, Box 3. 19 ‘Das Anglo-Österreichische Haus’, September 1950, AAS/AAMS, Box 3. 20 ‘An Anglo-Austrian Centre’, The Times, 17 January 1948, p. 5. 21 ‘New Anglo-Austrian Society Premises’, in Anglo-Austrian Society, ‘Report on Activities 1966’, AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 22 AAS/AAMS, Box 3. 23 ‘Information on the main activities of the Anglo-Austrian Society and its Affiliated Organizations’, n.d. [c.1952], AAS/AAMS, Box 3. 24 Harpner to Friedrich and Herta Scheu, 5 October 1954, AAS/AAMS, Box 8. 25

‘Cooperation with the Austrian Institute’, Anglo-Austrian Music Society Executive Committee Minutes, 20 January 1964, AAS/AAMS, Box 15. 26 See, for example, ‘Summary of the Activities of the Anglo-Austrian Society and the Anglo-Austrian Music Society in the Year 1953’, which refers to 668 participants in the first year, 1952, AAS/AAMS, Box 29.

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As announced by Walter Foster in Anglo-Austrian Society, ‘Bericht an die österreichischen Freunde der Gesellschaft über unsere Tätigkeit in der Zeit von April 1959 bis Februar 1960’, 29 February 1960, AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 28 For the subsidiary companies, see for example Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society, 31 October 1988, AAS/AAMS, Box 13. 29 See programme for Richard Tauber Memorial Concert on 20 February 1948, announcing the foundation of the scholarship, AAS/AAMS, Box 11. 30 ‘The State Visit of the Austrian President’, in Anglo-Austrian Society, ‘Report on Activities 1966’, AAS/AAMS, Box 29. 31 ‘Anglo-Austrian Society 1944-1969: 25th Anniversary Report’, AAS/AAMS, Box 6. 32 On this, see J. S. [Jacques Samuel], ‘Jubiläum in London’, Die Presse, 3/4 June 1967. 33 ‘Opening of Vienna Office’, 11 May 1962, AAS/AAMS, Box 3. 34 AAS/AAMS, Box 11. 35 ‘Protest to Austria on Reder welcome’, The Times, 13 March 1985, p. 7. 36 Fischer to Foster, 15 March 1985, AAS/AAMS, Box 11. (In the event, Frischenschlager’s official visit to Britain was called off.) 37 On 7 March 1985, AAS/AAMS, Box 11. 38 Letter from Professor A[lexander] Kennaway, 2 February 1985, ibid. 39 Foster to D. W. A. Cole, 11 February 1983, ibid. 40 Foster to Dr Wolfgang Count Hartig, 20 May 1988, AAS/AAMS, ibid. 41 As suggested by the publication of its journal, Felix Austria, whose first issue appeared in 2004, as well as by its current membership figures of 1300 throughout Great Britain.

‘Now you see them, now you don’t.’ The Archives of the Refugee Committee of the British Federation of University Women Susan Cohen Initially this article explores the access situation relating to a substantial collection of refugee-related material which forms part of the large archive of the British Federation of University Women (BFUW). It traces the background to the archive and highlights the difficulty that the donors faced when choosing a repository. It also looks at the problems encountered by archives due to financial constraints, and the outcome for researchers wishing to examine valuable material. The second part provides a brief overview of the Refugee Committee of the BFUW from 1933, and looks at the nature, scope and extent of its work and the women it helped, regardless of race, religion or political creed.

Whilst the title of this article might, at first glance, seem somewhat curious, it is the most appropriate way of describing the situation that exists with the papers of the Ad-Hoc Refugee Committee of the British Federation of University Women. For although there was a very brief period in 2003 when these were accessible to researchers, the collection has not seen the light of day since then. The situation vis-à-vis this refugee archive not only demonstrates the difficulty that researchers interested in the refugee question have in gaining access to valuable archive material, but it also serves as a reminder that there are still collections of papers in the public/private domain which have remained hidden from view. The value of this collection is manifold. The minutes include lists of names and personal details of some of the academic women refugees who applied to the Committee for assistance from 1933 onwards, shedding light on their lives both before and, in many cases, after arriving in England. Along with the innumerable case files, the collection also illustrates the scope and scale of the humanitarian task undertaken by a specially formed refugee committee within a non-denominational British women’s organisation. Beyond this, the collection illustrates the reaction and response of the public and the British Government to the refugee question from 1933 onwards. The BFUW, now known as the British Federation of Women Graduates, is a national organisation and was set up in early 1907 to

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support university women on matters especially concerning them; its aims included encouraging independent research work by women, facilitating inter-communication and co-operation between the women of different universities, and stimulating the interest of women in municipal and public life. 1 Thanks to the fund-raising campaign spearheaded by Miss Sybil Campbell,2 who was the Honorary Secretary during the 1920s and 1930s, an International Hall of Residence for women students was established at Crosby Hall in Chelsea.3 For many years this was the very heart of the organisation, and housed the BFUW headquarters, its library and archives. What Sybil Campbell could not have anticipated was the invaluable role that Crosby Hall would play as a reception centre for the increasing numbers of academic women refugees fleeing Nazism in Europe. 4 The loss of Crosby Hall as a centre for hospitality between 1940 and 1942 due to wartime arrangements was recorded thus in the minutes: When the Hall had to be closed many letters were received from university women exiles saying how happy they had been in its congenial atmosphere and how kind had been the Warden and sympathetic residents. They felt they had lost a second home and hoped for a re-opening at the earliest possible moment.5

The existence of a collection of papers related to refugee/academic women first came to my attention in about 1999, at which time they were, so I was told, languishing in a university library somewhere in Portsmouth.6 Many fruitless enquiries followed, until several months later I learnt that these papers were, in fact, part of the archive of the BFUW, all of which had gone into a ‘temporary’ home after the organisation was forced to move from Crosby Hall in late 1992. It transpired that the new headquarters in Bloomsbury, London, lacked the space for the archive material and that negotiations to find a suitable permanent home had been started around 1993. But just as I began my enquiries in 1999-2000, the BFUW papers had been moved from Portsmouth and had finally been deposited in the Women’s Library at London Guildhall University. A suitable location for this collection, one might say, given the all-female membership of the organisation, and one which the BFUW welcomed as it secured the long-term future of their collection. The downside to the arrangement was that as they were unable to provide the Women’s Library with any financial help for the cataloguing process, they had to accept the warning that there would be a considerable delay in making the papers available to researchers.

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This then was the status quo when I first approached the Women’s Library seeking access to the refugee papers. As disappointed as I was about the closed state of the whole collection, I remained relatively patient, and made the occasional progress enquiry. Finally, in 2002, having been more persistent in my efforts, I was very grateful to be given special dispensation to examine the now partially listed material. Over several days I made sufficient notes to serve my purposes at the time – I was concerned then with Eleanor Rathbone’s connections with the BFUW in general and with the refugee committee in particular.7 At that time the refugee-related material took up nine boxes out of a total of thirty-seven, and from my preliminary examination it was obvious that this was an exciting cache of papers – the stuff that historians dream of discovering – and was an important and neglected collection that warranted more detailed examination. So, in 2005, when I embarked upon my current project – a study of ‘Gender and British refugee work in the Nazi era’ – the BFUW refugee committee was near the top of my list of organisations to be included. This material is of great significance, especially since to the best of my knowledge few people have had access to it in the past. Indeed, only a small number of historians even knew of the existence of this rich resource, or indeed of the Federation itself. The exceptions of note were Heather Nash, a visiting Australian historian who, in 1983, used a small selection of refugee-related material to produce a booklet about the Ad-Hoc Committee. 8 More recently, and also whilst the collection was still at Crosby Hall, Professor Carol Dyhouse made extensive use of the papers in the wider collection for her research on university women, but did not concern herself with the refugee material, other than mentioning the use of Crosby Hall as a social centre for refugees.9 Having seen the refugee material once, I took it for granted that there would be no problem re-examining it. But life is full of surprises, not all pleasant ones, and to my dismay – verging on disbelief – I was told, in late 2005, that the collection had, subsequent to my prior visits to the Women’s Library, been closed indefinitely. My remonstrations fell on deaf ears and I was told that the partial listing, which existed in 2002, was not considered reliable, and that the library’s financial resources were insufficient to provide an archivist to catalogue the collection. I was warned that it could be years before the situation changed. Not, I should point out, that the BFUW papers have been selected for special treatment, for there are .

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other collections that are designated ‘education-related’ at this repository suffering the same fate. My immediate response was to contact the BFUW themselves, in the hope that they, as the donors, could bring some pressure to bear on the repository. Their initial reaction was one of amazement and incredulity that their papers had yet to be catalogued and that the collection, of which the refugee papers form only a part, had never, to all intents and purposes, been available to researchers since the move. All credit to the BFUW, for they did try to persuade the Women’s Library to grant me exceptional access again to the refugee papers. This was refused on the grounds that they lacked an archivist to physically ‘supervise’ my research. In an effort to come up with a solution to this impasse, I did suggest, rather speculatively, that the refugee papers might be moved to another repository – the Parkes Library at the University of Southampton would be an ideal home – but realised, as did the BFUW, that this was an impractical suggestion. The refugee papers are, after all, an integral part of the wider collection, and it is right that they should all stay together. All seemed doom and gloom, and I had no choice but to resign myself to excluding this potentially valuable collection from my research. And the BFUW resigned themselves to being unable to access any of their historic papers for use in their forthcoming centenary exhibition in August 2007. Events took another turn in summer 2006 when the BFUW were, with regret, on the move again, this time packing up the Sybil Campbell Memorial Library in London prior to depositing it in its new home at Winchester College. To my great good fortune, during the course of clearing up, their archivist discovered a few stray refugee case files in the office safe. These, along with a set of annual reports covering the period 1938-1945 that remained on the bookshelf in Bloomsbury, gave me a valuable overview and insight into the workings of the refugee committee. But a greater piece of luck was in store for me in December 2006, when, in the final stages of collating and clearing up, the BFUW archivist came across what amounted to a treasure trove in the shape of the complete set of Minutes of the AdHoc Refugee Committee, along with some additional case files and correspondence. These were discovered in a cupboard at the top of the building where they had clearly been languishing for some time – and were rather more accessible than any of the papers in the Women’s Library!

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In January 2007, and thanks to the generosity of another University Archive, the BFUW archivist was able to place all of these additional papers in a temporary home, enabling me to examine them fully before they eventually get sent to join the cache of papers at the Women’s Library. How this material became separated from the rest is a matter of speculation, but it most likely occurred when, in the 1980s, Heather Nash did her research into the refugee work undertaken by the organisation. Since none of the refugee-related papers are, at present, available to researchers, there follows a brief overview of this divided collection. Like the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL)10 on which the BFUW Ad-Hoc Refugee Committee modelled itself, the refugee committee was concerned with the welfare of its international colleagues. These were specifically women graduates, academics and professionals who were members of counterpart groups abroad, although, as some of the individual case files and minutes show, exceptions were occasionally made, with husbands and relatives receiving assistance. The committee’s involvement with the refugee question began in 1933, following Hitler’s accession to power in Germany. Within weeks, the BFUW Executive Committee in Britain, which initially dealt with this problem, found itself receiving urgent requests for help from German members who wanted to flee Nazi repression. As the threat from Nazism grew, so the calls for assistance increased exponentially, and it was not long before those from Germany were supplemented by demands from women academics in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. By 1938 the scale of the problem had grown so much that a special sub-committee had to be set up to cope with the deluge of work. Notable as a founder member was Professor Edith Morley, a lecturer in English at the University of Reading who was also responsible for setting up the Reading Refugee Committee, 11 for she would appear to have been the only member of Jewish origin. During the life of the committee a total of nineteen BFUW members were involved with the activities, some for long periods of time, others on an occasional basis, but all were dedicated to helping refugees. At the very first official committee meeting, held on 17 June 1938 and attended by eight women, the new group set out the criteria in respect of applications: priority was given to cases where academic work ought to be continued, and in all other cases, careful consideration was to be given to the age and probable adaptability of applicants. The latter criterion was a measure of the anxiety that the

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committee had over the response of the general population to foreign refugees – and their concern that the incomers should have a positive impact on the host nation. During the early months of its existence, the refugee committee minutes rarely noted the religion of an applicant, but this changed by late 1938 when it became obvious that many more of the women seeking help were Jewish, or of Jewish descent. For example, in May 1939, of forty-five new applicants, nineteen were listed as Jewish, one as Protestant. Besides providing names, age and religion, a number of extant lists of applicants include information about academic qualifications and remarks on the nature of previous work, names of recommenders, emphasis on whether the woman had domestic skills and even in one case a mention of being a vegetarian. 12 The workload of the refugee committee continued to increase so much that in September 1938 the committee agreed to the appointment of a secretary, but only on a temporary basis for thirteen weeks – long enough, they were sure, to put things in order. The person they chose was Dr Erna Hollitscher, a Jewish woman who had fled Austria with the help of refugee friends following the Anschluss in March 1938. The minutes record her application: Permit obtained by Mrs Ormerod. Very good secretarial and translation work. Been receiving hospitality from Miss Campbell. Applying for post in Birmingham firm as German correspondent. If this does not materialize suggest for temporary secretary to this committee. 13

It was no accident that the committee chose a refugee for the post, for it was obvious to them that someone with the personal experience of forced migration combined with an excellent command of German and English would be best suited to the job. The fact that she was Jewish certainly stood the committee in good stead when it came to her dealing with the increasing numbers of Jewish academic refugee women, and with related organisations in Britain. Eleanor Rathbone’s connection with the BFUW was tenuous, even though she was a founder member. But as the most active campaigner for refugees she did not hesitate to contact them in November 1938, urging her organisation and local branches to respond urgently to the dire situation of refugees in Prague. For, in her opinion, there was not much more than a window of two weeks’ opportunity for them to leave. 14 November 1938 was a turning point indeed, for the committee, which had been renamed the Emergency Sub Committee, realised that they had totally underestimated the scale of the refugee

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problem, since contrary to their expectations, the workload intensified: well before the thirteen weeks were up, Dr Hollitscher, who was, meanwhile, on the look-out for an alternative job, was offered a permanent post as secretary. She did not hesitate in accepting, and not only did she establish herself as the lynchpin of the refugee committee, but she remained as secretary until the committee was disbanded in 1950 – a career spanning nineteen years.

Dr Hollitscher, shortly before she died15 The individual case files that I have viewed demonstrate the extraordinary amount of work that Dr Hollitscher dealt with, and the personal interest that she took in every case. For example, very often she would hear of a job vacancy and then match this up to a suitable

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applicant who, in many instances, had contacted her months before, and who would have been forgotten by a less intuitive person. Nor did she hesitate to use her own contacts to find employment or hospitality for a refugee if she thought it would help. Her duties also included visiting refugees in hospital periodically.16 Given this workload it is all the more remarkable that she was able to reply to correspondence as quickly as she did, for she rarely took more than two days to answer a letter. Amongst other official events, Dr Hollitscher always attended the Annual Conference of Refugee Workers, and this would have given her an added opportunity of meeting others working in the field. Networking was a very important tool in her armoury, and names that appear with regularity include those of Bertha Bracey and Miss Cadbury, both prominent members of the refugee committee of the Society of Friends, as well as Esther Simpson,17 the secretary and driving force behind the SPSL. Miss Cadbury, who was working abroad for the Society of Friends, was sometimes asked to interview applicants to the BFUW, to check on their suitability. This was the situation with Dr Dora Kulka, a Jewish chemist who was trying to leave Vienna in mid-1938.18 With the cooperation of Miss Cadbury in Vienna and the SPSL at home, a permit was obtained from the Home Office for her to enter Britain, which she did before the outbreak of World War Two, and the BFUW continued to try and find suitable scientific work for her in a brewery.19 Because of the situation vis-à-vis her parents, who became stateless in early 1939 and were awaiting expulsion from Czechoslovakia, she became one of the numerous cases marked as ‘special’ in the minutes. In this instance, even though helping the family was outside the scope of the committee, it was willing to assist indirectly by giving Dr Kulka financial help with living expenses.20 Many other academic refugee applicants were included in the ‘special’ category, and were similarly complicated cases: Dr Kimelman was considered to be ‘a specially difficult case’ as both she and her husband were dentists whom the Home Office had refused to admit at first, though it was finally persuaded to grant a permit, which came at the very last moment before the husband was put in a concentration camp for the third and last time. 21 The Kimelman family, mother, father and son, whose school fees and medical bills were paid for directly or indirectly by the BFUW, continued to need the financial and welfare support of the refugee committee up until the end of December 1942. By then, as the minutes note, the parents had both been appointed as school dental

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surgeons in Essex. Like Dr Kulka, they were extremely grateful for all the help the committee had given them. Dr Kulka was, it seems, amongst the more fortunate academic refugees – she managed to get her parents, but not her sister, into Britain, and through the generosity of an anonymous member of the BFUW received a grant substantial enough to support her parents. Workwise, she secured a teaching job in the bacteriological department of a Birmingham laboratory, supplementing her income by teaching and coaching.22 Later she, like many other academic refugee women, was able to make a donation to the committee by way of repayment.23 The BFUW would not have been as successful in its work without the cooperation of many other refugee committees, and the minutes demonstrate the way these organisations worked in conjunction with one another, sharing information and collectively pressing government for assistance and for changes in the rules governing aspects of the refugee question. Besides the collaboration with the SPSL, other groups mentioned include the International Student Service, the Church of England Committee for Non-Aryan Christians, the Association of Jewish Refugees and the British Movement for the Care of Children from Germany, to name but a few. Alongside the annual reports, the minutes are key to understanding the financing of the refugee committee, for this inevitably influenced both the numbers of women who could be helped and the nature and extent of the assistance they were given. There were in fact three main sources of income – alongside donations from private individuals as well as local BFUW associations, generous amounts of money were made available from gifts from the sister organisation in America, and there was also money paid by the British Government, being half of all approved expenditure connected with German and Austrian refugees.24 By June 1947 available figures show that over £2800 was received in the form of private gifts. This was almost matched by money sent from America from 1940 onwards.25 The first tranche of money, £1000, was sent in September 1940, followed by a further £1000 in December 1940 and yet another £1000 in May 1941, and these sums enabled the Executive Committee to give local associations permission to make payments of up to £10 without referral to them. Dr Hollitscher was similarly authorised, giving all concerned a greater freedom to deal with emergencies, of which there were many.26 But the committee would not stand for any nonsense from applicants who either did nothing to help themselves

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or, like a Dr C., behaved ‘somewhat casually both with regard to her own future and to the efforts made on her behalf’. 27 Other generous but occasional donations came from New Zealand and South Africa. The Canada Association was notable for the clothes and toy parcels which it sent to the BFUW – as the Annual Report for 1942-43 noted: The continual flow of useful and charming gifts from Canada has enabled this committee to increase the help they give by supplying clothing to those in need […] owing to the small income of the parents, the purchase of clothes means a real hardship, and those provided by our Canadian Federation are a godsend. 28

Again, there are many instances in the case files where refugees express their gratitude for the garments and gifts which Dr Hollitscher distributed amongst those in need, for this was yet another task that she undertook, being exceptionally careful to try and match clothing to the age and particular requirements of the recipient. Until all the archive material is reunited and made available to researchers, it is impossible to know exactly how many women applied to, and were actually helped by the BFUW refugee committee. In May 1939 alone, they received new applications from sixty-nine adults and eleven children, with numbers inevitably reducing after the outbreak of war, when it became increasingly difficult to leave Europe. 29 Whilst there may have been a decrease in the numbers of new applicants, this did not reduce the amount of work. Even the refugee committee themselves had difficulty calculating how many were being helped at any particular moment. This uncertainty led to some friction between the BFUW refugee committee and Bloomsbury House, for when the latter requested this information in December 1939, the minutes record: ‘The activity of the Federation could not be judged by the number of “units” which Bloomsbury House asked for so as to estimate the scope of responsibility of each committee.’30 The nature of the work was such that it was ongoing: much of it was concerned with finding hospitality for refugees with local associations and members, and finding suitable employment for them. Only if these avenues failed were grants for maintenance or research work given. In most cases, the women had made every effort to help themselves before resorting to the Federation, and continued to do so even when they had received some help. In common with other women refugees, they often had little alternative but to accept domestic posts for which Home Office permits were available, but this

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was work that was rarely commensurate with the qualifications of those concerned. In other cases, women were seeking help with tuition fees, either because they wished to supplement a degree with a more marketable professional qualification, or so that they could complete a course of study which had been curtailed by political events in their homeland. The volume of correspondence that these cases generated was tremendous, and often spanned many months, or even years, and the many surviving letters reflect the personal interest that Dr Hollitscher and the committee took in their fellow graduates. Like the SPSL, the BFUW numbered some notable academics amongst their applicants. One such was Dr Rose Rand, a distinguished philosopher born in the then Austrian province of Galicia in 1903. She obtained her PhD. from the University of Vienna in 1938, and, with the help of Otto Neurath, a fellow refugee from Vienna and member of the so-called Vienna Circle of influential twentieth-century philosophers, and the British philosopher L. Susan Stebbing, she emigrated to England in 1939. There is, as I noted in 2003, a big file on Professor Rand amongst those held at The Women’s Library, and, as such, it is currently unavailable to researchers. However, I did note then that the file includes a reference from Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I also know from other sources that during the spring of 1940, Rand worked as a nurse whilst she struggled to adjust to her new life. At some time in 1940 she was admitted as a ‘distinguished foreigner’ to attend lectures at the Faculty of Moral Science at Cambridge University, where she joined the seminars of Wittgenstein. Her university privileges were revoked in 1943, and besides teaching German and psychology to night school students she had to work in a metal factory to make ends meet. In 1950 she eventually received a small grant enabling her to become a ‘recognised student’ at Oxford University. She left England for the USA in 1954 to pursue her career. In December 1939, the name of Dr Hedwig Kohn appears on the list of applicants to the BFUW. Kohn, an eminent astrophysicist, was dismissed from her position in Breslau in 1933, due to Nazi regulations which barred Jews from government service. She survived by fulfilling contracts for applied research in the illumination industry until 1938, when she found herself without work or financial resources and came very close to being a victim of the Holocaust. Finally, she was offered temporary positions at three women’s colleges in the United States through the aid of Rudolf Ladenburg, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and many others. She obtained a visa and left

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Germany in July 1940. The BFUW had in fact recommended that the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) help her, and in March 1940 it was noted that the IFUW Refugee Committee had promised a grant of £50, on condition that Dr Kohn was admitted to Sweden, which it would appear that she was. Less successful were their attempts to help Anita Mondolfo, a prominent Italian librarian of Jewish origin, whose name appears in the list of applicants to the refugee committee in May 1939. The minutes record how, on 10 June 1940, the day war was declared in Italy, she was arrested and accused of being an element capable of disrupting the public order in exceptional times. She was held in political confinement for two and a half years, and only released, aged 54, in December 1942. The relationship between the committee and government offices did not always run smoothly. The minutes of December 1941 record how a Survey of Foreign Professional Women was first mooted, and how the opinion of the Home Office was subsequently sought in July 1942. Dr Hollitscher’s involvement was quite evident, as was her contact with Esther Simpson of the SPSL, who seemed keen to undertake a similar survey of the men whom her committee had helped. However, by December 1942, and as the minutes describe, the initially favourable response of the Home Office had soured and the advice was that no such survey should be undertaken, reflecting the official concern that a register could be used for postwar purposes: their hope was that most refugees would want to leave Britain after the war and return to their homelands. In the event, the Refugee Committee decided to proceed with the survey regardless, and Dr Hollitscher was asked to ‘amplify the existing register of the Refugee Committee, with a view to the probable needs of reconstruction’. 31 To do this, she conducted personal interviews to establish the attitude of the majority of registered foreign graduates to the idea of staying, emigrating or returning home. 1944 saw the Survey Committee recommending the compiling and distribution of a leaflet on the contribution of foreign women graduates in Britain to the war effort – perhaps as part of an attempt at making life easier for those who wanted to stay post-war. To conclude, working for the benefit of refugees brought the BFUW Emergency Sub Committee into close contact with their counterpart groups in Europe, North America, Australasia and South Africa as well as the network of local groups at home, thus satisfying the objective set out in the IFUW’s charter, ‘to promote understanding

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and goodwill between university women of all nations, regardless of race, religion or political creed’. As for the individuals involved, the women committee members reacted in the best of humanitarian traditions and provided a truly supportive network for their international members. Similarly, the strength of character of the refugees, and their resourcefulness and determination to make a new life for themselves is ever present in the papers. The BFUW refugee papers are an ideal collection to be included in the BARGE project – the Online Database of British Archival Resources relating to German-Jewish Refugees 1933-1950 (BARGE) being created by the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex - for this aims to make information on British archival resources relating to German-speaking refugees available to the interested public, especially academic researchers. However, the best that can be hoped for at present is that these documents are mentioned as an extant source of historical information which is of great potential value, but which is currently unavailable to researchers.

Notes 1

For an overview of the early history of the BFUW see Carol Dyhouse ‘The British Federation of University Women and the Status of Women in Universities, 19071939’, in Women’s History Review, 4 (4) (1995), pp. 465-85. 2 Sybil Campbell (1889-1977), a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge, made legal history as one of ten women admitted at Middle Temple in November 1922, when women were first called to the English Bar. For a biography see Sybil Oldfield, ‘Campbell, Sybil (1889-1977)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/61344, accessed 4 May 2007). 3 Crosby Hall, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, originally stood in Bishopsgate, where it was the Great Hall of the fifteenth-century Crosby Place. Shakespeare was familiar with this former city mansion, and wrote it into Richard III as the scene of Gloucester's plotting. The building was occupied by Richard while he was Duke of Gloucester. Later it was owned by Sir Thomas More. The Hall was moved stone by stone from Bishopsgate to Chelsea in 1910 in order to rescue it from proposed demolition. It was then incorporated into the buildings of the BFUW. 4 Janet H. Sondheimer, History of the British Federation of University Women, 19071957 (London: British Federation of University Women, 1957), pp. 47-48. 5 BFUW Annual Report, 1939-1940, p. 21.

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I have recently discovered that the collection was placed in the Frewen Library, University of Portsmouth. My thanks to Nancy Edwards, archivist for the BFUW, for this information. 7 Susan Cohen, ‘Eleanor Rathbone and her Work for Refugees’, PhD Thesis, University of Southampton, 2005. 8 Heather Nash, Refugees and the British Federation of University Women (London: British Federation of University Women, 1985). 9 Dyhouse, ‘British Federation of University Women’, p. 466. 10 William Beveridge, A defence of free learning (London: Oxford University Press, 1959). 11 Cheryl Law, ‘Morley, Edith Julia (1875–1964)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/48617, 6 May 2007). 12 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 12 May 1939, entry for Kathe Breslauer, p.10. 13 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 19 September 1938, p. 3. 14 Letter by Miss Johnston to Miss Taylor, 15 November 1938, BFUW Papers, Women’s Library. 15 Picture of Dr Hollitscher, shortly before she died, by courtesy of the Sybil Campbell Library Archive, University of Winchester. 16 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 23 February 1944. 17 Sybil Oldfield, ‘Simpson, Esther (1903–1996)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/64023). See also Refugee Scholars: Conversations with Tessa Simpson, ed. by R.M. Cooper (Leeds: Moorland, 1992). 18 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 17 June 1938; 20 July 1938. 19 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 19 September 1938. 20 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 17 February 1939. 21 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 20 Jan 1939, p. 12. 22 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 16 December 1939. 23

In 1942 she made a donation of £52 as part-repayment of a grant. See BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 30 March 1942. 24 BFUW Annual Report, 1942-43. p. 16. 25 Nash, Refugees and the British Federation of University Women, p. 9. 26 Ibid., p. 10. 27 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 18 December 1940, p. 2. 28 BFUW Annual Report, 1942-43. p. 17. 29

For example there were 80 new applicants recorded in the Minutes of 12 May 1939, including 11 children. This declined to 45 in the Minutes of 23 Sept 1939 and to just 20 in the Minutes of 29 March 1940. See BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 12 May 1939, pp. 10-16; 23 Sept 1939, pp. 10-13; 29 March 1940, pp. 10-11. 30 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 16 December 1939, p. 2. 31 BFUW Refugee Sub Committee Minutes, 19 December 1942.

‘Dein grosser Brief war ein Ereignis’: the private and professional correspondence of the refugee art historians Hilde and Otto Kurz Anna Nyburg The subject of this article is the private archive owned by Erica Barrett, the daughter of the Viennese refugee art historians Otto and Hilde Kurz. The collection of some one thousand items includes the private and professional correspondence between her parents and their relatives, friends and colleagues, as well as many photographs, documents and works of art. The letters, in particular those sent from Erica Barrett’s mother Hilde to her sister Ilse in America, give a detailed picture of Hilde’s life as a refugee in London and shed light on the working life of art historians at that time.

Erica Barrett (born 1940) is the only child of two Viennese refugee art historians, Hilde Kurz (née Schüller) (1910-1981) and Otto Kurz (1908-1975). She has in her possession a collection of the private and professional correspondence of both her parents, which is referred to here as the Erica Barrett archive. Of the two parents, Otto had the more prominent career; Who’s Who 1975 lists him as ‘Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition with special reference to the Near East, Librarian at the Warburg Institute from 1944-1965, Visiting Lecturer at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in 1964, Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford 1970-1971’.1 A booklet published after his death contains an impressive list of his publications.2 Hilde Kurz’s career is less well chronicled, for reasons which will become clear.3 The correspondence is not neatly divided between the domestic and professional spheres; the borderline between the two is often blurred. Art history was a part of the daily lives of the Kurzes. In a sense, what Erica Barrett owns can be seen as several separate archives, held together by the thread of the family relationships. The collections are notable in that they cover in great detail ‘typical’ refugee experiences: escape, adjustment to life in Britain, the search for employment and internment. In this paper there will be an overview of the archive, most of which remains to be researched. In addition to the themes already mentioned, much of the correspondence deals with the practice and theory of art history, it includes discussions about interpretations, provenance and datings of

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art works and will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the development of art historical research in this country. Much could be made of the correspondence on the subject of the Warburg Institute and the Courtauld, for instance. The question must then be asked: what can this archive add to research on the refugee experience? Because of the scope of the correspondence and the number of family members it involved, the archive could perhaps be seen as representing the refugee experience in microcosm as all the themes are present. The starting point for an analysis of the archive must be a brief introduction to the background of the main correspondents. It should be stated from the beginning that Otto Kurz’s own voice in the archive is mostly silent: his half of the correspondence is not there. He did not keep copies of his own letters as, for example, his father did. Both Otto and Hilde came from Jewish families: Otto Kurz’s family was more modest in social and economic terms than Hilde’s family, the Schüllers, who were wealthy and upper middle-class. Richard Schüller (1870-1972) was Hilde Kurz’s father. Unusually for an Austrian Jew, he had a long and distinguished career as a statesman. After studying law in Vienna, he entered the Austrian civil service, moving to the foreign office after World War One. Schüller rose through the ranks. In 1923, seeing Austria as an important link between the estranged Germany and Italy, he negotiated important trade agreements with representatives of the new Italian premier, Benito Mussolini. This connection was to prove very significant later. He had three daughters, Ilse (1904-1978), Susi (1907-1995) and Hilde. Ilse emigrated to the States in July 1938; Susi had married an Italian two years before the ‘Anschluss’ and emigrated to Rome; and Hilde married in 1937 and moved to London (see below). Some letters from Hilde to Ilse were included in The Vienna Paradox,4 a personal account by Erica Barrett’s cousin (Ilse’s daughter, Marjorie Perloff) of the family’s flight from Austria and consequent adjustment to life in the country of refuge: in their case, the United States of America. These letters have now been returned to Erica, and form a major part of the archive. None of the other correspondence in the archive has been published. In The Vienna Paradox, the author demonstrates the importance of having powerful contacts in the 1930s through the recounting of a striking anecdote. 5 While the older Schüller women left immediately for Rome after the ‘Anschluss’, Richard lingered on, in the deluded hope of salvaging his civil service pension. The

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Gestapo made it clear that he would not even be allowed to leave, let alone claim a pension. He lay low until July when he left for a hiking trip in the Alps, meeting up with his daughter Susi and walking until they finally encountered Italian border guards who stopped them. Schüller suggested that the guards contact their commander about him. By the next morning, a telegram had arrived bearing the message: ‘L’amico Schüller e’ benvenuto’ (Friend Schüller is welcome), signed by Mussolini. Before the ‘Anschluss’, Hilde had studied art history at Vienna University under Professor Julius Schlosser. Her co-students were Ernst Gombrich and Otto Kurz, whom she was later to marry. Otto Kurz’s father was a family doctor and a consultant to the tobacco industry, as wells as an amateur painter. Otto obtained his PhD in 1931; all his educational certificates are stored in the archive. Through Julius Schlosser Kurz had a recommendation to the Warburg Institute, then housed in Hamburg, and went to work there in 1933,6 after having been beaten by Nazi thugs on the campus of Vienna University. By that time, the scholars at the Warburg understood the risk to the collection, which was owned by the Jewish Aby Warburg and they left for London. Having been asked to join them by Fritz Saxl, Otto moved to London in 1934. One part of the correspondence originates from this period: the literally hundreds of letters that Otto Kurz’s fiancée, Hilde, wrote to him from Vienna during their separation. These letters, which have not been reread since that time, cover Hilde’s life, including her travels, for example, to Egypt. In 1937 Otto returned briefly to Vienna from London, and the couple married. Otto and Hilde were secular Viennese Jews, but they had a Jewish wedding as was customary. Their certificates are intact in the archive; two copies exist, one in German, one in Hebrew. It does seem that Otto was not completely indifferent to religion: there is at least one reference to his having been to synagogue at Purim in the early 1930s.7 Having married in Vienna, the couple then immediately travelled, on New Year’s Day 1938, to London, where they set up home. Previously, Kurz had been sharing lodgings with his friend Gombrich. From that time on, Hilde started to correspond regularly with her sister, Ilse Mintz, in America. The letters she wrote have all been returned to Erica Barrett and, as mentioned above, cover the years 1938 to 1943. As one would expect, the 1938 letters cover the horror of the ‘Anschluss’ and the problem of how to get the older Schüllers out of Austria. They also show how hard it was for the two

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refugee art historians to make a living, and their daily struggles to get books published, to find lecturing jobs and, in Hilde’s case, more mundane publishing jobs, such as indexing. They cover the strangeness of the English, the humiliation of appeasement, and give an interesting insight into the domestic life of two art historians. The letters are in German until Hilde decided after the outbreak of war in 1939, to speed up the job of the Censor, whose job it was to monitor the content of letters from enemy aliens, and began to write in English. Erica Barrett possesses in these letters a really substantial testimonial to her parents’ and grandparents’ lives. They also give insight into the lives of those with whom her relatives worked and corresponded. Moreover, what is noteworthy about the archive is the excellent condition of most of the letters (still for the most part in their original stamped envelopes). Documents and letters in this collection are accompanied by packs of photographs, some of them dating back to Otto Kurz’s father’s service in World War One. Both the Kurz and the Schüller families included keen photographers. The photographs portray in addition to domestic life, for example, Austrian mountain scenes in the 1930s, as well as among other things an architectural record of pre-war Vienna taken by Hilde. Among the correspondence are also postcards from the families’ extensive travels. The archive is already to a large extent well organised, with letters grouped together according to year and stored in large manila envelopes. However, there is some overlapping, with more than one envelope per year and with no final listing of the items inside. One of the most complete set of letters within the archive is the correspondence from Hilde Kurz to her sister, Ilse Mintz. They were often written only days apart. In this way they give a complete and seamless impression of refugee life. The largest amount of correspondence dates from 1938 although the file for 1939 is also substantial. The correspondence for the following years dwindles progressively, with its content being focused increasingly on domestic rather than professional life. It is not known why this falling off should have happened, although no doubt the additional demands on Hilde’s time made by motherhood were one factor. A closer look at the Kurz-Minz archive reveals, understandably, concern with developments with regard to the political situation in Austria. These are covered, as already indicated, in the 1938 correspondence as they happened. In the 1938 folder but

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undated, a letter from Hilde refers to the current situation in Austria that she and her family had been lucky to escape: ‘Die Straßenverhaftungen sollen aufgehört haben […] ’ On 27 September 1938, she comments on both the politics of appeasement and the reaction of her English neighbours. Having noted that ‘einfache Leute’ had not known until recently where Czechoslovakia was, even at the time of Chamberlain’s visit to Berchtesgaden on 15 September, she notices the change in them: ‘[sie] sind schon völlig gefasst auf den Krieg, wissen alles von Hitler und sagen mit großer Ruhe: isn’t it dreadful!’ In the same letter, she writes that she saw two of her neighbours coming out onto the landing between flats and invited them in. Having just heard the report of Hitler’s speech on the radio, they answered her mildly, to her surprise: ‘We hope you’re not a Nazi’.8 Hilde’s comments remind one that the refugees’ long-term safety in Britain was by no means a foregone conclusion. Hilde writes on 12 October 1938: ‘[…] ich bin überzeugt, daß auch England in nicht zu ferner Zeit die Juden herausjagen wird, besonders die nichtenglischen’.9 This pessimistic view was followed by thoughts on emigrating further to the United States. However, she admits in this same letter that the Kurzes’ chances of being admitted to the States were practically non-existent. The period of appeasement was seen by many of the British, and probably the majority of the refugees, with disgust and the Kurzes were no exception. On this subject, on 5 October 1938, some six days after Chamberlain’s Munich agreement, Hilde writes: ‘Unser Ekel ist wohl größer als unsere Erleichterung.’ In the same letter, she gives voice to her worries about future developments in Britain. She tells her sister how she listens to the radio all day and then feels distressed. More than once, however, she alludes to the calming effect of work at this difficult time. For example, in April 1938, just after the ‘Anschluss’, she writes that such work stops her from constantly worrying about her friends and their life in general. Apart from her paid work, she also did voluntary work: ‘Weil die Welt sehr klein ist, helfe ich jetzt der Academic Assistance Council mit der italienischen Korrespondenz, übersetze italienische curricula von Ärzten ins Englische.’10 Most of the Kurzes’ income in the pre-war period, apart from a modest retainer from the Warburg and a 2-year scholarship for Otto Kurz, came from the books that they wrote, translated or indexed. On

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5 April 1938 Hilde wrote to her sister that Otto had just been to see his publisher about the book Fakes 11 that he had been commissioned to write: ‘Dieser [der Verleger] sprach mit Entzücken von der Inhaltsangabe, es sei ganz unglaublich wie ein Mensch so viel wissen könne,’ However, this praise was followed by a comment on the remuneration: ‘Reich wird man trotzdem nicht. £40 beim Erscheinen, 10% vom Preis, (15/– kostet das – ungeschriebene – Buch) und dabei ist zu befürchten, daß es keine große Auflage erreichen wird.’ With regard to Hilde Kurz and her attempts to find suitable work, it should be noted that refugee women art historians have already been the focus of a certain amount of research.12 Such studies tend to show how these women had to take on work which was intellectually beneath them, as indeed refugee women from other professions did. Although neither Anne Béchard-Léauté’s or Ulrike Wendling’s study focuses on Hilde Kurz, her experiences conform to the conclusions drawn in both studies about the professional lives of the refugee women art historians. Despite Hilde’s obvious ability and dedication to her research, her work in London was mostly not of a scholarly nature. She alludes more often than not, in her letters to her sister, to the search for work and her methods for tackling the commissions she did receive. One example of the sort of work that Hilde managed to find is referred to in her letters of June 1938 when Sir Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery, asked her to compile the index for his book on Leonardo da Vinci. She was not paid for the job until 6 May 1939 and writes bitterly to her sister on this payment: ‘Der erste Index trug £12, sie kam heute mit einer Entschuldigung, Sir Kenneth habe so lange gebraucht um den ‘correct amount’ zu erfahren.’ Explaining that he had asked several people for their advice on this payment, Hilde added: ‘Und dieser Mann ist einer der reichsten Männer Englands und gilt als ebenso elegant wie vornehm!’ 13 The English art historian had little idea of what it was to worry constantly about money. But at least it was easy work and she later received another similar commission from him. Her father-in-law timed her at work; she wrote to her sister that apparently she managed 35 references a day, about four an hour. As already indicated, this particular archive has the added dimension of including professional correspondence between art historians. Much research has already been carried out on émigré art historians.14 Indeed, art historians are of particular interest within the field of German Exile Studies because of the fact that the academic

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subject of art history, certainly at undergraduate level, was a relatively new one in Britain. Britain’s late arrival to art history as an academic discipline has been noted by, for example, Dieter Wuttke, who pointed out that although there were chairs in England in Fine Arts where undergraduates were taught aesthetics and criticism, chairs in Art History were not created until after the war.15 Refugee art historians are credited with being partly responsible for the establishment of this field in this country. The move of the Warburg Institute to London certainly helped in this regard. Refugees also taught at what was in some senses a rival: the Courtauld Institute. Art history before the arrival of refugee art historians had been largely an occupation for wealthy dilettantes or collectors. Anthony Blunt – perhaps with Kenneth Clark one of Britain’s best-known art historians – learned about research methods from the refugee Max Friedländer before the arrival of the Warburg scholars. He then continued to learn from the refugee scholars with whom he had much professional contact. There are several letters in the archive from Blunt to Otto Kurz.16 Hilde also received commissions to work as a picture editor on various books, for example, The London Anthology.17 In that book her role is clearly acknowledged. Erica Barrett remembers her mother reminiscing about working during the 1940s at the offices of Adprint, a book-packaging company founded by the Viennese refugee Wolfgang Foges. Indeed, Erica played there during the school holidays. This company was co-directed by Walter Neurath, later to found Thames and Hudson with fellow refugee Eva Feuchtwang. Adprint was staffed almost exclusively by German-speaking refugees, who all collaborated as picture researchers and editors and designers on, for example, the successful series Britain in Pictures. This series of illustrated books, produced between 1941 and 1950, celebrating different aspects of British life was intended to both inspire those at home and stimulate the sympathy of those abroad, encouraging those in the Americas, the Empire and the Commonwealth to join in the War. The books were widely sold abroad. Although Erica Barrett still has her mother’s collection of books from that period (not of course in itself proof of her employment on the project), there is no reference to her work at Adprint in Hilde’s correspondence. Erica Barrett feels that this omission is a reflection of the shame that her mother felt in carrying out work which was so far beneath her capabilities as an art historian. Nevertheless, such work was a vital source of income when, as the letters reveal, paid work was hard to come by.

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Unlike the largely unrecognised achievements of Hilde Kurz, Otto Kurz’s successful career has certainly been the subject of scholarly articles (see endnote 1) and he was an active researcher himself. His correspondents from all over the world wrote asking him for comment on various works of art. He contributed to the prestigious Burlington Magazine and was on the board of this magazine. As already mentioned, he wrote the definitive book on fakes. His lifelong friend Ernst Gombrich, in his chapter on Kurz in Tributes, drew attention to the ‘speed and accuracy with which he [Kurz] located, absorbed and retained information, and the utter selflessness with which he shared his knowledge with others’.18 Letters in the archive also underline the professional respect that Gombrich held for Kurz. On 11 March 1944, Gombrich wrote to his friend and Warburg colleague: ‘Whenever I get another evidence of your prodigious knowledge, Otto, I feel like giving it up altogether. […] Why don’t you write a book a day and an article every hour?’ He closed the letter, which dealt with Italian baroque painters, among other subjects, with the half-joking request: ‘I wish you could come here and teach me history of art. When can you come???’19 A closer look at the letters in the Kurz-Mintz archive, that is to say the letters written from Hilde to Ilse, also gives a more personal impression of the writer and her concerns. One letter which pre-dates the escape of the older members of the Schüller family from Vienna and is typical of the tone and content of the correspondence of this time is one written on 18 March 1938 immediately following the ‘Anschluss’. It introduces two of the themes common to the letters at this time: firstly, anxiety about the older members of the Schüller family with related discussions on the best way of getting them out of Austria and secondly, the constant search for work and income: Liebste Ilse Unsere Briefe haben sich gekreuzt. Du kannst Dir vorstellen mit welcher Erschütterung wir Deinen gelesen haben. Ich bewundere Euren Mut und Eure Entschlossenheit, besonders von deinem Schwiegervater finde ich ganz unwahrscheinlich. Wären nur unsere Eltern auch erst so weit! Ich bekam Susis Brief von vor ihrer Anreise aus Rom: sie erlangte durch den Propagandaminister Bono ein Telegramm hinaus an die italien. Gesandtschaft in Wien, sie möge für Papas Sicherheit sorgen, ausserdem versprach man Susi Straneo (1. Legationsrat) werde ihr zur Verfügung stehen. Seitdem

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habe ich nichts gehört. Was weißt Du von Großmamas Plänen? Erwin [Theodore Schüller’s brother] sagt, Ihr denkt daran alle gleich nach Amerika zu gehen, ruht Euch nur vorher ein bißchen aus, oder [?] keine Ruhe? Ich finde Zürich zu nahe. Falls Ihr herkommt, was ich sehr wünsche, müsst Ihr Euch mit einem entsprechenden Kreditbrief oder so etwas für den Immigration officer versehen, Ihr müsst ihn ja dann nicht in Anspruch nehmen. Ich werde morgen in das Warburg Institute gehen und mich bei Fräulein Bing, die alles weiß, erkundigen, wie man das am besten macht, Dir gleich wieder schreiben. Bei allem Traurigen habe ich etwas Erfreuliches zu berichten, wenn es auch nur materiell ist. Der vortreffliche Professor Saxl, den man gar nicht genug preisen kann, verschaffte nicht nur Ernst und Otto noch einen Auftrag für ein dem ersten ähnliches Buch für das kommende Jahr sondern ging zu Sir Percival David, dem Marco Polo Narren mit dessen Index wir uns in Wien so geplagt haben und der nach seiner Ablieferung sagte, er habe den Otto so gern und möchte etwas für ihn tun. Dem sagte Saxl, daß wir unser Einkommen verloren hätten und Sir P. gibt daraufhin Gombrich und Otto je £500 für 2 Jahre unter der Bedingung, daß sie dann eine Ausstellung hätten. Damit werden wir natürlich sehr sparen müssen, weil man ja nicht weiß was man dann haben wird aber zusammen mit dem Einkommen von den Büchern ist damit ist unsere Existenz gesichert und wir brauchen niemand mehr zur Last fallen. Schreibe mir bald, ich denke unaufhörlich an Euch und versuche mir vorzustellen, was Ihr tut, sprecht und denkt. Alles Liebe an alle, Dich und die Kinder umarmt Deine Hilde20

Another large part of the archive is formed by the letters that Max Kurz wrote to his son during this time. Max Kurz, who moved in with his son and daughter-in-law in London, had one habit which could endear him to a researcher: he threw nothing away. Having been threatened by the Nazi authorities that he would have to move from the family home in Vienna to Leopoldstadt, he moved first to Brno in Czechoslovakia, where he had family, the Hirsches (see below), before moving to London in September 1938. The exact details of the father’s move are unclear even to the family members themselves. He wrote to his son that he was having to write down notes for the maid, who was presumably Czech and spoke no German: ‘Die Zettel werde ich sammeln, damit sie, wie die Beethovens für die Nachwelt erhalten

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bleiben.’21 When Dr Kurz senior died in 1941, the wallet he still carried on him, now in the archive, contained not only his ration book, but his alien order book, a copy of the letter informing him that he had an entry visa to Britain, a list of useful English phrases, the publication entitled While you are in England telling aliens how to behave in Britain, and a small number of Austrian postage stamps. He brought not only all his degree certificates with him to Britain but every school report he had ever had, his weapons ID card from World War One, a letter written from six-year old Otto to his father at the front; the list is endless. Unusually, as a keen amateur photographer, he took photographs of his own replies to his son’s letters, and these miniature copies are archived together with his original replies. In the letters to his son, in addition to the usual fatherly advice, there are allusions to the reference work that Dr Kurz senior carried out for Otto in the museums and art galleries of Vienna, a labour of love for his absent son. The Kurzes’ friendship with their fellow student and refugee colleague at the Warburg, Ernst Gombrich, is reflected in letters from 1938 onwards. This correspondence with the celebrated art historian sheds light on some areas of research in art history. The book which was to launch his career, certainly financially, and to bring him celebrity, was The Story of Art, published by Phaidon in 1950. It is in the Erica Barrett Archive that the original connection between Gombrich and Phaidon becomes clear. In a separate part of the archive are letters concerning the life of Theodore (Teddy) Schüller, Hilde’s first cousin and for some years an editor at the Oxford University Press, responsible for overseeing the production of The Oxford Companion to Art. When Theodore Schüller died, his former school classmate Ernst Gombrich spoke at his funeral. In a written version of his speech, Gombrich reveals that it was Teddy (presumably in Vienna before the war) who had introduced him to Bela Horovitz, the founder of the Phaidon Press, which was created in Vienna and rescued from there in 1938 to continue its existence in London. Horovitz had initially, before the war, commissioned Gombrich to write a history of art suitable for young people. Although this was to be a spectacularly successful project for both Phaidon and Gombrich, the timing was unfortunate. Gombrich, who was very keen to support the British fight against facism, found war work at the BBC, listening in to German broadcasts and reporting on their content. Such work was often carried out at night and was time-consuming. He wrote

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bemoaning this to his friend and Warburg colleague Otto Kurz on 25 May 1944: Meine Kunstgeschichte für Horovitz macht gar keine Fortschritte […] Ich habe noch keine Ahnung, wie das werden soll, weil ich vor allem ganz ratlos bin, wo ich Abbildungsmaterial hernehmen soll. Ohne schoene und ausgesuchte Bilder ist das ganze ja sinnlos, und ich weiss nicht einmal wo man unschoene und unausgesuchte Bilder finden kann. 22

This also sheds light on the difficulties finding suitable material that picture editors such as the refugees Ruth Rosenberg, at Thames and Hudson, and Hilde Kurz must have had. Erica Barrett remembers that her mother collected pictures and prints wherever she could, buying prints and scraps of paper from second-hand bookshops. The above reference to Gombrich’s wartime activity is not the only one. Records, for example at the archive of the Academic Assistance Council/Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, show that Gombrich often wrote to them asking them to advise him as to how he could give his assistance to the British government, frustrated that his enemy alien status prevented him from joining the armed forces to fight against Germany.23 In a much less serious vein, in October 1939 after the outbreak of war, and referring to his refugee colleagues at the Warburg, he wrote to the Kurzes in English: ‘I keep picturing myself, Otto [Kurz], [Otto] Pächt, [Ernst] Kris, [Ernst] Buschbek, [Otto] Benesch under the storm commando of Dr [Ludwig] Münz […]’ He goes on to say that if it were not a little too serious, that it would make a marvellous ‘Institutionsstück’, a reference to the Warburg’s in-house comedy sketch evenings, which were no doubt a good way of letting off steam for the refugees.24 One cannot help but be amused, as Gombrich himself obviously was, at the thought of these refugee art historians and gallery directors, some of them no longer young, in uniform on active service. For those refugee enemy aliens not engaged in war work, such as Gombrich’s service at the BBC monitoring German broadcasts, internment was a distinct possibility. Hilde’s letters to her sister reveal that she was certain that Otto would be interned as an enemy alien. On 6 June 1940, Hilde wrote of the strange time spent waiting to hear when this would happen. The letter touches on the difficulties of being separated from her sister Ilse, and refers as usual to the problems of finding sufficient income:

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Anna Nyburg It is hard to imagine what the world will be like on your birthday, I hope with all my heart that it will be a fairly peaceful and propitious day and that we shall after all be able to send you a substantial birthday present. I do not believe that you and I could ever be estranged by prolonged intervals without direct communication. At least on my side the links are far too real to be destroyed by either space or time. I feel just as near to you that I did [two years ago]. My silence was largely due to prolonged or rather recurrent depressions caused above all by our financial situation and inflamed by Mama’s rather accusing attitude on this point. I therefore deliberately preferred impersonal to personal occupations, and letter-writing in particular to you – belongs to the latter class. Now this vital defect of being without income by the end of July (my personal occupations just provided for one month and June is the last month of the scholarship) has vanished into the background before more vital cares. Seeing how useless bothering about the future is nowadays, I stopped doing it and live in the loveliest weather mostly in my lovely garden, visited by many nice friends, who all endeavour to match the calm attitude of the English. Moreover, I try to enjoy Otto’s company as much as possible although I am of course unable to accompany him to the library any longer. He would definitely prefer the so-called Pioneer Corps (non-combatant troops composed of enemy aliens), but I wonder whether he will achieve this aim in time or will be interned after all, for we are practically certain that all men from Austria and Germany will be interned. As to being depressed on account of the situation, one has visualised the implication of an Allied defeat for us and our like, one really has no desire to dwell on them and as a rule one does not. 25

By this time, Hilde was eight months pregnant, which was no doubt the reason why she could not accompany her husband to the library, as mentioned above. Her joy at her pregnancy was expressed in letters up until the birth in July 1940. In June, Otto was sent off to a camp not on the Isle of Man but, unusually, to one in Scotland, Glenbranter in Strachur.26 He was allowed very little communication during internment. Otto’s one letter to Hilde still in the archive contains the usual requests for personal comforts but also adds that the writer has seen an article about the release of internees. He wonders if

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the Courtauld could make an application on his behalf. In the event, he was released in September; his last letter from the camp is dated 8 August 1940. Their daughter was born in July 1940. Later, Otto recalled that he had been called forward from the morning roll call in his internment camp and informed of the birth of his daughter. Obviously, Otto Kurz was not there to see his daughter’s first few weeks of life. Camp life in Glenbranter was terribly monotonous and dreary and correspondence was limited. Hilde notes: ‘In six weeks Otto had two wires with 7 words.’ To help compensate for this loss, the refugee artist Bettina Ehrlich, who along with her husband the sculptor Georg was a close friend of the Kurzes, made several studies of the infant Erica, so that her father could see what she had first looked like on his return. These sketches and paintings are still in the possession of Erica Barrett, who has written about the artist. She also possesses work by the refugee artist Katerina Wilczynski, another friend of the Kurzes. Internment was a lonely experience for Kurz as for most other internees. One friendship dates from that period, that with the writer Heine Meinhard.27 There are only a couple of letters, written well after the war, representing the relationship between Meinhard and Otto Kurz and there do not appear to be any references in them to their shared internment experiences. During the war, between 1942 and 1944, the Kurzes spent some time in Aberystwyth, working at the National Library of Wales, where many of Britain’s most precious paintings from the National Gallery, under the direction of Sir Kenneth Clark, had been sent. From there, they were placed in disused mineshafts to protect them from the bombs. There are a few letters in the archive which refer back to their stay in Wales. Although the Kurzes survived the war in the relative safety of Britain, the shadow of those relatives, including Otto’s mother, who did not survive was cast over them: an experience shared with many other refugees. In this archive, dispersed throughout different packs corresponding to different years, there is also much heartrending correspondence from and about Otto Kurz’s cousin Trude. The earlier letters from 1939 include pleas for the Kurzes to try and get places on the Kindertransport for their daughter Ruth, pleas which came to nothing. An example of such a letter is dated 8 April 1939 and is written from Brno by Rudolf Hirsch, the husband of Otto’s cousin Trude. Following a plea to be allowed to send a trunk of clothes to the

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Kurzes in London for safekeeping, and referring to their daughter Ruth, he continues with a more urgent request: Da, wie Dir bekannt ist, die Wartezeit für die Erlangung des amerik. Visums sehr lange ist, haben wir uns entschieden, die Ruth mit der in Prag tätigen englischen Kinderaktion nach England zu schicken. Es ist ‘die British Committee for Children’ in Prag XII… Der Londoner Vertreter ist: Mr N. Winton […] Wir haben die l. Ruth bereits angemeldet und dauert es angeblich ca. 2 Monate bis es zur Ausreise des Kindes kommt. […] Ihr könnt Euch denken, dass uns dieser Schritt nicht leicht gefallen ist, doch zwingen uns die Verhältnisse hiezu.28

As later letters show, it was not Ruth but Rudolf himself who was murdered in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. His widow wrote, once again from Brno after the war, to tell her story to her cousin. Having referred to their failed attempts to emigrate, she continues in uncertain English (the text was probably translated by Red Cross or Quaker volunteers): […] we remained as the last Jews in Brno, as Rudi got in the meantime leader of the Community. On the 1rst of July also we were evacuated, we came to Terezin, where we met from our family only Ilse, Artur, Uncle Karl. My mother, aunt Maritschi, uncle Hugo and Moritz died there before, aunt Elise, Cami, Vally were set to Poland. In Terezin it was relatively good for us. Rudi worked again as a lawyer, I on our ‘Jugendfürsorge’ and later on in a diet-kitchen administratively, so that food was sufficient to us. Ruth learned dental technics. In October 1944 we had to leave Terezin and came to Auschwitz. There on the station we saw our dear Rudi for the last time, men and women were parted. It is not at all necessary to write about Auschwitz, all you have heard is true.

Relating that the family were then sent to an SS work camp, and that Ruth by then had contracted typhus, she continues: though she had high fever, as I knew that everyone who will not go away from the camp will be shot… as the Russians came nearer… I took Ruth with me. On the third day of our travel, Ruth couldn’t go any more… our women and the SS were before us and we hid ourselves in a village. …three days later we were liberated by the Russian army. After Ruth was better, we had to go home through Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia.

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Back in Brno, she was desperately unhappy; waiting in vain for her husband to return, she noted that ‘hope was smaller day by day’. Survival was not the end of the story; these letters are rendered all the more poignant by Erica Barrett’s account of Ruth’s later life, as heard from Erica’s parents, though not covered in the letters. Ruth apparently survived Auschwitz by being lifted up by a group of women so that her (hidden) feet were not touching the ground. In this way she looked tall enough to be grouped with the adults and so was saved from the gas chamber. Tragically, the harrowing experience of the persecution and life in a concentration camp were too much for Ruth to live with and she took her own life in 1958. In one sense the Kurzes’ story also ended sadly: Hilde developed a brain tumour around 1957 when Erica was only 16 and never fully recovered. Otto helped to nurse her at home and continued to take her with him on trips to sites of artistic and archaeological interest. So it is all the more gratifying that her own letters have rejoined the archive. The letters from Hilde Kurz to her sister Ilse bear witness to the tremendous need that the refugees had for connection with friends and family because of the experience of being uprooted that they were undergoing. On 26 January 1939, Hilde wrote to her sister in America, obviously trying to boost the latter’s morale, referring to two good things that Ilse had done. Firstly, she had got her family out together and secondly: ‘[…] hast Du ohne Verzug durch den Ausgang aus Ägypten das richtige Kanaan ausgesucht.’ It is not clear whether she means that the United States was the better choice per se or better for her sister’s family in particular. She is not the only one of the refugees to refer to the biblical story of exodus when describing the flight from Austria or Germany. As well as giving support and encouragement, Hilde herself received great comfort from Ilse’s letters. One can find expressed in Hilde’s writings joy at news of her sister’s family’s welfare; Hilde also reminds her sister of their childhood memories in order to keep the link between them. The arrival of the letters from America was an important event in an uncertain world; so it was that she refers to the arrival of one such with the words: Dein grosser Brief war ein Ereignis.29

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Notes Grateful thanks for information and assistance are due to Erica Barrett; to Professor Charmian Brinson, Imperial College London; to Professor Hamish Ritchie; to Tom Meinhard and to the Bodleian Library Oxford. 1 On Otto Kurz, see for example, E. H. Gombrich, ‘The Exploration of Culture Contacts: The services to scholarship of Otto Kurz (1908-1975), in Tributes: Interpreters of our cultural tradition’ (Oxford: Phaidon, 1984), pp. 235-51. 2 The booklet is called Otto Kurz 1908-1975. It includes an article entitled ‘Words spoken at Otto Kurz’s funeral 10 September 1975’. 3 On Hilde Kurz, see U. Wendland, Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler (Munich: Saur, 1999), vol. 1, p. 398. 4 M. Perloff, The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir (New York: A New Directions Book, 2004). 5 According to Erica Barrett, in an interview with the author 16 February 2007, this account contains some inaccuracies, differing from the account she heard from her own mother. 6 On this see, for example, E. H. Gombrich, op. cit., p. 239. 7 Letter from Otto Kurz to Hilde Schüller, undated but in a folder dated 1933, 1934, 1945, Erica Barrett Archive [EBA]. 8 27 September 1938, EBA, Hilde Kurz folder, 1938. 9 12 October 1938, EBA, Hilde Kurz folder, 1938. 10 April 1938, EBA, Hilde Kurz folder, 1938. 11 Fakes: A Handbook for Collectors and Students (London: Faber and Faber, 1948). 12 G. Hofner-Kulenkamp, ‘Versprengte Europäerinnen: Deutschsprachige Kunsthistorikerinnen im Exil’, Exilforschung, vol. 11; Frauen und Exil: Zwischen Anpassung und Selbstbehauptung, (Munich: edition text und kritik, 1993), pp. 190203; A. Béchard-Léauté, ‘The Contribution of Emigré Art Historians to the British Art World after 1933’, PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1999. 13 6 May 1939, EBA, Hilde Kurz folder. 14 See, for example, C. Eisler, ‘Kunstgeschichte American Style: A Study in Migration’, in The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America 1930-1960 ed. by D. Fleming and B. Bailyn, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969); D. Wuttke, ‘Die Emigration der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg und die Anfänge des Universitsfaches Kunstgeschichte in Großbritannien’, in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933-1945 (Berlin: Frölich und Kaufmann, 1986). 15 Op. cit., p.213. 16 For example, in the EBA, folder 1942-1944. 17 H. and P. Massingham, The London Anthology (London: Phoenix House, 1951). 18 E. H. Gombrich, op.cit., p. 285.

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19

E. H Gombrich to O. Kurz 11 March 1944, EBA, folder 1944. 18 March 1938, EBA, Hilde Kurz folder 1938. 21 Max Kurz to O. Kurz, 11 August 1939, EBA, folder 1939. 22 Letter from E. H. Gombrich to O. Kurz 25 May 1944, EBA, 1944 folder. 23 Letter from E. H. Gombrich (undated), SPSL archive, Bodleian Library, Box 187/3 folders. 24 According to Erica Barrett, these productions were a continuation of the art historians’ student productions which they had put on in Vienna. 25 6 June 1940, EBA, Hilde Kurz folder. 20

26

Glanbranter was in fact a Prisoner of War camp which was also used to house internees. 27 According to Tom Meinhard in an interview with the author 9 May 2007, his father Heine Meinhard was Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, from 1938 till 1939, and worked there on a freelance basis thereafter. 28 R. Hirsch to O. Kurz, 8 April 1939, EBA, 1939 folder. 29 18 March 1938, EBA, Hilde Kurz folder 1938.

Medical Refugees as Practitioners and Patients: Public, Private and Practice Records Paul Weindling This paper reviews the problems of availability of and access to archives of medical refugees. Whereas there are papers of a select group of medical scientists, papers of practitioners are far rarer. Those papers which do survive deal understandably with the important issue of re-qualification, rather than actual practice. Evaluating any changes in style of practice arising from emigration poses a challenge to historians. While the medical refugees can be seen as a catalyst in the modernisation of health care in the UK and in developing research-led medical provision, documenting individual life histories remains essential.

Over 5,000 refugees whose careers involved health care or medically related research came to – or through – Britain as refugees between 1930 and 1950. Most were physicians, but there were also dental surgeons, psychoanalysts and nurses. Perhaps one third moved on to other locations, but most settled permanently in the UK. Refugees were also engaged in ancillary occupations as dental mechanics, dispensing chemists or opticians – although these occupations are far less well documented than the physicians. Britain’s record is controversial: there were those who supported the admission of medical refugees out of a sense that they could contribute much to modernising and supplementing British medicine. In contrast, some professional groups and specialisms argued against the Continental physicians, as competitors and as representing an alien style of scienticised medicine. The British Medical and Dental Association regarded alien practitioners as a threat, because they represented the wholesale transformation in the structures of medical power and knowledge. The prospect of scientifically informed professionals modernising health care provision was doggedly opposed by a traditionalist minded elite seeing science and the state as in sinister collusion. These divisions mean that the responses to medical refugees were complex. The medical refugees lack documentation, as specialist medical archives have been overly selective and insufficiently proactive. Despite diverse types of practitioner, the ‘medical refugees’ can be analysed and researched as a ‘total population’. Since 1993 I

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have been reconstructing this occupational group comprehensively, as this is something that has not been done either for the UK, or for intermediate locations such as France, Italy (until 1938), the Netherlands or Switzerland, or for overseas locations such as Palestine or the United States. The medical refugees may serve as a model study, as no other occupational category has been fully reconstructed; instead, historical research has been based on exemplary life stories. The reconstruction has generated an archive of questionnaires, correspondence and interviews, which I am developing as an open resource. A population-based, or prosopographical approach is illuminating both at the individual level, and as allowing collective structures to be analysed, as well as showing the individuality of each life history. The medical refugees may be construed as a spectrum from the elderly to students, and covering often neglected groups such as married women, who held professional qualifications but may not have practised. The refugees ranged from those who became celebrated innovators to those who never recovered from the trauma of persecution and forced migration. The majority (hitherto largely silent and under-documented) was composed of medical practitioners who readily adapted to a differing set of professional standards in the UK. Their professional and cultural metamorphosis coincided with an era of transition in British medicine, between the ending of Poor Law provision with the Local Government Act of 1929 and the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948, providing new opportunities for the Continental trained specialists. The medical refugees can be seen as a catalyst in the modernisation of health care in the UK, and in developing research-led medical provision. This means that the medical refugees can be traced in part through the archives of individuals and organisations providing assistance. A population-based approach allows one to reconstruct the overall age profile. The refugees came at different points in their careers: Sigmund Freud (born 1856) was the oldest, and a select group was born in the 1860s. Willi Strauss (an obstetrician, born 1873) requalified in 1935, aged about 64, and Edmund Nobel (born 1883) managed to re-qualify in 1941, aged about 58. The profile of years of birth suggests that most of the refugees were born between 1895 and 1915. Others came as medical students. The project also includes child refugees who subsequently studied medicine in the UK, representing a distinct generation who were to achieve much in medicine, for example Tom Arie in psycho-geriatrics and Leslie Baruch Brent in

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immunology. Those too old to practice, as well as the medical students, are relatively elusive and dispersed, and have not left the same level of documentation as those who came intending to have their qualifications recognised. On the whole, the migration favoured physicians who were within five years of having qualified. Although the majority of medical refugees were Germanspeaking (from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia), there were large numbers of Poles, and some ethnic Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians. There were smaller numbers of Italian and Spanish medical refugees, and a scattering of numerous other nationalities. Most of the German-speaking refugees were Jewish (or at least so categorised by the Nazis), whereas only a minority of the Poles were. Women figured prominently among the German-speaking refugees, due in part to the possibilities of entering the UK on domestic service permits or as nurses, and nursing was very much of a demand area.1 Nationality German Polish Austrian Czechoslovak Nationality uncertain All Nationalities

Male 836 933 474 401 948 4002

Female 275 146 164 93 481 1204

Total 1091 1079 638 494 1429 5226

(including others unidentified or smaller numbers)

Table: Medical Refugees in the UK, 1933-50 We find a series of fractured lives.2 Peter Voswinckel has analysed the significance of fractured life histories as a commonplace in twentieth-century medicine, by means of reconstructing and completing the first volume of the Biographical Dictionary of Isidor Fischer. This provides full details of 400 Jewish physicians, their dismissal and ultimate fate, whether suicide, emigration, or whether they perished in the Holocaust. One of the two professors of the history of medicine from Vienna, Fischer lived in obscurity in the UK, and died in Bristol in 1943.3 The archive of CARA/SPSL (Council for Assisting Refugee Academics/Society for the Protection of Science and Learning) provides a small amount of documentation on Fischer’s emigration, as for many of the academically inclined medical refugees.

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Archives A population-based approach requires linkage of professional, public and private records, as well as records from the country of origin and the country of final settlement. Archives should not be seen as selfcontained, and here the BARGE project is immensely useful: through the Online Database of Archival Resources relating to Germanspeaking Refugees, 1933-1950 it will be possible to locate material relating to individual refugees, even when held in separate collections. Archives document individuals’ experiences through a period of persecution and adaptation as well as organised assistance, revealing the complexity of individual experiences in the UK. Selective archival preservation policies for this important and distinctive group are inappropriate. For without any systematic listing of medical refugees, and with just a handful of biographies and overviews, we can only know of their experiences through the chance survival of papers. The surviving documentation is skewed towards medical research.4 There are major collections left by such figures as the penicillin researcher Ernst Chain, the pharmacologists Hermann (Hugh) Blaschko and Marthe Vogt at the Wellcome Library and the biochemist Hans Krebs (held at Sheffield University). The extensive records of the Medical Research Council are held by the National Archives at Kew. The Royal Society documents its fellows (several of whom were medical researchers), and holds archives of leading medical researchers like Henry Dale who sponsored refugees in pharmacology and physiology. Other major collections of British biologists like Julian Huxley and J. B. S. Haldane are illuminating as far as assistance to refugee biologists is concerned, and in Huxley’s case also for the sexologist Charlotte Wolff. The biographical dictionary of Central European émigrés, edited by Herbert Strauss, was primarily interested in ‘select émigrés’ who had made outstanding scientific contributions.5 Fortunately, a larger collection of questionnaires is available at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Berlin. Even on the better documented medical research side, we find under-documented categories. One is that of refugees who worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Then there was a group, partly documented by the SPSL, of refugee physicians who straddled research and clinical practice. Those who contributed to medical practice are far more numerous, and yet underrepresented in terms of surviving archives. There were additionally dental surgeons, nurses and psychoanalysts. Although the professional organisations like the

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British Medical Association, Royal College of Surgeons, Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Nursing and British Psychoanalytic Society commendably all hold archives for their respective occupations, there has been no dedicated archival rescue programme for medical refugees as a group, or for particular specialisms. This stands in contrast to ongoing archiving programmes for scientists by the Contemporary Scientific Archives Centre, based at Bath. The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine has several archival holdings for refugee scientists and practitioners, but, apart from usefully listing its relevant holdings, it has no apparent pro-active strategy for medical refugees and its collecting criteria are obscure. There have been sporadic efforts to collect archives and oral histories by a number of institutions, some not specifically medical. Here the Wiener Library and the Imperial War Museum merit special commendation. It would be desirable for archivists specialising in medicine and health care to work collaboratively with historians, and to be more pro-active. Most institutions of higher education hold relevant archives. Universities are important sources of records, documenting individual refugees’ studies and re-qualifications. Academic records cover admissibility for research work and appointments, as well as contacts with refugee organisations. Universities with medical and dental schools hold relevant archives, concerning refugee students and their admission to courses. Although the situation remains uneven, information on overall levels of admission and arrangements for requalification throws light on an important episode in the wartime history of these schools. UK universities may also hold collections of personal papers. While the greater support from the Scottish universities to medical refugees is apparent in the high numbers of re-qualifications there, I have found a positive situation elsewhere. At first sight, the situation as regards the National School of Medicine in Wales looked bleak until a cupboard at Llandough Hospital, Cardiff, yielded medical school records. These showed how students often took Scottish rather than Welsh degrees as the prescribed clinical course was shorter. Queen’s University Belfast was also supportive to a select number of refugee students during the war. The papers of the Vienna-trained paediatrician, Edith Hertz, are instructive as to her efforts to re-qualify. Her papers are to be found among those of her social scientist husband Friedrich Hertz, who later acted as her

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medical receptionist and would accompany her on home visits (including to the author of this paper in his youth). There is a letter from the Welsh National School urging her to join the special course for refugee students in 1940. Overall, there was a new openness to refugee students in England and Wales during the war.6 Professional acceptance was more rapid in psychiatry than in other specialisms. Austrian, Czech and Polish refugee physicians formed associations. The Association of Austrian Doctors in Great Britain was founded in 1941. The Czechoslovak Medical Society shows an active association of physicians, interested primarily in an eventual return. It issued the Czech Medical Bulletin. Additionally, there was an Anglo-Continental Dental Society, because of the animosity of the BDA. While their Bulletins and other publications have survived, no archives remain. The Polish Medical School at Edinburgh has an outstanding collection of student records, with a photo and life history of every student.7 At an elite level, the Royal Society took a special interest in refugees and holds both administrative and individual fellows’ records. Although its Committee records for the release of alien scientists from internment are not locatable as such, the patient researcher may glean worthwhile fragments. What is important is to document links between assistance organisations and professional and academic institutions. The papers of the SPSL have already been mentioned as a major resource. The Rockefeller Foundation failed to provide the SPSL with a block grant, but did assist a select number of fellows (such as Max Perutz) and former fellows.8 Other assistance organisations include the Central British Fund for German Jewry, the Czech Refugee Trust Fund and the networks of local refugee committees. The Cambridge Refugee Committee involved several noted medical researchers and physicians. The listing by Yvonne Kapp of refugee practitioners uniquely provides an overview of 1,626 refugee physicians and dental surgeons in September 1939. By contrast, records of professional assistance committees have survived unevenly. Assistance came from concerned individuals, such as A. V. Hill, who was MP for Cambridge University (papers at Churchill College, Cambridge and at the Royal Society), or Charles and Dorothy Singer (papers at the Wellcome Library), and was crucial. Assistance from Oxford colleges was also patchy and very uneven. 9 The British Medical Association has a dedicated archivist, and its Aliens Committee records offer important insights into interactions with the Home Office. Specialist medical societies carry papers, or at

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least document activities on professional committees. This is the case with Ekkehard von Kuenssberg as a former President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and a distinguished GP; he has a memorial room, although no publicly identifiable archive. Some specialisms such as psychiatry were open to the refugees, whereas others, such as dermatology, were more resistant. A similar situation obtains in UK hospitals. Here the problem is the uneven survival of hospital records and the lack of any systematic archiving policy. The National Archives and the Wellcome Library provide an overview listing of hospital records, but no readily available means to identify records of refugee medical students, student nurses or refugee clinicians. If we take a specimen psychiatric hospital, the Warneford Hospital (papers held by the Oxford Area Health Authority archives at the Warneford), its Trustee minutes mention Paul (‘Papa’) Berkenau, a highly respected psychiatrist from Berlin. The Maudsley and Bethlem Hospital archive has relevant records on a select number of refugee psychiatrists, notably Willy Mayer-Gross. Migration brought its own stresses and traumas, and even when illnesses were organic, they might be related to the stress of migration. The Viennese medical historian, Max Neuburger, wrote plaintively about the poor quality of surgical treatment that he endured in a British public hospital in 1940.10 When Sigmund Freud arrived, he was treated by a large medical retinue. The cardiologist Bernard Samet was allowed by the Home Office to continue treating Freud, even though he had subsequently to re-qualify. Publicly available death certificates carry the cause of death and are important individual biographical documents, as well as offering possibilities for studying the stresses of migration. Most traumatic were the numbers of suicides among the refugees. While hospital archives will contain records relating to refugee nurses, these are sparse and difficult to locate. Overall, the topic of refugee nurses, involving those who entered nursing out of short-term expediency and long-term professional dedication, has yet to be fully documented. While I have identified over 321 individuals who engaged primarily in nursing, there were also many temporary crossovers from medicine, such as Otto Fleming from Vienna (who worked as a military nurse before resuming medical studies in London) and Hedwig Striesow from Halle at the London Jewish Hospital. Certain refugees such as Annie Altschul, who trained in psychiatric nursing and became the first professor of nursing in the

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UK, and Lisbeth Hockey had outstanding careers. A select handful of nurses have left papers, memoirs and diaries. The UK Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery provides some useful online resources. The situation as regards psychoanalysts typifies the situation of a select elite being well documented, while the many more marginal analysts remain obscure, under-documented and consequently under-researched. The British Society for Psychoanalysis holds archives. Freudian analysis is exceptionally well documented, but not so the Adlerians, Jungians and other types. The Freudian analysts were highly selective as regards recognition, so that unrecognised analysts remain poorly documented. By way of contrast, the papers of Sigmund and Anna Freud at the Library of Congress are extensive, and offer an interesting comparison between Vienna and London. For it was in London that Anna’s career as a lay analyst really flourished. Sigmund Foulkes (Fuchs) has left papers enabling the tracing of group practice. Given the overall fragmentation, the BARGE database provides useful listings of doctors, dental surgeons, nurses and psychoanalysts, drawn in part from the Medical Refugees collection which I am developing at Oxford Brookes University. Documenting life histories has generated archival sources. This includes questionnaires, correspondence and a range of sources. Liesl Kastner and Paul Samet (both child refugees) have contributed enormously. John Zamet has built up an ancillary collection, as well as gaining access to the re-qualification records of the General Medical Council through the British Dental Association. 11 The aim has been to link sources in the country of origin with those in the UK, and represents a point of specialist reference among a network of refugee archives. The medical refugees arrived in the UK at a time when the financing and organising of medical care was a topic of discussion, with proposals culminating in the National Health Service. Issues arose of the admission of refugees to practice, where they might practice, and what sort of positions a refugee might take. Some visionary medical reformers such as the physiologist A. V. Hill saw that Continental physicians had much needed specialist skills, and that there was a social need for a higher quality of practitioner in socially deprived areas.

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Practitioner Records To date we know little about how a refugee practitioner established his or her practice in the UK. Although the Aliens Committee of the Home Office claimed complete control over the refugee influx, it was possible to circumvent this, as did the refugees with Italian degrees, which were valid in the UK. The situation eased when temporary admission was allowed by the Medical Registration (Temporary Registration Order) of 1 January 1941. This extended the GMC’s registration powers for temporary inclusion on the Foreign List of the Medical Register. It covered not only service in the armed forces but also employment in ‘certain hospitals, institutions, or services’.12 Apart from the general impression that refugees gravitated naturally to physicians who shared their background, we know little about how practices were opened and developed. Similarly, the place of refugees in British public or voluntary hospitals has only been considered on a rather fragmentary basis. The questions arise whether German cultural perceptions of sickness were somehow different for both doctor and patient, and whether there were cultural changes that occurred. Far from any monolithic understanding of illness, the refugee influx brought a plurality of insights and approaches. The psychologically oriented Kraeupl Taylor, who published on the concept of illness and morbus, suggests an inclination towards the philosophical and cultural aspects of physical illness. Certain refugees, such as Annemarie Noll from Heidelberg or Dora Bak (listed in the BARGE database), gravitated to the Peckham Health Centre that was exceptional in its holistic understanding of health and lifestyle. Some refugees transformed their style of practice. Erich Wellisch, when in Vienna, had developed a practice as a physical therapist. But in the UK he worked as a psychiatrist in conjunction with The Retreat, a hospital with a Quaker Heritage, and wrote on Isaac and the Oedipus complex.13 His thesis was that phenomena described in the Bible constitute a unique contribution to psychological truth. There is an argument for keeping papers in locations associated with the person or grouped with related collections of artefacts and books. The case of the paediatrician Karl Koenig at Camp Hill shows that some of the greatest successes lay outside the conventionally medical area. He developed care for the mentally disabled in the Camp Hill Village Settlements, inspired in part by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. His records are kept within the first institution he inspired. The psychoanalyst Michael Balint, originally from Budapest, had a profound impact on British general practice. 14

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Balint’s papers and correspondence are held alongside an extensive Sigmund Freud collection at the University of Essex. Books and reprints associated with a distinguished scholar or innovator can be illuminating. The best example of the preservation of artefacts and books is the Freud Museum at Maresfield Gardens, Swiss Cottage. Notable libraries like those of Walter Pagel, the historian of medicine, and of other academic refugees have been dispersed, even though papers need to be considered alongside other cultural artefacts. Most records deal with the issue of permission to practice. The above-mentioned papers of the political scientist Friedrich Hertz contain much about his wife, the Viennese paediatrician Edith Hertz. These include an important collection of records on her steps towards re-qualification. We see her move from organising a clinic at the Austrian Centre in Bayswater to opening a practice in Golders Green, where her distinguished husband was the part-time receptionist.15 Less well documented is actual practice. Exceptionally, the Museum of London has artefacts from the surgery of the general practitioner Frederick Barber. Qualified in medicine at Brünn (Brno) in Czechoslovakia, he had illegally escaped to Palestine, where he joined the British Army. He had many former refugees as patients, and his sympathy for immigrants meant that he had an ethnically very diverse practice in Kentish Town, North London. The Museum of London has preserved in their entirety the surgery and waiting room, which were both specially designed when Dr Barber opened the practice as a GP in 1958. Patients often gave him gifts of dolls in national costume, representing their homeland. Yet despite what we know about migration and requalification, how the refugees kept patient records and their approach to treatment is virtually undocumented. One would wish to know how the situation changed over the period before, during and after the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS). It would be possible to reconstruct a practitioner’s financial position, and a range of social detail from these records, while respecting patient confidentiality. Patient records are generally closed to the public for 100 years from their creation. Under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998 one is not allowed access to the medical records of living individuals. If we operate with a hundred year rule from the date of birth of the person being treated (a detail generally included in the records), the majority of medical refugee records would be accessible by now – had they been preserved. Anonymisation of patients would offer further opportunities for access.

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Before the NHS, a practitioner would keep ledgers with a page for each patient. The NHS was generally welcomed by refugees as a form of Krankenkasse. The NHS opened up new specialist positions, as well as improving the funding of general practice. In dental surgery, it meant a shift from bound ledgers to buff patient folders, making conservation even less likely. Collections of practitioner papers only exceptionally allow a comparison between practice in the country of origin and the UK. The Lothian Health Archives holds papers of the refugee neurologist Ernst Levin (18871975): these papers cover German correspondence and case notes 1920s-1971, and general correspondence and papers 1904-1980. The problem is that pre-NHS records were kept idiosyncratically. GP practice records and patient ledgers are exceptional rarities. After the foundation of the NHS, records are subject to massive and systematic destruction, erasing more generally the history of all clinical practice in the UK, even though case histories can be significant documents about the treated individual as well as about the practitioner. The Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital archives hold papers of the psychiatrist Willy Mayer-Gross, allowing acomparison between his time in the Germany and the UK.16 Oral history has made up for some of these defects. Rainer Schulze interviewed practitioners to compare their recollections of their countries of origin with those of the UK. The Borchardt Medical Centre in Withington, Manchester, allowed former patients of Karl Borchardt (1909-89) to be interviewed. Time is running out for such projects. The war represented a period of crisis: with internment, refugees often lost their clinical posts or recently purchased practices. The medical conditions during internment on the Isle of Man have received little comment. We find a new dynamism from 1941 as the war exposed chronic shortages of personnel and specialist expertise. The neurologist Ludwig Guttmann made a distinguished career at the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville. His strict and disciplined approach to patients was innovative and yet has remained controversial. The Stoke Mandeville records are at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury. The approximately 450 refugee dental surgeons represented a shift to an approach designed to conserve teeth rather than extract them. The Austrian dental surgeons all held an MD, giving them an overall medical approach to dental surgery. In the case of Emmerich Weindling, we find interleaved in his first patient register, begun in

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1940, correspondence with refugee organisations like the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, Woburn House and the Jewish agricultural settlements, as well as correspondence with patients. The letters cover obtaining permission to practice, the costs of establishing the practice, income (bank statements and tax records), expenses, relations with dental mechanics, some of whom were former refugees, and war work in a reserved occupation. It would be possible in this one case to reconstruct fully the balance between refugee and UK patients, as well as examining in detail a more surgically oriented Viennese approach to dentistry. John Zamet has identified several important collections in the course of completing his PhD on refugee dental surgeons. He has made the case that Continental dental surgeons were reluctant to extract and placed greater emphasis on conservative dentistry. For nursing it is even harder to construct a picture than for doctors and dentists. Continental qualifications were not accepted, and there were gradations of qualifications: a nursery nurse qualification could then lead to general nursing qualifications, although many did not go so far. Other key groups like medical social workers require special study; the trainees on London School of Economics training courses included many refugees. Most documents are concerned with obtaining professional recognition rather than day-to day practice. Few photographs are available. Scientists such as Blaschko and Perutz were more likely to write autobiographies than rank and file practitioners. Autobiographies are exceptionally rare, and often reside in private collections or have been privately circulated. An outstanding example is the double autobiography of Desider and Liliane Fuerst. It offers a penetrating account of resettlement in Britain, although the voice of the medically qualified mother is absent. The archives of the SPSL/CARA provide brief life histories of every person who registered. The Society found a major problem in assimilating the numbers of clinicians with substantial numbers of academic medical publications. The collections also document what happened to all who registered during the war. Diaries are exceptional rarities. This paucity in terms of the subjective voice is remedied somewhat by recorded interviews, as conducted by the AJR’s ‘Refugee Voices’ project and the Imperial War Museum. To this one can add interviews for specialist histories of medicine and nursing projects for interviews. The BARGE project will provide a directory for the dispersed holdings.

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The population-based approach is demanding because reconstructing life histories requires the energy to identify dispersed records. The universities in the country of origin will have matriculation and degree records, although professional associations’ records have been less forthcoming. Given the records in countries of intermediate settlement, there are considerable possibilities for reconstructing dispersed medical life histories. Further sources are records relating to the abolition and annulment of qualifications by the Nazis, and emigration records. Austrian and German records show much about the processes of expropriation – for example, roughly a third of the medical émigrés from Vienna have inventories in the records of the Vermögensverkehrstelle (excellently brought together in the inventory Recht als Unrecht by Hubert Steiner of the Archiv der Republik). 17 The German expropriation and compensation records remain far less accessible. Overall, we can lament how a massive destruction of medical and NHS records will have erased the record of refugee clinicians, nurses and psychotherapists. Private records are inherently vulnerable. The situation remains that of dispersal and fragmentation. Surviving papers are rare and comprehensive documentation rarer still. While the Wiener Library is commendably energetic and open, archivists in the medical area appear reluctant to discuss accessions and collection preparation strategies. Access to records remains problematic. The irony is that personal knowledge may be necessary to make sense of records, but access may only be granted when such knowledge is no longer available. It remains the case that the majority experience – of entering mainstream British general practice or clinical specialisms – are the hardest for a historian to reconstruct. Yet the achievements of this generation should be recognised. Karl Giesskann, a dental refugee from Vienna who resettled in London, later reflected: ‘I was devoted to my profession for nearly 50 years, and looked successfully after many thousands of patients who are still now deeply attached to me. This is my greatest pride.’18

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Appendix: Autobiographies Doctors BRUEGEL, Josephine. [Autobiography] Typescript. MEDVEI, Cornelius. The Cat has Nine Lives. Typescript. PHILIPP, Ernst. Typescript. PLESCH, Janos. The Story of a Doctor (London: Gollancz, 1947). ROLAND, Peter Ernst. [Autobiography] Typescript. SCHINDEL, Erich. [Autobiography] Typescript. SPENCER, Robert. Looking Back Without Anger. The Escape of a Jewish Physician from Austria to England (London: Hazelwood, 1992). STANG, Fanny. Fräulein Doktor (Lewes: Book Guild, 1988). A New Beginning (London: Minerva Press, 1997). TREDE, Michael. Der Rückkehrer. (3rd edn Landsberg: ecomed Verlag, 2003). WESTWOOD, Stephen. A Surgeon’s Story (London: William Kimber, 1962). WOLFF, Charlotte. Hindsight (London: Quartett Books, 1980). Dental Surgeons FUERST, Desider. Home is Somewhere Else (New York: New York State University Press, 1994). GLEES, Eva. Lessingstrasse to Oxford Road. Not a Straight or Easy Way. Typescript. NUKI, Walter. For My Grandchildren. Typescript. Nurses BECHHÖFER, Susi. Rosa’s Child (London: IB Tauris, 1997). ELSLEY, Marianne. A Chance in Six Million (Banbury: Kemble, 1989). MARFLOW, Hilda. Typescript. MOOS, Hilda, I Remember. Privately printed. WHITE, Irene. I Came as a Stranger (London: Hazelwood, 1991); So Shall We Gather (London: Hazelwood, 1992); From Temptation to Sanctuary (London: Hazelwood, 1993).

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Medical Scientists BLASCHKO, Hermann. Memories of My Life (Privately published, 1997). ISAAC, Simon [Autobiography] (Typescript, Judisches Museum, Frankfurt). KALMUS, Hans. Odyssey of a Scientist (London: Weidenfeld, 1991). KREBS, Hans. Reminiscences and Reflections (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). PERUTZ, Max. I Wish I had Made You Angry Earlier (Cold Spring Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor Press, 1998).

Notes 1

Paul Weindling, ‘Frauen aus medizinischen Berufen als Flüchtlinge in Großbritannien während der 1930er und 1940er Jahre’, in Ärztinnen – Patientinnen. Frauen im deutschen und britischen Gesundheitswesen des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Ulrike Lindner and Merith Niehuss (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), pp. 111-27. 2 Paul Weindling, ‘Gebrochene Lebenswege. Erfahrungen medizinischer Flüchtinge in Großbritannien und weiteren Ländern’, in Emigrantenschicksale. Einfluss der jüdischen Emigranten auf Sozialpolitik und Wissenschaft in den Aufnahmeländern. Medizin und Judentum, ed. by Albrecht Scholtz and Caris-Petra Heidel, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, 2004), pp. 9-18. 3 Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte der letzten fünfzig Jahre von Isidor Fischer† (originally Berlin/Vienna, 1932-1933), ed. by Peter Voswinckel, vols III-IV (Hildesheim: Olms, 2002), vol. 3; Paul Weindling, ‘Medical Refugees and the Renaissance of Medical History in Great Britain, 1930s-60s’, in Medizinhistoriographie in der Neuzeit, ed. by Wolfgang Eckart (Paffenweiler: Centaurus, 1999), pp. 139-51. 4 Paul Weindling, ‘The Contribution of Central European Jews to Medical Science and Practice in Britain, 1930-1960’, in Second Chance. The History of the Germanspeaking Jews in the United Kingdom, ed. by Werner E. Mosse (Tübingen: Mohr, 1991), pp. 243-54. 5 Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933 = International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés 1933-1945, ed. by Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss, 3 vols (Munich: Saur, 1983). 6 Paul Weindling, ‘Medical Refugees in Wales, 1930s-50s’, in Health and Society in Twentieth Century Wales, ed. by Pamela Michael and Charles Webster (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 183-200. 7 Fifty Years of the Polish School of Medicine 1941-1991 (Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, 1992).

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Paul Weindling, ‘An Overloaded Ark? The Rockefeller Foundation and Refugee Medical Scientists, 1933-1945’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Science, 31 (2000), 477-89. 9 Paul Weindling, ‘The Impact of German Medical Scientists on British Medicine: A Case-study of Oxford’, in Forced Migration and Scientific Change: Emigré Germanspeaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933, ed. by M. Ash, W. Mattern and A. Söllner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 87-114. 10 Paul Weindling, ‘Physicians as Migrants: Sickness and the Forced Migration of Medical Refugees from Germany 1933-1945’, in Migration und Krankheit, ed. by Peter Marschalck and Karl Heinz Wiedl (Osnabrück: Rasch, 2001, IMIS-Schriften 10), pp. 55-64. 11 John S. Zamet, ‘Aliens or Colleagues? Refugees from Nazi Oppression’, British Dental Journal, 201 (2006), 397-407. 12 Supplement to the British Medical Journal (25 January 1941), vol. 1, p. 9. 13 Erich Wellisch, Isaac and Oedipus. A Study in Biblical Psychology of the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Akedah (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954). 14 Michael Balint, The Doctor, his Patient and the Illness (London: Pitman Medical, second edition 1964, reprinted 1986); Problems of Human Pleasure and Behaviour (London: Hogarth Press, 1957); Primary Love and Psycho-analytic technique (London: Hogarth Press, 1952); Michael and Enid Balint, Psychotherapeutic Techniques in Medicine (London: Tavistock Publications, 1961). 15 Nachlass Friedrich O. Hertz (Archiv für die Geschichte der Soziologie in Österreich, Graz), Royal Free Hospital to Edith Hertz. See also Paul Weindling, ‘Central Europe Confronts German Racial Hygiene: Friedrich Hertz, Hugo Iltis and Ignaz Zollschan as Critics of German Racial Hygiene’, in Blood and Homeland: Eugenics in Central Europe 1900-1940, ed. by Marius Turda and Paul Weindling (Budapest: Central University Press, 2006), pp. 263-80. 16 Maudsley Hospital archives, ‘Notes and correspondence, includes notes on individual patients at Maudsley and Tooting Bec Hospitals, and notes (some in German) on schizophrenia, clinical and child psychiatry. This item contains references to: Gross, Willy Mayer, Control Box 17, Date range c. 1934 - c. 1948, c. 1934-c.1939. Formats General Correspondence and Loose Notes. Access partially closed until 1 January 2024. Inventory Identifier WMG-04 Series Box Number C12/4 Series WMG’. 17 Hubert Steiner and Christian Kucsera, Recht als Unrecht. Quellen zur wirtschaftlichen Entrechtung der Wiener Juden durch die NS-Vermögensverkehrstelle (Vienna: Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, 1992). 18 TU Berlin, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Biographisches Lexikon files, Karl Giesskann.

Tylers Green Papers – The Unique Archives of a WarTime Hostel Bernd Koschland The paper is based on the unique archival material of the Tylers Green Hostels Committee which ran two hostels, Tylers Green (boys) and Great Chesterford (girls) during World War Two and after. The documents fill in many areas of the background to this critical period with much detail, as well as describing day-to-day hostel life. Also from the very beginning, great care is shown for the individual boys, girls and staff. Where necessary, the author, who lived in the Tylers Green Hostel for almost seven years, has provided supplementary information.

The archival material which I describe requires a short personal background note. 1 I came to this country on the Kindertransport in 1939 from Fürth, near Nuremberg. After a hostel in Margate and evacuation, I came to the hostel in Tylers Green, near High Wycombe, Bucks, in 1941. I remained with it when it transferred to North London in 1945, until its dissolution. This hostel for boys, which opened in 1940, was the achievement of Rabbi Eli Munk and members of his Golders Green Beth Hamidrash.2 They opened a further hostel, for girls, in Great Chesterford, Essex, in late 1942, which closed in 1946; a further one, the Osias Freshwater Hostel, was opened in 1946 in Golders Green, north-west London, to accommodate youngsters from the concentration camps. Hostels Whilst researching and preparing the Tylers Green Hostel material, I came across the names and locations, usually by town, of 67 Jewish hostels in the United Kingdom run under various auspices, Jewish and non-Jewish. These hostels, which operated roughly between 19381939 and the post-war years, existed for various lengths of time, some for the whole period, some for only part of it; this depended on various circumstances, e.g. evacuation with subsequent closure, as was the case with the first hostel I stayed in, in Staffordshire, which was evacuated to Margate and then closed. Again, closure may have been due to financial circumstances or the fact that the hostel no longer served the purpose for which it was opened.

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Set against the wealth of material for the Tylers Green Hostel, there is a lack of material relating to many hostels, apart from relevant memories of individuals. An example is Margate Hostel, which was run by B’nai B’rith, but relevant papers no longer exist.3 Realising my interest in the subject, people have come forward with their memories, unfortunately mostly not backed by actual archival material. Occasionally during my research for this paper, material came to light, such as the papers on the Beacon Hostel in Tunbridge Wells, preserved by Erica Prean, who had been one of the young people living in the hostel.4 Additional material is scattered in biographies and autobiographies.5 Much research, however, needs to be done in the whole area of wartime Jewish refugee hostels before surviving written or oral material and memories disappear. Description of the archival material The material on the Tylers Green Hostel is in my private collection. Some years ago, Carmel Gradenwitz, the daughter of the Tylers Green Hostel Committee’s Honorary Secretary, passed on to me all the archival material that she had found after the death of her mother Cissi Rosenfelder, who had been a mother figure for the boys and girls at the hostel This wealth of material has been with me since then, and will ultimately be preserved in an appropriate institution, probably the Wiener Library. The material, which is in good to very good condition and easily readable, refers mainly to the two hostels, Tylers Green and Great Chesterford. A few post-war entries refer to the Osias Freshwater Hostel. There are the minute books of the Hostel Committee, the earliest of which date from 24 January 1940; the last signed minutes are dated 19 February 1947. The contents are very varied. Apart from items considered continuously, such as finance and budgeting, staffing and the like, there are very detailed accounts regarding individual boys, their schooling, work, health and future. Two interesting entries in the minutes refer to Rabbi Munk’s vision for the future, even though it was in the middle of the war, in 1943.6 He outlined his ideas on post-war planning and suggested ascertaining: firstly, whether the two houses (Tylers Green and Great Chesterford) could be retained after the war and for how long; secondly, what obligations there were to the children, and thirdly, what plans there were for the staff. The minutes also contain several further ideas, especially on the future of older boys, though none of them seem to have come to fruition. The possibility of a hostel for

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working boys was discussed, 7 another idea mooted was to ask families to offer a room for boys who worked; 8 and a third suggested venture was to link up with his organisation in order to form a special sort of hostel (a Bet Chalutz, ‘Pioneer House’). 9 A set of three copies of the minutes of a Board for Jewish Religious Hostels has also survived, in photocopy. The first minutes are dated 13th August 1945. The Board had representatives from the Tylers Green Hostels Committee and Bachad, as well as individual members of the community, for instance Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld,10 Dr Judith Grunfeld11 and Mr Oscar Philipps.12 In addition to the three hostels of the Tylers Green Committee, it included reference to two others.13 The minutes mainly deal with general procedure and the role of the Board. The bulk of the archival material is correspondence over the years, and includes copies of replies, addressed to a variety of correspondents, e.g. government departments, both national, such as the Ministry of Health, and local, e.g. regarding billeting; letters to and from the police regarding permission to travel for alien members of staff; refugee organisations such as the Refugee Children’s Movement.14 There are also letters to individuals on a great variety of matters such as employers, thanks for donations and so on. Some of the material is correspondence from the wardens of both hostels, who also submitted very detailed weekly accounts of expenditure. Other material comprises pamphlets about the Tylers Green Hostel re-located in North London, magazine articles and some rare photographs. Former “boys” have sent me memories of their time in the hostel, which also give an added dimension to the story and in reality must form part of the archival material, even though they are of later provenance. I cannot stress too much the papers’ significance. They show in detail the organisation and running of two hostels, against the general background of the period of World War Two, their day-to-day affairs, the lives of the youngsters and something about the Jewish community. They record the names of individuals, committees and organisations which would otherwise be lost, for example such little known organisations as the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls, Women and Children of 63 Mansell Street E1.15 The story revealed by the archives What light do they throw on the war years? Firstly they show the manner in which these records reflect general wartime conditions and

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secondly they narrate the story of the hostel itself and the life in it. An element of the latter story is some detailed information about individuals, which often was and is still unknown to the person concerned. I learned, for instance, a number of things about myself which I never knew. I quote some examples: glasses were supplied for me, but along with clothing they had to be paid for by my sponsoring committee. An attempt was made to adopt me, but was rejected by the Hostel Committee. Through the correspondence I can track my school career from Fürth to Margate, my evacuation to Hammerwich (a village in Staffordshire) on to Tylers Green Primary School, next to the High Wycombe Royal Grammar School and finally to the Hasmonean Grammar School, north-west London. Wartime conditions reflected Tylers Green was a semi-evacuation hostel, that is, some of the boys were evacuees, others not. (I lost that status when I left Hammerwich. 16) This situation influenced government departments in their decision-making regarding the hostels. An example of this is the reply from the Ministry of Health, which at one stage would not supply a bread-cutting machine and some beds because at that time the Ministry did not regard the hostel as fully occupied by evacuees. Evacuees were entitled to billeting money. Several times the material mentions that there were problems in receiving it on time, which caused difficulties as the finances of the hostel committee were usually on a knife-edge. Billeting was in the hands of a local billeting officer, in our case the Vicar of the local Tylers Green Church, the Revd. Gerald Hayward. Several Ministries appear in the materials, especially the Ministry of Health, which was responsible for providing materials for the hostel, e.g. beds, blankets. Occasionally it refused requests for various reasons. There was a system of priorities, which sometimes did not work. The Ministry of Labour and National Service needed to be dealt with in relation to the appointment of a nurse; the then current legislation raised some issues in obtaining one, but finally everything was resolved.17 Movement of Aliens 18 figured for a time as a topic, as the hostel and High Wycombe were in a protected area;19 High Wycombe was the headquarters of the American 8th Air Force. Police permission was needed for aliens to enter the town and even Tylers Green itself.20 Some correspondence to the Ministry of Labour and the police centres round the appointment of a cook, a refugee from

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Germany, as permission for residence was required; this was granted. Internment also featured. The Chairman of the Committee, Jacob Feuchtwanger, was interned and only released after requests from the Committee. A couple of boys were also interned when they reached 1621: one was sent to Australia on the SS Dunera with 2500 other refugees; the other was released into the Pioneer Corps of the British Army.22 Education Education was obviously an important topic. Access to Technical Colleges was not always easy for aliens, as preference was given to British citizens, especially after the war, when the places were taken by returning evacuees or ex-servicemen. At one stage, boys who had been cared for by the London County Council23 had difficulty in transferring to Technical Schools. Also, transfer at 11+ to the local Royal Grammar School was difficult as three prerequisites were demanded for aliens: firstly, possession of a good enough standard of English to keep up with their studies; secondly, an alien should not take the place of a local English boy; and thirdly, the fees had to be guaranteed. For orthodox Jewish boys there were added difficulties because of the Sabbath: they could not attend normal lessons on Saturday mornings and they needed to leave early on winter Friday afternoons. Wartime conditions also meant that premises were shared for a time with another school, Chiswick Grammar School, evacuated from London. This meant doubling up lessons, especially on Fridays.24 This feature was also found in other parts of the country, as illustrated in letters from Great Chesterford regarding the Clapton (North London) Secondary School which was evacuated to a location near Cambridge. The placing of Jewish refugee children The collected material also has something to say about the place of Jewish refugee children in the United Kingdom. Two references stand out. There is a cri de coeur from a Minister, Revd. Lou Rosenberg of Staines, for the Hostel to accommodate two very small children;25 this request could not be fulfilled as the children were too young for the Tylers Green Hostel. In a note Mrs Rosenfelder observed in the Jewish Chronicle, 15th March 1943, that there were still some 2500 children needing accommodation in a hostel somewhere but only 50 places were available. It must be stated that of course families did take

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youngsters in, but they were not always treated as they should have been, especially children in their mid-teens who occasionally were treated as cheap domestic help. Organisations Mention of a variety of organisations appears in the archives. The nerve centre of refugee activity was, of course, Bloomsbury House, where the Refugee Children’s Movement was also located. This Movement also had branches in several towns in the UK, e.g. in Oxford26 and Nottingham. They maintained close contact with the Tylers Green Committee on many issues. There was correspondence with Wycombe Rural District Council (Evacuation Department) which shows a rise to 25/– per week for domestic help. The B’nai B’rith Care Committee for Refugee Children also features frequently; I and some other boys were under their care. A report from the hostel Committee to the Board of Deputies of British Jews was passed on to the Central Jewish Committee for Problems of Evacuation, which would “deal with all questions pertaining to hostels.”27 A letter regarding accommodation for an older boy from the Joint Emergency Committee for Religious Education in Great Britain reveals much information about Religious Education, its personalities and the organisations represented.28 Another refugee organisation which is briefly mentioned, but whose name must not be forgotten is the Polish Jewish Refugee Fund; the one appearance relates to a particular boy.29 A post-war Committee (part of the Jewish Refugees Committee) was set up for the care of children from the camps.30 Among the final entries in the Tylers Green Committee minute book are references to a Board of Religious Hostels (see above). It was to have been an umbrella organisation for funds and their distribution, as well as for general oversight of hostels.31 Golders Green Beth Hamidrash In 1934 Rabbi Dr Eli (Eliyahu) Munk became the Rabbi of the Golders Green Beth Hamidrash. Membership of this synagogue grew with the influx of German refugees, from whose midst the Tylers Green Committee was formed. 32 Mrs Rosenfelder wrote: It was in the late thirties that Rabbi Dr Eliyahu Munk felt that our Kehilah (Congregation) whose members were

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made up of a large number of Refugees, should form an aid committee to help those who were still left in Germany or Austria. It was a task with which we could not really cope, as children were coming under the auspices of the Refugee Children’s Movement… Files have come into my hands containing pitiful letters from parents begging us to bring their children out of Germany. 33

In 1939, Rabbi Munk, together with several key members of his congregation, responded to the plight of refugee children who were arriving from Germany without parents, mainly with the Kindertransport. He was anxious to open a hostel, initially for boys. A committee was formed and the hostel opened in February 1940.34 Three years later, the girls’ hostel opened in Great Chesterford.35 The opening of the Tylers Green Hostel The first entry in the minute book,36 is concerned with the setting up of the Committee and its officers, and includes bank details and a reference to the landlord of the house in Tylers Green. This indicates that arrangements for the Hostel had commenced even before a formal committee was elected. Of three final decisions taken at that first minuted meeting, one underpinned the religious outlook of the Hostel: the Hostel was to be based on strict adherence to Orthodox Judaism37 and would not take boys who worked on Shabbat (Sabbath). The second set of minutes deals with finance, budgets and insurance; an initial weekly budget was set at £20.38 The Committee The papers delineate the tasks of the Committee carefully. Members would not just be a remote body, meeting in London, but very much hands-on, especially the Honorary Secretary, Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, and Rabbi Eli Munk. Apart from these two committee members, others would visit and report back. Mrs Rosenfelder reported to her Committee39 regarding a joint visit with Miss Tilling of Region 6 (Oxford) of the Children’s Refugee Movement, a year after the opening of the Hostel. Everything was found to be very satisfactory, in terms of health (apart from some incidents of chicken pox), schooling, gifts and entertainment. The work of the then wardens, Max and Regina Baer, was greatly praised.

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Staffing More generally, the minute book reflects the various issues and problems faced by the Committee in running the two war-time Hostels, in particular regarding staffing. Whilst salaries were not the issue they might have been in later days, there were difficulties in finding the right staff. Internment was one problem, preventing at least one appointment.40 Teachers of Jewish Studies were sought and of those that came into consideration and were rejected, one later became a university lecturer and one a professor.41 Issues which arose regarding domestic staff also reflect conditions of the time, including, again, curtailment of movement.42 After the appointment and resignation of several people as warden, Mr and Mrs Baer were appointed and remained until they left for the United States soon after the end of war in 1945.43 Josef Wolff, accompanied by his wife, was appointed as a teacher and remained until he too emigrated to the United States after VE Day. Thus the preserved material highlights the wartime difficulties of staffing. The situation was further complicated by the call on people to staff other hostels; several letters indicate initial applications for a job at Tylers Green and then withdrawal as the applicants found jobs elsewhere or preferred to remain where they were. The resignation of Mr A. Shapiro, warden of Great Chesterford is interesting as it was not the job itself which was the issue; his letters indicate how well he administered the girls’ Hostel. His move was within the orbit of the Golders Green Beth Hamidrash community as he was appointed the first headmaster of a new Jewish primary school in Golders Green, the Menorah, founded by Rabbi Munk and the members of his synagogue, a school which still exists today. Finances Finances occupy a significant proportion of the material and both expenditure and income are carefully documented. Up until June 1943 there is regular reference to finances in the minutes, but thereafter until February 1947, they are only dealt with sporadically. The budget for the Hostel was very tight, as seen by the figure of £20 which made up rent and wages (£10.10.8d), food (£8.10.00), expenses for boys including pocket money, travelling, etc. (15s.4d with a reserve of 19s.4d). As the years passed and the Hostel reached its maximum of 25 boys and some 6 staff, costs went up. Both Mr Baer of Tylers Green, and later Mr Shapiro of Great Chesterford, submitted weekly

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detailed statements of account to the Committee. By mid 1944, expenses had risen to approximately £100 for Tylers Green, and approximately £50 for Great Chesterford. These amounts included staff wages and health insurance but excluded rent, service charges and one or two other payments such as to the local doctor. The latter was unhappy with the 10s. allowed by the Government for each child and so the hostel executive increased this sum. The Refugee Children’s Committee queried the rise in the wages bill of £237 in June 1943 to £426 in December 1944, thus indicating the scrutiny to which accounts from hostels, such as these under discussion, were submitted. By September 1945 the cost per boy in the Hostel (which by now had relocated to London) was £24.00. Despite a contribution from the Refugee Movement, there was still a weekly deficit of £8 to £10 overall. Income came from a variety of sources. The organisations responsible for the boys and girls contributed both cash and in kind, the latter in the form of clothing. Only those children who were regarded as evacuees 44 had billeting money paid to the Committee. This amount could vary from person to person. When parents sent their son or daughter to the Hostel they would be expected to pay something towards the costs. Whatever was received in this way did not always meet the budget in full and therefore the Committee relied on donations and subscriptions.45 Individual donations came in the main from members of the Golders Green Beth Hamidrash. Donors also included members of the general Jewish community, for example Dolly and James de Rothschild in 1945, and people from the nonJewish community such as Lady Rayleigh OBE.46 The few boys that went to work kept a small proportion of their wages for personal use while the rest was used for their board. Jewish communities local to the hostels also appear as donors, such as Beaconsfield (Buckinghamshire), High Wycombe and Cambridge for Great Chesterford. Donations were also made in kind, such as by the British Council, who regularly supplied magazines 47 Individuals gave games, treats and outings; one donor supplied three bicycles. Appeals for clothing received responses from individuals as well as organisations, such as the Refugee Committee or B’nai B’rith. Where are they now? The names of institutions, committees, organisations and individuals appear throughout the material. Whilst active in their time, the

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organisations, with one or two exceptions, ceased to exist once their task was completed either at the end of the war or shortly afterwards. Some of the refugee organisations, in particular the Jewish Refugees Committee, have been integrated over the years into World Jewish Relief. Some former hostel staff are still alive, as for the “boys” (grandparents by now!), many are still around in various parts of the world.48 Home from home There are problems with relying solely on personal recollections. Coupled with written archival material a much truer picture emerges. In a post-war letter to the boys of Tylers Green, Mrs Rosenfelder wrote: Think back over the years you have spent at the Old Vicarage 49 and remember with gratitude that you have spent these days of war in peace and harmony, and those with whom you have lived there have done so very much to try replace your own homes and the care of your parents, of which you have been deprived50.

The correspondence, minutes and other documents reflect that the Committee did its utmost to provide a home. There are numerous examples dealing with all aspects of care for the individual, e.g. health,51 employment,52 education,53 general welfare and happiness. The care shown also extended to the time after the individual had left the Hostel, as a sense of responsibility for that individual still remained. For example, there are many letters, written over a period of time, which show concern for the health and welfare of a particular boy both whilst he was at the Hostel and after he had left to stay with his brother and sister in London.54 The material shows clearly the care expressed by the Refugee Children’s Committee, B’nai B’rith and other groups about the welfare of the children under the auspices of the Tylers Green Committee. However good hostel life was, there could be difficulties of adjustment, not just because children were refugees or evacuees. Evidence indicates, sadly only too often, that there were problems in a child’s home: no one to care for a child, because both the parents were in the Forces or one in the Forces and the other on war work. In one tragic case, both parents suffered from mental health problems. 55 Occasionally, divorce caused problems. 56 The material also collectively illustrates the unsettled conditions of individuals as they

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moved several times before reaching Tylers Green or Great Chesterford and moving on again from these two Hostels. Some interesting statistics are reported by the warden of Great Chesterford, Revd. B.Wreschner, on 26 October 1945: of the 18 children – 15 girls, 3 boys, aged between 15 and 8 years, 13 were under the legal care of various Committees and 3 under the care of parents. The children had changed homes between 2 and 9 times, the majority between 4 and 6 times, the average change being 6 times.57 Religious outlook An additional factor in making the Hostel a home from home, as far as was possible, is the decision from the very beginning that it had to have an orthodox basis.58 This was to be the touchstone for staff and youngsters, irrespective of their previous experience. It is questioned in the minutes: Whether sufficient interest was taken in the religious life of boys after leaving the hostel and whether parents who boarded their children in our hostels were sufficiently impressed with the kind of education that they were going to be given and that the parents had to fall in with this. 59

In the discussion that followed it was agreed that parents had to be informed of the religious character of the hostel and the need to adhere to it. A letter from the Jewish Refugees Committee refers to a parent withdrawing her application for her son as she was not orthodox ‘and it would complicate matters if she sent Robert…’.60 The minutes and correspondence, as well as personal memories, describe a very positive attitude to orthodoxy. Daily services were held, boys were encouraged to take services, instruction in Judaism and the Hebrew language was given daily, Sabbaths and Festivals and the occasional Barmitzvah were celebrated. That an orthodox way of life prevailed is shown in correspondence from a teenager who had left Tylers Green to learn a trade and went to live with a family whom he found not to be fully observant. In another case, several letters from 1940 to 1941 showed the story of a youngster who wanted to become an engineer, but was refused entry to an ORT61-OSE school in Leeds, because Sabbath working was needed in this occupation and as a result there would have been no point in him coming to the school if he was not able to work on a Saturday.62

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Two interesting examples thrown up by the correspondence illustrate the work of Rabbi Munk. In one instance the Committee was challenged by the Ministry of Food as to why they did not purchase meat from the local kosher butcher in High Wycombe. Ideally, wartime regulations required local registration with a butcher. Rabbi Munk pointed out to the Ministry that as the Hostel was under his religious supervision, meat could only be bought from a butcher under that same supervision. 63 A second issue was that the Royal Grammar School, which several of us attended, had full lessons on Saturday mornings and sport in the afternoon. In an exchange of correspondence between Rabbi Munk and Mr E. R. Tucker, the headmaster, the matter was clarified that the Hostel boys need not attend. E. R. Tucker wrote: I think you would be interested to know that the Ministry certainly would not want to support any compulsion on the part of a Headmaster which would react unfavourably upon boys of Jewish religion who require to withdraw on Saturday mornings on religious grounds. As you know we left it that I would take no action regarding these boys if you insisted on keeping them home. 64

The move to North London Mrs Rosenfelder’s letter to the boys in July 1945 foreshadowed the move from Tylers Green to what eventually would be the new home in North London. The move was necessary with the end of the war approaching. The minutes and correspondence show the difficulties in finding a new house, due to the procedure for derequisitioning houses; 65 for instance one property in north-west London could only be derequisitioned for occupation by one family. After some searching, a suitable house was found in Queen’s Drive, Finsbury Park and opened for boys and 4 girls from Great Chesterford, which had also closed in October 1945. The new Hostel was called Beth Shalom. 66 Between the closure of Tylers Green and October 1945, boys were sent to other hostels (as I was) or to families, mostly their own. As already mentioned there was further difficulty finding schools and technical colleges.67 Eventually schools or employment were found for everyone. Some of the boys went to the then newly founded Hasmonean Grammar School. 68 Several staff changes in the hostel are indicated in the minutes. The move to London enabled us residents to participate in the Jewish life around us.

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A third hostel Once the war was over, a new and more difficult problem arose: homes for individuals coming from the concentration camps. 69 These young men, no longer children, wanted to make up for their lost six years. Osias Freshwater approached the Hostel Committee to help him open a hostel, to be named after his own family, in 833 Finchley Road, Golders Green. The correspondence shows that Freshwater queried the orthodoxy of the Hostel; thus the Bachad Movement invited an orthodox warden to take over who stayed but a short time. This hostel eventually closed in 1951.70 Closure By 1947, as the boys and girls grew older, the Committee felt it was time to close the Tylers Green and Great Chesterford Hostels, and to place boys and girls into families, where necessary or where there were no families of their own. The last entry in the minute book is signed 17 February 1947; archival correspondence ceases in late 1946. Final thoughts The records, as I have outlined them, preserve a good picture of the details of setting up, the organisation and running of a hostel. Thus this archival material gives valuable insight, even beyond the hostel itself. Further research is needed and the result could be a much larger study, hopefully recording this aspect life of Jewish refugees from Germany (and other parts of Europe), thus preserving this material for the future.

Notes 1

See also an article by Bernd Koschland, Jewish Historical Studies, Jewish Historical Society of England, 41 (March 2007); much valuable background material may also be found in Chanan Tomlin, Protest and Prayer (Berne/Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 106-107. Also the papers of Mrs Cissi Z. Rosenfelder, honorary secretary of the Golders Green Beth Hamidrash Refugee Aid Committee, which are archived at Southampton University Library Special Collection MS 116/157. 2 The Golders Green Beth Hamidrash (an orthodox Synagogue) London NW11 was founded in 1933-34 and appointed Rabbi Dr Eli Munk as its Rabbi; he served until his eventual retirement to Israel in 1970.

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3

Oral communication from Hermann Hirschberger who was also in the Margate Hostel. 4 Letter from Mrs Erica Prean, 21 April 2006; Erica Prean The Beacon, September 2006. 5 I Came Alone: The Stories of the Kindertransports, ed. by Bertha Leverton and Shmuel Lowensohn, (Sussex: The Book Guild, 1990); Annette Saville, Only a Kindertransportee (London: New Millennium, 2002), Mona Golombek and Lee Cohen, The Children of Willesden Lane (New York: Warner Books, 2002) 6 28 October 1943, 15 November 1943. 7 24 April 1944. 8 8 May 1944. 9 12 June 1944. Arieh Handler was an active worker for Jewish refugee children; Bachad was formed in Germany as a Zionist youth group preparing for emigration to Palestine. It transferred to England with the same ideas before the War and still exists but with a slightly different function. 10 The Rabbi of the North London Adath Yisroel Synagoge and rescuer of children from the Continent before and after the War. 11 A famous Jewish educator before the war in Germany and later in England. 12 Chairman; industrialist and active worker in the Jewish community. 13 Woodberry Down in North London and Dorking from where it transferred later to London. 14 The Head Office was in Bloomsbury House, Bloomsbury Street, WC1. It also worked through regional committees, e.g. Region 6 in Oxford and Region 3 in Nottingham. Bloomsbury House was also the nerve centre for all Jewish refugees. 15 Letter dated 15 December 1942; the Association was founded in 1885 (Jewish Encyclopaedia, New York: Funk and Wagnall 1904, sv London) at the address of the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter, also founded in 1885. 16 Kent Education Committee (Thanet Division), 21 January 1958; I was withdrawn from the evacuation scheme on 28 July 1941. 17 Registration for Employment Order 1941; the person concerned had special qualifications which released her from her current employment. 18 The term ‘alien’ is used in official documents to describe a non-British resident. 19 Minutes of 15th August 1940. 20 Letter from the local Police Chief at Chepping Wycombe, 21 August 1942; also a letter from Mr Josef Wolff, teacher at the Hostel, to Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, 26th July 1943, regarding a visit to the hostel by his friends. 21 Minutes of 19 June 1940. 22

In the early war years, aliens who volunteered for military service were usually drafted into this Corps and then possibly transferred to other branches of the Army. 23 London County Council formed in 1899 as the local government for Metropolitan London; it was replaced by the Greater London Council in 1963 and later by the Greater London Authority, established in 1999 .

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Explained more fully below under section ‘Religious Outlook.’. Jewish Chronicle, 17 March 1943. 26 Oxford, region 6, features often in the various papers and letters. 27 Letter to Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, 18 June 1941. 28 4 November 1941. 29 Under the auspices of the Federation of Jewish Relief Organisations of Great Britain and Keren Hatorah Relief Fund. It was located at 33 Soho Square, London W1; there are several letters to Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, beginning with 17 February 1942. 30 Letter to Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, 19 August 1946. 31 It first met on 13 August 1945 at the Bachad Offices; nothing in the Tylers Green minutes or correspondence indicates that anything more than meetings happened. 32 See also the Blessing of Elijah (London: 1982), a volume dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Dr Eli Munk.This book contains his biography. 33 Golders Green Beth Hamidrash Bulletin, July 1985. 34 Letter from Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder to Mr A. Brotman, General Secretary of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, 18 June 1941. 35 Minutes of 13 January 1943. 36 24 January 1940. The Hostel opened a month later. 37 See the section on ‘Religious Outlook’ below; the other two decisions were: not to take any boy under £1.1 per week, and to transfer the assets of the Croydon Hostel for £3. 38 See section on ‘Finance’ below. 39 16 January 1942. 40 Minutes of 20 November 1940. 41 Professor Naftali Wieder became a great influence on me in my education at Jews’ College, London. 42 See note 18. 43 Minutes of 3 May 1945. 44 E.g. I was evacuated from Margate to Hammerwich (Staffordshire) on 31 May 1940 and withdrawn from the evacuation scheme; see note 16. 45 In my case, Grammar school fees were met by two successive donors; the second donor, Mr Kurt Lissauer paid most of my termly fees of 5 Guineas (£5.5.0) and was generally a very generous donor to the Hostel. 46 Wife of Robert John Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh. 47 Letters of 14 December 1942 and 30 March 1943. 48 I know nothing of the girls; I am in frequent contact with some of the ‘boys’ in the UK, Israel and USA. 49 The name of the house in which the Tylers Green Hostel was located; it stood next to the Parish Church. 50 26 July 1945. 25

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Minutes of 23 July 1941; Rabbi Munk requested the Chairman to find out from Dr Belfrage, the Hostel’s GP, whether he would examine the boys at regular intervals. 52 Grocery Store, minutes of 7 May 1941; apprenticeship in cabinet-making, minutes of 16 June 1943. 53 Mr Max Baer (a former teacher himself) to the Committee, 9 April 1943, in which he states that he reads the reports of boys regularly; Refugee Children’s Movement to Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, 24 September 1943; Mr E. R. Tucker, Headmaster of the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, to Mrs Rosenfelder, 27 May 1944; this includes eventual preparation for Aliyah (emigration to Palestine), Mrs Rosenfelder to Children’s Refugee Committee, 5 May 1945. 54 A letter of 2 April 1942 and many subsequent ones, as well as entries in the minutes. 55 Minutes of 17 January 1944. 56 Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls, Women and Children to Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, 8 August 1943. 57 Letter of 29 October 1943. 58 Minutes of 24 January 1940. 59 27 December 1944; the comment resulted from a boy having gone home to his mother and been given food that was not kosher. 60 16 March 1943. 61 A world-wide training and educational organisation founded in Russia in 1880. 62 A letter dated 3 October 1941. 63 15 December 1942. 64 To Mrs Cissi Rosenfelder, 28 November 1944. 65 Properties were requisitioned by the Government, national or local, or the Armed Services, for specific uses related to the war itself, e.g. housing troops or offices. 66 A pamphlet published in July 1946 appealed for funds and included photographs of boys and girls. 67 With demobilisation, places at Colleges were taken by former serving servicemen and women. 68 Founded by Rabbi Dr Schonfeld in 1944 and still in existence. 69 For a short time, Great Chesterford Hostel was used by another organisation for children coming from the Concentration Camps. 70 Verbal information from a former resident.

The relationship between oral history collections and community life: Impacts of the “Refugee Communities History Project” (RCHP) Zibiah Alfred In 2004 the Evelyn Oldfield Unit expanded its support for refugees by establishing the Refugee Communities History Project, which aimed to document and publicise the diverse and extensive contributions refugee communities have made to London’s culture and economy since 1951. The experiences of arrival and settlement and the contributions to London recorded are permanently archived at the Museum of London. Elements of these interviews featured in a public exhibition (October 2006February 2007). This paper considers the RCHP’s impacts on the communities involved and discusses how collecting, archiving, and displaying oral history material for refugee projects like this one may help shape new community identities

The Concept of a “Refugee Archive” Many people who migrate to new places seeking asylum from persecution, although by no means all, will feel a profound impact on their life and sense of selfhood as a result of being a refugee. This impact might be experienced long after the actual period of migration. It is important to emphasise that not all refugees are affected in this way, because there is often a tendency in modern-day discourse about refugees to link the concepts of refugees and trauma, with the implication that a piercing, wounding mark has been brought to bear on a refugee’s person. However, not all refugees choose to assign significance to their own refugee migration. For example, those who become refugees include babies and children who later in life may have little memory of their migratory experience. Refugees may already speak the language of their new countries, or even have lived for considerable time, for example as students, in the country where they later find themselves applying for refugee status. Whilst having to adjust to the idea of living “in exile”, these individuals may not undergo dramatic experiences of acculturation as refugees, or feel that their lives have been significantly shaped by having become refugees. One finds then that an individual may be labelled a “refugee” by people from both within and outside of the communities with which she identifies, but that that individual may not consider the

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label of much relevance or consequence for the way she views her own life and therefore for the way that she might represent her life, or have it represented, to others. An individual who acknowledges the significance of refugee experiences within her life may not wish to have the label “refugee” publicly conferred, or for personal life history material to be assigned to an archive collection organised around the theme of “refugees”. Human beings have complex multiple identities. An individual may see herself as belonging to any number of various distinct or overlapping communities and at different points in life these communities may take on different significances. As a result, at different points in one’s life one may wish to be recognised primarily, for example, as an artist, or doctor, or mother, or Londoner, or bornagain Christian, or feminist or human rights advocate. A refugee may be willing for personal life material to be exhibited or archived in collections organised around such categories, and be happy that within such overarching categories refugee experiences are revealed, but oppose the idea of material being assigned to the organising category of “refugee”. Individual choices to stand within or outside of a refugee community archive collection can cause discussion and sometimes conflict within communities. The very invitation to contribute personal material to a refugee-themed exhibition or archive collection may exacerbate tensions within so-called “communities” or bring latent division to the surface where that invitation is declined. As an oral historian, collector of life histories, as an archivist, or as an activist, one may find oneself in the position of persuading people to give over life history material to a refugee archive collection. It can be tempting to nudge hard on account of one’s own convictions about the value, be it historical, social, political or educational, of the material being requested. Such persuasion may contribute to community polarisation. People may feel connected in a nebulous way to a “community”. Being asked to make a decision to be interviewed or archived as a member of that community may draw people into the fold of the community. On the other hand it may prompt them to step away, or be pushed away by those within who feel that hesitation about commitment to a community means that the individual does not deserve to be welcomed. As a life history collector, it is important to acknowledge one’s own socio-political aims and consider how these may affect the way one selects material for collection, how material is filtered for

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presentation in exhibitions and archives and the impacts of such choices on the communities about which material is presented. One might consider too, the extent to which decisions to put together different people’s life story material into an archival collection or exhibition may create new communities, linking people who have never met in life, and how easy it can be to give an impression of a broad cohesive community which may have little grounding in reality. Background to the Refugee Communities History Project (RCHP) The Refugee Communities History Project (RCHP) is the outcome of over two years of discussions between refugee community organisations, the Evelyn Oldfield Unit, the Museum of London, London Metropolitan University, Resource Unit for Supplementary and Mother-Tongue Schools, the Vietnamese Oral History Project and the City Parochial Foundation. The RCHP is a refugee-led project, coordinated by the Evelyn Oldfield Unit, a London-based second-tier refugee support organisation. London Metropolitan University provided training to fifteen RCHP fieldworkers to collect refugee life stories. These sound recordings, together with selected accompanying visual material and donated artefacts, have been permanently archived within the Museum of London’s “Later London” Oral History collection. Elements of the interviews were exhibited within a Museum of London exhibition – “Belonging: Voices of London’s Refugees” (October 2006 to February 2007) – which drew over thirty thousand visitors of all ages from both refugee and non-refugee backgrounds. Oral history material displayed on the Museum of London website and project website www.refugeestories.org has attracted many thousands of hits. Fifteen fieldworkers appointed by the Evelyn Oldfield Unit, including the present author, each conducted ten or more in-depth life story interviews with consenting refugees selected by steering committees which had been formed by participating refugee community groups. These groups were: • • •

Afghan Association of London African Community Health and Research Organisation Bosnian Resource Information and Cultural Centre Kosovar Support (BRICKS)

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•

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA, founded in 1933, formerly known as the “Academic Assistance Council” and later as the “Society for the Protection of Science and Learning”) Chinese Information and Advice Centre Eritrean Elders 50+ Association Ethiopian Community in Britain Haringey Somali Community and Cultural Association Imece Turkish Speaking Women’s Group Iraqi Community Association Kurdish Association Latin American Association Latin American Women’s Rights Service Latin American Disabled People’s Project Latin American Elderly Project Lwo Cultural Group Roma Support Group Tamil Relief Centre

Interviewees chosen for the RCHP were of diverse ages, countries of origin, backgrounds and genders. All interviewees chosen were granted refugee status in the UK after 1951, the year of the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. Asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their applications for refugee status were not interviewed within this project. Interviews were conducted informally, in either the interviewee’s mother tongue or in English, with the majority of interviews lasting between two and five hours in total, over one or more sessions. Many benefits of this large-scale and pioneering project were anticipated from the outset. It was intended that the project would help foster good relations between refugee and non-refugee communities in London, promoting refugees’ integration into the wider community. It was also intended that the project would empower refugees in London through giving them a platform to share their experiences with others and to voice views about London life. The project aimed to build on the success of an earlier oral history project carried out by Refugee Action and the Vietnamese Community Association in South-West London in 2000-2003, to help improve inter-generational relations and understanding within refugee communities. It also aimed to raise general public awareness about the difficulties facing refugees

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arriving in London, to promote understanding and respect for refugees as human beings and to diffuse some of the public hostility whipped up by press descriptions of refugees as, for example, “scroungers” and “criminals”. 1 Archiving of oral histories collected through the RCHP The recorded histories have been archived and exhibited at the Museum of London. At the same time and of equal importance, participating refugee community organisations have been encouraged and enabled, both financially and in other ways, to use the histories creatively for their own purpose. Permission has been sought from interviewees to pass copies of recorded interviews on to the relevant participating community organisations, as well as to the Museum of London. For some refugee community organisations these interviews have complemented the organisations’ own heritage archives. For other communities, this collection of interviews has been the basis of a new community archive. Some community organisations participating in the project, such as the Ethiopian Community in Britain, have been established for over twenty years. The oldest organisation, CARA, established in 1933, has its own extensive archive, largely comprising written materials, some of which are housed in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. However, other groups, such as BRICKS, also known as Bosnian Resource Information and Cultural Centre Kosovar Support, were formed by communities arriving in London more recently. The initial concerns of refugee community groups tend to centre around pressing community needs, such as access to healthcare, housing and education. Meeting the needs of people arriving in London in a state of crisis can overwhelm the resources of small community organisations. Consequently, little time may be given to issues of secondary concern such as preserving cultural heritage. Celebrating cultural activities may be valued by communities in crisis as a focal activity around which to bring people together and combat isolation and depression. However, the act of recording these cultural activities, or spending time collecting people’s memories of them for the development of a community archive, may not readily come to community members’ minds, since the benefits may seem far removed from the pressing concerns of the day. Community members foreseeing future value in creating a community cultural heritage archive or memory bank may attract support and interest from others within the community. However, the undertaking of such a task may

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be hampered, not only due to lack of time and of people with interest and relevant skills, but also due to the lack of resources such as recording equipment, or permanent storage space. Whilst an organisation such as the Ethiopian Community Centre in Britain now owns its own spacious building, other organisations, such as BRICKS, have a more precarious existence. Their ability to rent the premises they occupy is frequently contingent upon funders’ targets and budget constraints. Premises for community organisations are not always large enough to store all the materials an organisation would like to retain. In the case of BRICKS, its office floor of six square metres must house cabinets of case files, funding information, community books, and other organisational reference material and notice-board information about upcoming courses, activities, legislation and opportunities for visitors to the office. This leaves little floor and wall space for cabinets to house community archives of tapes and videos, newspaper cuttings and photographs. Which Communities have been affected by the RCHP? In discussing the impacts of the RCHP on community life, one might first seek to explore the meaning of the term “community”. “Community” is a slippery term. An individual may belong to many different types of community, which may be understood in loose and changeable terms. An individual may find a community radiating around her. She may, metaphorically speaking, deliberately walk towards the centre of an existing community’s waters, in so doing changing the shimmering patterns of its light and creating new colours of reflection. She may tread water furiously to stay within a community’s defining boundaries, or drift backwards and forwards with the ebb and flow of its continually shifting borders without effort. The concept of “community” has been an important theme in the RCHP, with the Museum of London exhibition illustrating how individuals are at the heart of many social networks which spread out to include their family, the communities of which they are a part, their neighbourhood, the city and the world. These networks are bound together by often powerful shared experiences, cultures and ties. They “help to shape personal identities, while being themselves shaped by individuals. They are complex and necessarily change and evolve as circumstances change”2 People interviewed for the RCHP tended not to define themselves as belonging to a general community of “refugees” in absolute terms. Individuals define themselves as “refugees” according

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to the context in which they are asked, just as they might also selfidentify as “African” or “British” or “Rwandan”, as “woman” or “academic” at different times. In some cases whilst an individual may self-identify for example as “British” or “Jewish”, she may not be accepted as such by all those within the so-called “community” with which she identifies. In other cases, an individual may be under pressure to be identified under a community label by a community itself rather than through her own choice. For instance, people born to parents of one religion may be pushed to identify as members of that religious community when in fact they do not personally see reason to self-identify in this way. In some cases, people find themselves wishing to identify with community concepts which are no longer widely recognised. For example, individuals born in the Serbian region of the former Yugoslavia, at a time when the former Yugoslavia was known as “Yugoslavia”, may today prefer to be identified as belonging to the Yugoslav community but find pressure to identify as “Serb”. There are parallels here with situations that individuals choosing to identify with, or reject, the identity label “refugee” may encounter. The decision whether or not to self-identify as “refugee” may lead to welcome and acceptance or ostracism by different communities. Amongst Latin Americans living in London, one can find both strong social taboos against identifying as refugees, for example amongst some Peruvians, and fierce pride and championing of refugee causes, for example amongst Chileans who may continue to self-identify as refugees many years after becoming British citizens. The differing lengths of time that people choose to identify as a “refugee” is interesting and may well relate to the political climate around refugees in the country to which they flee at the time of their arrival and the initial kind of welcome they feel they receive as refugees, For example, many people with German Jewish backgrounds living in the UK continue to identify themselves as refugees, even a half century after their refugee flight, whilst many people who have arrived in the UK this century wish to drop their refugee identity as quickly as possible. There are many different kinds of “community” which one might consider to have been affected in some way by the RCHP. Groups directly involved with the RCHP included the fifteen different refugee community organisations selected to participate in the project. Some of these community organisations were linked to larger community groups organised around ethnicity and networked with

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other community organisations to nominate interviewees. For example, the community organisation “Latin American Association” also sees itself as a part of the wider Latin American community in London and the fieldworker for this organisation liaised with other community groups working with refugees of the same ethnicities. Overlapping the communities specifically targeted by the RCHP and communities of ethnicity, are communities of faith, such as Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities, and communities of professionals such as teachers, doctors and artists. Communities of work have also been affected by the project, for example the Museum of London community with its sub-communities of staff and visiting public, communities of academics thinking about refugee and social issues and even communities of oral historians who learned about the RCHP through project publicity, seminars and conferences. Individuals belonging to loose communities of “Londoners” and the “wider public” have been affected through media and press coverage, visits to the Museum and contact with people involved in the project and in turn their reactions to the RCHP may also have an impact on the communities of which they may be considered members. There are also communities upon whom the impact of the project cannot yet be guessed, for example, children of interviewees already born and the as yet unborn communities of children and grandchildren of RCHP interviewees and generations of school children to come. How has the RCHP impacted on community life? The RCHP has made, and continues to make, an impact on life within diverse communities at many different levels. The RCHP has promoted reflection upon the meaning of “community”, prompting people to consider where the boundaries of a particular community lie. This reflection has had both positive and negative consequences in terms of the broad social aims of connecting people, building trust and understanding and friendships between individuals and promoting social cohesion. Consider for example how the community group BRICKS has been affected by the project. BRICKS, also known as the “Bosnian Resource Information and Cultural Centre Kosovar Support”, is an organisation that supports refugees and migrants from the former Yugoslavia living in London. It has no membership rules or subscription list. Those self-identifying as being from the former Yugoslavia are welcome at its events, as are non-former Yugoslavs with an interest in the region. People are free to join community and

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cultural events without being questioned about their ethnicity. Encouraging nominations of ten people from the BRICKS community to be interviewed for the RCHP focused people’s attention upon the question of who lies within the BRICKS community and might be a suitable candidate for nomination, and who drifts on the margins or stands without. The act of selection of interviewees had the effect of hardening up people’s thoughts about group “membership”. Who qualifies as Bosnian or Kosovan and who does not? Who has had a refugee experience and who has not? Raising these questions entailed some risk for a community organisation which has as one of its key aims the uniting of people from religious and ethnic groups in conflict in the former Yugoslavia. On the one hand, committee members of BRICKS felt it was important that the ten people chosen for interview would reflect BRICKS’ diverse mix of participants. On the other hand, in taking care to involve a mix of people, for example from Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Kosovan and Albanian groups, those participating in the nomination and selection process were encouraged to focus on these ethnic differences, and cast in their minds interviewees as “Bosnian” or “Serbian”. Encouraging community members to reflect on the identity question of “who is in, who is out” carries the possibility of people on the margins being made to feel uncomfortable or cast out, or fearful about the possibility of future rejection. However, reflection about what it means to “belong” to a community can also have the opposite effect of bringing marginal people into the fold or result in a public widening of access to those wishing to join the community. In the case of BRICKS, the question of whom the community group welcomes and for whom the group might primarily exist, can be something of an unspoken issue. For example, whilst the organisation's rhetoric states clearly that both “Kosovans” and “Serbians” are welcome, people may wonder whether rhetoric matches reality. Taboos about mentioning ethnicity may mean that some individuals’ doubts about whether people of a certain group may fully participate in activities and decision-making are never aired. An individual may meet people from the same ethnic group at a BRICKS event she attends, but at the same time still feel unsure of the reaction that others may have if she were to be open about her ethnicity, and wonder about the extent to which she is really welcome, not just by the staff and management committee members but by the rest of the members of the community organisation. There have been cases at BRICKS events, for example, of individuals attending community events but feeling more

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comfortable speaking in English than a common language from the former Yugoslavia, or going to great lengths to conceal their surname, in order not to “offend” people by revealing through accent or surname that they identify with a particular ethnic or religious group from the region. Through holding community discussions about whom to interview and what to archive, community values may be discussed and made explicit. Values and principles may be set out or publicly reaffirmed. The discussion of the selection process for interviewees within BRICKS was from the organisation’s point of view a positive step in affirming the equal membership of people from all ethnic communities within the former Yugoslavia. The organisation has a large Bosnian contingent but welcomes everyone. Non-Bosnians were reassured by the selection for the RCHP that their welcome within the organisation extended beyond policies on paper, that their oral histories were valued as much as Bosnian oral histories. Thus the project helped build further trust between people from different sides of the conflict in Yugoslavia and helped in the process of healing old wounds and grievances. The process of communities’ nominations of oral history interviewees and, later, selection of material to archive, and of which aspects of oral history interviews to present and display to a wider audience within the exhibition at the Museum of London, also prompted reflection and discussion amongst community groups about where common community values, goals and aspirations lie. Whilst the ten interviewees from each community were chosen ostensibly for their contributions to London life and not as representatives of their communities, at the same time it was considered important that the views that individual interviewees publicly express should, in some areas, broadly be in line with views held by others within the nominating community. For example, within BRICKS a kind of community censorship took place, with people able to express empathy with people from different sides of conflict in former Yugoslavia being chosen as RCHP participants over people who might potentially express venomous hatred in an interview. The underlying social purposes of the RCHP had an influence on the interview process at every stage, from selection of interviewees through to presentation of material in public exhibitions. For example, whilst one may make a general assumption that, just by their presence, every individual refugee makes some kind of contribution to London, the wish to portray a positive picture of refugees contributing to

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London affected the selection of interviewees for the project, the framing of questions and the editing of material. Interviewees most readily selected for the project were those who shared the project’s social aims; material that may have suggested that an individual refugee is a burden on the UK economy or a potential threat to cultural harmony was edited, along with inflammatory statements and those expressing racist views. This means then that whilst in one sense care was taken to select interviewees of diverse backgrounds and social categories in order to create a historical archive reflecting a wide range of refugee experiences in London, the material that was filtered for exhibition cannot be presented as having been an attempt to be representative of the views and experiences of the many thousands of refugees living in London. The RCHP prompted discussion and reflection amongst communities about the perception of refugees. For example, within the Latin American communities in London, made up of migrant workers, students, refugees and other sub-communities, there exists prejudice and social stigma about being a refugee. Some Latin American refugees expressed general anxiety about revealing their refugee background, not only to the wider community, but to others within the Latin American community to which they feel they belong. On the other hand, for some community members being a refugee is almost a badge of honour, something of which to be proud. In some cases people felt guilt or embarrassment that they did not share experiences of being a refugee with others in the community. The RCHP has opened discussion within communities about the anxiety that may drive people to try and conceal their refugee, or even nonrefugee, background and the irony of situations where people are concealing their refugee experiences from others who in fact are also refugees. The collection and archiving of oral histories of refugees has helped to reduce taboos and myths about refugees and to create for people a sense of a safe climate in which to ‘come out’ as refugees. For example, the high-profile call for nominations for refugees from Latin America to be interviewed for the RCHP, with project advertisements on community radio stations, flyers despatched at community markets in Brixton and at football matches, articles in the community press and with a wide range of community and cultural organisations, encouraged people to feel welcome to come forward and meet a positive reaction when publicly identifying themselves as refugees. People cautious to come forward straight away were

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encouraged to do after seeing the reception given by other figures from the community who declared their refugee background. For some, this increased openness about being a refugee brought a tremendous sense of relief. It is not always easy to live in the community and yet conceal aspects of one’s own experience; people may be driven into self-imposed isolation from their own communities in order not to have information about their lives discovered. The RCHP helped identify people within the community willing to stand up and be counted as refugees. The opportunity to listen to these community members’ accounts of their lives in some cases gave others a new framework within which to think of their own experiences. People listening to extracts from the archive have reported joy and relief at finding that elements of other people’s experiences and concerns resonate with their own. Finding points of identification with others’ life stories has helped refugees from different countries of origin feel connected with each other. The RCHP has created bridges between many different communities. For example, people within Anglo-Jewish communities have found points of connection between the experiences of recent refugees to the UK and refugee experiences remembered within Jewish communities, for example recounted by Jewish refugees from National Socialism. Some exhibition visitors have reported that making such connections prompted them to reconceptualise their refugee experiences as part of a chain of human experience, rather than something particular to their ethnic or religious community. Making such connections may prompt people to act in different ways within and towards different communities, for example motivating people to take up campaign work against negative media portrayals of refugees. Non-refugee communities have also been prompted by the RCHP to reconsider their own understanding of what it may mean to be a refugee and their stance towards those who seek asylum in the UK. The exhibition has promoted debate about what a refugee exhibition should be all about. Visitors to the exhibition have had opportunities to express their views publicly in the Visitors’ Comments book and to submit comments for display on the walls of the exhibition space. Through these opportunities, many visitors have expressed a desire for the collection and exhibition of refugee community histories to continue in some way; reading through the comments book one has the impression that these are the expressions

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of a growing solidarity movement for refugees. The comments book reads in part like a collective petition for the recognition of the rights of refugees and asylum seekers and the contributions they make to London. Comments are overwhelmingly positive, for example “A very powerful exhibition which deserves a permanent place in London and which possesses the capacity to create real positive change in society”3. Besides fostering a sense of “belonging” and “group” membership and strengthening bonds between individuals, the RCHP had a number of positive social impacts such as creating opportunities to develop friendships in working together towards common goals. The RCHP also encouraged the sharing of histories between communities and helped to boost community self-esteem. Additionally, it promoted the increased participation of individuals in community life, generated “outsider” interest in community activities, brought communities under press and media spotlights, encouraged community self-reflection triggering change and growth in new directions, and supported community members in developing skills such as photography. With funding from the Heritage Lottery and the City Parochial Foundation through the Trust for London, the RCHP explicitly sought to fulfil three key objectives. These were to document refugee communities’ contributions to the society, economy and culture of London; to disseminate refugee oral histories via a high-profile exhibition at the Museum of London and local exhibition; and to document the diversity within refugee communities and the cultural complexity of London’s population. Behind these objectives lay the implicit political and social aims of helping make London a more cohesive and peaceful society, where cultural differences can be respected and celebrated, and of promoting public understanding of refugee issues, countering prejudice and hostility towards refugees. RCHP project fieldworkers, refugee interviewees and members of participating organisations clearly understood the social aims of the RCHP to include fostering good relations between refugee and non-refugee communities in London; promoting refugee integration into the wider community; empowering refugees through offering a platform to share experiences with others and voice views about London life; improving inter-generational relations and understanding within refugee communities; raising general public awareness about the difficulties facing refugees arriving in London; promoting understanding and respect for refugees as human beings;

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and diffusing public hostility whipped up by press descriptions of refugees as for example “scroungers” and “criminals”. Many of the people working to achieve these aims through the RCHP have bonded into a new community with a set of similar core values and a desire to work towards common goals. For example, RCHP fieldworkers reported experiencing heady excitement at feeling a part of a movement with a powerful drive to change society through the creation of the RCHP oral history archive. Clearly defined common social aims contributed to the building of strong identification and firm friendships between individuals involved in the creation of the RCHP archive from across the different partner organisations. These friendships have been maintained long beyond the period of the Museum of London exhibition, with individuals continuing to meet socially and give their time on a voluntary basis to think up and carry out activities that sustain the life of the project, from speaking at conferences, to presenting material at school assemblies, to promoting the project at Refugee Week celebrations, to involving members from refugee communities in the creation of new multimedia material linked to the project such as community films, and working further on educational resources such as the musical, multilingual “Childhood Landscapes” CD ROM. Some Negative Impacts of the RCHP on communities Not all of the RCHP’s impacts on community life may necessarily be considered positive or beneficial to communities. The RCHP at times caused division between communities through emphasising differences. It sharpened thought about divisions between communities, raising the question “who is inside and who is outside?”, and in so doing may have prompted community encapsulation. Human beings have a tendency to classify each other as part of an “in-group” or an “out-group”4. The RCHP brought together individuals from different backgrounds to form an “in-group” of project participants with the desirable effects of uniting people in friendship and common purpose. However, in creating an “in-group”, “out-groups” have inevitably been created as well. Celebrating the archiving of refugee voices by setting up an exhibition in public space prompted visitors who identify with communities not featured in the exhibition to criticise the exclusion of their own communities. For example, comments left in the Visitors’ book include “Interesting exhibition identifying the issues and experiences of refugees BUT WHERE ARE THE PALESTINIANS!

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They are not even included in the Timeline”; and “very interesting, however as a Roma and lesbian where are the references, facts of lesbian and gay people settling in London fleeing persecution...”. The RCHP also opened up potential for negative feedback and racist comments. For example, one local news article scorned contributions by individual RCHP refugee participants and not all comments left by visitors to the exhibition were supportive of refugees. The RCHP also had the potential to prompt resentment where family or community secrets were shared by individual interviewees. For some interviewees, fieldworkers, exhibition visitors and archive users the RCHP stirred up traumatic memories, sometimes with negative effects on psychological well-being. Whilst the project sought to link people coping with flashbacks and negative psychological effects of traumatic memory with available support, support has been limited and not always helpful. Those working on the RCHP have emphasised that interviewees’ accounts of their life stories give individual perspectives on events which may not be factually accurate and that there was never an intention for interviewees to speak as representatives of their communities. However, there remains the danger that individual opinions about events may be, in some eyes, cemented as “fact” under the “official” stamp of the Museum of London. This “cementing” may restrict possibilities for community growth and evolution and create divisions within communities. The RCHP proudly sought to give refugee voices a platform. However, in inviting interviewees to consider assigning copyright of their interviews to another organisation such as the Evelyn Oldfield Unit or the Museum of London, there was the danger that people’s voices could be “taken away” by being given over to organisations. Whilst participating organisations agreed to follow the UK Oral History Society’s ethical guidelines in handling material and to consult individuals about use of material, the voices of individuals are “bottled” and preserved by these organisations and it might well be impossible for an individual years in the future to take back her voice or record a new version of her life-story. The creation and display of any oral history archive runs the risk of turning people into objects to view, rather than subjects. The RCHP sought to counter this possibility by organising live talks in the exhibition space and inviting community musicians, dancers and storytellers to perform alongside the exhibition.

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Conclusions In working towards social aims, the RCHP has had an impact on communities both within and outside of the project. For example, the Belonging exhibition generated over 100 pieces of positive media coverage about refugees in local and broadsheet newspapers and magazines. Numerous school groups visited the exhibition and used its material to support topics within the National Curriculum subject of Citizenship. The RCHP has publicised itself widely to refugee community groups since the collection phase of oral history material, and subsequently through the large-scale public exhibition at the Museum of London advertised in a multitude of public spaces such as giant London Underground posters, newspapers and websites and through education networks. The exhibition at the Museum of London proudly used the strapline “voices of London refugees”, sending out a bold message that refugees may be considered welcome in London and as “belonging” to the London community. Comments left in the Visitors’ Comments book at the Museum of London indicate that the archive helped many people to feel accepted by and included within different communities. Bringing people together from different communities to record oral histories for deposit at the Museum of London archives has not only had the effect of prompting the development and growth of existing communities but has also brought about the emergence of what may be considered a new community oriented around the RCHP. This “RCHP community” was initially task-oriented; however, project staff, fieldworkers, interviewees and steering committee members have, through meeting on numerous occasions to work on common tasks towards shared goals, established ties and friendships. Others have been attracted to join the RCHP community, for example as volunteers or as well-wishers and the RCHP community has widened to become a community of people with a shared common vision of a “better” world. Throughout the process of collecting archive material, individuals have been brought into contact in a virtual way, through email exchange and at discussion meetings and community promotional events. The Belonging exhibition, featuring elements of material collected for the archive, created a temporary physical space for the “RCHP community” to meet. For some individuals, visiting the exhibition at the Museum during its running period from October 2006 until February 2007 was akin to attending a drop-in community

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centre; people visited the exhibition not only to browse the material on display but also with the expectation of bumping into fellow “RCHP community” friends and colleagues and perhaps of meeting new ones. From the personal point of view of the present author, an RCHP fieldworker, visiting the exhibition space came to feel rather like visiting an RCHP community “home”, the exhibition itself creating a setting which expressed shared RCHP community values. However, there are tensions within the very concept of a Refugee Communities History Project. On the one hand, the project aims to promote greater understanding of refugees as people who share a common humanity with the non-refugee population in this country, advocating equal rights for refugees, encouraging people to look beyond the “refugee” label society gives to people in particular situational circumstances, to see those labelled as “refugee” not as “other” and “different” but as “persons”. On the other hand, the very act of organising an exhibition and archive around the theme of “refugees” has meant singling people out for their refugee status, thus lending weight to the idea that refugees are different and giving legitimacy to the division between refugees and non-refugees in the community. An exhibition aiming to show inclusiveness towards refugees could perhaps have been better organised around the theme of “people contributing to London life” with stories of non-refugees and refugees interspersed. In the RCHP a number of people with refugee status nominated for participation declined the invitation on the grounds that they did not wish to be held up to the public as “refugees”. Their wishes not to be singled out under a “refugee” label were respected but not accommodated by the project. Finally, the RCHP is a living, growing archive and is likely to continue to have an impact on life within different communities long into the future and in ways that it may not yet be possible to anticipate.

Notes 1 2

Evelyn Oldfield Unit, Refugee Communities History Project Position Paper, 2004. Museum of London, Refugees Draft Proposal, 6 May 2005.

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Museum of London, Museum of London Visitors’ Comments Book on Belonging Exhibition, February 2007. 4 G. Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations, trans by K. Wolf, ed. by R. Bendix (New York: Glencoe Free Press, 1955).

Index Adler, Alfred 60, 148 Adler, H. G. 69, 104 Adler, Kurt Herbert 61 Ajchenrand, Lajser 2 Albers, Josef 60 Albrand, Martha 61 Altschul, Annie 147 Andersch, Alfred 24 Arendt, Hannah 59-60 Arie, Tom 142 Auernheimer, Raoul 5-6 Avery, Jane 95 Avery, Robert 95 Bab, Julius 58 Bach, David Josef 97 Bach, Susanne 5 Bader, Simone 21 Baeck, Leo 28, 44, 57-59 Baer, Max 163-64 Baer, Regina 163-64 Bailyn, Bernard 62 Bak, Dora 149 Balint, Michael 149-50 Barber, Frederick 150 Bargmann, Valentin 60 Barrett, Erica 123, 125-26, 129, 132-33, 135, 137 Béchard-Léauté, Anne 128 Becher, Ulrich 5 Berendsohn, Walter 58 Benesch, Otto 133 Berger-Hammerschlag, Margareta 83, 85-86, 88 Bergmann, Max 61 Berkenau, Paul 147 Bermann, Richard A. 11

Bernfeld, Siegfried 6, 60 Berthold, Werner 58 Bethe, Hans 61 Betts, Barbara see Castle, Barbara Bing, Gertrude 131 Bing, Rudolf 61 Bischof, Ernst 83, 86, 88 Blaschko, Hermann (Hugh) 144, 152, 155 Blend, Martha 21 Bloch, Ernst 2 Blumenfeld, Paul 5 Blunt, Anthony 129 Böhm, Gundo Ewald 6 Bondy, J. A. 83 Bono (probably de Bono, Emilio) 130 Borchardt, Hermann 6 Borchardt, Karl 151 Boult, Sir Adrian 96 Bracey, Bertha 116 Braunizer, Ruth 53 Brecht, Arnold 59 Brendel, Alfred 104 Brent, Leslie Baruch 142 Breuer, Robert 61 Britten, Benjamin 104 Broch, Hermann 60 Brooks, Alfred 57 Brünell, Erna 5 Bruner, Jerome 51 Brüning, Heinrich 60 Buber-Neumann, Margarete 5 Buschbek, Otto 133 Butler, Hubert 49

192

Cadbury, Miss 116 Cahn, Alfredo 5 Campbell, Sybil 110, 112, 114 Carnap, Rudolf 61 Cassirer, Ernst 60 Castle, Barbara (previously Barbara Betts) 96 Chain, Ernst 144 Chamberlain, Neville 127 Chargaff, Erwin 61 Charoux, Siegfried 22 Churchill, Winston 54, 87, 146 Clare, George 53, 105 Clark, Kenneth 128-29, 135 Comfort, Alex 23 Cosman, Milein 84 Courts, Ben 70 da Vinci, Leonardo 128 Daghani, Arnold ix Dale, Henry 144 Daube, David 74 David, Percival 131 de Rothschild, Dolly 165 de Rothschild, James 165 de Valera, Eamon 42, 45, 50 Derenberg, Walter J. 61 Derrida, Jacques ix Deutsch, Gitta 17, 22 Deutsch, Otto Erich 97 Dickel, Horst 42 Dieckmann, Herbert 61 Dillon, Theo 50 Dyhouse, Prof. Carol 111 Eberhard, Wolfram 62 Eckert, Brita 58 Ehrenberg Family x Ehrenzweig, Albert 61 Ehrlich, Bettina 20, 22, 135 Ehrlich, Georg 135

Index

Eichner, Hans 21 Einstein, Albert 60 Einstein, Alfred 61 Eissler, Kurt 60 Elton, Lewis x Engel, Paul 6 Eppelsheimer, Hanns Wilhelm 2 Erikson, Erik 60 Ettinghausen, Richard 60 Ewald, Paul 61 Fabian, Walter 5 Fermi, Laura 62 Feuchtwang, Eva 129 Feuchtwanger, Jacob 161 Feuchtwanger, Lion 57, 61 Feuchtwanger, Marta 58 Fields, Emmet 59 Fischer, Ernst 19 Fischer, Isidor 143 Fischer, Ruth 60 Fischer, Wolfgang Georg 104-5 Flatter, Hilde Loewe see Loewe-Flatter, Hilde Flatter, Otto 82-83, 87-89 Flechtheim, Ossip K. 5 Fleming, Donald 62 Fleming, Otto 147 Fles, Barthold 5 Foges, Wolfgang 20, 129 Fokschaner, Max 32-35, 39 Fokschaner, Otto 39 Fokschaner, Wolfgang 39 Foster, Walter 101-2, 104-5 Foulkes (Fuchs), Sigmund 148 Franck, James 61 Frank, Karl 60 Frank-Klein, Anna 5 Freshwater, Osias 157-58, 169 Freud, Anna 148

Index

Freud, Sigmund ix, 60, 142, 147-48, 150 Fried, Erich 19 Fried, John H. E. 59 Friedlaender, Walter A. 59 Friedländer, Max 129 Frischenschlager, Friedhelm 104 Froeschel, George 58 Fromm, Bella 61 Fromm, Erich 61 Fuchs, Albert 19 Fuerst, Desider 152, 154 Fuerst, Liliane 152 Gallagher, Frank 50 Gandert, Gero 58 Gieler, Peter 95 Giesskann, Karl 153 Gode von Aesch, Alexander 59 Gödel, Kurt 60 Goldscheider, Ludwig 21 Goldschmidt, Richard 61 Gombrich, Ernst 21, 104, 125, 130-33 Goslar, Lotte 61 Gotlieb, Howard 57, 61 Gradenwitz, Carmel 158 Graf, Oscar Maria 57 Gropius, Ise 71 Gropius, Walter 60, 71-72 Gross, Eva 53 Gross, Leo 6 Grossmann, Kurt 58 Grunfeld, Dr Judith 159 Guggenheim, Felix 61 Gumbel, Emil Julius 2, 61 Gurian, Waldemar 60 Gürster, Eugen 5 Guttmann, Ludwig 151

193

Habe, Hans 61 Haberler, Gottfried 60, 63 Haffner, Sebastian 79 Haider, Jörg 105-6 Haldane, J. B. S. 144 Hallgarten, George 60 Hare, Richard Gilbert 79 Harpner, Mrs 102 Harpner, Otto 97-103 Hayward, the Revd. Gerald 160 Heartfield, John 83-85, 89 Heiden, Konrad 2 Heilbut, Iwan 6 Heinsheimer, Hans 60 Heitler, Walter 44 Helga Prinzessin zu Löwenstein 23 Hennig, John 42 Henried, Paul 60 Hermlin, Stephan 2 Hertz, Edith 145-50 Hertz, Friedrich 96, 145, 150 Herzberg, Alexander 6 Hill, A. V. 146 148 Hindemith, Paul 60 Hirsch, Rudolf 131, 135-36 Hirsch, Ruth 135 Hirsch, Trude 131, 135 Hirschmann, Albert O. 60 Hitler, Adolf 2, 48, 68, 86-7, 105, 113, 127 Hockey, Lisbeth 148 Hoefler, Elsa 48 Holborn, Hajo 60 Hollitscher, Dr Erna 114-18, 120 Höllriegel, Arnold see Bermann, Richard A. Homolka, Florence 5 Horabin, Tom 96 Horovitz, Béla 21, 132-33

194

Huder, Walther 58 Hula, Erich 59 Huxley, Julian 144 Hynd, John 96 Jansen, H. W. 61 Jonas, Franz 103 Kähler, Alfred 59 Kahn, Ludwig Werner 5 Kalmus, Alfred 97 Kanitz, Ernst 60 Kantorowicz, Ernst 58 Kapp, Yvonne 146 Kastner, Liesl 148 Kaus, Gina 6 Keogh, Dermot 47 Kerr, Sir Michael 66 Kimelman, Dr 116 Knepler, Georg 96 Koenig, Karl 149 Koerner, Henry 61 Koestler, Arthur 75 Köhler, Wolfgang 61 Kohn, Dr Hedwig 119-20 Kohn, Hans 58 Kohn, Hein 5 Kokoschka, Olda 23 Kokoschka, Oskar 17, 23 Körber, Lili 6 Korngold, E. W. 60 Kosman, Milein see Cosman, Milein Koster, Henry 58 Kranzdorf, Israel 32 Krebs, Hans 144-45 Kreisky, Bruno 102, 104 Krenek, Ernst 60 Kris, Ernst 131, 133 Kristeller, Paul Oskar 61-62 Kuenssberg, Ekkehard von 147

Index

Kulka, Dr Dora 115-17 Kurz, Hilde (née Schüller) vi, x, xiii, 123-31, 133-37 Kurz, Max 131 Kurz, Otto vi, x, xiii, 123-37 Kuttner, Stefan 61 Ladenburg, Rudolf 119 Lamm, Fritz 5 Landauer, Carl 60 Landshoff-York, Ruth 61 Lazarsfeld, Paul 61 Leichtentritt, Hugo 60 Leser, Paul 5, 59 Levin, Ernst 151 Levy, Ernst 28-29 Lewy, Ernst 43 Lichtenstern, Paul 105 Lind, Jakov 17, 19, 21-22 Loewe-Flatter, Hilde 5 Longford, Lord see Pakenham, Lord Lothar, Johannes 79 Love, Henry see Loewe-Flatter, Hilde Maas, Lieselotte xiii, 3, 81, 8388 Machlup, Fritz 60 Magaziner, Alfred 104 Mahler, Anna 20 Maier, Alice 5-6 Maier, Joseph 5-6 Manasse, Ernst Moritz 5-6 Marlowe, Christopher 23 Marnau, Alfred 17, 19, 22-23 Mayer, Ella 70 Mayer-Gross, Willy 147, 151 Meinhard, Heine 135 Meinl, Julius 96, 104 Meitner, Lise 119

Index

Mende, Dietrich 79 Meyer, Felix 42 Mihaly, Jo 2 Minkowski, Rudolf 61 Mintz, Ilse see Schüller, Ilse Mintz, Marjorie see Perloff, Marjorie Mohl, Kurt 20 Mohr, Walter 5 Mondolfo, Anita 120 Morgenstern, Soma 5-6 Morgenthau, Hans J. 60 Morley, Prof. Edith 113 Moser, Claus 104 Müller-Sturmheim, Emil 96 Munk, Rabbi Dr Eliyahu (Eli) 157-58, 162-64, 168 Münz, Ludwig 133 Mussolini, Benito 124-25 Napier, Oona 22 Nash, Heather 111 Neuburger, Max 147 Neumann, Margarete Buber see Buber-Neumann, Margarete Neumann, Robert 19 Neumark, Fritz 5 Neurath, Marie 20, 129 Neurath, Otto 20 Neurath, Walter 119 Niederland, William 60 Nobel, Edmund 142 Noll, Annemarie 149 O’Brien, Gerard 46 Obermann, Karl 5 Olden, Rudolf 5 Oldfield, Evelyn 173, 175, 187 Ormerod, Mrs 114

195

Pächt, Otto 133 Paetel, Karl Otto 59 Pagel, Walter 150 Pakenham, Lord (later Lord Longford) 101 Panofsky, Erwin 60 Pappenheim, Fritz 6 Pears, Peter 104 Perloff, Marjorie (née Mintz) 124 Perutz, Leo 5, 11 Perutz, Max 146, 152, 155 Pfanner, Helmut 57 Philipps, Oscar 159 Pick, Kurt 69 Piscator, Erwin 62 Pollak, Marianne 96 Prean, Erica 158 Priestley, J. B. 99 Pritchard, Jack 71-72 Rand, Prof. Rose 119 Rank, Otto 61 Rapaport, David 60 Rathbone, Eleanor 111, 114 Rauter, Ferdinand 96 Rayleigh, Lady 165 Reder, Walter 104-5 Reed, Herbert 23 Reich, Wilhelm 60 Reichenbach, Hans 61 Reichenheim, Julius Oskar 79 Reimann, Paul 19 Reinhardt, Max 57, 62 Reisch, Walter 58 Reiss, Hans 53 Retzlaw, Karl 5 Rheinstein, Max 61 Rie, Robert 57 Riesenfeld, Stefan 6 Rockefeller, John D. 146

196

Röder, Werner 62 Rosenberg, Ruth 133 Rosenberg, the Revd. Lou 161 Rosenfelder, Cissi Z. 158, 16163, 166, 168 Rosenzweig, Wilhelm 96, 104 Rossmann, Alexandre 86 Rossmann, Nellie 86, 88 Rosza, Miklos 61 Roth, Joseph 11, 89 Rubel, Nomi 6 Samet, Bernard 147 Samet, Paul 148 Saxl, Fritz 125, 131 Schaal, Eric 5 Schaber, Will 62 Schachtel, Ernst 6 Schefold, Monica 53 Scheu, Friedrich 96, 102, 104 Scheu, Herta 102, 104 Schlosser, Julius 125 Schmeiser, Jo 21 Schmid, Heinrich 99, 101 Schneider, Franz 96 Schonfeld, Rabbi Dr Solomon 159 Schrödinger, Erwin 42, 44, 53 Schüller, Erwin 131 Schüller, Hilde see Kurz, Hilde Schüller, Ilse 123-25, 130, 133, 136-37 Schüller, Richard 124-25, 128, 130 Schüller, Susi 124-25, 130 Schüller, Theodore 132 Schulze, Rainer 151 Schumpeter, Joseph 60 Schwabacher, Nellig 86 Schwarz, Peter 53 Segal, Lore 21

Index

Seghers, Anna 2 Seib, Renate 79, 81, 87 Shapiro, A. 164 Simpson, Esther 116, 120 Singer, Charles 146 Singer, Dorothy 146 Sinowatz, Fred 104 Siodmak, Curt 61 Salmon, Trevor C. 41 Sonnenfeld, Marion 57 Soyfers, Jura 19 Speier, Hans 59 Spender, Stephen 23 Speyer, Wilhelm 6 Spiel, Hilde 18 Sponer, Hertha 119 Staudinger, Else 59 Staudinger, Hans 59, 62 Stebbing, L. Susan 119 Steiner, Herbert 17-19, 22, 104 Steiner, Hubert 153 Steiner, Rudolf 149 Stern, Curt 61 Stern, Desider 62 Stern, J. P. 104 Sternfeld, Wilhelm 62, 82-83 Stolper, Toni 58 Strauss, Herbert A. 58, 144 Strauss, Leo 61 Strauss, Willi 142 Striesow, Hedwig 147 Suchy, Viktor 18 Suschitzky, Wolf 20 Tauber, Richard 103 Tausig, Otto 19 Taylor, Kraeupl 149 Teller, Eduard 60 Tergit, Gabriele 5 Terkel, Studs 51 Tetens, Friedrich Tete H. 59

Index

Than, Joseph 60 Thompson, Dorothy 61 Thompson, Paul 51 Thoor, Jesse v, 17, 22-23 Tiedemann, Eva 62 Tillich, Paul 60 Tilling, Mrs 163 Toller, Ernst 58, 60, 89 Townsend, Stanley 57 Trier, Walter 82 Tucker, E. R. 168 Uhlig, Hans 79 Ullrich, Hermann 96, 104 Ulmer, Edgar 60 Vale, Eugene 61 van Beethoven, Ludwig 131 van Gogh, Vincent 21 Vaughan Williams, Ralph 96 Voegelin, Eric 60 Vogt, Marthe 144 Volke, Werner 58 von Einsiedel, Wolfgang 79 von Hofe, Harold 57 von Kahler, Erich 59 von Mises, Ludwig 62 von Mises, Richard 60 von Neumann, John 60 von Unruh, Fritz 59 Voswinckel, Peter 143 Waldheim, Kurt 98, 103-5 Walter, Bruno 61 Walter, Hans Albert 62 Warburg, Aby 75, 123, 125, 130, 133 Wasserman, Jacob 89 Waxman, Franz 61 Webster, John 23 Weidenfeld, Lord 66, 104

197

Weindling, Emmerich 151 Weiss, Erwin 104 Wellisch, Erich 149 Weltsch, Robert 59 Wendling, Ulrike 128 Werfel, Franz 61 Wertheimer, Max 61 West, Arthur 19 West, Edith 19 White, Antonia 23 Wiener, Alfred x, xii, 28-40 Wigner, Eugene 60 Wilczynski, Katerina 135 Winter, Georg 61 Winton, Nicholas 136 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 119 Wodak, Walter 104 Wolf, Charlotte 144, 154 Wolf, Edmund v, 17, 19, 22, 24 Wolff, Josef 164 Wolff, Kurt 60 Wreschner, the Revd. B. 166 Wrey Gardiner, Charles 23 Wuttke, Dieter 129 Wyler, William 60 Zamet, John 148, 152 Ziegler, Richard 82 Ziller, Robert 82 Zinnemann, Fred 60 Zoffany, John 86 Zweig, Stefan 57, 62

Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Volume 10 • •

• • • • • • • •

Ben Barkow: The Wiener Library: Founding Vision and Early History Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove: The Continuation of Politics by Other Means: The Freie Deutsche Kulturbund in London, 1939-1946 Jens Brüning: Karawanserei des alten Europas. Die Geschichte des Club 1943 Anthony Grenville: The Association of Jewish Refugees J. M. Ritchie: Dr Karl König and the Camphill Community Mario Kessler: Arthur Rosenberg in England und der Academic Assistance Council (1934-1937) Bea Lewkowicz: Belsize Square Synagogue: Community, Belonging, and Religion among German-Jewish Refugees Marian Malet: Oskar Kokoschka and the Freie Deutsche Kulturbund: The ‘Friendly Alien’ as Propagandist Anna Müller-Härlin: Die Artists’ International Association und ‘refugee artists’ Jennifer Taylor: ‘Work […] of modest proportion’. Ayton School: One Example of the Contribution of the Society of Friends to Saving the Refugees from Hitler

The editors welcome contributions relating to any aspect of the field of German-speaking exile in Great Britain, not limited to the refugees from Hitler in the mid-twentieth century. Articles should be sent on disk and in hard copy to: the Hon. Secretary, Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. A style sheet is available from the Hon. Secretary.