German Literature in Exile

Exile, Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann, Bruno Frank and Franz Werfel, have three characteristics in common. They are members of the well-to-do middle class, they are intellectuals producing essayistic writing as well as fiction, and their works are infused with the traditions of humanism.1 Leonhard Frank, on the other hand, shares none of these characteristics. He sprang from a poor family in Wiirzburg, he is neither an essayist nor does he possess the bookish learning of the men mentioned above, and he is by all odds no humanist. A point of contact between Leonhard Frank and Heinrich Mann reveals a superficial similarity, and a deep difference. Both protested in early writings against existing forms of society, Heinrich Mann in Der Untertan (1914) and Die Armen (1917), and Leonhard Frank in Die Riuberbande (1914) and Der Mensch Ist Gut (1917). While Heinrich Mann, however, called for a republican form of government, resting on the philosophy of the Enlightenment and retaining traditional values, Leonhard Frank demanded a remoulding of man himself and a fundamental social reconstruction that extended to all spheres of human activity. Frank attacked the falsity underlying modern ideals, among them patriotism, loyalty, and honor. They were, for him, shot through with simulation and placed in the service of forces that perpetuated them for reasons of self-interest and that derived gain by fostering antagonism between individuals and between social groups. The staff surgeon in Der Mensch Ist Gut, a volume credited with immeasurable influence in hastening the revolution of 1918, and comparable to the books of Duhamel and Barbusse, concluded, dass dieser hillische Ungeist, hinter dem schuldig und starr und gewaltig und gierig das Kapital steht, mit Halbheiten, mit kleinen oder grossen Reformen nicht iiberwunden werden kann. The creation of the Weimar Republic by no means satisfied Frank's call for fundamental changes. He continued to unveil man's loveless and mendacious institutions, particularly as he observed them in his native Wiirzburg. Even though the setting of his novels

Archaeology · Art · Art history · German · German Literature · Classics · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Literature and Cultural Memory