Everyone Writes for Himself

Artists are said to be pronounced individualists. The poets who remained in Germany after 1933 also behaved very differently. Whoever wanted to publish as an author in the Third Reich had to be officially registered as a member of the “Reichsschriftumskammer” (National Chamber of Writing). But what did that mean? How much adaptation was required? What was the relationship to the state and how did the writers see themselves as representatives of German intellectual life? Did they maintain contact with emigrated colleagues? And what was their attitude towards persecution and deportation of the Jews.

Anatol Regnier, who himself comes from a family of artists who decided against emigration, approaches the topic through literary self-testimonies of such diverse personalities as Gottfried Benn, Hans Fallada, Ricarda Huch, Hanns Johst, Erich Kästner, Ina Seidel and Will Vesper. Were they part of the system? Or was it possible to maintain integrity as writers in National Socialist Germany? The findings are often surprisingly ambivalent and much greyer than the black and white logic of Nazi/Antinazi suggests.