Marseille 1940

1940 is the most dramatic year in German literary history. In Nice, Heinrich Mann listens to the news on Radio London as the air raid sirens sound. Anna Seghers flees Paris on foot with her children. Lion Feuchtwanger is a prisoner in a French internment camp as the SS units draw nearer. They all eventually end up in Marseille, hoping to find a route to freedom. This is where Walter Benjamin hands over his last essay to Hannah Arendt before setting out to flee across the Pyrenees. Many German and Austrian writers, intellectuals and artists cross paths here. And this is also where Varian Fry and his comrades risk life and limb to try and smuggle them out of France. Uwe Wittstock’s rich scene-setting and sensitive narrative tell a story of incredible courage and profound desperation, of defiant hope, and of humanity in dark times.