The Exiles: Actors, Artists and Writers Who Fled the Nazis for London

(Hardback)

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London, 1934. Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner dominated the British theatre scene, poet and director Berthold Viertel shot two successful films for Gaumont British; two great actors from the Weimar era, Conrad Veidt and Fritz Kortner, became well-known faces in English-speaking cinema and the Hungarian journalist Stefan Lorant launched the first ever continental-style illustrated magazine for the British newspaper market. Exploring a phase in the history of Anglo-German relations during which the migrs from Hitlers Germany were making their influence felt in Britain, Daria Santini traces their presence in London from around 1933 to 1935 when these characters made their presence truly felt, all while the Nazi threat loomed on the horizon.

Reviews

An impeccably researched yet eminently readable book packed with fascinating and often intimate portraits of once-celebrated figures whose contribution to the artistic life of Britain and beyond deserves to be better remembered. * The Jewish Chronicle *
Vivid studies of a remarkable group of people who fled from nazism, giving new perspectives on London in the 1930s through their eyes and reminding us of their exceptional, lasting, contributions to British culture. * Professor Pat Thane, King's College, London *
A well-researched and beautifully written history of Nazi exiles in 1930s London. Daria Santini, a fresh voice in the history of London, has created sensitive and nuanced portraits of exiled artists that reveal their lasting contributions to English cultural life. * Amy Helen Bell, author of London Was Ours (2011) *
What an ingenious idea to take the chronology of one year (1934) to show the arrival of Exiles from Nazi Germany and unfold what will remain a cornerstone of a future cultural history of German emigration in the 1930s. Daria Santinis investigations into the calamities of exile make indispensable and compelling reading. * Professor Rdiger Grner, Director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, Queen Mary University of London *
[F]ollowing in the footsteps of earlier explorers such as Daniel Snowman, Santini brings home yet again, and urges us to remember, Mitteleuropas rich cultural legacy. * AJR: Journal of the Association of Jewish Refugees *

Author Bio

Daria Santini was born in Rome and studied in Italy and Germany. In 1992 she moved to London, where she still lives. She was Lecturer in German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford for fifteen years until 2010. Between 2000 and 2002 she was Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in German Literature at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universitt in Munich. Since leaving academia, Daria has worked as an independent scholar and writer. Her specialist fields are 18th-19th-and 20th-century literary studies as well as cultural history & biography.