COMMUNAZIS FBI Surveillance of German Emigre Writers.

• Author: Buzzelli, Susan
• Position: Review

COMMUNAZIS FBI Surveillance of German Emigre Writers by Alexander Stephan Yale University Books $29.95

NAMES LIKE FEUCHTWANGER, Werfel, and Seghers probably won't ring many bells today, but in the 1930s and `40s a long list of German playwrights, poets, and novelists were household names in America: Not just Thomas Mann, Nobel Prizewinning author of Magic Mountain, and Bertolt Brecht, librettist of The Three Penny Opera, endure today, but dozens of others who time has forgotten, including Anna Seghers, Franz Werfel, and Lion Feuchtwanger.

As the power of the Third Reich grew, the German, Czech, and Austrian intelligentsia, many of them Jews, cashed in on their celebrity, for one-way tickets to the United States. Many others had to make a detour through Mexico. Americans welcomed these distinguished men and women with open arms; and Central Europe's finest minds returned the favor by lending their talents to movie studios, publishing houses, and Ivy League universities, while pledging their loyalty to the American way.

The exiles seemed to have found an ideal refuge from the madness of war. Far away from the threat of the Gestapo, they had the freedom to rally against Hitler, pursue their literary endeavors without fear of imprisonment, and launch campaigns to save their colleagues and loved ones still trapped in Europe. They also had the privilege of choosing either the palms, villas, and cushy Hollywood gigs of Los Angeles or the jazz clubs, uptown apartments, and lecture circuits of New York, where they were free to lead their eccentric European lifestyles in comfort. Erika Mann, for example, a resident of Los Angeles, was married to openly homosexual poet W.H. Auden, and there were rumors that she and her brother Klaus were lovers. Surrounded by friends and family, and free to follow their whims, the exiles continued to produce brilliant and important novels, essays, and plays.

Take a closer look, however, Alexander Stephan, a professor of German at the University of Florida, does in his Florida, does book Communazis: FBI Surveillance of Emigre Writers, and a very different picture of the emigre lifestyle emerges Based on reams of government files that he obtained through the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Stephan reveals that Herbert Hoover's FBI, along with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, House Un-American Committee, and Office of Strategic Services--the precursor to the CIA--expended an astonishing amount of...