Liesl Frank, Charlotte Dieterle and the European Film Fund. Martin SauterЧитать онлайн книгу.
and the use of classical music, which, in a traditional Hollywood musical, was unusual. Meet Me In St. Louis, on the other hand, is set, as the title suggests, in St. Louis in 1903, just before the World Fair. The song that gave the film its title had already been an American classic at the time of the making of the film.25 The narrative and the characters in Koster’s film -a single parent , a divorcee whose ex-husband is about to marry an adventuress - would also have had no place in Louis B. Mayer’s ‘view of America [which] became America’s view of itself - a place and a people more virtuous, more godly, more resilient than anyplace else’ (Eyman 516 : 2005).26 And while in Meet Me In St. Louis, ‘a paean to hearth and home’ (Eyman 354: 2005), plans to move from the peaceful and quiet city of St. Louis to the iniquitous New York, are abandoned, this is precisely where the family reunion in Koster’s film takes place.
One cannot help but wonder what else Asper might have unearthed, had the Universal archives not been closed following the Vivendi takeover.27 The fact that this invaluable archival material may remain permanently inaccessible to researchers could now mean that the chapters in the history of Universal opened by Asper and Horak may never be closed - nor new ones opened - for sheer lack of accessible material. On another level, Asper’s study gives rise to speculations as to the émigrés’ influence on other studios - Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia, RKO, United Artists, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, not to mention the smaller ones like Republic or Monogram. It is certain that émigrés worked at all of these studios, but their impact, input and influence - if there was any - has never been thoroughly investigated. Filmexilanten must be regarded as an inspiration to do just that.
In summary, Asper’s contribution to film history in general and exile research in particular, is unquestionably crucial. Alongside Horak, by whom he was influenced and inspired, Asper has emerged as one of the field’s leading figures. Horak’s approach of course is analytical and diagnostic, while Asper’s own is investigative and biographical. The methodologies of both scholars complement each other however, inasmuch as the detection of data is as fundamental a part of exile research as their critical and contextual analysis. Asper was instrumental in memorialising those émigrés who tended to be ignored by scholars, thus instigating a shift of focus from émigré directors and actors to below-the-line personnel such as cinematographers, editors, production-designers, etc. In Filmexilanten, Asper investigated the émigrés’ impact on Universal, resulting in a groundbreaking study of how the émigrés brought their heritage to bear on one particular film studio. Clearly taking his cue from Horak, who had previously examined the émigrés’ influence on a particular film genre - the anti-Nazi films - Asper’s findings feed into what is now in any case a current shift in film history in general: notably studies of transnational cinema that bring to light the influence of European film artists on American cinema and culture.
Existing Gaps
Having scrutinised the existing literature on exile, I identified two persistent gaps. One of them is the absence of women. Peter Gay has already observed that, ‘very few of [the exile women] had ever really been remembered’ (Gay in Quack 1996: 354). Although Gay’s comment dates from 1995, little has changed since. This gap is all the more discernible in the light of the sheer number of books, studies, articles, and so on, that have been written on often prominent, exiled, male, film artists settling in Hollywood. Very few of these, however, mention the presence and achievements of women, conveying the impression that women were simply absent and that fleeing Nazi Germany was something that concerned only men. ‘No one’, Peter Gay has justly observed, ‘cared much about Mrs. Lion Feuchtwanger or Mrs. Herbert Marcuse or Mrs. Albert Einstein’ (Gay in Quack 1995: 354). Yet Liesl Frank, in a letter to Marta Mierendorff, wrote that ‘[...] women usually had an easier time adapting [to life in exile]’,28 a claim corroborated by Sabine Quack, who, in Between Sorrow And Strength - Women Refugees of the Nazi Period (New York/ NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995) writes that ‘refugee women were better able to cope [with exile] than refugee men were’ (Quack in Quack 1995: 9).
Quack’s study is one of the few discussing the role women played in émigré circles in general and in refugee organisations in particular. Another is Andreas Lixl-Purcell‘s, Women Of Exile - German-Jewish Autobiographies Since 1933 (Westport/ CT: Greenwood Press, 1988). Although not concerned with exile women in Hollywood per se, both books constitute a pioneering effort in a neglected field insofar as they make women a visible agent in the topic of exile of German Jews. Lixl-Purcell’s book consists of biographies of several women, with a focus on their flight from Nazi Germany and their early years in exile. In a parallel to the lives of Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle, who are at the centre of my own inquiry, the biographies of the women in Lixl-Purcell’s book also ‘confront the reader with provocative arguments against conformist models of identity’(Lixl-Purcell 1988: 6), for, as we shall see, exile not so much forced, as offered these women opportunities to assume roles previously deemed inappropriate. Unlike the majority of books available on exile men, none of the women featured in Lixl-Purcell’s book are famous in any way. They are, rather, ‘ordinary’ women describing in their own words how the exile experience changed their lives.
Lixl-Purcell’s study, although over twenty years old, has spawned surprisingly few related analyses, which is one of the reasons why it is still significant today. Another reason is, of course, the continuing preoccupation of scholars with the Holocaust and its consequences, one of which was exile. Approaching the topic of exile through biography, Lixl-Purcell’s method echoes that of many exile researchers and also served as a blueprint for my own examination. Furthermore, the relevance of Women Of Exile lies in the fact that analogously to Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle, the women at the centre of Lixl-Purcell’s study, were confronted with ‘the recognition that the culturally prescribed role models offered no solutions to the problems of their lives [and thus] convinced many women of exile to experiment with radically new models of political behaviour’ (Lixl-Purcell 1988: 6).
Similarly to Lixl-Purcell, Sybille Quack also examines the lives of ordinary women who fled Nazi Germany. Her study includes several eyewitness reports of the exile experience such as Elizabeth Marum Lunau’s on the ‘Arrival at Camp de Gurs‘, or Rachel Cohn’s on ‘Women Émigrés in Palestine’. The main focus lies on the effect exile had on these women and the lives they led - or were able to lead - in their adopted country. Neither Lixl-Purcell nor Quack offer any insight on the role exile women played in Hollywood and in its émigré community. Quack, however, does acknowledge the importance ’refugee organisations [played] in settling refugees’ (Quack 1995: 6). Hence, several contributions in Quack’s study examine the input of women in organisations such as, for instance, the National Council of Jewish Women. In another parallel to my own investigation, Steven M. Lowenstein, in ‘Women‘s Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community’, argues that, ’[the] participation [of women within the congregational sphere] was generally behind the scenes and, on the surface at least, did not challenge the male predominance in official communal functions’ (Lowenstein in Quack 1995: 172). This, as we shall see, mirrors the role Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle played in the EFF. Thus, while both Lixl-Purcell and Quack disregard the Hollywood exile community and its various aid organisations, their findings nevertheless proved useful insofar as they corroborated my own.
A second gap in the literature on German-Jewish exile, and particularly in film history, is the role of refugee organisations in Hollywood’s émigré community. This includes the involvement of women in these organisations which, as became apparent during my own research, was crucial. As pointed out above, literature on exile has a tendency to concentrate on, generally famous - male - individuals, their lives and/ or their creative output following their exile, be that literature or film, while the impact of the numerous refugee organisations, and the role they played within the émigré circle, has thus far received scant attention. Yet, archival data shows that the overwhelming majority of exiles were members of organisations, founded as a response to the political situation in their home country. Many of these provided fellow refugees with financial aid and came to their rescue when foreign governments chose to turn a blind eye to their plight. Examining these organisations offers valuable insight into the exile experience as a whole, not to mention the political situation in the host country.