The renegade in German exile literature

The article outlines the process by which several exile writers came to terms with the realisation that the response of the writing community to the Nazi takeover was by no means unanimous. It focuses in particular on the reactions of exiles in criticism, prose fiction and poetry to what was perceived as renegade behaviour by Gottfried Benn and Gerhart Hauptmann, before briefly considering the less well known but equally symptomatic cases of Max Barthel, Ernst Glaeser and Josef Ponten. It then looks at Paul Zech's attempt in his novel Deutschland, dein Tanzer ist der Tod (published 1980, but written during the thirties) to place Ponten and others in the context of a broader view of the literary landscape which included those who remained in Germany and made differing accommodations to the new regime, as well as those emigrants whose work had not (yet) been devoted to the anti-Fascist cause.