2008
Cairn
Daniel Azuélos, « L'exil dans l'exil Les stratégies linguistiques contradictoires des exilés aux États-Unis (Thomas Mann, Klaus Mann, Hans Sahl, Oskar Maria Graf) », Études Germaniques, ID : 10670/1.qnrbql
This paper focuses on the problem of language in the years of exile. The refugee-writers and most of the German intellectuals exiled in the USA were torn between two contradictory positions. Were they to condemn Germany and its terror regime and yet also throw away its cultural past and the German language for the sake of Americanisation and reeducation ? Adopting the English or the French language was not a solution for most of them and only the very young had the courage to speak and to write in French or in English. Were they to save the best of the German culture in an uncertain future in order to regenerate a German language that had to be freed from the stigma of the LTI-years ? Paradoxically enough it was mostly the German-speaking Jewish writers who did not follow the mainstream and continued to use the German language through which they expressed their Jewishness.