Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, or Beverly Hills – these are the illustrious names of the Californian idyll where they found refuge: filmmakers and actors, writers and intellectuals who had to flee Europe from the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. They formed a solidarity-based community of exiles: Bertolt Brecht, Helene Weigel, and Hanns Eisler; Billy Wilder and Vicki Baum; Fritz Lang and William Wyler; Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Anyone who had a name in Berlin, Vienna, or Prague followed the call of Hollywood's booming film industry. But this romantic “Weimar on the Pacific” is not the whole story: even as they made their military and moral contributions to the Allies at the beginning of the war, the refugees became suspects. Just moments before celebrated as noble opponents of the Nazis, their trash is now being searched by the FBI – the “red menace” and McCarthyism turn free spirits and left-wing liberals into hostile “communists”. The country that was a refuge is transformed into a place of repression and persecution.
Captivating and atmospheric, Jan Jekal uses previously unpublished documents from archives in Los Angeles to trace how the exiles fought back against authoritarian America – with activism, wit, courage, and films that have become classics – but also how some of them despaired of America.
Narrative non-fiction
Sample translation
English sample available
Jan Jekal, born in Kiel in 1993, is a freelance author and cultural journalist. He studied North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin. His articles on film and music have been published in DIE ZEIT and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. He also hosts the pop culture podcast Rolling Stone Weekly. Jekal lives in Berlin.
