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‘Extended Arm of Reich Foreign Policy’? Literary Internationalism, Cultural Diplomacy and the First German PEN Club in the Weimar Republic

Part of: European Cultural Diplomacy and the Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2021

Tara Talwar Windsor Open the ORCID record for Tara Talwar Windsor [Opens in a new window]
Tara Talwar Windsor*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the first German PEN Club (established in 1924) as a semi-formal agent of cultural diplomacy after the First World War. It shows that leading figures in the German PEN negotiated a role in the International PEN which blended PEN's ostensibly non-political literary internationalism with the national interests of the young Weimar Republic. It explores their mutually expedient relationship with the German Foreign Ministry their efforts to influence state cultural diplomacy and their use of the International PEN framework to test alternative visions of international order. The article complicates the notion that PEN was an ‘instrument’ or ‘extended arm’ of foreign policy by underlining the agency of PEN intellectuals and by showing how PEN was part of a wider search for new ways to shape international affairs and find ideological compromise in an era often seen through a dominant lens of confrontation and polarisation.

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Article
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Contemporary European History , Volume 30 , Special Issue 2: European Cultural Diplomacy and the Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939 , May 2021 , pp. 181 - 197
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 PEN (Ould) to PEN German Centre (Berlin), 11 Jan. 1927, PEN Letters, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin (hereafter HRC).

2 Walter von Molo, contribution to the survey ‘Was erwarten Sie von der Berliner Tagung des PEN-Klubs? Eine Umfrage unter Berliner Mitgliedern und Nichtmitgliedern’, Die Literarische Welt, 14 May 1926, 2. All translations are my own.

3 See Molo to Hans Friedrich Blunck, 24 June 1927, Hans Friedrich Blunck Nachlass, Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesbibliothek, Kiel (hereafter HFBN), Cb92.64.1:2:12,135.

4 Blunck, Tagebuch, 25 Apr. 1925, HFBN.

5 Blunck, Tagebuch, 25 June 1929, HFBN.

6 See Wilford, R.A., ‘The PEN Club, 1930–1950’, Journal of Contemporary History, 14, 1 (1979), 115 fn. 2Google Scholar; Doherty, Megan, ‘A “Guardian to Literature and its Cousins”: The Early Politics of the PEN Club’, Nederlandse Letterkunde, 16, 3 (2011), 132–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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24 See Trommler, Frank, Kulturmacht ohne Kompass: Deutsche auswärtige Kulturbeziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2014), 289–418Google Scholar.

25 Despite his emphasis on the alliance between literature and foreign policy, Fischer's handbook article does not use the term ‘auswärtige Kulturpolitik’ or any of its German variants which correspond with the English-language concept ‘cultural diplomacy’; indeed, exploring the precise nature of PEN's relationship to the state is not the purpose of his chapter.

26 For an assessment of recent developments in Weimar historiography, see Hung, Jochen, and, ‘“Bad” Politics “Good” Culture: New Approaches to the History of the Weimar Republic’, Central European History, 49, 3–4 (2016), 441–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, quoted in Watts, Marjorie, P.E.N. The Early Years 1921–1926 (London: Archive Press Watts, 1971), 13Google Scholar.

28 John Galsworthy, ‘Danksagung’, Berliner Tageblatt, 27 May 1926.

29 Doherty, ‘Guardian’, 146.

30 Potter, Rachel, ‘Modernist Rights: International PEN 1921–1936’, Critical Quarterly, 55, 2 (2013), 78Google Scholar.

31 Doherty, ‘Guardian’, 145.

32 Ibid., 138.

33 Ibid., 141.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., 137.

36 Watts, P.E.N., 15–9.

37 Potter, ‘Modernist Rights’, 72; Doherty, ‘Guardian’, 149.

38 Potter, ‘Modernist Rights’, 71.

39 Verbruggen, Christophe, ‘Hoe literair internationalisme organisieren? De ‘vervlochten’ geschiedenis van de Belgische PEN-club (1922–1931)’, Nederlandse Letterkunde, 16, 3 (2011), 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Gigova, Irina, ‘The Bulgarian PEN Club: A Study in Interwar Cultural Internationalism’, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, 20, 10 (2019), 3Google Scholar.

41 Verbruggen, ‘Internationalisme’, 153.

42 Orzoff, Andrea, ‘Prague PEN and Central European Cultural Nationalism 1924–1935’, Nationalities Papers, 29, 2 (2001), 243–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Ibid., 245.

44 Wellek, René, A History of Modern Criticism: Volume 8 French, Italian and Spanish Criticism, 1900–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 41Google Scholar.

45 Gigova, ‘Bulgarian PEN Club’, 3 and 6.

46 Ibid., 6.

47 Orzoff, ‘Prague PEN’, 243.

48 On the post-war cultural blockades, see Schroeder-Gudehus, Brigitte, ‘Challenge to Transnational Loyalties: International Scientific Organizations after the First World War’, Science Studies, 3 (1973), 93–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Watts, P.E.N., 19; Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 72.

50 On the politics of intellectual relief, see Piller, Elisabeth, ‘“Can the Science of the World Allow This?” – German Academic Distress, Foreign Aid and the Cultural Demobilization of the Academic World, 1919–1925’, in Chagnon, Marie-Eve and Irish, Tomás, eds., The Academic World in the Era of the Great War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 189–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the legacies of the war in PEN's early development, see Windsor, Tara, ‘Between Cultural Conflict and Cultural Contact: German Writers and Cultural Diplomacy in the Aftermath of the First World War’, in Martin, Nicholas, Haughton, Tim and Purseigle, Pierre, eds., Aftermath: Legacies and Memories of War in Europe, 1918–1945–1989 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), 109–27Google Scholar.

51 Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 71–3.

52 Federn to PEN (Marjorie Scott), 27 Mar. 1924, HRC, PEN Recip.; for more detail on these committee members see Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 73–8.

53 Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 77.

54 Federn's main literary works included two volumes of short stories (‘Hundert Novellen’, 1912/1926 and 1913/1928) and a war novel entitled Hauptmann Latour (1929), as well as critical essays and historical studies of Dante (1900), Cardinal Richelieu (1927) and Heinrich von Kleist (1930). In 1933 Federn, who had Jewish ancestry, went into exile in Denmark and later the United Kingdom. See ‘Biographical note on Karl Federn’, PEN Misc., HRC; Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 72–3.

55 Heinemann, Ulrich, Die verdrängte Niederlage: Politische Öffentlichkeit und Kriegsschuldfrage in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 73.

57 Weber, ‘Jäckh’.

58 Federn to PEN, 20 Apr. 1923, HRC, PEN Recip.

59 Ibid.

60 Federn to Galsworthy, 29 July 1923, HRC, PEN Recip.

61 Lettevall, Rebecka, Somsen, Gerd and Widmalm, Sven, eds., Neutrality in Twentieth Century Europe: Intersections of Science, Culture, and Politics after the First World War (New York: Routledge, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Hermann Sudermann to PEN, 20 July 1922, 6 Mar. 1923 and 21 Apr. 1923, HRC, PEN Recip.

63 Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 73.

64 Federn to Sudermann, 23 Aug. 1923, quoted in Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 73.

65 Trommler, Kulturmacht, 373–86.

66 Federn to PEN (Marjorie Scott), 27 Mar. 1924, HRC, PEN Recip. (and following quotations).

67 ‘PEN-Klub, Deutsche Gruppe’ statutes, undated, in HFBN, Cb92.64.1:1,09,02 and Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (hereafter PA AA), R65079.

68 See Marquardt, Sabine, Polis contra Polemos. Politik als Kampfbegriff der Weimarer Republik (Cologne: Böhlau, 1997)Google Scholar.

69 Karl Federn, ‘Von alten und jungen Schriftstellern im PEN-Klub’, Berliner Tageblatt, 29 May 1926.

70 Figures from the following sources respectively: Federn to PEN, 2 Apr. 1925, HRC, PEN Recip.; ‘PEN Club – Mitglieder – Verzeichnis’ attached to circular from Werner Mahrholz, 10 Nov. 1926, Akademie der Künste, Heinrich-Mann-Archiv 3107; German PEN (Mahrholz) to PEN (Ould), 28 Mar. 1927, HRC, PEN Recip.

71 On Thomas Mann's PEN activities, see Tara Windsor, ‘Dichter, Denker, Diplomaten: German Writers and Cultural Diplomacy after the First World War, 1919–1933’, PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013, 188–95.

72 Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 89.

73 Windsor, ‘Dichter’, 147–58.

74 Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 82–5.

75 Schober, Kunst, 54–5; Hürter, Johannes et al. , eds., Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen auswärtigen Dienstes 1871–1945, Vol. 2 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005), 687–8Google Scholar.

76 Mendelssohn, Peter de, S. Fischer und sein Verlag (Frankfurt a.M: Fischer, 1970), 819Google Scholar; Hürter et al., Biographisches Handbuch, Vol. 4, 4–5.

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78 Fischer, ‘Zentrum’, 77.

79 Georg Engel, Ludwig Fulda and Hans Brennert to AA, 3 Feb. 1924 with ‘Erläuterungen und Denkschrift von Hans Brennert’, PA AA, R65104.

80 Ernst Bischoff, ‘Aufzeichnung’ 25 Feb. 1924, PA AA R65104. The passage referring to PEN is highlighted by hand in green-coloured pencil on p. 2 of the memorandum.

81 Engel, Fulda and Brennert to AA, 3 Feb, 1924 with ‘Erläuterungen und Denkschrift von Hans Brennert’ (as note 79).

82 Ibid.

83 Federn and Albert Osterrieth to German PEN Members, 8 Apr. 1925, HFBN, Cb92.64.1:1,09,07.

84 AA (Heilbron) telegram to Leopold von Hoesch (German Embassy Paris), 31 Mar. 1925 and Hoesch telegram to AA, 9 Apr. 1925, PA AA Botschaft Paris 919a.

85 Federn, ‘Der PEN-Klub in Paris’, Berliner Tageblatt, 10 June 1925; Pro notitia, 1 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

86 For Heinrich Mann's assessment see ‘Die Literatur und die deutsch-französische Verständigung’ [1927], in Heinrich Mann, Sieben Jahre. Chronik der Gedanken und Vorgänge [1929], ed. Paul-Peter Schneider (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1994), 317; for Federn's account, see ‘Der PEN-Klub in Paris’, Berliner Tageblatt, 10 June 1925.

87 Blunck, Tagebuch, 19 May 1925 [incorrectly dated as 19 Apr. 1925], HFBN and Blunck, Licht auf den Zügeln. Lebensbericht Bd. 1 (Mannheim: Kessler, 1953), 403.

88 Leopold von Hoesch report to AA, 30 May 1925, PA AA Botschaft Paris 919a.

89 Doherty, ‘Guardian’, 141.

90 Minutes of the German PEN committee meeting, 16 Nov. 1925, HFBN, Cb.64.1:1,09,18 and Congress accounts attached to Hanns Martin Elster and Federn to AA, 28 May 1926, PA AA R65079.

91 Memorandum Soehring to Schubert/Stresemann, 30 Jan. 1926, PA AA R65079.

92 Federn to AA, 11 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

93 Elster (German PEN) to Otto Meissner (Office of the Reich President), 16 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

94 Pro notitia, 1 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

95 Elster (German PEN) to Otto Meissner (Office of the Reich President), 16 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

96 Minutes of German PEN committee meeting, 20 Apr. 1926, HFBN, Cb.92.64.1:1.09,34.

97 AA to Mayor of Berlin, 19 Apr. 1926 and Magistrat Berlin (Scholtz) to AA, 26 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

98 Office of the Reich President to AA (Heilbron), 17 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

99 Elster to AA, 23 Apr. 1926 and AA (Schmidt-Rolke) to German PEN (Elster), 30 Apr. 1926, PA AA R65079.

100 Mahrholz to German PEN committee, 1 May 1926, HFBN, Cb92.64.1:1,09,36.

101 Elster and Federn to AA, 28 June 1926 and AA to Elster, 30 July 1926, PA AA R65079.

102 For more detail on the Berlin Congress, see Windsor, ‘Cultural Conflict’, 120–4.

103 Minutes of German PEN committee meeting, 27 May 1926, HFBN. Cb92.64.1:1,09,60.

104 Werner Mahrholz, ‘Auslandspropaganda’, Vossische Zeitung, 28 May 1926.

105 Minutes of German PEN committee meeting, 27 Oct. 1927, HFBN Cb.92.64.1:1.09,115.

106 Heinrich Mann to PEN (Ould), 5 Feb. 1928, HRC PEN Recip. Original in English.

107 Windsor, ‘Dichter’, 301–9.

108 ‘Bericht über den PEN-Club-Kongress in Wien vom 24.–29. Juni 29’ (Mahrholz), HRC, PEN Misc., PEN: German Centre (Berlin), Accounts of Activities.

109 See Fink, Carole, ‘Defender of Minorities: Germany in the League of Nations, 1926–1933’, Central European History, 5, 4 (1972), 330–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 ‘Bericht über den PEN-Club-Kongress in Wien vom 24.–29. Juni 29’ (as note 108).

111 Smith, David J., Germane, Marina and Housden, Martyn, ‘“Forgotten European”: Transnational Minority Activism in the Age of European Integration’, Nations and Nationalism, 25, 2 (2019), 537CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 ‘Bericht über den PEN-Club-Kongress in Wien vom 24.–29. Juni 29’ (as note 108). On the wider discussions about the structure and organisation of the International PEN and its implications in other national contexts, see Doherty, ‘Guardian’ and Verbruggen, ‘Internationalisme’.

113 Blunck to Walther von Hollander, 29 Oct. 1930, Cb92.64.1:1,10,150. On the Austrian and Swiss PEN Clubs see Amann, Klaus, ‘Der österreichische PEN-Club in den Jahren 1923–1955’, in Bores, Dorothée and Hanuschek, Sven, eds., Handbuch PEN: Geschichte und Gegenwart der deutschsprachigen Zentren (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenburg, 2014), 481–532Google Scholar and Helen Münch-Küng, ‘Der PEN-Club in der Deutschschweiz’ in idem, 563–84.

114 See Martin, Benjamin G., The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115 Three of these post-1933 iterations have been the subject of monograph-length studies: Peitsch, Helmut, “No Politics”? Die Geschichte des deutschen PEN-Zentrums in London, 1933–2002 (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2006)Google Scholar; Hanuschek, Sven, Geschichte des bundesdeutschen PEN-Zentrums von 1951–1990 (Tübingen: Max Niemayer Verlag, 2004)Google Scholar; Bores, Dorothée, Das ostdeutsche P.E.N.-Zentrum 1951 bis 1998: Ein Werkzeug der Diktatur? (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Windsor, ‘Dichter’, 96–106.

117 See Fischer ‘Zentrum’, 104–25

118 Barbian, Jan-Pieter, The Politics of Literature in Nazi Germany: Books in the Media Dictatorship (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 19–20Google Scholar.

119 Peitsch, “No Politics”?, 13–180; Martin, Benjamin G., ‘“European Literature” in the Nazi New Order: The Cultural Politics of the European Writers Union, 1941–3’, Journal of Contemporary History, 48, 3 (2013), 486–508CrossRefGoogle Scholar.