The renegade in German exile literature

The article outlines the process by which several exile writers came to ter ms with the realisation that the response of the writing community to the N azi takeover was by no means unanimous. It focuses in particular on the rea ctions of exiles in criticism, prose fiction and poetry to what was perceiv ed as renegade behaviour by Gottfried Benn and Gerhart Hauptmann, before br iefly considering the less well known but equally symptomatic cases of Max Barthel, Ernst Glaeser and Josef Ponten. It then looks at Paul Zech's attem pt in his novel Deutschland, dein Tanzer ist der Tod (published 1980, but w ritten 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 th ose emigrants whose work had not (yet) been devoted to the anti-Fascist cau se.