In the 1930s and 40s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals―including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg―who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions.
week 1. Introduction, The Dialectic of Modernism, Art ands it's resistance to society: Theodor W. Adorno's Asthenic Theory
week 2. Bertolt Brecht's California Poetry: Mimesis Modernism? The dialectic of Modern Science: Brecht's Galileo
week 3. Epic theater versus Film Noir: Bertolt Brecht and Fritz Lang's anti-Nazi Film Hangmen Also Die
week 4. California Modern as Immigrant Modernism: Architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph M. Schindler.
Between Modernism and Anti-Modernism , Franz Werfel.
week 5. Renegade Modernism: Alfred Doblin's Novel Karl and Rosa
The Political background of Exile Modernism; The Council for a Democratic Germany.
week 6. Evil Germany versus Good Germany: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus
week 7. "A True Modernist" : Arnold Schoenberg
Conclusion:The Weimar Legacy to Los Angeles..
Option: week 8, Pending availability; A visit to the Villa Aurora
Weimar on the Pacific - German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism
by Ehrhard Bahr , 2008, University of California Press
suggested Additional reading:
The Kindness of Strangers by Salka Viertel, New York Review Books, 1969
Passionate Spirit: The Life of Alma Mahler : from fin-de-siècle Vienna to Hollywood's heyday by Kate Haste, 2019
Video, episode of lost LA, How German Exiles shaped Hollywood, 26:04
https://www.pbs.org/video/german-exiles-kv2wdr/
New Yorker article, March 9, 2020
Exiles & Emigres-The flight of European Artists from Hitler, Edited by Stephanie Barron, 1997,Los Angeles County Museum of Art
A catalog to accompany the exhibition of paintings and artifacts, Feb.-May 1997
NYT review of a new english translation of The Oppermanns by Leon Feuchtwanger.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/opinion/the-oppermanns-feuchtwanger.html?unlocked_article_code=l8It_viP4-DMNjXIQjtEwxgG8_iDLfePNc_2h1Rn-iT283A5_-BaJsxeFn80E_fM91RK_bnJ7eMqPxjSAvVkBz8VdZlVR0yawiD-QFZq6HZ3cethrHVdKJkpbzOWDbmSuhcAUm7-5HbodXVVpIiuPItz5utQoVAd1W8mwQKj4I1cgWYl6BHexhybgh0WA7eakc7W31pYg0huruzFa2GVHcUUEDD-4tSFnPB-G0nJEjgDGyVQewJa4LcZvj7SNkBbiU_5g69T4O1Hrqz_epGI_w00xnvf1wJO9QKAagQoiSwHSdGNVdWgyfTaZFebnQKXez92nDln-1OtkfN0Du3AGo4JX4SQ&smid=share-url