Liesl Frank, Charlotte Dieterle and the European Film Fund

Helmut G. Asper

Surveying the field of exile in the US further, a second figure, Helmut G. Asper, emerges as another important scholar therein. Their approaches complement each other insofar as Horak’s study of the émigrés offers an analytical framework for exile research, while Asper is best described as a painstaking gatherer of empirical data with an unerring focus on the existing gaps in exile research. Asper is a professor at Bielefeld University, specialising in German theatre in the 17^th and 18^th century as well as film, radio and theatre in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. His preoccupation with theatre is evident in his first edited publication on exile, Walter Wicclair und Marta Mierendorff: Im Rampenlicht der dunklen Jahre (Berlin: Sigma, 1989). The book homes in on the German stage actor Walter Wicclair - who fled Nazi Germany to settle in Hollywood - and his companion, Marta Mierendorff, and contains essays on theatre in exile, the Third Reich and in post-war Germany. In Asper’s subsequent edited publication, Wenn wir von gestern reden sprechen wir über heute und morgen - Festschrift für Marta Mierendorff zum 80. Geburtstag (Berlin: Sigma, 1991), the field of vision is expanded from theatre in exile to exile in general (e.g. exiled writers, screenwriters, painters, etc.), while Asper’s own contribution to the

book revolves around another German stage actor, Fritz Kortner, and his film, Der Ruf (The Last Illusion, Objektiv-Film Gmbh, Germany 1948/49).

Kortner, renowned for his theatre work in Germany until the Nazis forced him into exile, would eventually once again become one of Germany’s most noted post-war theatre directors. Der Ruf constitutes Kortner’s first project following his return to Germany from his exile in the United States. The film revolves around a professor - Mauthner, played by Kortner - who was forced into exile following Hitler’s rise to power. Once he returned to post-war Germany, the hostility and aversion towards Mauthner eventually led to his death. Asper’s concern in this essay is not so much emigration as remigration; thus he considers parallels between Mauthner’s narrative and Kortner’s own experiences, and the reaction the film received when it was first shown to German audiences. Der Ruf - even though directed by Josef von Baky, a non-émigré -was the brainchild of Kortner and written solely by him. Kortner saw the film as an act of reconciliation with Germany and the Germans. That he failed in this attempt, with Der Ruf resulting in a critical as well as a commercial failure, is testimony to post-war Germany’s reluctance to come to terms with its Nazi past.

Among Asper’s chief publications on exile research is, however, his seminal Etwas besseres als den Tod .... (Marburg: Schüren, 2002). Although published in 2002, its afterword indicates that Asper started research on the book seventeen years prior to its publication, interviewing many of the émigrés featured in the book between 1985 and 1987, among them Henry Koster, Walter Reisch, Paul Henreid and Felix Jackson. Some of Asper’s interviewees had never been interviewed before, including Ernest Lenart, Herbert Luft, Annemarie Schünzel-Stewart, Rudi Fehr or Rudi Feld. This fact, not to mention the book’s scope (655 pages, afterword and appendix not included), makes Etwas ... a unique research tool for any exile researcher or film historian.

Although Asper does dedicate several chapters to émigré actors, directors, screenwriters, and producers, the groups who traditionally had been at the centre of exile research, there is no denying that one of the main features of Etwas ... is Asper’s shift of focus to below-the-line personnel - editors, cinematographers, production designers, technicians - film-artists who had hitherto tended to be neglected by researchers. One example is Asper’s chapter on the all-but-forgotten production designer Rudi Feld, who, prior to his emigration collaborated with Kurt Gerron on his famous cabaret films.¹⁷ Gerron’s films featured a number of future émigrés,

including Blandine Ebinger or Sig Arno, but also artists who never made it into exile and perished in a concentration camp, as did indeed Gerron himself, or his collaborators Max Ehrlich and Otto Wallburg.

Similarly to many of his fellow émigrés, Feld had a difficult start in the US, not least because entry for production designers into their union was as strict as it was for other below-the-line-personnel. But, as Asper explains, since ‘Feld remained very close to his fellow émigrés’ (Asper 2002: 383), he eventually managed with their help to elbow his way into the Hollywood film industry. Not only that, but archival evidence shows that during this period of hardship Feld became a beneficiary of the EFF, and his is just one example of how crucial this organisation was for the survival of émigré film artists. In hindsight, the fact that Feld got his first break in an anti-Nazi film - after 11 years in exile - seems no surprise, as it seems to have become a rite of passage for émigrés to first prove their mettle in this particular genre. However, at long last, in 1946, Feld did obtain union membership, and his struggles in exile notwithstanding, as the title of Asper’s book aptly suggests, this was indeed better than the alternative: death in a concentration camp.

Asper also discusses a number of other émigrés who had previously received scant attention from film historians, including the editors Albrecht Joseph and Rudi Fehr or the choreographers Ernst and Maria Matray. The parallels to Horak are clear: Asper too started his research on exiled film artists with a series of oral histories, and in both cases the results of their findings led to crucial contributions to the field of exile research. In Horak’s case this was ‘The Palm Trees ...’, while Asper’s Etwas ... was no doubt influenced by Horak and as such could be considered an expansion of Horak’s work in ‘The Palm Trees ...’ as well as Fluchtpunkt Hollywood. Neither work is concerned with any aspect of exile in particular, but rather represents an all-inclusive overview of film exile, illustrating the diversity and the consequences of the German-speaking emigration to Los Angeles. More than Horak‘s, because of its scope and its emphasis on below-the-line personnel, Asper’s book also serves as a memorial to émigrés who had fallen by the wayside of exile research until he put them centre stage, commemorating their life, achievements, and ordeals as a result of Nazi rule.

In the introduction to Etwas ., Asper briefly sketches the political situation in Germany following Hitler’s rise to power, before moving on to discuss the various stations of exile such as France, England, the Netherlands, and Palestine, and dedicating a paragraph to those film artists who did not make it into exile and were subsequently murdered in the concentration camps, including the aforementioned Willy Rosen, Otto Wallburg and Kurt Gerron. But the body of Etwas . consists of ten chapters, each dedicated to a particular profession at the Hollywood film-studios, and discussing the impact of the émigrés. By covering virtually all professions associated with filmmaking - directing, producing, acting, writing, editing, cinematography, production-design, post-production - Asper is able to shed light on those among the émigrés who had until that point rarely been mentioned by exile researchers, including Reginald Le Borg, Gerd Oswald (directors), Helmut Dantine, Wolfgang Zilzer (actors), Albrecht Joseph (editor), and Fini Rudiger (animator). He would continue this enterprise in a later work, Nachrichten aus Hollywood, New York und anderswo (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2003), where he considers the correspondence of cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan and his wife Marlise with Siegfried and Lili Kracauer. Asper’s introduction consists of a biography of both Schüfftan and Kracauer, based on secondary as well as archival material, interspersed with excerpts from the Schüfftan-Kracauer correspondence and focussing on their lives following their arrival in the United States. Asper stresses that though Schüfftan’s and Kracauer’s friendship ‘was already mentioned by Karsten Witte in the afterword of the [second] German edition of Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler, nobody has so far followed up on it’ (Asper 2003: 1).¹⁸ Nachrichten ..., by contrast, shows how a focus on a cinematographer can open up new perspectives, and his study was also useful for my own research since both Kracauer and Schüfftan were at one time beneficiaries of the European Film Fund.

In the last chapter of Etwas ... , Asper considers exile film and film genres. Once more echoing Horak, Asper singles out Zuckmayer’s play Der Hauptmann von Köpenick,19 remade in Hollywood under the title, I Was a Criminal (USA 1945). As we have seen, Horak used I Was a Criminal as an example to emphasize the difficulties which a study of exile film introduces into the definition of a national cinema. The film was made in Hollywood, is based on a German play, is cast nearly in its entirety with émigré actors, and has an émigré director remaking a film he himself had previously made in Weimar Germany. All this prompts Horak to question whether this film should be seen as part of American or German film history. By contrast, Asper’s intriguing and extensive account of the film’s production highlights the difference in approach between Horak and Asper. Asper’s forte lies in the investigation of empirical data rather than any address to academic concerns, such as, for instance, issues in national cinema.

One shortcoming of Etwas ... is its tendency to the anecdotal, another is its failure to mention any aid organisations in which the émigrés were involved other than the short chapter he dedicated to the European Film Fund, though as one of the few consistent accounts on this organisation that are available, Asper‘s book is an important milestone for my own research. Other aid organisations, however, such as, for instance, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, the Emergency Rescue Committee or the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, to name but a few, are almost entirely ignored, highlighting a gap in exile research that is waiting to be filled.

A subsequent work, Filmexilanten im Universal Studio (Berlin: Bertz & Fischer Verlag, 2005), also has its origins in interviews Asper conducted in the 1980s with Henry Koster, Hans J. Salter and Curt Siodmak, who drew Asper’s attention to ‘the vast extent and significance of the work of the exiled German speaking film artists at Universal’ (Asper 2005: 292). Asper also mentions that it was the appointment of Jan-Christopher Horak as founding director of Universal Studio’s Archives and Collections which inspired him to embark on the project, as Horak not only ‘opened the archives to researchers from day one, but also encouraged [Asper] in his undertaking .’(Asper 2005: 292). The synergy between Horak and Asper would eventually result in the article discussed above, ‘Three Smart Guys‘, which Asper terms an ‘interim result of his undertaking’ (Asper 2005: 292). But while ‘Three Smart Guys’ focuses on the influence on Universal of only a small group of émigrés - Henry Koster, Felix Jackson and Joe Pasternak -Filmexilanten examines how Universal was influenced and shaped by the émigrés as a whole. Here, Asper does not solely home in on the twelve years of Nazi power, but looks at the studio’s history from its beginnings until the 1950s. Like Horak, Asper is interested here in the impact of the émigrés on certain aspects of Hollywood or/ and American culture.²⁰ He argues that ‘Universal is particularly suited for such an examination [measuring the émigrés’ influence] as émigré directors, producers, screenwriters, composers, actors and actresses worked there for well-nigh thirty years ...’ (Asper 2005: 11). Although the same applies to, for instance, Warner Bros.,²¹ Universal was distinct in that it was founded and run by a German immigrant. In addition, Universal had close affiliations with the German film industry going back to the Weimar Republic while Paramount’s - as well as MGM’s - affiliations with UFA were of a merely financial nature.^{22 23} Lastly, although most of the major studios took on their fair share of refugees following Hitler’s rise to power, it is safe to say that Universal, along with Paramount and Warner Bros., was more of a haven for refugees than, for instance, Columbia, RKO or even MGM. Hence, Asper concludes that Universal not only gave a large number of émigrés including, for instance, Curt Siodmak, Koster, Pasternak, Jackson, Salter, etc., their first start in the US film-industry, but by doing so it contributed substantially to their successful integration into American society. Indeed, none of them returned to Germany following the end of WWII as other, less integrated, émigrés did. At the same time, the émigrés saved Universal from financial ruin, as evidenced in the Deanna Durbin musicals which were a collaborative effort between producer Joe Pasternak, director Henry Koster and screenwriter Felix Jackson.²⁴ Moreover, the émigrés’ ‘contributed to a transfer of European culture by adapting it for an American audience’ (Asper 2005: 289). This transfer of culture is particularly palpable in Universal’s Deanna Durbin musicals, which have a distinct European flair, as opposed to, for instance, MGM’s Meet Me In St. Louis (MGM, USA 1944), which seems far more American by comparison. In Three Smart Girls (USA 1936), the obvious European elements include the setting (contemporary Switzerland) and the use of classical music, which, in a traditional Hollywood musical, was unusual. Meet Me In St. Louis, on the other hand, is set, as the title suggests, in St. Louis in 1903, just before the World Fair. The song that gave the film its title had already been an American classic at the time of the making of the film.²⁵ The narrative and the characters in Koster’s film -a single parent , a divorcee whose ex-husband is about to marry an adventuress - would also have had no place in Louis B. Mayer’s ‘view of America [which] became America’s view of itself - a place and a people more virtuous, more godly, more resilient than anyplace else’ (Eyman 516 : 2005).²⁶ And while in Meet Me In St. Louis, ‘a paean to hearth and home’ (Eyman 354: 2005), plans to move from the peaceful and quiet city of St. Louis to the iniquitous New York, are abandoned, this is precisely where the family reunion in Koster’s film takes place.

One cannot help but wonder what else Asper might have unearthed, had the Universal archives not been closed following the Vivendi takeover.²⁷ The fact that this invaluable archival material may remain permanently inaccessible to researchers could now mean that the chapters in the history of Universal opened by Asper and Horak may never be closed - nor new ones opened - for sheer lack of accessible material. On another level, Asper’s study gives rise to speculations as to the émigrés’ influence on other studios - Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia, RKO, United Artists, Paramount, 20^th Century Fox, not to mention the smaller ones like Republic or Monogram. It is certain that émigrés worked at all of these studios, but their impact, input and influence - if there was any - has never been thoroughly investigated. Filmexilanten must be regarded as an inspiration to do just that.

In summary, Asper’s contribution to film history in general and exile research in particular, is unquestionably crucial. Alongside Horak, by whom he was influenced and inspired, Asper has emerged as one of the field’s leading figures. Horak’s approach of course is analytical and diagnostic, while Asper’s own is investigative and biographical. The methodologies of both scholars complement each other however, inasmuch as the detection of data is as fundamental a part of exile research as their critical and contextual analysis. Asper was instrumental in memorialising those émigrés who tended to be ignored by scholars, thus instigating a shift of focus from émigré directors and actors to below-the-line personnel such as cinematographers, editors, production-designers, etc. In Filmexilanten, Asper investigated the émigrés’ impact on Universal, resulting in a groundbreaking study of how the émigrés brought their heritage to bear on one particular film studio. Clearly taking his cue from Horak, who had previously examined the émigrés’ influence on a particular film genre - the anti-Nazi films - Asper’s findings feed into what is now in any case a current shift in film history in general: notably studies of transnational cinema that bring to light the influence of European film artists on American cinema and culture.

Existing Gaps

Having scrutinised the existing literature on exile, I identified two persistent gaps. One of them is the absence of women. Peter Gay has already observed that, ‘very few of [the exile women] had ever really been remembered’ (Gay in Quack 1996: 354). Although Gay’s comment dates from 1995, little has changed since. This gap is all the more discernible in the light of the sheer number of books, studies, articles, and so on, that have been written on often prominent, exiled, male, film artists settling in Hollywood. Very few of these, however, mention the presence and achievements of women, conveying the impression that women were simply absent and that fleeing Nazi Germany was something that concerned only men. ‘No one’, Peter Gay has justly observed, ‘cared much about Mrs. Lion Feuchtwanger or Mrs. Herbert Marcuse or Mrs. Albert Einstein’ (Gay in Quack 1995: 354). Yet Liesl Frank, in a letter to Marta Mierendorff, wrote that ‘[...] women usually had an easier time adapting [to life in exile]’,²⁸ a claim corroborated by Sabine Quack, who, in Between Sorrow And Strength - Women Refugees of the Nazi Period (New York/ NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995) writes that ‘refugee women were better able to cope [with exile] than refugee men were’ (Quack in Quack 1995: 9).

Quack’s study is one of the few discussing the role women played in émigré circles in general and in refugee organisations in particular. Another is Andreas Lixl-Purcell‘s, Women Of Exile - German-Jewish Autobiographies Since 1933 (Westport/ CT: Greenwood Press, 1988). Although not concerned with exile women in Hollywood per se, both books constitute a pioneering effort in a neglected field insofar as they make women a visible agent in the topic of exile of German Jews. Lixl-Purcell’s book consists of biographies of several women, with a focus on their flight from Nazi Germany and their early years in exile. In a parallel to the lives of Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle, who are at the centre of my own inquiry, the biographies of the women in Lixl-Purcell’s book also ‘confront the reader with provocative arguments against conformist models of identity’(Lixl-Purcell 1988: 6), for, as we shall see, exile not so much forced, as offered these women opportunities to assume roles previously deemed inappropriate. Unlike the majority of books available on exile men, none of the women featured in Lixl-Purcell’s book are famous in any way. They are, rather, ‘ordinary’ women describing in their own words how the exile experience changed their lives.

Lixl-Purcell’s study, although over twenty years old, has spawned surprisingly few related analyses, which is one of the reasons why it is still significant today. Another reason is, of course, the continuing preoccupation of scholars with the Holocaust and its consequences, one of which was exile. Approaching the topic of exile through biography, Lixl-Purcell’s method echoes that of many exile researchers and also served as a blueprint for my own examination. Furthermore, the relevance of Women Of Exile lies in the fact that analogously to Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle, the women at the centre of Lixl-Purcell’s study, were confronted with ‘the recognition that the culturally prescribed role models offered no solutions to the problems of their lives [and thus] convinced many women of exile to experiment with radically new models of political behaviour’ (Lixl-Purcell 1988: 6).

Similarly to Lixl-Purcell, Sybille Quack also examines the lives of ordinary women who fled Nazi Germany. Her study includes several eyewitness reports of the exile experience such as Elizabeth Marum Lunau’s on the ‘Arrival at Camp de Gurs‘, or Rachel Cohn’s on ‘Women Émigrés in Palestine’. The main focus lies on the effect exile had on these women and the lives they led - or were able to lead - in their adopted country. Neither Lixl-Purcell nor Quack offer any insight on the role exile women played in Hollywood and in its émigré community. Quack, however, does acknowledge the importance ’refugee organisations [played] in settling refugees’ (Quack 1995: 6). Hence, several contributions in Quack’s study examine the input of women in organisations such as, for instance, the National Council of Jewish Women. In another parallel to my own investigation, Steven M. Lowenstein, in ‘Women‘s Role in the German-Jewish Immigrant Community’, argues that, ’[the] participation [of women within the congregational sphere] was generally behind the scenes and, on the surface at least, did not challenge the male predominance in official communal functions’ (Lowenstein in Quack 1995: 172). This, as we shall see, mirrors the role Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle played in the EFF. Thus, while both Lixl-Purcell and Quack disregard the Hollywood exile community and its various aid organisations, their findings nevertheless proved useful insofar as they corroborated my own.

A second gap in the literature on German-Jewish exile, and particularly in film history, is the role of refugee organisations in Hollywood’s émigré community. This includes the involvement of women in these organisations which, as became apparent during my own research, was crucial. As pointed out above, literature on exile has a tendency to concentrate on, generally famous - male - individuals, their lives and/ or their creative output following their exile, be that literature or film, while the impact of the numerous refugee organisations, and the role they played within the émigré circle, has thus far received scant attention. Yet, archival data shows that the overwhelming majority of exiles were members of organisations, founded as a response to the political situation in their home country. Many of these provided fellow refugees with financial aid and came to their rescue when foreign governments chose to turn a blind eye to their plight. Examining these organisations offers valuable insight into the exile experience as a whole, not to mention the political situation in the host country. Evidence also suggests that many exiles were approached for help by refugee organisations. More often than not, the request was of a financial nature, but often also to rally support for political causes. Hence, these organisations were of considerable significance in the lives of the refugees, tying them together in their fight against Nazism; more than this, they were an - often last - link to their home country.

Besides the EFF, organisations the exiles actively participated in during their US exile included the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, the German Jewish Club of 1933 -later renamed, for fear of anti-German sentiment following the US entry into WWII, as the

Jewish Club of 1933 - the American Committee for Christian German Refugees and the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. We know but little about how these organisations operated on a day-to-day basis, let alone anything about their members and their influence on the political stage. Investigating these organisations, however, offers the researcher new information on the life of the refugees during their exile, how they interacted, their social life, and their political involvement.

One notable contribution to the research on refugee organisations is Klaus Taeubert’s essay, ‘Im Dienste der Volksfront: Hollywood Now’ (In: Helmut G. Asper (ed.). Wenn wir von gestern reden sprechen wir über heute und morgen - Festschrift für Marta Mierendorff zum 80. Geburtstag. Berlin: Sigma, 1991), in which he discusses the party organ of the Hollywood AntiNazi League (HANL), Hollywood Now. Using the surviving issues of Hollywood Now as his starting point, Taeubert recapitulates the three and a half years - October 1936 to February 1940 -that the paper was in existence and evaluates its significance and purpose. As Taeubert makes clear, the refugees not only contributed to Hollywood Now, ‘which was published at slightly irregular intervals’ (Taeubert in Asper 1991: 161), but one of the weekly’s main concerns was the coverage of events in their erstwhile home country. He highlights the close links between the refugee network, HANL itself, and Hollywood Now, whose chief priority, besides ’the defence of democratic institutions’ (Taeubert 1991: 160), was to ‘raise awareness about the crimes committed within Hitler’s fiefdom [and as such] offered a surprising, today easily verifiable, exactness regarding all areas of German life’ (Taeubert in Asper 1991: 161).²⁹ Hence, Taeubert’s findings underscore my claim regarding the importance of organisations in the life of the refugees during their exile. Taeubert states that, ‘the density of the information network suggests a close collaboration [of members of HANL] with anti-fascists abroad and in the Nazi-occupied territories, and these have never been [discussed or researched]’ (Taeubert 1991: 161). Taeubert’s essay is an important step in the right direction; however, HANL was only one of many refugee organisations. Thus it is safe to say that refugee organisations as a whole remain a field yet to be fully explored by exile researchers.