German Writers in Exile

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Education, Genocide, Germany, history, Holocaust, literature, research, writing

This semester, one of the classes I took was a history class in Nazi Germany. Not only did I want to take this course because I’ve already taken enough American history and wanted to learn about the history of another country, but I wanted to learn something new about Hitler that I hadn’t already heard before, throughout my life.

Now, having completed the course, I found there was so much more to the Jewish holocaust than what I was previously aware of. It is understandable that most people consider the Jewish holocaust to have been a very inhumane way of treating anyone, much less concentrating that treatment largely on one group of people which in effect was genocide.

Reportedly, 6 million Jewish people were killed at the hands of the Nazis which is an unspeakable number of people. We also shouldn’t forget that Africans suffered a fate just as terrible, having been transported across the Atlantic to America, across the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.  A total of 60 million Africans either died or were enslaved because of the slave trade that took them to various parts of the world.

Mistreatment of any group of people in this manner is a crime which caused some Jewish people and some Africans to revolt. Africans revolted by forming a mutiny, attempting suicide or refusing to eat.  Many Jewish people went into exile to flee the constraints of Nazi Germany, some of the writers in Germany fled to America, one in particular,  Lion Feuchtwanger, continued his writing career and resided in Los Angeles in his later years.

Lion Feuchtwanger a notable writer and German citizen who was born Jewish, enjoyed a successful writing career while in Germany which continued once he relocated to the United States. His written work includes: The Devil in France, Proud Destiny, a trilogy covering the life of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century: Der jüdische Krieg (1932; Josephus), Die Söhne (1935; The Jew of Rome) and Der Tag wird kommen (1942; The Day will Come, also called Josephus and the Emperor).  Feuchtwanger personally acquired a large collection of the various editions and translations of the works of Flavius Josephus spanning 400 years of printing.

Posthumously, the Feuchtwangers have a testament to their life experiences by having Lion’s collection of books and writings maintained in an archive. As reported by the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library website at the University of Southern California (USC), upon his death, his widow, Marta donated his entire collection of 30,000 books, papers to the USC Doheny Memorial Library, which has one room devoted to his collection.  Approximately 8,000 of those books are housed in his former residence in Los Angeles, whereas the remaining 20,000 are house at USC.  The collection contains rare books, correspondence, manuscripts and photographs and archival material on other German-speaking exiles, and a personal collection of works written by other notable authors such as: Cicero, Juvenal, Ovid, Sophocles, Thucydides, Virgil, Xenophon, among others.  Feuchtwanger had in his collection texts covering: Incunabula about printing, the French Revolution, the Enlightenment period and German literature.

According to Michaela Ullmann, Exile Studies Librarian at USC’s Doheny library, Mr. Feuchtwanger’s collection is so vast that what you see housed in the one room is only a small portion of the collection; the remainder is also housed in the archives located in USC’s Grand Avenue Library Depository in Los Angeles.

I am grateful for the many sacrifices made by our ancestors whether they endured slavery and racism or internment in concentration camps and censorship of their work. I am glad that I had the nerve to venture outside of what is familiar to learn more about how widespread genocide is and what a terrible crime it is against mankind.

 

University of Southern California. University of Southern California: Lion Feuchtwanger and the German Émigré Experience. 2017, https//libraries.usc.edu/locations/special-collections/lion-feuchtwanger-and-german-émigré-experience.

“German Exile Literature.” Leo Baeck Institute, William Weitzer, Executive Director, https://www.lbi.org/collections/library/highlights of lbi/german-exile-literature. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017.

“The Middle Passage.” Digital History, Steven Mintz, https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu. Accessed 4 May 2017.

Etsy Offerings at GenreReads

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collegiate, dictation, language, logic, office skill, reference, student, thinking, writing

I have the following books on sale on Etsy at Genre Reads:

Functional Method Dictation by Louis A. Leslie by Gregg Publishing Co. in 1947; Focuses on increasing shorthand speed; $ 7.00

Writing and Thinking by Norman Foerster and J.M. Steadman Jr., University of Alabama publishing in 1952; The principles of this book are twofold: to help the college student improve their ability to communicate in writing involving their mental process and the use of the English language. Also, to present facts of current English usage that are usually needed in a composition course; $ 8.00

Logic and Language Edited by A.G.N. Flew – lecturer in King’s College, Aberdeen; Total of 206 pages, hardcover. Contains 10 chapters. First Series, Edited by Antony G.N. Flew a lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College in Aberdeen. Printed in Great Britain for Basil Blackwell & Mott Limited by A.R. Mowbray & Co. Limited in the City of Oxford; $ 7.00

Etsy offerings @GenreReads

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asian lore, biography, childrens interests, cooking, european subject, fiction, first edition, history, literature

A few of the books I am currently selling in Etsy at GenreReads are:

“Kappa” A Novel and Satire by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (hardcover) $ 10.00

“A Dog’s Book of Birds” $ 9.50 (hardcover) Includes excellent sketching;
a children’s story

“La Famille Bronte” by Robert De Traz – Written entirely in French (paperback) $7.00

Please view my shop GenreReads on Etsy for a selection of books on varied interests, including First Editions.

Gregg Dictation Simplified

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Gregg, office practices, office skill, office worker, secretarial duties, shorthand

One publication currently on sale in my etsy store GenreReads is titled:
“Gregg Dictation Simplified” authored by Louis A. Leslie and Charles E. Zoubek; published by The Gregg Publishing Company, Copyright 1949.

When originally published, this book was intended to: help students review and strengthen their knowledge of the system, help the student build shorthand, and to prepare a foundation for building skill in transcribing shorthand taken.

Most likely this book was used for a second-level course with learning how to write in shorthand, being the initial course.

Gregg Dictation Simplified contains 516 business letters which are organized into 80 assignments offered within 16 chapters. All assignments are categorized as:

Word Family Drills

Phrasing Drills

Accuracy Drills

Geographical Expressions

In recent times, shorthand is still used to some degree, however, modern offices tend to use a Dictaphone for transcription. The purchase of this book can be a great gift for a collector of vintage office tools.

Bio-Bibliographies and their usefulness

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british, british women, british women writers, penname, pseudonyms, women writers

Bibliographies are a great way of compiling a list of books to collect since it provides an exhaustive list of authors’ works. Any avid reader, student, researcher or potential book collector can refer to a bibliography for inspiration on what to read next, study or add to their collection.

One genre of books I am interested in collecting includes works by British Women Writers, ideally in the 18th and 19th centuries. What is most unique about women during this time was they were not expected to hold positions involving pursuits that normally only men were believed to be capable of. Women at this time in history were thought of as not being bright enough to having writing ability. As a result, many if not most of these women either hid their writing ability and either kept their works to themselves or shared it with a select few. Still, other women submitted their work in a male pen-name.

I’ve acquired a book titled Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers – A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Source book [Edited by Abigail Burnham-Bloom; Copyright 2000]. This publication is both a biography and bibliography. What makes this book especially informative is while it tells me about the lifestyle, education and childhood of each author I can also get a listing of books she’s written. As a result, I’ve realized that similar to many authors today, these women included aspects of their actual lives in the stories they wrote.

Combining the biography and bibliography information in one publication has been, especially helpful for me to gain an understanding of not only the authors’ background but her works as well. This type of publication will also include suggested reading written “about” the author.

A typical chapter in this publication provides a biography of the subject writer, discusses her major works and themes she’s written, critical reception which indicates whether the work was well received or altered in any form, and finally the bibliography which is categorized in two sections—selected works by the subject author and studies conducted about the subject author.

One particular subject author, Victoria Queen of Great Britain, I’ve learned kept a daily journal since the age of 13. Her writings include letters to her family, memos to her household and ministers, servants. The topics of which she wrote included the experience of childbirth and missionary work in the Empire, her opinions on current issues, and details of her family life.

I find bibliographies to be extremely useful with almost no end to the information I may gain from them.