Professor Spalek, what does the award of the Goethe Medal mean to you?
I’m naturally very pleased. However, I regard the award less as a personal honor and more as a sign of recognition for exile studies and the work of my staff and colleagues. I would like to mention Sandra Hawrylchak, with whom I have worked for 40 years and who also supported me as co-publisher of our four-volume work on German-language exile literature.
You are considered the father of exile studies and have already saved for posterity over 200 estates of German artists, authors, philosophers and scientists who immigrated to the United States at the time of the Nazi regime. How did this work begin?
In the sixties I worked at the University of Southern California, where the famous philosopher and exile Ludwig Marcuse also taught. We used to meet rather often and I also made the acquaintance of other personalities who were German émigrés. For example, there was the political scientist Eric Voegelin and Marta Feuchtwanger, the widow of the famous author. I often met her at parties. Life in California was strongly influenced by these émigrés. I was interested in their history and first published an anthology about screenwriters from German-speaking countries like Billy Wilder. I already found a very large amount of interesting material. Research on finds of this kind then became the main emphasis of my work. I made my first big find near New York City, when I discovered a major part of Fritz von Unruh’s estate.
What happened then?
At one of the very first congresses on exile studies – 1971 in Copenhagen – the German Research Foundation (DFG) asked me if I would like to systematically archive the estates of German émigrés. It then supported my work a lot. I felt and still feel that this work is also a political and moral mission. The Nazis forced so many personalities to leave Germany who should not be forgotten. Take the writer Ernst Toller, who also linked politics with literature. I used to teach classes on him and I suppose you could say I followed him “into exile”.
In Germany you made a major contribution to the establishment of the Exile Archive at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main. How did that come about?
The German National Library asked me in the 1990s if I would be prepared to contribute to the Exile Archive. The then head of the German Library and current Goethe-Institut president, Professor Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, didn’t hesitate about providing the necessary funding. That was another reason why the work was attractive. Meanwhile my staff and I have been able to make some hundred estates available to the National Library.
Which legacies can be found in Frankfurt?
On the one hand, there is the estate of the two sociologists Alice and Joseph Maier. Alice Maier was the secretary of the great philosopher and sociologist Max Horkheimer. 200 of his letters are part of her estate. We were also able to save the estate of Rudolph S. Joseph for the Exile Archive. We met with him when he was already 90 years old. He also fled from the National Socialists, but later returned to Germany, where he founded the well-known Film Museum in Munich in 1963. The estate of Clementine Zernik, one of the first female defense lawyers in Vienna, is also in Frankfurt. She lived in a house with 15 cats. After her death, we first had to make sure they were looked after – and then, of course, put the estate in order.
Do you still have similar surprises today?
Absolutely. Just recently I made an amazing discovery in a rather roundabout way. I corresponded with a family of German origin in Oregon. Initially there were no signs of anything special at all. But I wanted to meet the family in person to see what I might find. After a while they showed me a box with over 1,000 letters from Otto Brahm. I nearly fell off my chair. Brahm was not an émigré, however. He worked as a theatre critic and became director of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1894. I never thought I’d find his letters in Oregon in 2009. This estate went to the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. One of my latest finds went to the Exile Archive in Frankfurt. I was totally surprised to stumble on the estate of Berlin-born Peter Basch. He initially shot propaganda films for the American military during World War II, but then became one of Hollywood’s most famous photographers.
You obviously need a detective’s instinct for this work...
Definitely! The most important thing, however, is to build confidence. My staff and I always use the same approach. First, we contact former émigrés or their descendants by letter. Then we try to arrange a meeting in person. People often don’t immediately want to talk about possible legacies. We mustn’t leave out anyone any more. You never know where you still might discover something.
Did you ever think as a young man that exile studies would eventually become your life’s work?
No. I come from Poland and trained as a cabinetmaker. In 1949 I set off for the United States to begin a new life. The ship left on my 21st birthday – nothing could be more symbolic than that. In the United States I first studied Spanish, but I was not given the most exciting Spanish authors to read, so I changed to German. Well, it was just chance really that I came to work on legacies. I now hope that financial support will continue to be found for my research. After all, there’s still a lot to be discovered. And no one else has a more extensive network of contacts than the one my staff and I have built up.////
