Suspicious but Needed: Westemigranten between U.S. Exile and Return to the GDR

这本书的计划标题为“Beargwöhnt und benötigt：Westemigranten zwischen USA-Exil und DDR”（可疑和需要：德国共产主义移民在美国和他们返回民主德国），重点关注在美国的德国共产主义难民的生活和工作，他们在1945年后返回东德国帮助建立社会主义社会。本项目主要以美国和德国的档案材料为基础，包括联邦调查局的档案、德国联邦档案馆和史塔西档案馆的个人档案，探讨这些东德共产主义者的个人和集体经历如何影响他们的生活和工作。研究对象包括约40名1938年至1945年居住在美国的人（约70人及其家人）。他们当中不乏杰出的甚至是著名的作家、艺术家和学者，如贝尔托布雷希特、恩斯特·布洛赫、汉斯和格哈特·穆勒、亨里克·格罗斯曼、斯特凡·海姆、阿尔弗雷德·坎特罗维奇和塞缪尔·米佳·拉波波特。他们并不都是德国共产党的成员，但在美国，他们都属于一个与该党密切相关的网络。这本书将讨论难民对美国的双重看法：作为一个拯救了他们生命的土地和一个在很大程度上种族隔离的社会。在共产主义的东德德国，返回的难民受到欢迎和需要，但同样受到怀疑。他们的学术和艺术专长与他们在“西方帝国主义”主要国家的流亡经历是分不开的。“所谓的西方移民不得不在一个主要由那些从苏联回来的或在集中营或监狱中幸存下来的共产主义者领导的社会中定位自己。虽然许多从美国回来的人在文学、艺术、科学、学术或媒体方面取得了成功，但只有极少数人，如阿尔伯特·诺登，追求政治生涯。该项目将处理以下关键问题：1.在美国流亡期间，共产主义难民对战后德国的政治计划有何构想？2.）为什么这些人在冷战期间回到了东德德国而不是西德德国？3.）第三章是否有一种共同的文化“美国流亡经历”塑造了民主德国前难民的思想和行为？4.）“西移民”是如何在20世纪50年代的政治清洗中幸存下来的？这些经历如何塑造了他们的政治承诺？他们在后来的东德社会中的地位和地位是什么？

This book project under the planned title "Beargwöhnt und benötigt: Westemigranten zwischen USA-Exil und DDR" (Suspicious and Needed: German Communist Émigrés Between the United States and Their Return to the GDR) focuses on the life and work of the German communist refugees in the United States, who returned, after 1945, to East Germany to help build a socialist society. It is mainly based on archival material from the US and Germany, including FBI files and personal files in the German Federal Archives and the Stasi Archives.This project will explore how the individual and collective experiences of these East German communists affected their lives and work. The group under review includes around forty individuals (around seventy with their families) who lived in the United States between 1938 and 1945-48. Among them were prominent and even famous writers, artists, and scholars, such as Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Hanns and Gerhart Eisler, Henryk Grossmann, Stefan Heym, Alfred Kantorowicz, and Samuel Mitja Rapoport. Not all of them were members of the Communist Party of Germany, but all belonged in the US to a network that was closely linked with the party. The book will discuss the dual perception of the United States by the refugees: as a land that saved their lives and as a society that was largely racially segregated.In communist East Germany the returning refugees were welcomed and needed but likewise seen with suspicion. Their scholarly and artistic expertise could not be separated from their exile experience in the main country of "Western imperialism." The so-called Westemigranten (émigrés to the West) had to orient themselves in a society that was mainly directed by those communists who had returned from the Soviet Union or had survived Nazism in concentration camps or prisons. While many of the returnees from the US succeeded in literature, arts, science and scholarship or the media, only very few, such as Albert Norden, pursued political careers.The project will deal with the following key questions:1.) What political plans for a post-war Germany did the communist refugees conceptualize in American exile?2.) Why did these people return to East Germany and not to West Germany during the Cold War?3.) Was there a common cultural "American exile experience" that shaped the thoughts and actions of the former refugees in the GDR?4.) How did the "Westemigranten" survive the political purges of the 1950s? How was their political commitment shaped by these experiences? What were their places and positions in East German society in later years?