Hans Sahl im exil: die exterritorialität des Denkens

This is a study of the life and work of the German Jewish exile writer Hans Sahl. As a cultural correspondent – a kind of a German version of Alistair Cook – between the late 1950 and till the 1970 he reported weekly on theatre performances, exhibition openings and public lectures in New York for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and later Die Welt. Unjustifiedly little known for his literary work, he made a name for himself as the first literary translator of important American dramatists, including Tennessee Williams and Thornton Wilder. Sahl’s work and life (1902-93) are presented as paradigmatic for the mediating position of the exile writer. While his identity is studied at the point where the views he develops of himself (what I call ‘personal myth’) and those about him held by others intersect I also explore to what extent it was influenced by the demands made on him by both the national and the trans-national contexts within which he had to function. Moreover, I demonstrate how Hans Jonas’ Imperative of Responsibility guided both Sahl’s self-image as a mediator between the cultures of the New and the Old Worlds, and his attitude towards his Jewish origin between an exile and a Diaspora identity. The book suggests that the reason why Sahl never received much recognition in his lifetime lies in his exile identity and the challenge that the ambiguous generic character of his work poses to its reception. I analyze Sahl’s works in their specific political and historical context. Textual analysis, based on close reading of his published works (autobiographical fiction, two volumes of recollections, and editions of poetry) and archival study is informed by identity theory (Hall, Anderson), debates about exile and Diaspora (Gilman, Bhabha, Rushdie) and theories of cultural memory (Halbwachs, Nora, Assmann)