Invisible Women Writers in Exile in the U.S.A.

Women in Exile depicts German and Austrian women writers whose professional development as writers came to a halt when Hitler came to power. In exile in the United States, most of these women, some of them quite well known in Germany and Austria, became invisible because their writing skills were not in demand. In some cases it was them and not their husbands who had to support themselves and their families by other means. Some of them waited many years to see their works in print again; others never did. This book examines the physical, political and psychological exile these women endured in the United States in the late 1930s and 1940s. Each of them represents a different strategy of survival; together they offer a comprehensive framework of the exile experience as a whole. Among these women are Hilde Marx, Vicki Baum, Margarete Kollisch, Gina Kaus, Mascha Kaleko and Lili Koerber.