EXILES, THE (TV)
Summary
A documentary about the group of intellectuals,
academics, scientists, and artists -- the "exiles" of
the title -- who fled Europe in the wake of Adolf
Hitler's rise to power, and the profound and lasting
effect these exiles have had on America, their new home.
Interviews with surviving exiles and their children,
archival footage, and reenactments of key events tell
the story of the exiles, covering the following
subjects, among others: the incredulity that greeted
Hitler's rise to power; the mass arrests following the
burning of the German Parliament; the rapidly rising
tide of anti-Semitism that swept Germany; the moral
cowardice of non-Jews with regard to their Jewish
friends; the German academic community's conformity to
the Nazi line; Ivan Johnson's group of dissenting German
academics who form the "University in Exile," which
becomes the New School for Social Research in New York;
efforts to recruit emmigrants to the New School; the
practice of American universities to restrict the number
of Jewish professors; the flight of Italian and Austrian
intellectuals to America; Gerald Smith's and Father
Charles Coughlin's virulently xenophobic efforts to bar
the dispossessed Jews from America; the divided opinion
of the American public regarding immigration; the French
exodus at the beginning of World War II; American Varian
Fry's efforts to liberate French intellectuals from
occupied France, which eventually saves over 2,000
people, despite the wrath of the Vichy regime;
impressions of the exiles upon their arrival in America,
including the strange familiarity of Americans, the
vitality and scale of the cities, opportunities for
work, struggles with the language, and loss of identity;
tensions between the American children of exiles and
their parents; the efforts of exiled scientists and
intellectuals to defeat Hitler in World War II, such as
the work on the atomic bomb by physicist exiles Hans
Bethe, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard; the
shift in the center for psychoanalysis from Vienna to
the United States, and exiled psychiatrist Ernest
Dichter's revolutionary effect on advertising; the
contributions to the theater of exiles Erwin Piscator,
Kurt Weill, and Bertolt Brecht; the Hollywood successes
of exiles, epitomized by directors Billy Wilder and
Fritz Lang; the difficulties experienced by exiled
artists with more radical sensibilities, such as Arnold
Schoenberg; the exiles' response to the Hollywood
communist witchhunt hysteria; the academic revolution
known as "critical theory," developed by exiled
professors; exiled writer Herbert Marcuse's effect on
the student revolt movement during the Vietnam war; the
influence of exiled social scientist Leo Strauss; exile
Hannah Arendt's theory on the "banality of evil," and
her influence on academic thought; the high academic
achivement of the American children of exiles; the
impact on American architecture and design of the
exile-led Bauhaus movement, including Walter Gropius
and Joseph Albers; the influence of exiled artists on
American painting, particularly surrealism; the
influence of exiles on American music and literature;
and the continued industry and guarded optimism of the
surviving exiles.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1997.
Details
- NETWORK: N/A
- DATE: November 30, 1988
- RUNNING TIME: 1:56:10
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:47556
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Anti-Semitism; Germany - History; Nazism
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Richard Kaplan … Producer, Director, Writer
- Lou Potter … Co-Producer, Writer
- Catherine Taylor … Associate Producer
- Daniel Klein … Production (Misc.), Production Associate
- Prudence Arndt … Researcher
- Simone Rebere … Researcher
- Arthur Cunningham … Music (Misc. Credits), Music Coordinator, Narrator
- Sabine Thomson … Narrator
- Edward Teller … Guest
- Helen Wolff … Guest
- Alfred Eisenstaedt … Guest
- Hans Jonas … Guest
- Albert O. Hirschman … Guest
- Adolphe Lowe … Guest
- Hanna Holborn Gray … Guest
- Felicia Deyrup … Guest
- Hans Speier … Guest
- Peter Johnson … Guest
- Golo Mann … Guest
- Franco Modigliani … Guest
- Mario Salvadori … Guest
- Ernest Dichter … Guest
- Erich Leinsdorf … Guest
- Bruno Bettelheim … Guest
- Peter Selz … Guest
- Claire Ehrmann … Guest
- Mary Jane Gold … Guest
- Henry Ehrmann … Guest
- Hans Sahl … Guest
- Hans Bethe … Guest
- Leo Lowenthal … Guest
- Dolly Haas … Guest
- Lotte Lenya … Guest
- Wolfgang Rolf … Guest
- Rod Steiger … Guest
- Nuria Nono … Guest
- Konrad Kellen … Guest
- H. Stuart Hughes … Guest
- Ralph Lerner … Guest
- James Redfield … Guest
- Robert Motherwell … Guest
- Christian Claussen … Cast
- Harald Hoffman … Cast
- Christophe Marques … Cast
- Paul Schild … Cast
- Beth Strauss … Cast
- Joseph Albers
- Hannah Arendt
- Bertolt Brecht
- Father Charles Coughlin
- Hans Eisler
- Enrico Fermi
- Sigmund Freud
- Varian Fry
- Joseph Goebbels
- Walter Gropius
- Adolf Hitler
- Alvin Johnson
- Fiorello LaGuardia
- Fritz Lang
- Lotte Lenya
- Jacques Lipschitz
- Thomas Mann
- Herbert Marcuse
- Dies Martin
- Joseph McCarthy
- Erwin Piscator
- Franco Rasetti
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Gerald Smith
- Leo Strauss
- Kurt Weill
- Billy Wilder
- Christiane Zimmer