Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Theory And Practice Of Apolitical Literature: Die Kolonne, 1929-1932, Joseph P. Dolan

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The apolitical attitudes that made inner emigration possible were well established in Germany in the decade preceding 1933. Three main ideas from the tradition of "inwardness" were used to justify the exclusion of politics from literature: the timelessness of the inner life, the notion of the genius as hero of society, and the religious function of art. These ideas were propagated especially by the Dresden literary journal, Die Kolonne (1929-1932), to which such leading poets as Günter Eich, Peter Huchel, and Elisabeth Langgässer contributed. Literature of the period reveals a preference for the themes of nature and of myth, insofar …