February 1933. Winter of German Literature

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler took the oath of office as Chancellor of Germany — and the cultural landscape of the Late Weimar Republic changed in an instant. February determined which of the leading writers, artists, and intellectuals would have to fear for their lives and flee, who would build a career under the protection of criminals, and who would retreat into internal emigration to witness history unfold. Uwe Witshtok reconstructs the feeling of historical rupture that engulfed Germany based on diaries, letters, and archival materials. The transformation of the waning democracy into a realm of terror under the Nazis took no more than a month. The story of the fates of 33 German intellectuals — from Thomas Mann and Else Lasker-Schüler to Bertolt Brecht — is juxtaposed with the chronicle of clashes in the streets, where the right beat and killed the left — and vice versa.