CSP 57 Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles

After Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for thousands of German artists and intellectuals who fled the Nazi regime. Many of these German expatriates ultimately settled in the U.S., where – simultaneously attracted and alienated by their new surroundings – they made a significant impact on American culture. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works, in which Weimar Germany and its culture – with its mix of 18th-century classicism and 20th-century modernism – served as a key reference point. This seminar will explore German Exile Culture in Los Angeles, spanning film (Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder), architecture (Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler), literature (Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger), and philosophy (Adorno, Horkheimer). Based on the aesthetic and conceptual specificities of cultural phenomena, class discussions will focus on the relations between art and politics, modernist and mass culture, art and capitalism, culture and democracy.