thrown, while the fascists chanted “Jews get out” and “We don’t need Jews in Switzerland.” Instead of receiving help from Swiss authorities, the Manns had to publicly defend their political project. Before long, representatives of the Third Reich began flexing their muscles at the Swiss government, which responded by passing a law forbidding foreign residents of Switzerland from making political statements. Appeasement was the policy of choice in Europe, and Germany’s smaller neighbors hoped that compromise would pacify Hitler.
When Switzerland’s political leaders caved to Nazi bullying, it was the end for Klaus and Erika Mann’s cabaret. In response to the new law, Erika Mann sent an open letter to the most influential Swiss newspaper, justifying her work:
The Pfeffermühle is not a stage for inciting the masses or promoting a political party, nor is it an émigré theater. It’s an association of young people of various nationalities (Swiss, German, Russian, Austrian) who are trying to offer respectable entertainment and amuse people in a way that makes them think. “The Pfeffermühle would like you to think about …” could be the slogan on our programs and invitations. We are trying, in a consciously light-hearted manner, to say serious things that need to be said today.And we’d have every reason to be ashamed, if we stopped doing that now.
In 1937, after the Manns had emigrated to the United States, Erika and Klaus made a brief attempt at reviving their theater in New York, but people there weren’t particularly interested in either cabaret or theproblems of continental Europeans. Despite its ultimate demise, however, the Pfeffermühle was certainly the most successful and influential émigré cabaret troupe of the period.
Its fate was symptomatic of the situation faced by politically active exiles in the years prior to World War II. Many host countries issued gag orders, but the status of political refugees in Switzerland was particularly precarious. The Swiss were quite xenophobic and constantly feared being overrun by foreigners. Because she was married to the poet W.H. Auden, who carried a British passport, Erika Mann was not affected by the country’s strict visa regulations. But for Jewish émigrés, whom Switzerland did not acknowledge as political refugees, a German-Swiss border crossing was too often merely a detour on the way to the concentration camp. “Escort out”was what the Swiss called the deportations, and in many cases it was an escort to the grave.
THE SITUATION of Jews in Germany was getting worse and worse. Jews were constantly being hassled in a variety of ways, and the public insults and government-supported attacks were augmented by the hateful scorn meted out by newspapers like
Der Stürmer
, the organ of Julius Streicher, which published caricatures of Jews that could hardly have been more primitive, and plastered its front pages with every sort of anti-Semitic cliché.
The paper was conspicuously and perhaps revealingly obsessed with the idea that Jews wanted to sexually defile young Aryan women. The repressed pornography and homoeroticism of the illustrations that accompanied articles on this topic werealso a grotesque reflection of the era’s fascination with physiognomy. The crooked nose,
Der Stürmer
proclaimed, was the most significant and prominent external sign of Jewishness. Lascivious Jewish “race defilers” were depicted with hair slicked back in the manner of Latin lovers; Jewish bankers, who supposedly lusted for Aryans’ money, were caricatured as repulsively obese creatures with shifty eyes. One such figure was shown trying to break open strongboxes; another was depicted squatting atop a globe and shitting on it. The world as seen in the
Der Stürmer
was full of perversion, and the sick minds that conceived it were ruling Germany on behalf of the German people.
Above all, those Nazi cartoons were frighteningly perfect visual mirror images of
When Switzerland’s political leaders caved to Nazi bullying, it was the end for Klaus and Erika Mann’s cabaret. In response to the new law, Erika Mann sent an open letter to the most influential Swiss newspaper, justifying her work:
The Pfeffermühle is not a stage for inciting the masses or promoting a political party, nor is it an émigré theater. It’s an association of young people of various nationalities (Swiss, German, Russian, Austrian) who are trying to offer respectable entertainment and amuse people in a way that makes them think. “The Pfeffermühle would like you to think about …” could be the slogan on our programs and invitations. We are trying, in a consciously light-hearted manner, to say serious things that need to be said today.And we’d have every reason to be ashamed, if we stopped doing that now.
In 1937, after the Manns had emigrated to the United States, Erika and Klaus made a brief attempt at reviving their theater in New York, but people there weren’t particularly interested in either cabaret or theproblems of continental Europeans. Despite its ultimate demise, however, the Pfeffermühle was certainly the most successful and influential émigré cabaret troupe of the period.
Its fate was symptomatic of the situation faced by politically active exiles in the years prior to World War II. Many host countries issued gag orders, but the status of political refugees in Switzerland was particularly precarious. The Swiss were quite xenophobic and constantly feared being overrun by foreigners. Because she was married to the poet W.H. Auden, who carried a British passport, Erika Mann was not affected by the country’s strict visa regulations. But for Jewish émigrés, whom Switzerland did not acknowledge as political refugees, a German-Swiss border crossing was too often merely a detour on the way to the concentration camp. “Escort out”was what the Swiss called the deportations, and in many cases it was an escort to the grave.
THE SITUATION of Jews in Germany was getting worse and worse. Jews were constantly being hassled in a variety of ways, and the public insults and government-supported attacks were augmented by the hateful scorn meted out by newspapers like
Der Stürmer
, the organ of Julius Streicher, which published caricatures of Jews that could hardly have been more primitive, and plastered its front pages with every sort of anti-Semitic cliché.
The paper was conspicuously and perhaps revealingly obsessed with the idea that Jews wanted to sexually defile young Aryan women. The repressed pornography and homoeroticism of the illustrations that accompanied articles on this topic werealso a grotesque reflection of the era’s fascination with physiognomy. The crooked nose,
Der Stürmer
proclaimed, was the most significant and prominent external sign of Jewishness. Lascivious Jewish “race defilers” were depicted with hair slicked back in the manner of Latin lovers; Jewish bankers, who supposedly lusted for Aryans’ money, were caricatured as repulsively obese creatures with shifty eyes. One such figure was shown trying to break open strongboxes; another was depicted squatting atop a globe and shitting on it. The world as seen in the
Der Stürmer
was full of perversion, and the sick minds that conceived it were ruling Germany on behalf of the German people.
Above all, those Nazi cartoons were frighteningly perfect visual mirror images of
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