Network · 1938 – 1941
Two organizations Kurt Hellmer helped run out of midtown Manhattan in the years around America's entry into the war: the German American Writers Association and the Theater of German Freemen, with the full membership rosters preserved on their letterheads.
Organization · 1938 – 1941
A Popular-Front literary alliance of exiled German writers and their American allies, honorary president Thomas Mann, member of the American PEN Club. Hellmer ran the New York office at 15 East 40th Street as Executive Secretary.
Officers
9 people
Elected officers of the association Hellmer ran day-to-day as Executive Secretary. Names and titles taken verbatim from the GAWA letterhead in use during 1939 – 1940.
Honorary President
Nobel laureate; the pre-eminent figurehead of the German exile in America.
President
Bavarian novelist and social democrat, exiled to New York after 1938.
Vice-President, Eastern District
Austrian playwright (Krankheit der Jugend, Elisabeth von England), in New York exile.
Vice-President, Western District
German novelist and playwright resettled in Beverly Hills, at the centre of the Los Angeles émigré colony.
National General Secretary
German-Jewish journalist and war correspondent.
New York General Secretary
Communist-turned-liberal novelist and cultural organizer in exile.
Public Relations
Novelist, editor of Decision; son of Thomas Mann. Listed on the April 1940 letterhead.
Presse
Editor-in-chief of Aufbau — Hellmer's future long-time editorial home.
Executive Secretary
Coordinated correspondence, aid cases, and events from the New York office.
Correspondents & Aid Cases
3 people
People and institutions on the receiving end of the letters Hellmer signed — the everyday work of the association: sponsorships, affidavits, rescue appeals.
Austrian novelist and former vice-president of the Vienna PEN Club; addressed at Hotel Adams, 2 East 86th Street, New York (5 Jan).
Émigré-aid organization at 20 Vesey Street, New York — GAWA's frequent counterpart in rescue cases (24 April 1940).
Munich painter; fled to France after 1933, fought as a volunteer in the Spanish Loyalist Army, later interned in France — subject of GAWA's April 1940 appeal on his behalf.
Organization · c. 1940 – 1941
Anti-Nazi exile theater founded to work 'as much by means of the stage as by radio' — Hellmer sat in the three-man management line alongside Manfred Furst and Ludwig Roth, backed by an advisory board of the leading German-language writers, actors, and journalists in American exile.
"Furthermore the Theater is supposed to become not only the first Free German movement and will work as such as a fanfare, to be heard even in locked-up Germany of today, but will also help in the cultural reconstruction of a post-war world. The whole idea, as it looks to me, is promising in every respect, a cause well worth fighting for."
Management
3 people
The three-man management line running the Theater of German Freemen out of 507 Fifth Avenue — the name Kurt Hellmer stands directly alongside Manfred Furst and Ludwig Roth on the letterhead.
Management
Austrian-born theater producer in New York exile; co-founder of the Theater of German Freemen.
Management
Listed on the letterhead as one of three managers of the anti-Nazi exile theater — stage and radio work aimed 'not just for fun and entertainment.'
Management
Exiled German theater man; the third managing partner on the letterhead.
Advisory Board
15 people
The permanent advisory board printed on the letterhead — a roll-call of the German-language literary and theatrical exile in America, plus the Broadway producer Herman Shumlin, whose name was added in ink.
Austrian playwright (Krankheit der Jugend, Elisabeth von England); also GAWA Vice-President, Eastern District.
Austrian-born writer and anti-Nazi activist; son of the last Austro-Hungarian foreign minister.
German novelist and playwright resettled in Beverly Hills.
Editor-in-chief of Aufbau; the exile community's leading New York newspaper voice.
Great Weimar stage and screen actor; in Hollywood exile after 1938.
Best-selling biographer (Napoleon, Bismarck, Goethe).
Writer, cabaret founder (Die Pfeffermühle), lecturer; daughter of Thomas Mann.
American trial lawyer and author; frequent counsel for exile causes.
French novelist (Les Hommes de bonne volonté); then president of International PEN.
Former Reichstag deputy (SPD); escaped Oranienburg concentration camp; editor of the Neue Volks-Zeitung in New York.
American syndicated columnist and anti-Nazi broadcaster — expelled from Berlin by Hitler in 1934.
German expressionist playwright and poet in American exile.
Austrian novelist and playwright (The Song of Bernadette); husband of Alma Mahler.
German playwright (Der Hauptmann von Köpenick); then farming in Vermont exile.
Broadway producer-director (Grand Hotel, The Little Foxes, Watch on the Rhine); name added in ink at the foot of the printed board.
Organization · 1932 – 1975
Beyond the two exile-era organizations, a wider circle Kurt Hellmer worked with across four decades — from his father's Frankfurt theater, through the Aufbau desk in New York, to the postwar agency that placed European drama and fiction with American publishers and Broadway houses. Links go out to Wikipedia where an entry exists.
Family & Frankfurt roots
1 person
The Frankfurt theater house Kurt grew up in.
Kurt's father; founder and director of the Neues Theater in Frankfurt, where Kurt worked as dramaturg from 1932.
Stage, screen & music
10 people
Playwrights, directors, and composers Hellmer overlapped with as dramaturg in Germany, exile-theater manager in New York, and postwar agent for European drama.
German Expressionist playwright (Von morgens bis mitternachts, Gas).
German-born composer (Threepenny Opera, Street Scene); in New York exile from 1935.
Political-theater director in New York exile; ran the Dramatic Workshop at the New School.
English stage and film director (Becket, The Prisoner); Broadway contact of the agency.
German-born opera director; founding artistic director of the Canadian Opera Company.
American playwright and Roosevelt speech-writer (Idiot's Delight, There Shall Be No Night).
German novelist and playwright in Beverly Hills exile; also GAWA Vice-President, Western District.
Austrian actor; leading man of Hellmer's German-language Love from a Stranger at the Kammerspiele of the Theater in der Josefstadt, Vienna.
Czech playwright and novelist; Hellmer worked to place a Broadway production of Die weisse Krankheit / The White Disease in 1939.
Irish playwright and Nobel laureate (Pygmalion, Saint Joan); corresponded with Hellmer by letter.
Editors, publishers & press
3 people
American editors and publishers, and Hellmer's fellow editors at Aufbau — the working counterparts of the agency.
American publisher; co-founder of Reynal & Hitchcock, which took on several exile authors placed through Hellmer.
Editor of The Atlantic Monthly, 1938 – 1966; an American editorial contact of the agency.
Editor and cultural writer at Aufbau in New York; Hellmer's long-time colleague on the paper.
Aufbau & the German exile in America
10 people
Writers whose orbit Hellmer moved in at the Aufbau desk and in the wider German-speaking exile community in New York.
Anglo-American poet, arrived in New York in 1939; signatory of the GAWA honorary roster.
Bavarian novelist; GAWA President and a central figure of the German-speaking exile in New York.
German writer and communist dissident (Under Two Dictators); survivor of both Karaganda and Ravensbrück.
German theater critic and dramaturg; a leading Weimar-era voice on the German stage, in New York exile from 1940 and a regular contributor to Aufbau.
German-Jewish director; head of the Kleines Schauspielhaus Hamburg where Hellmer edited programme journals in 1932/33, later director of the Ohel workers' theatre in Tel Aviv, from which he sent Hellmer a new anti-fascist play to translate and place in New York in 1939.
Prague-German novelist and Kafka's literary executor; named by Hellmer as a personal reference to the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, 1939.
Alsatian novelist and pacifist essayist; named by Hellmer as a personal reference to the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, 1939.
German expressionist playwright and revolutionary; named by Hellmer as a personal reference to the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, 1939.
German novelist (The Case of Sergeant Grischa); named by Hellmer as a personal reference to the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, 1939.
Austrian novelist, biographer, and essayist; named by Hellmer as a personal reference to the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, 1939.
Postwar correspondents
10 people
Writers, publishers, and agency partners on the other end of Kurt Hellmer's postwar letter files — the working correspondence of the New York agency with the German-speaking literary world.
Swiss publisher; long-time editor at Arche Verlag, Zürich — a key European partner of the agency.
German-Jewish poet, critic, and translator; fellow New York exile and Aufbau contributor.
German playwright (Der Hauptmann von Köpenick, Des Teufels General); Vermont exile and later Saas-Fee. Also on the Theater of German Freemen advisory board.
German-Jewish novelist and PEN organizer; central figure of the exile literary network in New York and later Rome.
Swiss publisher; founder of Verlag Die Arche, Zürich — issued many of the German-language editions the Hellmer agency placed.
Wife and estate manager of Friedrich Dürrenmatt; correspondent of the Hellmer agency on Dürrenmatt's U.S. stage rights.
Swiss lawyer in Bern; Friedrich Dürrenmatt's legal and rights representative, and the agency's counterpart in stage-rights negotiations.
German playwright and radio dramatist (Philemon und Baukis); represented by the Hellmer agency for U.S. rights.
New York literary agent; Hellmer's longtime colleague and counterpart in placing European authors with U.S. publishers.