Language:
English
Year of publication:
2020
Titel der Quelle:
Refugees from Nazi-Occupied Europe in British Overseas Territories
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2020) 231-245
Keywords:
Wolfskehl, Karl, Literary style
;
Wolfskehl, Karl, Appreciation
;
Poets, Jewish
;
Exiled Jewish authors
Abstract:
For the poet Karl Wolfskehl (b. 1869, Darmstadt, Germany – d. 1948, Auckland, New Zealand), the migration via Switzerland and Italy to New Zealand was a dramatic rupture in his personal life, for his health and his cultural identity. In his poetic writing, however, a remarkable constant can be observed: in New Zealand the wartime ‘enemy alien’ continued writing in a style with which he had harvested fame when active in the early phase of the so-called ‘George-Kreis’, a group of writers centred around the charismatic poet Stefan George, in Germany at the fin de siècle. In this article, I will explore the challenges the exiled German-Jewish writer experienced in New Zealand: how he was perceived by New Zealand colleagues and by fellow exiles; and how he saw himself in the New World. On “the globe’s last island reef” Wolfskehl found a safe haven, a place to edit and finalise the exile poetry he had written in Switzerland and Italy. It was, however, not the start of a new creative phase.
DOI:
10.1163/9789004399532_013
URL:
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