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Weimar unter Palmen – Pacific Palisades: Die Erfindung Hollywoods und das Erbe des Exils
Von Glamour und großen Geistern
Wo man ab 1911 im modernsten Filmstudio Amerikas Western drehte und 1922 das größte christliche Zentrum der Welt errichten wollte, versammelten sich nach 1933 emigrierte KünstlerInnen und Intellektuelle wie Thomas Mann, Vicki Baum und Lion Feuchtwanger. Sie machten Pacific Palisades zu einem »Weimar unter Palmen«. Dieses Buch erzählt die dort bis heute lebendige Geschichte des deutschsprachigen Exils, entwirft ein farbenfrohes Sittengemälde Hollywoods und nimmt uns mit auf eine Reise zu diesem besonderen Ort.
Wo man ab 1911 im modernsten Filmstudio Amerikas Western drehte und 1922 das größte christliche Zentrum der Welt errichten wollte, versammelten sich nach 1933 emigrierte KünstlerInnen und Intellektuelle wie Thomas Mann, Vicki Baum und Lion Feuchtwanger. Sie machten Pacific Palisades zu einem »Weimar unter Palmen«. Dieses Buch erzählt die dort bis heute lebendige Geschichte des deutschsprachigen Exils, entwirft ein farbenfrohes Sittengemälde Hollywoods und nimmt uns mit auf eine Reise zu diesem besonderen Ort.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
272 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 13, 2022
31 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 20, 2023
Der Anfang war vielversprechend, aber dann wurde es mehr oder weniger zu einer Aneinanderreihung von Telefonbucheinträgen. Leider eine Enttäuschung.
January 11, 2026
If you've ever wondered how Hollywood, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood and movies got started, then you will want to read this book as it describes that period prior to WWII when so many Jewish people of wealth and means were escaping to California. While they realized they were living in paradise, they also recognized they were exiles and could never return home. Plenty of background information on sets were designed on places they missed in their homeland, actors and actresses that were predominantly expats, and the community they created to stave off loneliness. Not an easy read, because of all the historical data, but a mesmerizing one.
February 7, 2026
3.5 stars, really.
The book tells the story of Pacific Palisades and the many German exiles who moved there before and during World War II. Some left the country by choice; some were rendered stateless by Nazi decrees; some fled what amounted to certain death in the prisons and camps of the Nazi regime.
They met with varying degrees of welcome and enjoyed varying degrees of success. All struggled with the guilt of the survivor and with how to deal with their native lands when the war had ended and the long process of reckoning with blame and healing and reconstruction. Were they any less eligible to opine on what should happen and how perpetrators should be punished? Some believed so, as they had (to borrow an image from the book) looked on from box seats as the horrors played out in Europe. But all had lost -- loved ones, careers, fortunes, their pasts.
Some of the exiles returned home, while others remained to live out their lives in America. Not all ended up happy. There were suicides, solitary deaths from substance abuse, and families reduced to poverty and living on the kindness of relatives and friends. But there were success stories, and all of the people whose stories are told here found at least community in California, and, for a time, home.
The book tells the story of Pacific Palisades and the many German exiles who moved there before and during World War II. Some left the country by choice; some were rendered stateless by Nazi decrees; some fled what amounted to certain death in the prisons and camps of the Nazi regime.
They met with varying degrees of welcome and enjoyed varying degrees of success. All struggled with the guilt of the survivor and with how to deal with their native lands when the war had ended and the long process of reckoning with blame and healing and reconstruction. Were they any less eligible to opine on what should happen and how perpetrators should be punished? Some believed so, as they had (to borrow an image from the book) looked on from box seats as the horrors played out in Europe. But all had lost -- loved ones, careers, fortunes, their pasts.
Some of the exiles returned home, while others remained to live out their lives in America. Not all ended up happy. There were suicides, solitary deaths from substance abuse, and families reduced to poverty and living on the kindness of relatives and friends. But there were success stories, and all of the people whose stories are told here found at least community in California, and, for a time, home.
September 3, 2024
Mittelmäßig.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews