The Sun And Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood

Product Information

The émigré community certainly needed Viertel’s diplomacy. The struggling authors resented the popular ones. Misunderstandings arose between political refugees—those who had been aligned with the left or had strongly protested Nazism—and Jewish refugees, whose political sympathies ranged widely. The Austrians tended to band together; the musicians spoke their own language. The two opposing poles were Brecht and Thomas Mann, who had long disliked each other. Brecht saw Mann as a grandiose narcissist with no empathy for lesser spirits. Mann recoiled from Brecht’s combativeness, although when he read “Mother Courage and Her Children” he was forced to admit that “the beast has talent.” Nevertheless, even the most resourceful of the émigrés faced psychological turmoil. Whatever their opinion of L.A., they could not escape the universal condition of the refugee, in which images of the lost homeland intrude on any attempt to begin anew. They felt an excruciating dissonance between their idyllic circumstances and the horrors that were unfolding in Europe. Furthermore, they saw the all too familiar forces of intolerance and indifference lurking beneath America’s shining façades. To revisit exile literature against the trajectory of early-twentieth-century politics makes one wonder: What would it be like to flee one’s native country in terror or disgust, and start over in an unknown land? Salka used her stage skills to act out possible plot turns in story meetings. “One of Thalberg’s favored Scheherazades” is how Rifkind describes her. The newly-minted screenwriter worked on many other scripts for the so-called “Swedish Sphinx,” including “The Painted Veil” (1934), “Anna Karenina” (1935) and “Conquest” (1937), and the original screenplay for “Madame Curie” that Garbo turned down and was reworked for Greer Garson. The Hitler family, from which also the motherly grandmother derived, belonged for generations into the dominion of Landgraf Fürstenberg, who resided on the middle-age castle of Weitra and managed the vast sourrounding forests. In her new book, Daria Santini reminds us that this epic migration — and its cultural impact upon Britain — had in fact begun earlier than many realise.

The commission was created after the Italian high court in 2008 ruled that Germany pay damages, and sought to appropriate German property in Italy. The Hague Tribunal rejected the demands against Germany, saying no state may hold another liable - an unsatisfying decision for the victims and their families in Italy. Moving…brilliant…[Rifkind] performs an act of spiritual as well as cultural resurrection…Like the multitudes who came to 165 Mabery Road, you’ll be glad you met [Salka Viertel].”— Wall Street Journal Learn about the economic and political crises facing Germany's Weimar Republic after World War I. (more) See all videos for this article Salka Viertel (1889-1978) was an actress, screenwriter, influential hostess and effective humanitarian. She was born on the estate of her wealthy Jewish family in Sambor, western Ukraine, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her father, a prominent lawyer, was mayor of the town, one brother was a concert pianist, another was a professional soccer player. She was neither a beauty nor a star, but acted in everything from Greek drama to Schiller and Strindberg in the major cities of central Europe. Her stage career ended when she and her husband Berthold Viertel moved to America in 1928. These three witnesses came now with Johann Nepomuk Hiedler to Döllersheim and personally affirmed their testimony to the pastor. So the pastor changed the entry in the parish register, in the spelling “Hitler”.In her last years, Salka gave drama lessons and hustled for scripts. She suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died in Klosters, Switzerland, where Peter lived with Deborah Kerr. The Kindness of Strangers (1969), Salka’s vivid memoir and main source for this book, takes its title from Blanche DuBois’ famous farewell in A Streetcar Named Desire: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Rifkind’s biography makes clear that Salka was famous for dispensing kindness to strangers, rather than receiving it. Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany’s defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May–June 1919. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers’ Party in Munich (September 1919). In 1920 he was put in charge of the party’s propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ( Nazi). Conditions were ripe for the development of such a party. Resentment at the loss of the war and the severity of the peace terms added to the economic woes and brought widespread discontent. This was especially sharp in Bavaria, due to its traditional separatism and the region’s popular dislike of the republican government in Berlin. In March 1920 a coup d’état by a few army officers attempted in vain to establish a right-wing government. The little-known story of screenwriter Salka Viertel, whose salons in 1930s and 40s Hollywood created a refuge for a multitude of famous figures who had escaped the horrors of World War ll.

He described the consequences, which to this day affect the descendents. "This is my heritage, a very difficult part of my life. My father lost his parents when he was 18, and naturally, he brought that pain into the family that he started." The best biographies tell the story not only of the individual but of the entire milieu in which they lived. Donna Rifkind does exactly this in her examination of Salka Viertel, a figure mostly unknown to the general public but whose life is a winding line from prewar Vienna to the coast of California at the dawn of Hollywood. This book is smart, questioning, insightful, and ultimately impossible to put down.”—Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms: A Novel In the nineteen-forties, the West Side of Los Angeles effectively became the capital of German literature in exile. It was as if the cafés of Berlin, Munich, and Vienna had disgorged their clientele onto Sunset Boulevard. The writers were at the core of a European émigré community that also included the film directors Fritz Lang, Max Ophuls, Otto Preminger, Jean Renoir, Robert Siodmak, Douglas Sirk, Billy Wilder, and William Wyler; the theatre directors Max Reinhardt and Leopold Jessner; the actors Marlene Dietrich and Hedy Lamarr; the architects Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra; and the composers Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Seldom in human history has one city hosted such a staggering convocation of talent. The programme of Italianization was particularly forcefully applied in schools, aiming at the destruction of the German school system. [7] As of 1928, Italian had become the only language of instruction in 760 South Tyrolean classes, affecting over 360 schools and 30,000 pupils. [7] Likewise, German Kindergarten were required to use Italian, while substitutes were forced to shut down. [7] German teachers were systematically dismissed on the grounds of "insufficient didactics", or transferred to the south, from where Italian teachers were recruited instead. [7] Degrees from Austrian or German universities became valid only through an additional stay of one year at an Italian university. [7]During her marriage Salka gave in to her impulses and need to retaliate. She loved extravagantly and heedlessly, defiantly asserting her right to have sex with both women and men and to ignore the emotional damage she caused. She explained her love life by telling Isherwood, “if a man wants a woman enough, he can have her. Absolutely. It’s only a question of time and place.” Her first serious, two-year affair was with her screenwriter-neighbour Oliver Garrett. An open liaison, it was tolerated, if not endorsed, by their spouses, who ignored the brutti momenti and social constraints. Her next lover, in 1933, was the German director Gottfried Reinhardt, 22 years younger than the 44-year-old Salka. Throughout the next decade they were emotionally, physically and even professionally involved when he became her producer at MGM. Rifkind calls this a “civilised arrangement,” yet buried grievances, boiling tensions and deepening wounds caused bitter quarrels. Rifkind naively accepts Salka’s exculpatory claims that her three “sons were undamaged by their parents’ complex relationship” and soon “adjusted to the domestic changes, as children do, disregarding the opera buffa bed-switching.” But children who’ve experienced their mother’s adultery are often torn between loyalty to the older father and younger lover, and can be deeply wounded by the moral transgressions and emotional scars.

Extensive programs for new rail junctions to facilitate the Italianization of Alto Adige (rail projects Milan-Mals, Veltlin-Brenner, Agordo-Brixen). Unklar ist, wer für den Bau verantwortlich war und ob der Konstrukteur ausfindig gemacht werden kann, um festzustellen, ob dies absichtlich geschah. Es wird davon ausgegangen, dass es schwierig sein wird, ihn strafrechtlich zu verfolgen. Die Zerstörung der Villen steht auch nicht auf der Tagesordnung. „Hitler Viertel“ existiert nur auf Google Maps In October 1923, the "use of the Italian language became mandatory on all levels of federal, provincial and local government". [5] Regulations by the fascist authorities required that all kinds of signs and public notices had to be in Italian only, while maps, postcards and other graphic material had to show Italian place names. [5] In September 1925, Italian became the sole permissible language in courts of law, meaning that, from then on, cases could be heard only in Italian. [5] The fascist law regulations remained in effect after World War II, becoming a bone of contention for decades until they were eventually reconsidered in the 1990s. [5] A limited number of units were involved in the violence, said Wolfgang Schieder, a history professor and deputy director of the commission. Keeping that in mind, the German military formations acted all the more horribly, according to him. Marzabotto cemetery: Final resting place for massacre victims Image: AP Provvedimenti per l'Alto Adige, in: Gruber, Alfons: Südtirol unter dem Faschismus, Schriftenreihe des Südtiroler Kulturinstitutes 1, Bozen 1974, pp. 21f.

The Waldviertel, situated to the frontiers to Bohemia, with a rough climate, bad soil, a lonesome landscape, its fir woods made to poetry by Adalbert Stifter, is still today deemed to be the poorhouse of Austria. That's also what the historical work is about, Schieder said: "This issue of collaboration must be more intensively investigated, because aspects very different from a pure resistance perspective have emerged."