KURT WOLFF AND HERMANN BROCH: PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR IN EXILE

Based on an examination of over 10,000 largely unpublished literary documents (letters and manuscripts), the dissertation delineates Kurt Wolff's collaboration with Hermann Broch in the publishing of Broch's Der Tod des Vergil in 1945.; The investigation portrays Kurt Wolff's role as publisher/mediator between two cultures in his efforts to introduce European literature, art and history to the American reading public. In an introductory section that traces the development of Pantheon Books, this study offers new perspectives on the plight of the German exile intelligentsia who were trying to re-establish careers in a foreign land, while at the same time coming to grips with the German catastrophe. Nowhere is this situation more poignantly expressed than in a heretofore unpublished letter of Kurt Wolff to his daughter (who had remained in Germany as part of the "inner emigration"), which discusses the question of German responsibility for the Third Reich as seen from within and outside Germany's borders.; As an emigre publisher, Kurt Wolff was concerned with helping artists and scholars in exile to find viable means of expression. His publishing house, together with the Bollingen Foundation books which he helped to produce and distribute, became a forum for emigres as different in background and persuasion as Erich Kahler, Andre Gide, Erwin Panofsky and Hermann Broch.; The major part of the dissertation traces the publication of Broch's Der Tod des Vergil, viewing the circumstances and contingencies surrounding its genesis as a reflection of the exile experience and as a key to understanding the work. The philosophical implications, the symbolism and the political significance of Der Tod des Vergil are also given particular attention. The investigation of the Broch-Wolff collaboration not only sheds light on the role of the exile publisher, but also produces a new image of Broch that counters the traditional view of him as an aesthete and writer of exclusively apolitical fiction.