Ein Rosenkranz von Glucksfallen. Protokoll einer Flucht

Abstract

Lustig, Jan. Ein Rosenkranz von Glucksfallen. Protokoll einer Flucht. Published and with a postscript by Erich Frey. Filmography by Stefan Drossler. Bonn: Weidle Verlag, 2001. 160 pp. EUR16.00 hardcover. What a great little book! It is a perfect historical and literary introduction to the field of Emigrantenliteratur. The diary of the escape from evil (a second time, for on June 24, 1940-- when finally crossing from Spain to Portugal-- Lustig notes: Emigration will gelernt sein) actually begins on a positive note in Paris on January 1,1940. It is a new year and all the Nazi evil seems far away. Little did Lustig know on that entertaining Sylvester evening what misery the next months would bring when, after a genuine odyssey through Southern France, Spain, and Portugal, marked by fear for survival, hope and hopelessness, despair, deep depression, elation over incredible strokes of luck, humiliation, and, finally, through the intervention of good friends, such as Peter Lorre and Billy Wilder, in Hollywood, the unavailable visa for the United States arrives, finally making his departure from Europe possible on September 12, 1940. The diary ends on December 10, 1940, with a cryptic: Eintritt in M.G.M. And one more line: Es ist der Geburtstag meiner Mutter, von der ich keine Nachricht habe ... Erich A. Frey augments the diary with helpful footnotes, providing essential background and further information about the various individuals referred to in Lustig's eminently readable text. It was an illustrious group of intellectuals that Jan Lustig had as friends and companions in Paris. A few years earlier he had been forced to leave his job as writer and editor at Ullstein in Berlin. There he met Billy Wilder, became friends with Peter Lorre, Friedrich Hollander and other future emigres who not until years later, all forced out of Germany, found each other again at the Hotel Ansonia in Paris, and who, eventually, wrote a substantial part of Hollywood's film history. The linguistically highly talented Lustig was able to learn French quickly and find work as a screenwriter and successfully produce scripts for French cinema. As the forces of evil still seem far away, the diary starts out almost leisurely with elegantly written reflections on French society and observations and musings regarding the state of literature, philosophy, and the way of life of his contemporaries, but becomes increasingly hectic after the date ofa last-minute escape on June 9, 1940, with wife and dog, providing vivid images of overcrowded train stations and trains leaving or not leaving, endless hours of waiting and endless standing in seemingly endless lines for visits at consulates for life saving visas issued at the whim of some functionaries, all with the German forces closing in. …