Transatlantic Networks and Their Significance for Refugees from Central Europe to the United States, 1938–1949

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the importance of the ties of friendship between members of the Viennese social elite and Americans who came to Vienna for professional reasons, as well as travelers who, despite the ravages of World War I and the poverty in its aftermath, were keen on encountering the lively cultural scene there. They were joined by expatriates who disliked the adoption of the Volstead Act as well as emissaries of philanthropic institutions. The resulting transatlantic networks helped alleviate the negative consequences of nativist agitation in the United States against mass immigration, which had peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century and had led to the quota laws of 1921 and 1924 that limited the admission of European immigrants, especially from southern and eastern Europe. After the political turbulence and severe economic problems experienced by Austria and ending with the Anschluss, many Jewish intellectuals and artists were forced to look for a safe haven, but admission to the United States was dependent on affidavits generously provided by friends and acquaintances. On the basis of unpublished letters examined in several American archives, the essay shows that the refugees received help from foreign correspondents encountered in Austria, such as Dorothy Thompson, from whose support fellow journalist Marcel Fodor and author Carl Zuckmayer benefitted. The cultural critic H. L. Mencken similarly sponsored the admission of the family of the late Viennese anglicist Leon Kellner, and the generosity of Thornton Wilder extended to a number of refugees. Not every such effort, the article shows, was successful.