The Exodus of German Culture to Turkey (1933-1945)

FAIN: FEL-257135-18

Azade Seyhan
Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2859)

A book-length analysis on academic exiles from Hitler's Germany and the Turkish higher educational institutions in which they took refuge.

"Exile in Translation" focuses on a unique cultural encounter between professors exiled from Hitler’s Germany and the Turkish higher educational establishment that offered them refuge and intellectual community. Although the possibility of a humanist practice of Bildung was foreclosed by the Nazi takeover in Germany, this intellectual legacy could survive through instances of transportation and translation in a few lands, where the academic exiles immigrated. The safeguarding of intellectual heritages in this fashion contributes to a renewed understanding of texts that have shaped cultural movements across borders. Starting from this premise, I analyze the survival of the incoming culture, in general, and exile scholarship, in particular, in and as translation; the role of translation in the economies of a national culture; the imperative of cross-disciplinary work for the exiled scholar; and the conditions for the emergence of an alternative critique of modernity.