21.-25.9.2024, Sanary-sur-Mer with Parcours de Mémoire: Exiled writers and other artists

Sanary-sur-Mer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanary-sur-Mer:  a commune … in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, … 49 km … southeast of Marseille … Literary Sanary: With the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s, a great number of German writers and intellectuals left Germany and settled here … Patronised by Jean Cocteau and his coterie, Sanary had already drawn Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World at Villa Huley, … and his wife, Maria; they attracted other English visitors … The German expatriates clustered around Thomas Mann and his large family … Ludwig Marcuse in his book “Mein Zwanzigstes Jahrhundert” (p. 160) wrote about Sanary: “Wir wohnten im Paradies – notgedrungen“, meaning “We lived in paradise – against our will”. “If one lives in exile,” wrote Hermann Kesten, “The café becomes at once the family home, the nation, church and parliament, a desert and a place of pilgrimage, cradle of illusions and their cemetery… In exile, the café is the one place where life goes on.” With the declaration of war in 1939, the French government treated these exiles as enemy aliens and interned some of them in camps …, and eventually some were sent to Auschwitz. After the liberation of France, the whole episode went ignored until the 1990s when … a commemorative plaque was unveiled, and literary itineraries were signposted …

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Exilpoetik in Sanary-sur-Mer, https://www.sanary-tourisme.com/en/discover-sanary/history-and-heritage/sanary-land-of-exile/: It was not without a touch of humour that the journalist Ludwig Marcuse, who lived in Sanary, took the liberty of awarding the commune the honorary title of „world capital of artistic and literary exile“.

Parcours de Mémoire: Sur les pas des exilés à Sanary / Following the steps of the exiled writers [and other artists] / Auf den Spuren der Exil-Schriftsteller [und anderer Künstler]. Selected persons: Hans Siemsen, Erich Klossowski, Friedrich Wolf, Wilhelm Herzog, Walter Bondy, Alma Malher & Franz Werfel, Bruno Franck, Thomas Mann, Ludwig Marcuse, Lion Feuchtwanger (2 Standorte), René Schickele, Sybille Bedford. Not exiled, but in touch with those: Aldous Huxley. Significant places: Hôtel de la Tour; les cafés du port.