La fuga negata. Marie Luise Kaschnitz e il nazismo

Abstract

In January 1946 the German writer Marie Luise Kaschnitz published the essay Von der Schuld (On Guilt) on the journal Die Wandlung (The Change). In this essay, several months after the end of the war, she replies to the charges made against the German people of having allowed the Nazi to drag the whole world into the Second World War. Kaschnitz’s essay is a neglected document of the still unfinished debate around the guilt of those Germans who did not take position against Adolf Hitler. The text does not merely serve as evidence for accusing or acquitting the writer and those who, like her, called themselves cowards for not having spoken against the regime; it rather allows for the understanding of the causes of the Innere Emigration, a phenomenon caused by the paralyzing power of the regime of terror that hindered for most people the opportunity to flee, including towards their own conscience.