From September 1941 to January 1947 Kafka's English-language column about Hollywood's exile film community - “Hollywood Calling - Hans Kafka Speaking” - appeared fortnightly in the Aufbau/Reconstruction newspaper, published in New York mostly in German and founded in 1934. (The Aufbau is still being published. See the links at the end of this review.) To read the excerpts from Kafka's column is to get a unique glimpse into 1940s Hollywood and the history of Los Angeles.

Die Kolumne Hollywood Calling - Hans Kafka Speaking ist von 1941 bis 1947 in der deutsch-jüdischen Emigrantenzeitung Aufbau (New York) erschienen. - Diese bedeutende Informationsquelle zum Exil der deutschsprachigen Filmschaffenden in Hollywood wird hier in Auszügen erstmals wiederveröffentlicht. - vom Buchumschlag

Born in Vienna in 1902, Hans Kafka spent most of the 1920s as an author and journalist in Berlin. A collection of his short stories (Das Grenzenlose) was published in 1927. Beginning in 1930, Kafka went to work for the Ullstein publishing concern, traveling across Europe on assignment as a travel writer and news reporter. In 1932 the German film “Im Banne des Eulenspiegel” appeared on the screen with a script co-written by Hans Kafka.

In April 1933, as a “non-Aryan,” Kafka lost his job at Ullstein and returned to his hometown of Vienna before moving to London in 1936. It was in England that he wrote an original screenplay for the film "Dead Man's Shoes" (1939), starring the exiled German actor Conrad Veidt (later Major Strasser in "Casablanca"). After yet another move (to Paris) and five months of internment as an Austrian citizen in France, Kafka and his wife (actress Getrude Burr) were able to flee to America on the last ship out of France before the Germans marched into the French capital.

After landing in New York City in February 1940, the Kafkas remained there only a few months before moving on to the West Coast and a new life in southern California (but not before contacting Manfred George, chief editor at the Aufbau, whom Kafka knew from his Berlin days). Unlike many of his fellow exiles in “Tinseltown,” Kafka had the advantage of experience. “My writer's lot in Hollywood came off just the reverse of fate that so many other writer immigrants were up against. While those at first had to struggle to make a modest living and only later gained 'fame and fortunes,' I had a run of luck first, with times of indigence, even distress, to come much later.”

Besides his initial success as a screenwriter in Hollywood, Kafka (now John Kafka) also began writing a biweekly English-language column for a new "Westküste" section of the Aufbau. Under his German name (“Hans Kafka speaking”), from September 1941 until the beginning of 1947, Kafka wrote about the German and Austrian exile community in Hollywood. Realizing that Kafka's English-language contribution to the Aufbau was much more than a “gossip column,” author/editor Roland Jaeger has culled excerpts from “Hollywood Calling” to offer a revealing historical insight into what it was like for the exile community during and after World War II. With an introduction in German, Jaeger gives a good overview of Hans Kafka's life and career. But it is the excerpts from “Hollywood Calling” that offer a fascinating look at a Hollywood filled not only with names like Wilder, Lubitsch, Koster, and Preminger, but also Mann, Werfel, Brecht, Kortner, Bassermann, Bressart, Zeisl, and Schoenberg. But despite his close proximity, Kafka was able to keep a certain distance and a European perspective in his observations over many years.

Kafka became a U.S. citizen in 1945 and even after returning to Germany in 1958 on assignment for Variety, he still felt like an American. While living in Munich, he published several works in German under the name John Kafka, a sign of loyalty to his 18 years in America. In 1978, in very poor health and almost blind, Kafka ended his own life by leaping from the window of his Munich apartment. Sadly, his death went almost unnoticed in Austria, Germany, and the United States.

This book is ideal for advanced German-learners. The first 44 pages are in German (introduction and notes), while pages 45-123 are in English (“Hollywood Calling” excerpts). Both sections are a fascinating look at a period of Hollywood history too many people have forgotten or never knew.

Hans Kafka - Hollywood Calling
Die Aufbau-Kolumne zum Film-Exil
Author/Editor: Roland Jaeger
In German and English. Hardcover
Publisher: ConferencePoint Verlag, Hamburg, 2002

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WEB > Aufbau (historical archive, Volumes 1-16, Frankfurt)
WEB > Aufbau - The Transatlantic Jewish Paper (online issues, New York, Berlin)
WEB > Geschichte des Aufbau (history of the newspaper, in German)

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