German Exile Biofiction : The Metaphorical Art of Intellectual Activism

Shows how after the Nazis came to power, prominent exile writers used biofiction to provide readers with a means of identifying root causes of political oppression.

There were biofictions before the 20th century, but the literary form surged in the 1930s, especially among writers who fled Europe to escape the Nazis. What would be the best way to challenge and counteract the Nazis’ oppressive political agenda? This was a question those writers sought to answer. And as Michael Lackey argues, one answer revolved around the literary form of biofiction – or literature that fictionalizes and metaphorizes the life of a real person – which allowed exiled writers to identify root causes of political oppression and to propose healthier and more socially just ways of thinking and doing.

By charting the rise, evolution, and legitimization of biofiction from Friedrich Nietzsche through Lion Feuchtwanger and Thomas Mann, German Exile Biofiction sets the stage for a more compelling analysis and understanding of the major biofictions from the 1930s, which foreground the Nazis’ Christian nationalist political agenda. Using the most up-to-date scholarship about biofiction and the Nazis’ Christian nationalism, this study offers new and more grounded approaches to the way biofiction functions in relation to the political and how it can be used to expose and combat dangerous political leaders like Hitler and the Nazis. But more than that, German Exile Biofiction shows how metaphorizing lives can enable readers and audiences today to counteract the dangers of contemporary Christian nationalisms.