The dubious privilege of stateless women

Abstract

The article presents a discussion about German-language exile literature taking as primary source works written by female writers, who took refuge in Latin America due to persecution by the national-socialist regime. I propose to introduce some discussions about these works, highlighting three dimensions: 1) the possibility of reading this production from the perspective of gender studies; 2) the peculiarities of the exile literature and the stateless literary exposition, with emphasis on subjects like cultural meeting, linguistic and identity transit; 3) the relationship between these productions and the Shoah from the “testimonial content” they hold. Empirically, the reflection is guided on works of the following German-speaking female writers: Hilde Domin, who was exiled in the Dominican Republic; Paula Ludwig and Marthe Brill, who were in Brazil; Lilo Linke, who was in Equador; Lenka Reinerová and Alice Rühle-Gerstel, who were in Mexico.