Mediations through Exile: Cultural Translation and Knowledge Transfer on Alternative Routes of Escape from Nazi Terror
Academic discourse surrounding Austrian Jewish refugees who fled from National Socialism has only developed relatively recently, mainly trigged by the “Commemorative Year 1988”. Initially, research focused on literature and its presentation and concept of “exile”. This led to an increasing academic interest in the wider aspects of exile and its manifold cultural implications (Adunka and Roessler 2003, Adunka et al. 2018; Grossman 2003). In addition, the “cultural turn” affected research questions and approaches within exile research, thereby setting new trends in the field (Krohn 2012). In the historical and social sciences, approaches from cultural studies enriched concepts and thoughts about how to understand and rethink refugee migration. The growing awareness of the establishment of knowledge and information societies and their universal importance for present and future human interactions intensified this development. Consequently, historians developed a historical perspective on current debates about the knowledge and information society, leading to a further diversification of topics and approaches. They began to research historical actors and bodies of knowledge. Subsequently, the history of knowledge has become a very dynamic and productive area of research in history and cultural studies (Lässig, 2016).
Research on the history of knowledge shows that the transfer of cultural capital triggered by refugees led to the circular exchange of ideas, affecting developments in both the sending and receiving countries. This mutual cultural mediation particularly affected developments in broader culture and arts. Recent research has highlighted and commented upon the importance of cultural translation and translators. As we know, in most cases, knowledge and cultural capital experienced devaluation when people and particularly refugees crossed the border. In contrast to the transnational movement of material commodities with a relatively stable exchange value, such as gold or silver, the “value” of cultural capital and knowledge had to be renegotiated after the refugees had crossed the border. Studies have also shown that “favorable historical, social, and psychological conditions” are necessary for a translation of knowledge to take place (Lotman, 1990). In short, the receiving society must regard translated knowledge or culture as “necessary and desirable” (Podkalicka and Strobl, 2018). The success and acceptance of cultural translators depended largely on the refugees’ strategies of promoting their skills and knowledge in their new host society. Consequently, researchers have also come to understand such responses as “knowledge” in its own right (Westermann, 2019).

Yet the process of negotiation and promotion still demands further exploration. Cultural translation as a strategy to master the challenges and difficulties of life in exile/emigration by translating knowledge and cultural capital from the old homeland has not received much attention so far and has yet to become a part of the research agendas of researchers engaged in exile research (Strobl, 2019). Furthermore, the question of how persecuted people imagined or conceived exile in order to consider the option of emigration is poorly researched. (Schlör 2014) This is of particular interest since the question of how refugees imagine their future lives spent in exile before, during, and after their escape has the potential of influencing the cultural activities they undertook as well as their contributions in the contexts of their new environments.
Additionally, while escape routes taken by refugees during emigration and transmigration to and via Paris, London, and New York have been well-documented and carefully researched, other destinations and routes remain underexplored. Alternative routes of emigration frame the contributions to this volume; they investigate the practices refugees used to get accustomed to their new living and working surroundings.

The aim of this volume is to provide case studies on WWII refugees as cultural mediators or brokers and the question of how refugees became mediators between their sending and receiving societies and cultures. We invite contributors to provide us with analyses of what cultural capital was imported and how refugees translated and adapted this capital to their new living contexts. We are moreover interested in the question of how refugees imagined their emigration would translate into exile and––more specifically––how they conceptualized their emigration and their exile and how they translated cultural capital into their professional work.

Against this background, we invite proposals that address the following questions:
1. What strategies did the refugees use to become acquainted with their exile? How did the refugees locate themselves – did they associate with ethnic, religious, and/or cultural affiliations, specific social classes, or specific parts of society? What cultural and social capital did they bring with them as their “cultural luggage” that influenced their first time in exile? How did they remember their encounter experiences with the local population? How did they engage their social capital? What identifications with the sending and receiving countries did they address? What encounters and experiences were crucial at an early stage of being in exile?

2. How important was the refugees’ social capital? How did refugees use their networks to facilitate their escape and to organize their subsequent lives in their new homelands? What expectations did they have in their networks? What types of network did they use? How did their post-escape networks differ, compared to the ones they maintained before their flight? How did their forced-migration influence the formation of identities and relationship? To what extend did identifications (Jewishness, religion, class, bourgeoisie lifestyle, etc.) influence network behavior? What relations to family, friends, or co-workers who migrated earlier became important?

3. How did artists and academics envisage their alternative routes of escape? How did refugees deal with their escape in their art and science? To what degree did experiences from their emigration routes influence their artistic work? What crucial experiences triggered private, professional, and cultural mediations? How did the perception of escape, exile, and emigration affect their artistic work? What impact did their cultural translations have on the specific cultural domains in their host society?

4. What strategies did refugees pursue to exercise agency to promote their translations? To what extent were émigrés able to translate their capital within new contexts? Did refugees openly address cultural translations in their work and art? And, if so, how did their self-understanding as cultural mediators influence their output? What functions did cultural translations and knowledge transfer play in their work and art? Did they regard their translations as successful? If they were regarded as “failed”, when and why did they fail and how did they measure failure?
Building on such possible avenues for research, this volume aims to include analyses of the mediation by refugees along alternative routes of escape and to complement the analysis of the various waves of cultural translation and knowledge transfer affecting culture, sciences, networks, but also everyday life in these areas of the world.

Researchers who want to contribute to the edited volume are warmly welcomed to send short abstracts of up to 350 words to stroblp@uni-hildesheim.de and susanne.korbel@uni-graz.at.
Deadlines
Abstract of proposed chapter: 31 July 2019 (300-350 words)
Response to the authors: 1 September 2019
Completed chapters due: 1 February 2020 (7000-7500 words)