Free German League of Culture: Correspondence and papers

The following details of the Freier Deutscher Kulturbund have been taken from Theatre and Film in Exile: German Artists in Great Britain, 1933-1945, edited by Günther Berghaus, Berg Publishers, Oxford, pp 48-51.

The Freier Deutscher Kulturbund was set up in December1938 to provide a framework and a forum for the energy and creativity of the German and Austrian refugees. It was constituted as a 'German, anti-National- Socialist, anti-Fascist, non-party refugee organisation with the aim of nurturing 'free German culture'. The initial impetus came largely from the Communists, whose policy of a Popular Front against Fascism at this time was designed to combine and co-ordinate the efforts of all the oppositional groups. The refugees in Britain were not allowed to form political organisations so the FDKB was originally a surrogate for political activity, even the smokescreen behind which political interests were pursued. It became the social and cultural centre of the German community for the duration of the war.

The threefold aim of the organisation was to represent the interests of the refugees and to provide a venue for activities that would help to keep up their spirits in a demoralizing and materially difficult situation; secondly to explain their predicament to the British, to disseminate as widely as possible information about the real situation in Germany and thirdly to persuade their reluctant hosts that Hitler's Fascism was not the real Germany but a temporary and distasteful aberration.