5 - Return to Germany: the struggles of the fifties

Summary

Heym's arrival in East Berlin is usually referred to as a ‘return’ to Germany, but the euphemism is misleading: he and his wife were essentially seeking political asylum there. No other European country — on either side of the Iron Curtain — had been prepared to allow them permament residence, and even the GDR had taken time to reach a decision. The reasons for hesitation may not now be obvious, especially since Heym had been a victim of National Socialism, a campaigner against fascism, and a successful novelist with indisputably left-wing sympathies. He had, however, been a US citizen, and an officer in the US army. In a period of intense anti-American feeling, which had been present since well before the Americans' breaking of the Berlin blockade (1948/9), any former association with the USA was viewed with considerable mistrust. This was to continue throughout the history of the Republic, and as late as 1979 memory of Heym's period in the USA was used in Neues Deutschland to heighten that paper's denunciation of him (14 May 1979). Asylum in 1951 was therefore far from straightforward, and the Heyms' visa may well have been granted only as a result of the energy and perseverance of benevolent intermediaries.