Intercultural knowledge
“Secret Journey” through Nazi Germany
Bernese literary scholar Oliver Lubrich has published “The Secret Journey” (Die Geheime Reise): a novel that was initially published anonymously supplemented by a diary detailing a journey through 1941 Nazi Germany.
French writer Marcel Jouhandeau toured Nazi Germany in the fall of 1941 and later published an anonymous novel about his experiences: “Le Voyage secret”. First published in 2022, the German translation of this novel has been supplemented by Jouhandeau’s original travel diary, which reveals how a French intellectual was tempted by fascism and how he used art as a way of coming to terms with his collaboration.
Oliver Lubrich published “The Secret Journey”, which largely starts out as a story about a forbidden love between two men, together with the historical diary from 1941 (and also translated it from its original French). According to Lubrich, professor for Modern German Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Bern, Jouhandeau had agreed to a trip that took him to a propaganda rally with Joseph Goebbels in Weimar. He uses his own coded formulations in “The Secret Journey” as a way of artfully and subtly alluding to his collaboration.
The diary documents encounters with forced laborers from France and Jews wearing yellow stars. Together with the novel as a historical document, this diary offers an inside look at the warring dictatorship and a psychological study of collaboration.
As part of his research project, Lubrich examines the reports of international travelers to Nazi Germany, including from prominent figures such as Max Frisch, Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett.