Librairie Au Pont de l'Europe

From 1933 to 1940, the bookstore "Au Pont de l'Europe" was an intellectual refuge for literati and artists displaced from Nazi Germany, and at the same time a meeting place between two cultures - the French and the German. The first German exile bookstore in Paris founded by the Jewish publisher and bookseller Ferdinand Ostertag met celebrities such as Alfred Döblin, Klaus and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, Anna Seghers, Ernst Toller, Franz Werfel and Kurt Wolff. Marlene Dietrich, Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill were there as well as André Gide, Julien Green, Gertrude Stein and Paul Valéry. In 1940, "Au Pont de l'Europe" was seized by the French police, Ferdinand Ostertag fled further, to New York. What remained was the guest book of the bookshop, in which 64 prominent visitors had registered and which is completely reproduced in this volume as a facsimile. Inge Thöns and Herbert Blank reconstruct the story of "Au Pont de l'Europe" and follow in the footsteps of the founders, books and visitors.