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On October 5, 1921, 41 writers gathered for dinner in a London restaurant named Florence. Catherine Amy Dawson-Scott, author of novels, poems, and essays, an early advocate of women’s rights, and a supporter of the peace movement had issued the invitations. Among those who accepted were George Bernard Shaw and John Galsworthy. The guests talked about the world situation and, between courses, listened to brief dinner speeches. When the dinner party broke up after some three hours, it had been agreed that kindred spirits from France, Italy, and Germany would be invited to future gatherings in order to emphasize the interest all shared in promoting international understanding, advancing the struggle for human dignity, and supporting democracy.

This occasion marked the birth of PEN International, which was destined to become an early precursor of all present-day NGOs like Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch. The name PEN, besides referring to the instrument of writing, is also the abbreviation for »poets, essayists, and novelists.« The organization, which initially saw itself as a club in the British sense, expanded rapidly. In the Twenties, national chapters were established, principally in Europe, but also in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Asia. Members met at international conferences in a succession of countries to hear readings and exchange opinions and ideas. Moreover, the group approved a charter, inspired by its first president, John Galsworthy, that even today – albeit in a modernized form – must be signed by all new members of PEN.

Pen International’s charter reads as follows: »Members of PEN should at all times use what influence they have in favor of good understanding and mutual respect between nations and people; they pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.

Intellectuals as the conscience of society

Jean-Paul Sartre once remarked that intellectuals are people who meddle in matters that don’t concern them. That ironic characterization applies to the founders of PEN as well, because from the very outset many governments regarded such writers‹ commitment to peace and understanding between nations and to freedom of expression as annoying, incompetent meddling. But there was always a more positive view as well. Despite such hostility, the classical intellectual who intervenes in public affairs, especially in France, has enjoyed considerable prestige that has never entirely faded away.

The recently-deceased French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, described intellectuals as people who use »their competence in the autonomous field of culture (to) intervene critically in support of universal values.« This description epitomizes the classical understanding of intellectuals‹ role as it developed in post-revolutionary France: as incorruptible advocates of freedom and justice who use their privileged access to the public sphere to assist those who lack such options.

When PEN was founded in 1921, writers still could not shake off the horror of the First World War and the fact that many writers and intellectuals had been swept up in enthusiasm for that conflict, at least initially. The few women and numerous men who followed the founders‹ call felt like aristocrats of the mind, whose task it was to prevent a repetition of the catastrophe of the First World War though a literary conversation across national boundaries. The list of such members is long and illustrious: Anatole France, André Gide, Romain Rolland, Maxim Gorky, Joseph Conrad, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin, Ricarda Huch, Alfred Kerr, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Franz Werfel, Stefan Zweig, and Sigmund Freud.  They dreamed of creating a kind of literary league of nations.

»A literary conversation across national boundaries is meant to prevent a repetition of a catastrophe like the First World War.«

For most of the writers who took up the PEN cause, interceding in behalf of international understanding was more a matter of personal integrity and education than of politics. In fact, some members were even convinced that the work of mutual understanding would succeed only if they resolved to distance themselves from politics and partisan quarrels. Accordingly, a golden rule, formulated by PEN’s founders John Galsworthy and Catherine Dawson-Scott, long held sway in the Club: »No politics in the PEN Club under any circumstances.«

The politicization of PEN

However, the idea that one could stand aloof from the political battles of the day soon proved to be an illusion. After the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, at the latest, it was no longer possible for »high-minded people« to remain nobly aloof, as advocated by Thomas Mann in his Reflections of a Non-Political Man. The German chapter of PEN, founded in 1924 and host of the fourth PEN conference in 1926 in Berlin, was immediately forced by the Nazis to toe the line. The majority of renowned German writers, including Alfred Kerr, president of the German PEN Center, were driven into exile. The only writers of the post-Nazification PEN who remained in Germany were either authors of dubious quality or talented opportunists.

The blowup came at the eleventh International PEN conference in Ragusa (today’s Dubrovnik) in 1933. In a powerful speech, Ernst Tollner turned to the German delegation and asked, »What did you do when German writers like Ludwig Renn, Ossietzky, Mühsam, Duncker, Wittvogel and ten thousand German workers were locked up?« When the secretary of PEN International, the Englishman Hermon Ould, confronted the German delegation with the charter and asked them whether they were prepared to aid the persecuted and exiled German authors, the German delegation walked out of the congress under protest. Politics had caught up with the PEN Club.

A few weeks later, anticipating the inevitable expulsion of his chapter, Edgar von Schmidt-Pauli, the biographer of Wilhelm II and author of books on Hitler and his »struggle for power,« announced that the German PEN Center was leaving the organization. Its expulsion was subsequently made official at the Edinburgh Conference of 1934. 

Writers who had either fled Germany or been forced out, including luminaries such as Ernst Tollner, Lion Feuchtwanger, Max Hermann-Neiße, and Rudolf Olden, formed a new organization known as »German PEN in Exile.« Henceforth, they alone would represent German literature at PEN’s international congresses: those of 1934 in Edinburgh; 1937 in Paris, while Hitler’s Condor Legion already was testing its tactics in Spain for the larger war being planned; 1938 in Prague, shortly before the Wehrmacht occupied Czechoslovakia; and 1939 in New York on the eve of the Second World War.

»Writers tainted by their Nazi past should remain excluded.«

After the war was over, it still took three years for PEN Center Germany to be reconstituted. Thomas Mann was chosen to be the honorary president, with Hermann Friedmann, Johannes R. Becher, and Ernst Penzoldt serving as co-presidents, and Erich Kästner and Rudolf Schneider-Schelde as co-general secretaries. A commission affiliated with PEN International examined applications for membership to exclude writers incriminated by their Nazi past.

But the experiment of establishing a common PEN Center in a politically divided postwar Germany lasted just three-and-a-half years. In the climate of an intensifying Cold War, this attempt to maintain the unity of German literature regardless of ideological differences ended in failure. In the early Fifties the German PEN split into West and East German Centers after a group of West German authors quit the common PEN and founded their own Center exclusively for authors from the West. It was not until the late Nineties and only after bitter debates – in which more than a few writers on both sides sometimes failed to behave with decorum – that the division of the German PEN was overcome at the Reunification Congress of 1998 in Dresden. This difficult transition was aided by a self-purification process within the East German Center that, all things considered, was carried out in impressive fashion. 

Intervention in behalf of persecuted writers

Today, the PEN Center Germany is one of the most active among the 145 chapters throughout the world. In the context of Writers-in-Prison and Writers-in-Exile it cooperates with other PEN Centers as well as human rights organizations in interceding for persecuted writers and members of their families. It tries to establish contact with them and to inform the public of their fate, organizing public campaigns and employing diplomatic channels to help colleagues who are being harassed, tortured, or threatened with death. Whenever possible it seeks to free them from the clutches of their tormenters, but unfortunately not always successfully.

With the help of German diplomacy, we were able to get the writer and editor of the culture magazine Adineh, Faraj Sarkohi, out of a death-row cell in Tehran’s Evin prison. In the case of Ken Saro Wiwa, world-wide protests proved fruitless: The military junta that ruled Nigeria back then had him murdered in cold blood before the eyes of the global public.

The Writers-in-Exile program

But when PEN’s Writers-in-Prison work succeeds and persecuted authors are granted asylum in Germany, the question immediately arises: how are writers living in exile here going to survive as writers? 

Addressing that problem, the German PEN, with the financial support of the German Federal Government, created the Writers-in-Exile program. Lodgings in several German cities were arranged for the exiles. Foreign colleagues housed there receive a fellowship from a budget administered by the Ministry for Culture and Media, while volunteers from PEN and PEN’s Circle of Friends make sure they get assistance with the myriad problems of everyday life. At the same time, PEN does what it can to help the authors develop contacts with publisher, translators, and editors, organizes readings and discussions; and publicizes anthologies featuring texts written by fellowship recipients. The idea is to bring the work of these often completely unknown authors to the attention of the domestic reading public.

As explained by Michael Naumann, the first Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media, the Writers-in-Exile program enables German writers to pay back part of the debt of gratitude that they owe. This debt arises from the fact that so many German writers were given refuge in foreign countries like Great Britain, the United States, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, and even China (mainly Shanghai) and Australia during the Nazi dictatorship.

»Commitment to freedom of expression is needed more than ever.«

Let us hope that the recent split within the German PEN, provoked by a few self-seeking members bent on intrigue, will not end up damaging PEN’s important human rights work in Germany. At the very time when authoritarian tendencies are gaining ground all over the world, writers need to stand up for freedom of expression.

Because it had been a few years since I held any leadership positions in the German PEN, I found out only belatedly how deep the rift had become between the feuding parties in its presidium. My efforts to prevent the split and stop the founding of a second PEN Center in Berlin came to nothing in the face of the determination of both factions to keep fighting. Even during the Gotha Congress in 2022, when their quarrel came to a head, I was still trying vainly to persuade them to withdraw their recall and expulsion petitions against each other and enter into an objective discussion of their existing differences. Although my motion received far more »yes« than »no« votes, it failed due to the large number of abstentions.

Right after the disastrous Gotha Congress, in which they were defeated by a slim margin, the secessionists began putting into effect a plan that obviously had been hatched previously within their own circle. That plan was to establish a PEN-Berlin even though PEN had found a home in Darmstadt since its re-founding in 1948, one that had been generously supported by that city as well as by the Land of Hesse. Also, liaison work between Darmstadt and the Ministry of Culture and the Foreign Office in Berlin had generally been working well. Thus, there was no compelling, objective reason to move the German PEN to Berlin. What is clear, however, is that in our currently fragile global situation two German PEN Centers working more against than with each other, will spell trouble for our human rights efforts, which already face strong headwinds.