Lecture & Discussion: Alexander Smoltczyk - Lisbon 1941

Moderator: René Freudenthal, Carl Schurz House

Lisbon: A Mixed Zone in the Shadow of War, a Hubs for Exiles and Agents

In early summer 1940, the Wehrmacht drove refugees across Western Europe. Those who did not make it to England by ship sought refuge in Lisbon: Thousands waited in neutral Portugal for a ship. British spies and German agents kept a close watch on one another, while raw materials buyers sought to purchase large quantities of sardines for Hitler’s army and, more importantly, the rare and irreplaceable tungsten needed for shells.

Alexander Smoltczyk’s gripping book traces the fates of Josephine Baker, Otto von Habsburg, Salvador Dalí, Heinrich Mann, Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Peggy Guggenheim, Lion Feuchtwanger, Alfred Döblin, Ian Fleming, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jean Renoir, Arthur Koestler, Man Ray, and many others. 

Alexander Smoltczyk studied economics, political science, and agricultural economics in Berlin and Montpellier. As a distinguished journalist, he has worked for publications including the “taz,” the “Wochenpost,” “GEO,” and “Der SPIEGEL,” and has served as a correspondent in Paris, Rome, Abu Dhabi, and Lisbon. Smoltczyk has been awarded the Henri Nannen Prize multiple times, as well as the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize, the Holtzbrinck Prize for Science Journalism, and the Robert Geisendörfer Prize. He currently lives in Berlin as a freelance writer.

In cooperation with: Carl Schurz House, Freiburg