The Cold War Politics of Exile, Return, and the Search for a Usable Past in Friedrich Karl Kaul's Es Wird Zeit, Dass Du Nach Hause Kommst

abstract

Friedrich Karl Kaul, star lawyer of the East German establishment during the height of the Cold War and a flamboyant figure in both Germanys, was the prolific author of thirty-five books and sixty screenplays during his spectacular career as ideological standard-bearer for the German Democratic Republic. He drew international attention everywhere from West Germany's Supreme Court to the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, and his books sold in hundreds of thousands of copies. To achieve this success, Kaul carefully invented a personal past in order to reduce his vulnerability as a latecomer to Communism, a Jew, a wartime exile in the West, and – as this article reveals for the first time – a one-time volunteer for the Gestapo. Kaul's literary efforts were designed to shed his own Jewish origins, as when he joined the chorus that linked Jews to unreliable politics in the 1950s so as to avoid becoming himself a victim of that campaign. Combining archival research with a close reading of his memoir, Es wird Zeit, dass Du nach Hause kommst, this article finds that Kaul, like other exiles seeking to survive in a hostile environment, overcame grave political obstacles through strategic historical revisionism.