Leipzig Book Fair: LMU Researcher Wins Award in the Nonfiction Category

“We knew nothing about Albania, but that didn’t matter.” Trude Grünwald, who was almost 16 years old, was driven by the same sentiment as many other Jews in Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s: just get away from here, no matter where. It was all about surviving.

While well-known cultural figures or intellectuals such as Thomas Mann were able to make use of their prominence, their networks, and their financial resources to emigrate to France, England, or the United States – countries that promised stability, a certain structure to life, and above all safety, this was not an option available to the many Jews who led less privileged lives or other people who were being persecuted for political reasons.

These largely unknown individuals – with a few exceptions like Tilla Durieux, Ernst Toller, or Manès Sperber – only had one route left: southeast, to the Balkans. To countries like Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, or Bulgaria.

Leipzig Book Fair Prize

Marie-Janine Calic, professor of Eastern and Southeastern European history at LMU, has explored this previously unwritten chapter in the history of exile literature. Balkan Odyssey: 1933–1941. Fleeing Hitler Through Southeastern Europe is the title of her latest work, which has now received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the non-fiction category. Balkan Odyssey traces the history and stories of this exodus beyond the mainstream using personal documents—such as letters, diary entries, and eyewitness accounts.

“Originally, I was looking for a strategy for recounting the history of the Balkan countries on the eve of the Second World War,” explains Marie-Janine Calic. “While doing this, I came across various personal accounts from exiled individuals and realized there was a gap in the research that I had not previously been aware of.”

Emotional insights into an exodus

Why has this chapter in refugee history hitherto received so little attention? “I think it’s related to prejudices toward the Balkans in general,” Calic suggests. This region is often associated with violence and ethnic cleansing – it is viewed as a place that produces refugees rather than one that receives them. Yet countries like Yugoslavia or Romania served, at least for a short time, as safe havens for tens of thousands of people. They were given a warm welcome, selfless support, and hospitality when they arrived. Although the people in these countries often had very little themselves, they were willing to share what they had with those fleeing persecution – often making it possible for them to stay in the first place.

The documents that Calic analyzed bear testament to this and help ensure that Balkan Odyssey vividly portrays this period in history. Alongside political and social aspects, the book also boasts an emotional depth: The letters and diaries describe the immense psychological pressure experienced by refugees who had to endure a long wait for visas under the constant threat of Nazi agents closing in on them. They recount heartbreaking farewells and the constant struggle to maintain a sense of identity amid all the chaos.

Trapped on the Danube

One story that particularly moved Calic is that of the Jewish refugee Walter Klein. After being released from a concentration camp, he was finally set to embark on his journey to Palestine, where his family had been waiting for him for a long time. He traveled on an overcrowded steamer on the Danube and made it as far as Yugoslavia. Then he was forced to endure many months living in cramped conditions, firstly because there was no ship available in any of the Black Sea ports in Romania to transport him on to Palestine, and secondly because the winter conditions meant the Danube was frozen over. As an international waterway, it was only the Jewish aid organizations in Yugoslavia that felt any sense of responsibility for the stranded refugees. Amid dirty conditions, overcrowding, and poor nutrition, there were occasional flickers of hope of onward passage – only for them to be dashed again and again as Germany and Italy expanded their influence at the beginning of the Second World War.

Fascism catches up with the refugees

To place the many personal testimonies within their broader political and historical context, Calic was also able to draw on a wide range of traditional sources, including documents and records from foreign ministries and intelligence services. The historian was able to use these materials to help her reconstruct the highly volatile and precarious political situation in the Balkan countries before and during the Second World War. She describes the growing pressure exerted by fascist regimes in Germany and Italy on countries such as Yugoslavia, driven by ambitions of territorial expansion and exploiting raw materials for the armaments industry.

At the same time, Calic shows how the situation for Jews in the region became increasingly dire as a result of political developments. Albania, for example, had previously offered comparatively moderate conditions for victims of antisemitic persecution and had even specifically invited Jews to settle there at the behest of the king. But once Italy invaded Albania, the country could no longer continue to provide this level of protection: Antisemitic legislation from fascist Italy was imposed there as well. Calic’s Balkan Odyssey also highlights the problematic role played by the subsequent Allied powers, which closed their borders to refugees and pursued policies of appeasement toward Hitler.

Yet – as you will see – the book is much more than a historical monograph. It is a story about people whose desperation drove them to seize every opportunity they got to escape the terror of dictatorship in their homeland. And it addresses an issue that, unfortunately, is very relevant again today.

Balkan Odyssey, 1933–1941 – Fleeing Hitler Through Southeastern Europe
C.H. Beck, 2025
383 pages, with 38 illustrations and two maps
Hardback
28 euros
ISBN: 978-3-406-83634-3