This volume addresses and analyses the important contribution of émigrés to Britain during the 1930s and postwar, across the applied arts, embracing mainstream practices such as photography, advertising architecture, graphics, printing, textiles and illustration, alongside less well known fields of animation, typography and puppetry.
Most studies of exiles and emigres from Nazi Germany have concerned the lives of outstanding scientists and scholars in various fields. This book is based on in-depth interviews with 34 men and women who had to flee from Germany and came to Britain between 1933 and 1940, focusing on ordinary people. Special attention is given to the social, educational and cultural backgrounds of the exiles, all of which were to play a crucial role in their new lives. Attention is also given to the historical and personal circumstances of their enforced departure, including family members who voluntarily or for other reasons stayed behind, often to perish ultimately in the Holocaust.