Erna “Sascha” REICH & Ludwig MARCUSE

Erna «Sascha» Reich (1905-1967)& Ludwig Marcuse (1894-1971)

‘Sanary-sur-mer, capital of German literature’ is the title of a chapter in the autobiography Mon vingtième siècle by the philosopher and journalist, literary and theatre critic Ludwig Marcuse. Together with his wife Sascha, they fled Germany the day after the Reichstag fire and settled in Sanary from 1933 to 1939 in a small house (no longer standing) overlooking the bay of Portissol. They spent six ‘unglücklich-glückliche Jahre à Sanary meine heimatlichste Heimat ’* After losing their German nationality in 1937, and faced with the spread of the war in France and Europe, they emigrated to America in 1939.

*They spent six half-happy years in Sanary, their adoptive homeland.

Ludwig Marcuse was born into Berlin’s Jewish bourgeoisie, the only son of a hat manufacturer. After a carefree childhood, political and economic disasters changed the course of his life. His father died after the First World War and the family fortune disappeared in the financial crises of the 1920s. He became a philosopher and journalist, as well as a literary and theatre critic, and described himself as a ‘fighter armed with his pen’. Never one to hide his ethical and political convictions, he emigrated to France the day after the Reichstag fire, seeing his life in danger under the Nazi regime. He spent the summer of 1933 in Cros de Cagnes, before settling with his wife Sascha in Sanary, where they remained until their departure for the United States in 1939. During these years, Ludwig Marcuse gave Sanary sur Mer the title of : ‘Sanary, Hauptstadt der deutschen Literatur’.

The couple spent almost six years in the small villa La Côte, above the bay of Portissol. Ludwig used to sit on the small veranda and write his articles and books with his usual enthusiasm. In 1937, Ludwig and Sascha accompanied Lion Feuchtwanger on his trip to Moscow. That same year, Ludwig Marcuse was stripped of his German nationality by the Nazis. In 1938, public opinion changed in Sanary and exiles were no longer welcome. After the Munich Agreement signed on 30 September 1938 by Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier and Mussolini, Ludwig Marcuse, foreseeing that Germany would soon invade France, took the road of emigration once again with his wife in March 1939 to the United States.