On October 13, 1947, the prominent Weimar cultural critic and Nazi-era exile living in New York, Siegfried Kracauer, composed the following letter to Wolfgang Weyrauch in Germany, whom he had evidently known years earlier, when Weyrauch was a student in Frankfurt and an occasional contributor to Kracauer's Frankfurter Zeitung:

Six days later, he rewrote the as-yet-unmailed letter. In the revision, Kracauer replaces the colloquial suggestion that contact might resume after a while with a more personal and concrete—but also less companionable—choice of language, telescoping two of his earlier thoughts, by turning directly to the “things” whose occurrence make it “infinitely difficult to regain trust in people from over there from whom I have not heard in such a long time.” Finally, replacing his statement about the hardships of exile, he simply concluded with: “I do not want to say anything more. There is too much in the way.”

Kracauer's letter to Weyrauch is an example of the genre I call “First Letters” and which I propose to examine for their witness about the dynamics and dilemmas of exile and return. Minimally characterized, they are letters written as soon as possible after the war by refugees from Nazi Germany to someone known to them earlier who had remained in Germany during the Hitler years, including letters in reply to initiatives from German correspondents.