Preliminary Remark

In the analysis of the “First Letters” in the first contact after the end of the Second World War between emigrants from Nazi Germany and their former acquaintances, the problem arises of distinguishing between a stringent, narrow definition of First Letters as documents of an actual initiative to resume old connections and a more comprehensive consideration of the overall communicative maneuvers in dealing with the situation that inevitably occurs when the historical macro-situation compelling exile has ended or has largely disappeared. Even if one wanted to limit the analysis of the phenomenon of First Letters to the initial resumption of contacts in the strict sense, one would first have to analyze the social constellation that is associated with the cessation of the original condition of exile, that is, in this case, with the end of Nazi rule, and this necessarily raises the question of whether exile should continue (and then how?) or be ended by transforming emigration into immigration, on the one hand, or by returning to the country and culture from which one was originally expelled, on the other. For in this constellation, the pragmatics of the First Letters in their strict definition of the initiative of resuming old connections are always necessarily embedded and integrated. For this reason, this will be the first thing to be analyzed here.

The Social Constellation Underlying the Resumption of Old, Preexilic Connections

The Objective Meaning Structure of Exilic Emigration

Socially, exile emigration is of such a nature that it forces a strict analytical distinction between the status of the refugee and the exiled person, a distinction that often falls victim to ideological softening due to the political character of the conditions of exile. Exile in the strict sense of the word can only be spoken of when the exile is expelled and has not fled. Exile always means forced emigration, whereby the compulsion to emigrate is ultimately one that is politically exercised by a system of rule in possession of the state monopoly in the use of force.