It was no accident that the Holocaust and the Atomic Bomb happened at the same time. When the Nazis came into power in 1933, their initial objective was not to get rid of Jews. Rather, their aim was to refine German culture: Jewish professors and teachers at fine universities were sacked. Atomic science had attracted a lot of Jewish talent, and as Albert Einstein and other quantum exiles scattered, they realized that they held the key to a weapon of unimaginable power. Convinced that their gentile counterparts in Germany had come to the same conclusion, and having witnessed what the Nazis were prepared to do, the exiles were afraid. They had to get to the Atomic Bomb first. The Nazis meanwhile had acquired a more pressing objective: their persecution of the Jews had evolved into extermination. Two dreadful projects - the Bomb and the Holocaust - became locked a grisly race.

Erstmals wird im ersten Teil dieses Buches die österreichische Exil- und Emigrationsforschung über die „Vertriebene Vernunft und Kunst“ in englischer Sprache dokumentiert. Mit Beiträgen über den kulturellen Exodus (Wissenschaft, Literatur, Film, Theater, Musik, Architektur und bildende Kunst) in der Epoche des Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus mit den spürbaren Folgen bis zur Gegenwart wird der durch Vertreibung und Vernichtung vom Lande selbst verursachte geistige Verlust zwischen Kontinuität und Bruch thematisiert. Die Forschungsbeiträge von vorwiegend jüngeren österreichischen WissenschaftlerInnen werden durch (auto)biographische Texte von – heute prominenten – vertriebenen Österreichern und Vertretern des Widerstandes bereichert.Im zweiten, dokumentarischen Teil sind rund 4000 Kurzbiographien der österreichischen kulturellen Emigration in Form von 5 Datenbanken (Wissenschaft, Literatur, Film/Theater, Musik, bildende Kunst/Architektur) in deutscher Sprache sowie durch eine umfassende Dokumentation der österreichischen Exilzeitschriften (1933–1945) abgedrucktDamit stellt diese Publikation ein reich illustriertes Lese- und Materialienbuch zum kulturellen Exodus aus Österreich dar, dessen Aktualität auch in der heutigen Rolle Österreichs als (R)Emigrations- und Immigrationsland nach der „Wende 1989/90“ liegt.

In The Politics of Exodus, Mark Dooley offers a lively interpretation of Kierkegaard as a precursor of the ethical and political insights of Jacques Derrida. While many connections have been forged in recent years between these two quintessentially Continental figures, Dooley's book argues that these affiliations run much deeper than any previous commentators have suggested. Indeed, his most controversial claim is that Kierkegaard is anything but a proponent of asocial individualism, but is one whose writings bear witness to the notion of an open quasi-community which has driven much of Derrida's work over the past decade. In vigorously challenging conventional wisdom surrounding the place of Kierkegaard in contemporary thought and political theory, Dooley shows how powerfully postmodern and politically charged the latter's specifically 'religious' ideas are. As such, Kierkegaard ought to be read as someone who anticipated Derrida's claim that genuine responsibility in the political sphere depends upon a phophetic call for justice on behalf of the least among us. will appeal to anyone interested in the intersection of religion and postmodernism, as well as to those with interests in ethics and politics from a Continental perspective. It will undoubtedly change the way we read Kierkegaard in the new millennium.