Unexpected free spaces? The Reception of Marie Gevers’s Work in the ‘Third Reich

Abstract

This article investigates the reception of Belgian French-speaking author Marie Gevers in Nazi Germany. Limited as her success may have been, the fact that her works were translated into German could come as a surprise, as their depiction of Gevers’s native Flanders did not fully conform to the Nazi regime’s literary and ideological expectations. The present paper looks into the processes through which Gevers managed to be introduced into the German literary market of the time and to be accepted – or rather tolerated – by the Nazi propaganda system.