Clare George Discusses 'Laterndl' Project on BBC

Thursday 21 November 2019

Dr Clare George, Miller Project archivist at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR)/Senate House Library (SHL), discusses her research into the Laterndl, the Austrian political cabaret theatre established by a group of exile actors and writers from Nazi-occupied Austria during the Second World War, on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme,. The Laterndl, brought a beacon of light to the 30,000-strong traumatised refugee community, receiving wide critical acclaim, and soon came to symbolise the community's resistance to Nazi terror and assertion of an independent Austrian identity and culture.

The BBC programme complemented the story of the Laterndl which was brought to life by the theatre group [Foreign Affairs] at the Hampstead Jazz Club on 14 November. Entitled ‘Making Theatre in Exile’, the performance re-discovered the Laterndl through the work of the Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies on the Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller Archive, deposited in 2001 at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (University of London).

Performed in the original German and English, this project was made possible by sponsorship from the Miller Trust, the Being Human Festival, the Austrian Cultural Forum London, and the Open World Research Initiative (OWRI).