The book contains a number of studies focused on the post-war correspondence between noted exiles from Hitler's Germany and colleagues and friends who remained in Germany. These materials provide unique insights into the reshaping of relations among the correspondents, which figure decisively in decisions of exiles on questions of return.

David Kettler is a student of social and political theory with a special interest in the intellectual generation at work in Germany between the wars and in exile. He is Professor Emeritus of both Trent University (Canada) and Bard College (USA).

Detlef Garz is interested in social and educational theory and qualitative research with a focus on biographical development in Nazi Germany and beyond.

Preface; Chapter 1. The "First Letters" Exile Project: Introduction, David Kettler; Chapter 2. "That I Will Return, My Friend, You Do Not Believe Yourself ": Karl Wolfskehl - Exul Poeta, Detlef Garz; Chapter 3. "I Do Not Lift a Stone": Thomas Mann's "First Letter" to Walter von Molo, Leonore Krenzlin; Chapter 4. Faust Narrative and Impossibility Thesis: Thomas Mann's Answer to Walter von Molo, Reinhard Mehring; Chapter 5. "That I Am Not Allowed for a Moment to Forget the Ocean of Blood": Hans-Georg Gadamer and Leo Strauss in Their First Letters after 1946, Thomas Meyer; Chapter 6. Return into Exile: First Letters to and from Ernst Bloch, Moritz Mutter and Falko Schmieder; Chapter 7. A Postwar Encounter without Pathos: Otto Kirchheimer's Critical Response to the New Germany, Peter Breiner; Chapter 8. An Exile's Letter to Old Comrades in Cologne: Wilhelm Sollmann's Critique of German Social Democracy and Conception of a New Party in Postwar Germany, Marjorie Lamberti; Chapter 9. First Letters: Arendt to Heidegger, Micha Brumlik; Chapter 10. Denazification and Postwar German Philosophy: The Marcuse/Heidegger Correspondence, Thomas Wheatland; Chapter 11. "It Would Be Perhaps a New Exile and Perhaps the Most Painful": The Theme of Return in Oskar Maria Graf's Letters to Hugo Hartung, Helga Schreckenberger; Chapter 12. Social Constellation of the Exile at the End of the Second World War and the Pragmatics of the "First Letters": An Objective Hermeneutic Structural and Sequence Analysis, Ulrich Oevermann; Notes on Contributors; Index.