Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, University of Illinois, Chicago

Vladimir Vertlib, a "Global" Intellectual. New Dimensions of Exile and Homelessness

Vladimir Vertlib, born in the former Soviet Union represents an increasingly common fate, that of the migrant who has no home country to return to because such a country no longer exists, and who had little choice in where he would eventually establish himself as a writer and citizen. Contrary to the millions of migrants and asylum seekers Vertlib, who now lives in Salzburg and Vienna, is educated, has a language (German), and access to publication venues to write about his experience. In "Zwischenstationen" and "Abschiebung," he describes his and his parents' fate after leaving Russia only to find himself in the antechambers and waiting rooms of nation states. Vertlib's odyssey in no way compares to the rather glamorous exile experience of prominent authors who left for Switzerland, the south of France, Paris, and eventually the United States.

If at all, his parents' contact with different states resembles that of Anna Seghers in "Transit."

I will analyze the condition of statelessness and migration in Vertlib's writings with an eye on the contacts between unwanted and unwelcome individuals and groups marked by hostility and exploitation.

I consider Vertlib's descriptions paradigmatic of a new increasingly common form of existence, that of the disposable migrant deprived of the benefits of traditional society.