The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century by Owen Hatherley

Review by Karen Langley

The interwar period of the early 20th century saw a massive amount of emigration from Central Europe, as those vulnerable to the extremist governments of a number of countries fled abroad. Many of these émigrés migrated to the United Kingdom, and in a stunning new book, The Alienation Effect, Owen Hatherley takes a look at the massive cultural impact they had on this country.

Hatherley is known for his writings on Modernist and Brutalist architecture, but here he casts his net much wider. The émigrés brought with them a wide array of cultural skills, from design, fine art and photography to filmmaking, sculpture and planning. Hatherley opens his book with a personal encounter, meeting the architecture and public art of a number of creatives in and around St. Thomas’s Hospital on the South Bank of the Thames (which proves to be something of an enclave for their surviving work). He goes on to explore their impact in four sections of the book, each focusing on a different aspect: film and photography, books and their design, art, and finally, architecture and planning. The result is an utterly fascinating read, which really must be the definitive study of the subject.

Many of the names featuring in Hatherley’s study are well-known nowadays; Nikolaus Pevsner, for example, who pioneered a series of guides to various areas of the country which I believe are still in print and coming out; and the architect Erno Goldfinger, who, notoriously, gave his name to a Bond villain after a spat with Ian Fleming over planning. But for every name that’s known, there are many who aren’t, and here Hatherley does wonderful service by investigating and recording those who contributed to the fabric of 20th century Britain but have been forgotten.

One of the most lasting legacies has been Penguin Books and their iconic design. The imprint was conceived by Allen Lane, to provide affordable paperbacks that everyone could read, democratising publishing. However, as Hatherley reveals, there were continental models already in existence upon which this was based; and the look of the books was influenced by these and designed by émigré artists. There were also the art books released by Phaidon; the font and design of Faber covers; and so much more. This section alone makes fascinating reading, revealing a great deal about publishing in the early 20th century.

The chapters focusing on architecture are also detailed and informative, covering the variety of styles the designers and architects brought with them. It’s not just all Modernism or Brutalism, and Hatherley explores in depth the different elements each émigré brought with them and utilised in their designs. Some struck strictly to modernist principles, others adapted to the British landscape and needs of the towns and cities in the country; there’s no hard and fast rule about what architects did, and the sections on planning, in particular, were really interesting.

What’s especially fascinating  is discovering what innovations still survive from the time; and indeed one section of the book almost reads as a guide the South Bank, where many pieces of public art created by the émigrés can still be found. Hatherley seems to have toured the country extensively to find remaining buildings or developments or sculptures which are still in existence, and frankly if he prepared a guide to all these places, I’d be up for obtaining a copy and going on a road trip to visit them. I hope that his focus on some of these remaining treasurers highlights their importance and allows them to survive. Up until now, it does seem to have been a rather random thing as to whether they do or not; interestingly, there was much church art and architecture covered, a lot of which still exists.

Filmmakers, however, seem to have fared better when it comes to posterity. Powell and Pressburger films are still beloved nowadays, with A Matter of Life and Death being considered an iconic piece of work. Titles like Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment and Get Carter are not works which you might automatically associate with the émigrés, but the director and cinematographer, respectively, were Europeans. The visual arts influenced filmmaking in a big way, too, with the realism of photographers like Bill Brandt affecting the vision of the kitchen-sink dramas of the 1960s. In many cases in this book, the arts seep into one another in an osmotic fashion.

It’s obvious from Hatherley’s narrative that the general culture of the country was changed by the input from the central Europeans, and one strong example is in the magazine culture which existed at the time. Lilliput is one of the titles featured, but perhaps the strongest impact was from Picture Post. Co-founded by Stefan Laurent, a Hungarian photojournalist who had also started Lilliput, its liberal, anti-Nazi and working class stance was revolutionary and it had a lasting effect. This was a magazine where the pictures told the story, and the images in Picture Post have become iconic.

As Hatherley makes clear (though never to the point where you feel as if he’s beating you over the head with an ideological stick), the reaction which met some of the émigrés, who in effect fled seeking sanctuary, is still very relevant to modern viewpoints; it’s worth reminding ourselves that people are often fleeing for their life and at times it does appear as if nothing much has changed (certainly as far as the screaming headlines of the Daily Mail are concerned…) As is obvious, many of those escaping Europe were of Jewish origin, or had in some way displeased the various totalitarian regimes. If you were what the authorities described as a “Degenerate Artist” then it was essential to leave as soon as possible; the unavoidable end was the concentration camp. Tragically, many of those in exile were interned in Britain during the war as enemy aliens, when in fact the last thing they would have wanted to do was to aid the Axis Powers.

The Alienation Effect takes its title from the works of Bertolt Brecht, and at the end of the book, Hatherley looks at how the effect of the European cultural influx was revived in the 1970s and 1980s through the popular culture of the time. Many of the creators featured in The Alienation Effect hailed from the Weimar Republic, particularly Berlin, and this whole era and culture was rediscovered during the 1970s, when the conditions in the United Kingdom were very similar to that of the 1930s. Weimar culture seeped into the alternative culture developing in the UK and many of the people mentioned in the book were rediscovered and championed. However, many were not and so Hatherley has now recorded their lives and works; it’s clear, from his meticulously researched studies of the émigrés, that he really knows his stuff.

Owen Hatherley has produced an exhaustive (and, it has to be said, sometimes exhausting!) history of the creative talent which flowed into Britain from Europe in the early part of the 20th century. The detail is immense, his erudition stunning and it’s simply packed with fascinating information. Whether covering the Festival of Britain, an émigré artist recording miners in Scotland or Wales, the innovations of Leicester Art Gallery’s collection of German Expressionist paintings or the beauty of a stained glass window, Hatherley brings a fresh and knowledgeable eye to his analysis. The book is generously illustrated with in-text photographs which are well reproduced, comes with copious notes which inevitably lead to long lists of things to explore further, and it’s an immersive and powerful read. It’s possibly not a book for the faint hearted, as it takes commitment (and is also physically big so is best balanced somewhere whilst reading). Nevertheless, it’s a groundbreaking study of a fascinating period in British history when an influx of European culture changed the nation. Highly recommended!

Karen Langley blogs at kaggsysbookishramblings and thinks we should abolish nation states.

Owen Hatherley, The Alienation Effect (Allen Lane, 2025). 978-0241378205, 597pp., hardback.

BUY at Blackwell’s via our affiliate link (free UK P&P).