As the young editor of the New York based , Stefan Heym had to reconcile his responsibility as a journalist with his personal animosity towards the Nazi State and the disillusionment felt by exiles during the Great Depression. The result of this reconciliation, which drew upon his experience as a writer in pre World War II Germany and the democratic ideals of his newly adopted country, was a philosophy of democracy, citizenship and public debate that guided Heym’s literary and political activities through the rest of his life. Identifying this philosophy as a precursor to Habermas’ theory of the public sphere, traces the development of Heym’s beliefs through his writings at the and its further evolution through Heym’s early American novels: , and .weiterlesen