1933–1957: Exile and later life
After a brief stay in Zürich, the family moved to Paris. Döblin's closest acquaintances during this time were Claire and Yvan Goll, Hermann Kesten, Arthur Koestler, Joseph Roth, Hans Sahl, and Manès Sperber. Here he also saw Robert Musil, with whom he had kept up a sporadic relationship for over a decade, for the last time. Döblin finished his novel Babylonische Wandrung at the end of 1933. In 1935, he began work on his Amazon Trilogy, which narrates the colonization and Christianization of South America and was published in 1937–1938. During this time he also began work on his four-part novel project November 1918 about the revolution in Germany at the end of the First World War. He acquired French nationality in October 1936. In May 1939, he briefly visited the United States to take part in a PEN congress in New York. With other writers, he met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House, and saw his old Berlin acquaintance Ernst Toller again, who was suffering from severe depression and killed himself shortly thereafter.
After the start of the Second World War the family fled Paris, while Döblin's manuscripts were stored in the basement of the Sorbonne. Between the start of the war in 1939 and the German occupation of France in 1940, Döblin worked for the French ministry of information, writing counter-propaganda texts against Nazi Germany with a group of French Germanists and journalists, as well as artists like Frans Masereel.
In 1940, aged 62, Döblin was again uprooted by the German invasion of France, and spent weeks in a refugee camp in Mende. During this time, he began attending mass at the cathedral in Mende, taking a turn towards Christianity that would culminate in his religious conversion the following year. On 3 September 1940, Alfred, Erna, and Stefan boarded the Nea Hellas in Lisbon, reaching New York six days later; in October they moved to Los Angeles. Döblin worked briefly for Metro Goldwyn Mayer writing screenplays for $100 a week, but his contract expired in October 1941 and was not renewed, despite the interventions of Thomas Mann and others. Alfred, Erna, and Stefan were baptized as Roman Catholics in Hollywood's Blessed Sacrament Church on 30 November 1941.
Döblin completed work on November 1918 in the spring of 1943, but was unable to find a publisher. The only work of his that was published in German during his American exile was a private printing of 250 copies of the Nocturno episode from November 1918. Döblin was embittered by his isolation and setbacks in exile, drawing a strong distinction between his own situation and that of more successful writers less oppressed by material concerns, such as Lion Feuchtwanger and Thomas Mann. In honor of his 65th birthday, Helene Weigel organized a party on 14 August 1943 in Santa Monica. In attendance were Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Bertolt Brecht, among others. Heinrich Mann gave a speech, Fritz Kortner, Peter Lorre, and Alexander Granach read aloud from Döblin's works, and he was presented with notes of congratulation and praise from Brecht, Max Horkheimer, and Alfred Polgar, among others. Compositions by Hanns Eisler were performed, and Blandine Ebinger sang Berlin chansons. Yet the festivities were dampened when Döblin gave a speech in which he mentioned his conversion to Catholicism; the religious, moral tone proved alienating, and fell on unsympathetic ears.
In 1945, Döblin's 18-year-old son Stefan was called up for military service in the French army. That spring had brought the good news that Klaus was alive and in Switzerland after a period working for the French resistance, and the grim tidings that Wolfgang was dead, having committed suicide five years to avoid being captured by troops of the Wehrmacht. In October 1945, Alfred and Erna arrived in New York, sailing aboard the Argentine back to Europe. They first settled in Baden-Baden, where Döblin worked for the French military government as official representative for the office of public education; he was tasked with approving manuscripts for publication, and vehemently opposed the approval of any texts by authors who had sympathized with National Socialism, such as Ernst Jünger or Gottfried Benn. In postwar Germany's conservative cultural climate, Döblin was unable to draw on his earlier success as an author, yet continued his literary engagement with a series of publications and journals that aimed to rebuild Germany's intellectual and cultural life, reintroducing the literature banned by the Nazis and fostering the growth of younger writers. Despite these efforts, Döblin was disappointed by the apparent continuity between the Nazi years and the postwar climate. His growing pessimism was fueled by his sense of isolation and marginalization within the postwar German literary scene. In 1953, Alfred and Erna returned to Paris despite the invitation by Brecht and Johannes R. Becher to settle in East Berlin.
His last novel, Hamlet oder Die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende (Tales of a Long Night), was published in 1956, and was favorably received. Döblin's remaining years were marked by poor health (he had Parkinson's disease) and lengthy stays in multiple clinics and hospitals, including his alma mater, Freiburg University. Through the intervention of Theodor Heuss and Joachim Tiburtius, he was able to receive more money from the Berlin office in charge of compensating victims of Nazi persecution; this, and a literary prize from the Mainz Academy in the sum of 10,000 DM helped finance his growing medical expenses.
Alfred Döblin died in the hospital in Emmendingen on 26 June 1957 and was buried two days later in the village cemetery at Housseras next to his son Wolfgang. Erna soon joined them in the same cemetery when after turning on the gas tap in the family apartment in Paris on 15 September, she forgot to light the flame.
