Brecht, Bertolt, Hanns Eisler and Otto Klemperer. He moved back to Switzerland in 1933 (to escape persecution under the new race laws implemented by the Nazis) and subsequently to the US where he waited out the war. Interestingly, for reasons which arenât clear, and unlike many other German exiles from the same circle, Bloch was not given employment by Horkheimerâs Institute for Social Research, and was forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence supported by his wifeâs job as a waitress. After the war he returned to the now divided Germany and initially lived in the socialist East Germany, but after falling out with the authorities there he moved to the West, and spent his remaining years at TĂŒbingen. It was during his period in the US that he began but did not complete his magnum opus, for which he is best known, the three volume colossus Das Prinzip Hoffnung (1959), translated as The Principle of Hope (1986). A sprawling work that takes in virtually every cultural form of its time, The Principle of Hope argues that every historical age contains its own horizon, its Front over which what he calls the Not-Yet-Conscious spirit of utopia (or wish for change) flows. Thus even the darkest moments in history are said to contain elements of âVor-Scheinâ (pre-appearance or shining ahead), signs which point towards imminent transformation. Translations of Blochâs work into English have been inexplicably slow in coming, which has hampered appreciation of his thought in the Anglophone world. However it is now generally agreed that Bloch is one of the twentieth centuryâs most important theorists of utopia. He transformed the concept from a weak idea associated with unfulfillable dreams into a strong concept connected to the material reality of everyday life. Further Reading: F. Jameson Marxism and Form (1971).