This series contains personal and business letters, postcards, invitations, contract letters, telegrams and other correspondence, mainly to members of the Miller family. Approximately a quarter of the correspondence is from organisations such as theatre and film companies and the BBC, and concerns Martin Miller (MM) or Hannah Norbert-Miller (HNM)’s employment. The rest is from individuals, including colleagues, friends, acquaintances and fans. Approximately a third of the correspondence is in German.
The bulk of the correspondence dates from between the Millers’ emigration to the UK (1939) and the 1970s. It includes a number of letters of particular interest for research into exile studies and theatre studies, such as letters from Franz Theodo Csokor (Miller 2/28), Michael Redgrave (Miller 2/104) Hugo Garten (Miller 2/47), Julius Bab (Miller 2/8) and the BBC (Miller 2/17), all dating from the 1940s. There are also letters from a wide range of well-known British theatre and film actors from the 1950s and 1960s, including Richard Attenborough, Robert Hardy and Martitia Hunt, which throw some light onto the social networks of such actors at that time. There are also some letters from the post-war period from German and Austrian writers whose work MM helped to promote in the UK; see, for example, letters from Thomas Kramer (Miller 2/78), Fritz Hochwälder (Miller 2/62), Erich Fried (Miller 2/45) and Otto Zoff (Miller 2/140).
The material which dates from before the Millers’ emigration to the UK relates mainly to their respective careers before the war. In the case of HNM this includes a letter from Ernst Deutsch (Miller 2/29) and a contract letter from Maria Fein (Miller 2/42). In MM’s case it includes letters from the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Miller 2/71) and Fritz Wisten (Miller 2/136).
There is almost no record of correspondence sent by the Millers; for one exception (also the earliest letter in the collection), see Miller 2/1/88.
There is also some correspondence to and from third party individuals, including notably the writer Countess Hermynia Zur Mühlen and her partner Stefan Klein.
Some of the correspondence does not name an addressee, making it difficult to be certain for whom it was intended. In one such case (a letter from Albert Einstein in Miller 2/1/35), for example, it is not known whether the letter came into the Millers’ hands as a result of a personal connection to him, or whether the letter was acquired as part of MM’s autograph collection. It has been arranged as part of the Millers’ correspondence because it was located amongst their correspondence files when the archivist first examined the collection.