Das Wort was founded in 1936 in Moscow as a new exile literary magazine, after Die Sammlung (Amsterdam) and Neue Deutsche Blätter (Prague), both 1933-1935, had ceased publication. It was issued monthly from July 1936 to March 1939 with a circulation of 5000 to 7000 copies by the Jourgaz publishing house of Mikhail Koltsov. Editorial responsibilities were shared by Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger and Willi Bredel in Sanary-sur-Mer, Svendborg, and Moscow respectively. Fritz Erpenbeck was responsible for editorial management in Moscow. Maria Osten, a friend of Koltsov and Bertolt Brecht, represented the branch office in Paris.

Contributions by writers from almost all emigration countries appeared in it. Besides the texts of the editors there was also work by Johannes R. Becher, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Alfred Döblin, Oskar Maria Graf, Stefan Heym, Ludwig Marcuse, Alfred Kerr, Egon Erwin Kisch, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann, Anna Seghers, Rudolf Leonhard, Theodor Plivier, Ernst Toller, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Zweig, Erich Weinert and others.

Among exiles, Das Wort was an important and recognised means of publication and a home of first editions, criticism and discussion. There were separate sections for prose and poetry, and regular reviews. The magazine featured debates containing greatly varying points of view about cultural and exile-related topics, about methods of literary writing and its traditions in exile, such as the Expressionism debate of 1937 / 1938. In August 1938 it published an exchange of views on free German theatre in France. From July 1938, Das Wort was issued by the Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga publishing house. After being merged with the Internationale Literatur journal, the former editors were no longer involved.

Further reading:
Walter, Hans-Albert: Exilpresse I. Deutsche Exilliteratur 1933-1950. Bd. 7. Darmstadt und Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag 1974.