Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transformation: Refugees from National Socialism in the English-Speaking World 3211837507, 9783211837504

The volume presents a unique cross-section of contemporary research in the broad field of migration and exile studies. I

498 89 6MB

English Pages 267 [276] Year 2002

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD FILE

Polecaj historie

Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transformation: Refugees from National Socialism in the English-Speaking World
 3211837507, 9783211837504

Table of contents :
Introduction
1. Some Issues in Intellectual Method and Approach
2. The Role of Refugee Help Organizations in the Placement of German and Austrian Scholars Abroad
3. Mapping The Trade Routes of the Mind: The Warburg Institute.
4. The Significance of Austrian Émigré Art Historians for English Art Scholarship
5. Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain, 1933-39
6. Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber as an Exponent of Bauhaus Principles in Britain
7. Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell:
Depoliticisation and Cultural Exchange
8. Siegfried Kracauer’s Extraterritorial Critique
9. From Berlin to Hollywood: German-Speaking Refugees in the American Film Industry
10. The ‘Wiener Kreis’ in Great Britain: Emigration and Interaction in the Philosophy of Science
11. The Persistence of Austrian Motifs in Wittgenstein’s Later
Writings
12. Self-Knowledge and Sociology: Nina Rubinstein’s Studies
in Exile
13. Gender and Migration: A Feminist Approach to German-Jewish Women Refugees and their Texts
14. New Approaches to Child Psychology: From Red Vienna to the Hampstead Nursery
15. Forced Migration or Scientific Change after 1933: Steps Towards a New Overview
The Authors

Citation preview

Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis Band 12 Hrsg. Friedrich Stadler

Edward Timms Jon Hughes (eds.) Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transformation Refugees from National Socialism in the English-Speaking World

SpringerWienNewYork

Prof. Dr. Edward Timms School of European Studies Centre for German-Jewish Studies University of Sussex Sussex, United Kingdom Dr. Jon Hughes Department of German School of Humanities King’s College London, United Kingdom

Printed with the support of Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur in Wien and Magistrat der Stadt Wien, MA 7, Kultur-, Wissenschafts­ und Forschungsförderung

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photocopying machines or similar means, and storage in data banks. © 2003 Springer-Verlag/Wien Printed in Austria Typesetting: Camera-ready by the editors Printing: Manz Crossmedia GmbH & Co KG, A-1051 Wien Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper SPIN: 10856259

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at

ISBN 3-211-83750-7 Springer-Verlag Wien New York

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction................................................................................................1 1. Jennifer Platt (Sussex) Some Issues in Intellectual Method and Approach................................. 7 2. Christian Fleck (Graz) The Role of Refugee Help Organizations in the Placement o f German and Austrian Scholars Abroad...........................................21 3. Dorothea McEwan (Warburg Institute, London) Mapping The Trade Routes of the Mind: The Warburg Institute........... 37 4. Johannes Feichtinger (Graz) The Significance o f Austrian Émigré A rt Historians for English Art Scholarship............................................................................................. 51 5. Charlotte Benton (Cambridge) Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain, 1933-39.............................. 71 6. Ulrike Walton-Jordan (Sussex) Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber as an Exponent of Bauhaus Principles in Britain................................................................. 87 7. Nick Hubble (Sussex) Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell: Depoliticisation and Cultural Exchange............................................... 109 8. Nick Warr (Brighton) Siegfried Kracauer’s Extraterritorial C ritique........................................129 9. Feiwel Kupferberg (Aalborg) From Berlin to Hollywood: German-Speaking Refugees in the American Film Industry........................................................................ 139 10. Friedrich Stadier (Vienna) The ‘W iener Kreis’ in Great Britain: Emigration and Interaction in the Philosophy of Science....................................................................155

vi

Table of Contents

11. Roland Graf (Wiener Neustadt) The Persistence of Austrian M otifs in W ittgenstein’s Later W ritings................................................................................................. 181 12. David Kettíer (Bard College) Self-Knowledge and Sociology: Nina Rubinstein’s Studies in Exile...................................................................................................195 13. Andrea Hammel (Sussex) Gender and Migration: A Feminist Approach to German-Jewish Women Refugees and their Texts...................................................... 207 14. Edward Timms (Sussex) New Approaches to Child Psychology: From Red Vienna to the Hampstead Nursery..............................................................................219 15. Mitchell Ash (Vienna) Forced Migration or Scientific Change after 1933: Steps Towards a New O verview .................................................................................. 241 The Authors

264

EDWARD TIMMS AND JON HUGHES INTRODUCTION

The experiences of refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe have been mapped in a number of recent publications. Studies of official British and American policy during the 1930s have shown that severe obstacles were placed in the way of would-be immigrants (Wyman 1968; London 2000). In response to the pressures of what has been called ‘an age of genocide’, official attitudes towards refugees in the English-speaking world were decidedly unwelcoming, and during debates in the British Parliament in the inter-war period some speakers gave vent to a ‘vicious anti-alienism ’ (Kushner and Knox 1999, 73-4). But in practice, despite this ‘clim ate o f restriction’, the barriers against im migration proved rather porous, so that between 1933 and 1945 an estimated 90,000 refugees found at least temporary sanctuary in Britain and probably as many as 250,000 in the United States (London 2000,5 & 11-12). The migrants, mainly German-speaking and of Jewish origin, tended to come from educated m iddle-class backgrounds, although they frequently had to contend with a severe loss o f status after their arrival. However, in many cases their intellectual gifts enabled them to overcome the barriers of linguistic and ethnic difference so successfully that they made outstanding contributions to their countries of resettlem ent, in fields ranging from natural science (Medawar and Pyke 2000) to artistic creativity (Snowman 2002). A rich autobiographical literature, supplemented by unpublished interviews and memoirs, offers insights into the underlying personal experiences which sustained the refugees’ professional lives. Building on a wealth of documentation and research, the present book investigates the less tangible processes of ‘intellectual m igration’ and ‘cultural transform ation’, drawing on examples ranging from analytical philosophy to child psychology, industrial design to film making. Through a series of case studies, we aim to elucidate questions of underlying principle, as defined by the sociologist Jennifer Platt in Chapter 1. W hat exactly do we mean by the word ‘intellectual’? How did the migrants come to terms with the twin obstacles of antisem itism and anti-intellectualism ? Is it plausible to argue that certain form s of cultural transform ation would have taken place in the English-speaking world even without the arrival of the émigrés? Is it right to assume that British culture in the 1930s was ‘backward’

2

Edward Timms and Jon Hughes

compared with the more ‘advanced’ ideas of the continentals? Did the refugee social scientists who settled in the United States achieve their successes because their interests were already somewhat ‘American’? How im portant were the professional institutions and personal networks that supported the refugees? The fünction of institutions is analysed in Chapters 2 and 3. Christian Fleck shows that a concerted effort was made to find positions for refugee academics by several newly established organizations, including the London-based Academic Assistance Council (later renamed the Society for the Protection o f Science and Learning) and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars in New York. In Britain, as Dorothea McEwan demonstrates in a case study that draws on a wealth of unpublished documentation, the Warburg Institute, which was transferred to London from Hamburg in 1933, played a particularly im portant role in the acculturation not only o f a pioneering group o f art historians, but also of a wider refugee community. It becomes dear from these case studies that, in specific disciplines, the migration of intellectuals did indeed bring about a cultural transform ation. This was particularly evident in the field of art scholarship, analysed by Johannes Feichtinger in a contribution which shows how intellectual approaches pioneered in Vienna established what was effectively a new disdpline in London. In architecture, too, as Charlotte Benton shows in Chapter 5, the arrival of refugees like Erich Mendelsohn gave a dedsive impulse to modemist developments in Britain. Equally remarkable were the contributions to functionalist design made by a gifted group of émigrés led by Gaby Schreiber, the subject of the following chapter by Ulrike W alton-Jordan. In a period when intellectual life became highly politicized, there was an ambivalent response to the ideas of radical social thinkers. The key figures who settled in Britain included Franz Borkenau and Sebastian Haffner, whose reception is discussed by Nick Hubble in Chapter 7. Analysing the responses of George Orwell, he shows that the outbreak of war led to a depoliticization of the left-wing intelligentsia, which patriotically supported the war against Germany. The remarkable group of left-wing intellectuals who settled in the United States induded Siegfried Kracauer, whose ‘extraterritorial critique’ o f social processes is documented in the chapter by Nick W arr. Even more spectacular was the impact on American cultural life made by émigré film -m akers, from Fritz Lang to Billy W ilder. Their triumphs and

Introduction

3

frustrations are mapped in a chapter by Feiwel Kupferberg, which draws on a wealth of institutional histones and personal testim onies. In philosophy and the history of ideas, the most significant figures to settle in Britain were Karl Popper and Ludwig W ittgenstein. Taking issue with the conventional view that the impact of W ittgenstein was confined to analytical philosophy, Friedrich Stadler shows that his influence must be construed within a perspective which takes account o f other thinkers associated with the Vienna Circle, including Otto Neurath. The position o f W ittgenstein in Cambridge provides one o f the m ost illum inating examples of cultural adaptation, but the originality of his thinking owed a great deal to the persistence o f m otifs from his earlier Austria period, as Roland Graf demonstrates in a complementary chapter. In the past, research has tended to m arginalize the achievements of refugee women, many of whom made significant contributions in disparate fields, both academic and creative. This book redresses the balance not only by foregrounding the achievement o f Gaby Schreiber in the field of design, but also by devoting a chapter to the writings of Nina Rubenstein. Under the tutelage of Karl Mannheim, this aspiring young sociologist wrote a dissertation about Russian exiles of the interwar period, before herself being forced to flee into exile in the United States. Once again, we are made aware of the ways in which intellectual reflection is shaped by personal experiences, possibly at an unconscious level. In the study o f the experiences of refugees, there is clearly a need to take account of fem inist perspectives, as Andrea Hammel argues in Chapter 13. Women’s writing in exile, she suggests, should be construed as a subversive activity - a form of resistance to patriarchy and other oppressive ideologies. In the field of psychoanalysis, as Edward Timms shows in Chapter 14, there is little danger o f the achievements of women being overlooked, since the study of child psychology was decisively enriched by the researches of Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Charlotte Buhler. Traditions of psychoanalytical theorizing and developmental observation, which in Vienna had belonged to opposing camps, converged in London in the work of Isle Heilman, a child psychologist working at the Hampstead Nursery. It is often assumed that the international organization of the natural sciences made it easier for refugee scientists to adapt to the circumstances of forced migration than was the case in cultural fields. In his wide-ranging concluding chapter, M itchell Ash shows that the picture was more complex. The scientific portion of the intellectual

4

Edward Timms and Jon Hughes

migration was by no means sim ply a transfer of already existing knowledge’, but should be construed as a ‘resource exchange’ leading to a ’synthesis of scientific cultures’. Moreover, exchanges o f a comparable kind also took place in the humanities. From this series o f papers, it is clear that the émigrés had to overcome form idable obstacles if they were to rebuild their lives in a new environment. The testim onies of those who experienced frustrations and traumas during the process of social adaptation form the subject o f another research project at the Sussex Centre fo r German-Jewish Studies, to be completed at a later date. It is not the aim o f the present book to describe what has been called the ’dark side of exile’ (Herman 2002). But we hope to have shown how projects of enlightenment, initiated in the great cultural centres of continental Europe, brought reciprocal enrichment to the English-speaking world. The editors would like to acknowledge the support of a number of individuals and institutions. The conference at the University of Sussex in September 2000, on which this book is based, was jointly organized by the Centre for German-Jewish Studies and the Vienna Circle Institute, with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum in London. The research of Ulrike W alton-Jordan, undertaken while she was a Research Fellow at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, was supported by a generous grant from the Morris Leigh Trust. We are grateful to Friedrich Stadler, Director of the Vienna Circle Institute, for including this publication in his series; and to Catherine M artin, a research student at the University of Sussex, for her skilful support during the editorial process.

Bibliography Herm an, D. 2002. ‘The Dark Side of Exile' in The Jewish Quarterly, 166 (Sum m er 2002), 35-40 Kushner, T . and Knox, K. 1999. Refugees in en Age o f Genocide: Globel, N ational and Local Perspectives during the Twentieth Century, London: Frank Cass London, L. 2000. W hitehall and the Jews: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press M edawar, J. and Pyke, D. 2000. H itler’s G ift Scientists who Fled N azi Germ any, London: Richard Cohen Books Snowman, D. 2002. The H itler Ém igrés: The Cultural Im pact on Britain o f Refugees from Nazism , London: Chatto & Windus

Introduction

5

W ym an, D . S . 1968. P ap er W alls: Am erica and the Refugee Crisis, Amherst: University of M assachusetts Press

JENNIFER PLATT SOME ISSUES IN INTELLECTUAL METHOD AND APPROACH

In approaching the theme of ‘intellectual m igration and cultural transform ation’, it may be useful to examine the possible meanings of these concepts more closely, placing the different sorts of contribution made by migrants in relation to potential more general conclusions. My aim is to examine the concepts involved, to suggest some typologies, and to consider the basis on which one could argue convincingly that intellectual m igration had indeed led to cultural transform ation. We may think o f the papers presented in this book as potentially cumulative, bringing out a general pattem, rather than merely an accumulation of separate case studies. Some of the issues this raises are also briefly examined in this introductory chapter. Intellectual Migration Migration is, of course, a movement from one place to another. But is the move one o f people, of ideas, or of both? The two do not autom atically travel together. Intellectuals may migrate physically without m igrating intellectually and, conversely, one does not necessarily need to migrate in order to feel an ‘exile’. Coser (1965,264) describes the avant-garde of interwar America as sharing ‘a sense of belonging to a world different from, and in opposition to, the world in which the great m ajority of their fellow-countrymen lived their everyday lives. They managed, in one way or another, a kind of inner em igration’. Moreover, ideas do not always require the movement of their originators or bearers to be transm itted more widely. The present book is concerned with people who did migrate physically, at least for a period, and with the impact which this had, so to that extent there is no immediate problem about the concept ‘m igration’. But to evaluate the im pact of the migratory process we need to compare the outcome with what was likely to have happened without the m igration, and there we need to consider whether the ideas might have ‘migrated’ anyway. Given that the migration considered is one of people, the title suggests a presumption that these people are ‘intellectuals’ - but what is an intellectual? Those discussed in this book vary from people actively engaged in new and critical thought, to those in some artistic sphere. Only one of the papers, the contribution by M itchell Ash, deals with the natural sciences, so the books as a whole understates the significance o f natural-scientific refugees, who played very significant

8

Jennifer Platt

roles in new countries, and were prima fada em inently qualified as intellectuals (see Hoch 1987, 1991). An inclusive account, as Ash suggests, certainly needs to include scientists in the process o f 'cultural transform ation'. If we take the word ‘intellectual’ to refer to the ideas rather than the people, it raises the question of what is being changed rather than who is doing it. Throughout this introductory paper, ‘ideas’ are referred to as shorthand for this content, but that may be somewhat misleading. In a field such as philosophy, what else is there? But for architecture or music, for instance, there may be ideas explicitly form ulated as such, but there are also concrete practices available for direct inspection, and the mode of influence may be through the examination of examples rather than reading what is written about them. ‘Intellectual’ can be seen as a social role not held ex officio by everyone in academic or artistic employment, or can be seen as definable in terms of occupations. This issue is somewhat confosed by the propensity to discuss intellectuals and their role in the context of a more general class analysis, which is neither the only possible framework nor the one most obviously relevant here. Where for a dass analysis the key issue is the relation o f intellectuals to dasses, the key issue here might be seen as their relation to nations. This does not im ply that dass analysis might not also have some relevance, and indeed the intersections of dass and nation are potentially very interesting in their bearing on the outcomes of migration. W riters on the subjed have put forward a variety of different conceptions of the intelledual, some more indusive than others. Let us briefly consider some o f the issues raised by alternative definitions. Here are some sociological conceptions of the ‘intelledual’: [...] there is, however, one unifying sociological bond between all groups of intelleduals, namely, education [...] Participation in a common educational heritage progressively tends to suppress differences of birth, status, profession, and w ealth... fin modem life ] intelledual a d ivity is not carried on exclusively by a socially rigidly defined dass, such as a priesthood, but rather by a social stratum which is to a large degree unattached to any social dass [...] (Mannheim 1936,155-6) We shall consider persons as intellectuals in so far as they devote themselves to cultivating and form ulating knowledge. They have access to and advance a cultural fund of knowledge which does not derive solely from their d ire d personal knowledge. Their activities may be vocational or avocational. (Merton 1957,209)

Some Issues in Intellectual Method and Approach

9

Not all academic men are intellectuals, nor are all members o f the professions [...] intellectuals feel the need to go beyond the immediate concrete task and to penetrate a more general realm of meanings and values [...] They question the truth of the moment in term s of higher and wider truth [...] jealous guardians of moral standards that are too often ignored in the market place and the houses of power. (Coser 1965, viii) In any place and at any tim e, ‘the intellectuals' are constituted as a combined effect of m obilization and self-recruitm ent. The intentional meaning of 'being an intellectual’ is to rise above the partial preoccupation o f one’s own profession or artistic genre and engage with the global issues of truth, judgm ent and taste of the tim e. (Bauman 1987,2) These characterisations all specifically exclude the occupational definition, though when considering the matter historically some of the w riters suggest that the situation has been different in the past. Znaniecki (1940) might have been included among the writers quoted, though he writes of the ‘man of knowledge’ or ‘scientist* rather than ‘intellectual’. His broad historical sweep sees these subjects as always having performed a recognised social role, though the more creative have gone beyond what is socially required for adequate performance o f it. This approach may be contrasted with that of Shils, for whom the m atter seems more individualistic and less social: ‘There is in every society a m inority o f persons who, more than the ordinary run o f their fellow men, are inquiring, and desirous of being in frequent communion with symbols that are more general than the immediate, concrete situations of everyday life and remote in their reference in both tim e and space [...] This interior need to penetrate beyond the screen of immediate concrete experience marks the existence of intellectuals in every society’ (Shils 1972,3). There are some other definitions which offer typologies that distinguish subcategories, usually making the distinction between merely occupational categories and the creatively and reflectively original. Thus Boggs (1993, 9) distinguishes ‘technocratic’, ‘critical’ and ‘organic’ intellectuals. Sadri (1992) develops an elaborate taxonomy in which he distinguishes the more practical and occupational roles as ‘intelligentsia’ from the more theoretically creative roles of ‘intellectuals’: [...] a stratum o f intelligentsia resem bles th e rest o f th e strata and classes in society in th e unproblem atic w ay in w hich it organises

10

Jennifer Platt

and embraces an array o f ideas to protect its interests. Unlike intellectuals whose ideal interest in rational development of ideas clashes with any fixed ideological arrangement of them, the intelligentsia naturally advocate ideas that are conducive to its class or status interests. (Sadri 1992,117) We may note that, here and elsewhere above, matters of definition are mingled with evaluative judgments and assertions about em pirical situations. Clearly there is a strong tendency to be as much interested in normative issues as in practical working definitions for research. The im plications of this debate might extend beyond the question of whose influence is studied to the audiences they might influence: are the members o f the audience only other ‘intellectuals’, or the specialist occupational sectors of which they are the ‘intellectual’ members, or should the society as a whole, or some broader section of it, be included? It is surely to be expected that the most advanced and sophisticated ideas should be appreciated (whether positively or negatively) by members of the same or neighbouring intellectual circles or their related professional groups, while wider publics are only to be reached by more sim plified and vulgarised versions. It is arguable that the intellectual as a social role has not existed in Britain in the same way as in the societies from which those who migrated came. One migrant commented on his experience in this respect: [...] intellectuals are more or less regarded as a foreign body in the nation. They are either somehow looked down upon, spiritually isolated, or not really taken seriously [...] the main aspect under which the intelligentsia appear to the public is sim ply one of irritation (Mannheim 1943,42). In another essay, Mannheim remarked that ‘If you come over from the Continent one of the things that strike you most is that over here it seems to be part o f the accepted ways of life to leave many things unsaid which elsewhere would be plainly stated [...] differences in opinion are rarely fought out in full, and hardly ever traced back to their final sources.’ (Mannheim 1943,66) As Kettler et al. (1984, 107-124) have shown, Mannheim was very sensitive to the need to take into account the social context to which he addressed himself; that to some extent followed from his pre-m igration distinction between the kind of technical knowledge which can be communicated across social boundaries, and the kind of knowledge which defines identities and is rooted in specific communities.

Some Issues in Intellectual Method and Approach

11

Other commentators have suggested that the continuity and homogeneity o f British society had created a situation in which intellectuals were incorporated into the culture and the dass structure in such a way that they played a less distinctive and more integrated role than elsewhere. Max Beloff suggests that, at least in the Victorian period, intellectuals in Britain were dose to the political world and so had practical influence - and in consequence the term ‘intellectual’ was seen as representing a foreign situation in which the bearer was out of touch with everyday life (Beloff 1996, 418). Edward Shils (1972, 13748) suggests, though without citing systematic evidence in support of his interpretation, that this was particularly so from the late 1940s - a period espedally relevant for our concerns here - when local intellectuals rediscovered ‘the virtuous Britain’. How far Shils is correct in painting his picture may depend on the particular field of activity that one has in mind. One may note that his list of relevant groups - *[...] politicians [...] sportsmen [...] travelers [...] civil servants and judges [...] journalists [...] artists and writers of different persuasions’ (Shils 1972, 146) - conspicuously does not indude natural sdentists; he has in mind a general culture reasonably accessible to the hum anistically educated, and defined in their terms. (Perhaps a comparable list for, say, Vienna, would have rather different contents?) But it might be unwise to assume that the personal integration o f their bearers is essential for the influence of the ideas; after all, many readers or viewers w ill know little or nothing about those who have produced what they are consuming. An additional fa d o r which should be mentioned, however, is that of the Jewish identity o f a high proportion of the m igrants; a taken-for-granted antisemitism was widespread in inter-war British society, and this rather than - or as well as - anti-intellectualism , or a distinctive dass structure, was surely also a factor in difficulties o f personal integration beyond Jewish drdes. It would be interesting to compare the fates of Jewish and Gentile migrants, if there is an adequate numerical basis for such a comparison. A very much less sympathetic view of the same situation as that described by Shils is offered by Perry Anderson (1968), who argues that British sodety only attracted, or retained and gave prominence to, reactionary ‘white’ (rattier than ‘red’) intellectuals. (For criticism of that view in relation to the case o f 1956 emigrants from Hungary, see Platt and Isard 1999.) Clearly, an intellectual community which is dosely integrated into a broader national elite and its culture is likely to be harder to penetrate for those coming from outside than is one facing more towards a cosmopolitan community of intellectuals. It seems likely that the situation in this respect varied between different fields of activity, some having a much more cosmopolitan orientation than

Jennifer Platt

12

others. We need to be careful to treat the native and migrant intellectuals on the same terms. In particular, if native intellectuals have lim ited influence this may be presumed to follow from general characteristics of the receiving society, and so to set the standard by which the impact of migrants should be evaluated if one is interested to assess the effectiveness of the contribution they have made. We may raise the question whether all the migrants considered are best characterised as ‘intellectuals’ in some of the senses suggested above, and what the im plications of that are. The character of the receiving society offered a range of pre-existing roles, for which the migrants might or might not already be well qualified. They could on arrival, if not well qualified, achieve some success in the new setting either by adapting to its requirements, or by institutionalising in it new roles which they were able and w illing to play. Insofar as the fam iliar role of the intellectual was not available, they might nonetheless succeed in continuing to play it in their new setting, even if not to the same, or an equally wide, public. Cultural Transformation What might we mean by ‘cultural transform ation’? Let us not inspect those precise words too closely, but suggest that the general idea behind them is that of significant change in various forms o f cultural production, rather than total change of the whole society. W hat form s might such change take? As soon as one thinks closely about this as a general issue, it becomes evident that there are problems arise from the units of analysis:• •

Are the ideas of individuals changed, or is there merely an additive difference made to the range or to the social distribution of ideas current? If, for instance, a school of thought originally located elsewhere migrates to a new environment, that w ill change the pattem of distribution of ideas there - but it can do so without changing the ideas of any individuals. It has sometimes happened that the bearers of ideas have simply created an enclave, or joined an existing one of others like themselves, or have become specialists in their foreign identity, for instance teaching the language, literature or history of their native country. This may take the form of a rather sad and inward-looking émigré community. On the other hand, it may also represent a proud national identity which its holders are anxious to retain, perhaps because they expect and wish to return to their native land. It is well known that French intellectual refugees in W orld W ar II were much more likely to return home when they could than the German speakers, which of course

Som e Issues in IntoMoctual Method and Approach







13

reflected the different circumstances under which they became refugees. It does not follow that they were not influenced by their experiences in exile. Are the relevant changes those o f the migrants, the natives, or both? Other things being equal, it is at least as possible that the m igrants w ill change as it is that the locals w ill change in response to their arrival. Unless the migrants are exceptionally prestigious, can provide skills sought after in the labour market, or have access to desirable resources, it is they who w ill have the stronger practical incentive to change in some way, though how easy they w ill find it to do that is another matter. (If they do, that may in turn generate other kinds of change, as is shown by the example o f the important scientific changes arising from the shortage of US jobs for refugee physicists, which led them to take their skills into novel fields (Fleming 1969).) The migrants may, on the other hand, instead of exploiting their capital as opportunity offers, take on local colouring to the best of their abilities, whether enthusiastically (perhaps as a deliberate rejection of the old society), instrum entally (as a means of putting across their thought to an audience with different starting points), or merely pragm atically on the surface as a way o f getting by but without really changing their thinking. Conversely, the natives may be strongly attracted to the novel ideas of the incomers and move towards them. In either of those cases there may be a fully successful identification with an intellectual position new to its holder - or there may be misunderstandings, or adaptations to a range of experience different from that of the originators o f the ideas, which mean that the outcome is, perhaps unconsciously, the development of new ideas drawing on sources from both sides. Are the relevant changes only convergences on one set o f ideas, however derived? Intellectual life is not always as consensual as that. Randall Collins (1989) has argued, on the basis of worldwide cases from the history of philosophy, that intellectual history is a process of conflict, in which progress is made by rivalry between a lim ited number of schools of thought: ‘new positions are produced by negation of preexisting positions’. It seems possible that the presence o f novel ideas actively put forward in the same setting m ight lead to such changes as the development of existing theories to deal with new cases or problems brought by migrants, or salient in the new setting but novel to the migrants, even if that is done only to fight o ff the challenge o f a rival position. Following on from the distinction made at the end of the previous section, it is not necessarily ‘ideas’ that change - it may be buildings, or styles o f industrial design. For practical workers, and

14

Jennifer Platt

possibly also for workers with pure ideas, particular practices may change - in response to circumstances ranging from the local availability of m aterials and tools to differences in local taste or felt needs - without ideas changing. ‘Transformation’ is stronger than mere ‘change’, though it m ight imply only that this group of migrants was a very im portant one. However, the im plication of its use is that their arrival caused the change, and some of the points made above suggest that it could be useful to distinguish different form s which change might take, and to consider which of those better fits what happened in particular cases or fields. A tentative typology of outcomes is suggested: One set of ideas becomes dominant

Both sets of ideas combine in new ways

Impact of native ideas on migrants

A n g licisa tio n

S ynthesis

Impact of migrant ideas on natives

G erm anisation

C ultural transform ation?

Clearly this could be elaborated, or alternative versions could be proposed; this version is offered sim ply to raise the question of how to characterise the outcomes. It could also be valuable to draw distinctions between types o f case, identifying which points, held in common or not, affected the outcome of the m igration. Comparison between the cases studied is likely to be fruitful in bringing out key factors relevant to the outcomes, and clarifying the broader social processes which lie behind the impact of particular individuals or groups. D em onstrating C ultural T ransform ation W hat needs to be shown to demonstrate that cultural transform ation has indeed taken place as a result o f the m igration of intellectuals? There is a general logical requirement for imputing change to a particular cause: it must be shown that it can be argued plausibly not only that a change has taken place after the occurrence of the cause, but also that it would not have taken place in the absence of that cause.

Some Issues in Intellectual Method and Approach

15

That is not as easy as it often seems. There are at least two reasons for the difficulty: (i) social changes seldom take place as a result of only one factor, and (ii) what did not take place cannot be definitely known, and cannot be the direct subject of em pirical research. Let us look a little more closely at these two problems as they arise in relation to our questions. (i) The effect o f the introduction o f a new factor into a situation depends on the situation; the same factor w ill have a different impact in different cases. W hat is it that makes it more likely that a factor w ill have influence? Arguably one relevant feature is the local congruence and acceptability of the new factor - but the greater the congruence, and the easier the acceptance, the more likely it is that the new factor is not so very novel after all and so w ill not make a great difference. Thus it can be suggested that the social scientist Paul Lazarsfeld was so influential in America because his personal style and interests were already somewhat ‘American’, and so it was easy for his work to be appreciated. Sim ilarly, it can be suggested that members of the Vienna C ircle were well received in America to the extent that they put forward ideas which could be seen as closely related to some already current (P latt and Hoch 1996). Such cases create special difficulty for arguments about causation from the single factor o f migration. However, that it was not the sole cause does not, of course, mean that a factor was not an essential member of the set of causes - but, equally, some outcomes may be over-determined, and the migrants may not have been vital to the outcome even if their influence would have been sufficient to bring it about in the absence of other members of the set. (ii) This is the problem known to philosophers as that o f the counterfactual conditional: what would have happened if things had been otherwise? Leaving aside the most general issues which can be raised in this connection (discussed in Hawthorn 1991 and in Tetlock and Belkin 1996), let us consider some of the more specific ones which bear on our concerns. W hat could have been different? Some possibilities: • The migrants would have had influence anyway, without actual m igration, through their publications and artistic production and maybe also through short visits between the countries; such influence certainly took place in some fields. It is interesting to speculate on the relative importance of verbal theorisation, as opposed to practical exem plification, to the transmission of novelty, in fields where that distinction is relevant. It is well known that in laboratory science personal contact in the laboratory has often been essential for the full understanding of new developments, and

16

Jennifer Platt

this has been institutionalised in the system of visits and student placements; it seems plausible that the same might apply elsewhere, at least wherever craft skills of a non-verbal nature are involved. • There was a general movement of ideas, perhaps with Britain somewhat behind continental Europe in this, which im plies that essentially sim ilar changes in Britain would have taken place without the m igration. Even if Britain was not part of such a general movement, it is to be expected that some change would have taken place over tim e, so to compare, say, 1932 with 1952, and impute any difference between them to the m igration, is not realistic - and would not be even if such large historical factors as W orld W ar II had not come in between. It is possible, for instance, that the social changes which produced or supported intellectual change took place later in Britain than in continental Europe. • Increased sim ilarity between Britain and the country of the emigrants’ origin might be due to other factors than the m igration here; for instance, it might be due to the influence of America on Britain, even if America had been changed by other sim ilar migrants, and then the migratory effect would have been at most indirect, and would have occurred even if none of the migrants had come to Britain. These are not completely insoluble problems. At least some light can be thrown on whether publications and visits were exchanged, there was a general movement o f ideas independent of migration processes, or American influences were more salient than those from local migrants - and to look for such possibilities would strengthen any argument about the impact of the immigration. Research on such topics is not the same as directly having data on what would otherwise have taken place, but it is a reasonable second best, and the results can legitim ately be used to evaluate the plausibility of causal conclusions. Conclusions? The papers collected in this volume show that there are im plicit questions raised by different authors, as well as further questions which could have been asked, and that if the same m aterial were approached with other questions the conclusions might differ. There could be political reasons, historical or contemporary, for emphasizing the magnitude of the contribution of the immigrants; if the question started as one about major influences on British culture and its changes, their impact would look different seen from another angle. Some authors

Some Issues in Intellectual Method and Approach

17

perhaps im plicitly see the issue as why Britain did not fully accept the contribution they had to make. When British society is described as ‘backward’ or ‘conservative’, this involves a value judgm ent implying that change should always be in progress. Not only can that be questioned, whether in general or in relation to particular offerings, but also to allow the intrusion of a value position may distract attention from the em pirical circumstances which affected matters. In addition, there is the recognised risk in intellectual history o f studying only the antecedents of what was later successful; if it is treated as just that, there is no problem, but it can be tempting, while very misleading, to treat the results as providing a history of the total situation at an earlier tim e. There is a natural bias towards studying cases which have been ‘im portant’, but other less im portant or successful cases are a part of the whole picture. For some exiles, too, we might regard personal social and cultural survival as a sufficient achievement in itself. Finally, should we have been thinking in term s of the import o f ideas as much as of their export? this too might change the perspective. It is sometimes suggested that we need a theory of networking, given its importance, and different papers do indeed offer components of such a theory - for example, the suggestions that: the existence of networks on which immigrants could draw depended on the level of internationalisation of the profession or discipline; the networks might be ethnic rather than professional; the British and Americans who took an active part, personal or financial, in helping the exiles helped people (whom they knew) rather than principles. However, the role in the process of business networks, and of enlightened capitalist firm s interested in socially and culturally ‘progressive’ approaches, has been neglected. There is some analysis of the types of change which took place as a result of the migration, and the modes of adaptation. These include Ash’s list o f synthesis o f cultures o f scientific practice, synthesis through the technologisation of scientific research (especially in wartim e work), and change through reflexivity about the processes of the m igration - e.g. starting to study antisemitism. Suggested modes of adaptation in the migrants’ work spheres include ‘naturalisation’ in the name of architectural neighbourliness rather than compromise between tradition and modernism, not compromise but synthesis, and either carrying on as before (in German, if sufficiently famous), or learning English and making a new career with a new audience. The last point raises the question o f the audience addressed in the new situation, and some exiles found ways of supporting themselves there, at least in the short term, by catering for fellow exiles who were already sympathetic to what they brought rather than for audiences of local origin.

Jennifer Platt

18

A comprehensive approach to intellectual m igration needs to look at the broader phenomenon, not just prominent innovators, since this not only leads to an unrepresentative picture but may tend in particular to leave out the experience of women, or large movements rather than individuals. This suggests attempting to get away from the conventional case study. However, there are practical problems here, since less work is involved in studying small numbers o f cases, and of course the prominent and successful are usually better documented. Nonetheless, some papers carry out case studies of relatively obscure individuals or groups which are fruitful sources of wider understanding. It is hoped, too, that the accumulation o f case studies w ill make possible ‘meta-analyses’ which look fo r wider patterns than any one researcher could collect data on. It has also been argued that one needs to look at processes, not just outcomes, and that this would do much to advance knowledge o f why the outcomes varied. Contextual historical factors play a surprisingly minor role in some o f the accounts given in this book probably the natural consequence of focussing on a short period o f tim e and assuming that everyone is fam iliar with the broad history. This may have the odd effect that, for instance, the specific conditions of the wartime period receive only marginal attention. But the effects o f generation and life cycle stages in success and modes of adaptation are rightly stressed; the different age groups were not all in the same position. For instance, some were at the beginning of their occupational careers and others near its end, which was obviously likely to affect their intellectual capital and adaptability; for those with younger fam ilies, their children could play im portant mediating roles in relation to British or American society. As a way of incorporating such points, the concept of ‘career’ is potentially a very useful one, and a typology o f exile careers might fruitfully be developed; such careers could then be related to the historical background, so that the relative significance o f individual characteristics and social developments could be explored.

Bibliography Anderson, P. 1968. ‘Components of the national culture’. N ew Left Review, 5 0 ,3 -5 7 Bauman, Z . 1987. Legislators and Interpreters, Cambridge: Polity Press Beloff, M . 1996. ‘Intellectuals’, in ed. Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., The Social Science Encyclopaedia, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 4 18-9 Boggs, C. 1 .1993. Intellectuals and the Crisis o f Modernity, Albany NY: State University of New York Press

Some Issues in Intellectual Method and Approach

19

Collins, R. 1989. Tow ard a theory o f intellectual change: the social causes of philosophies', Science, Technology end Human Values 14 (2), 107-140 Coser, L. 1965. M en o f Ideas, N ew York: Free Press Flem ing, D. 1969. ‘Ém igré physicists and the biological revolution’, in Fleming and Bailyn, B. eds, The Intellectual M igration: Europe and Am erica, 1930-1960, Cam bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 152-189 Hawthorn, G . 1991. Plausible Worlds, Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press Hoch, P. K. 1987. 'Migration and the generation of new scientific ideas’, M inerva 25 (3), 209-237 Hoch, P. K. 1991. ‘Som e Contributions to Physics by Germ an-Jewish Emigrés in Britain and Elsewhere', in Mosse, W . E. et al. eds, Second Chance: Two centuries o f German­ speaking Jews In the United Kingdom, Tubingen: Mohr, 229-241 Kettler, D ., M eja, V . and Stehr, N. 1984.

K arl M annheim , C hichester Ellis Horwood

M annheim , K. 1936. Ideology and Utopia, New York: Harcourt Brace M annheim , K. 1943. Diagnosis o f our Time, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul M erton, R. K. 1957. ‘Role of the Intellectual in Public Bureaucracy*, in Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 208-224 Platt, J. and Hoch, P. 1996. T h e Vienna Circle in the US and Empirical Research M ethods in Sociology’, in Ash, M . G . and Söllner, A. eds, Forced Migration and Scientific Change, N ew York: Cam bridge University Press/ Germ an Historical Institute, 224-245 Platt, J. and Isard, P. 1999. ‘Migration and Globalization in Intellectual Life: A C ase Study of the Post-1956 Exodus from Hungary*, in Brah, A, Hickman, M . J. and M ac an Ghaill, M. eds, G lobal Futures: Migration, Environm ent and Globalization, London: M acm illan, 210232 Sadri, A. 1992. M ax W eber's Sociology o f Intellectuals, New York: Oxford University Press Shils, E. 1972. The Intellectuals and the Powers, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Tetlock, P. E. and Belkin, A. eds 1996. Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press Znaniecki, F. 1940. The Social R ole o f the M an o f Knowledge, New York: Columbia University Press

CHRISTIAN FLECK THE ROLE OF REFUGEE HELP ORGANIZATIONS IN THE PLACEMENT OF GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN SCHOLARS ABROAD

Mutual aid and involvement in politics are by no means essentials of the academic community. Yet in the following paper I w ill tell the story of an unselfish endeavour designed to help scholars and conducted by people like them; even more surprisingly, the beneficiaries came from foreign countries and could be seen by colleagues as com petitors threatening to push them aside. I shall focus on two refugee help organizations: the Academic Assistance Council, later renamed the Society fo r the Protection of Science and Learning, based in London and later relocated to Cambridge, and still active; and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German (la te r Foreign) Scholars in New York, which ceased to operate at the end of the Second W orld War. My paper is based on an archival study of the files of the Committee and additional lesser-known printed m aterial from both agencies. The files o f both organizations are accessible to researchers, but have seldom been used to assess the organizations themselves. I w ill focus on three areas: firs t the invention of this particular kind o f refugee help and the differences between the two agencies, second the relationship between the two, and finally some remarks on the decision-making process. Casual Conversations It could have happened at any time of the day because meeting someone at a place like this one was not restricted to a particular slot in the daily schedule. According to one participant’s memoir it was evening. Unfortunately he does not give details about the location but he indicates at least that it was in one of Vienna’s coffeehouses. In the first third of the twentieth century the coffeehouse served Vienna’s middle class as an enlarged living room where you could have an appointment with anyone, including your own wife, but where you could also ju st spend your tim e browsing through newspapers, talking casually to an occasional visitor or inform ally to a business associate, o r seriously to a friend, or where you could play chess for money (as the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron did) or just sit and write. S ir W illiam Beveridge, the long-time director o f the London School o f Economics and Political Science, was in his early fifties; a highly

22

Christian Fleck

influential political advisor and commentator he was not, however, equally regarded as an outstanding scholar among economists. He had come to Vienna for a meeting about an international research project on the history of prices and wages under his direction, which he had persuaded the Social Science Division of the Rockefeller Foundation to fund (Beveridge 1939). At the same tim e the rising star among the economists at LSE, Lionel Robbins, was visiting Vienna too, accompanied by his wife, to see fellow economists from the so-called Austrian School. One evening the three Britons had planned to come together with a Viennese from Beveridge’s generation, who thought him self the leading representative of serious economics in Central Europe and who was seen by others as the true successor o f the famous first generation of Viennese economists. He was prevented from accepting one of their university chairs prim arily because o f his non-Aryan origin, but also because of ordinary rivalry between academics. His name was then Ludwig Mises. Beveridge and Mises embraced opposite approaches to social policy: Beveridge’s name is forever connected with the construction of Britain’s postwar welfare state and the then exiled Mises wrote piece after piece condemning bitterly all interventional proposals in economics. Robbins was much closer to Mises’s point of view, indeed he saw him self as a disciple of the Austrian School in questions of economic theory but not necessarily in politics. The two seniors, Beveridge and Mises, shared one personal characteristic; both were still bachelors in their middle age, something which is worth mentioning here because it explains why this conversation took place in the public sphere of a coffeehouse and not during a dinner at Mises’s house. The exact date of the meeting is unknown. H itler had been Germany’s chancellor since 30 January and in March 1933 the Nazi party finished first in elections which were held in the wake of the terrifying events surrounding the burning of the Reichstag. (Despite the terror the Nazis did not gain the m ajority o f votes). The creation of the first concentration camp for political dissidents near Munich was publicly announced on March 21, but the persecution of people who did not rank first as political opponents of the Nazis was only in the offing. People who were not outspoken opponents of the Nazi movement judged the political situation ambiguously. The regulation that eventually ousted a large group of German professors was announced on April 7, 1933 and came into operation when the summer term started at Germany’s universities.

The Role of Refugee Help Organizations

23

The participants also disagree about who first made the suggestion of a form al society to aid German scholars. Robbins writes that the three British were sitting in the lobby o f the Hotel Bristol ‘exchanging impressions of travel’ (Robbins 1971,143), awaiting Mises to go out for dinner. Mises arrived with a newspaper in hand pointing to an article about the dism issal of German professors. Beveridge on the other hand not only suggests that all four were sitting in a coffeehouse but provides a highly detailed description of what happened then. Someone, he writes, brought an evening paper *with an announcement that a dozen leading professors of all faculties were been dismissed from posts in German Universities’ (Beveridge 1955,234). According to Beveridge he and Robbins decided at this very moment to do something for ‘teachers and scientists in our subjects.’ Robbins, however, praises Mises as the originator of the idea and applauds Beveridge only fo r agreeing to it: T h is was one of Beveridge’s great moments - his finest hour I would say.’ But according to Robbins, Mises made the proposal. He asked the British ‘was it not possible to make some provision in Britain for the relief o f such victim s, of which the names mentioned [in the newspaper] were only the beginning of what was obviously to be an extensive persecution’ (Robbins 1971, 144). It might be that S ir W illiam jumped on the Mises bandwagon. This interpretation would add to the understanding o f both the persons and particularly the wider topic of the relationship between creating ideas and putting them in practice. It would not have been the first tim e in recent history that an Austrian invented something but others made it run. The casual environment of a coffeehouse promotes creating ideas but does not encourage their implementation. Another man from Central Europe claimed for him self the credit for being the inventor of the idea to establish an organization helping ousted German professors. As early as 1933 Leo Szilard wrote a two and a half page long letter to an American fellow physicist about his immediate reactions after the chancellorship was handed over to H itler (Szilard, no date). A native Hungarian, Szilard had lived during the 1920s in Berlin, where he held a Privatdozentur, that characteristic German ‘professorship in waiting’. He left Germany for Vienna a few days after the Reichstag fire. W hile I was in Vienna [...] I met, by pure chance, walking in the street a colleague o f mine, Dr. Jacob Marschak, who was an economist at Heidelberg. [...] He was rather sensitive; not being a German, but coming from Russia he had seen revolutions and

24

Christian Fleck

upheavals, and went to Vienna where he had relatives. [...] I told him that I thought since we were out here we may well make up our minds what needed to be done. [...] He said that he knew a rather wealthy economist in Vienna who might have some advice to give. His name was Schlesinger and he had a very beautiful apartment in the Liechtensteinpalais. (Szilard 1969,97) Karl Schlesinger, a much-admired economist with no tonnai ties to the University of Vienna but substantial ones to the circle around Mises, earned a living in business and banking. A few years after Szilard’s approach he committed suicide when H itler’s troops invaded Austria. In spring 1933 Schlesinger brought the two exiled scholars together with Ignaz Jastrow, a German professor who attended the meeting that Beveridge had convened. Jastrow suggested contacting Beveridge. Realizing that he was staying at the same Hotel Regina, ju st across from the main building of the university, Szilard introduced him self to the gentleman in the course of breakfast. According to Szilard’s memoir Beveridge agreed to meet Schlesinger and Marschak to talk about the idea how to help dismissed German professors. Szilard reports in the undated letter from London to his friend in New York what happened during one o f his conversations with Beveridge. Both ‘talked over the matter [...and] we made up our minds to try to create, if possible, some institution of more or less permanent value for the advancement of science and scholarship.’ British Generosity After returning to London, Beveridge first asked the LSE faculty to establish through self-taxation an Academic Freedom Fund for the aid o f the dismissed German professors in the fields of study covered by their own institution, that is social sciences. According to the German historian Hirschfeld the professorial council accepted Beveridge’s suggestion to donate between one and three per cent of their annual income, depending on the status of the donor (Hirschfeld 1988, 30). Hirschfeld estimates the annual total o f this self-taxation to £1,000. A t this tim e Beveridge him self received about £2,500 as director o f the LSE, whereas the General Secretary of the Academic Assistance Council, W alter Adams, got about £500 annually as salary (Beveridge 1959, 6). A few days later Beveridge became the leading force in establishing a nation-wide counterpart. The aim of the Academic Assistance Council was - as he put it in his autobiography - to support ‘teachers and investigators of whatever country who, on grounds o f

The Rote of Refugee Help Organizations

25

religion, political opinion or race, are unable to carry on their work in their own country1 (Beveridge 1955, 236-7). Beveridge assembled a group of high-ranking academicians and persuaded Lord Rutherford of Nelson, Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge University and winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize, to take over the presidency of the newly established organization. 'On May 24, 1933 the birth o f the A.A.C. was announced,’ as Beveridge put it in his history o f this endeavour (Beveridge 1959,3). Forty-three outstanding British scholars signed the document, among them another Nobel laureate, the physiologist S ir Archibald V. H ill, who received the Prize in 1922, who became one of the vice-chairmen of the Executive Committee. He was joined in this position by the director of the British Museum and Secretary of the British Academy, S ir Frederic Kenyon. Other signatures came from John Maynard Keynes, G ilbert Murray, George Trevelyan, all in all the crème-de-la-crème of British scholarship. However, representatives of the Royal Society urged the initiators to avoid the participation o f Jews so as not to provoke prejudice. The A.A.C. should not be perceived as an un-British activity. As a result the A.A.C. got immediate support from the Royal Society, which provided space at its headquarters. The appeal asked for support in the form of donations, active participation, or by encouraging institutions to offer dismissed Germans asylum . W ithin a short period of tim e the A.A.C. received about £13,000, prim arily from individuals but also from the Central British Fund for German Jews (A.A.C., Annual Report May 1934, 3-4). About fifty refugee scholars were awarded maintenance grants, half as high as the annual salary of the General Secretary. The success of the fundraisers indicates that the average income of British academics was relatively high at the tim e and the Great Depression might not have had a strong impact on this part o f Great Britain’s population. This view is supported further from a contemporary listing of money raised in different countries for the assistance of dismissed German scholars. According to this list the A.A.C. fonds represented nearly half of all donations made in Great Britain, and Great Britain contributed nearly 40 per cent of the overall sums. In Austria nothing was done after Mises’s original suggestion, whereas the British academic establishm ent behaved surprisingly altruistically and were helpful to their German colleagues with whom they had exchanged fierce nationalistic pamphlets only two decades earlier. They not only raised money but also offered advice on how to continue academic work abroad. Organizational networks were easily

26

Christian Fleck

adapted to new tasks. The structure of authority and decision-making provided the director of an institution like the LSE with latitude to implement successful new policies within a very short time. And old institutions like the Royal Society did not hesitate to become involved in politics. Beveridge, the man who became known as the ‘father of the British welfare state’ strongly believed in ‘voluntary action’ throughout his life. Later in his career he studied this particular pattem of mutual help and emphasized how much private initiatives contribute to the institutional diversity of society. This thesis looks like an antithesis to the welfare state approach, which according to its harshest critics mutates into a centralized system, strangling individual responsibility and initiative. Beveridge saw it from a different angle when he argued for a balance between centrally provided and privately raised support (Beveridge 1948; Beveridge and Wells 1949; Harris 1977). To create something new it is not sufficient simply to present an idea or to be able to raise money. At least three additional features are needed: people willing to commit themselves at least partly to the common effort; institutions willing to help establish a new generation of scholars; and, in the case of activities on an international scale, the utilization of appropriate networks. The British initiative was confined to and took place only within the republic of scholars, thereby circumventing any public resentment. Austrian and Czechoslovakian university people, by contrast, seemed not to feel any responsibility for their German colleagues, but for differing reasons. The majority of Austria’s professors sympathized with Hitler’s goals, whereas the Czechoslovakian academic world was bitterly divided between a German-speaking minority of mostly anti-Nazi professors and the Czech and Slovak majority whose strong anti-German sentiments restricted their support. The practical aim of the A.A.C. was to help professional peers in need. To that end they gave not only grants but also loans to cover allowances, salaries, book purchases and, perhaps surprisingly, vacations too. The New York based Emergency Committee acted completely differently, as we will see later. It provided large-scale grants to institutions covering at least half of the supposed costs of living of a professor for one year. Only late in its history, when the A.A.C. changed its name to Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, did it have to ask the British government for support. But thanks to the range of its activities over the years it was much easier to persuade civil servants to award the Society a portion of the taxpayers’ money set aside to help refugees from the continent.

The Role of Refugee Help Organizations

27

America’s Institution Men On the other side of the Atlantic scholars, educators, and philanthropists started their own schemes to support German scholars independently. Three different efforts were made, the first being initiated by the Rockefeller Foundation. During the 1920s and early 1930s about half a dozen officers from the Foundation visited European research centres regularly and met scholars there. A reasonable share (approximately ten per cent) of the annual expenditure of the foundation went to Europe. Given these strong ties it is not surprising that the Nazi assaults on the universities outraged these people personally. Sentiments are one thing; to involve a foundation in a programme of refugee help is quite another. But that’s what the men around Max Mason, then the president of the Foundation, did. During the twelveyear period of the Nazi dictatorship the R.F. used the equivalent of nearly thirteen million dollars today to subsidize some three hundred refugee scholars from different European countries and different fields of research. The second initiative was the work of one man, Alvin S. Johnson, then director of the New School of Social Research and associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, whose first volume appeared in January 1933, at the very same time when the surrender of power to Hitler took place in Germany. Approximately one out of ten contributors to the Encyclopedia was German-speaking, a much higher share than in comparable endeavours before or afterwards. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to suggest that Johnson was a Germanophile; like many others in the course of this story he was an internationalist in politics and a cosmopolitan in scholarly affairs. Johnson’s idea of rescue was to bring over a group of dismissed professors, who would find refuge in a single place to continue their research. It sounds a little strange that an American professor was of the opinion that the German style of research necessitated collaboration between scholars of equal rank. Nevertheless Johnson, with the help of a few colleagues and some friends from the business world, was able to raise the money and persuade a dozen of Germany’s dismissed social scientists to cross the Atlantic. The nucleus of the third rescue project, which I shall discuss in greater detail, was the Institute of International Education. It had been founded in 1919 by Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, with the support of Elihu Root, Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt, and Stephen P. Duggan, the last of whom

28

Christian Fleck

became its first director. The institute aimed to strengthen international goodwill between nations by developing exchange programs for students and professors. It represented America’s educational institutions to the rest of the world and functioned as an entrance hall for visiting scholars and students from abroad. It organized lecture tours for German professors, and some of them later came back as refugees. The wide-ranging activities of the institute were secured by financial support from two leading foundations: the Carnegie Corporation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. Stephen Duggan had been professor of political science at City College since 1896, and his wide-ranging activities included being a trustee of the American College for Girts at Istanbul, and work tor the New York Academy for Public Education, whose president he was early in the 1920s. After his early retirement from City College at the age of 57 he devoted himself full time to the new Institute. During the early 1920s it helped Russian emigrants, victims of the Bolshevik revolution, to find new places abroad where they could continue their scholarly work. Furthermore, the Institute and its affiliates were part of the broader movement of re-establishing communication and exchange between the nations which had fought each other during the First World War. Even though the United States had not joined the newly created League of Nations, some American professors were actively involved in the League’s activities, in its International Committee on Intellectual Co­ operation, for example, some of whose prominent members were later to be forced into exile; Albert Einstein met Robert Millikan and Gilbert Murray there. The establishment as early as June 1933 of what, eventually, was named the ’Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars' became possible only because of pre-established networks and personal experiences abroad. Almost all individuals and organizations involved in the academic refugee help of the 1930s claimed they were acting for more or less abstract ideas like the freedom of learning and scholarship, thus defending the universal principles underlying the work of scholars all over the world. But looking at the whole group of helpers one comes to the conclusion that many came forward to help their endangered colleagues because they knew them personally. They aided people not principles. Abstract ethical principles work better for justifying behavior than explaining it. Edward R. Murrow, the young assistant director, had been on the staff of the Institute for only two years when he was invited by his paternalistic superior to take over the same job in the new Emergency

The Role of Refugee Help Organizations

29

Committee. From then on he worked both for the Institute and the Committee until 1935, when he accepted an offer from CBS, where he started his much better-known career. As a director of radio talks he later came to London to report during the Second World War, subsequently playing a significant role in the world of television. As the former president of the National Student Federation, Murrow had had some experience overseas when he had attended meetings of the International Student Service in Geneva, and he swiftly gained a reputation as a skilful administrator and negotiator. The initiative to do something for the dismissed German professors, however, came from another quarter. Alfred E. Cohn seems to have been the first to approach Duggan, sending him a list of dismissed professors and adding that in his view something should be done. Cohn, an expert in electrocardiography at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, was nine years younger than Duggan. Archival material suggests that Cohn had persuaded philanthropists like Felix Warburg to place some funds at the disposal of the new Committee before he approached Duggan, whom he knew only fleetingly. On the invitation of Duggan a group of seven assembled at the Century Club in midtown Manhattan on June 15,1933 to find a proper name, establish an agenda, and define the scope and method of the committee-information. It was not the first meeting but the one where these matters were finally decided. During the course of two earlier meetings Duggan, Cohn and some others had come to the conclusion that it would be desirable to invite a group of distinguished Christian American educators to serve on a General Committee (Minutes, 13/6/1933). In preparing the forthcoming meeting Duggan had sent his assistant Murrow a long memo, detailing everything from the menu he thought appropriate for lunch to the way of finding the necessary signatures for the entrance of the non-members to the club. Subsequent meetings took place alternately at the Century or the Chemists’ Club in midtown Manhattan. During this short overview we have come across three different types of helpers, representing three distinct cultural patterns. First, the Austrians, some of whom were as scared of the Nazis as their colleagues abroad, but who were not able to go further than to express privately, in one of Vienna’s coffee houses, that ‘something should be done!’ However, the implication was that someone else should do it. Obviously this behavioral pattern corresponds to a society where power is highly centralized and individuals rarely take the initiative. Second, the English gentleman, who is ready to help colleagues in need out of

30

Christian Fleck

his own pocket. However, his actions take place strictly on a personal level, after scrutinizing the merits of the help-seekers and allocating grants to individuals. And finally the American ‘institution man’, the type who finds in the institution a field for creative self-expression* (Lazarsfeld 1968, 38, note 43). Such people were most effective when they had prior experiences with scholars from abroad and were part of an organizational network of professional educators, devoting time to academic policy, and getting support from wealthy philanthropists who allocate money according to agendas of their own making. A Comparison of the Different Decision-making Processes The decision-making process of the A.A.C. was time-consuming but relatively simple. Applicants had to fill in questionnaires about their personal and academic background, give names of people able and willing to write recommendations and indicating their own preparedness to go to particular places worldwide. On the basis of this material the allocation sub-committee recommended to the executive committee ‘just what help to give or not to give in individual cases’ (Beveridge 1959, 9). All the rest was the responsibility of the refugees themselves, or of people who were willing to provide access to university libraries, laboratories, etc. Since the New York Committee had to interact with a much wider variety of people and institutions, it established a multi-faceted routine. From the very beginning the inner circle of the Emergency Committee scrutinized each of its steps to avoid irritating the non-Jewish majority. The implicit guideline was carefully observed: to avoid anything that could provoke antisemitic sentiments among the educated strata of America’s population. The composition of the different committees was carefully planned and the financial sources were concealed at least initially. The response of the professors and university administrators contacted was positive. Only a few declined to join the committee and only one seems to have had particular reservations about the aim of the proposed committee as far as ‘so many of our own had been dropped from the rolls’ (Duggan, 12/6/1933). Within four weeks the Committee was formed. One of the last things decided was the name of the organization. After much contemplation the vague expression ‘displaced’ was chosen, and it is not without irony that the final decision was influenced by the vote o f the visiting German professor Otto Hahn, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin, who declared categorically that those who become ‘affiliated with [...] exile would never be permitted to

The Role of Refugee Help Organizations

31

resume their posts in Germany1 (Murrow, 23/6/1933). These debates about an appropriate title produced interesting material regarding the image of Nazi Germany in 1933 and the political judgments of Germans, exiled or not, and foreigners. It is surprising that something like this refugee help organization came into existence at this early stage of the Nazification process in Germany, because most Germans and foreigners still thought of the Hitler government as a transitional one. The turning point came in 1935, when the so-called Nuremberg Laws were announced. This public stand against the Jewish population, defining someone as a Jew if they had one Jewish grandparent and explicitly excluding Jews from German citizenship, changed the opinions of the exiled Germans and most of their supporters abroad. Since the ‘emergency* in Germany was initially expected to be short lived, the Committee established its policy accordingly, thereby providing one more argument for its conception of itself as an emergency unit. Beginning in the midst of June 1933 the officers of the Committee approached the presidents of fourteen universities and colleges, offering to cover all the costs for at least one scholar, whom the university would invite for at least two years. The two-year span was not based on any expectation about the durability of the Nazi dictatorship, but was designed to bypass immigration laws. University teachers and researchers were allowed to enter the USA only if an institution provided them with a contract for at least two years. Given this generous and non-competitive offer one would expect that all universities seized the opportunity - and most did. In some cases it was difficult to match the wishes of the universities with available German scholars, in other cases health troubles or family affairs held scholars back in Germany. Even in such cases where a temporary settlement for a German professor was not within reach, most administrators and faculty tried to avoid offensive language. There are very few instances where one finds overtly antisemitic sentiments in letters from college and university presidents to the Emergency Committee. The case of Harvard is particularly interesting. Despite the fact that early supporters and intermediators came from there, Duggan had to wait very long until an answer arrived. Finally Harvard’s newly installed president, James Conant, regretted that his governing body declined the offer. He did not give any details, but only a few weeks later a public quarrel between Harvard and the Committee supported the impression that the Harvard Corporation had acted out of a mixture of xenophobic and elitist sentiments.

32

Christian Fleck

When, on the occasion of the publication of the first Annual Report, the New York Times (January 28,1934) reported that German scholars were invited to 31 American universities, dryly adding *with the exception of Harvard,’ some people there became disappointed and launched a reply announcing that it was ‘unjustified’ to exclude Harvard from the list of universities who supported Germans because there were four former Germans on its faculty. But Harvard did not and would not ‘make a place [...] for any man because he was an émigré’ reported the Times exclusively (January 30, 1934). The four Germans were either not really refugees or did not get a salary from Harvard, but these details were not in the article. The Harvard case is instructive for another reason. Only two years later it was possible for president Conant himself to persuade the bristling Committee to pay for a muchpraised German whom Harvard had picked up alone. The Committee gave in against its better intuition and after one year Harvard reversed its initial promise and cancelled the contract with the German historian of science because he allegedly did not measure up to Harvard’s requirements. He went back to Germany where he got promotion. This scholar saw himself never as an émigré, and I wonder whether he knew where the money he earned at Harvard came from. All in all some 160 institutions received financial support from the Committee during the ten years of its activities. The recipients were overwhelmingly located inside the United States; abroad, only the Hebrew University in Jerusalem received support. The vast majority of the institutions supported were located on the East Coast, particularly in New York State. From the start the Committee tried to persuade the Ivy League universities and similar established institutions and colleges to participate in its scheme. The Committee only accepted inquiries from the administration of the inviting institution. Presidents from elite institutions always got a friendly response, and in most cases arrangements could be worked out to the satisfaction of both sides. The ordinary college from somewhere in the Midwest or the South did sometimes find it more difficult to approach the Committee successfully. Misunderstandings and errors took place here much more often. Very rarely did a rejected college approach the Committee again, whereas the more confident and experienced institutions returned regularly with inquiries and eventually received more grants. And then, there was the tiny group of outsider institutions which the Committee did not really know and to which it therefore did not want to hand over money. Most of the difficulties arose because the Committee had established from the very beginning that it would contribute only part of the overall

The Role of Refugee Help Organizations

33

amounts needed. The Rockefeller Foundation gave the other half. Sometimes applicants failed because one of these two agencies declined support. Much more successful were applicants who promised additional support from local sources. These additional donations did not always materialize, but the Committee did not have the opportunities to scrutinize the records of the applicants. In one case, at least, I am convinced that the applicant institution seems to have duped the Committee. The case in question is that of the Institute for Social Research (also known as the ‘Frankfurt School'), and is of particular interest, for various reasons. Firstly, it concerns an organization exclusively consisting of emigrant scholars. Secondly, the Institute was to become a kind of icon for different adherents of NeoMarxism, Critical Theory, Postmodernism and other modem trends. Thirdly the case illustrates differences between German and American culture with regard to the handling of grant applications. The Institute in fact belonged to the top five supported institutions. In the margin of the very first letter in the correspondence from and to Max Horkheimer and his Institute, you find in Murrow’s handwriting: ‘B.D. - 1give up! Send them all the E.C. pamphlets.' B.D. refers to the secretary of the Committee who finally became not only assistant director but wrote the official history of the Committee in collaboration with Duggan. The letter itself is completely innocent - asking the ‘Gentlemen’ only to ‘send a copy of your prospectus’ because their own ‘activities are going in the same direction’ as those of the Committee. One can only speculate what had happened before this letter arrived on the desk of the Committee. Most likely the later applicant had bothered Murrow over the phone or personally. However, they received some of the publications of the Committee within a short time. It seems they studied the material extensively, but as we will see also successfully. Later in 1935 one of the long-time collaborators of the Institute for Social Research, Karl August Wittfogel, received a well-merited grant, even though he did not strictly fit the narrow definitions of the Emergency Committee, as he was neither a professor nor a Privatdozent. He was, however, a real victim of Nazism, and one of the few early beneficiaries of the Committee who had spent some time in a German Concentration Camp. Wittfogel was the first in a row of grantholders from the formerly Frankfurt-based Institut für Sozialforschung, and to obtain this money the Institute even offered the Committee a glance in its well-hidden portfolio. In almost all of the following applications the Institute promised to pay the other half out of its own sources, but they seldom did so. This strategy may seem dishonest but

34

Christian Fleck

it did at least secure modest incomes for scholars like Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Edgar Zilsel, and Albert Lauterbach. A similarly striking case had a different outcome. When the Yiddish Scientific Institute asked the Committee to subsidize the continuation of the work of Max Weinreich, one of the Committee men from the inner circle gathered information which suggested that the scientific credentials of the applying organization and its leading scholar were questionable. With hindsight one must say that this verdict was wrong and should be traced back to the prejudice against the Jews from Eastern Europe. To offer some tentative conclusions: First, contrary to a widely-held attitude that the migration of scholars from Central Europe to the United States is an exhaustively researched topic, I am convinced that there remains much to be discovered, particularly through the close scrutiny of unpublished papers. This leads to my second point. Going through the papers of only one refugee committee gives me the impression that it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the correlation between scientific merits and the amount of support someone was able to earn. Too much depended on accidental circumstances. For the majority of not so well known scholars or for those from disciplines that were not as cosmopolitan as physics or economics, to get entrance to the U.S. academia was dependent on good fortune. The overall success rate must be traced back to the expansion of American higher education and the research in this period. Thirdly, whereas it is true that the migration of the German­ speaking scholars made up only a tiny fraction of the overall immigration to Britain and America during the twentieth century, this particular transfer of people, ideas, networks and scholarly practices is still one of the most fascinating phases of recent intellectual history. The ‘brain drain’ from Europe started long before the expulsion by the Nazis and did not end in 1945, but the intellectual migration of the 1930s is the only one where people of equal rank and merit were supported by their former and later competitors for positions, grants, and fellowships.

The Role of Refugee Help Organizations

35

Acknowledgement I did research for this paper during my stay as a Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers, The New York Public Library and I want to express my deep gratitude to all people from the Center and the Library, especially the staff members from the Manuscript and Archive Division there. An earlier and somewhat different version of this paper was presented as a public lecture at the Center under the title “American Philantropy and the Rescue of European Scholars and W riters in the 1930s” on April 26,2000.

Bibliography Beveridge, W . H, 1948. Voluntary Action: A Report on M ethods o f Social Advance, New York: M acm illan B everidge, W . H. and W ells, A. F. 1949. The Evidence for Voluntary Action, Being M em oranda by Organisations and Individuals, and O ther M aterial R elevant to Voluntary Action, London: Allen & Unwin Beveridge, W . H. 1955. Roarer and Influence, New York: Beechhurst Beveridge, W . H. 1959. A D efence o f Free Learning, London, New York: Oxford University Press Harris, J. 1977. W illiam Beverdige: A Biography, Oxford: Clarendon Hayek, F. A. 1992. ‘Ludwig von M ises’, in Klein, P. G . ed. The Collected Works o f F. A. Hayek, IV , The Fortunes o f Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Id eal o f Freedom , Chicago: Routledge Hirschfeld, G . 1988. T h e D efense of Learning and S cien ce...’: D er Academ ic Assistance Council in Großbritannien und die wissenschaftliche Emigration aus Nazi-Deutschland, in Exilforschung. Ein Internationales Jahrbuch, Band 6 (Vertreibung der W issenschaften und andere Them en), Munich: edition text+kritik6,28-43 Kendrick, A. 1969. Prim e Time: The Life o f Edw ard R. Murrow, Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown & Co. LazarsfekJ, P. F. 1968. ‘An Episode in the History of Social Research: A Memoir’, in Kendall, P. L. ed. 1982. The Varied Sociology o f P aul F. Lazarsfald, New York: Columbia University Press Pérsico, J. 1988. Edw ard R. Murrow: An Am erican Original, N ew York: Dell Robbins, L. 1971. Autobiography o f an Economist, London: Macmillan Rockefeller Foundation 1929. Annuel Report, N ew York

36

Christian Fleck

Sperber, A. M . 1986. M unow, His U fé and Timas, N ew York: Freundlich Books. Szilard, L. 1969. ‘Reminiscences*, in Flem ing, D. and Bailyn, B. ed. 1969. The Intellectual Migration: Europe and Am erica, 1930-1960, Cam bridge MA: Belknap Press o f University o f Harvard Press, 94-151.

Unpublished Material Duggan, 9 /6/1933

Mem o from Duggan to M unow, 9/6/1933, E. C. Collection, Box 155, Duggan Folder, New York Public Library

Duggan, 12/6/1933

Letter from Duggan to Marlon Park, 12/6/1933, E . C . Collection, Box 155, Duggan Folder, New York Public Library

Szilard, no date

L. Szilard to G . Brett, no date, E. C . Collection, Box 120, New York Public Library

M inutes, 13/6/1933

M inutes of M eetings of Executive Com m ittee, 13/6/1933, E. C . Collection, Box 164, New York Public Library

M unow, 23/6/1933

Memo: M unow to Duggan, 12/6/1933, E. C . Collection, Box 155, Duggan Folder, New York Public Library

E)OROTHEA McEWAN MAPPING THE TRADE ROUTES OF THE MIND: THE WARBURG INSTITUTE

In this case study I shall examine the aims and functions of the Warburg Institute (W l) in London and its forerunner in Hamburg, the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW).1 On the basis of papers and letters kept in the archive of the Wl I will try to summarize the diverse functions performed by Aby Warburg himself and his staff from roughly 1902 to his death in 1929 and beyond to 1933 in Hamburg; and then, the new objectives of the Wl from 1934 to 1944 in London. By analysing the in-house definitions of the vital activities of the KBW and Wl, I hope to place this remarkable example of ‘intellectual migration’ in its cultural context. Warburg, who was bom in 1866, as the son of a banker in Hamburg, studied art history in Bonn, Florence and Strasbourg and became interested in the Florentine Renaissance and particularly its revival of pagan antiquity. The study of the survival of pagan antiquity in European religion, literature, art, the meaning of symbols and the processes of social memory occupied Warburg throughout his life. In 1902 he decided to create a library which would be devoted to researching these issues and, more generally, the history of European culture. Financial support was forthcoming from his family and, if Warburg had overdrawn his annual budget yet again, he would quip: ‘Other rich families have their racing stables, you have my library - and it is worth much more’ (Heise 1947,23). His library was the instrument the laboratory - of a private scholar, supplemented in time by a photographic collection; it was open to scholars who either approached Warburg or were invited by him. In November 1919, one year after Warburg fell seriously ill, his family appointed the young Viennese scholar Fritz Saxl to run the library in his absence. Saxl, who had collaborated with Warburg before World War I and had gained the trust of the family, opened up the privately run library to members of the public and turned it into a research institute with lectures, courses and publications. Saxl ran the library until Warburg’s return from the sanatorium in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, in August 1924 and became his deputy until Warburg’s death in October 1929. Saxl was then appointed director by the family and in 1933 transferred the library to London.

Warburg’s Definitions for his Library Warburg defined his collection of books and photographs as ‘semipublic’ (30/05/1917), i.e. as an academic library, privately funded but accessible to the public. His library was a ‘scientific collection of books’, which he needed ‘like instruments in a science laboratory’ (24/01/1918) or 'a research institute’ (24/12/1917), a ‘specialised library’ (05/08/1929), a facility essential for the intellect, in contradistinction to the ‘Lesefutterautomat’ or ‘automatic reader-feeder’, the Lending Library of Hamburg (20/11/1910). He defined his research as ‘cannon fodder for respectable question marks’ in the service of scholarship (23/12/1911), a service which ranged widely to cover serving on committees such as those governing the international art historical congresses or the German Institute for the History of Art in Florence, publishing research, lecturing, giving advice to individuals and groups in Hamburg, and keeping up an extensive correspondence with colleagues in his discipline throughout Germany, Europe and the US. The circles in which he moved - upper-class Hamburg banking circles with clubs called ‘Corona’ or ‘Conventiculus’, local and national groups of bibliophiles, ethnologists, friends of schools and colleges - were networks serving the scholarly and charitable elites of Hamburg. Visitors from other parts of Germany like Richard Reitzenstein, a historian of religion from Göttingen University, were impressed when they saw the library for the first time. Whilst there were many more books in Göttingen University library, it was not obvious to the reader which topics were linked and how (30/10/1922). In contrast, in the KBW books were arranged under the principle of ‘good neighbourliness’, that is to say, one finds books and off-prints on related topics on the same shelf - and this is still the case in the Wl today. Thus, work in the KBW with its atmosphere of equality and support created what Ernst Cassirer described as a ‘research community* (‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft’; Cassirer 1927, vii), which after its dispersal in the 1930s still figured in his memory as ‘the point of leverage for my work’ (‘archimedische[n] Punkt meiner Arbeit’; 11/09/1936). Warburg for his part had earlier referred to Cassirer’s work as a product of the KBW (13/12/1924); it was a matter of course that Warburg - when Cassirer was offered the chair of philosophy in Frankfurt University in 1928 - used his connections and friendships to influence public opinion to keep Cassirer at Hamburg University. In a letter to Kurt Riezler, Kurator of Frankfurt University, Warburg stressed that it was important to Hamburg to provide the setting in which ‘Cassirer’s and my efforts have the same function’: the research on images in the KBW

Mapping the Trade Routes of the Mind

39

presupposed the ordering of concepts at the university. It was therefore necessary that both should be in the same place in order to educate the next generation of scholars (18/07/1928). Or reduced to a common denominator to keep Cassirer in Hamburg was more than ‘W.(=Warburg) + C. (=Cassirer)’: it was ‘W. plus C. plus X.’, X being the power which will determine the future, not only of the university but also of learning in Germany (13/06/1928). Warburg wanted the city of his birth to take its educational duties seriously (06/04/1929). Warburg, who was on an extended field trip in Italy from October 1928 to June 1929 when he wrote this letter, went on to explain the remit of the KBW: to research the ‘continuity of intellectual values of the classical heritage in the psychology of the Mediterranean basin’ (‘geistige Wertbeständigkeit des antiken Erbes in der MittelmeerbeckenPsychologie’; 31/05/1929). An institute like his, which was not exposed to ‘swings of temperature' (01/05/1929) by political parties and funders and which was the only ‘conservatoire of the classical heritage’ (22/03/1929) run without state subsidies anywhere in Europe, should be recognized as having a ‘vital function’ (06/03/1925). W arburg's Use of Tower Similes Warburg compared the function of the KBW to a tower as a construct looking out over the landscape, sending out light in all directions, but also as a receiving station, sensitive to the waves of events far away. Thus the KBW was a tower for the reception, transmission and indeed transformation of ideas (see McEwan 1997), as exemplified in Warburg’s unfinished work, the Mnemosyne atlas, ‘the great map of the movement of civilisations, or rather of ideas’ (24/10/1929). In order to map out ‘trade routes of the mind or “paths taken by the mind”’, he frequently spoke of the KBW as being an ‘observation post’ (‘Beobachtungsstelle’), as in the famous letter from Warburg to the classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (23/04/1924). In another letter, this time to Gustav Herbig, brother-in-law of his deceased friend Franz Boll (when Warburg stressed the need to keep the Boll library together), he spoke of Boll’s library and his own as ‘revolving observation towers, from which the intellectual past of the Orient and Occident can be viewed’ (‘Aussichtsdrehturm’; 20/07/1924); elsewhere he spoke of th e observation tower of the academic world’ (‘Beobachtungsposten’; 16/05/1928) and even an observation tower from which ‘the entire trade route of culture and symbols between Asia and America can be viewed from Hamburg’ (WIA. Ill, 2.3.3.9). Another simile, used in a letter to Ernst Cassirer, was that of the ‘Lynceus tower’, an observation post from which one can view far away

40

Dorothea McEwan

developments like the Argonaut Lynceus, who was famous for his sharp eye and penetrating gaze (06/09/1928). He used this simile in his correspondence with Hamburg worthies in connection with setting up an exhibition on the history of astrology and astronomy in the new venue of the Hamburg planetarium (06/09/1928). A pertinent Hamburg tradition was invoked when Warburg declared the KBW to be ‘a tower observing the trade routes of cultural exchange’ (29/06/1928) - a peculiarly Hamburg agenda with its colonial academy and shipping tradition - scanning ‘our field of vision’ (04/06/1929). But the appeal of the library, as he pointed out, extended well beyond Hamburg. When Gershon Scholem researched chiromancy, he could only do so in KBW, ’the bureau for the intellectual stewardship of the heritage of Mediterranean culture’ (10/04/1929). The specialist library, having started life as a tented camp’, had to be extended by what he calls ’the fortication’ (fortezza) provided by the local university (05/08/1929): Warburg was convinced of the need for research institutes in the Humanities - ‘without a university a research institute cannot enter into the bloodstream of German culture as vital organism’ (24/12/1917). The Research Institute The KBW exerted its influence both on scholars and students gathered around Aby Warburg as well as those around Fritz Saxl, editor of the KBW publications, who was an expert in Rembrandt studies as well as the history of astrology. What bound them together was the overall research agenda of the history of symbols as elements of culture and then the migration and transformation of these symbols in their visual and verbal forms. To interpret and re-interpret art, religion, literature and science, the large field of the investigation required a variety of disciplines and intellectual approaches as well as international cooperation. Saxl summarized the task of research in the KBW and later the Wl as starting with mapping the trade routes of the mind, and from this base proceeding to draw conclusions on the function of what Warburg had called the ‘social memory’ (23/04/1924) of humanity (Saxl 1980, 331). This means that the KBW and later the Wl was an institute which did not set out to research aestheticism, art history as an attribution exercise, or art criticism; rather, the aim was to chart the ongoing flow of ideas beyond historicising topicality, the functions of the survival of pagan/classical antiquity in the Christian/modem world. Erwin Panofsky, art historian and friend of Aby Warburg, stressed that for Warburg works of art were documents of human thinking and feeling and not just objects made to please the eye (Wuttke, 07/01/1992, Neue Zuercher Zeitung, 17).

Mapping the Trade Routes of the Mind

41

A group of university teachers from Hamburg University published a document on the history, organisation and aims of research institutes in 1930. The professors wanted to highlight the interdependence of research and the role that a research institute played in 'the totality of intellectual life* ('gesamte Geistesleben'). They took their cue from the classical definition of the aims of a research institute, the motto of the Carnegie Institute in Washington: T o encourage in the broadest and most liberal manner investigation, research, and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind’ and concluded that research institutes had to be freely accessible to men and women who wanted to devote themselves to scholarly work (Brauer et al eds 1930,1, ix, xiv & xv). Here was the official recognition that institutes - often private foundations which had pioneered a discipline and were later institutionalized into official academic structures - acted as crystallisation points for a republic of scholars; their network was quite distinct from that of educators teaching courses at university level geared to producing degrees, following rules and regulations of academic administrative machinery. Thus, various institutes - among them the KBW - independent, yet connected to each other in the pursuit of a common ideal, were post-graduate centres of learning which encouraged and assisted each other (see also 21/08/1929). Saxl’s account of the KBW in the publication of Hamburg University called the library a ‘Problemsammlung’, a collection of books and images to research one problem, the historical processes of transmission, in such a way as to draw general conclusions on the function of the social memory of humanity (Saxl 1930, II, 355). Bernhard Harms, professor of Economics in Kiel, called the KBW a ‘bibliotheke iatreion psyches’, ‘the healing place for the soul’ (12/08/1927). It was a fertile centre, an organisation independent of bureaucratic considerations or political power plays as enacted at universities. Years later, Paul Ruben, a private scholar and friend of Warburg’s, who stayed behind in Hamburg and looked after the day-today correspondence of the KBW in Hamburg after its move in 1933, praised the way research had been conducted in the KBW: the atmosphere was vibrant, fellow researchers were looked upon as colleagues and the ‘intellectual air was extremely rich in ozone’ (10/05/1934). In short, the KBW was the ‘centre of one of the most remarkable circles of scholars of the Weimar Republic' (Kany 1989,7). From W arburg’s Death to the Move to London The staff comprising the newly-appointed director Professor Fritz Saxl, the librarians Dr Gertrud Bing and Dr Hans Meier, the multi-lingual

42

Dorothea McEwan

secretary Clara Hertz, the accountant Eva von Eckardt, the photographer and head of technical staff Otto Fein and a number of scholars who had short or long-term contracts, like Edgar Wind and Walter Solmitz, unquestionably saw their task as carrying on in Warburg’s footsteps (12/03/1931). True, in the following years, the library budget decreased and a number of periodicals were cancelled. However, the activities in the KBW - teaching and research, purchase of books and photographs, attending conferences and serving on committees, supervising students and assisting library users and editing Warburg’s writings - continued as they were to continue under different circumstances in a new country. In the early 1930s Saxl, Bing and Wind were involved in finding a place to move to once it was dear that they could not survive unscathed in Hamburg. For various reasons, the choice fell on London: the library was to be on loan by its partGerman, part-American owners, the Warburg family, to London for three years (see Buschendorf 1993, Wuttke 1991, Burkart 2000). After the shipping of books, photographs, furniture, bindery equipment etc. to London in December 1933, where it was set up again in Thames House, the library reopened as the Warburg Institute in May 1934. A draft memorandum from the Saxl papers explains its remit: 1. English University conditions and general educational (lack of) system different from Germany. 2. Necessary therefor [sicl] to fall in with conditions here. Missionary spirit arouses opposition. 3. Jealousy of all academics who think they ought to have thought of it themselves. 4. Theories are abhorred by the English in general and by the learned in particular. 5. The English are much more literary than artistic, and rather sceptical of art as an academic study. The question to ask is NOT “what good will it do?” but “can it do any harm?“. If not, then it is worth trying (WIA, Saxl Papers). This pithy statement, not unlike a pep talk, revealed a shrewd and remarkably accurate understanding of British academic sensitivities. A programme which ‘did not do harm’ was put into action. At the end of July 1934 a special photographic exhibition (the first of many) was arranged for the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, intended to demonstrate the connection

Mapping the Trade Routes of the Mind

43

between anthropological and historical studies. That autumn a very ambitious programme of nineteen lectures was inaugurated, attracting a large audience of roughly equal numbers of English and German speakers. To begin with, there were very few contacts with scholars in Great Britain; the move to London was an adventure for everybody, aggravated by the need to speak and write in English, a not inconsiderable hurdle. Saxl deplored the language ‘which it was quite impossible ever to learn!’ (Bing 1957, 17). The staff of the Warburg Institute looked for opportunities to continue their work in England and thereby prove to their new colleagues the usefulness of their quite different method of historical enquiry, juxtaposing texts and images, posing new questions, examining the unfamiliar, in time, the Warburg Institute successfully established ‘a wider conception of art-historical studies, extending beyond the traditional confines of connoisseurship to the study of images in their cultural context’ (Gombrich 1970,12). It is often said that the discipline of history of art, as distinct from art appreciation, did not exist in England, and that it was to be a niche for the Warburg Institute. Whilst it is true to say that art history did not exist as a university discipline, it is not true to say that this was the niche into which the Warburg Institute settled. In the first ten years of its existence in London very little art history was pursued at the Institute. Its lecture and exhibition programmes are testimony to a truly different injection of academic work: what was called ‘Kulturwissenschaft’ in Hamburg became ‘cultural and intellectual history’ in London. This is still its hallmark today. The Hamburg tradition of meetings/seminars in small circles to discuss science and arts, to campaign for the establishment of the university, to set up private initiatives to support scholarship, stood the Wl in good stead in the new environment, where self-help was as necessary as in Hamburg. Taking Root This tradition of self-help doubtless facilitated a quick acculturation in the new country. Ruben wrote to Bing in 1935: ‘it has happened as I thought: the library has taken root there - and just between ourselves the maturity and strength of English culture in its totality will be more conducive to its flourishing than the precision and diligence of American science, which, after all, lives on continental models’ (02/11/1935; also Biester 2001). Warburg’s nephew Erich Warburg used a similar expression to show the organic continuity from KBW to Wl: ‘the Institute’s continental roots could not fail to flourish in British soil’ (E. Warburg, 1953, 16). The first Annual Report by the Warburg Institute, published in 1935, stressed this continuity: This first year of our

Dorothea McEwan

existence in England thus represents a period during which we have maintained most of our old activities and tried to feel our way towards new ones' (Anon. 1935, 12). The 'unlimited opportunities which London offers to anyone willing to grasp them’ were realized and put to good use in the following years. Saxl's achievement in expanding the library into ‘a research institute where representatives of differing disciplines could meet for long-term joint work on the wide problems identified by its founder1 (Bing 1957, 10; cf. 05/01/1921) provided an ethos of assistance and support which went far beyond writing polite answers to letters by desperate colleagues, friends and friends of friends. Time and energy was generously given to inquirers and library users who found the atmosphere of the Institute in London conducive to research and discussion. In January 1936 the Times Literary Supplement praised the Wl for what it had achieved in the span of two years: ‘It must be regarded as the most signal addition to the resources available to English scholarship that has been made for very many years. And if other institutions have lent a helping hand to the new guest, the guest has given a return by entering freely into the consortium of English libraries, and entering into dose and friendly relations with the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Institute of Historical Research, and similar bodies’ (11/01/1936). This comment on library resources says nothing about the innovative methodology of the library which was not yet fully appreciated. In March 1936 Bing could summarize the activities of the Wl in a letter to the wife of the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, Toni: 30 to 40 people attended the courses run by the Wl, 80 to 100 people attended lectures. The courses induded: R. P. Hinks ‘Allegorical Representations in Andent Art’; R. E. W. Flower ‘Methods of Research in Mediaeval Manuscripts’; J. Seznec ‘Renaissance Mythography in Humanism and Art’; F. Saxl ‘Humanism in Venetian Art’; E. Cassirer The New Ideal of Truth in the Seventeenth Century’; E. Wind ‘Doctrines of Wit and Enthusiasm in Eighteenth Century English Art and Philosophy’. Individual lectures were given by Father Gabriel Théry on ‘Les Byzantins en France à l’Epoche de Louis le Pieux’ and by A. Goldschmidt on The Influence of English Art on the Continent in the Middle Ages’. An even greater attraction was the lecture by Niels Bohr on ‘Some Humanistic Aspects of the Natural Sciences’ when their number increased to 150. Young scholars, mainly art historians from Germany and England, had started to form a discussion circle, and a group of scholars from diverse disciplines started to meet in order to discuss questions of methodology common to them all (24/03/1936).

Mapping the Trade Routas of the Mind

45

Assistance In London the Institute had an urgent new task when the political situation in Germany deteriorated: assistance to refugees from the continent. It became a port of call for many people desperate for work, accommodation and contacts. The large correspondence with support organisations like the Academic Assistance Council / Society for the Protection of Science and Learning and a host of similar charitable and academic organisations testify to an awareness of what was going on and the urgent need to help. Links with these organisations were forged as a matter of course, a legacy of an ethos of generosity in research and time. The staff of the Wl, with their connections abroad, friends and colleagues, knew what was happening abroad and were therefore able to speak up for a great number of women and men in need (McEwan, 1999). The English world of learning accepted the Institute and actively sought out the expertise of the six members of staff: Gertrud Bing, Eva von Eckardt, Otto Fein, Hans Meier, Fritz Saxl and Edgar Wind. Technically speaking, they were not asylum seekers or people forced into exile. Very soon they were asked to assist scholars with finding work in the UK. The requests ‘weighed heavily’ on Saxl, as was noted by Gertrud Bing (24/03/1936), who devoted much of her time to helping others. She was a good listener, even if, at times, she felt pessimistic about obtaining help. For example, when the writer Barbara Bernstein applied for financial help, Bing, whilst passing on this request to Christina Ogilvy, secretary of the International Student Service, found it problematic, as ’our main function’ was to help applicants to complete their interrupted studies, whereas Bernstein was planning to make a living as writer (21/09/1936). In June 1938, the ‘German Jewish Aid Committee’ sent a list of names of people in their file ‘Selbsthilfe deutscher Ausgewanderter’ (‘Self Help of German Emigrés’) to Bing and asked her to supply their professions in order to set up a register with which to match professions to emigration opportunities. Bing knew many of them, as a great number of refugees were library users and as the pencil additions to the typed 14 page document attest (02/06/1938). In September 1938, Bing wrote to Miss Esther Simpson, Assistant Secretary of the ‘Society for the Protection of Science and Learning’ and gave her the names ‘of those connected with our Institute who would like to give their services to the British Community in case of war*. The list included all employees of the Wl (28/09/1938). An institute not exiled in the narrow sense, but transplanted from its soil to serve a different academic tradition, faced, like so many immigrants, the options of alienation or assimilation and absorption. It can be said that the Wl took root on its own terms, offering a new

46

Dorothea McEwan

method, inspiring scholars to work in their chosen field. Furthermore, the process of taking root was made easier because the Institute as an organisation, and its members individually, actively sought contact with scholars and institutions in Britain in order to continue with public lectures and with the publication of research papers in the two series ‘Lectures’ and ‘Studies’. It was therefore seen as a natural progression that the Institute, with its reputation as a research resource for the intellectual and cultural history of post-classical Europe, and which until 1936 had remained a privately funded institute, was looking for a new lease in London after the initial three year period had expired. In a letter to the financier Sir Percival David, Saxl compared the disadvantages of a possible move to New York University with the advantages for staying in London: London is in every respect the ideal centre for the Library. There is at present a tendency to increasing interest in the history of civilisation and especially in the history of art. If anywhere in Europe the feeling for history is alive, it is in England, and if anything can be done in the field of education to preserve Europe from disaster, it is through keeping alive this feeling for historical values. And this cannot be achieved through popular lectures alone, but must be fostered through the quiet work of the scholar. An alien institute for the study of the history of civilisation, which naturally tends to an international outlook, is not a luxury, but a dire necessity, and money spent on it is not charitable money. There is no need for me to emphasise how charitably in effect such money would be spent. All which has been achieved in the past, and which could be done, as experience in the last two years has shown, in the future for those who come form Germany, could only be done over here. There is so much talk about peaceful international relations. An institute trained on German lines and sending down firm roots into the English soil, will in the end necessarily bring about the peaceful amalgamation which might prove very useful if we looked ahead into the future and were not blinded by the momentary situation. £100,000 spent on armaments may prove in the end less efficient than a few thousand pounds spent on a body of men working with heart and soul to bring about true intemationality in the realm of study. I think the work we have done in the past can at least leave no doubt about this point, whether the results of our studies have been important or not. If one considers our circumstances in this light,

Mapping the Trade Routes of the Mind

47

does it not seem a crime to move us over to the Art Department of New York University, to be used there by a vast number of young girls eager to leam art appreciation?’ (25/06/1936). This impassioned (if in hindsight somewhat sexist) plea was accepted. The institute was given funds for the next seven years and was finally taken into public ownership with the decision by the Trustees to hand over the Warburg Institute to the University of London on 28 November 1944. One of the reasons for this decision was a comparison made between the titles of books and periodicals in the Warburg Institute and the British Museum. Thus the Warburg Institute provides an exemplary instance of the successful transplantation of an institute of learning. W arburg’s idea had taken root and the Institute was saved for all future [...] Thus an Institute created by a German scholar was handed over by American citizens to become a British Institution, in the expectation that it will serve the students of this country and be a worthy member of the international family of learned Institutions’ - this is how Saxl summarized the momentous move in his unfinished biography of Warburg, drafted in 1944-1945 (WIA, Cabinet 8).

Bibliography Published Sources: Anon., The Warburg Institute, Annual Report, 1934-1935 Biester, B., 2001. D er innere B eruf zu r W issenschaft: P aul Ruben (1666-1943). Studien zur deutsch-jüdischen Wirtschafísgeschichte. Berlin-Hamburg: Dietrich Reim er V erlag, Ham burger Beiträge zur W issenschaftgeschichte, 14 Bing, G . and Rougemont, F., eds, 1932. A. Warburg. Gesam m elte Schritten. D ie Erneuerung d er heidnischen Antike. Kulturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zu r Geschichte d e r europäischen Renaissance, 2 vols, Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner Bing, G ., 1957. ’Fritz Saxl. A Memoir1, in Gordon, D. J. ed, Fritz Saxl, 1890-1948. A Volume o f M em orial Essays from his Friends in England, London, Edinburgh: Nelson and Sons Brauer, L. e t al eds, 1930. Forschungsinstitute: ihre Geschichte, Organisation und Z iele, Hamburg: Hartung Burkart, L., 2000. "’Die Träum ereien einiger kunstliebender Klosterbrüder...*: zur Situation der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek W arburg zwischen 1929 und 1933’, Zeitschrift fü r Kunstgeschichte, 63, 89-119 Buschendorf, B., 1993. ‘A uf dem W eg nach England: Edgar W ind und die Emigration der Bibliothek W arburg’, in Diers, M . ed, Porträt aus Büchern. Bibliothek W arburg und Warburg Institute, Hamburg. 1933, London, Hamburg: Dölling und G alitz, 85-128 Cassirer, E. 1927. Individuum und Kosmos in d er Philosophie d er Renaissance, Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner Gombrich, E., 1970a. A by Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, The W arburg Institute, University of London Gombrich, E., 1970b. ’Introduction', in Honour, H. and Fleming, J. eds, A H eritage o f Im ages: A Selection o f Lectures by Fritz Saxl, Harmondsworth: Penguin Gombrich, E. H ., 1999. ‘Aby W arburg: His Aims and Methods. An Anniversary Lecture’, Journal o f the W arburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 2 ,2 6 8 -2 8 2 Heise, C . G ., 1947. Persönliche Erinnerungen an Aby Warburg, New York, Copyright Eric M . W arburg Kany, R ., 1989. ‘D ie religionsgeschichtliche Forschung an der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek W arburg’, in Gratia. Bam berger Schritten zur Renaissanceforschung, 19, Bamberg: S. W andel M cEwan, D ., 1997. ‘Aby W arburg und die Figur des Struwwelpeter”’, German Life and Letters, 5 0 ,3 5 4 -3 6 4

Nikolaus im

R ussischen

Mapping the Trade Routes of the Mind

49

M cEwan, D ., 1999. ’A T ale of O ne Institute and Two Cities: The W arburg Institute’, in Germ an-Speaking Exiles in G reat Britain: Yearbook o f the Research Centre for German and Austrian Studies, 1 ,2 5 -4 2 Raulff, U ., 1997. V o n der Privatbibliothek des G elehrten zum Forschungsinstitut Aby W arburg, Em st C assierer und die neue Kulturwissenschaft', in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 23, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and R uprecht 40 Saxl, F ., 1930. ‘Die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek W arburg in Hamburg’, in Brauer et al, eds, II, 355 and in D. W uttke and C. G. Heise, eds, A by M . W arburg: Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen, Baden-Baden: Koem er, 1 9 7 9 ,3 3 1 -5 Trapp, J. B., 1986. ‘Aby W arburg, His Library, and the W arburg Institute’, in Theoretische Geschiedenis: Cultuurgeschiedenis in verartderend perspectief 1 2 :2 ,1 9 8 6 W arburg, A ., 1999. The R enew al o f Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History o f tiie European Renaissance, tr. Britt, D ., Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute Publications Program W arburg, E. M ., 1953. ‘Appendix: The Transfer of the W arburg Institute to England in 1933’, The W arburg Institute, Annual Report, 1952-53 W uttke, D ., 1991. ‘Die Emigration der Kulturwissenschaftiichen Bibliothek W arburg und die Anfänge des Universitätsfaches Kunstgeschichte in Grossbritannien', in Bredekamp, H ., Diere, M . and Schoell-Glass, C. eds, A by Warburg: Akten des internationalen Symposions Ham burg 1990, W einheim : V C H Verlagsgesellschaft Acta Hum aniora, 141163 W uttke, D ., 07/01/1992. ‘Erwin Panofsky über Aby M . W arburgs Bedeutung. Ein Brief des Kunsthistorikers an den Bankier Eric M . W arburg', N eue Zürcher Zeitung, 17

Unpublished Sources: W arburg’s drafts and lectures, working papers and correspondence are kept in the archive of T h e W arburg Institute, London together with the KBW correspondence up to 1933 and the W l correspondence from 1934 onwards. Cited correspondence from this archive is listed here chronologically and referred to by date in the main text. Unpublished lectures and papers are listed with their archival reference. 13/02/1901, 20/11/1910, 23/12/1911, 30/05/1917, 24/12/1917, 24/01/1918, 31/12/1921, 30/10/1922, 23/04/1924, 20/07/1924, 13/12/1924, 06/03/1925, 12/08/1927, 16/05/1928, 13/06/1928,

A. W arburg to his brother, the banker M ax M . W arburg A. W arburg to M ax M . W arburg A. W arburg to F. Saxl A. W arburg to Hamburg Kriegsvereorgungsamt A. W arburg to mayor Senator W erner von M elle A. W arburg to rare book dealer J. H alle in Munich A. W arburg to F. Saxl F. Saxl to A. W arburg A. W arburg to the classicist U. v. W ilam owitz-M oellendorff A. W arburg to G. Herbig A.W arburg to the anthropologist Franz Boas A. W arburg to the banker Rudolf Kessal Professor of communication techniques G. Leithäuser to A. W arburg A . W arburg to Erich W arburg, son of brother M ax M . W arburg A. W arburg to M ax M . W arburg

29/06/1928, A. W arburg to Erich W arburg 18/07/1928, A. W arburg to Kurt R iezier 0 6/09/1928a, A. W arburg to E. Cassirer 0 6/09/1928b, A. W arburg to Senator Carl Cohn 03/10/1928, A. W arburg to Felix von Eckardt, editor-in-chief of Ham burger Frem denblatt 03/12/1928, A. W arburg to E. Cassirer 22/03/1929, A. W arburg to the headm aster of the Gelehrtenschute Johanneum, Edmund Kelter 06/04/1929, A.W arburg to E. Kelter 10/04/1929, W arburg to M ax Moritz W arburg 01/05/1929, A. W arburg to the art historian A. Goldschmidt 21/05/1929, A. W arburg to KBW 31/05/1929, A. W arburg to W . Ax 04/06/1929, A. W arburg to the Latin scholar Elisabeth Jaffé 05/08/1929, A. W arburg to E. R. Curtius 21/08/1929, Eugénie Strong to G . Bing 24/10/1929, E. Strong to A. W arburg 12/03/1931, G. Bing to W . Solm itz, E. W ind and F. Saxl 10/05/1934, P. Ruben to the historian Alfred Vagts 02/11/1935, P. Ruben to G. Bing 24/03/1936, G. Bing to Toni Cassirer 25/06/1936, F. Saxl to P. David 11/09/1936, E. Cassirer to F. Saxl 21/09/1936, G. Bing to C. Ogilvy 02/06/1938, Anita W arburg to G . Bing (W IA , G C, Box 1937-1938, 2 .4 , file 'M iss A nita W arburg, Germ an Jewish Aid Com m ittee') 28/09/1938, G . Bing to E. Simpson (W IA , G C . Box 1937-1938, 2.4, file 'Schools and Technical Training. Chairm an Miss N. Adler*)

Lectures, Papers etc. W IA , G C . V . 2 .3.3.9 , A ., W arburg, 04/07/1927. ‘Durchbruch nach Am erika’ W IA , G C , III.8 2 .5 . A. W arburg, 19/10/1912. W orking Papers for the lecture ‘Italienische Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Ferrara’, on the occasion o f the X International Art Historical Congress in Rom e W IA , Saxl Papers, 30/05/1934. Cabinet 9 , drawer 2, file *Warburg Explanatory*. Memorandum Re W arburg Institute, Notes on Suggested Pam phlet W IA , Cabinet 8 , top drawer, F. Saxl, ‘Notes for W arburg Biography, (m ainly 1945)’1 1 I am grateful to the Director of The W arburg Institute, Professor Nicholas M ann, fo r reading the typescript and supplying helpful comments, and to Evika Klinger for drawing my attention to Fritz Saxl's letter to Sir Perdval David.

JOHANNES FEICHTINGER THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AUSTRIAN ÉMIGRÉ ART HISTORIANS FOR ENGLISH ART SCHOLARSHIP

The primary object of this paper is to investigate the successful process of integration of Viennese émigré art historians into the English community of art scholarship during the 1930s. Some young Austrian art historians were able to build careers in England and develop a degree of influence which they might never have reached had they remained in Austria. Thus, the innovative scholarly thought of Ernst Gombrich, Otto Kurz and Otto Pacht contributed a great deal to the formation of the academic discipline Art History in England by importing Central European scientific methods. John Onians concluded that ‘both the vocable “art history” and the method it represents were an importation from the German-speaking world which has been adopted with surprisingly little modification by English speakers’ (Onians 1978, 131). A further question to be considered is why Gombrich, Kurz and Pacht made a far more significant impact on the development of English art history than the second wave of art historians persecuted on grounds of ‘race’ or politics: those who sought refuge in England after the German invasion of Austria (the Anschluss) in 1938? The answer to this question lies in the different states of the discipline ‘art history’ in Austria and in England: one needs to take a look at the socially determined conditions of the organisation of science and scholarship in Austria, while the role of the mediators between Austrian art historians and English institutions also needs to be analysed. The aesthetically oriented scholarly tradition of art criticism in England had been going through a process of change since the early 1930s: from the discipline of art appreciation, approaching works of art from a non-historical viewpoint, stressing the recreative aspect of art and relying heavily on value jugdments, to the new scholarly discipline of art history (Feichtinger 2001, 341-7). Due to the lack of an art historical tradition in England, a desperate need for a more scientific approach developed, and this was met by some far-sighted British connoisseurs. They took the art historical tradition of the continent as a model: first, the status of the discipline, second, well established methods of art-historical scholarship, and finally they supported the influx of some selected experts: from the Warburg Institute which moved to England in 1933, and scholars of the Viennese School of Art History. In Vienna art history had a highly developed and

52

Johannes Fetehttnger

professionalized historical approach which was also acknowledged by some British art scholars. Thus, the early émigrés were able to provide a new range of approaches to the study of art, but this influence did not change the British approach to art over-night. This was partly due to the strength of the British tradition which remained closely attached to art appreciation. Thus Anne Béchard-Léautó concluded that ‘if the émigrés professionalized the British approach to art, this professionalisation was achieved through a popularisation of the methods and techniques they imported rather than by a development of these methods’ (BéchardLéautó 1999,212). She argued that although the common aim of British and émigré art scholars was to explain art, their priorities differed. The émigrés of the mid 1930s felt an urgent need for a wider recognition of art history, but there was still room for the aesthetic approach of British art scholars. This situation changed gradually. After the German invasion in 1938 a further group of Austrian émigré art historians came to England, but they made a less significant intellectual and professional impact. The intellectual vacuum seemed already to have filled up. The State of Art History in England In England there was a long-established and internationally acknowledged tradition of museum and gallery connoisseurship and scholarly antiquarianism (Béchard-Léauté 1999,141-66, Lasko 1991a, 221-33, Lasko 1991b, 255-74, Lasko 1975, 114-15, Wuttke 1984, 179-94). In the nineteenth century this tradition encouraged the development of art schools, but not of schools of art history: the English academic world still remained uninterested in the historical approach which had been developed on the continent by historians such as Jakob Burckhard, who had published his key work The Civilisation o f the Renaissance in Italy in 1860 (translated into English in 1878). Art history had been taught on the continent for many years, whereas in England such studies did not exist on an academic basis. In 1833 and again in 1836 the painter and humanist Sir Charles Eastlake, the first director of the National Gallery, declined the call to a chair in the history of art at University College. The first art historical chair in the United Kingdom was installed in 1879 at the University of Edinburgh where the discipline was taught as part of a course leading to a degree. Only one English university experimented with a chair of fine arts: Liverpool had established one in 1881, but it was turned into a chair of architecture in 1894. In 1869 an endowment to the Universities of Cambridge, London and Oxford made by Felix Slade (1790-1868) allowed the creation of three annual chairs in the scholarship of art. The Slade Professors were theoretically bound by statute to lecture on th e history, theory and

Austrian Émigré Art Historians

53

practice of the fine arts’ (Béchard-Léauté 1999, 145). In practice, they did not care for a historically based discipline, placing the emphasis on aesthetic judgement. As John Ruskin, the most famous representative of the Slade School, put it: ‘The goal of art studies was to make our English youth to care somewhat for art’ (Lasko 1975,115). It was a full century after that original offer to Sir Charles Eastlake that the Courtauld Institute was created to compensate for this lack of concern for art-historical studies in England. In 1932 the University of London accepted the endowment of Samuel Courtauld, an industrialist of refugee Huguenot descent, to endow an Institute where art was studied as a historical subject leading to a university degree. Up to that point, serious historical work had continued to be done in the English museums, where the main concern of the well trained custodians was the accumulation of facts, the cataloguing of collections, and the development of those collections in accordance with their historical significance. The foundation of the Courtauld Institute gave expression to the intention of some custodians to transform art scholarship. When the Institute started its teaching programme, connoisseurs at English museums whose main concern had been to identify the origins of art objects were logically the first lecturers in art history. The courses held by these English museum professionals were meant to serve as preparation for posts in museums, galleries and similar institutions as well as for those wishing to become teachers of the history of art. Most of the lecturers had degrees in the humanities from Cambridge and Oxford, and some of them had sought training on the continent. Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), for instance, spent some years in Italy, on the hills above Florence, with the renowned art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1950), who had raised connoisseurship to a high scholarly level paying close attention to historical accuracy and documentation. Berenson brought connoisseurship closer to philology, leading it away from the traditionally strong element of art appreciation, and this introduced Clark to a new approach for analysing art. Thus British connoisseurs were acquiring a broader and more comprehensive view of art scholarship, and art history at last became a subject at the University of London. Since the main goal of the Courtauld Institute was to put art scholarship on a scientific basis, its members were becoming increasingly interested in the continental approach. There the importance of the discipline ‘art history’ (Kunstgeschichte) had steadily increased since the middle of the nineteenth century and its methods were developing further. The first chair of art history was established in Berlin in 1844 (Schlosser 1934, 151). By 1901 thirty professors of art history could be found in twenty-seven German universities and higher

54

Johannes Feichtinger

educational institutions, and by 1930, thirty-six institutions of higher education in Germany and Austria had professors of art history (Béchard-Léauté 1999, 143). In the 1930s the Vienna School of Art History became one of the focuses of the Courtauld Institute’s attention. This scholarly tradition seemed to provide a useful model for the following three reasons. The first was the characteristic Viennese historical approach: the combination of philological analysis of written sources with the identification of the historical significance of works of art. The so-called ‘Übungen im Erklären und Bestimmen von Kunstwerken’ were to become an essential part of the training of art historians. This approach was developed by Rudolf von Eitelberger (1817-1885), a philologist who had been appointed to the recently created Viennese Chair of Art History (Kunsthistorische Lehrkanzel) in 1852. Eitelberger’s successors on this chair continued to give these courses at the major museums in Vienna: the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Albertina and the court library (Holbibliothek). This combined efFort, connecting university and museum, was one characteristic feature of the Viennese School of Art History. Another characteristic feature related to the methodological principles which were positivistic, anti-speculative and anti-philosophical - that is: taking the natural sciences as a model. The School’s primary object was to train staff (civil servants) for museum work and for the protection of historic monuments and artefacts. It could build on a long tradition, since the subject had evolved into an academic discipline in Vienna as early as 1879, when the chair of art history was separated from the Institute of Austrian Historical Research (Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung). Moreover, art history had been accepted as an independent academic historical study by the professors of history and other humanities. Thus in Vienna art history had developed a characteristic profile since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and by the early twentieth century it was influencing developments in other countries: for example Aby Warburg’s Institute (Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek) in Hamburg. The work of the Warburg Institute was to remain particularly indebted to the Vienna School in respect to the following principles: the idea of concentrating on historical and philological principles, associated with Professor Rudolf von Eitelberger; the rejection of the unhistorical-formalistic style-analysis, a position developed by Professor Franz Wickhoff (1853-1909); the idea of the continuity and discontinuity of cultural traditions, investigated by Professor Alois Riegl (1858-1905); and the form of a ‘history of culture’ which had been promoted by Professor Max Dvorak (1874-1921). Julius von Schlosser, the last representative of that scholarly tradition in Vienna, was

Austrian Émigré Art Historians

55

considered to be a good friend of Aby Warburg. With Schlosser’s interest in the history of language as a form of cultural history, the Vienna School of Art History soon became integrated into a more complex intellectual structure. This paralleled Warburg’s study of intellectual history and Its notion of ’symbolic form’. Both of these systems of intellectual history had been derived from philosophies of linguistic or symbolic expression, deriving in the first case from Benedetto Croce, in the second from Ernst Cassirer (Bóchard-Lóauté 1999,67, Feichtinger 2001,349-61, Seiler 1988,625). Apart from Schlosser and some Viennese students on study-tours in Hamburg, there were at least two other important mediators between both schools. The first was Ernst Kris (1900-1957), who was Schlosser’s first student to graduate and who had earned the particular respect of his teacher. Kris later took over what had been Schlosser’s department: the collection of applied art in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The second mediator was Fritz Saxl (1890-1948), a pupil of Dvorak who completed his Habilitation in Hamburg. Saxl was to become the director of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in 1929. Both Kris and Saxl were of Jewish origin, and Kris was the first Austrian art historian to seek refuge in England after the Anschluss, while Saxl supervised the transfer of the Hamburg Institute to London in 1933. Against this background, we can see why English scholars were strongly attracted by the Viennese tradition of art historical scholarship. They were impressed by its status as an independent discipline. But it was the political crisis of 1933 that gave the decision impetus to the Courtauld Institute’s efforts to put art scholarship on a more scientific basis. Suddenly a group of well trained German art historians were seeking refuge in England, bringing with them new forms of professional expertise. The impetus which this provided for English scholarship was summed up by William G. Constable (1887-1976), the first Director of the Courtauld Institute in a letter of 1934: 'On the research side, there have been evolved in Germany systems and methods which have proved particularly fruitful; and for English scholars to have direct contact with these is at once stimulating and valuable. On the teaching side, the development in German universities of the class and seminar system has enabled them to be of great help in developing these methods here’ (11/12/1934). In the same year Kenneth Clark suggested that the Viennese art historical tradition; in 1934 Clark emphasized that particularly the Viennese School of Art History would be able to provide valuable inspirations for English scholarship: 'since for the last twenty-five years art historians have tended to concentrate more and more on questions of detail and attribution, and the attempt to put the subject onto a broader and more

56

Johannes Feichtinger

humanistic basis comes at a moment when the dominant school of connoisseurship is practically exhausted in England’ (08/05/1934). From all this it becomes dear that the process of cultural transfer brought redprocal advantages. The Courtauld Institute could call on the first-hand support of the émigrés in the process of transforming the aesthetically oriented art scholarship to an independent, theoretically based and widely accepted historical disdpline; on the other hand the continental art historians, as refugees, were dependent on the support of the Courtauld. They were considered to be ‘gate-keepers’ in the gradually shrinking market of available academic positions in England. Since English art scholarship suffered from an unstable academic status, it proved particularly receptive to innovative art historical approaches from the continent. The Warburg staff interacted dosely with their colleagues at the Courtauld, in drafting projects which formed the basis of a new and more coherent way of teaching art history from undergraduate to graduate levels (Bóchard-Lóautó 1999,146). Divergent Levels of Academic Institutionalisation in Vienna To give a more differential account of these developments, we need to take a doser look at the cultural context from which scholars like Saxl, Gombrich and Kris emerged. Science and scholarship had developed and become institutionalized on two different organisational levels in Vienna since 1918: on the university level and in a semi-private circles. Some of the most innovative developments took place in circles outside the official setting of the university. Scholars with socialist, liberal and Jewish backgrounds had developed comprehensive scientific approaches without any prospect of being accepted in the academic world. Ideological differences created further divisions, even though intergroup exchanges continued occasionally. For example, the political scientist Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) participated both in the nationalistic Spann-Circie and in the private seminars of Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) and Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) while the Austromarxist Otto Bauer (1881-1938) was a member of the liberal Böhm-Bawerk seminar. The socialist intellectual group was supported by a receptive public within the institutions of the ‘Red Vienna’ and the result was a dramatic socialscientific take-off in different areas: for instance through the school reform movement, the International Picture Language or through the empirical methods of social research. The liberal intellectual group also found its backing outside the official setting of the university, but in a contradictory way. Its private institutionalisation was not so much stimulated by the know-how which it had to offer, as by the internal wish to oppose the anti-liberal scientific community at the university. The liberal group had lost its social and political functions in an age when

Austrian Ém igré Art Historians

57

liberalism was going out of vogue (Krohn 1996, 187-90). From the industrial point of view the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had still remained a developing country at the end of the nineteenth century, because the bourgeoisie had failed to acquire the monopoly of power. Thus, the Austrian School of Economics and its methodological individualism had the function of a social appeal to the bourgeoisie to activate their own forces; and economically to consolidate the position of their own class against the powerful military and civil service state. In practice, younger liberal and socialist scholars of all academic disciplines were denied university appointments during the inter-war years for a number of reasons. Their careers were blocked by political and ideological prejudices, and by academic objections to unorthodox research methods. Antisemitism was particularly virulent at Austrian Universities, and since 1918 a new form which was not religiously but racially based became widespread. Vienna University was a ‘hot-bed’ of Nazi agitation. It became virtually impossible for anybody of Jewish origin to become a university teacher because the competing parties of the right were outbidding each other in their hostility toward Jews. As Gombrich later observed: ‘In Austria [...] the chances of employment for a young scholar were exiguous in the best of cases, and non-existent for students of Jewish extraction’ (Gombrich 1979, 722). The most that the younger Jewish generation could hope for was to become a Privatdozent. Those Jews who were trying to get appointed to the university had reached an advanced stage of western cultural assimilation. Frequently, their ancestors had already converted and the younger generation were not at all attracted by the Jewish religion, nor by a socalled Jewish identity, which they thought of as artificially created. In 1996 Ernst Gombrich, who was bom in Vienna in 1909, questioned the existence of a separate Jewish culture in Europe at a seminar organized by the Austrian Cultural Institute in London; on that occasion he denied any concept of a collective Jewish identity among assimilated and religiously converted middle-class Jews (‘Bildungsbürgertum’) in fin de siècle Vienna (Brix, E. 1997,1-3). On the contrary, according to Gombrich the assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie took it for granted that their understanding of culture - or Bildung related not to Judaism, but to German classical tradition. Thus he concluded that there could be ‘cultured Jews’, but their culture would not be Jewish (Gombrich 1997, 22). Ernst Gombrich remembered that most of them had a feeling of belonging to a Respublica Literarum, developed by the classical writers and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who were in turn influenced by the Age of Enlightenment. Goethe was considered to be the leading citizen of the republic of letters, founder of

58

Johannes Feichtinger

the lay religion of Bildung, which mostly among the middle classes fulfilled the function of a substitute religion. Gombrich stressed the fact that ‘the followers of this religion modelled themselves on Goethe, in that the masters and achievements of the past became their guiding ideals in all situations of life’, thus leading to the conclusion that ‘Jewishness’, a Jewish identity, was not a major issue (Gombrich 1996, 586). The fact is that, even after the advent of official antisemitism, assimilated Jewish intellectuals did not react actively to their exclusion from university appointments by referring to a Jewish identity or organising themselves collectively, because neither Zionism nor Socialism offered places of refuge (Feichtinger 2001,139-148). On the contrary, they took notice of their exclusion without any active reaction. The reason seems to be that an active reaction on the side of the assimilated Jews (who apparently did not feel Jewish) would have clearly shown the participation of the Jews in the racial discourse which was forced on them from the outside. Their defensive reaction led Jews to minimalize their Jewish origins, to avoid provocation, or to minimalize the significance of antisemitism. The religious conversion lost its meaning, when it became increasingly apparent that antisemitic riots were racially based. Therefore they took other measures to minimalize their Jewishness: they concealed or denied their origin. Thus when the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning tried to get an impression of the difficulties the intellectuals within Austrian Jewry suffered, Schlosser’s first disciple Ernst Kris, a converted Jew and psychoanalyst, reported in an unpublished letter as follows: ‘It is moreover almost impossible to ascertain the race of the people concerned, as in most cases they refuse to give information even to friends, and only those who see no prospect of being able to conceal their race are ready to give information’ (22/10/1936). This letter shows that even Ernst Kris had difficulties in establishing with certainty which university people were definitely of Jewish origin: ‘So I have only now been able to ascertain that the extraordinary professor of Mathematics at the university is definitely Jewish: - Monger.’ Denied access to university positions in Austria, Jewish intellectuals became institutionalized on another organisational level, without any formal connection with academia. Their scholarship flourished within numerous private circles, and they can be described as marginalized or ‘marginal men’ (Park 1928, 881-93, Hanák 1998, 147-77). According to the American sociologist Robert Ezra Park, ‘the marginal man [...] is one whom fate has condemned to live in two, not merely different but antagonistic, cultures’ (Park 1961, 15). This culturally constructed type of personality has been regarded as non-integrated, but still non­

Austrian Émigré Art Historians

59

deviant: for instance, assimilated Jewish scholars who were forced to develop a separate scientific culture. Significantly, there was a considerable overlap between the different circles in Vienna. Edward Timms indicates that in contrast to Vienna the different artistic and intellectual circles in London did not overlap; their members neither tried to establish contacts with members of other circles, nor were those circles formed under ideological (for example antisemitic) pressure (Timms 1996,128-43). Among the scientific community in Vienna most intellectuals belonged to several circles: the philosopher of law Felix Kaufmann, for instance, belonged to four. Therefore the diversity of interaction accelerated the intergroup exchanges of discoveries and it was those marginalized intellectuals who frequently turned out to be the most innovative scientists and scholars. Thus, such ‘marginal men’ founded psychoanalysis, they transformed trade cycle research in Vienna and influenced progress in nuclear research significantly. The outstanding example, in the context of this paper was Ernst Kris who formulated a new approach to art history on this organisational level. Ernst Kris as the Bridge-Builder for Gombrich, Kurz and Pächt Through marriage Ernst Kris came into contact with Sigmund Freud's circle; he had not only undergone analysis, but also decided to dedicate himself to psychoanalysis scientifically. Kris was also influenced by Karl Bühler’s book Ausdruckstheorie (Bühler 1933), and by Heinrich Gomperz’s essay: 'Über einige psychologische Voraussetzungen der naturalistischen Kunst’ (1905). Thus, he was the first to apply this new psychological approach to art history, going far beyond the bounds of conventional art history. Julius von Schlosser himself appreciated the way Ernst Kris applied psychological insights to art history by noticing that his pupil was contributing decisively to art history ‘with a most remarkable critical sensibility’ (‘mit einer sehr bemerkenswerten kritischen Behutsamkeit’; Schlosser 1934, 201). Kris, who had succeeded Schlosser as keeper of the collection of sculpture and applied art at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1922 after the latter had moved from the Museum to the University, offered two of Schlosser’s favourite graduates assistantships for two ambitious projects: Otto Kurz (1908-1975) and Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001). Ernst Kris’s goal was to apply psychoanalytic insights to uncover the ‘mystery’ of artistic creation. According to Gombrich it had turned out that the biography of the Austrian sculptor Messerschmidt written in the eighteenth century contained several stereotypical anecdotes also told of other artists. Kris realized that it was not enough for the historian merely to reject the typical legends told about artists as untrue. Their very persistence suggested that they expressed a widespread reaction

60

Johannes Feichtinger

to the mystery of artistic creation. Thus he invited Otto Kurz, an expert on Byzantine, Islamic and Chinese sources to join his project. Kurz traced the migration of motifs in the light of cultural contacts (Gombrich 1979,723-24). His findings were published under the title ‘Die Legende vom Künstler’ in Vienna in 1934. Ernst Gombrich also shared a project with Ernst Kris. Sigmund Freud had written a book on jokes and Kris wanted to show that the caricature was an application of the joke to the visual arts. On this level, outside of the university, innovative approaches to art emerged gradually. Gombrich, who counted Kris among his teachers, remembered the psychological impact on the history of art in Vienna in the following way: Thus we all absorbed psychology from our alma mater with our mother’s milk’ (‘So haben wir alle von unserer Alma Mater die Psychologie mit der Muttermilch mitbekommen’; Gombrich 1984, 100-01). After the completion of their projects, the politically aware Ernst Kris recommended both Kurz and Gombrich to the director of the Warburg Institute, Fritz Saxl. They would not have found academic jobs within Austria, indeed Gombrich’s application to work as a volunteer at the Albertina was turned down. The practice of volunteering was commonly recognized for art students to enter the museum world. The situation of Kurz in Vienna was also becoming very difficult, 'by the mere fact that he looked Jewish’ (06/11/1934). Schlosser recommended him warmly to take the examination of the Institute of Austrian Historical Research (Institut fur österreichische Geschichtsforschung) in order to improve his professional prospects. Concerning Kurz, Schlosser reported to Saxl as follows: ‘I know that it will mean a considerable exertion for Kurz to make it, but I feel sure that otherwise people would always say that not having passed this examination they cannot employ him.’ And he added the following remarkable sentence: ‘But if he has made it they will not employ him either, because he is a Jew!’ (06/11/1934). Therefore, his only possibility to earn a living was to live abroad. After the Warburg Institute had found refuge in London in 1933, it was initially regarded as an enclave. Its staff was isolated and their knowledge of the English language was limited; thus, the Institute might well have failed to attract public notice in foreign surroundings. In this exceptional situation, the Institute had to re-evaluate its intellectual position in order to overcome its public isolation as soon as possible. Consequently, Saxl had to look for opportunities to prove the usefulness of the Warburg Institute to English scholars. This explains why he made use of the methodologically ambitious young graduates Gombrich, Kurz and Pacht and brought them to England. There were plenty of projects with which they could help, two of which were of

Austrian Ém igré Art Historians

61

particular importance. In 1936 Gombrich was engaged to sort the literary remains of the founder of the Institute, Aby Warburg, in England and write about them. A second ambitious project consisted of a new and scholarly edition of Marco Polo's 'Description of the World’, sponsored by Sir David Percival, a famous collector of Chinese art. This subject was dose to the interests of Kurz, since it involved the contacts between China and Europe. Since 1936 another favourite pupil of Julius von Schlosser, Otto Pacht (1902-1988), was working in dose contact with the Warburg Institute. He had become Privatdozent in Heidelberg in 1933, but he was dismissed after Hitler had come to power. Saxl was interested in his case too, because Pacht was qualified to undertake studies of interest for English art history. In 1939 he was entrusted with the task of making a hand list of the illuminated manuscripts of the British Museum; this catalogue would give for the first time an exact description of the material available at the British Museum. In 1938 Gombrich and Kurz accepted a commission from the director of the Courtauld Institute to write introductions for students of the new subject of art history, the first being concerned with iconography. Soon both were appointed lecturers at England’s one and only institute of the history of art. In 1940 Otto Pacht joined them at the Courtauld Institute. As they were patronised by the director of the Courtauld Institute, it was very probable that they would qualify for academic careers in England. As a collaborator of the Warburg Institute put it: ‘Their chances even in this country are, I think, not bad, because they are both in touch with Mr. Boase of the Courtauld Institute’ (16/03/1938). Obviously, she was right: each of them was appointed to a professorship in England: Gombrich became Slade-Professor in Oxford in 1950, Pacht was to become lecturer in Mediaeval Art at Oriel College in Oxford in 1945 and Reader in 1962 and Kurz was appointed Professor of the ‘History of Classical Tradition with special reference to the Near East’ at the University of London in 1965. Austrian Émigré Art Historians in England after 1938 One final question remains to be answered: why did the impact of the persecuted art historians who sought refuge in England after the Anschluss remain insignificant in comparison to those who had immigrated several years before? In the second half of the 1930s almost two dozen Austrian art historians with academic ambitions found refuge in England, most of them after the Anschluss (Béchard-Léauté 1999, Feichtinger 2001, Hateiy-Broad 1996, Michels 1999). England still suffered from the aftermath of the world economic crisis at that time; foreigners were not

62

Johannes Feichtinger

readily accepted, and in the spring of 1938 the visa system was introduced for subjects from Germany and Austria. In spite of these restrictions, antisemitism and subsequent war developments which refugee scholars had to endure, art historians felt more welcome than other émigré scholars. They were hardly regarded to be in competition with English scholars, because the discipline was still in its infancy, being institutionalized only through the Courtauld Institute at London University. Thus, they were supported in most cases by influential English museum men, other colleagues, and the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, which made their immigration procedure easier. Among them were some outstandingly innovative Austrian art historians, for instance, Johannes Wilde, who had developed a method of x-ray analysis of paintings; Otto Demus, a scholar of Byzantine studies; and Ludwig Münz, a Jewish art psychologist in Vienna, who had been dealing with the psychological aspects of artistic creation of blind children. In Austria anybody of Jewish origin was in danger of being banned from university appointments, as Ernst Kris reported in 1936: T his elimination was never complete, but over the period which I have mentioned it has progressed. [...] Since 1933 the ban on Jews is complete* (22/10/1936). Among those, who emigrated after 1938, just three art historians had habilitated: Hans Tietze (1880-1954, a Protestant who was categorised as a ‘non-Aryan’), Wilhelm Suida (1877-1959), and Otto Demus (1902-1990, a Catholic who was engaged to a girl of ‘non-Aryan’ origin). Among them, only the 36-yearold Demus, who did not suffer directly from Nazi persecution, found refuge in England. After the invasion of Austria he had been called out of his official functions at the Office for the Protection of Monuments in Vienna to be asked to control the issue of export permits in respect to valuable goods (art objects) of people who were forced out of Austria. In 1939 he entered England under the aegis of the Protection of the Society for Protection of Science and Learning, and with letters of invitation from Professor Thomas S. R. Boase of the Courtauld Institute and Norman H. Baynes, the Professor of Byzantine History at the University of London. Once in England he also gained the sympathy of fellow émigré art historians; he was subsidised by the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning and later by the Bishop of Chichester for the purpose of writing a book on Mosaics in Sicily and he also gave lectures at the Warburg Institute. As a non-Jewish Austrian, he was considered a suspect by British officials. As a result of this, he was deported to Canada after his internment in 1940. After having been freed, Demus served as translator and programme-assistant at the Austrian-Service of the BBC. In 1946 he returned to Austria to serve as

Austrian Émigré A it Historians

63

director of the Office for the Protection of Monuments (Bundesdenkmalamt) in Vienna. The majority of Austrian émigré art historians in England were museum professionals: Otto Benesch (1896-1964), a Catholic who had been dismissed from his post as curator of the drawing collection of the Albertina because his wife Eva was considered to be of ‘non-Aryan’ origin; Ernst Kris (1900-1957), a Catholic of Jewish origin who was dismissed as the keeper of the collection of sculpture and applied art at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1938; Emst H. Buschbeck (18891963), a Catholic with one Jewish grandmother who was dismissed as keeper of the collection of paintings in 1939; Johannes Wilde (18911970) who was dismissed from the same department of the Kunsthistorisches Museum because of a spouse of ‘non-Aryan’ origin and Alfred Stix (1882-1957), the first director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, who was also forced out of Austria. Although they found refuge in England, almost none of them could establish museum careers in the UK in spite of their previous achievements. Only Otto Benesch, Johannes Wilde and Otto Pacht found temporary work in English museums during the war. They had been invited personally to come to England. After being unemployed for a year, Otto Benesch was appointed as research fellow to catalogue the drawings of the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), but after he was freed from internment on the Isle of Man, he found employment in the American academia: first at New York University, and then as research fellow at the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1939 Otto Pacht had been hired to work out a handlist of illuminated manuscripts at the British Museum, having been strongly supported by the Warburg Institute. After he was freed from internment, Pacht started a similar work in Oxford: the compilation of a classified hand list of the illuminated manuscripts of the Bodleian Library. In 1939 Johannes Wilde was invited to do research both at the National Gallery and at the British Museum. He was fortunate to be hired at the British Museum because he was highly respected by T. D. Kendrick of the department of British and medieval antiquities, and at the National Gallery because he was strongly supported by Kenneth Clark, the director of the National Gallery. Wilde was sent to Wales to relocate the collections of the British Museum and the National Gallery, but his task was soon brought to a halt, when he was interned and deported to Canada. When refugee art historians became naturalized British subjects after the war, they were at last legally allowed to work in museums, but in fact, the world of museums remained almost exclusively British (Béchard-Léauté 1999, 167). Among the Austrians only Fritz Grossmann re-entered the museum world permanently, when he was appointed to a curatorial

64

Johannes Feichtinger

post in Manchester in the late 1950s. Otto Demus, Emst Buschbeck, Emst Kris and Emst Gombrich worked as staff members of one of the war-related BBC services. Ernst Kris dedicated himself to psychoanalysis. In 1940 he emigrated to the US in order to supervise a major research project at the New School of Social Research in New York on the manipulative effectiveness of Goebbeis’s propaganda. Still there remained a third group of art historians who sought refuge in England, apart from the academics and the museum professionals: freelance art historians. Although some of them were supported by the Warburg Institute, they had practically no chances for academic careers. Caroline Froehlich-Bum (1886-1975) continued to provide a living for both her invalid husband and herself in the art trade in England during the war. Betty Kurth (1878-1948), who was considered one of the foremost European experts on mediaeval tapestry, was of assistance to the staff of the Warburg Institute. She was already 61 years old when she arrived in England. The Warburg Institute paid for Kurth’s board and lodging, and she lived on some pocket money from her daughter and her cousin Ernst Kris until she obtained short-term employment in 1945 from Glasgow Corporation, cataloguing the tapestries of the Burrell Collection. Ludwig Münz (1889-1957) was able to continue research in England, but only through the permanent support of the Warburg institute, whose director considered him one of the oldest and most valued collaborators, and through the donations of the Austrian-British Count Antoine Seilern. Münz’s innovative work on the treatment of blind children was highly regarded. Although most of them belonged to intellectual networks, in the long run none would obtain academic employment in England. They continued their researches either on gradually decreasing grants of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, or with the support of private patrons, often working under conditions of personal hardship. At that time English art history was already gaining a characteristic profile; the methodological vacuum seemed to be filled up with expertise from Austria and Germany; furthermore the Courtauld Institute was the only institute for the history of art in England and the number of academic jobs in England did not increase until the end of the Second World War, so that vacancies occurred almost only through resignation, retirement or death; this fact made the selection even tighter. The opportunities of the recently arrived émigré art historians were strictly limited; they could become lecturers only in exceptional cases, because of the lack of an institutional and professional structure and a decreasing number of the students trying to qualify for an academic decree since the outbreak of the war; and because the world

Austrian Ém igré Art Historians

65

of museums remained almost exclusively British until after the Second World War, as only civil servants (i.e. British subjects) were allowed to work in museums. Nonetheless the presence of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes influenced many Austrian professionals and scholars in their decision to choose Britain as the country of preference. Thus, those Institutes acted as catalysts for the immigration of art historians. As a result, it soon proved impossible to become a professional or academic art historian in Britain without being part of (or at least being supported by) the Warburg or Courtauld Institutes. In fact, 'not a single art historian has found a post over here' (12/04/1938), as Saxl, the director of the Warburg Institute, stated. Only a few people found niches in a paradigm they had created for themselves beginning in the mid 1930s: namely the younger art historians Gombrich, Kurz and Pacht who were supported by the director of the Courtauld Institute. In comparison to England, the US concentrated on the assistance of older scholars to prevent competition with younger, less experienced Americans. Nevertheless, America proved to be an alternative only for a few, including Hans Tietze, the Austrian baroque researcher and advocate of many Austrian avant-garde artists, who had made a career as a museum-reformer and honorary professor at Vienna University. When he left Austria in 1938, the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning assisted him to bridge over one year in Italy and in other European countries, but did not invite him to come to England. In 1939 a one-year visiting professorship was arranged for him at Toledo, Ohio. In his obituary, Gombrich wrote: ‘Exile, which overtook him at the age of 58, cut deeper into his roots than it did with most other scholars’ (Gombrich 1954, 290). The older scholars suffered from the direct consequences of exile more than the younger, be it because of their smaller professional chances, be it in internment, or in daily life, even if they emigrated to the US. But they suffered more, if they stayed in England. Johannes Wilde suffered from the consequences of internment in Canada, from which he only recovered after Count Seilern had invited him to live at his house as a guest. Betty Kurth could not adjust herself to the changed circumstances. She was confidentially described as ‘a very difficult patient, [who] would be utterly incapable of earning anything towards a living should she again have to be on her own' (01/06/1943). Ludwig Münz also could not adjust himself to the changed circumstances during the war. He was not ready to take up employment in some lines outside his own private research. Therefore he did not care to obtain paid employment as other refugee scholars did, by working for the BBC, or joining the Army, or taking school teaching posts for the duration of the war. Thus, he would have starved, if he had not been

66

Johannes Feichtinger

supported financially by Count Seilern. Although Otto Pächt started an academic career in Oxford, he never seemed to have adapted himself to the English way of life; in 1963 he returned to Austria, starting a successful university career at the University of Vienna. After the war, a small number of scholars returned to Austria, including older scholars like Buschbeck, Stix and Münz, and younger and innovative art historians like Demus. The only Austrian art historian who returned from the United States in order to take up his former career was Otto Benesch. The former curator of the Albertina was unable to assimilate to the American museum world. After having returned, many of them obtained the posts of directors at one of the Viennese museums: Benesch returned to Vienna as director of the Albertina in 1947, Stix as general director of the Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Wiens, Buschbeck as curator of its collection of paintings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, before he became head of the department (1949) and director of the museum (1953). Ludwig Münz was the only Jew who was called back after the war. He became director of the Academy of Plastic Arts in Vienna (Akademie der Bildenden Künste). Conclusion The success of émigré art historians in England was due to the new intellectual approaches which they had begun to develop in the avantgarde cultural circles of Vienna. This is exemplified by Ernst Kris who pioneered an unconventional, psychologically oriented approach to art. Through the mediation of Saxl, another pupil of the Viennese School who became the director of the Warburg Institute, they contributed gradually, but decisively, to filling the methodological vacuum of art research in England. The most recent theoretical approaches of the Viennese art historical tradition were adopted by the Courtauld Institute to put art history on a scientific basis. Thus those Viennese scholars who arrived in the mid 1930s were able to build the basis for their academic careers in England after 1945. They had shaped new attitudes towards art studies in England, after overcoming their experience of racial marginalisation and their adjustment to a new language (Béchard-Léauté 1999, 210). Anne Béchard-Léauté concluded that although the British acknowledged a need for a more scientific approach, in the long run they remained closely linked to their tradition of art appreciation: ‘While they [the refugee art historians] imported their methodology, there was still room for the sensitive approach of British art historians’ (Béchard-Léauté 1999, 211). Significantly, none of the Austrian art historians who arrived in the mid1930s had to rely on academic assistance organisations like the

Austrian Émigré Art Historians

67

Society for the Protection of Science and Learning. Each of them enjoyed the support of the decisive gate-keeping institution - the Courtauld Institute. Since it was impossible to find academic jobs in England after the persecution had escalated and migration had increased in 1938/39, the later Austrian émigré art historians had to rely on the assistance of academic, religious and philanthropic committees; some were also subsidized by individual donors. Among them were some outstandingly innovative art historians with academic ambitions, some of whom found niches in jobs they had created for themselves, for instance, as freelance art dealers, but nobody could obtain permanent academic employment in England until the end of the war. Thus, it is not surprising that a significant number returned to Austria after 1945, making a significant contribution to post-war reconstruction in Vienna. Bibliography Béchard-Léauté, A. 1999. T h e Contribution of Émigré Art Historians to the British Art W orld after 1933', unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cam bridge Brix, E. 1997. ‘Preface’, in Occasions: Ernst Gombrich Lectura, 17/11/1996, London: The Austrian Cultural Institute, 1-3 Buhler, K. 1933. Ausdruckstheorie. D as System an d er Geschichte aufgezeigt, Jena: Fischer Feichtinger, J. 2001. W issenschaft zwischen den Kulturen, österreichische Hochschullehrer In d er Emigration 1 93 3-19 45 , Frankfurt, New York: Campus Gom brich, E. 1984. ‘Kunstwissenschaft und Psychology vor fünfzig Jahren’, in W ien und die Entwicklung d er Kunsthistorischen M ethode, 99-104 Gom brich, E. H. 1954. ‘Hans Tietze*, The Burlington M agazine, 9 6 ,2 9 0 -1 Gom brich, E. H. 1979. 'O tto Kurz (1 9 0 8 -1 9 7 5 )', Proceedings o f the British Academ y, 65, 7 1 9 -3 5 Gom brich, E. H. 1996. ‘Goethe: The M ediator of Classical Values’, in WoodfiekJ, R. ed, The Essential Gombrich, London: Phaidon, 585-90 Gom brich, E. H. 1997. ‘The Visual Arts in Vienna Circa 1900', in Occasions: Em st Gom brich Lecture, 17/11/1996, London: The Austrian Cultural Institute H acohen, M . H. 1999. ‘Dilem m as of Cosmopolitanism: Karl Popper, Jewish Identity and “C entral European Culture” , Journal o f M odem History, 7 1 :1 ,1 0 5 -4 9

Johannes Feichtinger Hanák, P. 1998. ‘Social Marginality and Cultural Creativity in Vienna and Budapest (18901914)’, in Hanák, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History o f Vienna and Budapest, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 4 7 -7 7 Hately-Broad, B. 1996. ‘Refugee Art Historians: An Investigation into the Immigration and Employment of Germ an-Speaking Art Historians in Britain 1 9 3 9 -1 9 4 5 ’, unpublished MA thesis, University of Oxford Kotschnig, W . M . 1937. Unemployment in the Learned Professions: An International Study o f Occupational and Educational Planning, London: Oxford University Press Kresge, S. and W enar, L. eds 1994. H ayek on H ayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue, London: Routledge Krohn, C. D. 1996. ‘Dismissal and Emigration of Germ an-Speaking Economists after 1933’, in Ash, M . G . and Sôilner, A. eds, Forced Migration and Scientific Change. Ém igré Germ an-speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933, Cam bridge and N ew York: Cam bridge University Press, 175-97 Lasko, P. 1975. ‘The Courtauld Institute of Art and Art History in Britain', Revue de l ’art, 3 0 ,1 1 4 -1 5 Lasko, P. 1991a. ‘D er Einfluß der deutschen Kunstgeschichte in England*, in Strauss, H. A. e t al eds, D ie Emigration d er W issenschañen nach 1933: Disziplingeschichtliche Studien, Munich, London, N ew York, Paris: Saur, 2 2 1 -3 3 Lasko, P. 1991b. ‘The Impact o f Germ an-speaking Refugees in Britain on the Fine Arts’, in Cariebach, J. et ai eds, Second Chance: Two Centuries o f Germ an-speaking Jew s in the United Kingdom, Tübingen: Mohr, 2 5 5 -7 4 Michels, K. 1999. Transplantierte Kunstwissenschañ. D e r W andel ein er Disziplin als Folge d er Emigration deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker in die USA, Berlin: Akadem ie Verlag Onians, J. 1978. ‘Art History: Kunstgeschichte and Historia’, A rt History, 1 ,2 Park, R. E. 1928. ‘Human Migration and the M arginal M an’, AJoS, 3 3 ,8 8 1 -9 3 Park, R. E. 1961. ‘Introduction’, in Stonequist, E. V ., The M arginal M an. A Study in Personality and Culture Conflict, N ew York: Russel & Russel, 15 Poliak, M . 1997. W ien 1900: eine verletzte Identität, Konstanz: Universitätsvertag Popper, K. 1993. Unended Q u e st An Intellectual Autobiography, London: Routledge Schlosser, J. 1934. ‘D ie W iener Schule der Kunstgeschichte. Rückblick auf ein Säkulum deutscher Gelehrtenarbeit in Österreich', M IÖ G , 1 3 :2 ,1 4 5 -2 2 6

Austrian Émigré Art Historians S eiler, M . 1988. T h e Vienna School of Art History in Exile and the W arburg-lnstitute in London', in Stadler, F. ed, Vertriebene Vernunft. Em igration und E xil österreichischer W issenschaft, 1. Vienna, Munich: Jugend & Volk, 625-28 Tim m s, E. 1996. ‘D ie W iener Kreise. Schöpferische Interaktionen in der W iener M oderne', in Nautz, J. And Vahrenkam p, R. eds, D ie W iener Jahrhundertwende. Einflüsse, Umwelt, Wirkungen. 2nd ed, Vienna, Cologne, Graz: Böhlau, 128-43 Voegelin, E. 1994. Autobiographische Reflexionen, Munich: Fink W uttke, D. 1984. ‘Die Emigration der Kulturwissenschaftiichen Bibliothek W arburg und die Anfänge des Universitätsfaches Kunstgeschichte in Großbritannien’, in Berichte zur W issenschaftsgeschichte, 7 ,1 7 9 -9 4

Unpublished Sources: 0 8/0 5/19 34 Kenneth Clark to W alter Adams. S P S L 184/1 0 6/1 1/19 34 Fritz Saxl to W . G . Constable. SPSL 189/4 11/12/1934 W . G . Constable to W alter Adams. SPSL 184/1 2 2/1 0/19 36 Em st Kris to Fritz Saxl, Director of the W arburg Institute, London. SPSL 140 16/0 3/19 38 Gertrud Bing to W alter Adams. SPSL 187/3 12/0 4/19 38 Fritz Saxl to W alter Adams. SPSL 193/5 0 1/0 6/19 43 Gertrud Bing to Esther Simpson. SPSL 189/3

CHARLOTTE BENTON REFUGEE AND ÉMIGRÉ ARCHITECTS IN BRITAIN, 1933-9

This paper considers the experience and contribution - especially to the evolution of modernist architecture and design - of a small sample of refugee architects who arrived in Britain between 1933 and the outbreak of the Second World War. It touches on their backgrounds and early practice, indicates the circumstances of their migration, and outlines both the architectural context they encountered and the nature of their reception. It considers the kinds of opportunities available to them and some of their responses to, and impact on, the host culture. In conclusion, it indicates how the experience of a distinct professional group may relate to some of the paradigmatic themes of exile studies. Background and Pre-Emigration Practice Between 1933 and 1939 several dozen architects emigrated to Britain from Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Nazi-dominated Europe. The identities of many of these architects have not been reliably established and details remain scarce for many of those who have been identified. Nevertheless, it is possible - by extrapolation from various sources, including individual biographies and archival materials - to make some generalizations about their collective identity. For example, it is evident that they came from across the spectrum of architectural opportunities: some had worked in independent practice, whilst others had taught in schools of architecture, or been employed as architects in local authority departments or other organizations. And, conspicuously, a number had been associated with the neues Bauen (or ‘new architecture’) which emerged pre-eminently in Germany and Holland in the early 1920s and spread elsewhere in Europe during the later 1920s and early 1930s. Prominent among these latter were Walter Gropius and Eric Mendelsohn; but many others had also played a formative role. These included Ernst Freud, Erwin Gutkind, Eugen Kaufmann, Arthur Kom, Heinrich Kulka, Fritz Landauer, Eugen Rosenberg, and Harry Rosenthal. Collectively, these architects possessed a wealth of expertise in the use of new techniques and materials, and their pre-emigration work spanned the spectrum of building types, since both Weimar Germany and some of the other countries concerned - notably Czechoslovakia - had offered a distributed clientele, both public and private, for the new architecture. Thus, besides private houses and social housing, their work in the new

72

Charlotte Benton

mode included government and municipal buildings, factories, department stores and shops, and buildings for health, education and welfare. In England they would encounter very different circumstances. Here, as the Austrian architect Ernst Freud commented soon after his arrival in 1933, ‘it is most surprising to a continental observer how very few modem buildings are to be found and that on the whole the idea of modem architecture has not yet begun to influence the features of English towns’ (Freud 1934, 394-5). Some architects - notably Ernst Freud, Eugen Kaufrnann, and Eric Mendelsohn - were amongst the earliest refugees to leave Nazi Germany. Although information about the particular circumstances in which individuals architects left is relatively sparse, it is dear that even before the Nazis’ accession to the centre of power many architects in both the public and private sectors had encountered obstados to their continuing profession. Some of these were a direct consequence of the Depression; but changes in the political composition of munidpal and regional governments and of cultural institutions in the eariy 1930s were also responsible. Already by 1932, as Kathleen James has commented on the case of Eric Mendelsohn, ‘the conditions that had produced and nourished his architedure during the last dozen years had ended [...]’ (James 1997, 231). For Mendelsohn himself, the Nazis’ rise to power simply accelerated his professional marginalization ‘The first consequence of the new orthodoxy coming into the open is my not being invited to take part in the competition for the new Reichsbank building. Thirty German architects, and I am not one of them’ (quoted in Beyer 1967, 126). The passing of the Law for the Reconstitution of the Professional Civil Service eariy in 1933 resulted in the further dismissal of architects from teaching and local authority architecture department posts. In the same year, the establishment of the Reichskulturkammer, which incorporated professional artistic associations, brought about the marginalization within, or forced resignation or outright expulsion of a number of architects from these associations, thus making their continued practice difficult or quite impossible (Benton 1995, 40). The ‘Gleichschaltung’ also saw purges of architects employed by municipal building administrations and building societies. Individual architects’ responses to these circumstances varied. Some temporized, in the hopes that the ‘emergency’ would be short-lived; others immediately recognized that this was not a temporary state of affairs. Thus Eric Mendelsohn, who had only recently completed a luxurious house for himself and his wife in an affluent suburb of Berlin, left Germany precipitately in March 1933. He briefly considered settling in France but,

Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain

73

by the autumn of 1933, had re-established himself in practice in London, believing that England would offer him a new beginning. Similar hopes inspired a number of the other refugee architects: Eugen Kaufman recorded that *1 really considered myself quite lucky to be [...] still sufficiently young to start a new life’ (Kent n.d., 221 ). A New Context As Ernst Freud noted, the new architecture familiar in continental Europe was conspicuous by its absence from early 1930s England. Thus when Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson assembled their international survey ‘Modem Architecture’, which was shown at the New York Museum of Modem Art in Spring 1932, they could find few English buildings which fitted their selection criteria (see Hitchcock and Johnson 1969). And even as late as 1937 Berthold Lubetkin -him self a recent migrant - could comment: The whole architectural scene is fundamentally different from that of other countries [...] there is little or no interest in progress’ (see Lubetkin 1937). The architectural profession in England was dominated by Beaux-Arts, neo-Georgian and latter-day Arts & Crafts architects who were largely indifferent - and sometimes actively hostile - to what one architect-critic, Reginald Blomfield disparagingly labelled ‘modemismus’ (Blomfield 1934). Their conservatism was mirrored by the majority of clients. As a result, a hierarchical approach to style prevailed: ’official’ buildings and prestigious commercial commissions were designed to project an image of authority, often in a pared down neo-classical idiom. For the rest, neoGeorgian provided a reassuringly traditional yet flexible style for a range of building types from post offices, via cinemas to local authority housing (Benton 1979,47-61). The status quo was further reinforced by a combination of conservative British engineering traditions, building regulations, and architectural education. Advanced knowledge of concrete construction was limited to a small handful of engineers and surveyors, and these were inhibited by the building regulations which were, as Lubetkin observed, ’based on the standard of sixty years ago [and] make no allowance for modem technique’ (Lubetkin 1937). With a few notable exceptions, architectural education followed traditionalist practices. At the Bartlett School of Architecture in the mid-1930s architectural design teaching was based on the mastery of the Orders, and students had to learn to grind their own colours for their presentation drawings. The Czech exile Walter Bor, who had studied with a leading modernist in Prague and completed his architectural education at the Bartlett in the late 1930s, recalled being

74

Charlotte Benton

taught there by fervent advocates of the classical neo-Georgian tradition [...] convinced that theirs was the only correct approach to all current architectural challenges [...] [who] specifically forbade me even to mention Le Corbusier’s name’ (Bor 1994). Thus at first sight, this was not an architectural culture which could readily accommodate architects versed in the new idiom. Yet, by the early 1930s, a number of small, incremental initiatives had combined to encourage its spread in England, albeit often in a conservative form. These included coverage of new developments on the continent in architectural journals, the publication of a small handful of influential books by leading modem architects, exhibitions, and professional study tours to view exhibitions and new developments in continental Europe. As examples, the professional journals Architect and Building News and Architectural Review, gave coverage - in their rather different ways - to the new tendencies; Mendelsohn’s Erich Mendelsohn: Structures and Sketches was published in London by Benn Bros, in 1924; and the Design and Industries Association organized a number of study visits to new developments on the continent. Simultaneously the new architecture became more visible in other ways. It began to be associated with high quality photography and production values in influential publications, notably the Architectural Review - a journal which had a circulation beyond the architectural profession, amongst an educated elite. The appointment of Dell & Wainwright as staff photographers to the Architectural Review, and the attribution of a by-line to their work, was one marker of this. Another, in the case of the same publication, was the employment of the émigré designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to design the layout of a special issue on ‘Leisure at the seaside’ (July 1936). This ‘virtual’ visibility was complemented by real visibility, as the new architecture began to be adopted by some high-profile corporate and commercial concerns and became familiar to a wider public. Besides the London Passenger Transport Board, such concerns included the Zoological Society of London (which commissioned Lubetkin & Tecton to design new buildings for its premises at London and Whipsnade notably the Penguin Pool in Regent’s Park Zoo). As the decade progressed there was also a small, but significant, growth of private clients for the new architecture. And, increasingly, it began to penetrate the schools of architecture, albeit largely through the enthusiasms of individual teachers. Including Charles Reilly at the Liverpool University School and George Checkley at the Cambridge University School, and by the mid-1930s - some of the younger teachers at the Architectural Association. Concurrently, native modemist architects began to locate

Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain

75

the pedigree of their work in English architectural tradition, notably the Georgian. In this they were supported by contemporary commentators who saw the standardized units and proportions of Georgian architecture as the prototype for the new architecture more generally. Thus the German critic Guido Harbers reportedly exclaimed, on seeing Gloucester Place for the first time, 'Aber das ist Moderne’ (Powers, 1983: 4). And the Danish architect and town-planner Steen Eiler Rasmussen juxtaposed photographs of a modem house in Berlin with a Georgian terrace in his book London: the Unique City (first published in 1934). The accompanying text observed that both examples were characterized by ‘standardization [...] simplicity of forms [...] bare walls [...] flat roofs, windows [... with] as much glass area and as thin bars as possible, attempts to give an impression of freedom and openness [...] to the interiors, and to connect the light, sparsely furnished rooms with [...] beautiful gardens outside' (Powers, 1983: 4). The coincidence of the arrival of the refugees with this evolving architectural culture would make it possible for some of them to obtain high-profile commissions, as well as to evolve strategies by which to ‘naturalize’ their work. Reception Received wisdom has it that Britain was generous to refugees from Nazism; as Louise London has shown, however, this view needs qualification (London, 2000). Certainly, in the case of architecture, the reception given to luminaries such as Walter Gropius and Eric Mendelsohn was exceptional. Their eminence ensured that - although their paths were by no means easy - they encountered the minimum of obstacles to the resumption of their careers in England. They not only had guarantors, but found referees amongst senior members of the British architectural profession, and were rapidly offered architectural partnerships Gropius with E.Maxwell Fry, and Mendelsohn with Serge Chermayeff. Such a smooth transition was not the norm. Official British policy was to discourage permanent settlement. As a consequence, most refugees were admitted only as temporary visitors, without permission to work. Permits to stay could be revoked or curtailed if the holder left the country temporarily (Benton 1995, 50-51). And unconditional leave to stay and to ‘take any employment that is offered [...] without seeking permission from the Home Office’ was offered only to the small number who could persuade the British authorities - usually only with the help of influential referees - that their activities were ‘of benefit to this country’ (Benton 1995,46-47). These latter included those capable of creating employment for British nationals - the few refugee

76

Charlotte Benton

architects in a position to establish themselves as architectural principals or partners. Furthermore, later arrivals were subjected to more stringent general and professional restrictions. After the Anschluss, entrance regulations were tightened (London, 2000, Chapter 4); as a result, refugees from Germany and Austria were no longer permitted to enter the UK without valid visas issued in their countries of domicile, and - of course - there were many obstacles to obtaining these including the Nazi authorities’ institution of a requirement for foreign embassies and consulates to list those who had applied for such visas. At the same time, the passing of the 1938 Architects’ Registration Act placed new requirements on foreign architects to demonstrate their ability to practice. The financial support for most of these temporary visitors’ - few of whom were able to leave their countries of origin with sufficient funds to support themselves for any length of time - was vested in voluntary agencies. However, financial guarantees from these agencies were not easy to obtain, especially for those without prior contacts or appropriate introductions. Nor were ftinds from voluntary agencies either indefinitely guaranteed, or necessarily sufficient to cover the costs of board and keep. Some refugees evidently had to barter to make up the difference. Thus the Austrian architect Egon Riss, accommodated at Jack Pritchard’s Lawn Road Flats under the auspices of the Architects’ Czech Refugee Fund, worked as a handyman around the building in order to ‘earn’ his keep. Only later was he able to put his design skills to some limited use in furniture designs for Pritchard's Isokon Furniture Company; however, with the outbreak of the Second World War, even such opportunities as these evaporated. In order to obtain a labour permit, a refugee needed a firm offer of work. But, for many refugee architects, professional work was difficult to obtain. For one thing, there was a slump in the building industry through much of the 1930s. For another, modemist architectural practices - those most likely to able to make use of many of the refugee architects’ particular design skills were both few and far between and already mostly struggling to make ends meet. Thus, even when they were sympathetic in principle to the refugees’ plight, their sympathy was necessarily tempered by pragmatism. As Godfrey Samuel wrote, in reply to a request for help from H. Wemer Rosenthal: 'It is our policy with a small staff to have only one foreigner at a time’ (Letter to H.W. Rosenthal, 4.2.1937, Godfrey Samuel Papers). Samuel was undoubtedly well aware of the time needed for foreign architects to adapt to British building practices, and may also have been wary of attracting criticism from ‘Aryan’ colleagues,

Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain

77

especially at a time of un- and under-employment amongst native architects (Benton 1995, 68-9). Similar considerations may have informed Walter Gropius's reluctance - once re-installed in practice himself - to help refugee architects. (See letter from H.W. Rosenthal to Godfrey Samuel, 26.4.1936). Even when work was offered it was not always easy to obtain a labour permit. Foreigners were not permitted to take posts which could be filled by suitably qualified natives. As a result, sympathetic lawyers and employers were sometimes com plidt in small subterfuges. Peter Moro, only recently qualified when he arrived in England, recorded that ‘My visitor’s permit [...] did not allow me to take employment of any kind and an application for a labour permit had to be made. The solicitor dealing with this held out little hope of success. The only hope was for people with special skills. It was decided, therefore, that I was an expert on the design of spiral staircases and a permit for six months was granted on that basis. It seemed that I could survive only in instalments and then, regrettably, only with a degree of dishonesty’ (Moro n.d., 43). Bureaucratic regulations were not the only obstacles. British architects, through the agency of their professional organization - the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) - resisted the registration of foreign architects and took measures to limit their activities. Thus although the RIBA consented to Eric Mendelsohn’s admission without restrictions, it opposed his application to bring over his longstanding amanuensis, Johannes Schreiner, even though Mendelsohn pointed out that Schreiner’s particular skills and experience would help train - and thus expand opportunities for - British nationals within his practice. Luckily for Mendelsohn, the Home Office and/or Ministry of Labour exercised the discretion they possessed at this date (1933) to over-ride the RIBA’s advice (Benton 1995, 48-49). As the refugee crisis intensified, British architects lobbied for, and obtained, amendments to the Architects’ Registration Act. Passed in 1938, these made it impossible for anyone not already in practice in Britain as of July 1938, or who had not passed an appropriate qualifying examination such as the RIBA Special Final, to call themselves an architect. Furthermore, in 1939 the RIBA - to which, previously, the Home Office had referred refugee architects’ applications to practice or study only on an ad hoc basis - succeeded in obtaining the right to scrutinize all such applications. This was despite the fact that, as late as February 1939, official figures recorded only 25 refugee architects working in a profession which numbered around 12,000 practitioners in total (Benton 1995, 70). As a consequence of such obstacles, many qualified refugee

78

Charlotte Benton

architects were refused entry; some of those admitted chose - or were obliged - to re-emigrate; and, amongst those who stayed, several had to accept posts of lower status than their qualifications and experience warranted or turn to other fields of design - Eugen Kaufmann and Harry Rosenthal are notable examples. In such circumstances, opportunities for a creative exchange between the intellectual culture of the refugee architects and that of the host country would seem, at best, circumscribed. Yet the evidence suggests that some such exchanges did take place. The Émigrés* Work and Influence Those exiled architects who were able to resume their professional activities responded to their new situation in a variety of ways. A few appear to have adopted the prevailing design orthodoxies, at least on the surface. Others adapted their work selectively: the use of materials such as brick or stone instead of concrete offered a means of ‘keeping in keeping’ without the necessity altogether to abandon preferred design methodologies. And sometimes site and context inspired adjustments of a kind which could be made without significantly compromising established practices. So the attention to sympathetic landscaping in some of the English work of Walter Gropius and Eric Mendelsohn may indicate a deliberate attempt to connect with English pastoral tradition. Examples include Gropius and Fry’s project for an apartment block at Windsor, 1934, and Mendelsohn and Chermayeffs setting of the private house Shrub’s Wood, at Chalfont-St-Giles, 1933-4. Similarly, some of the migrant architects adopted the British modernists’ strategy of claiming a pedigree in Georgian and Regency prototypes. Despite such apparent concessions, however, established design practices and preferences often remained readily visible. Thus in Mendelsohn’s work, despite adjustments, a continuing preference for ‘dynamic’ effects and the use of ‘contrapuntal’ devices can be observed; and his approach to the design of key elements and details - such as principal staircases and the use of lettering on entrance façades - was consistent with his earlier practice. Paradoxically, Mendelsohn’s attempts to assimilate or to conform to the British stereotype of German modernism (Benton 1999, 201), for example, in Mendelsohn and Chermayeffs scheme for the re­ development of a site at the White City, in west London, c.1935, which draws directly on German modemist planning typologies of the 1920s (Benton 1999, 201). This brought his work closer to Hitchcock and Johnson’s definition of the ‘International Style’ than his pre-emigration work had been, with the result that Hitchcock regarded the De La Warr

Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain

79

Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea as his best building to date (Hitchcock 1937, 67-70). Such attempts to combine pre-emigration ideology and practice with the demands of a new context could be finely balanced, however, and were not always seen to be successful. Thus Lubetkin, perhaps with Mendelsohn in mind, criticized those émigré architects who ‘transplanted to another country [...] continue their work in too unbroken a sequence, not realizing that [...] sociological conditions [...] so very different [...] invalidate such a lack of flexibility’ (Lubetkin 1937). Yet although Mendelsohn’s English work suggests clear continuities with his earlier work, in practice he found that conditions in England severely inhibited his creative energies. He wrote to the American critic Lewis Mumford: ‘I do not feel very happy in England. I cannot breathe in a country without spiritual tension. I cannot work where creative fight is taken as attack against the “common sense” and where modem architecture has to dress with the arabesques of superficiality or highbrowisms’ (Letter of 12 April 1939, Erich Mendelsohn Archive). The arrival of refugee architects corresponded with a considerable growth of examples of the new architecture in England by the later 1930s. In 1932, Hitchcock and Johnson had observed that: ’In England [...] really modem architecture has only [just] begun to appear1 (Hitchcock 1937, 24). But by 1937 Hitchcock was able to present a dedicated exhibition of ‘Modem Architecture in England’ in New York and even to claim that today, it is not altogether an exaggeration to say that England leads the world in modem architectural activity’. Although he drew attention to the role of migrant architects in this phenomenon, Hitchcock was careful to emphasise its indigenous roots: ‘for all its international personnel, the English school of architecture must not be considered an alien phenomenon’ (Hitchcock 1969, 25 & 32). More recent assessments of the influence of the émigré architects have taken a similarly cautious line. John Gold’s view is that ‘collectively the refugees were too vulnerable and too marginal to shape the emerging British Modem Movement’ (Gold 1997,91). And William Curtis suggests that ‘it would be wrong to see their influence as anything other than an encouragement for a movement which had its own momentum’ (Curtis 1996, 333). Such judgements, however, seem to focus principally on formal concerns. If one looks beyond such narrow concerns, it may be argued that - despite their small numbers and often marginal positions émigré architects contributed in numerous ways to the changes which took place in the culture of architecture and design in England from the early 1930s to the early post-war years. For example, it is certain that the presence - albeit brief - of such luminaries as Walter Gropius,

80

Charlotte Benton

Marcel Breuer and Erich Mendelsohn both boosted confidence in the new idiom and enhanced the professional skills of their British architectural partners and assistants, some of whom would later achieve influential positions (Powers 2001, 69-70). Chermayeff recalled that Mendelsohn had been ‘invaluable’ to his own development as an architect (Benton 1999, 192-93). A number of the migrant architects actively contributed to the promotion of modemist theory through their membership of architectural groups, such as the MARS (Modem Architectural Research) Group, and publications, such as Circle edited by J. L. Martin, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, and was published by Faber & Faber, London, 1937. And some, notably Eugen Kaufmann, showed how commercial commissions of modest scale could be stylishly and consistently handled, for example, in his work for the Rothmans. During the war and early post-war years, émigré architects’ town-planning and design ideas helped to extend the ambitions of British modernists and create expectations for the reconstruction period (Benton 1995, 83-87). It is more difficult to assess the impact of the work of those architects who were compelled to diversify into other types of design, a group that included Ernst Freud, Jacques Groag, George Fejér, Fritz Gross, Eugen Kaufmann and Walter Segal. Outside the orbit of a small number of progressive producers and retailers such as Geoffrey Dunn, Heal’s, the John Lewis Partnership and the Isokon Furniture Company - these architects’ work as furniture and domestic interior designers may have had little real impact either on design or retail practices or consumer aspirations. On the other hand, the activities of émigré architects such as George Fejér, Peter Moro and Fritz Gross in the design of commercial exhibitions, shops and showrooms - despite the often ephemeral life-span of such commissions - almost certainly helped to raise the profile of these fields as the distinct areas of specialization they later became. The impact of the migrant architects on architectural education remains to be explored in any detail. Before the war, their impact was necessarily limited since, even if they could speak fluent English, restrictions were imposed on their employment in educational institutions - although the appointment of Gropius as Rector of the Royal College of Art was briefly considered. Nevertheless, some architects were invited to give occasional lectures in schools of architecture. Both Charles Reilly and Louise Mendelsohn have recorded that Eric Mendelsohn received a rapturous reception to his lecture to students and staff at the Liverpool School of Architecture in the autumn of 1933 (Louise Mendelsohn n.d., 289-90; Reilly 1938, 293). And

Refugee and Ém igré Architects in Britain

81

amongst those who were able to obtain teaching posts during - or soon after - the war, Arthur Kom was noted both for his insistence on the indivisibility of architecture and planning considerations, and for insisting that it was his students’ duty ‘to aim high, to design for the best* (Ginzburg 1979, 49-54). Peter Moro was remembered particularly for the rigorous criticism and methods he brought to his spell of teaching at the Regent Street Polytechnic. And the influence of émigrés’ writings on architecture should not be overlooked: Gropius’s The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (first published in 1935) and Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers o f the Modem Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (first published in 1936) were both significant for many contemporary - as well as later - students, teachers and practitioners of art and design as well as architecture. Thus the presence of refugee architects undoubtedly contributed to bringing about significant changes in British architectural culture during the 1930s and early post-war years; nevertheless, it should also be noted that the pre-migration work o f architects such as Gropius and Mendelsohn - as known in England mainly through exhibitions and publications - may have been as influential as their English work itself. And, clearly, other factors contributed to this paradigm shift. Furthermore, a significant - if often ’invisible’ - factor in the promotion of modernism in Britain over this period was its co-option as a symbol of democracy and freedom of artistic expression first in the war against fascism and later in the prosecution of the Cold W ar.1 Conclusion We might quibble about whether architects can be classed as intellectuals by virtue of their occupational category; few of the refugee architects were intellectuals in Bauman’s sense (Bauman 1987). Nevertheless, as Jennifer Platt observes in her contribution to this volume, any field of activity ‘can be intellectualized’, thus the category ’intellectual’ need not exclude contributions from the visual and performing arts. Furthermore, as Edward Timms’s chart of adjacencies and overlaps between Viennese cultural groups and personnel of the 1920s suggests, intellectual and artistic groups in particular centres may resonate or directly interact with one another (Timms 1993, 140). W hether we define those architects who emigrated to England between 1933 and 1939 as intellectuals or not, their experiences - both individually and collectively - are relevant to debates about how ideas and practices travel, and how migrants negotiate their relationships with the host culture. The architects’ example, more fully documented

82

Charlotte Benton

elsewhere than has been possible in this essay (Benton 1995),2 suggests answers to a range of questions which have been posed in recent literature in the field of exile studies. Such answers - here presented in summary - span the spectrum of these questions. Both ideas and practices may move, either independently of people or in association with people, or both; if the latter, they may be mutually reinforcing. Conversely people may move without significantly adhering to, or promoting, their existing ideas or practices, and indeed may seek to ‘naturalize’ these almost completely. As a consequence, it cannot be assumed that an apparently homogeneous intellectual group (e.g. German-speaking modemist architects) will necessarily respond uniformly to a new context. As has been indicated, a range of responses is possible, and these themselves may based on a number of factors. These last may include paradigm shite within the host culture itself even though these shifts may also be influenced by and/or correspond with a period of movement of people and ideas. The examples on which this case study has drawn also suggest that the impact of the movement of people and/or ideas may not be all one way. For example, it seems likely that Gropius and Breuer’s experience of adapting to British practices helped them when they re-emigrated to the USA. Furthermore, a migrant’s ability to adapt and influence the host culture positively may depend on the nature of their opportunités: the different expectations and needs of the host culture may create a lack of ‘fit’, or reciprocity, between the migrant’s expectations and ‘offers’. And failure to find the kind of opportunities - or the type and level of stimulus to creative ideas - to which he/she is habituated may be a cause both of internal conflict and ‘maladaptive’ approaches and practices. The cases of Eric Mendelsohn and Harry Rosenthal are pertinent here. The position and/or status of a migrant prior to emigration (including the issue of his/her degree of ‘intemationality’ or ‘domesticity’) may provide a useful guide to their success or otherwise in re-establishing themselves. However, definitions of ‘success’ may need to be adjusted to reflect the different range of possibilities available within the host culture (especially where high levels of prior skills and qualifications are deemed inadmissible by that culture). Materially, none of the refugee architects who arrived in Britain in the 1930s was able to achieve anything approaching the kind of success which had once been enjoyed by those like Eric Mendelsohn and Walter Gropius in Weimar Germany.3 Furthermore, ‘intemationality’ and ‘visibility’ in a previous specialist context may not be a reliable guarantee that the same status can be maintained in a new context. The experience of Eugen Kaufmann offers

Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain

83

a case in point. However, although he was not able to pursue his pre­ emigration success in the public sector, his professional competence was quickly recognized by a handful of clients in the commercial sector. The issue of ‘success’ may also have to be considered in terms of subjective experience. Thus although Eric Mendelsohn was materially successful in England by comparison with some of his English modernist peers, as well as fellow refugee architects, in practice this success was, as we have seen, vitiated by his sense of an absence of stimulus and lack of ease in his new surroundings. The role of intermediary artefacts - in architecture notably drawings and photographs - and their style should not be underestimated as a means of the transmission - and transformation - of the ideas and practices, both in tandem with and independently of the movement of individuals. Mendelsohn’s dynamic drawing style and his suggestive use of streamlined imagery, which developed during and soon after the First World War, was directly influential for the drawing style of some of the assistants in the Mendelsohn and Chermayeff office. But even though his influence was most visible in the 1930s, it was already known in England through publications and exhibitions well before he arrived here in 1933. And the new styles of photography which developed in continental Europe in the 1920s, and their frequent association with the representation of other forms of artistic modernism, were also influential for the evolution of modernism in British architecture and, in turn, its means of representation. This is exemplified by the work of the architectural photographers Dell & Wainwright (already mentioned above) for the Architectural Review, and John Havinden’s architectural photographs (notably of Lubetkin & Tecton’s work). As far as Platt’s ‘counterfactual conditional’ is concerned, the case of architecture suggests both that these migrants would have been influential anyway and that some change would have taken place without their presence. Nevertheless, their presence contributed to a more rapid and extensive change than would otherwise have taken place, both as a result of first hand experience of their design practice and the wider dissemination of their ideas through lectures and the publication in English of some of their writings. Finally, as Mitchell Ash has observed for the case of the history of science, an emphasis on 'celebrities’ - and the present essay has not been able to avoid this - is problematic. More differentiated study offers both a more modest and more complex picture. Yet this more modest and complex picture may point to significant ways in which ideas and practices become more widely diffused, especially outside the immediate sphere of intellectual

Charlotte Benton

84

elites. Ulrike Walton-Jordan’s discussion of the post-emigration practices of Hans and Elsbeth Juda (see Chapter 6) is pertinent here, as are the non- and para-architectural activities of some of the architect migrants who have been mentioned in this essay.

Bibliography Baum an, Z . 1987. Legisiators and Interpreters, Cam bridge: Polity Barron, S. and Eckmann, S. eds 1997. Exiles * Em igrés: The Flight o f European Artists from Hitler, New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Los Angeles County M useum of Art Benton, C . and T . 1979. ‘Architecture: Contrasts o f a D ecade’, in Thirties: British art and design before the war, London: Arts Council o f G reat Britain, 47*61 Benton, C . 1995. A D ifferent World: Em igré Architects in Britain 1928-1958, London: RIBA H einz G allery Benton, C . 1999. ‘Enough M istakes and Experience Behind M e - Enough Strength and Future Before M e’, in Stephan, R. ed, Erich M endelsohn: Dynamics and Function: R ealized Visions o f a Cosmopolitan Architect, Ostfildem -Ruit: H atje C antz Publishers, 1 9 0 -2 0 5 ,2 7 1 -7 2 Beyer, O . ed 1967. Eric Mendelsohn: Letters o f an Architect, London, N ew York, Toronto: Abeiard-Schum ann Blomfiek), R. 1934. ‘For and Against M odem Architecture', The Listener, 28 Novem ber,

886 Curtis, W . J. R. 1996. M odem Architecture since 1900, London: Phaidon Freud, E. ‘A Foreign Architect Observes England’, Design for To-D ay, O ctober 1 9 3 4 ,3 9 4 5 Gold, J. R . 1997. The Experience o f Modernism: M odem Architects and the Future City 1928-1953, London: Spon Heilbut, A. 1983. Exiled in Paradise. Germ an Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University o f California Press Hitchcock, H .-R . and Johnson, P. 1969. M odem Architecture: International Exhibition, N ew York: Am o, 1969, (reprint of 1937 edition) Jam es, K. 1997. Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture o f Germ an M odernism , Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press London, L. 2000. W hitehall and the Jews 1933-1948. British Imm igration P olicy a n d the Holocaust, Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press

Refugee and Émigré Architects in Britain

85

Lubetkin, B. 1937. ‘M odem Architecture in England', Am erican Architect and Architecture, February, 29-42 Powers, A. 1983. ‘Look Stranger a t this Island now’: English Architectural Drawings o f the 1930s, London: The Architectural Association Powers, A. 2001. Serge Cherm ayeff: D esigner Architect Teacher, London: RIBA Publications R eilly, C . H. 1938. Scaffolding in the Sky: S Sem i-architectural Autobiography, London: Routledge Tim m s, E. 1993. ‘Die W iener Kreise: schöpferische Interaktionen in der W iener M oderne', in D ie W iener Jahrhundertwende, Nautz, J. and Vahrenkam p, R. eds, Vienna: Böhlau, 1 28-43

Unpublished Sources Bor, W . ca. 1994. 'Mem oirs’, unpublished typescript seen by author Kent, E . (né Eugen Kaufm ann) n.d. ‘Memoirs o f Eugene Kent*, unpublished typescript, Archive, British Architectural Library (hereafter BAL), Royal Institute of British Architects (hereafter RIB A ) M endelsohn, E. 12/04/1939. Letter, Erich Mendelsohn Archive, Kunstbibliothek, Berlin M endelsohn, L n.d. ‘M y Life in a Changing W orld’, unpublished typescript seen by author Moro, P . n.d. ‘A Sense of Proportion: Memoirs of an Architect’, unpublished typescript seen by author Sam uel, G ., to H. W . Rosenthal, 4.02 .1 93 7. Godfrey Sam uel papers, S aG /84/3, Archives, BAL, R IB A

For visual exam ples of the first, see Em ö Gokffinger’s exhibition work for the Army Bureau o f Current Affairs (ABCA), such as the ‘Traffic’ exhibition of 1944 (illus. Benton 1995, 9 0 ). m aterial for which is held in the RIBA Drawings Collection. S ee also ‘Your Britain: Fight for it Now’, a 1943 poster which uses the im age of Lubetkin & Tecton’s Finsbury Health Centre for propaganda purposes (illus. Benton 1995, 94); the poster was designed by Abram Gam es, official poster designer to the W ar Office; an exam ple is held by the Im perial W ar Museum . 2 Little o f substance on the work and influence of ém igré architects who arrived in England between 1933 and 1939 has been published since my - necessarily limited study o f 1995. However, a number of Germ an and other scholars have considered - or are currently working on - such issues in relation to other countries and regions, including Australia, Palestine/lsrael, Turkey, and Latin Am erica. A conference titled ‘Architecture and Exile: the Germ an-speaking Emigration and the Transformation of Modernism (19331945)', which brought together some of this work, was organized by Bemd Nicolai at the TU-Bertin in Novem ber 1998. And Prof. Nicolai (now at the University of Trier) is currently engaged in a research project to co-ordinate existing - and stim ulate new - work in this area. A more recent conference, ‘Tras las huellas de arquitectos alem anes en Am érica Latina’, organized by the Instituto Ibero-Am erican de Berlin and the Grupo des

86

Charlotte Benton

Arquitectos Latino-Americanos, was held in Berlin in March 2001. A t the tim e o f w riting, proposals to publish the proceedings of these conferences have not yet been realized . 9 C. H. Reilly recorded that, in the autumn of 1933, on the occasion of a lecture a t the Liverpool University school of architecture, Mendelsohn w as to have announced his intention to apply for naturalization, but that just before the lecture began M endelsohn begged him not to m ake the announcement, on the grounds that 'M y solicitors in Berlin say there is yet a chance of saving a portion of my fortune, about £70,000 ... O f course I agreed. An architect who still might have £70,000. W ho was I to risk it?’ Quoted in Reilly 1938, 293. (In the event M endelsohn's wife Louise intervened, the announcem ent was m ade, and the chance o f saving the £70 ,00 0 lo st.)

ULRIKE WALTON-JORDAN DESIGNS FOR THE FUTURE: GABY SCHREIBER AS AN EXPONENT OF BAUHAUS PRINCIPLES IN BRITAIN

On boarding a British Airways plane, the traveller acknowledges the fam iliar aspects of the interior cabin design: the seats, the trays, the colour and texture of the upholstery. But more general features like the lighting, the space and the overall concept of flying are part and parcel o f the experience. To a large degree, these impressions derive from the creativity of a refugee from Nazi oppression, who came to England in 1938 to start an extraordinary career in design consultancy: Gaby Schreiber, née Wolff, from Austria. Further examples of her influence include the interior design of the transatlantic liner Queen Elizabeth II, the furniture in Marks & Spencer cafés, and the plastic utensils for cooking and eating at home. Gaby Schreiber’s achievements, which will be the main focus of this paper, illustrate a phenomenon that has so far not received the scholarly and public attention it deserves: Refugees from Nazism have enriched British society in the field of applied design and of commercially viable artistic and manufacturing skills, which have been absorbed into British consciousness in a way that proves both their ingenuity and success. Patterns of transcultural exchange can be identified, which arguably brought about a paradigm change. These achievements, which were often accompanied by a strong sense of social responsibility, deserve to be acknowledged alongside the scientific, scholarly and artistic contributions of former refugees. These creative interactions with British society must be seen in a wider historical framework if we are to appreciate the wide-ranging consequences of the refugees’ influence. British Culture and International Design The First World War had been a defining time for the British economy, culture and society. Its effects, and those of the post-war economic depression, were still very much felt when the first refugees from Nazism arrived on British shores in 1933. The early 1930s were a time of economic difficulty for British exports in particular, which were threatened by protectionism and the bilateral balancing of exchange controls. Against the backdrop of short-term recovery until 1938, which was later sustained by the processes of rearmament, the refugees were faced with the challenging task of creating a new economic base for themselves so that they could contribute to the shape of British industry (see Morgan 1990, 3-158). Britain became a new home for over 50,000

88

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

refugees from Nazi oppression, amongst them ten thousand children from the ‘Kindertransport’ (see Sherman 1973). The balance sheet resulting from this process of resettlement is impressive, but the complex process of settling in another country cannot be analysed in a summary manner without the risk of losing sight of the uniqueness of every individual. Developing new economic and social roots was a challenge, which for many refugees meant changing their profession, as in the case of many lawyers. For others, traditions existed that allowed for a transfer of talents and interests. Perhaps the most significant was the textile industry and its various marketing and artistic branches. Described by Werner E. Mosse as ‘probably the major field o f Jewish (and, probably not only Jewish) entrepreneurial activity’ in the nineteenth century, it retained this importance for later generations and was transplanted to Britain in the wake of Nazi persecution (Mosse 1987, 39). This was achieved in defiance of the Nazi contempt for Jewish manufacturers. Their entrepreneurial skills had been attacked at every level by Nazi ideology, which operated with crude stereotypes of ‘Jewish’ behaviour. While the manufacturing industries received some British government backing for settlement in the deprived areas, those involved with innovative design attracted comparatively limited public funds and awareness. Designers frequently relied upon freelance work, supported by good publicity and the patronage of private and public clients. A pioneering role in the publicising of new design ideas was played by Elsbeth and Hans Juda’s magazine The Ambassador, which provided a voice for consumer-oriented creativity. In 1933 Hans Juda, a promising economic journalist with the Berliner Tageblatt, who also played football for FC Darmstadt and performed as a musician with the Collegium Musicum Freiburg, came to Britain from Berlin with his young wife, the photographer Elsbeth Juda. They arrived with only two suitcases and a violin. Elsbeth was already familiar with England, as she had stayed in Oxford as a child. She had grown up in a cultured and liberal Jewish home, and her father Julius Goldstein, a professor in Darmstadt, had provided for tutoring in English. She later went to study and work as a photographer for prominent publications, including Harper’s Bazaar. In 1933, two years after they had married, the brutal reality of Germany under the Nazis was brought home to the young couple. Hans Juda, working late one night early in 1933, witnessed the abusive behaviour of an SA man towards a waitress in a café. Juda intervened and was badly beaten up. Two weeks later, he received a summons for disrespectful behaviour towards the SA member, and when the couple came home to their flat in the artists’ colony in Laubenheimer Platz one day, a house search had taken place and they

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

89

found armed men positioned throughout their library, while some of their books were burning. Their decision to emigrate was hastened by advice received from a former friend, who had joined the NSDAP and gave them a chilly warning to leave. The couple arrived in Britain on Guy Fawkes Night in 1933, settled into a boarding house in Bayswater and started to pick up the threads of their lives.1 Although Hans Juda did not speak English, he developed a great attachment to his country of refuge. His contacts in economic journalism provided them with a connection to the editorial headquarters of an innovative, truly international publication called International Textiles. Published in Amsterdam, it provided trade and fashion information of high quality through its network of offices worldwide. Also, it published its features regularly in four languages - Dutch, German, Spanish and English - spanning the globe not only in terms of trade, but also of reader accessibility. As far as could be ascertained, there is no critical appraisal available to date of this international publication which only ceased in 1970 and can be interpreted as model for the integrative and innovative efforts by refugees from Nazism in Britain. Hans Juda established the London office of the magazine, which helped to shape the representation of design and retail in Britain and their relationship with international developments. Marketing and design, the editors discovered, were relatively neglected areas in Britain at the time, and International Textiles provided a new outlook on both. The magazine was shipped from Portugal to the rest of the world after the outbreak of war and the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. International Textiles had offices in Batavia, Belgrade, Bombay, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Guatemala City, Haifa Hadar Hakarmel, Helsinki, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Kobe, Lima, Lisbon, Los Angeles, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Stockholm, Sydney and Tokyo. The London office now became a beacon of free enterprise journalism. More than that, it stood for a philosophy of peaceful economic co-operation. According to Hans Juda, The world must exchange goods, otherwise they’ll exchange weapons’ (AAD/1987/1). Apart from subscription as the chosen mode for building circulation, advertising kept the journal financially afloat. During the 1930s it also provided a much-needed window on the world for firms within Germany, many of them still in Jewish hands. In 1946 International Textiles was renamed The Ambassador and developed into the leading export magazine for British textiles. Combining an artistic with a commercial outlook, the editors spearheaded a re-evaluation of contemporary design in the fashion, art and retail world. This transformation would not have been possible without the work of a number of other refugees who were innovators in the field of

90

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

design. Their work was facilitated by co-operation with private and public institutions and companies, which continued in the often dire post-war reconstruction period. An outstanding example is provided by the work of the architect Jacques Groag from Prague, who designed utility furniture and was responsible for the quality control and design departments at Marks & Spencer. Modemist impulses in art design found their way into the British scene in the work of Groag’s wife Jacqueline (née Hilde Blum), who proved the versatility of modemist and abstract creativity in pattem design from wallpaper to dress fabrics.2 Jacques Groag was not able to fully realize his potential as an innovative and socially-minded interior designer and architect. In his case the loss of the continental congenial climate of informal discussions over coffee, and an integrated social and professional life, was crucial to this drying up of creative energy. This was matched by a failure on the British side to suggest possible niches of contribution.3 Hans Schmoller of Penguin Books also put his creative energy at the disposal of an innovative, democratising British venture. Head of design at Penguin for many years, Schmoller also indirectly promoted the works of other refugees, notably Nikolaus Pevsner, who taught Britons to view their architectural heritage through continental eyes.4 Hans Schleger, graphic designer and corporate exhibition organiser, is another prominent emigrant who had in fact left Germany some time before Hitler’s rise to power. He was bom in Kempen, Germany in 1898 and later became the set designer for Karl Hagenbeck’s famous circus in Berlin. In 1924 he went to New York, and in 1932 he came to London as a freelance designer. He succeeded in unifying design policies for a number of British industrial concerns, including the British Sugar Corporation and the John Lewis Partnership.5 Sometimes, talents for design were discovered through the enforced change of professional circumstances. Bernhard Breuer, who had practised as a lawyer in Berlin until 1933 and suffered under the ‘Aryanisation’ of the legal profession, later became print director at Ganymed Original Editions, which was founded in 1960. It should, however, never be forgotten that for every success in this area, there are examples of highly deserving individuals who did not fulfil their potential for creative and lucrative achievements in their new country of residence. Their experiences reflect the power of totali­ tarianism to suppress creativity. Charlotte Bondy is an example o f a highly gifted designer who worked in the developing field of aluminium foil packaging and window dressing. She was arrested in Nazi Germany and branded an ’enemy of the state’. Forbidden to marry her Jewish fiancé Paul Bondy, who ran the export department of Aluminium Walzwerke in Singen, she left Germany in 1936 for London and they

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

91

married in Britain. She found herself frustrated in her prime by the British work permit policy for refugees. Charlotte Bondy painted and made toy animals in Britain, while her daughter continues the artistic fam ily tradition.6 Had political and economic circumstances in the country of refuge been different, many more would doubtless have made an impact on British society. Bertha Sander (1901-1990), who worked at the School of Arts & Crafts in Cologne, came to England in 1936 and was also denied a work permit. Consequently, she was unable to continue her career. The key to the refugees’ success lay in a fortunate combination of practical and material opportunities, an exceptionally high selfmotivation and intellectual independence, coupled with a flair for adapting ideals and skills to the changing circumstances in Britain. Happily, their influence continues today, both in the first and second generation, and has borne fruit through teaching and example throughout British society. From these preliminary instances it can be seen that the evolving creative relationships between continental émigrés and their British colleagues and clientele functioned in a number of different ways. It can be argued that there were three principal models which facilitated creative interaction and professional success. First, creating public platforms for the dissemination of new ideas and products (as in the case of The Ambassador). Secondly, co­ operating with open-minded British institutions and companies, among which Marks & Spencer provides the most instructive example. And thirdly, introducing a new philosophy which combined functional design with elegance of style within a comprehensive approach to project development. All three of these elements can be traced back to the seminal influence of the Bauhaus. Gaby Schreiber and the Bauhaus Tradition The career of one refugee designer, Gaby Schreiber, exemplifies the significance of the combination of circumstances described above. Schreiber not only achieved success in the traditional world of British art and design, but also forged a path to economic and artistic success for independent business women in the age of predominantly male ‘tycoons’. A succinct overview of her career is provided by an article published on 10 September 1958 in The Tatter, introducing to its readers a personality who had captured the public imagination: Gaby Schreiber is the Austrian-born industrial artist who designed the interior of the new comet je t airline. From wallpaper to carpets, tableware to lighting, she is responsible for all the 200 different items that make up the furnishing of the aircraft. Behind a black

92

Ulrike W atton-Jordan

marble desk in her Belgravia office she presides over her own group of architects, artists, engineers, colour consultants, typographers and others. It is a remarkable position for a woman to achieve, but no more remarkable than everything else in Mrs Schreiber’s career (Anon 1958a). Schreiber won many admirers, promoting both the acceptance of modernism in Britain and a genuine enthusiasm for the creative arts. Through her flair for placing her skills in the service of consultancy work, she pioneered the successful relationship between creativity and consumer services we have come to recognize as the hallmark of contemporary design. In 1938 Gaby Schreiber, an Austrian interior and stage designer of Jewish origin, had arrived in Britain. She was following her husband Leopold Schreiber, who also faced Nazi persecution as a Jew, to start a new life away from this threat. Bom in Vienna, Gaby was the daughter of the industrialist Peter Wolff, who also found sanctuary in Britain. After enjoying a privileged education, not only in Vienna and Berlin, but also in Florence and Paris, she had married at the age of eighteen the writer and journalist Leopold Schreiber, a man twenty years her senior. While living in Berlin, she was apprenticed to an interior design firm and subsequently worked as assistant to the international stage and film designer Rochus Gliese. In this period the British design scene, which had initially been resistant to international modernism, was gradually becoming more open to new influences from abroad. In the late nineteenth century, the Arts and Crafts Movement had undergone a subtle shift away from William Morris’s resistance to the machine and modem methods of production towards R. C. Ashbee’s realisation that modem civilisation was based on them. But this change was so gradual that England had forfeited her leadership in the shaping of the new style just about 1900, that is, at the very moment when the work of all the pioneers began to converge into one universal movement. [...] The levelling tendency of the coming mass movement [...] was too much against the grain of the English character. [...] so, at the very moment when continental architects discovered the elements of a genuine style for the future in English building and English crafts, England herself receded into an eclectic neo-classicism (Pevsner 1968,175-6). Significantly, many of the first architects to embrace modem, machine-related design, were American, German, Austrian and Belgian: Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Louis Sullivan, Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

93

W right and Henri Van de Velde (see Pevsner 1968, 27). Germany and Austria pioneered a ‘new sobriety’ (in German, Neue Sachlichkeit) of beauty and usefulness combined, resulting in a truly new quality of unobtrusive design. This approach was pioneered in the ‘Werkbund’ from 1907, and later perfected in the Bauhaus academies in Weimar and Dessau (Pevsner 1968, 35). At the heart of this movement was the idea of beauty and utility for the masses, endorsed by modernist designers on the continent. But it was not until the 1930s that the twin movements of démocratisation and aesthetic radicalism began to influence avant-garde British design. Britain lacked a Bauhaus tradition committed to integrating functionalism with aesthetic form. It was this that gave Gaby Schreiber her chance as a design consultant for British industry. Her commitment to ‘total design projects’ was strongly influenced by her early training under the impact of the modemist movement in Germany. This cosmopolitan background was rightly emphasized in the obituary tribute published in The Guardian on 11 July 1991: She absorbed the ideas and aesthetics of the Bauhaus, which was flooding through artistic central Europe at that time. The best of her designs, especially her plastic tableware, are very Bauhaus-like in their mechanical precision. Schreiber loved the crafts, but her design philosophy was based on the machine. Schreiber came to England in 1938; Gropius and Breuer had reached London four years earlier, in search of home in Hampstead ( Guardian 1991). Through her development of new British design projects, she succeeded in anchoring the aesthetic and democratic principles of functional beauty firmly in this country and contributed to the modernisation of the highly visible public display of design. But there was more to this process than aesthetic innovation: a whole new humanistic and utilitarian trend manifested itself in this movement. In 1918, when Walter Gropius took over the directorship of the Arts & Crafts School of the Grand Duke of Saxony in Weimar from Henry van de Velde, he set the institution up on a new level of theory and practice. He wrote: Architects, painters and sculptors must learn to know and to understand the many aspects of building both in its totality and in all its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued again with the architectonic spirit it has lost as ‘salon art’. The old art schools were unable to create this unity, how could they, since art cannot be taught? They must once more become part of the workshop. This world of drawing and painting, of designers and handicraft-artists must at last become a world of building again [...] for there is no such thing as ‘art as a profession’ (Westphal 1991,38).

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

94

This radical stance presented a challenge to the mainstream art world and was of necessity first and foremost an urban phenomenon. As Uwe Westphal points out: This was an uncompromising position to adopt, and one which, not surprisingly, drew protests from the more traditionally minded. Like others before him, Gropius attacked the ideas of the conservatively biased art world of the post-war period, with its self-centred view of culture and its elitist claim that art was the preserve of a small, elect minority (Westphal 38). By combining an earlier respect for the materials (shared by the English tradition) with a new mass-based functionalism, Gropius soon drew around him a circle of like-minded, yet very individualistic colleagues. After their flight from Nazi Germany they made a significant contribution to developments in the U.S.A. and other European countries. Radical in his commitment to functionalism, Gropius became a model for the modernist architects in Britain, including Welles Coates and others. In 1934, the ‘Lawn Road flats’, Hampstead (London), the Penguin enclosure at London Zoo and the Cheddar Gorge Cave Restaurant were opened as key buildings of this British modemist movement. Belatedly, there was a readiness in Britain to embrace the continental modernist influence. Tangible proof of this dynamic was the involvement of the Hungarian Bauhaus master Marcel Breuer in London town planning between 1935 and 1937. Schreiber seems to have been particularly impressed by Breuer’s work. In 1956, on her first visit to Berlin since 1938, she mentioned his Berlin projects in her diary, alongside the Gropius legacy (BED 23/4/1956). Getting Established in Britain On 13 January 1945, Gaby Schreiber’s business diary records: ‘Savoy -T e a Theatre’ (BED 13/1/1945). Seven years after her arrival in Britain, the Austrian designer had found her feet not only professionally, but also socially, in London. Shortly after her arrival in Britain, she had founded an interior design company in partnership with Daniel Sykes. Possibly through the introduction of his sister Angela, who was married to Lord Antrim, she also began to work for the furniture company of Lord and Lady Antrim in Glenham, Northern Ireland. Lord Antrim was to remain a dose business partner and co-director of her own companies in years to come. In 1943, when the Second World War had reached its darkest hour, she took the risky step of founding her own design consultancy in London, ‘Gaby Schreiber Assodates’.

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

95

During the war years, she was appointed exclusive Plastics Designer to the company ‘Runcoiite’. In the late 1940s she set up office in Hobart Road, Kensington, and began a long-standing association with the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers. From 1945 onwards, her business engagement diaries record professional and occasionally - social activities, which increasingly document her successful and happy integration into the British design scene. Her diary is almost exclusively written in English, a choice that dearly underlines her conscious effort to tune into the British way of life. Crudally, however, her life also revolved around continental friends and family: her father regularly came for long weekends or meals, and a number of German acquaintances and friends feature in her busy schedule (see BED 1945-6). Importantly, continental dients - often sharing her émigré status - also appeared regularly in her engagement diaries in these early years. She enjoyed drinks parties, dinners and lunches in London (see BED 8/5/1945,9/6/1945). Yet, to begin with, her finandal drcumstances were far from comfortable, as a rare list of expenditure on 27 May 1945 shows. Her diary also records intermittent health problems (BED 27/5/1945). At home in London, she pursued multifaceted cultural interests which induded stage design. In February 1945 Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was playing at London’s Duke of York Theatre. Readers of the announcement were notified that the stage design was supervised by a firm of interior designers, set up in the capital some seven years ago: Sykes & Schreiber. This example shows that Gaby Schreiber’s wartime work also referred back to her early love for the theatre and stage design. In this, the modernist idea of a unity between the practical, useful and affordable components of design and its artistic elements was very much evident. Privately, too, Gaby Schreiber continued to visit the theatre and the dnema in London. Her life had acquired a certain routine, with frequent afternoon tea appointments, invitations to cocktail parties and cultural events. Nor did her design lack a sense of humour: Daniel Sykes and his young Austrian business partner produced, among other designs, a ‘Napoleonic’ wallpaper with patterns evoking a nostalgia for the past which seems to mockingly predate the onset of this mood in the 1950s. After the end of the war, following travels to the U.S.A., there was a discernible American influence in her work. Gaby Schreiber developed the ‘corporate design office' and worked in colour consultancy and lighting (AAD/1991/11a). By then, she could look back on achievements which refleded the humanitarian, democratic and aesthetic ideals she had developed during her studies in Vienna, Florence and Berlin, whilst adapting her consultancy talents to the British requirements. Gaby

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

96

Schreiber Associates and Convel Design, the two companies which became the basis of her consultancy work, published a glossy brochure describing their programme: A comprehensive and integrated design programme is the means by which an organisation can achieve the visual expression o f its character and aims. Top management departments of research, manufacturing, sales and communication must link in a combined campaign with the design consultant. It is such a design service, directed at increasing sales, which we are offering to industry throughout Europe. The French translation of this bilingual brochure brings out the link with ‘New Sobriety' traditions even more clearly: ‘une campagne concertée avec l'expert en conception esthéthique et fonctionelle’ (AAD/1991/11/3/12). It is to the practical realisation of this formula we now turn. Britain Can Make It: The Post-W ar Exhibitions When the Council for Industrial Design proposed to hold a major exhibition of current British industrial design in 1946, the project bore the working title of ‘Swords into Ploughshares - British Goods fo r the New Age’. The resulting show ‘Britain Can Make It’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London marked a new departure for modem, forwardlooking promotion of post-war design. Of course, even before the Second World War, greater publicity for ‘British art in industry’ had been achieved through exhibitions, like the show of glassware, ceramics and metalwork at the Royal Academy in 1935 under the same title. In 1944 the Council of Industrial Design was founded under the auspices o f the Board of Trade, aiming at an improved understanding of the role of design in British industry and increased sales of its products. After 1949, it had an official mouthpiece in the journal Design. Additionally, a ‘Design Centre’ was opened in Haymarket in 1956 as a showcase for recent design. Through the Design Council’s Index, products were selected on aesthetic and performance grounds (see Liebenau, 1988). The organisers described the primary purpose of the 1946 exhibition as: to demonstrate to the British people and the rest of the world the quality of post-war British industrial design. [To be unmistakably distinguished from arts and crafts] and to stake a claim to British leadership in the new age. [...] British design and industrial achievement in war can be used as a supporting theme to underline the significance of the post-war display. Apart from this the

Designs for the Futur»: Gaby Schreiber

97

reference to historical achievements should be limited. Logical though it is to argue ‘Britain has always led - she will still lead’, in practice too much backward looking would confirm the critics and doubters of Britain’s confirmed leadership (AAD/S.F. 20946/75). S ir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, emphasised: THE PRIMARY OBJECT of the ‘Britain Can Make It’ Exhibition is to prove that industrial design is by no means an impracticable and idealistic matter. Industrial design has, in fact, the most intimate connection with the comfort and happiness of our daily life. [...] It is these new pioneer goods of wonderful quality and excellent design that will establish for us foreign markets which we shall be able to hold against competition when the full flow of supplies once more reaches the markets of the world. It is quality of workmanship and design - both equally important - that will maintain our export trade and so enable us to have a decent standard of life for our people (Cripps 1946,5). A t the ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition, visitors could for the first time identify individual designers alongside the manufacturers of massproduced items. ‘Let us hope’, wrote Professor Robin Darwin, ‘that it marks a new attitude towards the designer - that we are going to recognise him in future as someone who can do more than most people to make our lives easy and enjoyable’ (Darwin 1946, 141). As the first post-war show of new design, ‘Britain Can Make It’ occupies a special position in the development of this field. Visitors could view a display entitled: ‘Birth of an Egg-Cup: what shall the egg cup look like?’, explaining the role of the industrial designer to an unsuspecting public. Designed by Misha Black and Milner Gray of the Design Research Unit of the Council for Industrial Design, this exhibition was ‘the first piece of design propaganda’ by this newly formed association which ‘selected all the exhibits’, as the ‘Historical Notes’ in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s archive collection comment (AAD/1977/4). The goal of ‘Britain Can Make It’ was also to improve standards in the industrial arts, and the displays reflected the general ‘argument’ of the exhibition. The official catalogue listed a number of firms owned by or associated with former refugees, confirming their contribution to the progressive ethos of the exhibition. They included the travel luggage firm B. Jonzen & Co., the glass manufacturers Wolingham Plastics, the publishers Penguin and the precision instrument manufacturers Hilgers & Watts Ltd. Also, we find Marian Mahler designing for Edinburgh Weavers, Oswald Hollmann (Beckenham) for Hilite Shades, Siemens Electric Lamps & Supplies Ltd

98

Ulrike W alion-Jordan

with their designer A. Loebenstein, and Margaret Leischner’s travel luggage designs (the latter had been associated with the Bauhaus in Germany) (50 Years Bauhaus, 139,140,213). It was a major success for Gaby Schreiber when she won the ‘Britain Can Make It* commission to design the ‘Women’s Dress Hall’ for one of her companies, Convel Design. Listeners to the wireless could also hear her on the BBC on 18 September, announcing the forthcoming event. On 23 September, she was invited to a preview at the Victoria & Albert Museum (BED 18/9/1946, 23/9/1946). Apart from her role as commissioned designer, Gaby Schreiber exhibited a number of pieces in plastic, mainly kitchen equipment, at the ‘Britain Can Make If exhibition. These included a very user-friendly and innovative colander and strainer with movable inserts in order to facilitate washing dishes as well as kitchen spoons and salad servers in white and pastel colours. This aspect of her work, combining aesthetic with practical considerations, reflected the industrial aesthetics represented in modernist German design. Rolf Rossler, who was at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1923 to 1929, recalled this approach as it was executed at the Bauhaus metal workshops: Production generally began with a workshop discussion which was always led by Moholy-Nagy [...] Together, we contributed information about the function of the object to be produced. If, for example, we were to make a tea or coffee service, then we discussed in detail the methods used in each part of the world for preparing coffee or tea (quoted by Whitford 1986,207). The ‘Britain Can Make If exhibition was followed five years later by the hugely popular Festival of Britain at the South Bank, London. These public exhibitions were aimed at the trade and the general public alike, and they represented more than the latest trends in design and production from furniture to fashion. Alongside publications like The Ambassador, organisations like the Council for Industrial Design as well as existing and newly founded companies, these shows provided a forum for former refugees. Innovative continental traditions joined hands with current British trends in a marriage of expertise and creativity. Publicists in the field, like Hans Juda, editor of The Ambassador, served on expert panels for judging the exhibits. This was a tribute to the reputation which this refugee-edited journal had built up in Britain since 1933. Throughout both exhibitions, deceptively English-sounding names often conceal on closer inspection a strong creative impact by continental designers. This phenomenon, of course, also highlights

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

99

British readiness to employ these colleagues on their merits, belying the widespread cliché of British insularity at least in these areas of industrial consumer production. The increasing co-operation of design and industry in a variety of areas, as favoured by The Ambassador, was very much present both at ‘Britain Can Make If and the Festival of Britain. Former refugees were also involved in the media coverage of these shows. In 1951, The Ambassador managed to shoot a rare photograph of the principal festival organisers on the rooftop of the newly constructed Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. Former refugees, too, represented the performing arts: Berthold Goldschmidt from Berlin, for instance, won one of the prizes of the Festival of Britain’s opera competition with his work Beatrice Cena. However, it took more than forty years before this opera was finally produced onstage in London. See Hansen 1996, esp. 230-257, for a more general background to individual musician’s fetes. As Plastics Designer at Runcolite, Gaby Schreiber participated both in ‘Britain Can Make If - dubbed ‘A Show for Every Londoner’ by the newspaper The Star - and the Festival of Britain. If the war years and their immediate aftermath had brought experiments in new materials like plastics for Gaby Schreiber, her activities only became truly public in 1946. A ‘shop window’ for Britain’s ability to compete internationally as well as to capture the domestic market, this exhibition presented a touchstone of recognition for any young designer in Britain. This was all the more true for refugees. At the Festival of Britain, her designs included commemorative plates for this major public attraction, as well as objects for everyday use like a cocktail shaker, a lemon squeezer and glasses (Society of Industrial Designers 1951, 212). Following from her wartime work, the brightly coloured plastic utensils made waves not only in contemporary Britain, but became objects of veneration in the 1980s. Now they are to be found in the Museum of Modem Art in New York. Mass production did not necessarily have to compromise on style, as her design of pressed-glass hors d’oeuvres dishes for Runcolite prove (AAD/1991/11b). Her participation in the great event of 1951, which bound together the entertaining arts with commercial design into a festival of post-war reconstruction, represented a step towards integration that went beyond professional success. When King George VI delivered a speech about the Festival of Britain, he remarked on the growth of a sense of national confidence and optimism: ‘Every family in all parts of the country will share in this great festival, so that all of us may join in showing that Britain lives on, now as ever taking her rightful place among the nations of the world’ (AAD/5-1979).

100

Ulrike W allon-Jordan

There were many more trade exhibitions to follow, and among the most active refugee exhibitors was Gaby Schreiber. She participated in the Ideal Home Exhibitions at Earl’s Court, London, where her versatile aluminium kitchen-cum-bathroom, the ‘Alpla’ kitchen, was displayed. The ‘glamour kitchen’, as the Daily Herald called it, was manufactured from aluminium and coated with coloured plastic. A gas-heated sink doubled as a washing machine for the average British household of two wage earners. If this was glamour, it was intended for the masses. As the paper emphasized: ‘The kitchens have already been ordered in their thousands for Government housing schemes’ (AAD/1991/11c). At the British Gas Council’s Exhibition of Kitchens, the safety and laboursaving devices of the ‘Alpla’ kitchen were noticed, the fingergrip handles, for instance, of nursery mugs (AAD/1991/11b). This piece earned her wide acclaim for originality in Britain, Germany and as far afield as Canada, but it should be pointed out that models of small, functional and aesthetic kitchens in durable and easycare materials had been pioneered in the 1920s in Germany. Here, too, early influences of continental design trends were adapted successfully to the British post­ war market. Eating Ice-Cream In Style: The Association with Marks & Spencer Marks & Spencer, which had made the transition from ‘Penny Bazaar’ to a modem retailing company, welcomed a number of refugees from Nazism into its workforce. They helped shape the vision of progressive, profitable and quality-oriented development advocated by Israel Sieff, contributing to Marks & Spencer’s programme of in-house modernisation. Refugees from Nazism joined the company in a variety of capacities, influencing day-to-day procedures as well as fundamental new departures in quality control, design and supply. Eric Kann, who had worked at the Schocken Department Store in Chemnitz, was the most influential of these personalities, setting up a technical laboratory for quality control. Over time, others also joined in the field of design, like Hans Schneider, who was to head that department (Interview with Lewis Goodman 15/8/2000). The company served as a springboard for new ideas, combining creativity and profitability. Its particular character as a Jewish-founded business lent a special momentum to the integrative process. Refugees were especially welcomed and encouraged to develop their potential in the period between 1935 and 1965. In this process of mutual enrichment, the reformist wing within Marks & Spencer welcomed, encouraged and developed the technological expertise and continental design impulses of refugees in a most auspicious way. The character of the business as a ‘national institution’ was matched by an internal corporate identity which went

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

101

beyond a pure working environment. The social ethos of Marks & Spencer was increasingly perceived as having an aesthetic and moral dimension shared by all employees from trainee to director. What were needed for the continual development of this experience were innovative impulses, sparking off yet more loyalty for the company. In 1948, ten years after her arrival in Britain, Gaby Schreiber was commissioned to remodel catering facilities for several Marks & Spencer’s stores. In extending patronage to a young consultant in industrial design from Austria, Marks & Spencer showed an awareness o f talent with a continental flavour. Her designs, which mirror the functionality and modernity of continental models as well as American influences, were for the Holloway store in London, the Leicester store and the Brighton store (AAD/1991/11/6/1-12). Gaby Schreiber had a lively interest in designing for consumer needs. Her elegant and functional designs for Marks & Spencer’s cafeterias, sundae bars and glaceries reflected a new emphasis on leisure, while guaranteeing the maximum flexibility for peak time provision of food and drink. Technical and space design details all combine to create light areas which allow for the free flow of people at times of high fluctuation. Gaby Schreiber Associates and Convel Designs prepared schemes for the three stores which introduced crucial changes to these spaces. Descriptive details highlight these alterations which were made, for instance, in the Holloway (London) store: Booth seating defines the café, obviating the not uncommon cattle pen appearance and either booth or diagonal table seating is used centrally. The glacerie area is arranged with standing tables for quick turnover. The layout screens service areas, allows good circulation, and entrances and exits give room for queuing at peak periods. The booth type seating is framed in light metal and is, as the counter and walls, surfaced with washable plastic sheets in contrast colours of wine red, dove blue and French grey. The suspended canopy has a pale yellow soffit continuing spot lighting for the sales counter. All lettering is standardised in white. Hatches in the rear service wall give direct service from the food preparation tables to the servery. Moulded cafeteria trays stack from behind in a special fitment at the beginning of the counter. At the opposite end a special cutlery fitment projects from the counter to give easy access from both sides. Similar innovations were introduced in the glacerie bar at Leicester, where the smooth operation of serving large crowds was paramount. In Brighton the needs were very different, and here Gaby Schreiber

102

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

concentrated on creating a ‘holiday atmosphere’ through colouring and decoration. Gaby Schreiber maintained close contact with members of the Marks & Spencer Board of Directors, especially Marcus Sieff, who came to her office in Hobart Street. Discussions also included Simon Marks, Israel Sieff and others (see BED, 2/6/1948, 23/7/1948, 7/8/1948). The theme of providing new, refreshing living and working spaces continued in her work. Her next major project, however, added a special dimension to design, namely the quality of energy-and waste­ saving exterior and interior planning. In this, she remained true to basic principles of organic building advanced in the 1920s by Gropius and other Bauhaus designers. Environmentally Friendly Production: The Bartrev Press Project In the 1950s Schreiber turned to large-scale enterprises which demanded ‘total design projects’ from a dedicated team. Privately, the pace of life had become almost too fast. She recorded on Tuesday 21 April 1953: 'no relaxation, no planning, no leisure, no hobbies, no time’. Later that year, she booked a long-desired holiday to Provence (BED 21/4/1953). Professionally, her career had reached a new, exciting stage. True to the Bauhaus maxim of achieving a balance between nature, art and the human sphere, she became involved with a forwardlooking process of environmentally friendly building material production: The Vere Corporation had pioneered the Bartrev Press, which utilised by-products of timber for the manufacture of flat boards. The results could be used in virtually all areas of interior design and furnituremaking. Since Gaby Schreiber had already used the waste wood product from this company for her exhibits at the Festival of Britain, she welcomed a chance for a comprehensive project with the Vere Corporation. In pioneering environmentally friendly building and interior decoration on this scale, she also established the right of women to participate in the field of large-scale industrial design. As the Guardian obituary writer recalled, she had admitted that, although she did not feel disadvantaged as a woman in her field, ‘occasionally, at the start of some particular job in a new, hitherto male field one felt a slight resistance in accepting a woman’s final instructions or decisions. It had to be worked with a lot of diplomacy and with sufficient technical know­ how’ (Guardian 1991). The influential magazine Design commented in its October 1953 issue on the topic of ‘design for engineering’: T he growing popular taste for contemporary design in today’s interiors and furnishings can be largely traced to the pioneer work of a few designers and retailers who, before the war, saw in the modem movement a way of escape from stale and overworked conventions’ (Anon 1953).

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

103

The magazine remarked on the symbiosis between the individual designer and the firm that had been achieved by Gaby Schreiber for the Vere Corporation. The opening of a new factory to house the Bartrev Press also attracted the interest of this magazine: It is often a long journey from the inventors’ dub to the industrial designer’s studio. Most inventions mature slowly from the raw bones of an idea to current refinements of line, form and colour. This is particularly true in the world of machines and engineering where mechanics and functional achievement rate higher than finish and outward appearance. [...] It was [...] with particular interest, that Design witnessed the recent unveiling at Marks Tey, Essex, of the Bartrev Plant of the Vere Engineering Co. There was no mistaking the capital investment involved in this revolutionary process, which has spent some fourteen years perfecting it or from the point of view of the customers who will have to find nearly £200,000 each to exploit it commercially. And yet few plants can have been so thoroughly designed in all their details from the moment of their public presentation (Anon 1953). The reporter was surprised by the attention devoted to: ‘considerations of industrial psychology, such as colour, light and operators’ amenities’. But this type of ‘industrial psychology’, in this case uniting modemist aesthetic with humanitarian concerns through the medium of wood, remained central in Gaby Schreiber’s work. This philosophy demanded an active partnership between industry and designer, as became evident in the case of the Bartrev Press factory: The fact that these visual and psychological aspects of engineering design were given such attention stems from the company’s belief in design being an essential component of good business management. [...] The Bartrev process is, in brief, the first successful method of producing, in continuous length, rigid structural board for a multitude of building and cabinet-making purposes from raw materials that would otherwise go to waste (Anon 1953, 7,12). Gaby Schreiber’s profile had already singled her out as the most suitable candidate: Mrs Schreiber has had considerable experience in designing colour schemes for industrial projects and her technical knowledge has enabled her to advise on many applications of Bartrev board to

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

104

industry. [...] Except where otherwise mentioned, all the designs for the Bartrev factory and offices are by Gaby Schreiber and her chief assistants, Ron Thompson and Felix Holton (Anon 1953,8). Gaby Schreiber used Bartrev board extensively in the interior of the factory canteen with its Scandinavian chairs, designed by Hans Wegner and Tibor Reich for Tibor Ltd. The design for a factory office used Bartrev board on all surfaces: floors, bookshelves, counters, troughs, lighting, panelling and desks. Variety in colour and texture was achieved by different surface finishes (Anon 1953,12). The project also found an appreciative reception in the U.S.A (Anon 1954b). Design on the Wing: Comet and BOAC Interiors As Director of Gaby Schreiber Associates, a specialist team which included architects, interior designers, artists, engineers, colour consultants and typographers, Schreiber was able to undertake major projects, including redesigning the interior of Shell-Max House in London. Her most remarkable achievement was to win the commission to design new aircraft interiors for the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC). In those years of burgeoning transatlantic and European flights, there was a growing public interest in aerodynamics. On 18 June 1958, Alison Adburgham, writing in the magazine Punch, enlightened her readers about the special role of aircraft interior design in creating a feeling of well-being on board: Gaby Schreiber, the first woman to design the interior of an aircraft, has now nearly completed her work on the Comet Mark IV. British Overseas Airways retain her services, as, for the DC7C, the American jet Boeing 707, and the new versions of the Britannia. The appointment of a woman consultant is not really surprising, since everything in the passenger accommodation of a long-distance aircraft comes into the domestic province: wall papers, linen, table appointments; pantry, kitchen, and lavatory fittings; carpets, curtains, bedding, chairs. In her colour schemes Mrs Schreiber gets right away from the free functionalism of transport planes to a more personal, friendly, reassuring atmosphere. [...] B.O.A.C. did not, in point of fact, specifically look for a woman designer; it was simply that the best man for the job turned out to be a woman. [...] Mrs Schreiber is responsible for the choice of two hundred different items on the aircraft, but lighting is her most difficult problem, since it is affected by different altitudes and climates; [...] The Comet has been the most intricate and fascinating of all her undertakings, a

Designs for the Futura: Gaby Schreiber

105

miniature hotel in the shape of a large cigar (Adburgham 1958, 816). By 1964 her involvement had already been expanded. Schreibens own company brochure sums up the range of her involvement in aircraft interior design projects: Avro 748, Queen’s Flight, Britannia (BOAC), the Boeing 707 (BOAC), the Comet IV (BOAC) and the V.C. 10 (BOAC). The achievements of this decade led to another phase of Gaby Schreiber’s professional profile in the ‘swinging sixties’. She achieved a breakthrough into the higher levels of the British cultural establishment by becoming a member of the Panel for The Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for Elegant Design and was also a judge for the Design Centre Awards. Although her private life had been saddened by the breakdown of her second marriage and her giving up her beloved farm in Sussex, she expanded professionally. In April 1964, Shopfitting, Display & Commercial Decor described her and her team: A milestone in the history of Gaby Schreiber and Associates was marked in March when their new design studio and offices were opened at 15 Radnor Walk, Chelsea. The company of which Mrs Gaby Schreiber and Lord Antrim are co-directors, together with the associated company of Convel Ltd., was formed by Mrs. Schreiber in 1942, and has been progressively developed since as a creative organisation specialising in architectural, interior and industrial design, exhibition and display, graphic design and colour consultancy (Anon 1966,196). That year also saw major commissions for Dunlop, Rank and other companies, and in 1967 an office for Convel Design Ltd. was opened in Brussels. Gaby Schreiber designed the offices for the Crown Agents in London. She accepted commissions for the Rank Organisation and served on the Women’s Advisory Panel. She also designed the interior for the Westminster Foreign Bank in Brussels (1971-72), the President’s Offices for Gulf Oil/Eastem Hemisphere and the Chairman’s Offices for GHP Group, London (1975). Gaby Schreiber’s career as a design consultant in Britain had brought her into contact with a wide range of individuals, companies, state institutions and public bodies. Importantly, her work led her abroad as well, most of all to Belgium, the U.S.A. and later Ireland. Apart from the examples chosen for more in-depth portraits here, further clients amongst the total group of fifty-five included the Abbaye de Chevetogne, the Abbaye de Maredsous, British Railways, Crown Agents, Dunlop Companies Ltd., Thomas Hedley & Co. Ltd. (Proctor & Gamble), MBLE (Manufacture Belge des Lampes et

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

106

de Matériel Electronique), Namur University and the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board. During this period she also spent time in Ireland, both for business and pleasure. Eventually, she returned to London for good and moved from her flat in Eaton Square to Ebury Street. To sum up: Gaby Schreiber represents one of the most successful exponents of the Bauhaus tradition in Britain. The essential principle is pinpointed in a study of the ‘modem style’: The German school taught, for the first time, how to fashion light fixtures, furniture, housewares and other products into Constructivist and de Stijl (a Dutch group) forms. The development of a vocabulary of forms [...] was perhaps the most significant achievement of the Bauhaus. These forms have influenced design throughout the Western world (Ferebee 1970,94-5). This influence has been widely acknowledged for the U.S.A., the chosen country of exile for the Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Josef Albers and Laszlo MoholyNagy. But this same vocabulary is evident on an impressive scale in Gaby Schreibens original work for her design consultancy. Even more significantly, she advanced the idea of functionalism combined with beauty at an affordable price, on a democratic level and on a wider scale of visibility than hitherto known in Britain. This woman from Vienna loved to combine great chic - she bought her clothes from Balmain - with an acute professionalism. But she also became a pioneer in the male bastion of industrial design, in creating living spaces for a modem age.

Bibliography 5 0 Years Bauhaus: Exhibition a t Ota R oyal Academ y o f Arts, 21 Septem ber to 2 7 O ctober 1968, London Adburgham, A. 1958. ‘For W om en’, Punch, 2 3 4 ,8 1 6 . Anon 1953. ‘Design for Engineering’, Design, 5 8 ,1 5 -2 1 Anon 1954a. ‘W ho’s W ho in the Business’, Sparks, Decem ber, 1-2 Anon 1954b. no title, Industrial Design, 1, February, 98 Anon 1955. 'Interview with Hans Schneider*, St. M ichael News, 29 April, Marks & Spencer Company Archive

Designs for the Future: Gaby Schreiber

107

Anon 1958a. The Taller, 2983, unpag. Anon 1966. no title, Shopfitting, Display and Com m ercial Décor, April, 196-199 Cripps, S . 1946. ‘Foreword’, in Newm an ed, upag. Darw in, R. 1946. ‘Designers in the Making*, in Newm an ed, unpag. Ferebee, A. 1970. A History o f Design from the Victorial Era to the Present: A Survey o f M odem Style in Architecture, Interior Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design and Photography, London, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company H ansen, J. B. 1996. NS-Verfolgte M usiker in England: Spuren deutscher und österreichischer Flüchtlinge in d er britischen Musikkultur, Hamburg: Von Bockei Liebenau, J. ed 1988. The Challenge o f N ew Technology: Innovation in British Business since 1850, Aldershot: Gower M organ, K. 0 . 1990. The People’s Peace: 1945-1989, Oxford: Oxford University Press M osse, W . E. 1987. Jews in the Germ any Economy: The Germ an-Jewish Econom ic Elite 1820-1935, Oxford: Oxford University Press New m an, W . H. ed 1946. Design ‘46: S u rrey o f British Industrial Design as D isplayed a t the “Britain Can M ake I f Exhibition, London: His M ajesty’s Stationery Office ‘Obituary: G aby Schneider’, The Guardian, 11/7/1991 ‘Obituary: G aby Schneider’, The Independent, 13/7/1991 Pevsner, N. 1968. Pioneers o f M odem Design from W illiam Morris to W alter Gropius, Harmondworth: Penguin Sherm an, A. J. 1973. Island Refuge: Britain and R efugees from the Third Reich 19331939, London: Cass Society o f Industrial Designers 1951. Designers in Britain, Volume 3: 1851-1951 - A B iennial R eview o f Graphic and Industrial Design, London: Allan W ingate W hitford, F. 1986. Bauhaus, London: Tham es and Hudson W estphal, U . 1991. The Bauhaus, London: Studio Editions

Unpublished Sources A A D /S.F. 20946/75

Victoria & Albert Museum London, Archive of Art and Design, A A D /S.F. 20946/75

AAD/19 7 7 /4

Victoria & Albert Museum London, Archive of Art and Design, A A D/1974/4

Ulrike W alton-Jordan

108 A A D/1987/1

Interview with Elsbeth Juda re. The A m bassador27/11/1 9 9 2 , tape and transcript, Victoria & Albert M useum London, Archive o f Art and Design, A A D /1987/1

A A D/19 9 1 /1 1a

Research notes by Liz McQuiston for the unpublished manuscript G aby S ch reib er A Desginer’s U fa, G aby Schreiber Papers, Victoria & Albert Museum London, Archive of Art and Design, A A D/1991/11

A A D /1991/11b

Press Cuttings: G aby Schreiber, Vol. 1, no source given, Victoria & Albert M useum London, Archive of Art and D esign, A A D /1991/11

A A D/19 9 1 /1 1c

Press Cuttings: G aby Schreiber. Vol. 1, The D aily H erald, no date given, Victoria & Albert M useum London, Archive of A rt and Design. A A D /1991/11

A A D /1991/11/3/12

A A D /1991/11 /6/1-12

Convei Design International (Brussels) and G aby Schreiber and Associates, Convei Designers Ltd (London), com pany profile brochure, Victoria & Albert Museum London, Archive of A rt and Design. A A D /1991/11/3/12 Victoria & Albert Museum London, Archive of Art and D esign, A A D /1991/11/6/1-12

A A D /5-1979

King George V I, ‘A Final W ord’, le a fle t Festival of Britain Folder, Victoria & Albert Museum London, Archive o f A rt and Design, A A D /5-1979

BED

G aby Schreiber, Business Engagem ent D iaries, Victoria & Albert Museum London, Archive o f A rt and Design

Interview with Lewis Goodm an, 15 August 2000 1

1 Interview of the author with Elsbeth Juda in her artist's studio in C helsea, London, 7 October 1999. I would like to express sincerest thanks to Elsbeth Juda for graciously sharing memories and information with me. 2 Jacqueline G roag's papers are preserved in the collection of the Archive o f A rt and Design (henceforth AAD), with exam ples of her work in the National Art Library collection, Victoria & Albert Museum . 3 Papers of both Jacques and Jacqueline Groag (née Hüde Blum) at the AAD. 4 Archival m aterial on Hans Schm oller is kept at the National Art Library, V& A M useum , London. The Penguin Publishers Archive is situated a t the University o f Bristol. 5 Papers held at the AAD. * H er papers (19 25 -1 98 4 ) at the AAD.

NICK HUBBLE FRANZ BORKENAU, SEBASTIAN HAFFNER AND GEORGE ORWELL: DEPOLITICISATION AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE

This paper investigates the processes of depoliticisation that acted upon German-speaking writers and intellectuals forced into exile in Britain by the Nazis. The possibility of politics is defined as the existence of a space - which might be legal, institutional or printed, as much as physical - permitting equal rational critical exchange between participants on the conditions governing their lives and enabling the creation of an informed democratic consensus. The equality of access to this public debate is in sharp contradistinction to the deference and obedience demanded by a more rigidly hierarchical society. Processes of depoliticisation range from those reducing the equality of access, to those diminishing or actively repressing the extent of the political public sphere, in the sense defined by Jürgen Habermas (Habermas 1992). Clearly, the majority of exiles were subject to these processes to the extent that they could not freely access whatever political public sphere existed, because of difficulties concerning language, employment, non-membership of parties and organisations and so on. This could perhaps be termed depoliticisation due to the culture shock of translocation. However, it could also be argued that the conservative cultural framework of Britain imposed a much more severe and permanent form of depoliticisation on the exiles, as suggested by Perry Anderson (Anderson 1969). The problem with this is not, as might perhaps be expected, the status of the national claim. Trying to assess the relative degree of cultural conservatism in Weimar Germany and National Government Britain would be a particularly pointless task. The problem is that these nationalistic issues distract attention from the question of depoliticisation, which as a process is independent of the dominant political order (even when functioning in the interests of that order). For the sake of argument, let us assume that the Britain of the 1930s had a more conservative cultural framework than Weimar Germany; but that would not necessarily have made it any more depoliticised as long as there existed a political space in which participatory egalitarian practices flourished and asserted themselves against the ruling order. I will argue below that despite the more liberal constitutional order of the Weimar Republic, especially in the 1920s, it was a more depoliticised society than Britain and became increasingly so from the end of the decade. Such a conclusion leads to a reversal of the process under study: from wondering whether a hostile cultural

110

Nick Hubble

climate imposed depoliticisation on the exiles, we are now investigating how they might have aided this process by importing tendencies towards depoliticisation from their own culture. The point is not to ascribe blame, but to unearth the archaeology of one of the most powerful processes of the twentieth century. The extent of depoliticisation in the western world after the Second World War was immense, although perhaps inevitable as the displaced millions sought respite in ordered domesticity. In Anthony Howard's famous phrase, the British 1945 settlement was 'the greatest restoration of traditional social values since 1660' (Howard 1963, 31). The Conservative 1950s, along with their contemporary years in Eisenhower’s America and Adenauer’s Federal Republic, represent the classic post-war period of improved living standards and social conformity. The ostensible politicisation of the cultural cold war was actually a démonisation of political activity as defined above, an ideological formation which served to maintain the static social hierarchies on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The principal subjects of this paper were prophets, advocates and agents of the formation of this post-war order. Orwell, Borkenau and Haffner were also major participants in the cultural cold war. Borkenau and Haffner were two of the most successful exiles in adapting to writing in English (Dove 2000, 221). Since they were in a position to publish influential political books in the host country, they were among the least affected by the culture shock of translocation. However, together with Orwell, they provide excellent figures for attempting to trace depoliticisation in the process of wider cultural exchange between exile and host. By understanding this process we will also come closer to understanding how these highly politicised individuals came to compromise themselves in the name of a depoliticised social order. We must beware of misunderstanding the process of cultural exchange associated with the new middle class. The key instance is Orwell’s eulogising of this class as 'the germs of the future England’ in The Lion and the Unicom. With the benefit of hindsight, this class looks like the forerunner of exactly the depoliticised suburban classes that came to typify post-war Britain. This is a strange outcome for a book which was consciously advocating the urgent and overwhelming need for a total politicisation of British society. The pre-war English new middle classes, whom Orwell knew well, were not so depoliticised. As the historian Ross McKibbon has described, ‘a self-consciously modem and, in a particular way, democratic middle class emerged in the 1930s: one that saw itself, rather than organised labour, as the “progressive" class’ (McKibbon 2000, 49). Among it were the people who joined the Left Book Club, joined Mass-Observation and bought Penguin Specials

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell

111

(Jeffrey 1990 and Pennybacker 1990). In contrast, this was only true of a minority of the new middle classes of Weimar Germany, who retreated from political uncertainty and status anxiety into the extended interior of everyday life. Orwell, reading accounts of Germany especially those of Borkenau and Haffner - prominently featuring descriptions of the new middle class and everyday life under the Nazis, absorbed their political arguments offered as a means of mobilising the German people against fascism and applied them to the problem of mobilising the English new middle classes against the static ruling order, a step he thought necessary to avoid defeat in the war. I think he was wrong to do so because the social and political situations were structurally different. It can also be argued that Borkenau and Haffner were wrong: since their arguments were insufficiently critical of a state of depoliticisation which they accepted as given. Thus the reciprocal cultural exchange exemplifies the spread of depoliticisation. The New Middle Classes and Everyday Life in W eimar Germany The theory of everyday life has a distinguished intellectual genealogy (see Roberts 1999). Everyday life, in this sense, is constrained and conditioned by the boundaries and timetables of the workplace, organized leisure and the domestic sphere. It is worth emphasizing that everyday life transcends the distinction between public and private, being 'above all the organising of people’s individual lives into every day: the replicability of their life functions is fixed in the replicability of every day, in the time schedule for every day’ (Karel Kosik quoted in W right 1985, 6). Patrick Wright argues that everyday life is not exhausted by its social reproduction, but has 'subjective and cognitive surpluses’ such that, while it may form a Lukácsian second nature that is taken for granted, its reproduction is also ‘dependent on a constitutive subjectivity, and determination can therefore be said to cut both ways’ (Wright 1985, 6-7). This is a variant on Henri Lefebvre’s distinction between everydayness (atomisation and repetition) and the everyday (resistance and possibility of social transformation); which, in turn, is the major theoretical forerunner of how the concept of everyday life is employed in modem cultural studies. As John Roberts points out, this conceptual distinction within everyday life offers the possibility of rewriting Lukács by seeing the everyday as the site for selfconsciousness of the proletariat (a category which we could expand to include any waged workers or employees) within a wider everyday life constituted by the capitalist exchange process (Roberts 1999, 23). The obvious aim is to get away from the false consciousness / class consciousness dichotomy which unproductively dogged so much of twentieth-century Marxism.

112

Nick Hubble

Returning to Lukács enables us both to redress past errors of conceptualisation in order to reinvigorate contemporary practice, and also to reconsider Lukács’ position with respect to Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany, not just his response to the Russian Revolution, so strongly emphasized by Roberts (Roberts 1999, 16). It is easy to reconstruct a conscious German-language tradition of writing about everyday life: from Lukács and Georg Simmel (see Outhwaite 1996, 56) to Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin. The role of public and private spheres in Wilhelmine and, especially, Weimar Germany were replaced as Habermas suggests, by the space of everyday life, accompanied by a growing independence of the occupational sphere (Habermas 1992, 154). This space became the natural domain o f the rapidly growing new middle classes. Again, it is significant that, as is the case with the concept of everyday life, the vast majority of early theoretical work on the new middle classes comes from Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany: specifically from Emil Lederer, Jacob Marschak and Hans Speier. According to Val Burris, the actual idea of there being a new middle class comprised of civil servants, office and sales personnel, etc., originated in the 1890s as a critique of the Marxist view that all wage and salary earners were part of the proletariat. Interestingly, in the light of Orwell’s later similar position, one of the theorists of the new class, Gustav Schmoller, saw them as a more likely contender to become the true subjects of history than the industrial proletariat. The more usual interpretation was that the class would develop into a stabilising mediator between labour and capital. This attracted the revisionist wing of the Social Democratic Party. Emil Lederer became one of the first Social Democrat theorists to argue for the distinction from the proletariat, identifying technicians and commercial employees as occupying a new position in a book published in 1912. However, economic decline during and after the First World War led Lederer to revise his position (Burris 1986,25-29). In 1926, Lederer and Marschak implied that this rapidly growing class was being' forced to side with either the forces of capital or of labour. After studying the unionisation of these salaried employees, they concluded that ‘a single stratum of all gainfully employed [i.e. waged and salaried] ... is in the process of formation’ (Lederer and Marschak 1926, 64, 69-73, 82). This position was challenged by Speier’s work of a few years later. He claimed that while ‘a degree of organisational similarity’ existed between all unions, this did not mean that the salaried employee unions embraced the socialist aims of the workers' unions, or that they did not retain consciousness of occupying a more privileged social status than manual workers: ‘Instead, of the three types of unions that white-collar

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell

113

workers could have joined during the Weimar years only the “middleclass” organisations gained in size and importance. Toward the end of the Weimar Republic they emphasised the middle-class self­ understanding of white-collar workers even more sharply than they had at its beginning’ (Speier 1985, 96-97). Of course, this does not refute Lederer and Marschak’s claim that the new middle class was forced to choose sides; it merely demonstrates that they were wrong in their prediction of which side it would choose. However, Speier was undoubtedly correct in arguing that the reason why Marxist analysts were slow to understand the direction in which the new middle classes were moving was their adherence to the theory of true and false consciousness and the inability to conceive that salaried employees could act otherwise than in their purest economic interests (Speier 1985,99-100). Siegfried Kracauer’s book on the new middle class starts out from Lederer’s analysis (Kracauer 1998,30). Kracauer was initially optimistic about the ability of the new middle class to adopt the proletarian outlook, but he ultimately concluded, as Walter Benjamin approvingly notes, with ‘a critique of trade unionism.’ As Benjamin informs us, ‘this whole book has become a grappling with a section of everyday life, an inhabited Here and lived Now’ (Benjamin 1998, 110-111). This forms the viewpoint from which the unions appear as part of the system which structures everydayness. However, Kracauer also undermines Speier’s analysis: ‘A stratum thus finds itself in power which, in the interest of power and at the same time against this interest, cannot find its own position ideologically. But if it shrinks itself from confronting the reason for its existence, the everyday life of the employees is more than ever abandoned’ (Kracauer 1998, 100). The apparent choice of labour and capital confronting the new middle class is false, because its condition remains one of profound alienation; which is to say, as Kracauer puts it, ‘human beings are not living life’ (Kracauer 1998, 59). ‘Shelter for the homeless’ is provided by the culture industry in mass cinemas and sports clubs (Kracauer 1998, 88-95): everyday life is expanded to encompass all experience. It is true, as Inka Mulder-Bach argues, that this book rejects categorically any of the emancipatory potential Kracauer had earlier located in the distraction of everyday life (MulderBach 1998), but it does not reject the emancipatory potential of the new middle class itself. Instead it recognises that the only prospect of selfrealisation for the new middle class is to bring the resistant kernel of the everyday to full consciousness: ‘then everyday reality vanishes and all those present, far beyond the circle of colleagues, revel in the enjoyment of a more beautiful life’ (Kracauer 1998, 69). Benjamin argues that Kracauer’s book ‘is a landmark on the road to the

114

Nick Hubble

politicisation of the intelligentsia* (Benjamin 1998,113). This is because Kracauer analyses everyday life politically as opposed to accepting the categories of everyday life as reality, and basing a politics of praxis upon them. For Benjamin, the ultimate form of depoliticisation was fascism, where the structure of everyday life itself becomes politics, and against which the only answer is to politicise everyday life. Franz Borkenau Franz Borkenau was bom in Vienna in 1900 (see Lowenthal 1981). By 1921 he was in Germany and a member of the Communist Party, going on to lead the Communist students of Germany and to work for the research section of the Comintern. He was expelled from the Party in 1929 for opposing the ‘class against class’ policy of the third period of the Comintern. There then followed a period of several years of research under the auspices of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research which resulted in a book on the emergence of bourgeois thought from the feudalist West. He left Germany in 1933, eventually settling in London. In 1937 he published his eyewitness account of the Spanish Civil War, The Spanish Cockpit. This has remained more or less continuously in print and is the work for which Borkenau is most widely known in Britain. Orwell reviewed it extremely favourably, as he also did two of Borkenau’s subsequent books The Communist International and The Totalitarian Enemy. Another publication was the Penguin Special, The New German Empire. Borkenau wrote to Orwell after the publication of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and praised him for remaining honest despite being politically partisan (see Crick 1982a, 363-364). This was the start o f the friendship; but it also demonstrates the political difference. Borkenau had not supported the revolution in Barcelona (he was in favour o f the constitutional republic), while Orwell - a participant, of course, rather than an observer - had been. Borkenau was interned in 1940 and subsequently deported to Australia; but he did manage to return to England when released and remained in contact with Orwell. However, the entry of the Soviet Union into the war on the side of the Allies seemed at the time to have made a nonsense of his position concerning the threat of totalitarianism. As soon as the war finished he returned to Germany with the American press service. Aside from a relatively brief spell as a history lecturer at Marburg University, Borkenau spent the last years of his life - he died of a heart attack in 1957 - writing about the Communist block and working on his theory of civilizations. The cultural cold war supplied a new context for his totalitarian theories and he participated in the meetings to plan the

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell

115

Congress for Cultural Freedom, which took place in Berlin in June 1950 (Saunders 1999, 71,78-79). In this paper we are concerned with Borkenau’s intellectual and political position as expressed in those four books written in English between 1937 and 1940 during the main period of his friendship with Orwell. Part of the enduring appeal of The Spanish Cockpit to the nonaligned Left is its sharp criticism of the Communists whom it considers mainly a tool of Russian foreign policy. However it also attacks the Anarchists and the independent Marxist POUM as well. What Borkenau supported was the constitutional rule of the Republican government. He believed that if there had been no foreign intervention, the Spanish desire to defend the Republic against Franco and the Right would have led the socialists and anarchists to eventually unite: ‘merged into one single revolutionary party, backed by the spontaneous enthusiam of both workers and peasants, they would have won the war and created a new order of things, less dictatorial, more humane and more progressive’ (Borkenau 1986, 295). Clearly he understands ‘revolution’ in the sense of the French Revolution as a term marking the change from feudalism to liberal democracy. However, he came to regard his own belief as one of the utopian dreams of the Left, and he made this decision for two reasons. Firstly, the advent of Fascism meant that the reactionary powers - which had traditionally been ‘technically and intellectually inferior to the forces of revolution’ - could combat any revolution with the ‘most modem, most efficient, most pitiless machinery yet in existence. It means that the age of revolutions free to evolve according to their own laws is over1 (Borkenau 1986, 288-289). The second reason he gave was Spanish national character. He saw evidence of a country which had refused to progress historically with the West: and yet remained attractive to observers from the West. He accounted for this as an unconscious recognition on behalf of the Western observers that their own civilization was at fault and concluded that Spain might survive while the West progressed ultimately to its own destruction (Borkenau 1986, 299-300). This pessimistic view was carried into his post-war engagement with Spengler and work on the ends and beginnings of civilizations. These ideas about the technical ability and modernity of powers and peoples form the basis of Borkenau’s understanding of National Socialist Germany. He saw the National Socialists as a revolutionary force, structurally similar to the Bolsheviks and, thus, totalitarian. This analysis was confirmed for him by the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939. The Totalitarian Enemy, written after the signing of this pact, expresses an almost theological sense of spiritual loss culminating in the rejection

116

Nick Hubble

by the Nazis (and Bolsheviks) of the value of the human soul (Borkenau 1940,134). It is not difficult to read Borkenau’s position as the product of disillusionment with his earlier active revolutionary socialist experience. His utopian dream of the spontaneous merging of Spanish workers and peasants in the support of a socialist democratic republic - which was, as we have seen, stated only to be rejected - reads like an homage to Rosa Luxemburg, whom he had evidently admired greatly. Thus his book on The Communist International is unremittingly hard-headed, apart from the passages on Luxemburg: This woman, herself a hunchback, was filled with a profound love and commiseration for all human beings, her chief love was to listen to the song of the blackbird outside her prison. In unforgettable lines she describes her suffering in watching the beating of a buffalo which had been brought from Roumania to Breslau [...] She was loved and admired, not only in the closer circle of her friends, but wherever she came, a woman annihilating the handicap of physical deformity by the sheer charm of her sweetness, her understanding and her warm heartedness [...] She had a very wide culture and leamt foreign languages not, as did Lenin, primarily in order to understand foreign newspapers, but in order to understand foreign poetry. This implies that her approach to the labour movement was deeply humanistic. She was not the type who cares only for the starving little children in the backyards of proletarian districts, hers was not a cheap sentimentality (Borkenau 1963,139140). It is ironic that Borkenau himself leamt to read foreign languages primarily in order to understand foreign newspapers when working for the research department of the Comintern. Luxemburg may have been truer to Marx than Lenin, but not necessarily because she liked poetry and animals. The sentimentality of this passage tells us something about Borkenau: that he has lost his faith but cannot find a new one because it is still there, somehow entrenched in his unconscious. He became disillusioned not only with the dreams of his own past but, as indicated in his book on Spain, with the West as a whole. When he states that ‘the Nazi revolution today is the true world revolution’ (Borkenau 1939,117), he is not just making a point about the Nazis, he is criticising the world as a whole. Nonetheless, he still gave his support to the liberal powers (France and England), calling for ideological war between them and the totalitarian states (Borkenau 1940, 11). To this end, he emphasised the necessity of central planning to match the

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haflner and George Orwell

117

efficiency of the totalitarian states. However, it is difficult to believe that he was fully committed to this cause in his heart. The qualification he provides lacks conviction: ‘Perhaps the necessary changes can be worked out without the wiping out of all the values of our tradition* (Borkenau 1940,105). Borkenau’s position prefigures the state of post-war Europe pretty accurately. Moreover, there can be no doubt that he influenced Orwell. It is Borkenau’s account of the Bolshevik revolution and its subsequent history - particularly the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky (Borkenau 1940, 225-226) - which serves as the blueprint for Animal Farm and the relationship of Napoleon and Snowball. And it is while reviewing The Totalitarian Enemy that Orwell discusses the theory of oligarchical collectivism that features in Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell 1940a, 159). However, it is worth emphasising again that Orwell’s political position was different; and that even in 1939 he was still rejecting Borkenau’s half-hearted survival plan for the West: Where I part company from him is when he says that for the western democracies the choice lies between Fascism and an orderly reconstruction through the co-operation of all classes. I do not believe in the second possibility, because I do not believe that a man with £50,000 a year and a man with 15 shillings a week either can, or will, co-operate. The nature of their relationship is that the one is robbing the other and there is no reason to think that the robber will simply turn over a new leaf. It would seem, therefore, that if the problems of western capitalism are to be solved, it will have to be through a third alternative, a movement which is genuinely revolutionary, i.e. willing to make drastic changes and to use violence if necessary, but which does not lose touch, as Communism and Fascism have done, with the essential values of democracy. Such a thing is by no means unthinkable (Orwell 1938, 203-204). It is as though Orwell detects Borkenau’s lost faith as latent in the text and seeks to redeem it. Perhaps there is also something to be redeemed from the now out of fashion theories of the Nazis as revolutionary and totalitarian. Detlev Peukert, in Inside Nazi Germany, criticises the former dominance of these theories because ‘they both dealt with the political system of authority, the wielders of power and the mechanisms of suppression, and they largely ignored the experience of those affected by the system, namely the mass of the population (Peukert 1993, 23). This is true as far as it goes, but the converse also applies. It is impossible to understand people’s

Nick Hubble

118

experience unless the exact constraints of the system of authority are also understood. In Borkenau’s work there are passages which show an understanding of this. For example: The masses which were so nationalistic before, under the strain of everyday life under the Nazis and of a surfeit of lying propaganda, have become largely indifferent to all the bigger political issues, and completely immersed in their petty everyday affairs’ (Borkenau 1940,43). Contemptuous though it may be, this at least offers a space for the study of everyday life and experience within grand totalitarian theory. One such set of studies was that provided by the journalist and historian, Sebastian Haffher. Sebastian Haffher Haffner was bom in Berlin in 1907 as Raimund Pretzel, and worked there in the 1930s as a lawyer before leaving for Britain in 1938 with the conviction that the exile movement was the most important form of opposition to the Nazis (although his exile was also forced to the extent that the woman he loved and subsequently married in England, Erika Hirsch, was Jewish). He published two books before being interned. Later on in the war he produced a German newspaper in conjunction with the Ministry of Information. Throughout the war he consistently advocated that Germany should be split up into its constituent states: an idea which he obviously saw as combating the depoliticisation o f the Reich by undoing it and reinstating the mid-nineteenth century public sphere. He became a journalist for The Observer and eventually became the paper’s German correspondent in 1954. Subsequently, he pursued a distinctive path through the politics of the Federal Republic and beyond, criticising anything that did not match his ideals of democratic stability and order. He died in January 1999 (see Ascherson 1999; Thunecke 1999, 75-77). Ian Kershaw, in his recent biography of Hitler, describes Haffner’s 1940 book Germany: Jekyll and Hyde as ‘an extraordinarily perceptive early study’ (Kershaw 1998, 602, n29). He specifically refers to Haffner’s insight that Hitler “’privatised” the public sphere’ (Kershaw 1998, xxvi). In fact, Kershaw modernises Haffner’s terminology here. What he actually wrote was: To tabulate Hitler, as it were, in the History of Ideas and degrade him to an historical episode is a hopeless undertaking, and can only lead to perilous miscalculation. Much more progress towards an accurate estimate of the man can be made if one takes exactly the opposite course and considers German and European history as part of Hitler’s private life (Haffner 1940,16).

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell

119

Kershaw also admires Haffner’s evaluation that ‘Hitler is the potential suicide par excellence. He owns no ties outside his own “ego”, and with its extinction he is released and absolved from all cares, responsibilities and burdens’ (Haffner 1940, 24 and Kershaw 1998, xxviii, 602, n32). If you combine both of these insights, it is possible to see how Germany and European history were reduced to an everyday life with no sense of origin or place. A purely performative society was created. As Kershaw argues ‘Hitler’s entire being came to be subsumed within the role he played to perfection: the role of “Führer”’ (Kershaw 1998, xxvi). Likewise the Party required conformity of words and conduct in a way which, as Haffner observed, made it difficult ‘to persevere in thinking and feeling differently’ (Haffner 1940, 99). Thus the performative unity of the mass rally applied equally to the ostensibly dispersed field of everyday life surrounding it. O f course, not everyone was a Nazi as Haffner was quick to point out. He divided the population into 20% Nazis, 40% loyal (to the regime) non-Nazis, 35% disloyal (to the regime) and 5% opposition (Haffner 1940, 75). He also explained the loyalty with reference to the German character The power that the majority of Germans respect is static power, conservative vigorous rule that establishes peace and order and guarantees private spheres of homely comfort’ (Haffner 1940, 34). He further characterised this as the combination of three elements: a German belief that politics is immoral, combined with a high sense of personal morality and an extreme form of patriotism derived from the Prussian state-ethic (Haffner 1940, 128-138). The result was that it became possible to display individual self-sacrifice for the common good of Germany even while Germany was obviously behaving immorally in the political sphere. The disloyal population acted from the same sense of private morality - only here their morality was directed against the regime and manifested in small acts of the everyday variety. However, the surveillance society already existed - ‘How long will it be before every house has its built-in microphone, before every private word is as audible as is every telephone conversation to-day? The Kingdom of the Ant is at hand’ (Haffner 1940, 167-168) echoing Karel Öapek’s Life o f the Insects and prefiguring Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Hence these moments remained private voluntarisms with no public meaning. In fact, such activity - an outer conformity never punctured by inner dissent - is just as performative as that of the loyal German population, and fitted in with the Nazi system. One could argue that 95% of the population on Haffher’s count were part of this performative society. He identifies one moment of exception:

120

Nick Hubble

Alone on one occasion something like a breath of wind blew across this suffocating desert; in 1936, at the time of the popular front, when during the Spanish Civil War international camps were formed. It was a strange experience to feel the underground reverberations in the German catacombs; the sudden revival of discussion, of hope, even of activity and enterprise [...] It would perhaps have turned into a real struggle against Hitler but for ‘non­ intervention’, which smothered everything (Haffner 1940,183). However, as is the case with Borkenau, Haffner is merely stating the dream in order to reject it: from a certain point of view the policy of non­ intervention must to-day seem justified [...] the Popular Front and the Spanish Civil War represent what is probably the last attempt - its failure is historically justified - to solve the problems of the twentieth century with the formula of the nineteenth, with the formula of “Right against Left”’ (Haffner 1940,183). Again we see a distrust of politics typical of Germans in this period. Instead, Haffner pins his hopes on the idea that the everyday morality of the disloyal Germans represents ‘another Germany’. This is not, Haffner is quite explicit, ‘a Germany that is ready to create and lead a democratic Great power1; but ‘a Germany distinguished by human universality, untamed individualism, cleverness in small things, openmindedness on large issues, and a deep, unconquerable distrustful aversion for politics and politicians’ (Haffner 1940,169) Perceptively, he predicts a political future in which the Centre party, which had ‘accepted the Reich, though only with a shrug of the soldiers’, becomes the prototype of German political parties; and the Social Democrats rediscover social justice: ‘Once they resolve, however, to confess their sins and make a new start, their chances as an opposition party are not too bad’ (Haffner 1940, 210-211, 223-225). So, just as Borkenau prefigures post-war Europe, Haffner foretells the Federal Republic. The shock troops he saw creating this opportunity were the exiles, who would mobilise this ‘other Germany’ of everyday morality into an active resistance under the banner of patriotism: ‘here is a weak spot in the Nazi regime [...] The ground is not unprepared for a recognition of the fact that the Nazis are no patriots, that they do not work for Germany, that they are active nihilists and are consciously leading Germany into the abyss of nothingness’ (Haffner 1940,65). Orwell, Patriotism and Everyday Life This model of using patriotism to mobilise everyday resistance is one that also occurs in Orwell’s work. Before the war, he had celebrated working class culture in The Road to Wigan Pier and gone on to fight

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell

121

for revolutionary Barcelona - a ‘town where the working class was in the saddle’ (Orwell 1986, 2). Throughout this period he maintained the view that the pressure to take part in the coming war was to be resisted. In what he described as his ‘pacifist’ novel, Coming Up for Air, an Insurance Agent (an archetypal new middle-class profession) awakens from the dream world of capitalist everyday life to question the madness of a society living in denial of the shadow of the bomber. But then, in ‘My Country Right or Left’, he writes: For several years the coming war was a nightmare to me, and at times I even made speeches and wrote pamphlets against it. But the night before the Russo-German pact was signed I dreamed that the war had started. It was one of those dreams which, whatever Freudian inner meaning they may have, do sometimes reveal to you the state of your feelings. It taught me two things, first, that I should be simply relieved when the long-dreaded war started. Secondly, that I was patriotic at heart, would not sabotage or act against my own side, would support the war, would fight in it if possible (Orwell 1940c, 271). The interesting thing about Orwell’s overnight conversion is that it was not published until more than a year after the events described. Although he tried to enlist in September 1939, he didn’t ostensibly alter his politics - he carried on writing projects he had started eariier with no change in tone - and continued in short to espouse the same belief in the possibility of a humane socialist democratic revolution that he had recorded in his review of Borkenau’s The Communist International. W hat he did do was reject ‘socialist pacifism’ as the mobilising call and eventually turn to a ‘socialist patriotism’ for a similar purpose; only later inventing a road to Damascus conversion for himself.1 I would suggest this emphasis on patriotism, as opposed to politics per se, is at least partly derived from Borkenau and Haffner. Orwell’s discussion of the value of patriotism was published in April 1940, some months before ‘My Country Right or Left’, and his argument is purely Marxist in its terms of reference. He discusses how Marx’s dictum that ‘religion is the opium of the people’ is taken out of context because Marx did not mean that religion was a drug but ‘something the people create for themselves, to supply a need that he recognised to be a real one, “Religion is the sigh of the soul in a soulless world. Religion is the opium of the people”’ (Orwell 1940b, 126). In effect, Orwell replaces religion by patriotism in the equation, arguing that patriotism is one of a number of loyalties that give hope to the long term aims of socialist pacifism for a peace on Earth:

122

Nick Hubble

Men die in battle - not gladly, of course, but at any rate voluntarily because of abstractions called ‘honour1, ‘duty’, ‘patriotism’ and so forth [...] People sacrifice themselves for the sake of fragmentary communities - nation, race, creed, class - and only become aware that they are not individuals in the very moment when they are facing bullets. A very slight increase of consciousness and their sense of loyalty could be transferred to humanity itself, which is not an abstraction (Orwell 1940b, 125-126). The position Orwell outlines is similar to that of a book published by Gollancz in 1935 called Christianity and the Social Revolution, one of the co-editors of which was another exile, Karl Polanyi, of whom it has been said that he introduced early Marx to the English Christian Left. Borkenau certainly moved in the same circles as Polanyi and it is possible that Orwell developed his ideas directly or indirectly from this source.2 In any case, it should be apparent that Orwell’s adoption of a patriotic position was the result of complex consideration over a period of months. During this time, Orwell was involved in planning a series of books, to be called Searchlight Books, with a committee consisting of Tosco Fyvel, Fredric Warburg (both of course to become cultural cold warriors; see Saunders 1999,111,173) and Haffner, who as a Seeker and Warburg author was staying as a house guest of Warburg’s. The aim of Searchlight Books was to revolutionise the war effort, to attack the ‘muddling through’ ethic and promote that all-out people’s war which they saw as the only way Britain could survive (this was the period immediately after the fall of France when Britain was the only opponent of Nazi Germany). Fyvel, particularly, had a vision of the citizen soldier dating from his experiences in Palestine in 1936 fighting the Arab rebellion (see Crick 1982b, 15-16). Against this, Orwell’s model was clearly that of the Spanish militias and the fight for revolution, rather than of soldiering constituting some form of revolutionary existence in itself. The difference is small but sufficient to create the parodie distortions that occur in Orwell’s work at the time as he struggled to maintain a consistent line of politics: ‘it is exactly the people whose hearts have never leapt at the sight of a Union Jack who will flinch from revolution when the moment comes [... there is a] spiritual need for patriotism and the military virtues for which, however little the boiled rabbits of the left may like them, no substitute has yet been found’ (Orwell 1940c, 272). In the event, the first book of the series to be published was Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicom and the second, Haffner’s Offensive

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Orwell

123

Against Germany. The Lion and the Unicom represents a critical moment in Orwell’s relationship to the War. In it two contradictory arguments are combined. On the one hand, Orwell argues: ‘One cannot see the modem world as it is unless one recognises the overwhelming strength of patriotism, of national unity’ (Orwell 1941, 392). This statement represents the same withdrawal from politics we saw in Borkenau and Haffner. At the same time he praises everyday resistance, but primarily only that occurring in private spheres - ‘the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and “the nice cup of tea”’ (Orwell 1941, 394). The text reflects a retreat from the public to the private, reminiscent of Weimar and Nazi Germany. Orwell is forced to deny his earlier position that there are no grounds for cooperation between someone on £50,000 a year and someone on 15 shillings a week. Instead the English have become ‘a family with the wrong members in control’ (Orwell 1941, 401) and all that is required is a tightening of resolve. Following Haffner, Orwell squares his contradictions by taking patriotism as the perfect measure to mobilise the new middle classes in the hope of finding ‘another* England in the realm of everyday life: The place to look for the germs of the future England is in the light industry areas and along the arterial roads [...] It is a rather restless, cultureless life, centring around tinned food, Picture Post, the radio and the internal combustion engine [...] To that civilisation belong the people who are most at home in and most definitely o f the modem world, the technicians and the higher paid skilled workers, the airmen and their mechanics, the radio experte, film producers, popular journalists and industrial chemists. They are the indeterminate stratum at which the older class distinctions are beginning to break down (Orwell 1941,408). Conclusion: Politicising the Post-War The Nazis were defeated, but in the end neither Orwell, nor Borkenau, nor Haffner were happy with the results which they themselves had predicted or the courses which they themselves had advocated. There was not another England or another Germany that could be brought into being by this combination of state effort and patriotic appeal to the national interest. Furthermore, because the English left-wing intelligentsia, virtually to the last man and woman, supported the state in this cause (Orwell going to work for the BBC), they effectively depopulated the fertile English public sphere of the 1930s and depoliticised society as a whole. The new middle classes that Orwell had pinned his hopes on were abandoned to an everyday life

124

Nick Hubble

unleavened by access to the small journals and public political circles that had sustained them previously. This depoliticisation was not a fault of that class itself but of English intellectuals in general, who failed in the task, which Benjamin had defined, of politicising themselves. Instead they accepted the structures of everyday life as reality and ushered in the postwar period of depoliticisation and unreality. Orwell was quick to grasp this complicity of the intellectuals (no doubt through a process of intense self-reflection) and portrayed it savagely in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ineffectual liberal-left intellectual Winston Smith, the Fascist/Bolshevik intellectual O’Brien, and Goldstein, the critic of the power system who is still fixated by its power, are all equally implicated. Now that this book has been freed of the cultural cold war context which determined its reception as doomladen prophecy, we can perhaps leam to read it (and laugh with it) as a dark satire on the misunderstandings and muddled intentions of the politically committed intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s. From our present perspective, we can see that the immediately charged contexts of Borkenau, Haffner and Orwell no longer hold and the way is open for reconsideration and new approaches. Haffner’s posthumous autobiography is currently top of the bestseller lists in Germany and Orwell studies are in the process of transformation by the new Complete Works (currently being issued in paperback). Borkenau’s case is more difficult because he is linked most closely to the old theories of fascism and totalitarianism; but, as we have seen, his position is not inconsistent with an everyday life approach. As I hope I have demonstrated, there is still a need for totalising theories in order to understand both the structure of depoliticisation and its relationship with everyday life. The imperative governing the practice of the committed intellectual ought to be the need to politicise everyday life. Otherwise, it is all too easy to succumb to the promised immediacy of a performative politics based on accepting the constructed categories of everyday life as real. Such an approach, as the history of the last century demonstrates, leads to depoliticisation at best; and fascism at worst.

125

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haffner and George Otweü

Bibliography Anderson, P. 1969. ‘Components of the National Culture’, in Cockbum , A. and Blackburn, R. eds, Student Power, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 214-284 Ascherson, N . 1999. ‘Obituary: Sebastian H affn e r Stem words from Berlin', The Guardian, 14 January 1 9 9 9 ,1 8 Benjamín, W . 1992. T h e W ork of Art in the Age o f M echanical Reproduction', in Benjam in, Illuminations, trs. Harry Zohn, Hammersmith: Fontana, 211-244 Benjam in, W . 1998. “An Outsider Attracts Attention'' • on The Salaried M asses by S . Kracauer’, in Kracauer 1 9 9 8 ,1 0 9 -1 1 4 Borkenau, F. 1939. The N ew G em ían Em pire, Harmonsworth: Penguin Borkenau, F. 1940. The Totalitarian Enem y, London: Faber and Faber Borkenau, F. 1963. W orld Communism: A History o f the Communist International [form erly titled The Communist International], Ann A rb o r University of Michigan Press Borkenau, F. 1986. The Spanish Cockpit, London: Pluto Press Burris, V . 1986. T h e Discovery of the N ew M iddle C lass', in Vidich 1 9 9 5 ,1 5 -5 4 C rick, B. 1982a. George Orwell: A U fa, Harmondsworth: Penguin C rick, B. 1982b. ‘Introduction’, to Harmondsworth: Penguin

George

Orwell,

The

Lion

and

the

Unicom,

D ove, R . 2000. Journey o f N o Return: Five Germ an-speaking Literary Exiles In Britain, 1933-1945, London: Libris Evans, R. J. 1982. ‘Introduction: The Sociological Interpretation of Germ an Labour History1, in Evans, R. J. ed, The Germ an Working Class 1888-1933: The Politics o f Everyday Life, London: Croom Helm H aberm as, J. 1992. The Structural Transformation o f the Public Sphere, trs. Burger, T. with Lawrence, F ., Cambridge: Polity Press H affner, S . 1940. Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, trs. David, W ., London: Seeker & W arburg H affner, S . 1941. Offensive Against Germ any, London: Seeker & W arburg H ow ard, A. 1963. W e are the M asters Now*, in Sissons, M . and French, P. eds, A ge o f A usterity, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 13-32 Jeffrey, T . 1990. 'A Place in the Nation: The Lower M iddle Class in England’, in Koshar 1 9 9 0 ,7 0 -9 6 Kershaw , 1 .1998. H itler 1889-1936: Hubris: Harmondsworth: Allen Lane Koshar, R . ed 1990. Splintered Classes: Politics and the Low er M iddle Classes in Interw ar Europe, New York: Holm es & M eier

126

Nick Hubble

Kracauer, S. 1998. The Salaried M assas: D uty and Distraction in W eim ar Germ any, trs. Hoare, Q ., London: Verso Lederer, E. and M arschak, J. 1926. T h e New M iddle Class’ in Vid ich 1 9 9 5 ,5 5 -8 6 Lewis, J., Polanyi, K. and Kitchen, D. K. eds 1935. Christianity and the Social Revolution, London: Gollancz Lowenthal, R 1981. ‘lntroduction,, in Borkenau, F., End and Beginning: O n the Generations o f Cultures and the Origins o f the West, ed. Lowenthal, R ., N ew York: Columbia University Press, 1-29 McKibbon, R. 2000. Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951, Oxford: Oxford University

M eier, B. 1935. 'M oral Sanctions and the Social Function of Religion’, in Lewis, Polanyi and Kitchen 1 9 3 5 ,3 9 5 -4 1 5 M ulder-Bach, 1 .1998. ’Introduction’, to Kracauer 1 9 9 8 ,3 -2 2 O rw ell, 6 .1 9 3 8 . ‘R eview o f The Communist International, in Orwell 1998a, 2 02 -2 04 Orwell, G . 1940a. ‘Review o f The Totalitarian E n em y, in Orwell 1998b, 158-160 Orwell. G . 1940b. ‘Notes on the Way*, in Orwell 1998b, 121-127 Orwell, G . 1940c. ‘M y Country Right or Left’, in Orwell 1998b, 269-272 Orwell, G . 1941. The Lion and the Unicom: Socialism and the English Genius, in Orwell 1998b, 391-434 Orwell, G . 1968a. The C ollected Essays, Journals and Letters o f George O rw ell, I, ed Orwell, S. and Angus, I., London: Seeker & W arburg Orwell, G. 1968b. The C ollected Essays, Journals and Letters o f George O rw ell, II, ed Orwell, S . and Angus, I., London: Seeker & W arburg Orwell, G . 1986. Hom age to Catalonia: The Com plete Works o f George Orwell, V I, ed Davison, P ., London: Secker& W arburg Orwell, G . 1998a. The Com plete Works o f George Orwell, X I, ed Davison, P ., London: Secker& W arburg Orwell, G. 1998b. The Com plete W orks o f George Orwell, X II, ed Davison, P ., London: Secker& W arburg Outhwaite, W . 1996. 'Introduction', to Outhwaite, W . ed., The Haberm as R eader, Cam bridge: Polity Press Pennybacker, S. 1990. ’Changing Convictions: London County Council Black Coated Activism between the W ars', in Koshar 1 9 9 0 ,9 7 -1 2 0

Franz Borkenau, Sebastian Haflner and George Orwell

127

Peukert, D. 1993. Inside N a ti Gennany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life, trs. Deveson, R ., Harmondsworth: Penguin Roberts, J. 1999. 'Philosophizing the Everyday" in R adical Philosophy, 9 6 ,1 6 -2 9 Saunders, F. S . 1999. Who P aid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold W ar, London: G ranta Books Speier, H . 1985. ‘M iddle Class Notions and Lower-Class Theory* in VkJich 1 9 9 5 ,8 7 -1 0 2 Thunecke, J. 1999. “ Characterology”, not “Ideology”: Sebastian Haffner*s Refutation of D aniel Goidhagen in Germ any: Jekytt and Hyde (1940)’, in W allace, I., ed., Germ anSpeaking Exiles in G reat Britain, The Yearbook o f the R esearch Centre fo r Gorman and Austrian Exile Studies, 1, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 75-93 Vidich, A. J. ed 1995. The N ew M iddle Classes: Lifestyles, Status Claim s and Political Orientations, Basingstoke: Macm illan W right, P. 1985. On Living in an Old Country, London: Verso 1 1 T hese claims can be checked against the detail of volum es eleven and twelve of the new C ollected Works, see Orwell 1998a and 1998b. The now superseded four volume C ollected Essays, Journals and Letters o f George O rw ell prints ‘M y Country Right or Left* out of chronological sequence and thus gives a totally false impression of Orwell’s position at the outbreak of the war. S ee Orwell 1968a and 1968b. 2 The information about Polanyi is taken from a paper, ‘Kart Polanyi in England', given by Berkeley Fleming to the Intellectual Migration conference held at the University of Sussex in Septem ber 2000. I’m also grateful to Professor Fleming for directing m e towards the book (Lewis, Polanyi and Kitchen, eds, 1935) and outlining why he thought the contributor listed as Bruno M eier might in feet be Borkenau. Borkenau was certainly an expert on these aspects o f reformation theology. O f course, the relationship between Polanyi and G .D .H . Cole would provide another excellent exam ple of a moment of cultural exchange in which the process of depoliticisation could be tracked.

NICK WARR SIEGFRIED KRACAUER’S EXTRATERRITORIAL CRITIQUE

Academic discussion of such varied figures as Walter Benjamin, Thedor Adorno, Roberto Rossellini, Andre Bazin, Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, Charlie Chaplin, or Fritz Lang almost always contain a reference to Siegfried Kracauer. Whether it is to fill in the background to the main subject of a text, or to serve as an example of a sceptical intellectual standpoint (especially useful to students of modem film studies), Kracauer usually seems to fit the bill. Until very recently few studies dedicated specifically to Kracauer had been published. The few which have appeared have tended to be less well received than the numerous recent volumes focusing on Kracauer’s contemporary Walter Benjamin. Why has Kracauer, a consistently radical thinker who was extremely influential in Weimar Germany and has great relevance for contemporary critical theory, been marginalized in this way? D. N. Rodowick has suggested a possible reason for his apparent academic anonymity: The neglect of Kracauer [...], and the general misunderstanding of his later work written and published in English, is scandalous but may be explained, I think, by a specific historical paradox. Kracauer was a thorough reader of Benjamin, and the earliest translation of Benjamin’s writings, ‘Illuminations’ only reached English readers in 1969, the same year as Kracauer’s posthumously published book on history. Moreover, although Benjamin’s thoughts on history may be understood as thoroughly permeating Kracauer’s book, Benjamin’s voice is still a distant one echoing against the influence of Dilthey and Husserl. This voice is also distant because it is drained of its revolutionary power. Though still a committed materialist, Kracauer was, at this time, no Marxist, nor does his critique of historical knowing carry the force or political commitment of Benjamin’s essay 'On the Concept of History’. However it is precisely the context of Benjamin, I would argue, that is needed to understand Kracauer and, in certain respects, to read him against himself. In short, Kracauer seems to take for granted lessons from Benjamin which his time and place were not yet aware of (Rodowick 1987,111 n.4).

130

N ickW arr

In order to affirm his theory concerning Kracauer’s indifferent academic reception Rodowick appears to have attributed a chronological and geographic naivety to Kracauer’s work. Whilst it is true that Kracauer’s position in the academic pantheon of philosophers is, relative to Benjamin’s, a peripheral one, it is in fact a position consciously adopted by Kracauer and one that he nurtured and developed through out his career. Rodowick is mistaken in his belief that Kracauer conceived his texts from *within’ his social and historical context. In my view the philosophical impulse behind all Kracauer’s work was the exploration of his relationship with constructed ‘social reality.’ As Adorno observes: ‘With Kracauer, in place of theory it is always Kracauer himself who is present in the gaze that grips the subject matter and takes it in’ (Adorno 1991, 161). In order to keep his relationship to ‘social reality’ in perspective, Kracauer had to choose carefully from which angle he was to observe its mechanisms. In History: The Last Things Before the Last (1969), Kracauer discusses the need for the historian to act as if he were a tourist. That is to say, he must interact with his environment without any sense of belonging, and remain detached by adopting a conspicuous 'outsider* persona: ‘If he remains the person he is he will hardly be able to penetrate the fog that veils the sights as he arrives on the spot. To get to the core of things he must take advantage o f the mind’s freedom to alter the cast of the mind. The job of sightseeing requires a mobile se lf (Kracauer 1995,81). For Kracauer the passivity associated with the onlooker, the sightseer, the outsider is transformed into an active critical stance - a stance Kracauer later referred to as being ‘extra-territorial’. To read Kracauer in this way is not to adopt a retrospective interpretation against the grain nor (more cynically) to explain Kracauefs attitude as an attempt to justify to himself and others his relative academic obscurity. Martin Jay, in his essay The Extraterritorial life of Siegfried Kracauer*, affirms: ‘Marginality, alienation, outsidemess have been among the stock obsessions of intellectuals ever since the tim e of Rousseau. Few, however, focused as consistently on the manifestations of the malaise throughout their entire careers as did Kracauer. Fewer still found ways to fashion their own marginality into a positive good in quite the manner he did’ (Jay 1991,150). From what point did Kracauer feel a need to maintain what Benjamin would refer to as his ‘consistent outsidemess'? Jay’s answer is highly suggestive:

Siegfried Kracauer's Extraterritorial Critique

131

Kracauer’s sense of marginality must have begun almost at birth. Physically, he was set apart from his peers by two characteristics, a stammer which would preclude, among other things, a teaching career at any time in his life. The second was his physiognomy, whose peculiarity struck all that knew him. To Adorno who actually used the word ‘extraterritorial in describing his face, he looked as if he were from the Far East. Asja Lads, the Latvian Marxist director who met him in the late 1920’s, said he looked like an ‘African.’ To Hans Mayer, the Marxist Literary critic, he was a Japanese painted by an Expressionisf (Jay 1985,151). It is interesting to see how Kracauer’s physiognomic character was adjudged to have an unspecific geographical nature. This inability to associate or be assodated with any one ethnic group must have reinforced Kracauer’s sense of alienation. His fashioning of the sodal marginalization of his childhood into a positive intellectual strategy for his adult life was a topic that Adorno addressed in his 1964 essay The Curious Realist’. Initially prepared as a radio broadcast, the essay was intended to perform a dual role, firstly to mark the occasion of Kracauer’s seventy-fifth birthday and secondly to act as an introduction to the republication in Germany of a number of Kracauer’s early Berlin writings. In the essay Adorno assumes with Freud that the major influences on the development of an individual’s psychological makeup occur during childhood. He illustrates this by describing how Kracauer reacted to the ‘unusual’ antisemitic bully he experienced at school, ‘unusual’, according to Adorno, in the fact that antisemitism was not common during that period in the ‘commercial city of Frankfurt’. Adorno relates how: ‘Kracauer told the story of carrying, in a pitiful parody of the little red book in which teachers recorded their marks, a similar book in which he graded his fellow students on their behaviour toward him. With him, many things were reactive; philosophy was in no small measure a medium of self-assertion’ (Adorno 1991,161). But if Kracauer had the ability to maintain his marginalization, then why did he not choose to assert himself in the opposite direction and ingratiate himself to academia? In History Kracauer proposes a possible explanation for his philosophical attitude, suggesting that a historian should adopt the character of the exile who as an adult person has been forced to leave his country or has left it of his own free will, [...] and the odds are that he will never fully belong to the community to which he now in a way belongs [...]

132

N ickW arr

Where then does he live? In the near vacuum of extraterritoriality, the very no-man’s-land [...] The exile’s true mode of existence is that of a stranger [...] It is only in this state of self-effacement or homelessness that the historian can commune with the material of his concern. [...] A stranger to the world evoked by the sources, he is faced with the task - the exile’s task - of penetrating its outward appearance, so that he may leam to understand the world from within (Kracauer 1995,83). Kracauer’s commitment to ’extraterritoriality’ is manifest in his attempts not to become associated with just one subject or topic, or to adhere to any pre-existing school of thought. This tendency is illustrated by Kracauer’s relationship to his teacher George Simmel. Though Kracauer was open about the important role Simmel played in the evolution of his critical method, he was careful in his own work only to replicate Simmel’s general Intellectual character and attitude to philosophy rather than adopt any of his specific concepts. Adorno suggested that Kracauer adopted this intellectual position because it was important for him to experience the growing inability of human consciousness to understand and penetrate a complex social reality that lay beneath a closely woven veil of ‘ideology’ at first hand (Adorno 1991, 162). Kracauer’s intellectual method was therefore intentionally positioned in opposition to conventional philosophical methodology. Benjamin, in a review of Kracauer's The Salaried Masses (1930) (Die Angestellten) referred to Kracauer as an ‘enemy of philosophy* - and in this context, I suggest, Benjamin meant philosophy in the departmental sense. Both Benjamin and Kracauer, for different reasons, felt that they were unreasonably denied the stability and comfort of academic acceptance, especially Benjamin during his term in exile. For Kracauer, ‘departmentalized’ philosophy was a self-reverential, self-referential academic clique whose nomenclature and methodological structure prevented their members from allowing their thought to interact with cultural phenomena and historical issues. The elitist and culturally insular character of pre-war German academics made Kracauer determined to develop a critique of the society that maintained and propagated academic elitism. To do this Kracauer felt it necessary to emphasize the individualistic nature of his critical strategy. To Adorno the reason for Kracauer adopting this approach was to give his work ‘humanness, not through identification but through its absence; the act of keeping oneself outside as a medium of knowledge’ (Adorno 1991,

Siegfried Kracauer’s Extraterritorial Critique

133

169). Adorno continues with a summary of his personal opinion of Kracauer: Kracauer’s experiential stance remains that of the foreigner transposed into the realm of spirit. He thinks as though he had transformed the childhood trauma of problematic membership into a mode of vision for which everything appears as it would on a journey, and even what is grey and familiar becomes a colourful object of amazement. This independence of the conventional outershell has itself since been conventionalised, in the Brechtian term Verfremdung; in Kracauer it was original (Adorno 1991,165). This commitment to his own project sometimes made life extremely difficult for Kracauer. His personal relationships with fellow writers had no bearing on his attitude towards their work. Human relationships and philosophical relationships, for Kracauer, operated on two completely different planes. His friendship with Benjamin, for instance, was always a little shaky, especially after Benjamin started to associate himself with Brecht, whom Kracauer disliked intensely both personally and theoretically. Adorno suggested that this psychological separation between work and author was a ‘sort of over-vigilant fear of intellectual obligations, as though they were literally debts. Kracauer’s reactive stance was quick to shift when he felt constrained. Almost all of the many reviews he wrote during his lifetime, some of which are quite biting, represent breaks with aspects of Kracauer himself or at least with impressions that have overwhelmed him’ (Adorno 1991,165). An example of Kracauer’s philosophical self-alienation contrasting with his personal relationships was related by Leo Lowenthal in a keynote address at the ‘Kracauer Symposium’ held at Columbia University in 1990, entitled ‘As I Remember Friedel’: Another important characteristic of Kracauer [...] (was) his capacity for lasting friendship. During my long life, I don’t remember any other person with whom relations remained so free from ambivalence, as in my friendship with Friedel Kracauer [...] He invited solidarity [...] On August 27, 1922 he wrote a very critical review of Ernst Bloch’s book Thomas Munzer as Theologian of the Revolution’ for the Frankfurter Zeitung. And Bloch answered in a very bitter, sarcastic, and almost insulting tone, whereupon I broke off my friendship with Bloch, as Kracauer, of course, did too. It was an almost natural response for me to say if you insult my friend, you

134

Nick W arr

are no longer my friend. The same thing happened a couple o f years later when Kracauer was very critical of the stylistic sense and mentality underlying Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s Bible. Buber wrote a bitter article berating Kracauer in a tone which was anything but tasteful. Again I did the same thing: I broke off my relationship with Rosenzweig by attacking Buber (Lowenthal 1991,10). Kracauer worked for the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1920. After the First World War, though its circulation never increased over 70,000, the Frankfurter Zeitung maintained an often disproportionate influence on the political and cultural opinions of the metropolitan German middle classes, particularly the educated Jewish community. Anyone interested in Kracauer's concept of 'extra-territoriality* must take account of the fact that he worked as a journalist, a term he disliked. Firstly, as Adorno observed, it provided not just a livelihood but a theoretical forum outside of academia: ‘Being an autodidact gave Kracauer some independence from routinized method. He was spared the fate of professional philosophy, the doom of being established as a department, a specialised discipline beyond the other specialised disciplines; accordingly he was never intimidated by the line of demarcation between philosophy and sociology1 (Adorno 1991, 162). Writing a column in a highly-regarded newspaper enabled Kracauer to fulfil a basic intellectual desire to become what he termed ’a debunker* or a ‘gadfly’ (Lowenthal 1991,10). This he did with some success - as Lowenthal comments, he became a ‘real irritant to the heroes o f high culture.' But it has to be remembered that for Kracauer there was no real choice. Writing for a newspaper was the only way that he could convey his views regarding contemporary issues to a wider audience. So how did Kracauer transcend the intellectual constraints o f daily journalism? By concentrating his critical eye on the ephemera of contemporary culture, but discussing them in a style more akin to literary criticism, Kracauer developed a textual strategy that enabled him to confront the ‘ideological’ issues underlying consumer culture. The topics of his newspaper pieces include pulp novels, popular autobiographies, shop window displays, photographs in newspapers, holidays, music halls and most famously cinemas and film s. His colleague at the Frankfurter Zeitung during the Weimar period, the journalist and novelist Joseph Roth, described his writing style as ‘dear* and 'well grounded in facts’ but simultaneously ‘pungent* and ‘bitter*. Roth went on to characterize Kracauer’s journalistic abilities as those of a translator, a mediator who is able to examine what is foreign without

Siegfried Kracauer’s Extra territorial Critique

135

colonizing it: ‘Kracauer brought abstractions to life not by feeding them with naturalism but rather by keeping them alive as abstractions [...] Kracauer’s critical approach produced certain incidental by-products, which neither poetry nor philosophy could have produced independently1(Witte 1991,79). Karsten Witte describes Kracauer’s literary style as promoting a sense of ’light sorrow.’ 'Light sorrow* was a term Kracauer once used to describe a novel by Joseph Roth, but Witte uses it to characterise Kracauer’s stylistic tendency during his career in Germany: The tone of Kracauer’s reviews was a product of the melancholy Kracauer felt when, finding it necessary to abstract life, he brought life to his abstractions. [...] This narrative tone, however, should not be confused with the one Walter Benjamin reproached as ’leftist melancholy’. A philosophically grounded position, as suggested by Benjamin’s phrase, would be dissolved into a moral sentiment by Kracauer’s tone. Light sorrow can be considered a genuine alternative to the worn-out Enlightenment metaphor of Max Weber’s ‘demystification’ or Paul Tillich’s ‘demythologizing.’ Directed against the premises of dialectical thinking, light sorrow implies a position of defiance in an individual, as well as an anonymous sign of wilfulness’ (Witte 1991,80). In ’Siberia to Paris, with stop overs’ printed in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1927, Kracauer expounds his own interpretation of ‘light sorrow’: It is not a protest directed against the times, but rather a sorrow that determines. It is deeper than protest [...] While protest must remain blind in many places, sorrow has eyes, it sees. And in this way, as non-violent as it is, it helps protest. [...] sorrow is addressed not so much to current events, which may very well be crying out for change, as to the world, because sorrow embodies the world. Can anyone escape this world? No. As a result, sorrow travels on easily and lightly, as if over snow (Quoted in: Witte 1991,85-6). It is with the development of such concepts as ‘light sorrow’ that, I believe, Kracauer fuelled his critical interest in cinema. His ideas of the ‘removed’ or ‘alienated’ critical observer became increasing analogous with his descriptions of the cinema audience in his many film reviews for the Frankfurter Zeitung. The subject matter chosen for his reviews and the style utilized in them became more and more dictated by

136

NickW arr

Kracauer’s quest to discover a solitary meditative position were he could assess and manipulate his personal interaction with certain forms and aspects of social phenomena. His articles are less about the film or book under review, but are progress reports on his own intellectual exploration of his relationship with society. This leads him to make the following claim for his distanced perspective: ‘In today’s world, only a person who does not participate and who has no desires can become a receptacle for observations that concern the heart. Stillness reigns only around him. The ruling and oppressed reveal their true forms only to him’ (Witte 1991, 85). Adorno’s comment (‘With Kracauer, in place of theory it is always Kracauer him self) is echoed by Witte, who also concludes that, ‘Kracauer shapes his persona in secret: the critic as object, as fallen subject, the victim of impassability, of ego expropriation, of depersonalisation’ (Witte 1991,85). In 1933, after the burning of the Reichstag, Kracauer fled Germany for Paris. Whilst the Nazis were burning The Salaried Masses, his study of the white-collar workers of Berlin, he supported himself by writing film reviews for Swiss newspapers. After his ’social biography’ of the composer Jacques Offenbach was published in 1937, Kracauer devoted him self to his major film project. This project, which was to become Theory of Film’ and finally published over twenty years after it was started may be viewed as Kracauer’s major attempt to manufacture for himself a 'position of self-reflexive isolation.’ In a letter to Adorno he writes: ’in this book, again, film will only be an excuse’ (Koch 1991, 103 n.15). This admission confirms Witte's perceptive observation: Historians of modem thought are well aware that Siegfried Kracauer was first an architect, then a sociologist, a journalist, and a novelist, and finally a historian and a theorist of film and historiography. But are we thus obligated to maintain that he approached his Sociology as Science scientifically, his novels literarily, The White Collar Workers sociologically, Jacques Offenbach musically, film cinematically, and history historically, as his critics in the various disciplines have traditionally argued? In other words, did his object determine his methods, or did his methods determine his objects? (Witte 1991, 77) In sum, Kracauer’s position remained highly individualistic, eluding the definitions of ‘exile writing’ used by historians like Getrod Koch: ‘In research on emigration it has become an established custom to

Siegfried Kracauer’s Extraterritorial Critique

137

distinguish in the terminology between emigration and exile in order to mark the sharp difference between those who were forced into exile and those who chose to emigrate. Those who did not return from exile after 1945 thus became émigrés. For the rest of his life Kracauer surely came under the category of exile’ (Koch 1991,103 n.15). I feel Koch is mistaken in applying that term to Kracauer. The term ‘exile’ presupposes ‘a home’ and belonging - but Kracauer forwent those necessities. The appropriate term is of course ‘extraterritorial’. Though always categorised as an ‘exiled’ intellectual, the state of ‘exile’ was already inherent in Kracauer’s work even before he left Germany, and long before his troubled move to America in 1941. In other words, Kracauer’s physiognomy and speech impediment promoted a deep sense of social alienation within in him, and subsequently that sense fostered a self-image that he embraced in order to make sense of the world about him. The subject of Kracauer’s work and therefore the subject of extraterritorial critique is the process of the individual struggling to salvage his humanity from ideology. As Adorno perceptively concludes: Using spirit to protect spirit from its own self-idolisation was probably Kracauer’s primary compulsion, a compulsion produced by the suffering of someone who had it etched into his awareness so early on that there is little spirit can do in the fact of mere existence. [...] Even where Kracauer agitates against utopia like a defeatist, he is actually attacking something that animated him, as though out of fear. The utopian trait, afraid of its own name and concept, sneaks into the figure of the man who does not quite fit in. In the same way, the eyes of a child who has been suppressed and badly treated light up in moments when, suddenly understanding, the child feels understood and draws hope from that. The image of Kracauer is that of someone who just barely escaped the most fearful thing of all, and just as hope of humankind is encapsulated in the chance that it will avoid catastrophe, so the reflection of this hope falls on the individual who anticipates, so to speak, this event (Adorno 1991, 176).

Nick Warn

138

Bibliography

Adom o, T . W . 1991. T h e Curious Realist: On Siegfried Kracauer', N ew Germ an Critique, 5 4 ,1 5 1 -6 5 Jay, M . 1985. T h e Extraterritorial Life o f Siegfried Kracauer* in Jay, M ., Perm anent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual M igration from Germ any to Am erica, N ew York: Columbia University Press, 152-198 Koch, G . 2000. Siegfried Kracauen An Introduction, Princeton: Princeton University Press Koch, G . 1991. 'Not yet accepted anywhere: Exile, M emory, and Im age in K racauer’s Conception of History*, N ew Germ an Critique, 5 4 ,9 5 -1 1 1 Kracauer, S. 1995. History: Last things before the Last, Princeton: M arkus W einer Lowenthal, L. 1991. 'As I Rem em ber Friede!', N ew Germ an Critique, 5 4 ,5 -1 7 Rodowick, D. N. 1987. T h e last things before the last: Kracauer and History1, N ew Germ an Critique, 4 1 ,1 0 7 -1 4 0 W itte, K. 1991. “ Light Sorrow”: Kracauer as Literary Critic', N ew Germ an Critique, 54, 7 7 95

FEIWEL KUPFERBERG FROM BERLIN TO HOLLYWOOD: GERMAN-SPEAKING REFUGEES IN THE AMERICAN FILM INDUSTRY

The Nazification of Germany and Austria in the 1930s brought an involuntary stream of German-speaking refugee scholars, architects, artists, writers and other members of the creative professions, mostly of Jewish origins, to America (Fleming and Baylin 1969; Jackman and Borden 1983; Heilbut 1983; Pfanner 1983; Coser 1984; Rutkoff and Scott 1986). It has been estimated that around a thousand of these became professionally involved with the American film industry in Hollywood, working on a more or less regular basis as ‘directors, screen writer, actors, camera men, cutters, scenarists, composers and producers’ (Gersch 1979, 412) for the major studios such as Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Colombia Pictures, and Universal Pictures (Moeller 1976; Russell 1983; Merrill-Mirsky 1991; Schnauber 1992; Gumprecht 1998). For some highly-talented refugee intellectuals, like Max Reinhardt and Arnold Schoenberg, who had, respectively, been leaders of the modem movements in drama and music in Europe, the Hollywood exile was not a happy one, although, paradoxically, for very different reasons. Whereas Max Reinhardt found that his hopes of transplanting his European neo-Wagnerian ideas of theatre as Gesamtkunst to an eager and theatre-interested audience in the city of film turned out to be illusory - Hollywood and Los Angeles were indeed very far from Berlin - Schoenberg’s much more cynical view of Hollywood, in contrast, led him to reject possible patronage from the studios. He prefered to teach elementary music for college students in the Los Angeles area rather then to prostitute himself to what he considered the epitome of vulgarity and commercialized art (Harris 1976; Styan 1982; Taylor 1983; Heilbut, 1983; Merrill-Mirsky 1991). For other refugee intellectuals such as Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger, whose tastes and skills were more attuned to the Hollywood film industry, Hollywood represented an unexpected windfall in their lives. Indeed, their names came to be identified with the very best that the American film industry had to offer (Wood 1970; Seiddman 1977; Zolotow 1977; Pratley 1971), continuing a tradition that had started with legendary German-speaking emigrant directors like Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Mumau and Josef von Sternberg (Whittemore, Cecchetttini 1976; Weinberg 1968). Other German-speaking film

140

Feiwel Kupféfberg

directors arriving in the 1930s, like Fritz Lang, William Dieterle, Fred Zinneman and others, easily fit into this pattem of creative success from European emigrants in Hollywood. As emphasized by Jarrell Jackman, th e ability of the émigrés to assimilate into the cultural life of Southern California was determined by a set of factors: age, facility in English, profession, temperament, and attitude toward his home in exile’ (Jackman 1983, 106-7). More generally, three patterns seems to have determined how the the refugee intellectuals adapted to the particular conditions in Hollywood. One pattem, discernible in most studies of refugee scholars and artists from Europe (Crawford 1953; Fleming and Bailyn 1969; Jackman and Borden 1983; Heilbut 1983) is related to the degree of compatibility between European and American culturally-defined professional standards. Creative success and the accompanying cultural impact were stronger in those cases where the professional standards were not too far from each other and where the contribution of Europeans was therefore immediately seen and appreciated as a potential enrichment and enhancement of American standards (cases in point are architecture, physics, the social sciences and art history). These empirical findings are in conformity with the recent literature on ethnic entrepreneurship by Waldinger and others (Waldinger et al 1990) who suggest that what they call the 'opportunity structure’ for the type of skills offered by the host country influences the possibility of immigrants demonstrating their creative potential. A second main pattern of adaptation among cultural or intellectual immigrants, emphasized by Lewis Coser in his study of refugee scholars in America (Coser 1984), focuses upon the role of commitment. The choice of whether to stay and become a citizen of the host country or the alternative - returning to one’s home country and resuming one’s civic duties there - dearly influences the degree o f cultural impact. Exiles, in the sense of those who expect to return as soon as possible, have little incentive to leam the language and become integrated into the host society. This doesn’t exdude the possibility of this type of immigrant becoming creative when they return to their home country, as illustrated by the case of Levi Strauss. Although his original marriage of cultural anthropology and linguistics dates from his time at the New School for Sodal Research in New York, where he met the leading linguist Roman Jakobsen (Coser 1984, 253), Lévi-Strauss like most Frenchmen was eager to return to liberated France as soon as possible. The result was that France and not America profited intellectually from Levi-Strauss’s years of exile in

From Berttn to Hollywood

141

America (Lévi-Strauss 1977). If we define creativity not only as novel combinations (Koestler 1989; Kupferberg 1998) but also novel ideas which are found useful (Lasswell 1959; Martindale 1994), lack of commitment undoubtedly diminishes the cultural contribution of creative talents to the host country. A third aspect is what Portes and Rumbaut (1996), in their study of migration to America, call the ‘context of reception’. This includes the policies of the receiving government, the conditions of the host labour markets and in particular the characteristics of the ethnic communities that these immigrants often become part of. The importance of these ethnic networks for the way immigrants become integrated in the host society has been acknowledged in recent research. The point is that it is mainly through these networks that the cultural norms and values that immigrants from a particular country bring with them are reproduced in the host society (Steinberg 1989; Sowell 1996). A case in point is the Frankfurt School, which functioned as a tight ethnic network of American-based scholars educated in the German tradition, thereby reproducing certain habits of mind that were not easily adaptable to a culture where learning had no special status, where students treated their professors as equals, and where in particular art was not seen as the exclusive monopoly of a sophisticated elite, but rather as a form of entertainment for the masses and for this reason an area for entrepreneurial businessmen (Jay 1976; Heilbut 1983). The Role o f Immigrants In Hollywood One thing missing in Adorno and Horkheimer’s highly critical analysis of the ‘culture industry’ in The Dialectics o f Enlightenment, which they wrote when they lived in Los Angeles, is a reference to the important role played by immigrants in the American film industry. From this point of view, Hollywood had always been a cosmopolitan city. Thus Rosten in his study of Hollywood in the 1940s found that ‘21.8 percent of the entire sample, 28.7 per cent of directors, 25.3 percent of the actors and actresses and 17.4 per cent of the producers had been bom abroad’ (cit. Hall 1999,548). Even more important, however, was the qualitative impact. A study of immigrant directors in Hollywood (Whittemore and Cecchettini 1976) almost reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Hollywood’s creative community, analyzing the creative careers of household names like von Stroheim, Chaplin, Lubitsch, Curtiz, Hitchcock, Lang and others. Hollywood was not only enriched by European immigrants, often of German or Austrian origins. As Gabler (1988) formulated it, Hollywood could be said to have been ‘invented’ by European

142

Feiwel Kupferberg

immigrants, mainly but not exclusively of Jewish origins (Italian and Irish immigrants also played an important role, mainly as bankers and advertisers). These early immigrants were predominant among the industrial pioneers who transformed Hollywood into the leading film city of the world. These were obviously very different kinds of immigrants from most of those who came later. They were roughnecked and mostly uneducated. None of them had ever dreamed of going to college. Irving Thalberg, perhaps the most talented and sophisticated of all the Hollywood ‘Movie Moguls’ hadn’t even finished high school (Thomas 1969). What these early immigrants brought into the new film business was something else, a strong will to succeed in a new, emerging business, and they had few prejudices about serving an uneducated audience like themselves. Most visitors to the early moving pictures were like them, uneducated immigrants for whom films were both affordable entertainment and easily understandable, since this was the era of silent film. The ‘Movie Moguls’ had mostly started as salesmen and entrepreneurs in the fashion business before they entered the film business as exhibitors, then as distributors, and finally as producers o f film, becoming the leading executives and studio-heads of the dominant studios like Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Colombia and Universal. These pioneers entered the American film industry at a critical phase, characterized initially by a lack of interest in or sympathy for the artistic side of the industry among the big players. These businessmen had a low opinion of cinema audiences and were mostly interested in finding an outlet for their newly invented machines and film-negatives (Kennedy 1927). An important characteristic of these immigrant pioneers was a strong willingness to take risks (Gabler 1988). This should be seen in the context of what Upset calls a pressure to innovate due to structural exclusion and accompanying feelings of threatened self-esteem (Upset 1979; Kupferberg 1999). They ultimately succeeded in combining an intimate knowledge of audience needs and wants with a growing respect for artistic standards. It was this particular intellectual background that allowed these Movie Moguls to formulate a strategic vision for the American film-industry, based upon an openness and sympathy for the artistic side in combination with a sound business sense for producing films for a mass market on an industrial basis (Thomas 1969; Marx 1975; Freedland 1983; Crowther 1985). These immigrant entrepreneurs found themselves at the heart of the creative tensions within the industry between business and art (Davies 1962;

From Berlin to Hollywood

143

Griffith 1970; Jarvie 1970; Tudor 1974; Baker and Faulkner 1991), and were able to balance the two in an unusually productive way, thus laying the ground for the transformation of the American film industry from a technically advanced but artistically underdeveloped business to the world centre of filmmaking. Whereas the American film industry had been dearly behind its major European competitors such as France, Italy and for some years Denmark as well (Waldekrantz 1941; Jakobs 1968), by the early 1920s it had established a dominant position in the world market that it has never relinquished since (Thompson 1985; Robinson 1996; Barber 1996). It should be emphasized that this was accomplished not only due to the high degree of professionalism encouraged by the studio system (Jarvie 1970; Bordwell et al 1988; Staiger 1995; Jarvie 1970), but also to shrewd marketing methods and a policy of luring away talents to Hollywood (Huaco 1965). At the start of the 1920s Germany and Sweden were producing artistically advanced as well as commercially viable moving pictures, but only ten years later these potentially dangerous rivals had already lost momentum (Hood 1939; Furhammar 1998; Kracuaer 1971; Kreimeier 1996; Eisner 1973). The Swedish film industry’s two foremost talents, Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, were both lost to Hollywood, as was Stiller’s protégé, Greta Garbo. From Germany the great actor Emil Jannings, the leading producer Erich Pommert and a long list of leading directors - Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Mumau, William Dieterie, Fred Zinneman, G. W. Pabst - came to Hollywood in the 1920s (although Jannings was to return to Germany with the introduction of sound films). Although these immigrants no doubt contributed to the raising of the artistic standards of the American film industry, the underlying motive of Hollywood’s massive import of European talents seems to have been to consolidate Hollywood’s dominance in the production and distribution of films. This hidden motive explains why the major studios, after luring talents over to Hollywood, were often in no hurry to use them. Many, such as the Swedish director Mauritz Stiller, were paid handsomely to do nothing (Hood 1939). Even Fritz Lang, arriving in 1934 as one of the first German-speaking refugee intellectuals in Hollywood, also had to arm himself with patience. The studio executives clearly expressed their wish not to be bothered (McGillan, 1997). Eventually the European directors were indeed given a chance to prove their worth. As is the general case in Hollywood, box office results meant creative freedom, whereas failure meant that the director had to do what he was told. This was a hard blow to a top director like Fritz Lang who was used to being

144

Feiwel Kupferberg

in creative control. His problems in adapting seem to have been related to learning that in Hollywood the producer, rather than the director, was in charge, and the stars were considered second most important. Another problem was getting used to an audience used to dramatic action and emotional melodrama, rather then long, serious German movies. Artistically, however, Fritz Lang met with surprisingly little resistance. All his American films, beginning with Fury (1936), a film about a lynch mob storming a jail where an innocent prisoner (Spencer Tracy) is kept waiting for his trial, draw on the techniques of German Expressionist cinema as well as Russian montage (Huaco 1965; Eisner 1971). The ease with which Lang could incorporate his artistic vision into his American films is probably explained both by the support he got from the strong presence of other emigrant directors in Hollywood, and by the overall business strategy of the Movie Moguls of the 1930s to combine financial control with high artistic standards and innovation in order to remain competitive in the American and world markets. Fritz Lang belonged to a category of refugees who would probably have wanted to come to Hollywood in any case. A similar case is Billy Wilder, who started out as a screen writer and arguably became the most successful emigrant director of them all (Wood 1970; Zolotow 1977). But whereas Wilder was practically unknown when he arrived in Hollywood and had to share a small room with Peter Lorre until he made his professional breakthrough as part of a twin-team o f screenwriters (Zolotow 1977), Lang was already a world-renowned director. Lang had visited New York in the 1920s (an influence on the skyscrapers in Metropolis) and had been impressed by Hollywood’s high professionalism. Nevertheless, as the leading director in the German film industry, he had remained in Germany until the Nazis convinced him that it was time to get out. His decision, according to a story whose absolute veracity is open to some doubt, came after Goebbels offered Lang the unrestrained leadership over the German film industry at a point when it was entering a new and glorious phase of service for the German nation. Lang nervously asked for time to consider the generous offer, and took the first train to Paris. There he met David Selznick, the son-in-law of MGM's studio boss Mayer, and was soon on his way to Hollywood (McGilligan 1997). Refugee W riters A quite different category of refugees is represented by those prominent German and Austrian writers who came to Hollywood in

From Berlin to Hollywood

145

1940, mainly from the South of France after the French capitulation to the Nazis (Spalek and Strelka 1976; Taylor 1983). These refugees came less because they had a professional interest in Hollywood, than to save their lives and continue their professional careers. It should be emphasized that the living and working conditions of these writers were extremely polarized (Coser 1983). A small number were best-selling writers with a world-wide reputation and only needed a safe haven where they could continue writing in their own language, knowing that their books would be translated. Others were largely unknown in America and had to struggle hard to gain a new readership. The radical difference between these two groups of refugee writers in Hollywood is noted by Jarrell Jackman: After spending an afternoon at Feuchtwanger’s, the émigré author Herman Kesten left amazed at what he had seen: a twenty-room Spanish-style home with a view of the mountains and ocean; all kinds of fruit trees; a garden filled with flowers; a park with benches and breakfast tables. As Kesten said, ‘what a life!’ It undoubtedly had its comforts, and there must have been occasions when Feuchtwanger thought to himself that all the troubles he had to endure in escaping the Nazis were worthwhile - if this was the end result. But of course, the end result was not the same for all the émigrés. While Feuchtwanger lived in luxury, writers such as Heinrich Mann, Alfred Doblin, and Bertold Brecht struggled to eke out an existence in their small bungalows and apartments (Jackman 1983,95-6). Most of the writers without world renown had come to Hollywood because they had recieved one-year contracts with some of the main studios (MGM, Warners, Colombia). This was necessary in order to circumvent the Washington Bureaucracy allowing this ‘New Weimar* as it was later called (Schnauber 1992; Gumprecht 1998) to enter the ‘land of the free’ in the first place. The studio heads naturally didn’t expect them to contribute very much during that year, and paid them thereafter 100 dollars a week. The average annual wage for organized Hollywood screen writers was 5000 dollars, which meant that these writers received what trade union members with average contracts could claim. It was more than enough for a decent living and far above the average of most refugee intellectuals in other parts of America, but of course, compared with their more fortunate colleagues from Germany and Austria or the few better paid American screenwriters, it was very little. Hence the strong feeling of resentment expressed in a letter from Alfred

146

Feiwet Kupferberg

Döblin, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, to Hermann Kesten: ‘There are only two categories of authors who live here on the West Coast [...] those who live in the fat, and those who live in the dirt.’ (cit. Coser 1984,233) What was even more demeaning were the conditions they worked under. In particular these studio-employed refugee writers who had come less for professional than for political reasons, were unused to the typical Hollywood labor-divided team-work, where each writer specialized in a particular area (dialogue, characterization, straight narrative, screen ‘doctors’ etc.) and where the membership of these teams was often fluid. As emphasized by a German study on exile writers as screenwriters, ‘the structure of their spiritual life was in the German cultural space more than in others oriented towards the image of the artist as creator. The understanding of the Dichter as original genius, as prophet, as leader, and the artwork as personal expression, as the shaping of personal convictions [...] necessarily had to clash with the [...] unpersonal, assembly-like type, market oriented and reproducible structured film product of Hollywood.’ (Moeller 1976, 683). The cultural shock felt by most German-speaking writers was increased by their lack of preparedness for and knowledge of the particular conditions for writers in the film industry. William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald complained about Hollywood in terms not very different from those of their foreign-bom colleagues. They experienced the degradation of status comparable to becoming hiring hands’ (Coser 1984,231 ). But at least the latter were able to produce screenplays that could be used by the film industry and moreover they were handsomely paid for it. The refugee writers in contrast: had little knowledge about the demands they would face in their new employment. To them Hollywood was a strange new world, for which they were not prepared [...] when a writer arrived in the studio that had agreed to employ him, he was assigned to an office in the Writers’ Building, where he was supposed to work from 9.A.M. to 5 P.M.. producing, or more often rewriting, film scripts. Most refugees had only the vaguest idea what was expected of them, and even if they fully understood their assigned tasks, they felt utterly unable to comply with the wishes of their employer. It is not surprising that hardly any of the projects on which these writers labored ever came to fruition. For men and women whose sense of self had largely been nurtured by their literary productivity, their new existence as producers on an assembly line was a shocking ordeal. Asked to

From Beilin to Hollywood

147

write in a language they had mastered only imperfectly, required to deal with ideas, situations, and plots that were generally completely remote from their own experiences, they felt shattered (Coser 1984, 231-2). Thus Coser concludes that ‘the autobiographical accounts and especially the letters of refugee writers make depressing reading’. He cites a letter by Alfred Doblin in which the author describes the utter meaninglessness of his situation: ‘One does nothing, absolutely nothing [...] Supposedly we are collaborating on something, but up to now that is only a rumor. We take care of our correspondence, telephone, read newspapers, write on our own - whatever you can do in a sitting position.’ (cit. Coser 1984, 233). The situation certainly did not get better when the year ended and it turned out that Döblin’s contract with the MGM was not renewed. In another letter to Kesten, written in Hollywood on 30 January 1942, Doblin expresses his feelings of hopelessness and resignation. ‘Dear Herr Kesten: one now only writes gloomy or artificially hopeful letters; in one’s heart, there is nothing to laugh at [...] As to myself, I receive 18 dollars in unemployment benefit (until March) and the committee of Frau Frank donates a contribution above that (this time 50 dollars a month) and there you have exactly my budget for three persons. On top of that Frau Frank has told me that because of the catastrophic situation of the Committee, she cannot promise me anything for the next months’ (Kesten 1964,200). Age, Language and Opportunities Döblin’s age (he was almost fifty when he arrived in Hollywood) possibly explains his passivity and willingness to be taken care of, rather then take some initiative of his own (he was in fact a qualified physician, but lacked the knowledge of English to be allowed to continue his profession). The willingness to leam the language of the host country was another important factor. Jan Lustig, a journalist who arrived in Hollywood at the same time as Doblin, surprised his studiobosses at MGM by having ‘not only film experience, but also talking and writing English’ (Boewe 1976, 782). Lustig’s experience in the film industry was admittedly rather limited; he had once submitted a film scenario he had written with Billy Wilder in Berlin in 1932 to UfA. The manuscript was accepted, but no film came out of it and Lustig returned to journalism. In exile, however, he had shown considerable foresight: 'After the fall of France in 1940, his hopes had been directed towards America, and thus Jan Lustig had used the half year he spent in

148

Feiwet Kupferberg

Portugal waiting for an American affidavit, a visa and a ship ticket exclusively to read English literature, with a vocabulary book and a pencil in hand. This paid off in California, as it contributed essentially to secure his and his wife incomes for living' (Boewe 1976, 782). Interestingly Billy Wilder’s case was somewhat similar. When he arrived in Hollywood in 1934, he barely spoke English. While waiting for an offer to turn up, Wilder spent most of his time listening to the radio. His favourites were soap operas and baseball. Not only did he leam to speak like an American, but some critics believe that his early exposure to radio soap operas was an influence on his later box office hits such as Irma La Douce and Some Like it Hot (Zolotow 1977). These were exceptions rather than the rule. Another German writer who settled in the vicinity of Hollywood and Los Angeles, but without professional contacts with the film industry, Ludwig Marcuse, noted that ‘many German scholars, writers and actors, were simply unbending when it came to learning the English language’ (Boewe 1976, 784). This reflects the importance of the decision whether to stay or to return, as suggested by Coser. Doblin left the USA as soon as the war was over, whereas Jan Lustig and many of his German-speaking colleagues stayed and had a significant cultural impact upon American film and literature. Although very few of the writers on a one-year contract had their contracts renewed immediately, the entry of America into the war suddenly made German-speaking writers very attractive, as Hollywood ‘went to war* and started mass-producing pictures about the situation in Europe. Suddenly their particular cultural and linguistic skills were in high demand, as were the skills of other film professionals from that region. These new opportunities are well illustrated by the film classic Casablanca (1942), where several German and Austrian actors, some of Jewish origin, played (or overplayed) the unsympathetic roles. As a result ‘by one count in 1944 there were fifty-nine German screen writers in Hollywood, thirty-three directors, twenty-three producers, ten actors, and nineteen composers working for Hollywood. According to George Froeschel, an émigré writer who won an academy reward for his work on the screenplay of Mrs Miniver (1942), Hollywood studios considered German language writers to have a special gift for storytelling. “We were Gods in those days,” recalls Froeschel of successful writers in this golden era of the American Screen’ (Lyon 1980,46). One of the writers who tried to profit from this God-like status was Bertolt Brecht. An East German study notes that ‘of all the great exile writers, Brecht turned most intensely to Hollywood. This was due, first of all, to his fundamental interest in the technical arts, and secondly his

From Berlin to Hollywood

149

will to use film as a mass art in the struggle against fascism. And, not least, Brecht sought to secure the necessary income for himself and his family and his “production for the drawer”’ (Gersch 1979, 440). But of his approximately *forty outlines, among them several complete exposós and scenarios’ only one actually became a film. This was Hangmen Also Die, which he wrote together with its director Fritz Lang and the established American screenwriter John Wexley. Brecht received a handsome reward for his efforts, 10,000 dollars, which gave him the security and creative autonomy he needed. But Brecht’s behaviour during filming, in particular his refusal to complete the script unless he received a considerable pay raise, so infuriated Lang and Wexley, both of whom were known for their left-wing sympathies, that they decided never to work with him again. Some of his other wellconnected friends in Los Angeles tried to help him as well, but nothing came of these efforts, mainly because Brecht had the habit of telling professional filmmakers how films should be made. As suggested by Lyon, this was not a new pattem; he had acted in exactly the same way in Berlin in the 1920s. Being completely convinced of his genius, he had little need for advice from people he thought to be less talented. Needless to say, these snubbed friends did not repeat the effort. This suggests that temperament has to be taken into account as well. The two major irritants of [Brecht’s] American exile - non-recognition and lack of money - became a near-obsession,’ we are told, and he now began to look at his attempts to get into Hollywood merely as a form of prostitution: ‘If Arthur Koestler can make money writing pornography, I can do it writing films’ (Lyon 1980,46). Cultural Alienation These professional disappointments in Hollywood do not fully explain another interesting trait among most German writers in Hollywood, namely their strong cultural alienation. This factor is emphasized by Jackman: in the minds of many [...] exiled writers, revulsion towards all things American encouraged and was fed by a nostalgic view of the way things used to be in Europe. European culture, in this view, had been refined; American culture was nasty, brutish, and crude. Even the mild Hollywood climate was compared unfavorably with their own. Leonard Frank complained that there V as no air in the air*. He noted that in ‘the eternally sunkissed, lifeless hell of Hollywood’ one lost all sense of the rhythm of seasons (Coser 1984,233-234).

150

Feiwel Kupferberg

A similar attitude of cultural unease can be found among those German-speaking writers who chose to settle in the vicinity of New York. They certainly did not appreciate American puritan drinking habits: ‘above all, they missed being able to drink a glass of beer or wine with their inexpensive meals in New York cafeterias’. Other New York writers in exile were annoyed by 'differences in building construction [...] For example, they noticed that American doors had knobs instead of handles [...], the windows also could not be opened in the European manner but had to be pushed up or down’ (Pfanner 1983, 86-7). Brecht of course topped them all. He ’criticized the climate in Los Angeles (too hot); American food (it was impossible to buy proper bread); the enforced artificiality that dinged to a green region that inevitably would return to being a desert if one stopped watering it; the crass materialism; a consumer capitalism which with its "cheap beauties” degenerated everything around it; and a lifestyle almost totally lacking in style.’ (Lyon and Fuegi, 1976, 270-71). A typical diary note written on 1 August 1941 reads: ‘In hardly any place did I find life more difficult than in this show place of easy going’ (Lyon and Fuegi 1976,270) and in a poem he explidtly compared Los Angeles with hell. This cultural alienation naturally prevented Brecht from immersing himself in and contributing anything of value to American culture. Nevertheless he did write some of his most creative work while in Hollywood, such as a new version of the historical drama Das Laban das Galilai, which he staged together with Charles Laughton. But since these are almost purely European works, his im pad on American culture was almost negligible. Interestingly the same curious distance to American culture is noticeable in Thomas Mann’s work. Although he lived ‘more then ten years in southern California' (four more years then Brecht) ‘the only American influence he could attribute to his novel Joseph the Provider (1943) was that it had been written under th e Egyptian-like sky of California.’ Mann never attempted to synthesize the California and German experiences and went on to write Doktor Faustos (1947) ‘probably the most German novel ever written’ (Jackman 1983, 103). By contrast, another of the German-speaking refugees, Frederick Kohner, wrote the best-selling novel Gidgat (1957). This novel portrays the southern California surfer world, in which what mattered most was one’s suntan. The favourite pastimes of Gidget’s friends were ‘shooting the breeze’, 'making out’, tooling down the main drag’, ‘getting annihilated on beer* or ‘fradured on wine’, to quote some

From Berlin to Hollywood

151

phrases used in the novel (Jackman 1983,102). Gidget was based on the experiences of Kohner’s own daughter who had the hedonistic lifestyle described in the novel. Mann’s sons and daughters were of course too old and Germanized ever to attempt such an undignified thing. So perhaps age does play the crucial role for the cultural impact of the refugee writers and intellectuals in Hollywood, as Jackman suggests.

Bibliography B aker, W . E. and Faulkner, R . R. 1991. ‘Role as Resource in the Hollywood Film Industry*, A JS 97 (2), 279-309 B arber, B. 1996. Jihad vs. M cW orid: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping die W orld, N ew York: Ballantine Boew e, K. 1976. ‘Jan Lustig', in Spalek and Strelka eds, 780 - 788 Bordwell, D ., Staiger, J. and Thom psen, K. 1988. The Classical Hollywood Cinem a: Film Style and M ode o f Production to 1960, London: Routledge Coser, L. 1984. R efugee Scholars in Am erica: Their Cultural Im pact and Their Experiences, N ew Haven and London: Y ale University Press Crawford, W . R. 1953. The Cultural Migration. The European Scholar in Am erica, Philadelphia: University o f Pennsylvania Press Crowther, B. 1985. The Lion’s Share, N ew York and London: Garland D avies, B. 1962. The Lonely Life, N ew York: G . P. Putnam’s Sons Eisner, L. H . 1973. The H aunted Screen, London: Seeker and W arburg Flem ing, D. and Bailyn, B. 1969. The Intellectual M igration, Cam bridge, MA: Harvard University Press Fteedland, M . 1983. The W arner Brothers, London: Harrap French, P. 1971. The M ovie Moguls, Harmondsworth: Penguin Furham m ar, L. 1998. Film en i Sverige, Stockholm: Bra Böcker G abler, N . 1988. An Em pire o f Their Own: H ow the Jew s Invented Hollywood, N ew York: Crown Gersch, W . 1979. ‘Antifaschistisches Engagem ent in Hollywood’ in E xil in den USA, Leipzig: R edam , 411-446 Griffith, R. 1970. The M ovie Stars, Garden City: Doubleday

152

Feiwei Kupferberg

Gumprecht, H. 1998. ‘N ew Weimar" unter Palm en. Deutsche Schriftsteller im E xil in Los A ngeles, Berlin: Aufbau Harris, E. 1976. ‘M ax Reinhardt* in Spalek and Streiks eds, 789-900 Heilbut, A. 1983. Exiled in Paradise: Germ an Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in A m erica from the 1930s to the Present, N ew York: Viking H all, P. 1999. Cities in C M iaation , London: Phoenix Hood, R . 1939. Svenska Pitmens D ram a: Sjöström och Stiller, Stockholm: Ahlen and Söner Huaco, G . A. 1965. The Sociology o f Film Art, N ew York: Basic Books Jackm an, J. C . 1983. ‘Germ an Ém igrés in Southern California’, in Jackman and Boden eds. 1 9 8 3 ,7 9 -9 4 Jackm an, J. C. and Boden, C . M . eds 1983. The M uses F lee Hitter. Cultural Transfer and Adaption 1930 - 1945, W ashington D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press Jacobs, L. 1968. The R ise o f the Am erican Film , N ew York: Teachers’ College Press Jarvie, I. C . 1970. Towards a Sociology o f the Cinem a, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Jay, M . 1976. The D ialectical Im agination: A History o f the Frankfurt School and the Institute o f Social Research, 1923 - 1950, London: Heinem ann Kennedy, J. P. 1927. The Story o f Films, Chicago and N ew York: Shaw Kesten, H. 1964. Deutsche Literatur im Exil, Vienna, Munich, Basel: Desch Koestler, A. 1989. The A ct o f Creation, London: Arcana Kracuaer, S. 1971. From C aligari to Hitler. A Psychological History o f Germ an Film, Princeton: Princeton University Press Kreim eier, K. 1996. The Ufa Story, New York: Hill and W ang Kupferberg, F. 1998. ‘Models of Creativity Abroad: M igrants, Strangers and Travellers’, Arch, erop .sodol., 3 9 ,1 7 9 -2 0 6 Kupferberg, F. 1999. 'The Pressure to Innovate: Imm igrant Am erica and the Invention of Hollywood', unpublished paper to IV 0-sem in ar, Aalborg University. 18 June Lasswell, H. D. 1959. T h e Social Setting of Creativity’ in Anderson, H. H . ed, Creativity and its Cultivation, New York and Evanston: H arper and Row Lévi-Strauss, C. 1977. Tristes Tropiques, N ew York: W ashington Square Books Lipset, S. M . 1979. The First N ew Nation: The United States in a Com parative Perspective, New York: Norton

From Berlin to Hollywood

153

Lyon, J. K. 1980. Bertolt Brecht in Am erica, Princeton: Princeton University Press Lyon, J. K. and Fuegi, J. B. 1976. ’Bertolt B rechf in Spalek and Streike eds, 268-298 McGHHgan, P. 1997. Fritz Lang, N ew York: S i M arlin’s Press M artindale, C. 1994. ‘How Can W M easure a Society’s Creativity?' in Boden, M . A. ed, Dim ensions o f Creativity, Cam bridge, M A M IT Press M arx, S . 1975. M ayer and Thalberg: The M ake-B elieve Saints, Hollywood: French M errill-M irsky, C . 1991. Exiles in Paradise, Los Angeles: Hollywood Bowl M useum and Los A ngeles Philharmonic Association M oeller, H. 1976. ‘Exilautoren als Drehbuchautoren’ in Spalek and Streiks eds, 6 76-714 Planner, H. F. 1983. Exile in N ew York: Germ an and Austrian W riters a lle r 1933, D etro it W ayne State University Press Portes, A and Rum baut R. C. 1996. Im m igrant Am erica, Berkeley: University of California Press Pratley, G . 1971. The Cinem a o f Otto Prem inger, London: Zwem m er and New York: Barnes Robinson, D. 1996. From P eep Show to Palace: The Birth o f Am erican Film , N ew York: Colom bia University Press Rutkoff, P. M . and Scott, W . B. 1986. N ew School, New York: Free Press and London: C ollier M acmillan Schatz, T . 1998. The Genius o f the System: Hollywood Film -M aking in the Studio Era, London: Faber and Faber Schnauber, C . 1992. Spaziergänge durch das Hollywood d er Em igranten, Zurich: Arche Seidm an, S . 1977. The Film C areer o f Billy W ilder, Boston: Hall Sowell, T . 1996. Migration and Culture, N ew York: Basic Books Spalek, J. M . and Streiks J. 1976, Deutsche Exillitteratur seit 1 9 3 3 :1 . Kalifornien, Berne and Munich: Francke Staiger, J. ed 1995. The Studio System , N ew Brunswick: Rutgers University Press Steinberg, S . 1989. The Ethnie M yth: Race, Ethnicity and Class in Am erica, Boston: Beacon Styan, J. L. 1982. M ax Reinhardt, Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press Taylor, J. R. 1983. Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Ém igrés 1933-1945, London: Faber and Faber Thom as, B. 1969. Thalberg: Life and Legend, Garden City: Doubleday

154

Feiwei Kupferberg

Thompson, K. 1985. Exporting Entertainm ent: Am erica in the W orld Film M arket, 1 9 0 7 1934, London: BFI Tudor, A. 1974. Im age and Influence: Studies in the Sociology o f Film , London: A llen and Unwin W aidekranz, R . 1941. Film en växer upp, Stockholm: Gebers W aldinger, R ., Aldrich, H. and W ard, R. 1990. Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Im m igrant B usiness in Industrial Societies, London: Sage W einberg, H. G . 1971. The Lubitsch Touch, N ew York: Dutton W hittem ore, D. and Cecchettini, P. A. 1976. Passport to Hollywood. Film Im m igrants Anthology, New York: M cGraw HHI W ood, T . 1970. The Bright Side o f Bitty W ilder, Prim arily, Garden City: Doubleday Zoiotow, M . 1977. Bitty W ilder in Hollywood, London: Allen

FRIEDRICH STADLER THE W IENER K R EIS IN GREAT BRITAIN: EMIGRATION AND INTERACTION IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

In 1968 the Austro-American philosopher o f science Herbert Feigl published a remarkable, largely autobiographical essay on T he Wiener Kreis in America’. This historical and theoretical account o f the Vienna C ircle’s em igration story was first anthologized in the second volume on Perspectives in American History (1968), edited by the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History and once more included in the standard volume on The Intellectual Migration. Europe and America, 1930-1960, published in 1969 by Harvard University Press. A reprint can be found in Feigl’s Inquiries and Provocations. Selected Writings 1929-1974 (Feigl 1981). Together with his influential article on Logical Positivism (co-authored with Albert Blumberg in the Journal o f Philosophy), which already appeared in the year o f his definitive em igration to the USA in 1931, the above-mentioned publication marked a watershed in the historiography of Logical Empiricism as a paradigm atic intellectual history of forced migration, supplementing the autobiographical reports o f Philipp Frank (1949) and Rudolf Carnap. As Feigl wrote: It was this article, I believe, that affixed this internationally accepted label to our Viennese outlook [...] Blumberg and I fe lt we had a mission in America, and the response to our efforts seemed to support us in this. We had, indeed, ‘started the ball rolling’, and for at least twenty years Logical Positivism was one of the major subjects of discussion, dispute, and controversy in United States philosophy. (Feigl 1968,646f.). In his essay on one of the most influential philosophical movements in the field o f philosophy of science coming from Austria (Central Europe) to the USA, Feigl reconstructed the intellectual and institutional trajectory of the Vienna Circle from a personal and professional perspective in what could best be described as a sort of philosophical oral history. Starting with the origins and development in Vienna, Feigl describes the early contacts with American philosophers (Schlick 1929/1931) in Stanford and Berkeley and the beginnings of Vienna C ircle’s m igration from the 1930s onwards. His own contacts with

156

Friedrich Stadler

Dickinson M iller and Charles A. Strong (a son-in-law o f John D. Rockefeller) enabled the Schlick student and gifted young philosopher of science to embark upon his brilliant academic career in Harvard with a Rockefeller Fellowship. Since Carnap, Frank and most o f the members emigrated to the USA, we still lack a complementary account of the Wiener Kreis in Great Britain. Moreover, the most influential history o f this transfer of ideas came from Alfred J. Ayer (1910-1989), who had attended the Vienna Circle in 1932-33, with his publications on the history and influence of the Viennese philosophy, especially with his booklet Language, Truth and Logic (1936a) - a publication that was influential into the postwar period. This was reinforced by Ayer’s ’The Vienna Circle’ (The Revolution in Philosophy, 1956) and his textbook volum e on Logical Positivism (1959). I do not wish to deal with all these factors influencing the intellectual migration and cultural transform ation o f the Vienna Circle to Great Britain, but only to provide some significant m aterial in order to criticise what I w ill call the standard view o f 'Logical Positivism ’ in England. This widespread position has been challenged over the last decade in studies in the history and philosophy of science, but we still lack a critical reconstruction analogous to the better researched topic o f Origins o f Logical Empiricism (Giere/Richardson 1996) and (forthcom ing) Logical Empiricism in North America (Hardcastle/Richardson 2003). This standard view is determined on the one hand by Ayer’s role as most im portant mediator and interpreter, and, on the other hand, by the extensive research on Ludwig W ittgenstein’s impact on English analytic philosophy before and after W orld W ar II. The essence o f this traditional historiographical account is that the Logical Positivism o f the Vienna Circle made its primary impact on British philosophy of science, partly through the mediation of Popper, whereas analytic philosophy, especially as ‘ordinary language philosophy’ was mostly m otivated by W ittgenstein’s late philosophy o f the Philosophische Untersuchungen I Philosophical Investigations (posthumously published in 1953). In the following account I want to show - in an adm ittedly cursory fashion that: 1. this traditional image of Logical Empiricism has shortcom ings and is highly selective 2. this distinction between two different currents (Vienna C ircle vs. W ittgenstein) is rather artificial

The W iener K nis in Great Britain

157

3. there was a flourishing communication among the dominant figures already mentioned, which constitutes an im portant correction of the usual history o f reception. From a biographical point o f view this means that the players in this complex intellectual history have to be extended on both sides. Accordingly, we are dealing with a typical example o f networking in the period from the 1930s to the 1960s in approaching the Wiener Kreis in Great Britain. My intention is to reveal that, parallel to the American story, there was another interconnected development, so that it is futile to argue that Continental, British and American branches all existed as separate movements. (Cf. the diagram at the end of this article). Intersections and Interventions: Philosophy o f Science and A n alytic Philosophy between Central Europe and Great Britain The process of interaction between Continental and British traditions in analytic/scientific philosophy did not suddenly set in in the 1930s. The key figure is without doubt Bertrand Russell. Russell, Einstein and W ittgenstein were the leading representatives of the scientific worldconception mentioned in the Vienna Circle’s manifesto in 1929. Besides this context his early dispute with Alexius Meinong (1905) and his lifelong conflict-ridden involvement with the life and work of Ludwig W ittgenstein is well known, even if strongly contested in its interpretation. Russell was one of the most im portant partners for Austrian philosophy from the turn of the century until his American days, and for this reason we need to revise the dominant stories on his relations to the Vienna Circle and W ittgenstein, too, especially with reference to the reception of his book Our Knowledge o f the External World, 1914. This intellectual impact can be illustrated more precisely by the internationalization of Logical Empiricism in Europe and Am erica, especially with a focus on the International Congresses for the Unity of Science (1934-1941), organized in Paris (twice), Copenhagen, Cambridge (in England at Girton College), Harvard and Chicago. At the latest in Paris in 1935 we encounter the first significant presentation of Logical Empiricism in an international context with an increasing overlapping into the Anglo-Saxon world (Stadler 2001, 363-371). Russell gave a widely acclaimed opening address in which he presented scientific philosophy as a synthesis of logic and empiricism. (Russell 1936). For the American delegates Charles Morris had stressed the international cooperation of scientists, which indicates the growing Austro-American relations, but what of the British connection? Already in January 1935 Neurath had organized an inform al meeting on

158

Friedrich Stadler

Logical Positivism in London (held at Belsize Park) with A. J. Ayer, G. E. Moore, Max Black and Carl G. Hempel, which resulted in a s till rather sceptical statem ent on common points in Vienna and Cambridge (Stebbing 1935). In Paris, the young Ayer delivered a paper on 'The A nalytic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy’ (1936b), referring to the analogous anti-m etaphysical movements in Vienna and England since the turn of the century. He expressed his hope for a stronger interpenetration o f science and philosophy - as opposed to the often deplored Scientism as Infatuation of Philosophy with Science (Sored 1991). Otto Neurath gave a very positive account on the Paris congress, conveying his 'im pression that there was in fact something like a scholar’s republic of logical em piricism ' (Neurath 1936, 377). This, by the way, seems to be congruent with what was happening at the tim e: Robert Musil tried to get an invitation for the congress, the Frankfurt School sent W alter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht expressed his interest in cooperating with Neurath. The meeting of American pragm atists (Charles M orris), English analytic philosophers (Susan Stebbing), Polish logicians (Kasim ir Ajdukiewicz) and Italian scientific philosophers (Frederigo Enriques) illustrated this tendency towards a unification of empiricism and rationalism , but also the international objectives of this ambitious project. A year later Russell, who had delivered his laudatio of G ottlob Frege in German (!), wrote, that The congress of Scientific Philosophy in Paris in September 1935, was a remarkable occasion, and, fo r lovers of rationality a very encouraging one’. Russell's review perfectly illustrates the international context of the already exiled Vienna School, and particularly its rational-em piricist interpretation in the sp irit of Galileo and Leibniz: Modem science arose from the marriage o f mathematics and em piricism ; three centuries later, the same union is giving birth to a second child, scientific philosophy, which is perhaps destined to as great a career. For it alone can provide the intellectual tem per in which it is possible to find a cure for the diseases of the modem world (Russell 1936,10-11). W hether scientific philosophy was able to fu lfil Russell’s hopes is not for us to decide. S till, his statement documents an atmosphere of optim ism and awakening so soon to be swept away by war. A large international committee for the Intenational Congresses for the Unity of Science was

The Wiener Kreis in Great Britain

159

form ed, including the English members C. K. Ogden, Bertrand Russell, Susan Stebbing and Joseph H. Woodger. A ll of them were to play a significant role in the convergence and divergence of Logical Empiricism and British philosophy (of science). The case of W oodger as biologist o f the Unity o f Science movement and his Theoretical Biology Club in Oxford is one of the issues which deserves further investigation. The ‘Fourth International Congress for Unity of Science’ on the main topic ‘Scientific Language’, held in Cambridge UK in 1938, a few months after the German occupation of Austria was the last European m eeting o f the community in scientific philosophy within the framework o f a larger encyclopedia-oriented programme. It also documents the high level o f the dialogue between British and Central European proponents of scientific and analytic philosophy. A t the same tim e it also provided a forum for constituting the international committee for the forthcom ing congresses and the organizational committee for the International Encyclopedia o f Unified Science (Camap, M orris, Neurath 1938ff). In his inaugural address G.E. Moore focused on the historical reference point of Cambridge philosophy, i.e., Russell’s and W hitehead’s Principia Mathematica, but surprisingly without mentioning Ludwig W ittgenstein, who was not present at the congress. Oxford Philosophy was represented by G ilbert Ryle, who discussed the practical and theoretical reasons for the disunity of sciences. Finally, one o f the most im portant figures o f this dialogue, Susan Stebbing, host and initiator o f the congress, spoke about ‘Language and Misleading Questions’, apparently in the spirit of W ittgenstein, but with a rem arkable preference for Carnap’s alternative: Since the conference is meeting in Cambridge and since its topic is 'S cientific Language’, it seems to me not inappropriate to take for this inaugural address ‘Language and Misleading Questions’. For it is, perhaps, to W ittgenstein more than to any other philosopher that the conception of philosophy as ‘the critique o f language’ is due. His influence has, so I understand, now permeated Cambridge students of philosophy so that to the outsider all their discussions appear to be concerned with investigation o f language [...] I have leam t even more from studying Carnap’s writings. I have fe lt the attraction of the view that: ‘an die Stelle des unentwirrbaren Problemgemenges, das man Philosophie nennt, tritt die W issenschaftslogik’ [‘the logic o f science is displacing that

160

Friedrich Stadler

impenetrable tangle of problems known as philosophy*] (Stebbing 1939-40,1). Despite this professed affiliation with the ‘Logic of Science’, Stebbing concludes her paper with reference to Heinrich Hertz’s Principles o f Mechanics, which contains a linguistic critique of (m etaphysical) questions and answers, with another (early) W ittgensteinian thought: 'We want an answer to a question we have not asked. Our minds cease to be vexed when we find that the question is illegitim ate; we no longer seek for an answer for there is no longer a question to be asked’ (ibid., 6). As can be seen from the congress report, the program focused on logical-analytical questions, with many special contributions on ‘scientific language’. Otto Neurath, who later had to flee from the Netherlands (The Hague) to England in 1940, postulated many sm all scientific units as a logical starting point for the development of a future unified science, once again directing polemical attacks against one privileged ‘system’, expressing a preference for Encyclopedism as opposed to hierarchical Pyramidism (Neurath 1983, esp. chapters 823). Among the printed contributions to this congress the paper by the British-Am erican philosopher Max Black on the ‘Relations between Logical Positivism and the Cambridge School of Analysis’ is of special interest, because it offers a profound discussion from an British point of view of what W ittgenstein, the Vienna Circle and the Cambridge School have in common and what separates them (cf. Skorupski 1993): [...] the development of the analytical movement in England and of Logical Positivism are found to have much in common. They have had, roughly speaking, the same friends and the same enemies. The teachings o f W ittgenstein, Russell, Moore and the earlier English em piricists have been among the most im portant form ative influences of both. If Logical Positivists have proclaimed their attachment to the advance of science more loudly, the English movement, [...], has to some extent been permeated with the same values. There should be room for further fruitful interchange of opinions between the two movements (Black 1937/38,33f.). W ith this argument Black, the translator of Frege and Carnap, once more stressed the synergies between the German-speaking and the Anglo-Saxon world in the philosophical field. But this convergence was interrupted for several years by the War. In 1941, the European

The Wiener Kreis in Great Britain

161

participants who planned to attend the ‘Sixth Congress for the Unity in Science at the University o f Chicago’ met instead for a small conference on ‘Terminology’ on October 3-5, 1941 at Linton Road in Oxford. This event was once again organized by Neurath, together with J. A. Lauwerys and Susan Stebbing, shortly after his release from the internm ent at the Isle of Man. We do not possess a record of the proceedings at Oxford, but Neurath’s publications from this period on ‘Universal Jargon and Term inology' (1941) and 'The Danger of Careless Term inology’ (1941) indicate the motivation and orientation of this jo in t activity - which ended significantly with another variation o f his famous boat metaphor (Uebel 1992,2000). This contribution was partly evoked by the critical remarks of Bertrand Russell in his W illiam James Lectures An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), where the author w rites in the preface: ‘I am, as regards method, more in sympathy with the logical positivists than with any other existing school’. In order to avoid so-called ontological m isinterpretations as a consequence of a correspondence theory of truth, Neurath directs his proposals towards the history and sociology of sciences (American neopragmatism), because ‘no judge is in the air who says which of us has the TRUTH’ (Neurath 1983, 229). This nonfoundationalist attitude corresponds with his radical criticism of Schlick and Popper, rejecting both verificationism and falsification ism as absolute philosophies (Neurath 1935). The Chicago congress of 1941 united Americans and European em igrants as well as 'Contributors from Europe’ whose papers were presented in the absence of their authors, among them Friedrich Waismann and Martin Strauss. From 1938 on we can note a renewed convergence with the International Encyclopedia o f Unified Science (with Neurath, Morris and Camap as main editors) and the transform ation of the journal Erkenntnis (1930ff., ed. by Camap and Reichenbach) into an English edition as Journal o f Unified Science with the eighth and last volume. Since 1933 it had come under increasing pressure after the Nazis seized power. The first volume of the International Encyclopedia, with contributions by Neurath, Niels Bohr, John Dewey, Camap and Russell, marked the beginning of the (uncom pleted) project with the University o f Chicago Press. Russell contributed a paper on ‘On the Importance of Logical Form’ (1938, 41) via the instrum ent of mathematical logic for pure mathematics and the em pirical sciences, reaching the (somewhat Popperian) conclusion that ‘the unity of science [...] is essentially a unity of method, and the method is one upon which modem logic throws much new light. It may be hoped that the Encyclopedia w ill do much to bring about an

FriedrichStadler

162

awareness of this unity*. When we look at the authors o f the Foundations o f the Unity o f Science and also consider the members o f the 'Advisory Committee’, we can detect a strong UK/US-Austrian dominance. A first analysis of the contents of the 8 volumes of the Erkenntnis shows a sim ilar development as the Congresses fo r the Unity of Science: among the English-language authors o f the journal from 1934 on - apart from the printed congress contributions - we find Ayer, Black and Stebbing. The reviews in these publications reflect the increasing reception of the philosophy of science. From the first issue on, works by Ayer, Church, Lewis, Nagel, Quine and W oodger were presented within the context o f what was still Central European ‘W issenschaftslogik’, the Logic o f Science according to Carnap. Transfer and Transformation: Circles and Networks continued Apart from these rather well known extensions of the Wiener Kreis into the Anglo-Saxon world, we can reconstruct another story of international relations in philosophy of science between the wars which is also representative for the scientific communication within Europe and between Europe and America. Let me illustrate this phenomenon by analysing the intellectual networking before and after the forced m igration. a) From W iener K reis to Vienna Circle in Great Britain It was, above all, the founder and head of the Vienna Circle, M oritz Schlick (married to an American citizen Blanche Hardy) who fostered early intellectual contacts with the English-speaking world: he visited England at least twice in the late 1920s as can be shown by his correspondence with Frank P. Ramsey (1927/28), who stood in close personal contact with both W ittgenstein and Schlick. Ramsey, who invited Schlick to the famous ‘Moral Sciences Club’, discussed his controversy with W ittgenstein on the Philosophy of Mathematics:I I had a letter the other day from Mr W ittgenstein criticising my paper T he Foundations of Mathematics' and suggesting that I should answer not to him but to you. I should perhaps explain what you may have gathered from him, that last tim e we didn’t part on very friendly terms, at least I thought he was very annoyed with me (for reasons not connected with logic), so that I did not even venture to send him a copy of my paper. I now hope very much that I have exaggerated this, and that he may perhaps be w illing to discuss

The Wiener K nis in Great Britain

163

various questions about which I should like to consult him. But from the tone of his letter and the fact that he gave no address I am inclined to doubt it. (Ramsey to Schlick, July 22,1927). These contacts continued, and in one o f his last letters before his premature death, Ramsey reported to Schlick on Cambridge philosophy: It is a great thing for us to have W ittgenstein here, he is such a great stim ulus and has been doing most excellent work, quite destroying my notions on the Foundations of Mathematics. Apart from that I think the school of philosophy here is severing a little ; there are more and better pupils, and a distinct improvement from the very low level we were at when you visited us. (Ramsey to Schlick, Dec. 1929) Schlick had visited the USA twice, Stanford in 1929 and Berkeley in 1931/32, which documents his Anglophile leaning, but also paved the way for the transatlantic shift together with Herbert Feigl’s em igration. (Schlick’s assistant in Stanford was Paul Arthur Schilpp, later on the editor of the influential, still existing book series T he Library of Living Philosophy’, including volumes on Camap, Dewey, Quine, Popper, Russell and Einstein). It is thus no coincidence that Schlick already figured on the Advisory Board for the first issues of the journal Philosophy o f Science, which had been founded in 1934 together with Feigl and Camap. In the interim Schlick had delivered a paper on ‘The Future of Philosophy’ at the ‘Seventh International Congress of Philosophy’ in Oxford 1930, addressing the linguistic-analytic turn in philosophy according to his ‘Die Wende der Philosophie’ (1930). Here he advocated the dissolution of the classical philosophical canon by drawing a functional distinction between scientific philosophy on the one hand, and related scientific theorizing on the other: Nowadays a professor of philosophy very often is a man who is not able to make anything dearer, that means he does not really philosophize at all, he just talks about philosophy or writes a book about it. This w ill be impossible in the future. The result of philosophizing w ill be that no more books w ill be written about philosophy, but all books w ill be written in a philosophical manner. (Schlick 1930,116).

164

Friedrich Stadler

This W ittgensteinian diction called into question the existence o f an autonomous philosophical subject area. It comes as no surprise when one considers Schlick’s allegiance to English empiricism and to the scientific orientation o f the philosophy since the turn of the century. The Journal o f Philosophy, which has existed since the turn o f the century, dealt directly and indirectly, especially in the inter-war years, with the work o f John Dewey and functioned in America as a moderate forum for the development from scientific philosophy to philosophy of science, as becomes clear in the contributions o f Ernest Nagel, W illard Van Orman Quine, Carl G. Hempel or Nelson Goodman. This trend may be illustrated Nagel’s inform ative 'Im pressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy’ (1936). His reports from Cambridge, Vienna, Prague, Warsaw and Lwow of the early thirties is a document o f the advanced stage of internationalization in Europe and between Europe and America. Thus he correctly observes that in the ‘W iener Krais’ ‘significant shifts in positions taken have been made by some o f its members’ (Nagel 1936, 216ff.). And the leftist American student of philosophy concludes: In the first place, the men with whom I have talked are im patient with philosophic systems built in the traditionally grand manner. Their preoccupation is philosophy as analysis [...] The intellectual tem per cultivated by these men is that o f ethical and political neutrality within the domain o f philosophic analysis proper, however much they may be moved by the moral and social chaos which threatens to swallow the few extant intellectual oases that stand. In the second place, as a consequence o f this conception o f the task of philosophy, concern with form ulating the method of philosophic analysis dominates all these places [...] w ithout ‘dogmatism and intellectual intolerance’ [...] In the third place, students whose prim ary interest is the history of ideas w ill find that, with some im portant exceptions, they w ill profit little from talking of these men [...] In the fourth place, what pertains to a common doctrine, the men to whom I refer subscribe to a common-sense naturalism . Nagel who had attended Schlick’s lectures, commented as follow s on the sociological background of Vienna:

The Wiener Kreis in Great Britain

165

Although I was in a city foundering economically, at a tim e when social reaction was in the saddle, the views presented so persuasively from the Katheder were a potent intellectual explosive. I wondered how much longer such doctrines would be tolerated in Vienna [...] Analytic philosophy has thus a double fonction: it provides quiet green pastures for intellectual analysis, wherein ist practitioners can find refuge from a troubled world [...]; and it is also a keen, shining sword helping to dispel irrational beliefs and to make evident the structure of ideas [...] it aims to make as dear as possible what it is we really know. (Ibid.). And with special focus on the Cambridge philosophy around Moore and W ittgenstein, he admits the significance o f the latter, ‘in spite o f the esoteric atmosphere which surrounds’ him. Let me return to the transfer of Central European philosophy of science to the Anglo-Saxon world, where Great Britain has been featured rather unjustified prim arily as a transition country. It is true that Camap, through his contacts with Charles Morris from 1934 on, gradually found entry into American universities, but it is im portant to note that his books had already been translated and read in England before then. On the invitation of Susan Stebbing, Camap came from Prague to London, where he delivered three lectures at the University o f London in October 1934. Here he came into contact with Russell, Ogden, Woodger, Braithwaite - and, significantly, with the young philosophy student Max Black. The latter wrote his Ph.D. thesis on T he Theories o f Logical Positivism ’ under the influence of Moore and Ramsey. He had already met Camap in 1931/32 and translated his ‘Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der W issenschaft’ with an introduction that appeared as a booklet with the title The Unity o f Science (1934) in the General Series of ’Psyche Miniatures’ in London (ed by C.K. Ogden and published with Kegan Paul). In his introduction Black dealt with the origins of the Vienna Circle, its relations to W ittgenstein, and the central semantic notion o f meaning. This looks like a anticipation of Ayer’s bestselling book of 1936 on Logical Positivism : Language, Truth and Logic. And in Carnap’s introductory notes to The Unity o f Science we read already in a dear and distinct diction that ‘we are not a philosophical school and that we put forward no philosophical theses whatsoever [...] for we pursue Logical Analysis, but no Philosophy’ (Camap 1934, 21 and 29). A second booklet in this series appeared one year later as Philosophy and Logical Syntax and it

166

Friedrich Stadler

was the first popularization of Carnap’s Logical Syntax period in Great Britain: My endeavour in these pages is to explain the main features o f the method of philosophising which we, the Vienna Circle, use, and, by using try to develop further. It is the method of logical analysis of science, or more precisely, of the syntactical analysis of scientific language. Only the method itself is here directly dealt with; our special views, resulting from its use, appear rather in the form of examples (for instance our em piricist and anti-m etaphysical position in the first chapter, our physicalist position in the last) (Carnap 1935,7). Max Black, bom 1909 in Baku (Russia), had studied mathematics and philosophy in Cambridge, Gottingen and London, and published The Nature o f Mathematics in 1933 (advised by Moore and Ramsey). He emigrated to the United States in 1940 where he began his career, first at the University of Illinois and as of 1946 as Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. He became a leading figure in (B ritishAmerican) analytic philosophy and was an im portant m ediator between Logical Empiricism and the British tradition in philosophy o f science, Ayer’s popularization supplementing the Vienna Circle from 1936 on. This function can be detected in his article ‘Relations between Logical Positivism and the Cambridge School of Analysis’ (1939/40). In describing the common ground between analytical and common sense philosophy in England, associated with Moore and Russell and the Vienna tradition, he explicitly refers to W ittgenstein’s influence in the 1930s: ’During the last eight years W ittgenstein’s influence upon younger English philosophers has been comparable with that exerted by Morris. In this the Tractatus has played less part than his lectures [...] and oral discussions based upon W ittgenstein’s later and m ore radical views’ (Black 1938/39, 32). And he notes that this influence could be more closely linked with Schlick and Waismann than w ith Camap and Neurath. This corroborates the thesis that in England analytic philosophy (with the subfield of ordinary language philosophy) was better able to gain acceptance than the philosophy o f science related to the International Encyclopedia project. This developm ent is confirmed by Friedrich Waismann’s work after his im m igration to the UK in 1937. His influence was, compared to W ittgenstein, unspectacular but continuous, if one takes into account the publication of his oeuvre, (cf. Waismann’s Principles o f Linguistic Philosophy, 1965).

The Wiener Kreis in Great Britain

167

Notwithstanding all differences, Black underlined the convergence of both movements at that tim e, still hoping that there would be further productive cooperation: There should be room for further fruitful interchange o f opinions between the two movements' (Black, 1938/39, 34). On this basis we can reconstruct a bilateral (and intercontinental) exchange of ideas also on the level of institutions and periodicals. The name of a philosophical journal published since 1933 in Oxford (with Basil Blackwell) indicates the programme as such. Analysis, ed. by A.E. Duncan-Jones with the cooperation of Susan Stebbing and G. Ryle, issued six tim es a year, was founded under the influence o f Moore, Russell and W ittgenstein, followed by an ‘Analysis Society' in 1936; besides Alfred Ayer and Max Black, also Camap, Hempel and Schlick contributed to the early issues. A fter the war (the journal was suspended 1940-1947) we find contributions from Friedrich Waismann (w ith six articles on ‘Analytic-Synthetic’), and Karl Popper (on the MindBody-Problem). In the context of these activities Black - although always m aintaining a critical distance (a ‘friendly critic’ in his own words) paved the way for greater receptivity for the Vienna Circle, inspired mainly by Susan Stebbing. She contributed significantly to the intellectual acculturation of Logical Empiricism in Great Britain, but because o f her early death in 1943 she regrettably fe ll into oblivion. She had studied at G irton College and the University of London, before her teaching period at King’s College London (1913-1915), Bedford College (1915-1920) and University of London (1920-1924), where she became the first woman professor of philosophy in Great Britain (1933-1943). W hile her colleagues remember her as being a passionate teacher, her philosophical writings document a profound knowledge of the em piricist and analytical tradition o f Continental and English thinking: as president o f the ‘Aristotelian Society’ in 1933 she reinforced her presence on an institutional level as well, since she was also acquainted with Russell, Moore and W hitehead. As a supporter of Camap, Neurath and Popper, a friendof W ittgenstein, she played the role o f a go-between and mover and shaker in analytic philosophy of her tim e, as became clear in the philosophical lecture she gave to the British Academy on Logical Positivism and Analysis (1933). In this lecture, she investigated the language-critical approach of the Vienna Circle and the Tractatus and compared it with the English em piricist tradition (from Russell and Moore to Ramsey). She argued that while all philosophy is concerned with language, not all philosophical problems are linguistic ones.

168

Friedrich Stadler

Neurath welcomed one of her last lectures on ‘Men and the Moral Principles* (1944, 18f.) as follows in his notes in the com plimentary copy, where Stebbing states: ‘Moral philosophy, I repeat, is not a science’, but ‘W hatever maybe the case with politicians making weekend speeches in tim e of war, philosophers cannot afford to ignore the conditions o f the problems set by the situations in which we live’. This appeal is consonant with the defence of democracy during W orld W ar II in her last book Ideals and llusions (1941), which impressed the exiled Neurath in Oxford. It is only against the background of the relationships described above that we can we fully appreciate the contribution o f Alfred Jules Ayer as the chief interpreter and protagonist o f the Vienna Circle and early W ittgenstein in England, with his book Language, Tmth and Logic (1936a). His prim arily antim etaphysical position already became m anifest with his appearance at the Paris Congress of 1935, where he refers in his paper on The Analytic Movement in Contemporary Philosophy’ (1936b) to the analogous movements in Vienna and England since the turn o f the century. The success o f his book also influenced all other networks: in 1955, the 11th impression o f the second, enlarged (and critically revised) edition of this bestseller appeared. The eight chapters addressed the following issues: I. The Elim ination o f Metaphysics, II. The (new) Function o f Philosophy, III. The Nature of Philosophical Analysis, VI. The A Priori, V. Truth and Probability, VI. Critique of Ethics and Theology, VII. The S elf and the Common W orld, and VIII. Solutions o f Outstanding Philosophical Disputes. In the Preface to the first edition we read that th e views which are put forward in this treatise derive from doctrines o f Bertrand Russell and W ittgenstein, which are themselves the logical outcome of the empiricism o f Berkeley and Hume employing a modified verification principle for em pirical hypotheses’ (Ayer 1955, 31). He goes on to contextualize these assertions to the effect that ‘philosophizing is an activity of analysis which is associated in England with the work o f G. E. Moore and his disciples’, but ‘the philosophers with whom I am in the closest agreement are those who compose the Vienna Circle [...] and of these I owe most to Rudolf Carnap.’ (ibid., 32). Additionally, Ayer not only expressed his indebtedness to G ilbert Ryle and Isaiah Berlin, but also alluded to philosophical differences. Ultim ately, he says: ‘we must recognise that it is necessary for a philosopher to become a scientist, [...] if he is to make any substantial contribution towards the growth of human knowledge’ (ibid., 153). Was this really a part o f The Revolution in Philosophy (1956), as Ayer later maintained in a collection on

The Wiener Kreis in Great Britain

Bradley, Frege, Moore, Russell, W ittgenstein and the Analysis o f the O rdinary Language Philosophy with reference to the Vienna Circle? His judgm ent is apparently am bivalent: he saw the Vienna Circle as a thing o f the past, though still valid for Logical Positivism , since many of its ideas lived on. Ayer remained a critic of the late W ittgenstein - and o f Popper too, as I realized fo r the first tim e when I spoke with him at the W ittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg (Austria) in 1981. In summary, we can say that in Britain there was a lively scholarly dialogue between Central European and English philosophers - with a strong focus an analysis, as compared to the turn from

>

>

Wenn ich dazu neige anzunehmen, daß eine Maus durch Urzeugung aus grauen Fetzen und Staub entsteht [ . . . ] / If I am indined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust [...] (§52) Nimm an, die Farbe käme Dir an einem Tag heller vor als an einem andern / Suppose that the colour struck you as brighter on one day than on another (§56) Wie wäre es, wenn die Menschen ihre Schmerzen nicht äußerten (nicht stöhnten, das Gesicht nicht verzögen, etc) /

Austrian Motifs in Wittgenstein's Later Writings

>

>

>

185

What would it be like If human beings showed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? (§257) Stellen w ir uns diesen Fall vor. Ich w ill über das W iederkehren einer gewissen Empfindung Tagebuch führen. / Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. (§258) Denke D ir einen Menschen, der es nicht im Gedächtnis behalten könnte, was das W ort .Schmerz' bedeutet - [ . . . ] . / Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word ‘pain’ meant [...] (§271) Stell Dir Menschen vor, die nur laut denken könnten. / Imagine people who could only think aloud. (§ 331 )

The evident methodological relation to his philosophical predecessors, including members of the so-called First Vienna Circle, leads to a tendency in the later W ittgenstein to destroy a seemingly strong fundament of thought, once it was built, without compromising the development o f new one. ‘Use’ and ‘understanding* are the new key­ words, and he shows by a series of examples illustrating why some words are understood in the right way and others are not that you can indeed make mistakes in understanding without this being noticed by others. W ittgenstein’s aim is not to present a nice collection of stories, but to demonstrate, through the sum of possible quotations, how weak the fundament of the few structuring elements in all these sentences is. Or, using a phrase that recalls his experience as a part-tim e architect: ‘It is not my interest to construct a building, but to have the principles of the possible buildings shining through in front o f me’ (‘Es interessiert mich nicht, ein Gebäude aufzuführen, sondern die Grundlagen der möglichen Gebäude durchsichtig vor m ir zu haben’) (W ittgenstein 1977, 43). The same methods which the Austrian philosophers of the late nineteenth century deployed against German Idealism are here directed by W ittgenstein against the Scientific Philosophy of his time. W hat he questioned in both tendencies was their mono-causal and therefore absolute way of speaking about the world. A sim ilar ambivalence, hovering between fascination and disgust, can be detected in comments about Freud’s psychoanalysis: ‘Analysis probably causes damage. Despite discovering some things about oneself during the process, one has to have a very strong, sharp and persistent critical mind to recognise and see through the mythology that is offered and forced upon one. One is likely to say: “Yes, of

186

Roland G raf

course, it has to be that way”. A powerful mythology’ (‘Die Analyse richtet wahrscheinlich Schaden an. Denn obwohl man in ihrem Verlauf einige Dinge über sich selbst entdeckt, muß man einen sehr starken, scharfen und beharrlichen, kritischen Verstand haben, um die Mythologie, die angeboten und aufgezwungen wird, zu erkennen und zu durchschauen. Man ist verleitet zu sagen ‘Ja, natürlich, so muß es sein.’ Eine mächtige Mythologie’) (Janik/Veigl 1998, 22). To sharpen the mind against mythologies, in other words against metaphysics, different examples are cited designed to undermine the habitual uses of language and allow deeper insight into the innermost parts o f its functionality. For these reasons, many of W ittgenstein's examples are derived from everyday expressions and contrasted with quotations from physicists and mathematicians. In addition to his logical masters Frege, Moore and Russell, we can find the scientists Faraday and Hertz, whose influence has been examined by a number of recent publications. His sources also include Kant and Ockham, St. Augustine (who opens the Investigations) and Socrates, who is present in the form of the Platonic Dialogues. There is a remarkable stress on psychological questions in W ittgenstein’s later works. Three quotations from W illiam James suggest that he - together with St. Augustine was a favourite writer. Besides the most famous example, the duckrabbit, there are other passages of psychological reflection. But the main focus lies on the examination of the use of language and its ambiguities. Once again the drawing of borders is a central aim, but now the optim istic view o f the Tractatus gives way to a sceptical view concerning the possibility of giving fixed criteria for so doing. Thus it is not surprising that Kohler’s hexagons, an optical illusion, are cited at this point. Actually, all these optical tricks from the psychology of perception are nothing less than a metaphor for the tasks of his new re-Austrified philosophy of language. Methodological Viennese Memories Questions arising from other sciences, which were certainly of interest in his earliest years as a philosopher, also found their place in the Blue and Brown Book. As a form er engineer, W ittgenstein writes: ‘[...] imagine our dots were holes in the revolving disc of a siren’ (W ittgenstein 1989,121). He also mentions one of the most intriguing questions from the Theory of Numbers by writing: ‘Prof. Hardy saying that Goldbach’s theorem is a proposition’ shortly after a remark about

Austrian Motifs in W ittgenstein's Later W ritings

187

Frege (W ittgenstein 1989, 11). Reminiscences of Vienna include the quotation of Hertz and the remarkable lines about David Bündler’s dances at the end of the Brown Book. In this passage W ittgenstein’s own experiences guide him towards the insight that not language, but music is the appropriate expression for a feeling: I ’m imagining this tune played with the right expression and thus recorded, say, for a gramophone. Then this is the most elaborate and exact expression of a feeling o f pastness which I can imagine’ (W ittgenstein 1989, 184). The interesting thing about this quotation is that this dear expression is to be interpreted in more than one sense. He is speaking about the past in more than one way: it is his own past, when he used to hear these dances, its pastness, as it is present in every record played, and it is the special pastness, which is the topic of this particular piece of music. Therefore it is not only sim ply a reproduction of a certain nostalgia for him, but also the ’most elaborate expression’, because it literally evokes the feeling mentioned in m ultiple ways. W ittgenstein was sensitive to the combination of feelings and music. A humorous note about his dreams highlights not only this fact, but also his relationship with psychoanalysis: ‘Something strange has been happening to me for the past two months: I can scarcely think of any musical m otif other than the scherzo from [Mendelsohn’s] Midsummer Night’s Dream! [...] Freud would perhaps say, and perhaps rightly, that I am telling myself: “I’m an ass”; for the m otif I most often have in mind is that in which the donkey brays’ (’Etwas Seltsames geschieht m ir seit etwa 2 Monaten: Es geht m ir beinahe gar keine Musik mehr durch den Kopf, außer dem Scherzo aus dem Sommemachtstraum! (...) Freud würde vielleicht sagen, und vielleicht m it Recht, dass ich mir damit sagen w ill: ‘Ich bin ein Esel’; weil mir besonders oft der Teil durch den Kopf geht, in welchem der Esel schreit’) (Letter to his sister Helene, 15 March 1948, in Janik/Veigl 1998,22). The end of the book also contains another reminiscence recalling his experiences as an engineer. It is about the difficulty of fixing the exact moment when ‘the ray of light reaches the m irror’ in Fizeau’s Experiment. Hippolyte Louis Fizeau’s method of fixing the speed of light was invented 1849, using an incredibly exact setting, including a ray o f light, measured ten kilometres away from its source. There are a lot o f other technical metaphors in W ittgenstein’s text. One of the first examples to be mentioned is that of the tool kit, which culminates in a chain of technological associations. The chain of the arguments is indicated by the following excerpts from the bilingual edition (W ittgenstein 1963):

188

Roland G raf

>

> > >

Indem ich die Stange m it dem Hebel verbinde, setze ich die Bremse instand. / 1 set the brake up by connecting rod and lever. (§6) Denk an die Werkzeuge in einem Werkzeugkasten: / Think of the tools in a tool-box: (§11 ) Wie wenn w ir in den Führerstand einer Lokomotive schauen: It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. (§12) Denke an die verschiedenen Gesichtspunkte, nach denen man Werkzeuge in Werkzeugarten einteilen kann. / Think of the different points of view from which one can classify tools (§17)

O f course these passages could be understood literally as further examples of the function o f language, just as the language-games were introduced shortly before. If one reads the sentences w ith a sense for their metaphorical potential, one catches a glimpse o f further conditions of understanding. Other details prove to be in origin autobiographical. Thus you can find the sentence: ‘Thus if we taught a person the C yrillic alphabet [...]’ (W ittgenstein 1989, 122) written a t a tim e when the philosopher was preparing for a voyage to Russia. Another interesting image dealing with language seems to come right out o f the engineer’s cabinet: ‘If one considers what is happening inside us when we mean words (and not only utter them), so it seems to us as if something is linked with them, where they would otherwise be empty. - As if, so to speak, they are reaching into us’ (‘Wenn man sich überlegt, was dabei in uns vorgeht, wenn w ir W orte meinen (und nicht nur sagen), so ist es uns, als wäre dann etwas m it diesen W örtern gekuppelt, während sie sonst leerliefen. - Als ob sie gleichsam in uns eingriffen’) (W ittgenstein 1990, 291). The m otor of language, working at last! Although these autobiographical and, so to speak, private remarks are rare within the complete text, they show the same aim as the whole Investigations: To show the abundant forms of speaking, bound to their specific situations, checked by meaning and succeeding by being understood. Analogous to W ittgenstein’s concern to establish dear boundaries for the logical content of the Tractatus, these common statements only serve one aim: to carve out some sincere sentences about the essence of language: 'Each sign alone seems to be dead. What gives him life? It lives by using. Does it contain living breath? Or is the use its breath?’ (‘Jedes Zeichen scheint für sich allein tot. Was

Austrian Motifs in W ittgenstein’s Later W ritings

189

gibt ihm das Leben? Im Gebrauch lebt es. Hat es dadurch lebenden Atem in sich? Oder ist der Gebrauch sein Atem?’) (W ittgenstein 1990, 273). After pointing out the importance o f use, the next steps involve reflections on specific modes of expression. Only by chance we w ill leam about the different ways of speaking, the distinction between various language games and how to react in a given situation: ‘Cast your eyes on the variety of the language games in these examples and others’ (‘Führe Dir die M annigfaltigkeit der Sprachspiele an diesen Beispielen, und anderen, vor Augen’) (W ittgenstein 1990, 110). Every example has the same quality of defining language because it delivers a certain attribute of language by itself. The selection of examples is more due to their plasticity and usefulness from the w riter’s point of view, in the end that is only one deliberate criterion among others that are in daily use. One’s own experience is as im portant for one’s personal coping with language as any philosopher’s theory, indeed it can even provide a sharper focus: ‘A main cause for philosophical diseases - unbalanced diet: one feeds one’s thoughts with one kind of example only’ (‘Eine Hauptursache philosophischer Krankheiten einseitige Diät: man nährt sein Denken m it nur einer Art von Beispielen’) (W ittgenstein 1990, 313). One of the points the everyday use of language can teach the philosopher is that of the indispensable role of expectation. Only with a certain expectation is communication possible under changing circumstances. A great deal of our expression is due to what we expect the other, the situation and our position to be. Hence Aldo Gargani sees expectation as one of the central terms marking the turning point between the early and later works of W ittgenstein: ‘Since the early Thirties W ittgenstein made out in intention the rule directing the use o f language, because it would be intention that connects the use with a system o f symbols’ (Gargani 1986,187). He correctly linked it to the name of the founding father of Austrian Scientific Philosophy, Brentano, who also was strictly against the doubling of the contents o f consciousness when he spoke ‘about the white piece of sugar that’s tasted as a piece o f sugar and not as w hite’ (Brentano 1969,24). Expectation determines our intention towards things, and how we refer to them and understand each other’s views about them. For another great theoretician of expectation, who even named a (somewhat autobiographical) composition after it, Arnold Schönberg, the distinction between two ways of dealing with expectations was dean ‘Sdence tends to explain its thoughts exhaustively and in a way that leaves no questions unanswered. But Art is content with a m ultiple

190

Roland G raf

presentation, which lets the idea rise unambiguously without necessarily uttering it directly. This leaves open a window, through which - seen from the scientific point of view - intuition can enter* (‘Die W issenschaft ist bestrebt, ihre Gedanken erschöpfend und so darzustellen, daß keine Frage unbeantwortet b le ib t Die Kunst dagegen begnügt sich m it einer vielseitigen Darstellung, aus welcher der Gedanke sich unzweideutig emporhebt, ohne daß er jedoch direkt ausgesprochen sein muß. Es bleibt hierdurch ein Fenster offen, durch welches - vom Standpunkt des Wissens - das Ahnen Einlaß erlangt’) (Schönberg 1976,21). On the surface, this concept of intuition distinguishes W ittgenstein's first attempts in the Tractatus and his later insights in the Investigations. He does not write explicitly about the sum o f characteristics constituting language, but from the accumulation o f examples one can deduce the underlying processes by which we understand each other. Epistemologically this is the sm allest number on which we can agree after having made our way through all the sometimes contradictory - examples and stories. Some few guidelines can be guessed, but they are never forced upon the reader. Only the central terms are defined, often in a negative way, as is also the case with ’intention’: ‘If you take the element of intention out of language, its whole function collapses’ (‘Wenn man das Element der Intention aus der Sprache entfernt, so bricht damit ihre ganze Funktion zusammen’) (W ittgenstein 1964, §22). The Process of Re-Austrificatlon To sum up, this surprising emphasis on everyday language is a part o f the Viennese heritage that came into its own decades later, when W ittgenstein was living in Cambridge as an exiled professor in an archetypal English setting. Ironically, those years in the British Isles were far more indebted to Austrian philosophical traditions than the early years before and after the Tractatus. At that time, the English tradition, based on mathematical methods of the logical analyses of Russell and Moore (and certainly to an important extent, Frege, as a kind of ‘honorary Englishman’), was far more important to W ittgenstein than continental influences. These authors provided cues for the process through which the falsification of their common views was exemplified in the early W ittgensteinian writings. One can identify at least four new ways of examining language, stressed by W ittgenstein during his English years:

Austrian Motifs in W ittgenstein’s Later W ritings

191

Everyday Language - Logical analysis approaches lim its when regarding the function of colloquial expressions. For example, interjections can act as a whole structured sentence if the communicators are used to refer to it in a certain way. This is one reason for the abundance of examples, especially in the Investigations. Expectation - The role of the expectation as a constitutive element of interacting and understanding is one of the key features in the reAustrified philosopher’s thinking. Each sentence is uttered with a certain intent and has to be seen in combination with this, or else the communication would be lim ited to an ‘exchange of lexical meanings of words’ (W einreich 1970,9). Use and Understanding - Only the use of language, not the theoretical analysis alone, can lead to insights about how our minds work. Another question raised is how rules are applied by majorities, thus excluding understanding by certain m inorities and hence not regarded as rational. Other forms of logic, also following rules, have to be accepted, as long as there is a possibility of understanding the principles underlying seemingly nonsensical language games. Historicity and Circumstances - The most under-appreciated approach the later W ittgenstein introduces leads into ethnographic and sociological fields, where the question of interpreting (regarded as understanding processes by only viewing and listening) is the key feature. In a very modem way, he points out the difficulty of intercultural understanding and exchange of historically determined positions. For Rudolf Haller, the main theme of the later W ittgenstein sim ply consists in thoughts about the ‘dynamics and historicity of interacting’ (Fischer 1995,387). A set of four methodological novelties is introduced in order to handle these new focuses of linguistic interests: Examples, (Language) Games and Rules, Technological Metaphors, Personal and Historical Situations. The method of using simple problems of everyday life (e.g. learning a language) can be traced back to earlier developments in Austria, as they were used there to show how anachronistic the views o f German Idealist Philosophy had been. Thus a passage from Ernst Machs Antimetaphysical Preliminary Remarks shows more than one resemblance with W ittgenstein’s view: The philosophic view of the

192

Roland G raf

common man deserves the highest estimation [...]. Compared to it, every achievement of philosophy is an irrelevant, ephemeral artificial production. Indeed, we see every thinker, and even every philosopher - once he’s driven out of his narrow-minded intellectual occupation by practical pressures - taking the common point of view1 (‘Der philosophische Standpunkt des gemeinen Mannes hat Anspruch auf die höchste Wertschätzung [...] Alles, was die Philosophie geleistet hat [...], ist dagegen ein unbedeutendes ephemeres Kunstprodukt. Und wirklich sehen w ir jeden Denker, auch jeden Philosophen, sobald er durch praktische Bedrängnis aus seiner einseitigen intellektuellen Beschäftigung vertrieben wird, sofort den allgemeinen Standpunkt einnehmen’XMach 1985, 29). Mach’s argument was, of course, directed against idealistic dwellers of ivory towers, but it shows also a deep concern for hermeneutic questions, which arose with the change of paradigms when scientific philosophy claimed to have taken over the discredited ideologies of metaphysical origin. Stephen Toulmin cites a story from one of W ittgenstein’s last lectures in Cambridge that underlines Mach’s theory in an almost mocking way, but nevertheless pairs a portion of criticism of the sciences with a pessim istic epistemological view. And once again it stresses the importance o f intention for our (scientific) interpretations or in this case the failure o f coping with an unexciting but uncommon act without being prejudiced at the very instant: Suppose an anthropologist finds the members of a tribe, whose language he does not yet understand, cutting up bolts of longitudinally striped doth and exchanging them for small cubes o f wood uttering as they hand over the cubes the sounds ‘eena’ ‘meena’, ‘mina’, ‘mo’, and so on, always in the same regular sequence. And suppose he discovers that this exchange proceeds always up to the same point, regardless of whether the doth is (as we should say) single-width or folded double. What should the anthropologist then conclude? Is he to infer that the tribe values cloth only by its length as measured along the stripes; or that the merchants who sell the cloth single-width are rogues; or that the tribe’s arithm etic has a different strudure from ours; or that ‘eena’, ’meena’, ‘mina’, ‘mo’ are not their words for T , ‘2’, ‘3’, and ‘4’ after all; or that this is not really a commercial exchange, but some kind of a ritual...? Or might we have no effective way of dedding among these alternatives? (Janik / Toulmin 1973,228).

Austrian Motifs in W ittgenstein's Later Writings

193

Actually, the only honest answer to this question would be negative. For W ittgenstein, having reassembled his Austrian roots in a land markedly different from his home country, the point is also set. Our decisions are made up long in advance, the expectations are fixed, combinations of words which we are accustomed to, decide the way we understand things, determine how we think about them. He not only repudiates monocausal explanations o f all kinds - whether Freudian, Vienna Circle-based, Idealist or Logical - but also enunciates a programme for him self and a legacy for those who follow, when he states: ‘There grows more grass for the philosopher in the valleys of stupidity than on the bald hills of cleverness’ (‘In den Tälern der Dummheit wächst für den Philosophen noch immer mehr Gras als auf den kahlen Hügeln der Gescheitheit’) (W ittgenstein 1978,154).

Bibliography Brentano, F. 1924. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol. I, Hamburg: Felix M einer Brentano, F. 1969. The Origin o f our Knowledge o f Right and Wrong, London: Chisholm Feigl, H. 1969. T h e W iener Kreis in Am erica' in: Fleming, D. and Bailyng, B. eds, The Intellectual Migration. Europe and America, 1930-1960, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Fischer, K. R. 1989. 'D ie Spätphilosophie Wittgensteins in den Vereinigten Staaten von Am erika', in Nagl-Docekal, H. ed, Ludwig Wittgenstein und die Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderte, Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tem sky Fischer, K. R. 1991. Philosophie aus W ien, Vienna, Slazburg: G eyer Edition Fischer, K. R. 1995: Das goldene Zeitalter der österreichischen Philosophie, W iener Universitätsveriag

Vienna:

Gargani, A. 1986. ‘Ethics and the Rejection of Philosophical Theorizing in Wittgenstein and in Austrian Culture’, in Haller, R. et al eds, From Bolzano to Wittgenstein: Schriftenreihe d er W ittgenstein-Gesellschaft, 12, Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tem sky Janik, A. Schuster

and Toulmin, S. 1973. W ittgenstein’s Vienna, New York, London: Simon &

Janik, A. And Veigl, H. 1998. Wittgenstein in W ien, Vienna: Löcker Heinrich, R. 1986. Wittgensteins Grenze, Vienna: Deuticke McGuinne8S, B. 1992. Wittgenstein - A Lite. Young Ludwig (1889-1921), London: Duckworth

Roland G raf

194

Mach, E. 1985. D ie Analyse d er Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum Psychischen, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Monk, R. 1995. W ittgenstein - D as Handwerk des Genies, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Mulligan, K. 1986. ‘Exactness, Description and Variation: How Austrian Analytic Philosophy was done', in Hallier, R. et al eds, From Bolzano to W ittgenstein: Schriftenreihe d er W ittgensteln-Geseilschafí, 12, Vienna: HökJer-Pichler-Temsky Nado, M . and Ranchetti, M . 1983. Wittgenstein. Sehr Leben in Bildern und Texten, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Schönberg, A . 1976. ‘Stil und Gedanke. Aufsätze zur Musik’, Frankfurt am M ain: Suhrkamp W eininger, 0 . 1962. Genie und Verbrechen, G raz, Vienna: Czem y W einreich* U. 1970. Erkundungen zu r Theorie d er Semantik, Tübingen: Niem ayer W ittgenstein Blackwell

1963.

Philosophical Investigations, tr.M argaret Anscombe,

Oxford:

W ittgenstein, L. 1964. Philosophische Bemerkungen, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp W ittgenstein, L 1977. Vermischte Bemerkungen, Auswahl aus dem N acN aß, W right, G . H. ed, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp W ittgenstein, L. 1978. Wörterbuch für Volksschulen, Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Term sky W ittgenstein, L. 1989. The Blue and Brown Books, New York: Harper W ittgenstein, L. 1990. Philosophische Untersuchungen, Leipzig: R edam 1

1 Translations - unless otherwise indicated - are by the author.

DAVID KETTLER SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIOLOGY: NINA RUBINSTEIN'S STUDIES IN EXILE

In addressing the work o f one of Karl Mannheim’s students, our topic is the ambiguous conjunction of autobiography and sociological theory.1 In other words we are interested in self-reflection as a constituent of scientific clarification and innovation. Reflexivity and setf-distantiation were central motifs o f Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, and, quite apart from his well-known call to self-knowledge among those he classified as intellectuals, he repeatedly applied the concept not only to the position of women (Kettler and Meja 1993) but also to the situation of the exile (Mannheim 2001; Loader and Kettler 2002). W riting about him self in the early 1920s as an exile in Germany from H orth/s authoritarian regime in his native Hungary and again in 1944 as a ’refugee’ in England from Hitler’s Germany, he claimed that persons in that marginal situation could bring unique insight to their hosts but only if they first became fully aware of who and where they themselves had come to be. Understanding presupposes a measure of distance from oneself as well as from the external contextures to be understood. There is an attractive self-evidence in such a claim, fam iliar to sociologists from Georg Simmel’s seminal work on th e stranger* (Simmel 1950, 402-408) but in this paper my aims are not only to secularize the concept o f productive reflexivity, to ask what remains if we do not imagine (with Mannheim’s early mentor, Georg Lukács) that the insights to which it refers operate in the manner of a dialectical Aufhebung, but also to raise some questions about situational and psychological lim its on such reflexivity. How much knowledge about ourselves can we use without undermining the selves that are presupposed, and how does such knowledge relate to our ability to contribute to knowledge of a more general kind? W ith trepidations, given the complexity of the theme and the faddish extravagances often associated with it, I might restate the topic as a problem in identity. Our present context for such inquiries is provided by a study of the political emigrant as a social type and the political emigration as a social formation by Nina Rubinstein, a student who first met Karl Mannheim in Heidelberg in 1929 and followed him to Frankfurt, where she last worked with him during his last semester, the winter of 1932/33. We w ill interpret Rubinstein’s dissertation (Rubinstein 2000),

196

David K ettler

first, in the context of Mannheim’s political-educational project, his own approach to the linkage between biography and sociology, and, second, in the context of Rubinstein’s own life history as an em igrant in a political fam ily. Nina Rubinstein’s studies in emigration (her Exilforschung) represent a cautionary tale in three respects. First, her contribution to the theory of political emigrations calls attention to an aspect of exile that m ilitates against insight, a consequence that troubled her from her first engagement with the subject. If being a ‘stranger1 in the sense of being encapsulated within a political emigration may inhibit insight, as Rubinstein suggests, then the realism of the political work of her ‘fam ily’ in the Russian Menshevik emigration is threatened, and the extent to which being an intellectual in W eimar may have entailed having a ’political’ character (Mannheim 1929) also gives us reason to look with care for the ‘Rubinstein effect* in studies of the W eimar generation in exile. Second, the theoretical insecurity in the restrictions she consequently puts on the scope of her own theory of the political emigrant - and the potential for personal pain in its unrestricted uses call attention to lim its of reflexivity. In the case of Nina Rubinstein, we see the inhibiting effects of love and loyalty. Critical distance is not always an uncontested good. Identity is not comprehended by social location alone. Third, and most important, however, neither o f these cautions simply dismisses common claims about the epistem ological and transform ative consequences of reflexivity. Rather, they suggest that the insights we have in mind when we speak of reflexivity are always costly, qualified, conditional, and limited - an im perfectly negotiated settlement rather than a revolution. In this respect, the reflexivity of exiles is but an aspect of the overall process of acculturation and shares its messy incompleteness (see Krohn et al 1998). Nina Rubinstein was bom in 1908 to a young couple who had escaped arrest as political activists in Latvia, and she lived on dom estic terms among political émigrés for many years. Rubinstein’s exile studies were thus in fact lifelong and experiential, but our interest is focused first on the dissertation completed in April 1933 under the active supervision of the sociologist, Karl Mannheim.2 The dissertation, written between 1930 and April 1933, dealt almost exclusively with the aristocratic émigrés at the time of the French Revolution, although it bears some traces of Rubinstein’s abandoned original plan to compare that cohort with the W hite Russian émigrés after 1917. The earlier sketches are more revealing than the final text about the Russians and

N ina Rubinstein's Studies in Exile

offer vital clues for understanding Rubinstein’s reasons for revising her scheme, quite apart from the undoubted objective difficulties in the way o f a daughter o f a socialist household and a Jew gaining the cooperation of this anti-socialist and antisem itic milieu. Her additional reasons for abandoning the plan to study Russians w ill concern us later. In every draft of her work, including her very first memo, Rubinstein states that her work is a contribution to the sociological theory of the stranger. Rubinstein’s point of departure is Simmel’s seminal excursus ‘On the Stranger,’ which is summarized as follows by Claudia Honegger: Being a stranger ‘is an altogether positive relation, a distinctive form of interaction’ because the stranger is an element in the group itself, an element whose inherent situation entails a position that is simultaneously external and engaged. This position of the stranger has an even more acute effect on consciousness when he remains settled in place rather than departing from the scene of his activities. And Simmel adds: The classical example is provided by the history of European Jewry1 (Honegger 1993,181, citing Simmel 1950,408). Rubinstein does not question the main outlines of this perception, but she poses the special problem of the émigrés, a population that becomes settled without becoming properly engaged with the group that is its host. Rubinstein’s thesis is that those she calls political emigrants in the full sense lack the distance, discernment, and social creativity credited to the stranger in society by the sociological tradition from Simmel and Sombart to Mannheim himself, whose missionary intelligentsia are after all strangers of a sort, epitomized by the Jews of his own generation in Budapest. Rubinstein concludes that these general expectations about the strategic advantages of the stranger do not apply to the situation of the political emigrant, as a type of stranger. Her argument is complicated, however, by a certain indecision about the extent to which intellectuals are ever political émigrés in the sense of her thesis. In the protocol o f a seminar held on February 15,1933, two weeks after Hitler came to power and two months before Mannheim’s dismissal, where she presented a abstract of her dissertation for final review, Rubinstein raises the problem of possible exceptions to the mass of typical emigrants, especially the progressive reformers among the French

197

198

David K ettler

constitutionalists in exile and the Russian revolutionary exiles. At this point, she breaks out of the impersonal form at of the protocol to insert a note to Mannheim, in parentheses: T his raises the new problem of the intelligentsia, about which I would very much like to speak to you!’ (AHSA) This unresolved issue haunts the work. Rubinstein constructs an ideal-typical scenario for the political emigrant. After an initial period of disbelief, when the political émigrés imagine that their normal life has simply been suspended, as on a holiday, the emigration as a whole abruptly recognizes that there can be no return and, after a sharp break, its members enter an enclosed space where they can only reproduce old convictions and ways, even if they pragmatically interact with their host environment to earn a living. The social formation is sustained, above all, by practices of sociability set in scene by the women. If political émigrés survive to return, as many French aristocrats did, they are demanding, estranged and disappointed, unable to contribute to the new reality they did nothing to bring about, and ignored by those active in shaping the new tim es. It is a sad and dreary story, as she tells it, and remote in both manner and matter from the therapeutic designs of her greatly admired teacher, Karl Mannheim. Mannheim is best known for the sociology of knowledge put forward in Ideology and Utopia (see Kettler and Meja 1995). The central claim of that composite work is, first, the pervasiveness of ideology in social thought, taken as total perspectives more accurately characterized by their ways of forming concepts, arguments, and ways of knowledge than by the characteristic doctrines fam iliarly present in competing political doctrines. Second is the contention that sociological interpretation can uncover the grounds of those ideologies in structured form s of social existence - notably in class location, as analyzed by his 'M arxistic' sociology, but also in such other social form ations as generational and gender units. The sociology of knowledge, third, is uniquely available to the intelligentsia, a social formation that is relatively detached from the other structures, although made up of individuals derived from them all. It is the common cultivation of the intelligentsia, as well as the way of life that this entails, that puts them comparatively at a distance from the unmediated way of holding ideologies, although that distance can in the end only be assured and made productive through the reflexive and critical practice of sociology of knowledge. Finally, the sociology of knowledge, through the awareness of ideological perspectives that it engenders and through the recognition of the social denominators common to all the social

Nina Rubinstein’s Studies in Exile

form ations in competition - the historical time and situation and course o f development they share - transforms the character of political debate and fosters the emergence of syntheses that overcome the unrealistic and highly selective viewpoints of the ideologies. The resulting knowledge is an open system, constantly subject to revision and subject to continuing conflict. Mannheim likened the outcome to the rare attributes that Max W eber credited to the politician oriented to the ethic of responsibility. Mannheim’s sociological project was simultaneously a project in political education (see Loader and Kettler 2002). In the W eimar context, Ideology and Utopia was unmistakably about political education. Mannheim proposed sociology of knowledge as a method fo r opening practical life to the guidance of sociology. The intimate connections that interlink sociology of knowledge, sociological education, and the cultivation requisite for civic practice in Mannheim’s work have been obscured by the standardizeddebates over Mannheim’s book, especially after itwas translated into English, reconfigured, and incorporated into the canon of American sociology, but the records of Mannheim's disrupted term as professor in Frankfurt make the importance of his educational project dear. The recent recovery of the notes for Mannheim's introductory sociology course during his inaugural year in Frankfurt makes possible a fu ll appredation o f the extent to which Mannheim's contributions to sociology are channeled through his hope of contributing decisively to the debate about sodology as education. The intellectuals that Mannheim seeks to bring to consciousness w ill express themselves not by becoming politidans, let alone revolutionaries, but by becoming teachers in the broadest sense, cultivators of the social mind and instructors of the democratic mass. Reflexive insight was the starting point. A ll memoirs of Mannheim’s practice as teacher agree that he pressed students to ground their research in questions that they had to confront in their lives. Speaking to his dass in 1932, Mannheim insisted that no one is ready for sociology who has not experienced the disparities between their actual lives as women, youth, or intellectuals and the myths by which these form s of existence are regulated in society. The need to darify such situations makes sociological work possible, and the endpoint of such darification is self-darification and a new self- possession (Loader and Kettler 2000). Those who have not yet despaired of their situation,’ Mannheim said, ‘cannot really find their way to sociology and should give it up’. Young people who have not realized their parents' loss of

199

200

David KetUer

authority and have thus missed the youth movement experience, he maintains, are not ripe for the sociological problem of generations. Women are addressed twice, and significantly each time anomalously associated with the supposedly anachronistic type of ‘the lady*: Any woman or girl who fails to face up to the fact that modem society [...] gives her enlightenment and culture, while denying her a field of action, falls prey to melancholy and the other psychic ailments that we w ill later encounter in the history of the lady. Only someone who has, as woman, confronted the experience of being alternately shunned as a ‘lady* (a throwback to the past) and shouldered aside as a competitor, can begin to see that a social situation is not a m atter of anatomical destiny. (Mannheim 2001, 166) In the case of the intellectual, his most important category, the key disparities are experienced in ‘the fact that he is esteemed above all others as cultivated person but counts for nothing in the world of bourgeois and proletarian, that he knows everything and can do nothing, that everyone needs him and that he is nevertheless rejected.’ (Mannheim 2001,166) In sum, Mannheim says that his sociological method starts out from a crisis experienced in one's own life situation and that the structural analyses that it generates are designed to culminate in self-knowledge and self-command. Sociological inquiry must begin and end with a recursive move to self and situation. From the standpoint of Mannheim’s project as sociologist and teacher, the question is whether Rubinstein has used the resources o f structural sociology to gain sufficient clarity about herself and her own identification with the Menshevik emigration to transcend its ideological constraints and to be in a position to choose among the courses o f action open in her time. Distance, understanding, openness to practical synthesis are the key terms in Mannheim’s design. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that Mannheim’s quite remarkable mentoring of Rubinstein arose out of his hope that she would make an im portant statement about exile on the foundation of her own need to make sense of the experience. Yet Rubinstein detached her study from her experiences, at least in the final version of the dissertation, defining her subject m atter so as to exclude the political emigration that encompassed her own life.

Nina Rubinstein's Studies in Exile

In her introduction Rubinstein distinguishes political emigrants first from two sub-types of economic, as well as religious emigrants. These latter represent the more or less progressive types of ‘strangers’ whose contributions to social change in their host environments have been overgeneralized by Sombart and some others. But her ideal type of political émigré also excludes politically motivated emigrants who are not, as she puts it in uncharacteristically Marxist terms, representative o f social strata defeated by successful revolution. Not included, thus, are people like her father, who must escape because they have taken part in a revolution that has failed, and, second, people like her Menshevik ‘fam ily,’ who are fleeing political persecution in their homelands. Because the political emigrants among whom she lives are not political emigrants in the sense of her study, they do not exhibit the telltale need for radical reorientation or reconstitution o f their ways of life. Above all, there is no restrictive émigré consciousness or ideology. I submit that this move can best be understood by shifting our frame of reference from Nina Rubinstein as a student of Karl Mannheim to Nina Rubinstein as a loving daughter of the Menshevik extended fam ily. She declined the offer to transmute herself into a political educator because she could have made the experiment only at the cost of a painful disruption in her self-defining attachments. More than that, the break would have been on terms deeply hurtful to the only people she cared for. Rubinstein’s drafts and memos record a variety of efforts to specify the distinction between ‘real’ political émigrés subject to ideological ossification, on the one hand, - what she called the ‘consciousness of the declassed' in her earliest notes and labeled ‘le transformation idéologique [...] des vaincus’ in her proposal to the Sorbonne in 1934 and the exiles, on the other, who remain capable of renewal and insight. The closest she came to a principled solution depended on a distinction between reactionary and progressive strata, with the form er ‘anchored in the past1 and the latter dispensed from this fixation. Yet there are difficulties with all of these analytical attempts, even apart from the literary evidence of Rubinstein's vivid intimate identification with portrayals of emigrant helplessness, especially among activist intellectuals. Rubinstein concedes that even the progressive political emigrants who share the revolution’s rejection of the past are ensnared in an antiquated picture of the future, they fa il to grasp the foreclosure o f possibilities by the revolutionary change they cannot accept. The issue becomes moot by the time she prepares her abstract for the Sorbonne, since she there speaks in despair of a successful ‘revolution’

201

202

David K ettier

that is regressive and that produces a cohort of the ‘defeated* selected from the most ‘progressive’ groups. In examining the literary evidence, I lim it myself to a passage from one of Rubinstein’s preliminary studies to show how difficult she found it to sustain the hard line of separation between her Russian Jews and the aristocrats. She repeatedly segues from the aristocrats to the socialists, emphasizing that intellectuals and politicians are as ‘physically’ tied to their country as land owners, even if they have a comparatively cosmopolitan capacity for earning their sparse livelihood abroad. According to Rubinstein, the intellectuals are among those who suffer most from emigration. ‘How dreadful it is for politicians, literati, and authors,’ Rubinstein writes, ‘to sit around in cafes, impotent and fettered, debating the fate of their land, prophesying, year in and year out, the downfall of the ruling regime - at first, perhaps, out of genuine belief and later, out of habit or fear, as one clings to a straw.’ It is their helplessness that most moves Rubinstein. And something else: How painful and bitter for a socialist who fought against the old regime side by side with his present foe, who endured Czarist prisons, Czarist expulsion and emigration, and who is now once again imprisoned or compelled to flee abroad, who is once again a ‘traitor’ to his land. The intellectual suffers in both spirit and intellect. He may be better able to accommodate him self to external circumstances because he is more likely to be cosmopolitan. He may be able to find a field o f activity, even in strange lands, by means of which he can earn a living. But inwardly he languishes, he bleeds to death. He is cut o ff from the land from which he drew his spiritual forces, the land fo r whose well-being he had worked, struggled, and suffered. Rubinstein's emotional ties to her extended ‘fam ily’ were too great to permit the self-distantiation that Mannheim recommends as firs t step in his method; instead she took distance by subdividing the topic and choosing the category furthest removed. Yet Rubinstein did not in fact believe, as her categorical separation requires, that the Menshevik emigrants remained part of Russian political reality after 1917, certainly not if her retrospective reflections as an old woman are to be believed. ‘I cannot imagine,’ she adm its, th a t any of them really thought that they would ever go back.’ In answer to questions about the point of Menshevik political activities put to her in interviews in 1987, she reveals the conflict between her personal

N ina Rubinstein's Studies in Exile

feeling for this ‘fom ily’ and her inability to relate to their doings as something alive: They were politicians, and this was [...] their life. There was [their newspaper], after all, and it appeared for fifty years, and may do so still [...] It is all so long ago, and the people are all so long dead, and I was personally such very dose friends with the leaders, with Abramovich and Dan. I do not believe that I ever had a political conversation with them [...] They were my friends [...] Being actually pretty much an apolitical person I never read the [party newspaper]. But to me [their political activity] was incontestable. It was their life content, and it had a purpose. I took that for granted. If they do it, they must be right. [...] I knew them personally, and I knew how they considered themselves, and I couldn’t put them at the same level as the French nobles and their behavior, and how they became emigrants. It was different.3 My point is not to expose Rubinstein as somehow lacking in the intellectual seriousness to carry through the reflective exercise postulated by Mannheim. The difficulties identified in this case are integral to the larger ambitions of the Mannheimian project. The question is, ultimately, how the distanced, critical, typological view constitutive of the sodological perspective can orient and galvanize the passionate human being, profoundly tied in relations of love and loyalty. 'W hat is the relationship between me and my dissertation?’ she asked herself during the interviews. ‘It is that which is unclear to me’. The tension between the two contexts is the theme of a question posed by Mannheim near the end of his introductory sociology course in 1930: ‘Can we master the global tensions or shall we be shipwrecked on our own histories?’ Formulated as a loaded question, the option against mastery has strong appeal to a woman like Rubinstein, given her own manifest feeling for her life, but the issue is somewhat in suspension even for Mannheim. Mannheim’s last lecture is devoted to the method that distinguishes sociology from other types of human study. He characterizes it by three aspects, and it is the third of these that is of special importance here. First, then, as is evident from the earlier account of sociology of knowledge, sociological method looks behind the immanent contents, whether assertion of fact or value. Interestingly, his example is one that Norbert Elias later elevated to importance in his civilizational process, the social conditions behind the use of a fork to eat fish. Second, ‘sociology dynamicizes social

203

204

David Ketder

form ations,’ so that the question always arises about trends o f development. The pathos of sociology/ he said, 'is the variability of m an/ Finally, the distinctive sociological move is to reveal the particularity of established standpoints, their susceptibility to the illusion of the individual personality or individual social configuration that it is unique, self-sufficient, and complete. This illusion is epitomized in the approach that we find in internal life history, as it was im plicit in the historicism of the old Bildungskultur. Learning is in fact a function of social experience and social relations, and attention to these relationships between knowing and society, including the concomitant self-distantiation, is what Mannheim terms the functionalist’ view constitutive of sociology. Self-knowledge reveals the knower as a function of historically variable social relations and orients to a practice of accommodation. Mannheim ended with a flourish: ‘Odd that the foundational truths of Christianity are here fulfilled: sociology shows that the other lives in everyone, that all men are brothers/ Nina Rubinstein reserved the metaphors of fam ily for more intim ate connections. In her life in America, she Rubinstein opted for language, literature, and sociability - professionally, as an interpreter at the United Nations and most vitally in a small circle of Russian speakers, many of them émigré friends of her youth. I suggest that her choice of lifehistory above sociology is more than a private matter. Mannheim also accepted the notion that there was something beyond the self as apprehended functionally, but he saw it as a mysterious remainder, reachable only when the other course has been exhausted, and he characterized it in a religious language derived from the mystics. Another of his students, Kurt W olff, cautioned Mannheim, in a naive seminar submission, that his own commitment to sociology was conditional on his being given free play as poet too. In a brief article written last year, W olff concludes that they were after all poets together. Rubinstein drew the line differently than either, but evidently Mannheim let it be known to his students that the line was there to be negotiated. The capacity for choice opened to the intellectual by sociological reflection could yield a choice against the intellectual's political mission. That seems obviously right to me, as long as the full im plications of the choice are accepted, and we are spared aesthetic politics. In exile, Mannheim also had to operate further on his identity as intellectual in his attempt to become The Sociologist* whose expert advice would be accepted as authoritative by gentlemanly English elites, only to find that, like other ‘successful’ emigrants, that he had

Nina Rubinstein’s Studies in Exile

205

been domesticated as a kind of interesting character, who was welcomed for striking ‘ideas’ but not taken altogether seriously by the world of learning. Rubinstein’s negotiated outcome is obviously different from that of such prominent social scientists (see Ash and Söllner 1996; Gemelli 2000), but it is not the point of my cautionary tale to impose a new universal formula on the emigration. My point is simply to invite closer examination of comparable trade-offs and adjustments, as well as the many lifelong costs. I have studied these effects in the cases of Karl Mannheim and Franz L. Neumann. I suggest that the questions apply equally to all the others of that generation. There was no ‘happy end,’ and no one ‘lived happily ever after.’

Bibliography A sh, M . G . and Söllner, A. eds 1996. Forced Migration and Scientific Change. Em igré Germ an-Speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933, Cambridge and New York: Cam bridge University Press G em elli, G. 2000. The ‘Unacceptables. ' Am erican Foundations and Refugee Scholars between the Two W ars and after, Brussels and Bem e: P .I.E .-P eter Lang Honegger, C . 1993 ‘Jüdinnen in der frühen deutschsprachigen Soziologie,’ in Jansen, M. M . and Nordmann, I. eds, Lektüren und Brüche. Jüdische Frauen in Kultur, Politik und W issenschaft, W iesbaden: Chm ielorz, 178-195 Kettler, D. and M eja, V . 1993. T h e ir Own 'Peculiar W ay’: Karl Mannheim and the Rise of W om en,’ International Sociologyt 8 :1 ,5 -5 5 Kettler, D. and M eja, V . 1995. Kart M annheim and the Crisis o f Liberalism, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Kettler, D. 1999. ‘C an W e M aster the Global Tensions or Must W e Suffer Shipwreck on our Own History?’, in Endreß, M. and S ai bar, I. eds, Kart Mannheim s Beitrag zu r Analyse m oderner Gesellschaften, Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 293-309 Kettler, D. 2000. ‘W ie kam es zu Nina Rubinsteins Promotion,’ in Nina Rubinstein, D ie französische Emigration nach 1789. Ein Beitrag zu r Soziologie d er politischen Em igration, ed. Dirk Raith, Graz: Nausner & Nausner, 73-85. Krohn, C. D ., Mühlen, P. v. z ., Paul, G . and W inckler, L. 1998. Handbuch d er deutsch­ sprachigen Emigration. 1933-1945, Darmstadt: Primus Loader, C. and Kettler, D. 2002. K a/f Mannheim 's Sociology as Political Education, New Brunswick and London: Transaction M annheim , K. 1929. Ideologie und Utopie, Bonn: Cohen

206

David K ettler

Papanek, H. 2000. ‘Spiegel und Schattenspiel: Vom W iedererleben des Eriebten*, in Hansen-Schaberg, I. and Schm eichel-Falkenberg, B. eds, Frauen Erinnern. W iderstandVerfolgung-Exil 1933-1945, Berlin: W eidler, 39-53 Rubinstein, N. 1929-1933. ‘Die französische Emigration nach 1789’, dissertation, Archive for the History of Sociology in Austria (AHSA), 39/1 Rubinstein, N. 2000. D ie französische Emigration nach 1789: Ein Beitrag zu r Soziologie d er politischen Emigration, ed Raith, D ., Graz: Nausner & Nausner Sim m el, G . 1950. T h e Stranger* in The Sociology o f Georg Simmel, tr. Kurt W oiff, N ew York: Free Press, 402 - 408 1 2 3 1 This is a revised version of a paper first presented to the Columbia University Sem inar on Methods and Contents, Septem ber 13, 2000 and to a public sem inar sponsored by several programs at the University of Minnesota, Septem ber 15, 2000. The paper is linked to Kettler 1999 and Kettler 2000. It also draws on Kettler and M eja 1993 and Loader and Kettler 2001. The analysis was stim ulated in part by rewarding exchanges with Dirk Raith, the editor of Rubinstein 2000, as he was preparing his introduction, as well by as a dozen instructive years of frequent communication and occasional collaboration with Hanna Papanek (see Papanek 2000). 2 In our examination of this work, we can draw as well on a surprisingly com plete record of preliminary sketches and drafts, fragm entary documentation of Rubinstein's unsuccessful proposals for developing her thesis as submitted to the Sorbonne in the mid-thirties and to the Graduate Faculty of the New School in New York, in 1941, as well as a series of interviews conducted with Rubinstein in 1987 by the present author and the anthropologist Hanna Papanek, Rubinstein’s younger half-sister (AHSA 39/1). Detailed marginal comments in Mannheim's handwriting on Rubinstein’s drafts confirm her own recollection that he mentored the work in detail, rather than leaving the supervision largely to his assistant, Norbert Elias, as was evidently the case for m any of his other students. Elias did m ake some contribution to Rubinstein’s efforts, however, as evidenced by a 1930 letter on the project. S ee Raith in Rubinstein 2000. 3 This is an edited compilation of statem ents m ade in reply to various probes. Interview Protocol, Decem ber 1 7 ,1 9 8 7 .

ANDREA HAMMEL GENDER AND MIGRATION: A FEMINIST APPROACH TO GERMANJEWISH WOMEN REFUGEES AND THEIR TEXTS

Exile studies as a discipline is at a crossroads. Academics have been taking stock: in 1996 the International Exiles Studies Yearbook series published its fourteenth volume entitled Rückblicke und Perspektiven. In this volume Bernhard Spies outlines the fate of exiles studies in the context of political and cultural changes in German Studies and in Germany. Focusing on the study of German literature, he points out that until the 1970s academic research into the works of exiles was confronted at best with indifference and at worst with intense suspicion. In the 1970s the political clim ate in Germany changed, and a short period of intense interest and public awareness followed, fuelled by a desire to find and explore proponents of a different ‘better1 Germany (Spies 1996, 17). Over the last ten years, according to Spies, exile studies researchers have had to contend with the view that further study is redundant and the field of exile literature has been comprehensively researched: the project was deemed to be finished, even by academics who had themselves form erly been engaged in the research of exile. This is an outline of the situation in Germany, and does not necessarily correspond to the development of exile studies abroad. W ithin the British academic world the study of those who were exiled from Central Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and made their home in Britain has only been systematically developed since 1990. The First International Symposium on German and Austrian Exiles, held in Aberdeen in 1990, was a turning point in that direction. In Aberdeen the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies was founded under the chairmanship of Professor J. M. Ritchie and in 1992 the London Research Group for Exile Studies was established. The two groups have since merged to form the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the Institute for Germanic Studies, University of London. This late start might seem surprising since a number of academics in the field of German Studies were form er refugees themselves. On closer inspection it causes less astonishment: in the same way as other professional groups, these Germanists living in Britain defined themselves through their academic

208

Andrea Hammel

achievements and professional status, not through their ethnic origins (Livingstone 1991). Exile Literature Traditionally, German as an academic discipline in Britain has tended to focus on the study of German literature, especially on the well-known canonical figures of high culture. Exile literature, investigated because of its social and historical significance, was sometimes seen as ‘inferior’ literature. Those authors like Thomas Mann or Bertolt Brecht who were part of the literary ‘canon’ and seemed to m erit investigation on the basis of their aesthetic, their ‘literary1accomplishment, have of course been the subject of many academic studies. But this was not the case with ‘minor* figures, Germanists with a refugee background frequently did not want to be reminded of their past lives and their often painful fam ily history; again they shared this desire with the m ajority of German-speaking refugees from Central Europe who stayed in Britain. Most of them only started to talk about their past in the 1990s. In most analyses, two reasons are given for this development: firstly, the fact that form er refugees are coming to the end of their lives and feel the desire to leave some testimony of their experiences behind, either for their own descendants or for the world at large. Secondly, many fe lt compelled by the contemporary outbreaks of neo-Nazi activity, xenophobia and antisemitism to tell of the ultimate consequences of such ideologies. Although a late starter in this field, researchers in English-speaking countries have been able to make an important contribution, especially to the study of the social and historical background o f the German speaking exiles. This is due to the close geographical proxim ity to the location of exile and privileged insights into the culture of the host country. German Studies abroad has also been able to contribute significantly to the study of specific groups of exiles and to fields outside the area of exile literature, due to the different development o f academic disciplines in Britain and the USA today. An interdisciplinary approach makes it possible to combine the study of the German literature, history, politics and many other disciplines that would traditionally be split into different schools in Germany. Gender and Exile As in other areas of academic inquiry, research on the works of women exile writers was taken up much more slowly than was the case fo r the

Gender and Migration

209

work of male authors. According to Irmela von der Lühe, the mid-1980s brought the first groundbreaking works (von der Lühe 1996, 52). The number of studies has since increased markedly and the international yearbook of the German Gesellschaft für Exilforschung has devoted two volumes to the subject of women and exile (Krohn, Rotermund et al 1993; Krohn, Rotermund et al 1999). The Gesellschaft has its own Arbeitsgemeinschaft Frauen im Exil and the London-based Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies devoted one day at their International Symposium ‘Hitler’s G ift to Britain’ to the study of women exiles. To engage with women exile writers and their texts is a political act, as well as an academic one, comparable to the discovery by a mainstream readership of black American women writers or British Asian women writers. In its early stages this process involved social and historical groundwork. Sibylle Quack bemoans the lack of statistical data concerning the numbers of men and women who emigrated to specific countries (Quack 1996, 36). In the case of Britain as a country o f exile, the assumption is that women were the m ajority among the refugees because it was easier for them to gain entry to work, for example, as domestic servants. Tony Kushner devotes a chapter to the subject of refugees as domestic servants in his book The Holocaust and Liberal Imagination. He argues that, although in some cases a humanitarian act by private individuals who employed servants, the granting of visas to around 20,000 women was generally a selfinterested act on the part of the British government to ease the socalled ‘servant crisis’ afflicting middle-class households (Kushner 1992, 90-115, esp. 112). At the same tim e refugees suspected by the government of being a danger to the functioning of British society were not granted visas. Single women working as servants were seen as easier to assim ilate and to keep ‘invisible’ than men. According to Kushner this invisibility continued long after the war as researchers were recording and analysing the experience of refugees who came to Britain. The researchers’ focus on the industrial and cultural elite brought with it a ‘gender distortion’. Studies such as Marion Berghahn’s essay ‘Women Emigrés in England’ aim to rectify this distortion and show that there was a distinct difference between the experiences of and perceptions of male and fem ale refugees (Berghahn 1995). According to Berghahn’s oral history m aterial, women seemed to have been more willing to adapt to the challenges of emigration than men, a conclusion which is supported by some documentary evidence such as the newsletter of the Jewish

210

Andrea Hammel

women’s association Blätter des Jüdischen Frauenbundes. As early as 1936 only ten per cent of Jewish girls still living in Germany were interested in achieving their Abitur school qualification and the number of those who wanted to train for a job with a lengthy training period had fallen sharply. The main reason for this development was evidently the realisation by young German-Jewish women that they were more likely to be able to emigrate if they had more vocational training. It is difficult to analyse how much this was a consequence of pressure from parents, who tended to dedicate their scarce resources to male students to enable them to get better qualifications. There is, perhaps, a tendency to accept the theory of the greater social adaptability of women without analysing the complex underlying causes. However, it seems to be true that, as Marion Kaplan argues, even in the period between 1933 and 1938, Jewish women in Germany faced different problems to men (Kaplan 1995). They suffered from a very specific m ultiple burden of wage work, domestic tasks, childcare, and the obligation to provide psychological support for the other members of the fam ily. W ith the closure of most Jewish businesses in Germany, women’s employment prospects looked even bleaker than those of their make counterparts. Firstly, women had been traditionally employed in small, often family-owned, and medium-sized Jewish businesses, and secondly, Jewish men were treated preferentially in the downsized job market. W ith decreasing fam ily income and less access to domestic help and other auxiliary services, Jewish women faced a much-increased workload running households. Kaplan also argues that they were more aware of rising antisemitism as they had more contact with state agencies such as the post office and schools. As some of the antisemitism during the first years of the Nazi regime was based on ’economic rivalries and resentments rather than purely racial grounds’, it took forms to which the male earner was more used as part of his business life (Kaplan 1995, 18-19). As a result of these difficult developments, women were expected to support their fam ily emotionally, especially their hard-pressed husbands. Analysis of articles in Jewish publications, such as the Centralvereins-Zeitung and the aforementioned Blätter des Jüdischen Frauenbundes paint a bleak picture of the nature of gender privilege in Jewish fam ilies under threat (Kaplan 1995,25-31). Women often took the first steps to initiate emigration. There is ample evidence of this in the case of the wives, daughters and other female relatives of those incarcerated in concentration camps and prisons after November 1938. It has even been claimed that after

G ender and Migration

211

November 1938 ‘married women were singled out and targeted as mediators of Nazi policies in order to enforce the departure of all Jews from Germany* (Lixl-Purcell 1988, 3). W ives were told that their husbands would not be released unless they could produce emigration documents. But the situation in other fam ilies whose male members were not imprisoned was often not much different. Claudia Koonz argues that as women were less assimilated into German society and the economy, they did not find it as hard as men to leave their possessions and professional careers behind (Koonz 1986,285). It has also been said that women’s identities were more fam ily-orientated and thus they preferred to secure their fam ilies’ survival by emigrating. In total, however, fewer women than men managed to emigrate from Germany and Austria. Kaplan offers several explanations for this fact: men were perceived to be facing more immediate danger, and so they were sent ahead; some had business connections abroad which made it easier to gain entry to another country; it was deemed safer for the men to travel ahead to establish themselves and have their fam ily follow them later; women had closer emotional ties to their extended fam ily and stayed behind to care for elderly relatives; parents favoured sons for emigration, and worried more about sending girls on their own. Britain with its relatively large contingent of female refugees coming on domestic permits must have been the exception. Once abroad, the majority of female refugees seem to have chosen different paths from their male fellow refugees. They were more willing to take on any job, even if they were hugely overqualified for a position. For many fam ilies this probably ensured their survival, but for the women themselves it was again a double-edged sword. There is, for example, some evidence that a number of male writers only managed to continue their careers because their wives or female relatives took on menial, poorly-paid regular work. These women had often themselves been writers or artists and thus they put their male relative’s creative career before their own. Richard Dove writes of the theatre critic Alfred Kerr’s wife Julia that ‘exile had probably treated her more cruelly than her husband, working long hours in poorly-paid secretarial jobs and thereby sacrificing any chance of achieving her artistic and musical ambitions’ (Dove 2000,226). Women refugees’ relatively vulnerable position in their low-status jobs, as well as in society in general, exposed them to other dangers such as sexual abuse by their employers or in the case of girls who came with the Kindertransporte, by their foster fathers or other males in their foster fam ilies. The poet Stella Rotenberg describes her situation

212

Andrea Ham m el

as a 'home help’ in the household of a single man in the Netherlands: her employer and guarantor had been hoping for a sexual relationship with her and although she seemed to have no problems in avoiding this situation, she still got into difficulties with the emigration authorities, as living in her employer’s household had been one of the conditions of her permit (Rotenberg 1991,143-44). Gender blindness? These numerous differences lead me to ask why considerations of gender were excluded from exile studies for so long. Kushner has drawn attention to the gender blindness of a related research field, Holocaust Studies. Joan Ringelheim, and other enterprising fem ale researchers such as Deborah Dwork, Vera Laska and Sybil M ilton, have made it their project to change this situation. In her article 'Genocide and Gender: A Split Memory*, Ringelheim argues that gender is an important aspect within Holocaust Studes which has largely been forgotten. According to Ringelheim, women were specifically persecuted because, according to the Nazi ideology o f racial struggle, Jewish women were the producers of the next generation of Jews and therefore to be actively pursued and killed. The traditional view of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ as the total genocide o f the Jewish population made the question of gender in the eyes o f many researchers and campaigners ‘irrelevant, even irreverent’ (Ringelheim 1999, 21). Ringelheim points out that women themselves have not dared to speak out or point to the need for gender analysis. She opens her article with a quotation from a woman interviewee reluctantly describing sexual abuse suffered when she was in hiding. The interviewee feels that the sexual abuse is not part of the story because it does not specifically relate to the National Socialist persecution. The enormity of the mass murder has also led to the widespread belief that the Holocaust should be viewed as a unique event, which does not lend itself to critical approaches, such as fem inism , used fo r other form s of historical investigation. This tendency has been m irrored in exile studies. Because most refugees were compelled to leave their home country fearing persecution and death, this was understood to be an equalizing factor. Politically, splitting up refugees into different subgroups has been seen as detrimental to the overall aim. In research areas such as exile literature, the search for common aesthetic characteristics or the attempt to define the exile period as a literary epoch has also seemed to m ilitate against a fem inist approach.

G ender and Migration

213

In the field of exile literature, academics have started to argue that there is a need to move away from purely biographical research to a more diversified analysis. Bernhard Spies, for example, has criticized the sim plified view that the physical exile of writers is the overriding influence upon their identity, rejecting the resultant tendency to concentrate overwhelmingly on biographical research within the field of exile literature. His argument points in the direction of opening up the field of exile literature to a more interdisciplinary approach. Spies would like to see scholars take account of research about totalitarianism , acculturation, bilingual literature and German-Jewish identity. However, Spies is perhaps setting up a false opposition between biographical and literary studies. Feminist theorists in particular have argued for the importance of the interrelationship between the lives of women writers and their texts. Women’s experiences - fictional or lived - underpin fem inist theory. Both von der Lühe and Quack would like to see fem inist methodology applied to exile studies. Von der Lühe draws on fem inist literary theory and fem inist attention to the everyday and domestic space for understanding the work of Anna Gmeyner, coining the phrase ’poetics of everyday life’ to describe Gmeyner’s radical discourse (von der Lühe 1996,56). Gendered Spaces of Resistance A specific textual example may be cited to illustrate this point. In her novel Manja, first published in 1938, Anna Gmeyner uses gendered images of the everyday creating space for resistance. The scene is set in the maternity ward of the local hospital. The Polish Jewish mother has given birth to the little girl Manja after a long and difficult labour. The baby is ill and might not survive. The working-class mother Anna M üller offers to breastfeed the baby: 'Herr Doktor*, sagt Anna Müllers dunkle Stimme vom Bett, 'ich möchte gern die Kleine mitnähren, wenn Sie es erlauben. Vielleicht h ilft es. Mein Bub hat mehr als er braucht.’ Zum zweiten Mal in dieser Nacht ließ Heidemann die Ge­ brauche und Vorschriften des Spitals unbeachtet und nahm ohne Zögern das Angebot an. Während die Schwester verwundert, aber kritiklos, Vorbereitungen traf, das Kind mitten in der Nacht der fremden Mutter anzulegen, richtete Lea sich im Bett auf. ‘Sie sind gut. Wenn ich nur könnte, wenn ich nur Milch hätte.’

214

Andrea Ham m el

1st doch eins wie das andere’, sagte Anna und hielt die Hände über dem dunklen Köpfchen wie sonst über dem hellen ihres Jungen. Dieser einfache Satz drückte die Gemeinschaft aus, die zwischen all den Frauen bestand und wie ein Strom die weißen Inseln der Betten verband. (Gmeyner 1984,25) ’Doctor,’ Anna Müller’s dark voice said from the bed, 1 want to breastfeed the little girl, if that’s alright. Maybe it w ill help. My boy has more than enough.’ For a second time that night Heidemann disregarded the rules and regulation and accepted the offer without hesitation. W hile the nurse, surprised but without criticism , prepared to latch the child onto the breast of a strange woman in the middle of the night, Lea sat up. ’You are a such a good woman. I wish I could do it, I wish I had m ilk myself.’ ‘One baby is just like the next,’ Anna said, holding her hands over the dark head like she normally did over the blond one of her son. This simple sentence expressed the commmunity that existed between all the women and that connected the white islands of the beds like a stream. The image of the gentile German mother breastfeeding the daughter of the Polish Jewish woman is part of a series illum inating the possibilities of resisting the all-encompassing racist ideology. This is not the overt political resistance to Nazism which has been focussed on in many academic studies but a narrative representation of the possibilities in everyday life. As the fem inist critic Joan Ringelheim has argued Jewish women were actively persecuted by the Nazis as the potential bearer of the next generation of Jews. Gmeyner manages to show us a representation of subversion by transgressing the very private action of breastfeeding. Intrinsically linked with child birth and the survival of the newborn infant - the baby Manja was close to death before she received the vital feed - in the twentieth century breastfeeding was normally performed within the nuclear fam ily between a mother and her own baby only. Because a woman is shown feeding a baby of a different race, the daughter of a complete stranger, a direct challenge is made to the racial ideology of National Socialism and to the patriarchal nuclear fam ily. The scene following the quotation above shows the happiness between all the women on the ward and so proves the possibility of community as well. W ith this transgressive act of

G ender and Migration

215

breastfeeding, Anna Gmeyner offers an alternative bodily discourse taking place in an alternative domestic space and fam ily arrangement. The strand of classic white feminism has traditionally seen the fam ily and the domestic sphere as a site of oppression. W hite fem inists identified patriarchy as the source of women’s oppression and the fam ily as a primary site of patriarchal domination. They were subsequently criticised by black fem inists for their lack of attention to the intersections of race and gender. (See Eschle 2001, 125-126) I would like to argue that a discourse using domestic metaphors and fam ilial images can create a space for resistance. The black American w riter Sherley Ann W illiam s creates a scene sim ilar to that in Manja in her novel Dessa Rose: the white woman Rufel breastfeeds the baby of the escaped slave Dessa when the latter is too weak to do so: The sight of him so tiny and bloodied had pained her with almost physical h u rt... And only when his cries were stilled and she looked down upon the sleek black head, the nutbrown face flattened against the pearly paleness of her breast, had she become conscious of what she was doing. (W illiam s 1987,101) The meanings of motherhood have been a site of conflict: white fem inists have identified motherhood as a site of oppression and essentialist notions of womanhood. Motherhood has not been seen as a site o f political and social change because of this identification with essentialism. But this notion of essentialism is based on a specific discourse of white motherhood which is universalized for all women. This discourse has been contested in many ways by non-white fem inists. For example, white fem inists’ campaigns in the 1970s for the right to have abortions were challenged by black fem inists who pointed out that black women have been subjected to enforced abortion and sterilisation and have had to fight for the right to have children and be mothers. This has transformed the fem inist agenda, which now tends to favour the right to choose. By examining specific practices of motherhood it is possible to explore its transgressive possibilities. Traditionally poorer women, in the history of the United States prim arily black women, have acted as wet nurses for the infants of privileged fam ilies. This is overturned in both novels cited here as in each case a racially privileged, which is to say white woman breastfeeds a child of another race. The novels suggest that the daily practices of motherhood provide a space for resisting dominant normative discource.

Andrea Ham m el

216

Manja was written at a tim e when National Socialist ideology prescribed a specific, restricted notion of motherhood. But fiction provides a space for resisting the prescribed ideology and exploring alternative representations of women and the fam ily. The creation of stories, the writing of fiction also opens up the possibility of being critical of one’s own oppressed group. Gmeyner’s narrative of everyday life sets her novels apart from the texts by other exile writers. As a very early exploration of the intersection of racial and gender oppression it makes sense to read her alongside more contemporary theories in the field of fem inist theory and especially fem inist literary theory. Theoretical ideas and academic research are shaping the context in which stories are told and how they can be heard. Joan Ringelheim writes in relation to Pauline, the interviewee who tells her about her sexual abuse: ‘Pauline knew that this story would interest me.’ Having been interviewed many tim es, Pauline only told the part of her survivors’ story relating to the sexual abuse in the late 1990s, perhaps in response to the changes regarding gender in Holocaust Studies. (Ringelheim 1999, 20) Women’s exile literature like the novel Manja can both be read within a newly shaped context as well as contribute to the construction of such a context. In this way exile studies can continue the transform ation of feminism brought about by the challenges of previously marginalized groups. On the other hand, drawing on the strength of existing challenges such as black feminism is a necessary and crucial approach to the process of transforming and thereby revitalising exile studies. This new approach reveals the lim itations of previous research and assumptions that the project of exile studies was complete. It identifies women as political subjects and agents and new spaces of resistance to National Socialism. W ithout interdisciplinarity, without looking to other sources of analysis, exile studies w ill remain insular, and w ill miss the opportunity to inform and be informed by other innovative fields.

Bibliography Berghahn, M . 1995. ‘W om en Emigrés in England', in Quack ed 1995. Betw een Sorrow and Stregth: Women Refugees o f the N azi Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Dove, R. 2000. Journey o f N o Return: Five Germ an-speaking Literary Exiles in Britain, 1933-1945, London: Libris Eschle, C. 2001. Global Democracy, Socila Movem ents and Feminism, Oxford: W estview

G ender and Migration

217

Gm eyner, A. 1984. M anfa, Mannheim: persona Kahn, S . 2002, D er W eg b e Dritte Reich, Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre Kaplan, M . 1995. ’Prologue: Jewish W om en in Nazi Germ any Before Emigration’, in Q uack ed 1995. Between Sorrow and Stregth: Women Refugees o f the N azi Period, Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press Koonz, C . 1986. 'Courage and Choice among Germ an-Jewish W om en and M en' in Paucker ed 1986. The J e m in N ezi Germany, 1933-1943 Tübingen: JCB Mohr Krohn, C .-D ., Rotormund, E ., W inckler, L , and Koepke, W . eds (in cooperation with Inge Stephan) 1993. Frauen im Exil: Zwischen Anpassung und Selbstbehauptung. Exilforschung. Ein Internationales Jahrbuch. B and 11, Munich: edition text + kritik Krohn, C .-D ., Rotermund, E ., W inckler, L , and Koepke, W . eds 1996. Rückblicke und Perspektiven. Exilforschung. E n Internationales Janhtbuch. Band 14, Munich: edition text + kritik Krohn, C .-D ., Rotermund, E ., W inckler, L , and Koepke, W . eds (in cooperation with Sonja H ilzinger) 1999. Spreche - Identität - K u ltu r Frauen im Exil. Exilforschung. E n Internationales Jahrbuch. B and 17, Munich: edition text + kritik Kushner, T. 1992. The Holocaust and the Liberal Im agination: A Social and Cultural History, Oxford: Blackwell Lentin, R. ed 1999. G ender and Catastrophe, London and New York: Zed Books Livingstone, R. 1991. T h e Contribution of Germ an-speaking Jewish Refugees to Germ an Studies in Britain*, in Mosse ed 1991 Lixl-Purcell, A. ed 1988. Women o f Extie: Germ an-Jewish Autobiographies Since 1933, N ew York: Greenwood Von der Lühe, 1 .1996. “ Und der Mann w ar oft eine schwere, unddankbare Last”: Frauen im Exil - Frauen in der Exilforschung’, in Krohn et al eds 1996. Rückblicke und Perspektiven. Exilfbrschung. Ein Internationales Janhrbuch. Band 14, Munich: edition text + kritik Mosse, W . E. ed 1991. Second Chance: Two Centuries o f Germ an-speaking Jews b the United Kingdom, Tubingen: Mohr Quack, S . ed 1995. Between Sorrow and Stregth: Women Refugees o f the N azi Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Q uack, S . 1996. ‘D ie Aktualität der Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung für die Exilfbrschung’, in Krohn et al eds 1996. Rückblicke und Perspektiven. Exilforschung. Ein Internationales Janhrbuch. Band 14, Munich: edition text + kritik Ringelbaum , J. 1999. ‘G enocide and G en d er A Split M em ory, in Lentin ed 1999. G ender and Catastrophe, London and New York: Zed Books

218

Andrea H am m el

Rotenberg, S. 1991. ‘Ungewissen Ursprungs’, in Rotenberg, Scherben sind e n d lic h e r Hort: Lyrik und Prose, Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 143-44 Spies, B. 1996. 'Exilliteratur - ein abgeschlossenes Kapitel? Überlegungen zu S tan d und Perspektiven der literaturwissenschaftlichen Exilforschung*, in Krohn et al eds 1 9 9 6 . Rückblicke und Perspektiven. Exiiforschung. Ein Internationales Jenhrbuch. B an d 14, Munich: edition text + kritik W illiam s, S. A. 1987. D essa Rose, London: Virago

EDWARD TIMMS NEW APPROACHES TO CHILD PSYCHOLOGY: FROM RED VIENNA TO THE HAMPSTEAD NURSERY

One of the most remarkable consequences of the intellectual migration of the 1930s was the debate that divided the British Psycho-Analytical Society - the ‘Freud-Klein Controversies’ (King and Steiner 1991). The openness of the Society towards analysts from abroad meant that by 1939, as Mitchell Ash has noted, émigrés from the continent made up 35% of the membership. This astonishing figure cannot be matched by any comparable professional institution, least of all in the sphere of medicine. W hat followed was even more dramatic: an ideological conflict between factions led (as the British analyst James Strachey put it) by ‘bloody foreigners’: by two women, both migrants, both of Jewish origin, both specialists in child psychology, and neither of them medically trained: Melanie Klein, who came to London in 1926 at the invitation of Ernest Jones; and Anna Freud, who escaped to London with her father in 1938 (also with the help of Jones). The so-called ‘controversial discussions’ between the two factions had enduring effects on British psychoanalysis, especially the work of child therapists at the Tavistock Clinic (Ash 1991, 111-20). The great row was about how to conceptualize the experiences of tiny babies, with the Kleinians insisting that the ’internalized breast forms a core for all further object relations’ (Grosskurth 1987,331). The aim of this paper is to modify the picture of Anna Freud and her followers locked in a titanic struggle with the Kleinians by focusing on factors that promoted not confrontation but convergence. A more differentiated picture emerges if we take account of the influence of a third child psychologist who came to London from Vienna, Charlotte Bühler. By reconstructing the context of socialist Vienna, from which im portant new conceptions of child development originated, we shall be able to appreciate the matrix of ideas which led to the founding of the Hampstead Nursery and the Hampstead Child Care Clinic. The concluding section of this paper recalls the career of one of the key figures at the Nursery, Use Heilman, and the alliances which she formed with members of the competing factions. In a volume devoted to intellectual migration it is by no means inappropriate to focus on theories of child psychology, for this was a period when philosophers took education seriously. W ittgenstein became a primary school­

220

Edward Tim m s

teacher, while Bertrand Russell set up an experimental school o f his own. Why did migrants make such an impact on British life during the 1930s and 1940s? We are all fam iliar with the conventional idea o f a conservative Britain suddenly confronted by modemist influences from the continent. We may call this the ‘impact model’, most dearly illustrated by an example that has already been mentioned in the paper on architecture: the Bexhill Pavilion - a masterpiece of European modernism constructed in a sleepy English seaside resort. One can imagine the reaction in 1935 to this object from another world: it was as if a spacecraft had landed. The success of Erich Mendelsohn in designing this building, in collaboration with Serge Chermayeff, was all the more remarkable because, in the broader field of British architecture, there was considerable resistance to innovations from the continent (Benton 1995). Cultural historians have thus developed more complex models of migration, arguing that ‘an acculturation process mediated by inner-disciplinary dynamics shaped the ém igrés’ contributions’ (Ash 1991, 114). We may call this the ‘acculturation model’ - the notion that migrants are obliged to adapt to conditions imposed by the recipient culture. In psychoanalysis and child therapy, however, something rather different occurred: British culture adapted to the ideas of the migrants. This we may call ‘reverse acculturation’. Miss Freud and Mrs Klein were certainly formidable women, but individual gifts do not explain their extraordinary influence. We must also take account of the relative backwardness of psychoanalysis and child psychology in Britain before the arrival of the migrants. Academic psychology in Britain, as Mitchell G. Ash has shown, 'had not expanded in the way it had in the United States’; there were only five chairs of psychology in Britain in the 1930s, compared with over a hundred in the United Sates. There was a persisting scepticism about ‘the intellectual legitim acy and practical value of the field’. Hence the predominance of the so-called ‘objective’ methods associated with Francis Galton and Karl Pearson (Ash 1991, 104). New ideas from America - for example the behaviourism of John D. Watson - were only slowly affecting British institutions, which were resistant to innovations from abroad. One o f the most significant sources of resistance was the Eugenics Society, which focused attention not on child development, but on the ‘unborn child’. Heredity versus Environment: The Unborn Child The Eugenics movement was founded in 1907 by Sir Francis Galton, the leading British geneticist and medical statistician (Searle 1976, 2). This movement dominated debates about public health in Britain for several decades, gaining adherents in every part of the world. The

New Approaches to CNW Psychology

221

Eugenics Review, founded in 1909 and published for the next sixty years, makes remarkable reading. The predominant concern was less with the conditions that promote the healthy development of children than with the ‘unborn child’. The question was 'how to improve the breed’ and avoid the ‘degeneration of the race’ that was feared. Contributors to the Eugenics Review argued that genetically inferior parents should be discouraged from breeding; mental defectives and crim inal types should be sterilized; and lesser breeds should be discouraged from settling in Britain. Some members the Eugenics Society also contributed to the agitation which led Parliament, in 1905, to pass the Aliens Act, designed to keep out unwanted migrants, especially Jews from Eastern Europe (Searie 1976,39-41). The Eugenics movement was launched in the heyday of British im perialism, and its influence persisted throughout the 1920s and 1930s, when it came into conflict with more progressive attitudes towards the health of children. How to improve the breed was the dominant issue of in early twentieth-century popular science, not only in Britain. There was a great debate between 'geneticists’, who claimed that the character of children was essentially shaped by their heredity; and ’environmentalists’, who insisted that improved education would produce happier human beings. Seen in a broader international context, this issue was at the heart of the secular struggle between communism and fascism, but it also became a topic for passionate debate among advanced thinkers in the Anglo-Saxon world. They were already dreaming of what we would now call ‘designer babies’ (they called it ‘improving the germ-plasma’). Their programme had political im plications which were less progressive than they imagined. It is somewhat embarrassing to note the affinities between British eugenics and the doctrines of ‘racial hygiene’ that were being promoted in Germany. In October 1933 the Eugenics Review carried an article by C. P. Blacker, General Secretary of the Eugenics Society, offering a cautious welcome to the new German Sterilization Act, while taking issue with the element of ‘compulsion’ (Blacker 1933,157-9). A further article by K. B. Aixman on ‘Race Mixture’, published in the same number of the Review, argues for racial segregation and denounces the social and biological consequences of mixed marriages, warning that the United States, like South America, may soon be inhabited by ‘a mixed race of Caucasian-Negro hybrids and mongrels’ (Aixman 1933, 161-6). The fieldwork being undertaken by geneticists in Nazi Germany, including the setting-up of holiday camps for the study of twins, was particularly admired. At the Seventh International Genetical Congress, held in Edinburgh on 23-30 August 1939, the progress report on these studies of twins was presented by Professor Otmar von Verschuer,

222

Edward Tim m s

Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene, one of whose pupils was Joseph Mengele (Teich 1990, 296-

8). The Eugenics movement influenced leading thinkers of the interwar period whom one would normally describe as ‘progressive’. The early fem inists were particularly enthusiastic, and the principles of Eugenics were also embraced by Marie Stopes, the campaigner fo r sexual liberation. In Married Love, the best-seller which transform ed British attitudes towards sexuality, Stopes promoted the use of contraceptives as the key to a happy sex life. But her model of a healthy marriage was suffused by the ideas of the Eugenics Society, of which she was a life-long member. She argued for the compulsory sterilization of ‘the diseased, the racially negligent [...] and the feeble­ minded’ in order to prevent the birth of ‘stunted, warped and inferior infants’. In 1921 she founded her own Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, since she was determined to prevent ‘wastrels [...] from reckless breeding’ (Soloway 1997, 55-61). During the famous meeting which she organized in London in May 1921, she made it clear that her vision of a ‘world of healthy, happy, desired babies’ also involved ‘the repression of lives that ought not to have been started’ (Rose 1992,148). This concern with heredity - with nature rather than nurture strongly affected British academic psychology, including the work of the most influential figure in the field, Sir Cyril Burt, who was appointed Professor of Psychology at University College London in 1932. Burt was the principal advisor to the London County Council on educational reform, making constructive suggestions about the provision for ‘Young Delinquents’. He could be justly proud of his pioneering achievements, for example the setting-up of the first British child guidance clinics in the late 1920s (Heamshaw 1979, 96-99). But intellectually, he never entirely freed him self from the assumptions of the Eugenics movement. His early work with Intelligence Tests showed that children from highclass private schools peformed consistently better than children from state elementary schools. This led him to conclude that intellectual superiority is ‘inborn’ (Searle 1976, p. 52). To substantiate his conviction that intelligence is inherited, he published a series of papers about twins who had been separated at birth. Burt's data appeared to confirm the claim that every child has a fixed intelligence quotient, which is largely independent of environmental factors. These findings led to in fundamental changes in British educational policy, most notably the Education Act of 1944. This introduced the 11+ test which separated all English schoolchildren at the age of eleven into ‘Grammar School’ and ‘Secondary Modem’ material. However, there was one

New Approaches to Child Psychology

223

snag, which only became evident after Burt’s death in 1971: the leading British child psychologist had faked his results. There was no firm evidence that Burt had actually undertaken the systematic studies of twins which supposedly proved that intelligence was inherited (Heamshaw 1979,227-61). Burt epitomizes the ambiguities of British psychology in the 1930s. His academic research was skewed by assumptions derived from the Eugenics movement, but he was certainly reform-minded, believing that systematic observations of children’s behaviour, together with statistical methods for measuring their development, could provide a basis for educational improvements. Aware of the deficiencies of British work in this field, he became active on behalf of continental psychologists seeking employment in Britain. It was Burt who in 1935 invited to London, as a visiting professor at University College, the leading German-speaking expert on child development, Charlotte Bühler from Vienna. Pedagogic Psychology in Vienna: The Adaptable Child The Vienna of the 1920s and 1930s has been called ‘the capital of child analysis’ (Appignanesi and Forrester 1992, 287). To understand this phenomenon, we need to recall not only the work of the Freudians, but the social matrix from which new thinking about child development emerged. In Austria childhood had become a political issue, as is clear from the success of the Social Democratic Association of Friends of Children (Sozialdemokratische Verein Kinderfreunde), founded in 1908 in the provincial city of Graz. The ‘Kinderfreunde’ had branches throughout Austria, and with the founding of the Republic it became a m ajor force in the struggle to create an egalitarian society. It was not sim ply a children’s charity, but a radical organization committed to educating the socialists of the future. The importance of this movement may be gauged from the fact that in 1929 the ‘Kinderfreunde’ had over 100,000 members in Austria (Scheithauer 1983,146). This programme was most effectively implemented in Vienna, which acquired the status o f a self-governing province in 1922 with significant tax-raising powers. The ‘great and mighty work of the local government of Vienna’, as Herbert Morrison put it in 1925, was the envy of the socialist world (Danneberg 1925,3). Children’s welfare was the highest priority of the provincial government of Vienna. New resources were made available for children’s homes and clinics, under the direction of Professor Julius Tandler, and the Public W elfare Office gave priority to child-care programmes, establishing over a hundred kindergartens catering for alm ost ten thousand children by 1931. Tandler, like other progressively

224

Edward Tim m s

minded medical scientists, was influenced by Eugenics, setting up Marriage Consultation Clinics to assess the health of prospective conjugal partners and prevent genetically transmitted diseases. The ‘new human beings’ of whom the socialists dreamed were to be produced by ‘environment and biology combined’ (Gruber 1991, 72). But the City’s welfare programme was extremely wide-ranging. In the field of education there was close cooperation with Alfred Adler and his group of Individual Psychologists, who argues that feelings of inferiority were socially conditioned and could thus be rectified by enlightened teaching methods. It was also on the initiative of the Social Democrats that the developmental psychologists Charlotte Buhler and her husband Karl B iihler were appointed as Professors of Psychology at the University of Vienna. As director both of the University’s Psychological Institute and of the Children’s Support Service (‘KinderObemahmestelle’), Charlotte B iihler bridged the gap between theory and practice, bringing her professional expertise directly to bear on questions of social policy. It is significant, as Riccardo Steiner has pointed out, that much of the pioneering work in Vienna was undertaken with ‘extrem ely deprived children’ (Steiner 2000, 111). The developmental studies undertaken by Charlotte Bühler’s team of researchers formed part of a programme of radical social reform. B iihler’s basic method of testing infant responses is set out in detail in her book Kindheit und Jugend: Genese des Bewußtseins (1931). By the 1930s a number of B iihler’s writings had appeared in English - or rather American - translation. There was a strong American interest in developments in Vienna, as we can see from that landmark publication of 1931, A Handbook o f Child Psychology, edited by Carl Murchison, which includes a forty-page article by B iihler (as well as a shorter one by Anna Freud). B iihler’s Kindheit und Jugend was translated by an American psychologist under the title Testing Children’s Development from Birth to School Age, supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The B iihler baby tests presented in this book, which was jointly authored with Hildegard Hetzer, were famous for their precise calibration of patterns of development in very young children. The section on the ‘Eighth Month’ (see illustration) shows how progress can be measured in terms of a sequence of progressively more complex activities. All this may seem rather obvious, but this is because Bühler’s response-testing techniques have now become standard practice. It was pioneering work at the time, and it was designed to help those 'stunted infants’ whose conception the eugenicists wished to prevent. The work of Bühler’s group involved hundreds of children and enjoyed enlightened support from the City of Vienna. However, there is something missing in Bühler’s approach. In setting up these tests,

New Approaches to Child Psychology

225

Bühler’s followers were concerned with cognitive development, manual dexterity, and visual coordination. But there is no reference to the psychological considerations that might occur to us now: the effects of fantasy; the function of ‘play* as a means o f symbolic representation; or object relations - feelings about absent parents - being acted out in a displaced form. In short, as her colleague Use Heilman recalled in an interview Riccardo Steiner, Buhler was ‘completely anti-psychoanalytic’ (Heilman 1990, 4). Those who trained with Bühler were forbidden to attend the lectures of Anna Freud, since the psychoanalysts had a completely different model of child development, which was conceptual rather than em pirical. The psychoanalytic conception of childhood derived from the writings of an author who had never worked with children, from Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality and his study of ‘Little Hans’. These works supplied the seminal concepts for the psychoanalytical study of the child: polymorphous infant sexuality; the oral, anal and genital phases; the working through of Oedipal attachments and aggressions; sibling rivalry and the castration complex; the latency period and the internalization of the super-ego. These ideas were based less on em pirical observation than on generalized psychological reflection, which stressed the primacy of libidinal drives and the repressed unconscious. It was Anna Freud who set out the im plications of these ideas for child psychology in a series of lectures delivered in Vienna in the 1920s. Her first book, Einführung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse, was published in 1927, with the American edition, Introduction to the Technique o f Child Analysis, coming out the following year. In these lectures she summarizes the analytical work which she had undertaken with ten children, including the offspring of her American friend and lifelong supporter Dorothy Burlingham (Appignanesi and Forrester 1992, 289). Her working methods are memorably recorded in her case notes on a nine-year-old Viennese boy, who was a friend of the Burlingham children (Heller 1990). The approach described in her lectures may not seem very radical, but they immediately provoked controversy. Anna Freud found herself caught between two factions: the observational psychologists in Vienna, led by Charlotte Bühler, who dismissed the theory of the unconscious with the words: ‘It’s Mr Freud’s and his daughter’s fantasy, but it’s not for me!’ (Heilman 1990, 4); and the Kleinians in London, who argued that Anna Freud failed to recognize the significance of unconscious phantasy in the earliest years o f infancy. Klein first came into prominence in April 1924 at the International Psychoanalytic Conference in Salzburg, where she presented a paper

226

Edward Tim m s

on her techniques of ‘early analysis’ with children aged from two years onwards. Even more original was the paper she presented at the First Congress of German Psychoanalysts at Würzburg in October, ‘An Obsessional Neurosis in a Six-Year-Old G irl’, based on her observation of the aggressive behaviour of a severely disturbed girl named Ema. It was this paper that reportedly led Klein’s mentor, Karl Abraham, to observe that th e future of psychoanalysis lay with child analysis’ (Grosskurth 1987,115-8). The conferences of 1924 marked a decisive shift in the development of psychoanalysis: the emergence o f a distinctively fem inist perspective, with the focus on maternal bonding and the child’s pre-Oedipal development. Klein led the way with her theories the destructive fantasies of infants at their mother’s breast. In 1927, after her move to London, Ernest Jones organized a symposium to provide Klein and her supporters with a platform to launch their counterattack against Anna Freud and the Vienna group. Sigmund Freud was so distressed that he wrote to Jones, complaining: ‘You are organizing a veritable campaign in London against Anna’s child analysis’ (Appignanesi and Forrester 1992,290-1). Anna Freud is sometimes portrayed merely as a dutiful daughter, a mouthpiece for her father’s ideas. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s biography has corrected this picture, showing that from the mid-1920s onwards Anna Freud played an increasingly important role in the international psychoanalytical movement. It is true that her main task was to defend the orthodox Freudian position against deviations. But in the field of applied psychology she decisively distanced herself from her father. During the 1920s Sigmund Freud’s pessimism became very pronounced, as he developed his theories about the ‘death instinct’ and the destructive behaviour of the masses. But the new generation of child psychologists to which Anna Freud belonged was far more progressive. It included social activists like August Aichhom (who worked with juvenile delinquents), Siegfried Bemfeld (director o f a celebrated children’s home) W illi Hoffer (editor of the Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Pädagogik) and Editha Sterba (director of a child guidance centre). Together with other radicals like W ilhelm Reich, they formed the so-called ‘Kinderseminar’ (Young-Bruehl 1989,157). The ‘Kinderseminar’ was committed to the belief that ‘altering environments can improve the psychic condition of children’. Anna Freud was not herself a socialist, and her early with the Burlingham children dealt with a privileged group. But her sympathies (as her biographer puts it) ‘dearly went in the sodalist direction’ (Young-Bruehl 1989, 177-8). In the late 1920s she was commissioned by the Vienna Board of Education to deliver a series of ‘Lectures on Psychoanalysis for Teachers’, published in 1930 as Enfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse

New Approaches to Child Psychology

227

fur Pädagogen (published in English in London the following year). In her lectures she repeatedly quoted Alchhom’s pioneering study of juvenile delinquents, Ven/i/ahrloste Jugend: Die Psychoanalyse in der Fürsorgeerziehung (1925), published in American translation in 1935 under the title Wayward Youth. Aichhom analysed the effects of environmental factors, contesting the view that delinquency is due to 'hereditary degeneration’ (Young-Bruehl 1989, 101). Anna Freud, too, emphasized the possibilities of social adaptation, explaining that the child analyst has a double task: to ‘analyze and educate’ (Freud, A. 1974 (1927), 65). If teachers and parents ‘succeed in allying themselves with the child’s superego, the battle for drive control and social adaptation w ill be won’ (Freud, A. 1974 (1930), 119-20). It is important to bear the social and educational ideals o f Red Vienna in mind if we are to understand the controversy between the followers of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein in London twenty years later. Underlying the two positions was a radical divergence of opinion about the relationship between nature and nurture. Anna Freud focused on processes of social adaptation among pre-school children, using established psychoanalytic categories. Melanie Klein developed a new vocabulary to describe the destructive impulses of infants at their mother’s breast. She claimed that as a result of these impulses the child’s super-ego develops into an ‘immutable’ structure - an inescapable function of our biological heritage (Young-Bruehl 1989, 166). In a significant sense Klein could claim to be closer to Sigmund Freud - to the later, more determ inistic Freud of the death instinct (Grosskurth 1987, 326-8). By contrast, Anna Freud placed the emphasis on the m odification of unconscious drives through the creation of favourable social environments, and she remained at heart teacher. When Anna Freud summed up her position in 1931 in an article entitled ‘Psychoanalysis of the Child’, she claimed that by ’feeling its way further and further back into the childhood of the individual under observation’, psychoanalysis was providing the basis for ‘a new history o f childhood’, since the ‘ideal of an asexual childhood’ had been destroyed (Freud A, 1931, 558-60). Her account of the 'attachment of the child to the mother’ makes no reference to the work of either Klein or Biihler, but in practice there can be little doubt that she was taking their ideas on board. On one point Klein was clearly right: the psychoanalytic study of the child implies the need to work with infants, not sim ply with the five-to-ten-year-olds discussed in Anna Freud’s Introduction to the Technique o f Child Analysis. But if such a study is to produce systematic results, it requires the kind of controlled environment developed by Charlotte Bühler. There was thus a change

228

Edward Tim m s

of direction in Anna Freud’s work during the 1930s in Vienna - and during the 1940s in London - which can best be summed up in the phrase ‘Back to the Nursery1. Vienna in the year 1937 may not seem the obvious tim e and place to set up an experimental nursery. The Social Democrats had been crushed by the Dollfuss government in 1934, and after the July Agreement of 1936 it was only a matter of tim e before Austria was annexed to the German Reich. However, January 1937 was the moment Anna Freud chose to open the Jackson Nursery (Kinderkrippe) on the Rudolfsplatz. She had a g ift for forming alliances and obtaining funding, particularly from American sources. Finance to start the nursery was provided by an American sympathizer, Edith Jackson, premises were leased from the Montessori Society, and a permit obtained from the Mayor of Vienna. W ithin a matter of weeks Anna Freud had purchased 150 nappies, 25 towels, 48 bibs, 10 metres of rubber sheeting and 10 attractive wooden beds with big wheels that could be trundled out on to the terrace. It was a day nursery for babies aged over twelve months from impoverished fam ilies where the father was unemployed and the mother out at work all day. The aim (as Anna Freud later recalled) was to gather ‘direct information’ about the all-im portant phase when infants establish deeding and sleeping habits’ and acquire ‘the rudiments of super-ego development and impulse control’. In a letter of Januaiy 1937 Anna Freud observed: They laugh at me at home because I think and talk of babies continually and because I lead a sort of double life’ (Young-Bruehl 1989, 218-20). In this context, talking about babies was a serious matter. Intellectually, the aim was to square the circle: to use Bühler’s techniques for gathering ‘direct information’ in order to investigate the Kleinian sphere of precocious super-ego development. And politically, as German troops gathered on the Austrian frontier, running the nursery was a defiant gesture of confidence in a future generation. When the Freuds were compelled to emigrate in 1938, the nursery project migrated with them. Anna was even able to arrange for the cots from the Jackson Nursery to be packed and transported to England. She thus, in the autumn of 1940, had the equipment she needed to create an even more famous institution, the Hampstead W ar Nursery (Young-Bruehl 1989, 246-9). Anna Freud’s ‘double life’ continued in England. As a theoretician and a leading member of the PsychoAnalytical Society, she was fully engaged in the debates with the Kleinians known as the 'controversial discussions’, while as a pragmatist she supervised the observational study of a total of well over a hundred children at the Nursery. This was made possible by further American funding, in this case from the Foster Parents’ Plan fo r W ar

New Approaches to Child Psychology

229

Children; and by the support of a dedicated staff, almost all of them like Use Heilman - refugees from Vienna. Alliances and Controversies in London: The Work of Use Heilman The career of Use Heilman represents a convergence between the competing conceptions of child psychology of three seminal thinkers, Charlotte Bühler, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Bom in 1908 as a member of a cultivated Austro-Jewish fam ily, Heilman had a privileged childhood. Her mother's brother was the celebrated liberal politician, Josef Redlich, and under Redlich’s influence the fam ily converted to Lutheran Christianity. Like her friend Ernst Gombrich, she attended the Schottengymnasium, a very traditional institution where most of the teachers were Catholic priests. The school had recently become co­ educational, and Use recalled that took her school-leaving exam, she was the only girl in a class of forty boys (Interview November 1990). Her parents, Paul and Irene Hellmann, were close friends of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and influential supporters of the Salzburg Festival (Volke 1967). The Hellmann Papers at the University of Sussex include many documents relating to the early years Salzburg Festival, for example an invitation signed by Max Reinhardt to a private production at Schloss Leopoldscron in July 1923. One might have expected that a girl growing up in such a cultured environment would have gravitated towards the arts. But the crisis that struck Austria during the First W orld W ar changed the direction of Heilman’s life. Her mother set up a home for refugee children, and this made an indelible impression on the young Use. The first impressions of deprived children which she received in this period, between the ages of six and ten, helped to inspire her decision to study child psychology (Interview November 1990). After the First W orld W ar there was an urgent need for nursery care fo r children from displaced and broken fam ilies, and there were acute problems of malnutrition and disease in the newly founded Austrian Republic. Youthful idealists from bourgeois fam ilies found themselves drawn into the welfare activities initiated by the socialist government of Vienna. At the age of fifteen Heilman began working for a Christian youth group as a volunteer with deprived children, and at eighteen she began a course in social work and child care. Use had been brought up bilingually in German and French, as well as studying English from the age of ten. In 1931 she obtained further valuable experience working at an American-funded home for delinquent children near Paris, taking evening classes in child psychology at the Sorbonne. Her great opportunity came when she returned to Vienna in 1935 and was appointed research assistant in Charlotte Bühler’s Department of Child Development. She was directly involved in the famous baby tests

230

Edward Tim m s

described above: the ‘meticulous and minute observations’ of development in babies from birth onwards. W orking with more experienced psychologists like Liselotte Frankl, she would pay regular visits to a home for unwanted babies run by the City of Vienna. The psychologist would put her observations into words, and Heilman would use shorthand to record these comments. By these means it was possible to construct developmental profiles of a substantial number of children and compare their responses to different stim uli (Heilman 1990, 3-4). In 1937, after Charlotte B iihler had moved to London, Heilman was invited to join her. The growing Nazi influence at the University of Vienna meant that she was delighted to leave. In London she assisted Biihler in setting up an institute for retarded children, the Parents’ Association Institute, funded by an admirer of B iihler’s work, Miss Belle Rennie. Soon after her arrival in London she came into contact with the Kleinians, who were to dominate the British Psycho-Analytic Society during the 1940s. The link was initially a personal and practical one, instigated by one of the leading Kleinians, Susan Isaacs. During the 1920s Isaacs had come into prominence as director of an experimental school in Cambridge, the Malting House School, which provided her with opportunities for first-hand observation of the behaviour of children between the ages of three and eight. At this stage the emphasis was on creating an environment conducive to ‘learning through activities’, as we can see from her detailed report (Isaacs, 1931), and there is no trace of her subsequent interest in the Kleinian concept of phantasy. In 1933 she was appointed Head of the Department of Child Development at the Institute of Education in London, working closely with Cyril Burt. As a pioneering educational psychologist Isaacs admired the work of Charlotte Biihler, and through Biihler she was introducted to Use Heilman. During the late 1930s and early 1940s Isaacs wrote a column for the weekly magazine Nursery World, answering letters from mothers concerned about their babies’ development. There were so many letters that she asked Heilman to help her. They would look through the letters together, and Isaacs would draft replies to the most interesting inquiries for publication in the magazine. Heilman’s task was to w rite replies to the remainder of the letters, and her answers were sent direct to the mothers (Heilman 1990,5-6). This episode provides a fascinating example of the process of ‘reverse acculturation’. British mothers were given guidance about the most modem methods of child care through the combined efforts of a Kleinian analysis and a Bühlerian developmental psychologist. After the outbreak of war the Parents’ Association Institute closed, B iihler moved to America, and Heilman had to find a new job. For a

New Approaches to Child Psychology

231

tim e she worked with evacuee children: ‘One got a telephone call: W ill you go to Blackpool to open a home for twenty-five bedwetters or children who couldn’t sleep, and I travelled all the year* (Interview November 1990). Then in 1941, out of the blue, she received a letter from Anna Freud inviting her to visit the nursery which was being established in Netherhall Gardens with funding from an American Childrens Charity. ‘I’ll never forget when I first arrived,’ Heilman recalled many years later. ‘It was during the children’s lunch hour, and all the one-and-a-half to two-year-olds were eating with their hands. They sat around a big table and they could choose what they wanted to eat. [...] and If they didn’t want it any more no one minded. When I was asked what It was like, I said rather Ironically: “They ate spinach with their hands, and it looked rather peculiar, but maybe that makes one em otionally healthier!” It didn’t make sense to me at the tim e’ (Heilman 1990,7). Heilman at that stage knew virtually nothing about psychoanalysis, but she was a trained observer o f child development and had considerable experience in dealing with disturbed children. Her practical experience meant that she was just the kind of person the Nursery needed, and after observing her sitting on the floor playing with children, Anna Freud offered her a job (Young-Bruehl 1989,248). Once she had settled in, Heilman realized that it was possible to find common ground between the Freudian and the Bühlerian approaches to child development. The children at the Hampstead Nursery were almost all from broken homes, with an absent father and a mother who was obliged to take paid employment and could not care for the child on her own. For the next four years Heilman worked as a supervisor at the Nursery, acting as ‘substitute mother’ for a group of these deprived children. She soon came to realize the value of Anna Freud’s permissive methods and of her emphasis on emotional attachment as the key to child development. The conditions under which the Nursery had to operate, with food shortages and bombs falling on London, were fa r from ideal. Heilman recalls the difficulties she had while acting as substitute mother for a particularly difficult boy called Kenneth, who was always disrupting other children’s games and knocking down their toybrick houses. The night after the Marie Curie Clinic in Hampstead was bombed, she took the children for a walk past the ruined building: There was nothing but stones and no house left, just bits of glass, and this boy took my hand and said: “Me not done it!”’ (Interview November 1990). Heilman had a g ift for cooperative research, and she acknowledges a special debt to the work of Dorothy Buriingham, especially that dealing with the empathy between mother and infant. A fascinating

232

Edward Timms

passage in her tribute to Burlingham deals with the study o f twins which was undertaken at the Nursery. Three sets of twins were admitted, the youngest being only 4Va months old, and their physical and emotional development was carefully monitored over the following years. The focus was on the effects resulting from twinship on the infants’ relationship with their mother and - in follow-up studies - on their more general emotional development (Heilman 1990, 230-2). There could hardly be a more striking contrast to the research on twins that was being undertaken during this same period in the non-psychoanalytical world. Heilman herself made an essential contribution to the success of the Nursery, as can be seen from the famous publication Infants without Families: Reports on the Hampstead Nurseries, written by Anna Freud during the early 1940s in collaboration with Dorothy Burlingham (Freud A. 1973). Several short sections in these Reports were written by Heilman, offering fascinating glimpses of her approach to the psychological development of vulnerable children. By the early 1940s she had decided to become an analyst, and her training coincided with the period of the Controversial Discussions, which almost tore the British Psycho-Analytical Society apart. She was too junior to contribute to the debates directly, but she did attend Melainie Klein’s seminars, and her comments on the Kleinians are surprisingly conciliatory. The clashes between the rival groups were confusing, she recalls, fo r students who had little experience of working with young children. How could one make up one’s mind, on the basis of one’s own observations, what babies ‘might be thinking or feeling about the breast’? However, the fact that Heilman had already done so much work with babies was an advantage in her relationship with Klein, and she also benefited from dose contacts with one of Klein’s followers, Paula Heimann (Heilman 1990,11-13). Heilman bridged the gap between two worlds: the PsychoAnalytical Sodety with its fierce theoretical debates and the Hampstead Nursery with its hands-on involvement in the care of em otionally damaged infants. Her guiding prindple was that, even when children were in residential care, their mother should remain actively involved. In the Monthly Report on the Hampstead Nursery for May 1944, w ritten at a tim e when she had almost completed her analytical training, Heilm an addresses the problem of ‘Regression as a Disturbing Factor in C hild Development’. Observations at the Nursery had repeatedly shown tha t sudden separation from fam ily brought about a loss of ‘ego’ control among children between the ages of 2 and 4, accompanied by a return to infantile behaviours like masturbation, sucking, rocking and soiling. Heilman describes how she responded in the case of Bobby, a tw o-

New Approaches to Child Psychology

233

year-old whose father was abroad and whose mother had been bombed out of her home. When Bobby was placed in the Nursery, he was “the picture of health’ and had been ‘dry* at nights for several months, while his language development was ‘especially advanced compared with that of our nursery children’. His mother paid frequent visits, despite the fact that she was expecting a second child and found the long journey on the Underground difficult. When she was prevented from visiting him for several days, Bobby ‘became listless, often sat in a comer sucking and dreaming’ and at other times became Very aggressive’. He ‘almost completely stopped talking’ and *was wet and dirty continually*. After her confinement, the mother courageously undertook the task of taking complete charge of both her children, and Bobby returned with her to a ground-floor flat below the one that had been bombed. Heilman followed his subsequent development, which provided ‘an instructive mixture of the combined effects of belated air raid shock, reaction to separation, and jealousy due to the birth of the new baby1. The process of réadaptation to home life was slow and difficult, and Heilman acknowledges that the ‘combined efforts of the mother and the Nursery were unable to spare Bobby the consequences of his threefold traum atic experience: bombing, breaking up of home life, and the arrival of the new baby* (Freud A. 1973,396-405). It is dear that the Hampstead Nursery undertook pioneering work in the field of child observation with important theoretical im plications, espedally for the concepts of ‘attachment’ and ‘traumatic separation’, which are usually assodated with the work of John Boulby and Michael Balint. The fact that their findings remained confined to the small print of the ‘Reports’, and were not published until 1973, means that they have not received the credit they deserve. The power struggle within the Psycho-Analytical Society, during which the intellectually more highpowered Kleinians held centre stage, had the effect of marginalizing the work of Anna Freud and her group. For many years Anna’s work, with its emphasis on ego psychology, was more highly regarded in the United States than in Britain. It thus becomes all the more important to acknowledge the significance of Heilman’s career, which represents a convergence between competing approaches to child psychology. It shows that Anna Freud’s child analysis, Charlotte Biihler’s developmental psychology, and Melanie Klein’s sensitivity to the phantasy of infants, did not, after all, represent mutually exclusive approaches. In London, specifically in Hampstead, it was possible to create a space where these traditions converged, thanks to the enterprise shown by Anna Freud’s remarkable team of refugee child psychologists and analysts. The empirical grounding which Heilman had received in the Bühler school enabled her to integrate

234

Edward Timms

developmental psychology with psychoanalysis, while her contacts with Klein, Heimann and Isaacs attuned her to what habies ‘might be thinking or feeling about the breast’. Above all, she became embued with the inclusive approach to child psychology which inspired Anna Freud to involve the mothers of deprived children as active partners in the therapeutic process. By 1945 Heilman herself had qualified as an analyst, and she had a long and distinguished career at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic, set up by Anna Freud in Maresfield Gardens in 1951, again with American support. Given this complex background, it is hardly surprising that Helman’s own later work was based on flexible and pluralistic principles. The research undertaken at the Hampstead Child Care Clinic, of which she provides a succinct overview, involved careful reporting and detailed discussion of individual cases with other analytically trained colleagues (Heilman 1990, 165-85). Two strands in her own therapeutic practice may be seen as particularly innovative. The first, Simultaneous Analysis of Parent and Child, was a logical extension of the original practice at the Nursery of encouraging the close involvement of mothers. The Hampstead technique of ‘simultaneous analysis’ was devised in 1950 by Dorothy Burlingham, based on earlier observations of child-parent interactions formulated in Vienna (Burlingham 1935). It was recognized that, ideally, for each mother-and-child couple, a team of three analysts was needed: one each for the separate treatment of mother and child, and a third who acted as the ‘coordinator1 (Heilman 1990, 233). The mothers involved in the Hampstead Study agreed to treatm ent only after their children’s analysts had indicated that their participation in the children’s disturbance constituted a serious obstacle to therapeutic success. The aim was to elucidate the unconscious meaning and motivation of child-parent interactions, and this approach proved particularly illum inating in the case of both rejecting and overprotective mothers, as well as those responsible for the premature sexual stimulation of their children. One of the most important findings related to parental fantasies as a pathogenic factor, which involved the analysis of the mother’s childhood material and its effects on the em otional development of the child. When Heilman took over the role of coordinator, she and her colleagues investigated a series of correlations between children’s distress and their mother’s reaction formations, confirming that inadequate parenting during the child’s earliest phases could lead to ‘irreversible damage’ (Heilman 1990, 79102). Heilman’s analytical experience led her to form ulate the concept o f the -therapeutic alliance’ - the creative empathy between patient and analyst that is particularly important when working with children and

New Approaches to Child Psychology

235

adolescents. Here again we may detect a double debt, not only to Anna Freud but also - im plicitly - to Charlotte Biihler. It is no coincidence that Heilman’s paper on The Ego’s Participation in the Therapeutic Alliance’, first published in The International Journal o f Psycho-Analysis in 1962, was jointly authored with Liselotte Frankl, another of Bühler’s Viennese pupils who later qualified as an analyst. References to ‘ageadequate developmental features’ recall their early observational training in Vienna, while the emphasis on ‘ego defences’ places their approach to the emotional distresses of childhood firm ly in the Anna Freud tradition. The insistence on gradually reducing the child’s anxiety is contrasted with the more hazardous method of ‘directly confronting him with ego-alien id-contents’ (a dig at the Kleinians). Good mothering is again seen as the key. Where it proves possible, on the basis of satisfactory mothering in the early months, to achieve positive transference and a trust in the analyst’s willingness to help, the child becomes an ‘ally* in the therapeutic process, participating actively in his or her treatment (Heilman 1990,147 & 187-98). Conclusions In the field of child psychology it was clearly not just ideas that migrated, but also persons, practices - and even equipment. The transfer to London of the cots from Jackson Nursery on the Rudolfeplatz has a significant comparable to the arrival of the couch from the Berggasse, since in Hampstead Anna Freud and her collaborators succeeded in creating institutions that were both innovative and enduring. These achievements depended on the ideas o f specific - gendered - persons. Almost all of those working at the Hampstead Nursery were women, including the paediatrician Dr Josephine Stress. Their achievement was to bring Freudian theory down to earth, helping to reverse the patriarchial assumptions which had shaped psychoanalysis for fifty years and to shift the focus towards adequate mothering. It was disagreements about the deeper im plications of this shift that inspired the Controversial Discussions, which were dominated by women, led by Susan Isaacs with her landmark paper on The Nature and Function of Phantasy1 (King and Steiner 1991, 265-321). The focus on the first year of infancy provided common ground, even though the positions of the two groups appear to be so antagonistic, the one prioritizing the libidinal drives, the other unconscious phantasies (King and Steiner 1991, 242-5). The fact that the pioneering work of both groups was undertaken under the pressure o f war-time conditions makes it all the more remarkable. It certainly could not have been accomplished without the theoretical foundations

236

Edward Tim m s

and practical skills that had been developed during the previous fifteen years. The advantage that the child psychologists brought with them from Vienna was their experience of working with a specific category of young people: deprived children, excluded from the parental home and the maternal embrace by force of circumstances. This generated a special kind of reflexivity: the exiled analysts saw in the faces and heard in the voices of their subjects echoes of their own condition of being excluded from their original home and fam ily. The feet that these therapists were themselves ‘extra-territorial’ had consequences fo r the general development of psychoanalytical theory. We find in the work of this generation a compelling interest in a duster of exile-related themes: attachment and separation, loss and mourning. There is a very suggestive chapter in the Young-Bruehl biography of Anna Freud, entitled 'On Losing and Being Lost’, which elucidates the dreams that accompanied Anna Freud’s emotional crisis of 1945 under the heading ‘On Losing and Being Lost*. These dreams seem to have been closely related to her mourning for the death of her father, which may have led her - as Riccardo Steiner suggests - to daim an ‘exdusive and extremely idealized possession of Freud’s truth’ (King and Steiner 1991, 238). But the preoccupation with separation and loss has far wider implications. The experiences of exile were compounded by the loss of the mother tongue, a specific deprivation which seems to have intensified the concern to create new forms of emotional reparation. Exile also involved the renunciation of their original sodal identities, with the German or Austrian heritage fading into the background, even if a strong foreign accent was retained. The theme of separation, which assumed such importance for British psychology under the influence of the German-speaking migrants, carries an exceptional em otional resonance. It is never entirely clear to us, even from our dreams, what it really is that we have lost: our place of origin or simply our childhood? Our parental home or our mother’s breast? We may finally consider whether the fact that most all these exiles were of Jewish origin made a significant difference to their work. Like Use Heilman, they mostly came from assimilated fam ilies and did not have a strongly developed consciousness of themselves as Jews until the pressures of antisemitism forced them to rethink their identities. Indeed, Use was brought up as a practising Christian, and after her migration to London she remained a regular church-goer: ‘I never miss church because I think it is the closest link to my mother, who was very religious’ (Interview November 1990). At another level, however, this question takes us back to the debates about heredity and environm ent that frame this paper. The assumption, both in orthodox Judaism and in

New Approaches to Child Psychology

237

the rhetoric of antisemitism, is that being Jewish is biologically determined. You are Jewish if you are bom of a Jewish mother or (the antisem itic variant) of a Jewish parent. But the fundamental assumption o f psychoanalysis is that biology is not destiny. The study of twins undertaken at the Hampstead Nursery illustrates the guiding principle most dearly. It is not a specific heredity, but the emotional environment of our infancy that shapes our ends. The process of analysis involves the quest for adult autonomy through a complex reworking of early memories. It reconceptualizes the bond between personality and descent by transposing relationships with parents on to a symbolic plane and reconstructing the self through dialogue. Psychoanalysis provides a humanistic creed that challenges both the dogmas of traditional religions and the biologism of orthodox medical science. This conception of identity in terms of inter-personal relations held a strong attraction for the assimilated Jews who flocked to join the psychoanalytic movement in its early days in Vienna, and it continued to be a source of inspiration after the m ajority of the analysts were forced to seek refuge abroad. It was the intensify of their new faith that generated such bitter factional disputes, but Heilman was able to draw on a broader and more generous heritage. In addition to her cultured upbringing, she had the advantage of being able to draw on two complementary traditions: on Freudian psychoanalysis and Bühlerian developmental psychology. Through the combination of her observational and analytical training, she developed therapeutic skills that were to sustain her work for fifty years and earn her a special place in the hearts of her patients and colleagues.

Bibliography 1. Unpublished Sources: T h e Hellmann Papers. Collection of correspondence relating to the cultural activities of th e fam ily of Use Heilm an, now in the archive of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex. Interview Novem ber 1990. 48-page typescript of an interview with Use Heilm an, conducted by Edward Tim m s in London.

2. Published Sources: Aixm an, K. B. 1933. ‘Race M ixture', The Eugenics Review, 25:3 (October) A sh, H. 1991. ‘Central European Emigró Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in the United Kingdom’ in Mosse, W . E. ed, Second Chence: Two Centuries o f Germ an-speaking Jews in the United Kingdom, Tübingen: Mohr

Edward Tim m s

238

Blacker, C. P. 1933. ‘Eugenics in Germany*, The Eugenics Review , 25:3 (October) Benton, C. 1995. A Different World: Ém igré Architects in Britein 1928-1958. W ith contributions by David Elliott and Elain Harwood, London: RIBA Heinz Gallery Bühler, C . 1931. Kindheit und Jugend: Genese des Bewußtseins, 3rd ed, Leipzig: S. Hirzei Buhler, C . and Hetzer, H. 1935. Testing Children's Developm ent from Birth to School Age, tr. Beaumont, H ., London: Allen and Unwin Burlingham, D. 1935. ‘Child Analysis and the M other', Psycho-Analytical Quarterly, 4 :4 Danneberg, R. 1925. Vienna under Socialist Rule, tr. Stenning, H. J., with an introduction by Herbert Morrison, London: The Labour Party Freud, A. 1974. ‘Four Lectures on Child Analysis* in The Writings o f Anna Freud, 1, New York: International Universities Press Freud, A. 1974. ‘Four Lectures on Psychoanalysis for Teachers and Parents', in The Writings o f Anna Freud, 1, New York: International Universities Press Freud, A with Burlingham, D. 1973. Infants without Fam ilies: Reports on the H am pstead Nurseries 1939-1945. In The Writings o f Anna Freud, 3, New York: International Universities Press Grosskurth, P. 1987. M elanie Klein: H er W orld and h er Work, London: Maresfield Library Gruber, H. 1991. R ed Vienna: Experim ent In Working-Class Culture 1919-1934, New York: Oxford University Press Heam shaw, L. S. 1979. Cyril Burt, Psychologist. London: Hodder and Stoughton Heller, P. 1990. A Child Analysis with Anna Freud, Madison, CT: International Universities Press Heilm an, I. 1990. From W ar Babies Psychoanalysis, London: Kam ac Books

to

Grandmothers:

Forty-eight

Years

in

King, P. and Steiner, R. eds 1991. The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941-45, London: Routledge Murchison, C . ed 1931. A Handbook o f Child Psychology, W orchester, MA: Clark University Press Rose, J. 1992. M arie Slopes and the Sexual Revolution, London: Faber Searle, G . R. 1976. Eugenics and Politics in Britain 1900-1914, Leyden: Noordhoff Soloway, R. 1997. ‘The Galten Lecture: “M arie Stopes, Euegenics and the Birth Control M ovem ent" in Peel, R. A. ed, M arie Stopes, Euegenics and the English Birth Control Movement, London: The Galten Institute

New Approaches to Child Psychology

239

Scheithauer, E. 1983. Österreichs Geschichte in Stichwörtern, 5: V o n 1918 bis 1934’, Vienna: Verlag Ferdinand Hirt Steiner, R. 2000. Tradition, Change, Creativity: Repercussions o f the N ew Diaspora on A spects o f British Psychoanalysis, London: Kam ac Books Teich, M. 1990. T h e Unmastered Past of Human Genetics’ in Teich, M . and Porter, R. ed, Fin de S ied e and its Legacy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Volke, W . 1967. ’Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Briefe an Irene und Paul Hellm ann’, Jahrbuch d e r Deutschen Schillergeseilschafí, 1 1 ,1 7 0 -2 2 4 Young-Bruehl, E. 1989. Anna Freud: A Biography, London: Macmillan

MITCHELL G. ASH

FORCED MIGRATION AND SCIENTIFIC CHANGE AFTER 1933: STEPS TOWARDS A NEW OVERVIEW

The so-called ‘Law for the Reconstitution of the Professional Civil Service’ of April 7, 1933, which authorized the release or premature retirem ent from government service of persons who were not of ‘Aryan’ descent or who were associated with groups considered politically undesirable in the new German state, was only the beginning of a massive, forced exodus of mainly Jewish scholars and scientists from Nazi Germany. Some particularly prescient intellectuals had already fled when the Reichstag burned in February. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the invasion of Austria in March 1938 and the pogroms in Germany in November 1938, and finally the Nazi conquests in the rest o f Europe made the emigration of scientists and scholars a mass phenomenon unprecedented in the modem history of academic life. Compared with the total of more than half a m illion refugees from Germany alone, the fates of a few thousand academics and research scientists may seem of modest concern, but not when we remember how innovative some of these scholars and scientists were or became. Nonetheless, sceptical voices have been raised, asking whether these innovations were indeed the results of emigration, or whether they m ight have occurred in any case. Did that ‘exodus of reason’ in fact lead to significant scientific change, and if so, how should that change be characterized? A certain unavoidable pathos has long permeated discussion of this ‘intellectual migration’ and its im p act.1 Dominant in both public and academic discourse during the first postwar generations, especially in W est Germany, were the perspectives of political and literary exiles. Many spoke - and still speak - of this migration as an ‘exodus of mind’ (‘Auszug des Geistes’), of the modem spirit, or - depending on the political viewpoint of the speaker - of democracy (see Radio Bremen 1962; Briegel and Frühwald eds 1988; Heilbut 1983). Following and at tim es combining with this discourse in the 1960s and later came studies that gave triumphant accounts of the émigrés’ contributions to American and British science and culture since the 1960s. Following these in turn came mournful assessments of loss in W est Germany and Austria centered about the fiftieth anniversaries of Nazism’s takeover in

242

Mitchell Ash

1933 and 1938, respectively - one of many ironic aspects of those sombre jubilees (Fleming and Bailyn eds 1969; Jackman and Borden eds 1983; Möller 1984; Coser 1984; Stadler ed 1987-88; Mosse et al eds 1991; Strauss 1991a). Stimulated in part by these efforts, younger researchers from Germany and Austria, working alongside or in collaboration with American, British, and Israeli scholars, cast their nets more widely than before, going beyond the earlier focus on literary and political exiles and more prominent scientists and scholars to consider the careers and achievements of émigré academics and professionals in more detail (See Mock 1986; Hubenstorf 1989; Stiefel and Mecklenburg 1991; Mosse et al eds 1991; Peters 1992; Grossman 1993; Quack and Mattem eds 1995). One result is that a more differentiated, in some respects more modest, picture has emerged; although earlier global rhetoric and metaphors persist, it has become more difficult to be satisfied with them. The fascination with the brilliant achievements of more prominent émigrés, such as Erwin Schrôdinger, Lise Meitner, Paul Lazarsfeld, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Sigmund and Anna Freud, Hannah Arendt or Leo Strauss, continues, with good reason. In addition to groundbreaking scientific innovations, these and other émigrés as w ell have given us some of the most profound and complex accounts of the cultural breaks and ironic reconstructions characteristic of modem life, as they lived through them. However, exclusive emphasis on prestigious innovators seems problematic; interesting though they may be as personalities, and important as their work has been, it seems inappropriate to make them symbols for the émigré or exile experience as such, and thus divert attention from the lives and work of their many less prominent colleagues. In addition, and in keeping with this broader awareness of cultural breakage and reconstruction, there has been a turn in recent years from assessing the products or contributions of the émigrés to the processes which produced them. As a result, a new view has emerged that has taken a step away from a discourse of loss and gain, and towards a closer examination o f the dynamics of scientific, social and cultural change - a view, indeed, that regards change rather than continuity as the expected norm (see Ash 1999). The literature that could be regarded as contributing to this new perspective is enormous (see Strauss et al eds 1991; Ash and Söllner 1996; Krohn et al eds 1998). I w ill attempt to summarize its results here in the form o f five thesis statements (see also Ash 2000). Although these are derived

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

243

prim arily from work on natural and social scientists, I believe that the im plications can be extended to other fields as well. Thesis 1: The forced migration of Jewish and socialist scientists and scholars was a well understood by-product of broader Nazi policies, in particular the persecution of Jews and Socialists. Its effects on the personel structure of German-speaking universities and scientific disciplines therefore varied widely, according to the respective numbers of scholars and scientists in these institutions who were defined by the Nazis as ‘Jews'. A single statistic should suffice to make clear what I mean by this statement. In the autumn of 1934, officials of the newly-created Reich M inistry for Education and Science prepared a list of persons dismissed or forced to retire from higher education institutions in Germany as a result of the Nazi civil service law. The list includes 614 university teachers; of these, 190 were fu ll or tenured associate professors, and 424 non-tenured associate professors and Privatdozenten. Already at this early stage, the uneven distribution pattem of dismissals is obvious. Just three universities, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Breslau, account for fully forty per cent of the total (136, 69, and 43, respectively), while the universities of Rostock and Tübingen have as few as two each, and Erlangen only one.2 The Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938 led to an even greater number of dismissals in a far briefer period, because all existing anti-Jewish measures, including the Civil Service law and the Nuernberg laws, were executed at once. In the University of Vienna alone a total of 82 professors (37 per cent) and 233 Dozenten (49 per cent) lost their positions between 1938 and 1945; most were dismissed between March and October 1938. Yet here, too, the impact was vastly greater in Vienna than in Graz or Innsbruck; and even in Vienna some faculties, particularly medicine, were much harder hit than others, such as theology or law (Mühlberger 1993,9). The impact on particular disciplines varied widely in Germany as well. Estimates of the total numbers of émigré scientists and scholars, as well as their proportion of German-speaking academics as a whole, vary considerably. In a 1937 study, American sociologist Edward Y. Hartshome estimated that 16.7 per cent of all German (not Austrian) higher education faculty had been dismissed or forced to retire on racist or political grounds; a more recent count by Klaus Fischer, lim ited to professors and Dozenten in Germany (not Austria), gives a somewhat lower figure of circa 15 per cent (Hartshome 1937; Fischer 1991a). The proportion of émigrés from the disciplines studied thus far ranges

244

MitcheH Ash

closely around the latter figure. Non-medical biology appears to be on the low end among the natural sciences, with circa 13 per cent (45 of 337 persons surveyed) dismissed on racist or more narrowly political grounds and 10 per cent (34) émigrés (Deichmann 1996,25 ff.). Losses in academic chemistry were far higher; of a total of 535 chemists in the rank of Privatdozent or above working at universities or Kaiser W ilhelm Institutes in Germany, Austria and the German University in Prague, at least 128 (23.9 per cent) were dismissed between 1933 and 1938, of whom at least 108 (20.1 per cent) emigrated (Deichmann 1999, 28; Deichmann 2001, chap. 3). The figures for physics lie between those for chemistry and biology; of a total of 325 physicists in Germany who had earned the right to teach at a university, 50, or 15.4 per cent, emigrated after 1933 (Fischer 1991b). This corresponds quite closely to Fischer’s estimate for all émigré scientists and scholars. More interesting, however, is the fact that the fifty émigré physicists came from only fifteen institutions, at which 212, or 65 per cent of university physicists taught; the other twenty-one, generally sm aller, institutions had no émigrés at all. The larger, generally more innovative, institutes were thus also the hardest hit. When we realize concretely what is meant here - nearly the entire membership o f the famous Göttingen institutes of physics and mathematics, for example then we must acknowledge that the qualitative dimensions of loss were as significant in some disciplines as the quantitative. Data fo r psychology tell much the same story. O f the 308 members of the German Society for Psychology who lived or taught in German­ speaking countries, 45 (14.6 per cent), emigrated; among them , however, were the directors of four of the five largest and internationally best-known psychological institutes and 22 academics ranked associate professor or higher (Ash 1984,208-9). Nazism’s racist policies thus left noticeable, in places considerable quantitative gaps in Germany’s scientific institutions, but the qualitative losses were often still more significant. Not for nothing does Alan Beyerchen speak, in a deliberately ironic reference to M artin Heidegger’s inaugural address as Rector in Freiburg, of the ‘self­ decapitation’ (‘Selbstenthauptung’) of German culture, rather than Heidegger’s proclaimed ‘self fulfillm ent’ (‘Selbstbehauptung’) of the German university (Beyerchen 1983). And yet, that is not the whole story. Emigration rates were not the same for all disciplines. Studies of the dismissal and emigration of medical scientists from Berlin, for example, present a highly differentiated picture, from com plete destruction in the case of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

245

Research to nearly complete continuity in university and extra­ academic institutes concerned with public health and population policy (see esp. Fischer et al eds 1994; Harwood 1997,140). One can certainly view these statistics as losses to be mourned, but in my view these numbers are also indicators of the uneven distribution o f Jewish and/or socialist academics in German-speaking universities and disciplines. Why people later defined by the Nazis as non-Aryans were not equally represented in all these institutions, is an important question that cannot be discussed fully here, but perhaps one brief remark on this issue may be permitted. If we wish to avoid the danger o f making Nazi-era denunciations of entire disciplines as ‘Jewish’ appear to be justified after the fact, we must use the tools of em pirical social history rather than presupposing that Jewish scientists had some sort of mystical affinity for particular styles o f thought (see Volkov 1987; Hammerstein 1995; Fischer 1998). For this reason, too, it should be clear that frequently-used global form ulations, such as or ‘Exodus of Modernity1, need to be used with some caution. Such form ulations may have their uses, but they make it difficult even to ask, much less to discover, what kinds of modem science not only survived but prospered under Nazism. Successors were found often enough for dismissed academics who emigrated; and - as recent research to be cited below has amply shown - the science that replaced their work cannot be dismissed simply as Nazified ideology disguised as science - though there was plenty of that. It is surely appropriate, however, to speak of loss when the émigrés’ personal experiences are in question. They lost not only their livelihoods, but connections with their fam ilies, their language and not least their culture. These were, after all, the most assimilated Jews in Europe, for many of whom the experience of dismissal and of being labelled and persecuted as non-Aryans, i.e. as foreigners, came as an unbelievable shock. As Curt Stem, then an assistant am KaiserW ilhelm -lnstitut für Biologie, wrote to Max Hartmann on 16 May 1933: ‘It is terribly difficult for my wife and me to separate ourselves externally from Germany. You know that I have always considered myself fully German’ (Deichmann 1996, 21 ).3 These scholars and scientists were persecuted on the basis of extrinsically ascribed, not intrinscially accepted identities - that is, on the basis of a logic that at best only the politically aware among them could even begin to understand. This is what distinguishes the forced migration of the Nazi era from other cases of political persecution, or the massive international circulation of trained professionals that has become so prominent recently.

246

Mitchell Ash

Thesis 2: It is a fundamental mistake to assume without further study that the later achievements by émigrés in their new places of residence reflect precisely what was lost to German or German­ speaking science and scholarship. Such an assumption lies behind the all too frequent tendency to evoke portentously the names of émigré Nobel Prize winners and also future Nobel Prize winners, as though these outstanding scientists would have produced their prize-winning achievements if the Nazis had not driven them out. Such simple - dare I say: simple-minded? - calculations of loss and gain presuppose a static view of science and of culture, as though the émigrés brought with them finished bits of knowledge, which they then inserted like building-stones into already established cultural constructs elsewhere. This error can only be reinforced by the understandable but quite misleading tendency to ask only whether émigrés continued their previous research in their new locations, and to mourn the breakup of scientific schools or other research groups. This way of thinking is an artefact of German and Austrian academic life, which is still organized much more hierarchically than in the English-speaking world. As a result, the school led by an all-powerful chair holder still seems to be the ultimate degree of institutionalisation. Proceeding on the basis of such assumptions may be understandable, but doing so without further reflection assumes that such research programmes or groupings would necessarily have remained in place or continued working as before had their members not been forced to leave their homelands. It also ignores the fact that forced migration made possible careers that could not have happened in the smaller, more restrictive university and science systems of Central Europe, and the possibility that both new career opportunities and the pressure to respond to new circumstances may have made possible innovations that might not have occurred in the same way otherwise. Also related to the discourse of gain and loss, and equally questionable, is the widely-held assumption that natural scientific knowledge is more easily transferable than the supposedly more language and culture-dependent knowledge of the social sciences and the humanities. In the natural sciences the transfer of knowledge is often considered essentially unproblematic, with cultural factors influencing the process only indirectly, by affecting the contexts of transfer, rather than ‘the ideas themselves’. Sociologist Sven Papcke evokes this criterion to differentiate between literary and political

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

247

émigrés, whose self-concept is correctly represented by the word ‘exile,’ and émigré scientists, whom he prefers to describe as ‘emigrants’ (Papcke 1988,19). The validity of these claims needs to be examined, rather than assumed. In any case, such assumptions are not well suited to help us understand or even recognize sim ilarities in transfer processes, or in the generation of new knowledge, in the natural and the social sciences. Moreover, as biochemist Erwin Chargaff writes in his autobiography, even the modes of thought and practice of the natural sciences are not transferable without lim it, for these, too, ‘live in the womb of a particular language and civilization’ (Chargaff 1984, 89). Simply defining scientific knowledge per se as international closes o ff consideration of this point before it can even begin. Chargaffs remark suggests that styles o f thinking about and experimenting on or with nature are not independent of the cultural contexts of their creation. Recent work on research and theoretical preferences in Europe and America in the physical and biological sciences supports the claim that there may, indeed, be national or even local styles in science, the conversion of which into internationally understood science or their transfer to other cultural settings is by no means easy or simple (on physics see Hoch 1983; Schweber 1986; on biology see Harwood 1987; Harwood 1993). Paul Hoch and Jennifer Platt have suggested that forced migration actually accelerated what they term ‘the denationalization of science’ (Hoch and Platt 1993; see also Hughes’s concept of ‘deprovincialization*; Hughes 1976). Thesis 3: It is insufficient to present the scientific portion of the intellectual migration after 1933 as a transfer of already existing knowledge Such a 'products’ perspective has a certain historical justification in the vocabulary of the time. Even Alvin Johnson, then president of the New School for Social Research, founder of the so-called ‘University in Exile’ and a leading advocate of rescue for émigré scholars, had no qualms about calling them ‘Hitler’s g ift to American culture.’ Another prominent academic reportedly put it even more directly when he said, ‘Hitler shakes the tree, and I gather the apples’ (Johnson 1953; McClay 198586,120). Today, however, it seems problematic to speak of the émigrés and their science only in such terms, continuing to treat them or their research achievements now and without irony as a sort of human or intellectual capital, or as prestige objects to improve - or damage - the images of particular nations.

248

MitcheM Ash

Neither the sciences themselves nor the societies and cultures in which they are practised are closed systems; rather, they are dynamic, open systems. The rightly celebrated achievements of the émigrés are thus not only, and indeed not even mainly, continuations of earlier work. That is the primary reason to take a process rather a products-oriented approach to this topic - to focus not only on the émigrés’ contributions, but also and prim arily on the processes and the sociocultural and biographical circumstances that made them possible (see Strauss et al eds 1991; Ash and Söllner eds 1996). Needed to achieve this are not only more comprehensive overviews of individual disciplines, but also closer analyses of scientific continuity and change in their cognitive and social dimensions, in particular closer analyses of individuals and research groups going beyond the well-known cases such as that o f the Frankfurt School. Thesis 4: From the viewpoint of social history the intellectual migration after 1933 can be understood as a spectacular case of forced international elite circulation. But that circulation did not happen automatically. Before we can consider scientific change proper we must therefore ask who had the opportunity to continue scientific work, and thus, at least potentially, to participate in scientific change, and why. Significant in this context is the presence or absence of institutional, economic and social support available for science and scholarship in the countries to which the émigrés went. Some of these so-called ‘receiving countries,’ such as Turkey, Palestine and the Latin American nations, were severty lacking in such support; in Turkey, émigrés were consciously recruited in an effort to build up the missing infrastructure (see Erichsen 1991). The few existing studies of émigré scientists, scholars and professionals in these countries amply document the difficulties they faced, and also the pioneer spirit many showed in the face of such adversities (on Palestine see Jütte 1991 ). For those émigrés who received positions or stipends in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Britain, it is important to clarify the mediating roles of the many aid organisations, disciplinary and m ultidisciplinary as well as humanitarian in character. Traditional accounts o f this subject, for example of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning or the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, understandably stress the impulse to rescue persons in distress (see Bentwich 1953; Fermi 1971). Although such m otives were undoubtedly present, also important were the tradition of countries

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

249

like the United States as a nation of immigrants, and the continuing respect for German intellectual culture among segments of the educated elites in that country and in Britain. As recent research indicates, however, political and economic considerations were equally prominent. Important in this respect were two seemingly opposed but ultim ately reconcilable impulses. The effects of the Depression and widespread fears of unemployment and competition for scarce resources among scientists and professionals in the host countries clearly worked against wholesale importation of academics or professionals, and encouraged careful selection among them. On the other hand, the desire of some influential academics as well as foundation and university administrators to grasp the opportunity of enriching their own disciplines or institutions by acquiring the émigré scholars judged to be best by their colleagues reinforced the impulse toward selectivity (see Greenberg 1987; Hirschfeld 1988; Hirschfeld 1991). A closely related pattern appears in the work of the many aid committees organized within individual disciplines, for example in mathematics, psychology and psychoanalysis. In all of these cases humanitarian aims competed, not always on equal terms, with institutional, disciplinary and professional politics. In some cases, the aid committee’s very existence expressed a disciplinary political agenda. In the case of psychoanalysis, for example, Ernest Jones in England and Lawrence Kubie in New York secured visas, affidavits and other papers for dozens of colleagues, but functioned simultaneously as selectors for the immigration authorities and tried to persuade émigrés once they arrived to take up practice in the provinces in order to spread the good word and reduce competition in the métropoles (see Mahler 1987, 103; Ash 1991, pp. 112 ff.; Kurzweil 1996). Sim ilar selectivity is evident in the ways in which émigrés were employed in support of agenda-setting within and across disciplines. For example, Finn Aaserud has shown how physicist Nils Bohr cooperated with the Rockefeller Foundation and other institutions not only to find work for outstanding émigrés, but also to support particular research programmes, thus contributing to the emergence of molecular biology as well as advancing nuclear physics research (see Aaserud 1990, chaps. 3-5). Such patterns point to selective, even pre-selective, effects not only by influential individuals, but also in local scientific and cultural milieux, which could have decisive impacts on émigrés’ futures. Socialhistorical studies have made a start toward more careful examination of

250

MitcheM Ash

such impacts by employing acculturation as an organizing concept rather than assimilation (see Strauss 1991b). The issues that can be considered under this heading are many. Factors such as age and gender obviously play important roles, but so do the quite different levels of willingness among the émigrés to adapt to the language and behavioural norms of the receiving countries. At least as important as these global factors, however, are issues that might be defined as matters of disciplinary acculturation, in particular the relative degree of internationalisation of the styles of thought and practice in the different fields of science and scholarship involved. As suggested above, it is often assumed without further examination that scholars in the supposedly more language- and culture-bounded humanities should be considered, like writers and politicians, as true exiles in the generally understood sense, while the supposedly more easily transferable skills of natural scientists and engineers (and social scientists, in some accounts) place them in the category of ordinary emigrants (see Papcke 1988, 17). Surprsingly enough, there appears to have been no attempt to examine or test this assumption systematically beyond individual case studies. Against such often stereotypical sounding distinctions it seems important to note three things: •

First, the shift from exile to emigrant occured at different times in émigrés’ lives; it appears to be at least as closely related to individual attitudes than to disciplinary membership.



Second, intemationality is not automatic even in the natural sciences, but was and remains a historical product; national and even local differences in styles of thinking and working have been shown to exist.



Third, well established international networks existed in many humanities and social sciences, for example in classics, modem languages and literatures, or psychology, well before 1933.

It is therefore not justified to assume in advance that there exist some sort of linguistic of cultural essences that make knowledge and practices more easily transferred in one kind of discipline than in others. Discipline membership could be an anchor of stability in the personal and career crises that befell many émigrés, but only if the disciplines in question had achieved a certain level of internationalisation. Even at the level of the discipline as subculture the personal cannot be separated from the social. Was disciplinary acceptance a means to

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

251

acculturation for the émigrés, or was acquiring membership in a culture a precondition for acceptance as a scientist or scholar in that setting? Studies of the Frankfurt School and of the ‘University in Exile’ at the New School for Social Research, as well as Paul Weindling’s work on émigré medical scientists at Oxford, indicate that local settings of varied kinds could offer supportive niches to scientists who differed from conventional norms in their countries of settlement (Jay 1973; Wiggershaus 1986; Rutkoff and Scott 1986; Krohn 1987; Weindling 1996). Just as frequently, however, acquiring membership in the culture o f a given country by adapting to the local academic habitus and/or the social standards of the educated elites was an important precondition for acceptance as a scientist or scholar. The contrasting cases of Erwin Schrödinger and the medical scientists who worked with Paul Florey in Oxford illustrate this point (see Hoch and Yoxen 1987; Weindling 1996). Mastery of a local language may have been less important in this regard than the ability or willingness to refigure one’s behavior. Émigrés in Britain who were deemed insufficiently ‘suitable’ in this respect were sometimes quite openly told that their chances would be better in America; and even those who stayed and succeeded as scientists often felt that they had never been fully accepted. In America, in contrast, acculturation was possible and even at times most successful through opposition to then-current cultural norms - for example by emphasizing the superior theoretical sophistication and broader outlook that a European education brought with it (Hirschfeld 1988; Greenberg 1992; Ash 1996; Feichtinger 2001). In spite of these complications, it is possible to venture at least one positive but also ironic general statement about the social historical dimension of scientific change. We can, I think, speak of a ‘trick of reason’ (‘List der Vernunft’) in Hegel’s sense, or, perhaps more accurately, a ‘trick of unreason’ (‘List der Unvernunft’). Precisely this political and human catastrophe created for many scientists and scholars unanticipated career opportunités and chances to work in new settings. Especially the large, decentralised university and research system in the USA offered émigrés, despite the existence of antisemitism and the obstacle course of pre-selection, better chances in the long run than they would ever have had in Germany or Austria. This was especially true for younger émigrés, whose adaptability may have been greater in any case and whose styles of thought and practice tended to be more flexible; and it also appears to be especially true for those disciplines with international networks that were already in place before 1933. Unfortunately this generalisation does not apply

252

M ilcheil A sh

to everyone. Many did not succeed in emigrating at all; for women entry was possible in only a few disciplines and professions, and many accepted under- or even unqualified work in order to feed their families (see Quack and Mattem eds 1995). And many émigrés learned to their discomfiture that disciplinary and other networks were not always aid agencies, but worked often enough as negative selectors. We still know far too little about those affected by adverse decisions (see case studies of the biologist Victor Jollos in Deichmann 1996, 19ff.; Dittrich 1996; and of the psychologist Gustav Ichheiser in Ash 1987). Yet a further level at which the acculturation concept is relevant for understanding the subtleties of scientific change is the role of science and scholarship as expressions of cultural values. As Alfons Söllner has pointed out, even the naming of disciplines, for example ‘Staatsrecht’ or ‘public law’ in Germany versus ‘political science’ in the United States, can transport cultural valuations and images (Söllner 1996a, 1996b). A further example from the social sciences is what Söllner calls the ‘politicisation’ of social science during the Second World War, as émigré social scientists worked on a wide range of projects for American intelligence agencies and developed plans for the ‘re-education’ of Germany (Söllner 1986; Koebner, Sautermeister and Schneider eds 1987). Thesis 5: The changes In styles of scientific thought and practise resulting from the W issenschaftsem igration are too varied to be reduced to a single formula. The best common denominator appears to be resource exchange, leading in most spectacular cases to a synthesis of scientific cultures. Ute Deichmann cites the work of embryologists Viktor Hamburger and Walter Holftreter as examples in which émigrés managed to continue their earlier work and were rewarded for doing so (see Deichmann 1996, 30ff.). The geneticist Richard Goldschmidt - who continued to work on environmental rather than strictly genetically determined changes in phenotype and insisted on the enyzmatic character of the genetic material - is perhaps the best example of continuity that was not rewarded (Deichmann 1996, 49). Dittrich argues that the negative reception of Goldschmidt’s work resulted in part from his generalist orientation, which contrasted sharply with the atheoretical, data oriented approach of most American biologists (Dittrich 1996). At the other end of the spectrum is the work of James Franck, whose change of field from theoretical physics to the biophysics of photosynthesis coincided with his emigration to the United States and was generously

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

253

funded in America by the Rockefeller Foundation. This example shows that scientific change need not necessarily lead to innovation; Franck developed ever more complex models but ultimately failed to do justice to the complexity of this biological process with the conceptual tools at his disposal (see Beyerchen 1996). Most interesting in this context are two types of scientific change. The first type involves a synthesis of cultures of scientific practice, that is of research styles and styles of thought, that I would like to call scientific change through de-localisation - playing on Clifford Geertz’s concept of ‘local knowledge.’ Comparable terms already used in the literature are ‘de-nationalisation’ or ‘deprovincialisation’. I prefer ‘delocalisation’ because I want to direct attention away from the disputed concept of ‘national styles’ in science and towards a level at which behavior plays a central role in scientific change, that of the scientific workplace - the laboratory, seminar, or university department. Central here, particularly though not only in laboratory science, is what émigré chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi has called ‘tacit knowledge’ - the exchange not only of ideas but of apparatus, skills, modes of working that are more easily learned by personal interaction than from the literature (Polanyi 1950). The recent trend in science studies toward ‘ethnomethodology’ has led historians of science to consider more intensively such scientific practices and the cultural, or sub-cultural, beliefs and norms embodied in them. Paul Hoch has pointed to the central role of migration in the transmission and transformation of such practices (Hoch 1987a, 1987b). As early as 1937, in a general essay on the social situation of intellectual exiles, émigré social scientist Hans Speier described a range of such possibilities, from a relatively self-enclosed milieu, such as that of the Frankfurt School, to already-internationalized and institutionalized discursive realms, like that of theoretical physics, within which the scientist or scholar simply changed location (Speier 1952). Seen from this perspective, common conventions of scientific thought and practice only existed to the extent that a given discipline had already become internationalised. I have already emphasised above that such international networks also existed in some of the social and human sciences, as well as the natural sciences. Much more spectacular syntheses of scientific cultures, or cultures of scientific practice, in which émigrés were prominently involved, examples that go far beyond the level of the laboratory or seminar, are the atomic bomb project and the creation of computer science and technology (see for example Heims 1981; Eckert 1996, 2000). In these

254

M itchell Ash

cases one can speak of a technologisation o f basic research under wartime conditions. I refer here to a complex interaction of basic research, applied science and industrial research, in which basic research necessarily acquired a practical orientation, because new fundamental knowledge was needed in order to develop the desired weapons, ballistics and communications systems. Such innovations were not merely eclectic combinations of components, but mobilizations and reconfigurations of intellectual as well as personal resources with different cultural roots for new purposes. Because émigrés were involved in all aspects of this process, it is doubtful whether the simple claim that the émigrés brought primarily theoretical knowledge to the table, while the Americans and British contributed mainly apparatus and experimental skills to the mix, can be sustained (see Hoch 1987a; Galison and Hevly eds 1992). Further analyses of such innovations will help to improve our understanding of intercultural science and technology transfer. In the social sciences, the best known synthesis of culturally formed scientific research styles is The Authoritarian Personality study (1950), in which, by the way, not only members of the Frankfurt School were involved. Rather, social theorist Theodor Adorno, the academically and psychoanalytically trained Viennese psychologist Else FrenkelBrunswik and the test orientated and statistically trained American psychologists R. Nevitt Sanford and Daniel Levinson collaborated intensively on the project (see Adorno et al 1950; Wiggershaus 1986; Ash 1998). This example also points to a second type of scientific change that is central to this discussion. I have called it scientific change through reflexivity, or: learning from one's own biography. The formulation refers to changes in both scientific topic choice and styles of scientific or professional practice resulting from conscious or subconscious reflexion on the émigrés’ own expexperiences. Here there is little doubt that there was a causal connection between scientific change and the events that began in 1933. For many of these scientists and scholars did not begin to identify themselves as Jews or to study topics such as antisemitism until they were literally forced to confront them by world history. The Austrian social psychologist Marie Jahoda formulates this with her usual clarity: ‘For me my Jewishness first became a true identity with Hitler1(Jahoda 1983, 71). Numerous examples of this process have been analysed, from the aforementioned Authoritarian Personality to the profound analyses by Hannah Arendt and Franz Neumann of the origins o f totalitarianism and the structure of the Nazi state, respectively (see also

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

255

Kurzweil 1996; Papcke 1993). An interesting example is the work of the Berlin psychologist Kurt Lewin (see Ash 1992, 1998). Although he had worked with children in Berlin, he did not begin to consider systematically the topic of cultural differences in education until after he emigrated to the United States. In this context, and with the help of conversations with his American co-workers, Lewin produced research on so-called ‘democratic’ and ‘authoritarian’ leadership styles in children’s play groups that made him famous (Lewin, Lippitt and White 1939). Thus it appears clear that at least two important aspects of his research - experimentation with groups as units and cross-cultural comparison - were direct results of his emigration. However, naming this phenomenon does not yet give us a sustainable analysis of how such processes worked in detail. In the cases studied thus far it appears to be the case that émigrés trying to make scientific use of their own biographies nonetheless required and received the cooperation of researchers and funding institutions in their new countries, partners who had at times rather different interests and research styles of their own. Thus the two kinds of scientific change I have tried to emphasize here turn out not to be entirely distinct from one another. Scientific change through reflexivity becomes a social process with only partly biographical roots, in which émigrés combined methodological and conceptual resources from their past work with tools, funding and collaborators from their new settings. Conclusion I would like to summarize this discussion as follows: 1. The extent to which it is justified to speak of a causal relationship between forced migration and scientific change remains disputed. Klaus Fischer has argued that such a causal relationship cannot be established, because the scientific changes involved, such as the emergence of ‘big science’ or the creation of molecular biology, had already begun before 1933 and thus would probably have continued whether the Nazis came to power or not (Fischer 1996). Fischer is correct to point out that there is indeed no necessary causal relationship between political upheavals and scientific change. Nonetheless, the projects I have cited would surely not have occurred as quickly or in the way that they did without the National Socialists1rise to power and the Second World War to which it led. The issue is therefore not whether scientific changes occur as a result of radical political changes, but rather the timing and the specific characteristics

256

MMcheM Ash

of the scientific developments that did take place. Nor are they comprehensible without the forced migration undoubtedly caused by the Nazi seizure of power. Perhaps this explanation will suffice, at least for historians. A causal explanation of the strictness that Fischer appears to demand is not generally possible in historical scholarship in any case. 2. Whether and how scientific change can be attributed to forced migration depends in large part on how we define science in the first place. Although the full range and variety of continuity and change is most visible in overviews or comparisons of individual disciplines, the most interesting loci of change and innovation appear to lie above as well as below the disciplinary level. On the one hand, global trends in which émigrés participated, such as the emergence of ‘big science,’ were already in progress before 1933 and were not confined to single disciplines. On the other hand, the processes of change themselves can often be followed in detail, or even detected, only at levels below that of the discipline - in single fields, in interdisciplinary research groups, and even in the biographies of individual scientists. 3. Though I have concentrated here on the natural and social sciences, I do not believe that it is either necessary or justified to presuppose essentialistic distinctions between these fields and the humanities. The kinds of changes I have discussed took place in all types of disciplines. Though émigré writers and some humanists often mourned the loss of their culture, so did natural and social scientists; it therefore seems appropriate to avoid any mystification of language as a marker of cultural identity. The linguistic or other resources the émigrés brought with them into exile may have varied in importance, but scientific and scholarly change that did occur can nonetheless be described in all cases as a reconfiguration of resource constellations. 4. Émigré scientists and scholars were not only victims, but also agents. Even the decision to emigrate and above all the timing of that decision were conscious choices. Nonetheless, the freedom of action of even the most famous émigrés was limited, not only by the Nazis who forcibly dismissed them, but also by pre-selection processes in the so-called receiving countries. The relative autonomy of science and scholarship must therefore be regarded not as a given, a value in itself, but rather as a contingent product of negotiations, in democracies as well as in dictatorships.

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

257

5. Last but not least: scientific changes following forced migration after 1933 were processes, with results that none of the individuals involved could have predicted at the outset. The behavior of those involved in such situations can therefore be regarded, among other things, as an answer to the reorientation problem faced by both scientists and political emigrants in times of radical political upheaval.

Bibliography Aaserud, F. 1990. Redirecting Science: Niels Bohr, Philanthropy and the R ise o f N uclear Physics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Adorno, T . e t al 1950. The Authoritarian Personality, New York: Harper and Row Ash, M. 6 . 1984. ‘Disziplinentwicklung und W issenschaftstransfer deutschprachige Psychologen in der Emigration’, Berichte zu r W issenschaftsgeschichte, 7 ,2 0 7 -2 2 6 Ash, M. G. 1987. 'österreichische Psychologen in der Emigration: Fragestellungen und Überblick’, in Stadler ed, II, 252-267 Ash, M. G . 1991. ‘Ém igré Central European Jewish Psychologists and Psychoanalysts in G reat Britain’, in Mosse et al eds, 101-120 Ash, M . G . 1992. ‘Cultural Contexts and Scientific Change in Psychology: Kurt Lewin in Iow a’, Am erican Psychologist, 4 7 ,1 9 8 -2 0 7 A sh, M. G. and Söllner, A. eds 1996. Forced Migration and Scientific Change: Ém igré Germ an-Speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933, Cambridge and New York: Cam bridge University Press A sh, M. G. and Söllner, A. 1996. ‘Introduction: Forced Migration and Scientific Change’, in A sh and Söllner eds, 1-19 A sh, M . G . and Söllner, A. 1996. ‘Ém igré Germ an-Speaking Psychologists after 1933: T h e Cultural Coding of Scientific Practices', in Ash and Söllner eds, 117-138 Ash, M . G. 1998. ‘W issenschaftswandei durch Zwangswanderung: Kurt Lewin und Else Frenkel-Brunswick nach 1933’, Tel A viver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte, 27, 251272 Ash, M . G . 1999. ‘Scientific Changes in Germ any 1933, 1945 and 1990: Towards a Com parison’, M inerva, 3 7 ,3 2 9 -3 5 4 Ash, M . G . 2000. ‘Emigration und W issenschaftswandel als nationalsozialistischen W issenschaftspolitik’, in Kaufmann ed, 610-631

Folgen

der

Becker, H. 1998. D ie Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus, 2nd ed, Munich: Sauer

258

Mitchell Ash

Bentwich, N. 1953. The Rescue end Achievem ents o f Refugee Schoiars: The Story o f Displaced Scholars and Scientists 1933-1952, The Hague: Martlnus Nijhoff Beyerchen, A. D. 1983. 'Anti-lntellectualism and the Cultural Decapitation of Germ any under the Nazis’, in Jackm an and Borden eds, 29-44 Beyerchen, A. D. 1996. 'Emigration from Country and Discipline: The Journey o f a German Physicist into Am erican Photosynthesis Research’, in Ash and Söllner eds, 7 1 85 Briegel M . and Frühwald W . eds 1988. D ie Erfahrung der Frem de: Kolloquium des Schwerpunktprogramms ‘Exilforschung’ d er Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, W einheim : VC H Verlagsgesellschaft Chargaff, E ., D as Feu er des Heraldit: Skizzen aus einem Leben vor d er Natur, Munich: Piper Coser, L. 1984. Refugee Scholars in Am erica: Their Cultural Im pact and Experiences, New Haven: Yale University Press

Their

Deichmann, U. 1992. Biologen unter Hitler: Vertreibung, Karrieren, Forschung, Frankfurt a. M . and New York: Campus Deichmann, U. 1996. Biologists under Hitler, trans. Dunlap. T ., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Deichmann, U. 1999. ‘The Expulsion of Jewish Chemists and Biochemists from Academ ia in Nazi Germ any’, Perspectives on Science, 7 ,1 -8 6 Deichmann, U. 2001. Flöchten, Mitm achen, Vergessen. Chem iker und Biochem iker in der N S-Zeit, W einheim : W iley Dittrich, M. 1996. ‘On the Mobility of Genes and Geneticists: The ’’Am ericanization'' of Richard Goldschmidt and Victor Jollos’, Perspectives on Science, 4 ,3 2 1 -3 4 6 Eckert, M . 1996. Theoretical Physicists at W a r Somm erfeld Students in G erm any and as Emigrants’, in Forman, P. and Sanchez-Ron, J.-M . eds, National M ilitary Establism ents and the Advance o f Science and Technology, Dordrecht: Riedel, 69-86 Eckert, M . 2000. ‘Theoretische Physiker in Kriegsprpjekten: Zur Problem atik einer internationalen vergleichenden Analyse', in Kaufmann ed, 296-308 Erichsen, R. 1991. ‘D ie Emigration deutschsprachiger Naturwissenschaftler von 1933 bis 1945 in die Türkei in ihrem sozial- und wissenschaftshistorischen W irkungszusam menhang’, in Strauss et al eds, 73-104 Feichtinger, J. 2001. W issenschaft zwischen den Kulturen: österreichische Hochschullehrer in d er Emigration 1933-1945, Frankfurt a. M . and New York: Cam pus Ferm i, L. 1971. Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930-41, 2nd ed, Chicago: University of Chicago Fischer, K. 1991a. 'D ie Emigration von W issenschaftlern nach 1933: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer Bilanzierung', Vierteljahreshefte zurZeitgeschichte, 3 9 ,5 3 5 -5 4 9

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

259

Fischer, K. 1991b. ‘D ie Emigration deutschsprachiger Physiker nach 1933: Strukturen und W irkungen', in Strauss et al eds, 25-72 Fischer, K. 1996. ‘Identification of Emigration-Induced Scientific Change’, in Ash and Söllner eds, 23-47 Fischer, K. 1998. 'Jüdische W issenschaftler in W e im a r M arginalität, Identität und Innovation', in Benz, W . e t al eds, Jüdisches Leben in der W eim arer Republik, Tübingen: Mohr, 89-116 Fischer, W . et al eds 1994. Exodus von Wissenschaften aus Berlin, Berlin: D e Gruyter Flem ing, D. and Bailyn, B. eds 1969. The Intellectual Migration, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Galison, P. and Hevly, B. eds 1992. Big Science, Stanford: Stanford University Press Gerstengarbe, S . 1994. ‘Die erste Entlassungswelle von Hochscullehrem deutscher Hochschulen aufgrund des G esetzes zur W iederherstellung des Berufsbeam tentums vom 7 .7.19 33 ’, Berichte zu r W issenschaftsgeschichte, 1 7 ,1 7 -4 0 Greenberg, K. J. 1987. ‘The Mentor Within: The Germ an Refugee Scholars of the Nazi Period and Their American Context’, unpubished PhD dissertation, Y ale University Greenberg, K. J. 1992. ‘Crossing the Boundary: Germ an Refugee Scholars and the Am erican Academ ic Tradition', in Teichler, U. and W asser, H. eds, German and Am erican Universities: M utual Influences - Past and Present, Kassel: W issenschaftliches Zentrum fü r Berufe- und Hochschulbildung, 67-80 Grossm an, A. 1993. ‘Germ an W om en Doctors from Berlin to New York: Maternity and Modernity in W eim ar and in Exile’, Fem inist Studies, 1 9 ,6 5 -8 8 Ham m erstein, N. 1995. Antisemitismus und deutsche Universitäten 1871-1933, Frankfort a . M and New York: Campus Harwood, J. 1987. ‘National Styles in Science: Genetics in Germ any and the United States between the W orld W ars’, Isis, 7 8 ,3 9 0 -4 1 4 Harwood, J. 1993. Styles o f Scientific Thought: The Germ an Genetics Community 19001933, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Harwood, J. 1997. 'G erm an Science and Technology under National Socialism’, Perspectives on Science, 5 ,1 2 8 -1 5 1 Hartshom e, E. Y . 1937. The German Universities and National Socialism, London: Unwin Bros. Heilbut, A. 1983. Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in Am erica from the 1930s to the Present, New York: Viking Heim s, S. J. 1981. John von Neumann and Norbert W einen From M athem atics to the Technologies o f Life and Death, Cambridge, MA: M IT Press

260

M itchell Ash

HirschfeW, G . 1988. T h e Defense of Learning and S cien ce...’: D er Academ ic Assistance Council und die wissenschaftliche Emigration aus Nazi-Deutschland, Exilforschung, 6, 28-43 Hirschfsld, G. 1991. ‘A High Tradition of Eagerness...': British Non-Jewish O rganizations in Support of Refugees', in M osse et al eds, 599-610 Hoch, P. K. 1983, ‘The Reception of Central European Refugee Physicists o f the 1930s: U .S .S .R ., U .K ., U .S .A .’, Annals o f Science, 4 0 ,2 1 7 -2 4 6 Hoch, P. K. 1987a. 'Migration and the Generation of Scientific Ideas', M inerva, 25, 2 0 9 237 Hoch, P. K. 1987b. ‘Institutional versus Intellectual Migrations in the Nucléation o f N ew Scientific Specialities', Studies in the History o f N ew Scientific Specialties, 1 8 ,4 8 1 -5 0 0 Hoch, P. K. and Yoxen E. J. 1987. 'Schrödinger at Oxford: A Hypothetical National Cultural Synthesis which Failed, Annals o f Science, 44, 593-616 Hoch, P. K. and Platt, J. 1993. ‘Migration and the Denationalization of Science’, in Crawford, E. ed, Denationalizing Science: The Contexts o f International Scientific Practice, Dordrecht, Boston, London: Riedel, 133-152 Hubenstorf, M . 1987. ‘österreichische Arzteem igration', in Stadler ed 1 9 8 7 ,3 3 9 -4 1 5 Hughes, H. Stuart 1976. A S ea Change: The Migration o f Social Thought, N ew York: Harper and Row Jackm an, J. C. and Boden, C. M. 1983. The M uses Flee H itte r Cultural Transfer and Adaption 1930 -1 9 4 5 , W ashington D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press Jahoda, M . 1983. ‘Für mich ist mein Judentum erst mit H itler eine wirkliche Identität geworden’, Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 51, 71-89 Jay, M. 1973. The D ialectical Imagination: A History o f the Frankfurt School a n d the Institute o f Social Research, Berkeley: University of California Press Johnson, A. 1953. Pioneer's Progress: A n Autobiography, New York: Viking Jütte, R. 1991. D ie Emigration der deutschsprachigen "Wissenschatt des Judentums": die Auswanderung jüdischer Historiker nach Palästina 1933-1945, Stuttgart: Steiner Kaufmann, D. ed 2000. Geschichte der Kaiser-W ilhelm -Gesellschaft kn Nationalsozialismus: Bestandaufnahme und Perspektiven d er Forschung, Göttingen: W allstein Koebner, T ., Sauterm eister, G. and Schneider, S. eds 1987. Deutschland nach H itle r Zukunftspläne im Exil und aus d er Besatzungszeit 1939-1949, Opladen: W estdeutscher Verlag Krause, E. ed 1991. Hochschulttag im ‘Dritten Reich": Die Ham burger U niversität 19331 9 4 5 ,1, Bedin: Reim er

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

261

Krohn, C .-D . 1987. W issenschaft im Exil: Deutsche Sozial- und W issenschaftler In den USA und die N ew School for Social Research, Frankfurt a . M . and New York: Campus Krohn, C .-D . et al eds 1998. Handbuch d er deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945, Darm stadt: W issenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Kröner, H. 1989. 'D ie Emigration deutschsprachiger M ediziner im Nationalsozialism us', Berichte zu r Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 12, Sonderheft Kurzweil, E. 1996. 'Psychoanalytic Science: From Oedipus to Culture’, in Ash and Söllner eds, 139-155 Lewin, K ., Lippitt, R. and W hite, R. K. 1939. ‘Patterns of Aggressive Behaviour in Experim entally Created "Social Clim ates” , Journal o f Social Psychology, 1 0 ,2 7 1 -2 9 9 M cClay, W . 1985-86. ‘W eim ar in Am erica’, Am erican Scholar, 5 5 ,1 1 9 -1 2 8 M ahler, M. S. 1987. The Memoirs o f M argaret S. M ahler, ed Stepansky, P ., New York: Free Press Mock, W . 1986, Technische Intelligenz im Exil: Vertreibung und Emigration deutschsprachiger Ingenieure nach Großbritannien 1933-1945, Düsseldorf: VD I-Verlag M öller H. 1984. Exodus der Kultur, Munich: Beck M osse, W . et al eds 1991. Second Chance: Two Centuries o f Germ an-Speaking Jews in the United Kingdom, Tübingen: Mohr Mühlberger. K. 1993. Vertriebene Intelligenz 1938: D e r Vertust geistiger und m enschlicher Potenz an der Universität W ien von 1938 bis 1945, 2nd expanded ed., Vienna: Archiv der Univeristät W ien Mussgnug, D. 1988. D ie vertriebenen Heidelberger Dozenten: Z u r Geschichte der Ruprecht-Karis-Universität nach 1933, Heidelberg: Carl W inter Papcke, S . 1988. 'Fragen an die Exilforschung heute’, Exilforschung, 6 ,1 3 -2 7 Papcke, S. 1993. ‘Lernen aus der Barberei: Zur Entwicklung der politischen Soziologie von Franz Leopold Neum ann’, in Papcke, Deutsche Soziologen im Exil: Gegenwartsdiagnose und Epochenkritik 1933-1945, Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Peters, U. H. 1992. Psychiatrie im Exil: die Emigration d er dynamischen Psychiatrie aus Deutschland 1933-1939, Düsseldorf: Kupka Polanyi, M . 1950. Personal Knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press Q uack, S. and M attem , D. S. eds 1995. Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees o f the N azi Period, Cam bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press Radio Brem en 1962, Auszug des Geistes: Bericht Ober eine Sendereihe, Brem en, 1962 Rutkoff, P. M. and Scott, W . B. 1986. N ew School: A History o f the N ew School for Social Research, 1919-1970, New York: Free Press

262

M itchell Ash

SchotUaender, R. 1988. Verfolgte Berliner Wissenschaft: Ein Gedenkwerk, Berlin: Edition Hentrich Schweber, S. 1986, T h e Em piricist Tem per Regnant* Theoretical Physics in the United States 1920-1950, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1 7 .5 5 -9 8 Söilner, A. ed 1986. Z u r Archäologie d er Dem okratie in Deutschland, M l, Frankfurt a . M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Söilner, A . 1996a. ‘From Public Law to Political Science? The Emigration of Germ an Scholars after 1933 and the Influence on the Transformation o f a Discipline', in Ash and Söilner eds, 246-272 Söilner, A. 1996b. Deutsche Politikwissenschaftler in der Emigration: Studien zu ihrer Akkulturatlon und Wirkungsgeschichte, Opladen: W estdeutscher Verlag Speier, H. 1952. 'The Social Condition of the Intellectual Exile’, in Speier, Social O rder and the Risks o f War. Papers in Pottical Sociology, New York: Stewart, 86-94 Stadler, F. ed 1987-88. Vertriebene Vernunft: Emigration und E xil österreichischer Wissenschaft, l-ll, Vienna and Munich: Vertag Jugend und Volk Stiefel, E. C. and Mecklenburg, F. 1991, Deutsche Juristen im am erikanischen E xil 19331950, Tübingen: Mohr, 1991 Strauss, H. A. 1991a. ‘W issenschaftsemigration als Forschungsproblem,, in Strauss e t al eds 1 9 9 1 ,7 -2 4 Strauss, H. A. 1991b. ‘Jewish Emigration in the Nazi Period: Som e Aspects of Acculturation’, in Mosse et al eds, 81-95 Strauss, H. A. et al eds 1991. D ie Emigration d er W issenschaft nach 1933, Munich: Sauer Volkov, S. 1987. ‘Soziale Ursachen des Erfolgs in der W issenschaft: Juden im Kaiserreich’, Historische Zeitschrift, 2 4 5 ,3 1 5 -3 4 2 ; repr. in Volkov 1990. JQdsiches Leben und Antisemitismus im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert, Munich: Beck, 146-165 W eindling, P. J. 1996. ‘The Im pact of Central European Medical Scientists on British Medicine: A Case-Study of Oxford, 1933-1945’, in Ash and Söilner eds, 86-114 W iggershaus, R. 1986. D ie Frankfurter Schule. Geschichte, theoretische Entwickung, politische Bedeutung, Munich: Hanser

1 The original version of this paper was presented at the conference on ‘Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transformation: The Movem ent of Ideas from G erm anSpeaking Europe to the Anglo-Saxon W orld,’ Centre for Germ an-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex, 25 Septem ber 2000. 2

Liste der auf Grund des G esetzes zur W iederherstellung des Berufsbeam tentum s verabschiedeten Professoren und Privatdozenten (für das Auswärtige A m t), 11. Dezem ber 1934. Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Am tes, Bonn. S ee also

Forced Migration and Scientific Change

263

Gerstengarbe 1994; SchotUaender 1988; Mussgnug 1988; Krause ed 1991; Becker ed 1998). 3 The original reads as follows: ‘Es fällt m einer Frau und m ir furchtbar schwer, uns äußerlich von Deutschland zu trennen. Sie wissen, daß ich mich stets als Deutscher gefühlt h ab e...’ Quoted in Deichmann 1992, 41. Stem sent copies of this letter to a number of his colleagues, thus making it a semi-public document.

THE AUTHORS

Mitchell Ash Universität Wien Institut für Geschichte Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 1 A-1010 Wien Austria [email protected] Charlotte Benton 235 Chesterton Road Cambridge C B 41AS United Kingdom Johannes Feichtinger Universität Graz Institut für Geschichte Heinrichstraße 26/ll/lll/IV A-8010 Graz Austria [email protected] Christian Fleck Universität Graz Institut für Soziologie Universitätsstraße 15 A-8010 Graz Austria [email protected] Roland Graf Independent Scholar Hofackergasse 4 A-2721 Bad Fischau Austria [email protected]

The Authors

Andrea Hammel University of Sussex Graduate Centre for the Humanities Arts B 222 (Library) Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH United Kingdom [email protected] Jon Hughes King’s College, London School of Humanities Department of German Strand London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom [email protected] Nick Hubble University of Sussex Graduate Centre for the Humanities Essex House 208 Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH United Kingdom [email protected] David Kettler Bard College PO Box 5000 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000 USA [email protected] Feiwel Kupferberg Aalborg University Department of Business Studies Fib2, rum 117 Fibigerstrsede 2 DK-9220 Aalborg 0 s t Denmark [email protected]

265

266

Dorothea McEwan The Warburg Institute Woburn Square London WC1H OAB United Kingdom [email protected] Jennifer Platt University of Sussex Sociology in SOC Arts E 415 Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH United Kingdom [email protected] Friedrich Stadler Universität Wien Institut für Zeitgeschichte Spitalgasse 2, Hof 1 A -1090 Wien and Institut Wiener Kreis Museumstraße 5/19 A-1070 Wien Austria [email protected] Edward Timms University of Sussex Centre for German-Jewish Studies School of European Studies Arts B 140 Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH United Kingdom [email protected] Ulrike Walton-Jordan 1 Charleville Circus Sydenham, London SE26 6NR United Kingdom

The Authors

The Authors

Nick Warr University of Brighton Brighton BN2 4AT United Kingdom N [email protected]

267

SpringerPhilosophie Veröffentlichungen des Instituts W iener Kreis Friedrich Stadler

The Vienna Circle Studies in the Origins, Development, and Influence of Logical Empiricism

C lem ens Jab lo n er, Friedrich S ta d ler (H rsg.)

Logischer Empirismus und Reine Rechtslehre Beziehungen zw ischen dem W ie n e r

Übersetzung C. Nielsen et el.

Kreis und d er Hans Kelsen-Schule

2001. XV, 984 Seiten. 47 Abb. Text: englisch

2001. X X I, 339 Seiten.

Gebunden EUR 75,97, eFr 118,-*)

Broschiert EUR 49,80, sFr 8 0 ,-

ISBN 3-211-83243-2

ISBN 3-211-83586-5

Sonderbend

Band 10

A lb ert M u lle r, Karl H. M ü ller, Friedrich S ta d ler (H rsg.)

Thom as Uebel

Konstruktivismus und Kognitionswissenschaft

VemunftkritHc und Wissenschaft Otto Neurath und der erste Wiener Kreis

K ulturelle W urzeln und Ergebnisse

2000. XXI, 432 Seiten.

Heinz von Foerster g ew id m et

Broschiert EUR 5 4 ,-, sFr 86,50

Zweite, ekt und erw. Auflage.

Band 9

ISBN 3-211-83255-8 2001.308 Seiten. 22 Abb. u. 1 Frontispiz. Broschiert EUR 3 8 ,-, sFr 6 1 ,ISBN 3-211-83585-7 Sonderband

•) Unverbindlich« Prei— mpfehhinq. Dieter Euro-Prels Ist empfohlen fur Deutschland und enthftft 7 % M w «.

llp i SpringerWienNewYork Sechasnpleti 4-6. RO. Bast 86. A-1201 Wien. Fax «43.1.330 24 26. email: books^springerat. Internet www.apftnfer.st SAG. HaberatraOe 7, D-69126 Heidelberg •Tokeyo 113,3-13. Hongo 3-chome, BunkytHcu Chronicle Books, 86 Second Street, San Francisco, CA 64106, USA

SpringerPhilosophie Veröffentlichungen des Instituts W iener Kreis Friedrich Stadler (Hrsg.)

Friedrich S ta d le r (H rsg.)

Elemente moderner Wissenschaftstheorie

Bausteine wissenschaftlicher Weltauffassung

Z ur Interaktion von Philosophie,

Lecture Series/Vortrâge des

Geschichte und Theorie

Instituts W iener Kreis 1992-1995

d er W issenschaften 1997.231 Seiten.Text deutsch/englisch 2000. XXVI, 220 Seiten. 16 Abb.

Broschiert EUR 3 3 ,-, sFr 5 3 ,-

Broschiert EUR 34,90, sFr 5 6 ,-

ISBN 3-211-82865-6

ISBN 3-211-83315-3.

Band5

Band 8

Friedrich S ta d ler (H rsg.)

Kurt R. Fischer, Friedrich Stadler (Hrsg.)

Phénoménologie und logischer Empirismus

«W ahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt4’

Zentenarium Félix Kaufm ann

Zum Lebenswerk von E. Brunswik

(18 9 5 -1 9 4 9 )

(1903-1955)

1997.163 Seiten. 1 Frontispiz.

1997.187 Seiten. 15 Abb. 1 Frontispiz.

Text: deutsch/englisch

Text deutsch/englisch

Broschiert EUR 28,-, sFr 4 5 ,-

Broschiert EUR 3 0 ,-, sFr 4 8 ,-

ISBN 3-211-82937-7.

ISBN 3-211-82864-8

Band 7

Band 4

SpringerWienNewYork Sach—nplatt 4 -6 . RO. Box 89. A-1201 W lon. Fax «43.1330 24 26. a-m all: bookaSapringarat. Intamac www.apftngar.at SAG, Habaretrafla 7, D-69126 Haldatbarg «Tokyo 113,3-13. Hongo 3-choma, Bunkyo-ku Chvonlda Booka, 86 Saoond Straat, San Frandaoo, CA 84106, USA

Springer-Verlag and the Environment

W e a t S p r in g e r - V e r l a g f ir m l y b e l ie v e t h a t a n

international science publisher has a special obliga­ tion to the environm ent, and ou r corporate policies consistently reflect this conviction. W e a l s o e x p e c t o u r b u s in e s s p a r t n e r s - p r in t e r s ,

paper mills, packaging m anufacturers, etc. - to com m it them selves to using environm entally friendly m ate­ rials and production processes. T h e p a p e r i n t h i s b o o k i s m a d e f r o m n o -c h l o r i n e

pulp and is acid free, in conform ance with inter­ national standards for paper perm anency.