the intellectual migration a typology
TRANSCRIPT
THE INTELLECTUAL MIGRATION: A TYPOLOGY
By Jorge M. Robert
I also believe that more and more of
the better "Europe" will be moving here.
T.Mann, Jamestown, Rhode Island, 1938
The flow of immigrants entering the United States at any given
period is called wave. The oceanic metaphor is relevant if we
think in the different sizes of the waves, the predominance of
Atlantic maritime transportation up to the 1950s, and also in
the fact that the waves arrive recurrently at American shores.
However, at this time we want to look at an immigration wave
which has rarely been recognized as such, it extended over
twelve years spanning from 1933 to 1945. This wave brought to
America several generations of Europeans fleeing racial and
political persecution. Some scholars called it the intellectual
migration because "in this relatively small group [of refugees]
the level of education and the quality of professional skills
were remarkable." (1) In America, its arrival was not seen as a
separate immigration wave and the reasons for the misperception
are that the émigrés came not at once but over a number of
years, and not regularly but intermittently. Besides, there were
1
other events dominating the headlines during that period such as
American isolationism, restricted immigration, economic
depression, other political and social upheavals, and a world
war. It also there seems to be working a deeper notion having to
do with the popularity of immigrants in the United States in
general, and specifically these refugees. Immigrants are mainly
ignored by a culture whose members do not want to be reminded
that either them or their ancestors sometime in the past where
immigrants too. To this general attitude it could be added the
anti-semitism common at the time and the prevalent anti-
intelectualism of the American people. (2)
In 1929, the Immigration Restriction Act went finally into
effect and from then on visas became scarce and very difficult
to get. Americans did not want to hear about either new
immigrants or refugees, moreover, there was no legal category
for refugees. The Americans had had enough already, first, with
the Depression, and then with their two-front world war.
Nonetheless, somehow this migration came within the limits of
the quotas, on special visas, or even as temporary visitors
staying in America for good.
The intellectual migration brought over an extraordinary
assortment of immigrant-refugees, the best and the brightest of
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the European intellectual, scientific, and artistic world. They
were the émigrés from European Fascism who began arriving from
the time of the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933. Individuals
from many countries engrossed this migration: the largest
contingent was made up of Germans, and Austrians, but the
political and racial persecution sent away also Czechs,
Italians, Spaniards, Hungarians, French, Romanians, Bulgarians,
Greeks, Polish, and some Russians too. Most of them were
persecuted out of the continent (exile-by-force), a minority
left freely out of political, or moral conviction (exile-by-
choice), some tried to come but failed, while others reluctantly
succeed. Some were already in America and stayed out when the
upheaval began. The lives of all of them make up the story of
the intellectual migration.
In 1968 this group of émigrés was referred to by Laura Fermi,
wife of the physicist-refugee Enrico Fermi, as the intellectual
migration, because of the high level of education and
intellectual achievement of its core elite. In 1969, Donald
Fleming and Bernard Bailyn used the same designation in their
compilation of articles on the émigrés. The designation has been
used again and again, and, though elitist, it seems fit as
shorthand to designate these exiles. (3) No other group with
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similar characteristics has ever come to America. Their
intellectual achievements were and still are astonishing and the
study of this people’s migration constitutes a very significant
chapter not only of American immigration history but also of
American Intellectual, Artistic, and Scientific history.(4)
Chronologically, this “wave” came after the decline of American
immigration in the 1920s and the restrictionist period, but
before the post World War II displaced persons “wave.” A scholar
of the migration asserted that the history of exile literature
[intellectual migration] would not be terminated until its last
representative in exile had died or has returned to his native
country. By the same token we would like to say that the history
of this group will not be over until the last of its members
passed from the scene (there are no more returns). They are the
witnesses and the last representatives of the migration's
legacy. (5)
The political turn-moil of those years dispersed thousands of
refugees all over the world, and the majority migrated to the
United States. The best estimate indicates that the refugees
entering America between 1933 and 1944 were about 266,000 among
them 22,842 were intellectuals, professionals, or artists (6).
These numbers are small if compared with the masses going
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through Ellis Island at the dawn of the century, and, because of
that, its study requires different parameters. We need to look
at them almost individually and thus the topic becomes very
vast. A sociological, impersonal or statistical view would not
reveal their experiences, their contributions, their endeavors,
their failures, and their final destiny after the migration.
They should be looked at from a historical view point without
disregarding the context provided by sociology or the other
auxiliary sciences.(7)
The analysis of this migration requires a basic typology to
facilitate its contextual and chronological placement, and also
because such a typology would "provide[s a] theoretical
structure for a broad range of scholarship." As William Petersen
indicated long ago, what is required is a theoretical framework
into which the data may be fitted. He emphasized also two
general points, first, that it is useful to make explicit the
logical structure of a typology; and second that the criteria by
which types are to be distinguished must be selected with care.
(8) This paper will try to follow these guidelines establishing
three basic parameters to classify the refugees. The first
criteria to be developed will be generational, the second
occupational, and the last one will distinguish them by country
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of birth.
Generational Approach
In the last two decades there has been an increasing use of the
generational concept in the sociological and historical
discourse. All attempts to build grand theory based on it
including a historical theory of cyclical reproduction have
failed as they should. However, it seems to this writer that the
concept has great explanatory power in both history and
sociology. My proposal is simple: to use the concept of
generation as a classificatory device. Almost twenty years ago,
Hans Jaeger highlighted what he called a "promising approach" in
generation theory, saying that "[T]he study of concrete groups,
organizations, schools, and movements constitutes the most
promising approach to the research about historical generations.
An examination which starts with the vast historical reality of
a group and then investigates the age structure uses an approach
opposite to that which starts with the age structure of a group
and only then look for factual connections or correspondences."
(9) To be sure, here we will refer to historical generations
without adopting any general theory, however, we will
incorporate when proper the conceptual insights develop by the
generational theory masters. Establishing to what generation
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these individuals belong explains not only their place in the
subsequent history of the group but also the background they
brought to America, their limitations, and frequently even the
nature of the influence they exerted here.
The concept of generation has been the subject not only of a
large bibliography in sociological studies, but also of many
enlightening historical writings. Here we’ll limit the
generational concept to the age group impacted by specific
historical events during their members' main formative years.
Following Karl Mannheim we placed the formative years as those
spanning from the 17th birthday up to the 25th's. (10) I say
"main" formative years because historical events influence
people all the time and at every age, but it seems that the
psychological impact received during those years leave a
permanent imprint, a distinguishing mark. However, it would be
disingenuous to concentrate exclusively on the years between the
17th and the 25th birthdays as the only life phase where
personality formation takes place. Obviously, the "primary
stratum of experiences" (infant years) plays a major role in the
subsequent phase of "personal experimentation with life." (11)
The early adolescent years are also crucial. However, during the
formative years the person is the most impressionable, the
"imprint" that their psyche suffered defines their way of
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thinking, their basic attitudes, and his or her patterns of
experience and expression most radically. In other words, the
experiential imprint one receives during his/her formative years
stays with the individual the rest of his or her life. Thus,
according to Karl Mannheim, in this way they forge a
generational style. Another generationalist put it in this way:
"older members of society also experience the same events, yet
they interpret them according to perspectives they developed
during their formative years. Since each generation has its own
Weltanschauung, the experiencing of these events becomes
'stratified' by a multitude of generational perspectives."
It has always been my understanding that historically, age
matters the most. Here we have the intellectual migration, this
large and diverse group. How to study its American reception,
their own American experience, their achievements and failures,
their adaptation or revolt, and their cultural legacy? It seems
that without a basic generational typology it will be very
confusing to talk about this people experiences and
achievements. For instance, looking at the émigré musicians, we
find these two age extremes, on the one side Alexander Zemlinsky
(1871-1942), and on the other Andre Previn (1929- ). They both
are members of the intellectual migration despite the 58 years
span between their births. They cannot be considered as part of
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the group without highlighting the many profound differences
between them and what they mean in terms of immigration
experience.
The older members of the group immigrated in their sixties and
seventies like Maurice Maeterlinck a writer from Belgium born in
1862, Jacques Hadamard a mathematician from France born in 1865,
Richard Beer-Hoffmann, a poet and dramatist from Austria born in
1866, and Arturo Toscanini, the conductor from Italy born in
1867. But these are rather exceptions because the bulk of the
oldest migration is from the 1870s. On the other end, the very
youngest are represented by people born even in the 1930s who
came here as children with their parents absorbing through them
a cultural mixture from the European home and the American
surroundings. As an example, I would like to mention Werner
Gundersheimer born in 1937, scholar, historian and ex director
of the Folger library. As to age, these are the outer-limits of
the intellectual migration.
Some students of the migration may object to the inclusion of
the younger generations within the group. It has been said that
only those who brought their education from Europe belong to the
migration, because the younger ones studied or developed their
skills in America. This view cannot be favored because the
younger refugees brought with them European experiences along
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with the basic emigration experience plus their personal
qualities, besides most of the time they came with their family
group who prolonged in America the influence of their foreign
culture. All these factors marked them out as members of this
migration.
As to the time of the migration itself we will include those
coming to America from 1933 up to the end of the war in 1945.
However, I make an exception for people that were already here
in 1933 (a short stay) and decided not to return to Europe
during the mentioned period. We would like to repeat here Robert
Boyers's preface words from his compilation of articles on the
intellectual migration. He said that he included "figures who
never even emigrated, for one reason or another, but who are
nonetheless significantly a part of the émigré generation ...
[like] ... Walter Benjamin and Karl Kraus." Kraus is undoubtdly
an exaggeration but as to Benjamin you may say that his writings
migrated to America with the Frankfurt School. Thus, this paper
will include individuals who are not part of the group but
should be included because of their cultural significance and
influence on the migration. (12)
Without going deeper into generational theory what is
significant for our classificatory purpose is the general
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outlook, attitudes, habits and style provided by the
generational imprint. Thus, Thomas Mann's Weltschauung is
markedly different from that of, for instance, Erich M.
Remarque, Hannah Arendt, or Peter Gay.
It has been a regular and in some way justified objection to
generational theory that it is imprecise because there is no
agreement as to the boundaries between the generations and their
lengths. Here we preferred to design the generational categories
within precise dates even though we realized that valid
differences may be pointed out. Our view is specific to the
period, the place, and the individuals and it is unconcerned
with establishing a full-strength theory. It must be understood
that there are exceptions which hopefully will confirm the rule.
Moreover, each individual case must be looked at to determine
whether his or her place within a specific zone of dates
coincides with his or her formative experiences.
A generation is said to be a group of like-aged individuals who
are commonly imprinted by socio-historical events because they
experienced those events at a similar age. Thus, men who are
born into the same social environment about the same time
necessarily come under analogous influences, particularly in
their formative years. Mere common location in a generation is
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of only potential significance. Contemporaries have to
participate in the same ideas and concepts. Ortega y Gasset says
that a generation is a zone of 15 years during which a certain
form of life (vital sensitivity, climate of opinion) was
predominant. "Practically every society recognizes a discrete
coming-of-age moment (or 'rite of passage') separating the
dependence of youth from the independence of adulthood. This
moment is critical in creating generations; any sharp contrast
between the experiences of youths and rising adults may fix
important differences in peer personality that last a lifetime."
Eckstein and Barberia pointed out that cohorts that differ in
their pre-immigration backgrounds can be expected to differ, in
certain respects, in their post-immigration experience. (13)
Hazlett also remarks that the generational imprint is part of
the culturally imposed identity (like that pertaining to women
or minorities). (14) For Pilcher the notion of generations
provides a way to understanding differences between age-groups,
and it constitutes also a means of locating individuals and
groups within historical time. These ideas have been emphasized
by previous theorists, and evidence of its reliability has been
established. (15)
The sociologists who studied the intellectual migration have
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delineated various groups following three statistical
categories: the elder group, an intermediate group, and a
younger group of refugees. Those who in 1933 were older than 45
integrated the elder group (born before 1888). The intermediate
group was formed by those which in 1933 were between 44 and 16
years of age (born between 1889 and 1917). Finally, those 16
years of age and younger at the time of emigration were within
the younger group (born after 1917). (16) These groupings may
satisfy the sociologists’ perspective, but fall short of the
actual historical generations represented within the migration.
The intermediate group is too large and includes individuals
pertaining to at least two different generations. These refugees
were born after 1888 but before 1917, a span of 29 years
including individuals as diverse as Werner Jaeger, the Classic
German Philologist born in 1888, and Peter Drucker, the Austrian
management consultant and educator born in 1908. Jaeger passed
away in 1961, but Drucker in 2005. It is obvious that these two
individuals’ European experiences made them members of different
generations. The intermediate group then includes two different
generations, one is the very-much-analyzed war generation and
the other may be designated as the Weimar generation. This last
designation has the disadvantage of making sense only for the
Germans, but not for the other European countries. However, I'll
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use it because the Central European culture at that time was
defined mainly by German culture which was in many ways
hegemonic. Besides, most of the émigrés were from Germany and
Austria. Another example of the distinction may be found in
Joseph Wechsberg when he describes the 1914 family's farewell to
his father going to war. Wechsberg was born in 1907 and belongs
to the Weimar generation and his father instead died in WWI.
(17)
These generations are to be defined by historical events of the
period spanning from the 1870s to the 1930s. This sixty-year
period begins with the Franco-Prussian war and ends with World
War II, and the main historical event of the period is World War
I. The members of the intellectual migration whose formative
years coincided with World War I are said to belong to the War
generation which is by itself a well-established concept. (18)
All European countries, except Britain, required compulsory
military service for its young men. In Germany, all able bodied
men between the ages of 17 and 45, were liable for military
service (19).
Therefore, for the purposes of this typology, the war generation
would be integrated by those born from 1889 to 1900. A Central
European born in 1889 would have been 25 in 1914 and then liable
14
for military service within his formative years, and, by the
same token, an individual born in 1897 would have been 17 in
1914 and thus subject to the rigors of the war during his
formative years. It should be noted that Central Europeans who
were older than 25 during the war also experienced it because
they were drafted anyway, but most of them served in non-combat
positions. Thus, their experiences have a different relevance
because they were already passed their formative years.
Nonetheless, every personal history must be considered because
the war experience was not the same for everybody, and even the
war generation may be subdivided depending on the year the
person began his military service. (20)
Thus, being the war generation a well-established concept, the
other generations may be defined preceding or following it.
People born before 1888 should necessarily belong to a previous
generation even though they may have served in the Great War.
They were formed in the 19th century and did not possess the
mind set, expectations and goals of the war generation.
By the same token, people who were too young to serve in the war
had formative experiences acquired in the post-war social and
political upheavals, a very different existential environment.
The mental imprint of this group must necessarily be markedly
15
diverse from the war generation. Finally, a different generation
develops in a Europe at the mercy of the Nazi dictatorship, and,
those who got the imprinting at that time must be grouped in a
separate generation. It has been called the younger generation
by several scholars. (21)
Two well-respected scholars distinguished between pre-war
generations. Thus, Detlev J.K. Peukert founded two generations
previous to the war generation. They are the Wilhelmine
generation, contemporaries of Wilhelm II born between 1847 and
1869, and the Grunderzeit generation of those born in the decade
of the establishment of the Reich, between 1870 and 1879. Then,
Peukert lists the Wartime generation of those born in the 1880s
and 1890s who experienced military service during the Great War.
(22) The other scholar is Wolfgang Schivelbusch who analyzed the
Wilhelmine generation, those born between 1853 and 1865, and
said that they experienced the founding of the German empire and
were a classic "post-heroic" generation of inheritors (victors'
sons, "epigones" and "literati"). (23) Even though these two
elaborations are well-thought and compelling they were built for
different purposes and do not consider the intellectual
migration. I will use the designation "Wilhelmine generation" to
include all the refugees born before 1888, leaving those born
16
between 1888 and 1900 within the War generation. The migration
includes only a few members born in the 1860s minimizing in this
way the need to halve this group, however, when necessary, I
will take into account the distinctions pointed out by Peukert
and Schivelbusch between the generations of those borne before
or after 1865. Additionally, in the case of the war generation,
some scholars distinguish between sub-generations because the
German draft covered men within 17 and 45. Thus, some
distinguish between "two groups: those who were mature men in
1914 and who experienced the war as an interruption of their
peacetime activities; and those born between 1885 and 1900, for
whom the war was an introduction to life and adventure.(24) This
is a distinction which can be clearly identified in the case of
Ludwig Bendix who served in his late 30s and even Paul Tillich
serving during his late 20s. Additionally, the refugees
themselves distinguished between those drafted at the beginning
of the war in 1914 from those incorporated later; a case in
point is Zuckmayer who placed Remarque and his age group in a
generation separate from his. Again, I will keep in mind these
distinctions whenever appropriate. (25)
Walter Laqueur, a refugee scholar himself, has recently
published "Generation Exodus" an account of the so-called
17
younger generation of emigrants. He said in the preface that his
is a first attempt to sketch the portrait of a generation, the
young people from Germany and Austria who were forced to
emigrate after the Nazis went into power, and that this was the
cohort of those born, roughly speaking, between 1914 and 1928.
Laqueur (1921- ) himself belongs to this generation which will
be called the "younger generation" to followed the terminology
used by other scholars. (26)
Now, in between the "War generation" and the "Younger
generation" we have those born between 1901 and 1916 which
constitute a separate and definite generation, the "Weimar
generation" imprinted in their adolescence by the chaos created
after Germany's defeat (revolution of 1919), death caused by the
Pandemic Influenza of 1918-1919, economic distress caused by the
German hyper-inflation of 1921-1923, and in general the cultural
turmoil of post-war Central Europe.
It seems possible to add another generation after Laqueur's
generation exodus or Fermi's young generation, because some
members of the migration born after 1928 were imprinted by the
migration itself, and, of course, by the American culture.
However, similarly to the Wilhelmine generation including
individuals born in the 1860s, we are including in the younger
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generation figures like Andre Previn (1929- ), Leo Spitzer
(1939- ), etc. who were born after 1928. Therefore, in
summary, the lineup of generations goes like this:
Wilhelmine Generation (born before 1888)
War Generation (born from 1889 to 1900)
Weimar Generation (born from 1901 to 1917)
Younger Generation (born after 1918)
Examples fitting each category are Thomas Mann born in 1875 for
the older group; Carl Zuckmayer born in 1897 for the war
generation; Hannah Arendt born in 1906 for the Weimar
generation; and Peter Gay born in 1923 for the younger refugees.
This classification of the intellectual migration in four
groupings will allow us to draw conclusions and establish
connections among them illuminating thus many aspects of their
migration experience.
Wilhelmine Generation
You [Erich Kahler] have given an example of fortitude that
honorably differs from the complete incompetence of most refugee
intellectuals faced with their new situation. None of them, I have
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the impression, is prepared to learn anything new; rather they all
want to go on as they did in times now buried, and expect roasted
squabs to fly into their mouths. T.Mann to E. Kahler, 05/25/1941
This generation was formed during the Wilhelmian Empire and
before, including then those emigrants born up to 1888. They are
those too old to fight in the First World War, even though they
might have served anyway in a non-combatant capacity. Hans
Jaeger, a scholar of generations, provides an example of
generational phenomena found in Wilhelmine Germany between 1914
and 1918 saying that "in 1914, we find in Germany a society
which bears the imprint of the Wilhelmine Empire ... among older
people. A widespread economic and social expansion, an
authoritarian state and the education of subjects, a display of
power with respect to foreign policy... The Wilhelmine lifestyle
had left such a deep imprint on the German people because of its
long duration." (27)
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) in his 1950 article entitled The Years
of My Life called this generation the Old Timers, and “spoke of
a cultural advantage which the man born in 1875 possessed over
those born straight into the post-bourgeois world.” He said that
the “old timers still witnessed a form of opposition to
liberalism and rationalism that itself abided by the loftiest
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tenets of culture, a darkling variety of humanism, as it were, a
pessimism that wrote the language of our great humanistic epoch,
its proud misanthropy never denying respect for ideas, for the
higher vocation, for the dignity of man.” Peter Gay illustrates
the theme of the Gospel of Work with Thomas Mann’s father’s
example extolling in his will the virtues of work. These
observations confirm Mann’s generational outlook. (28)
Zweig in his homage to Ludwig for his 50th birthday said that
“for that whole generation, for all of us who began our lives
before the War in the old forms that had once been appropriate,
the world upheaval also signified an inner upheaval.” He
recognized that even though they belonged to the Wilhelmine
generation, WWI shook them up and made them understand “the
teaching of events.” (29)
Another example of this generation is Bruno Walter (1876-1962)
the notable conductor whose autobiography describes the
spiritual attitude of those times. Mann was 39 at the time of
WWI, and Walter 38, and the war did not alter the basic outlook
and habits of these men. Neither one of them, of course, served
in the war even though the German draft extended to age 45. (30)
H. Stuart Hughes, one of the historians of the migration, places
21
the German intellectual of the Wilhelminian era in a peculiarly
ambiguous relationship to his own political and social milieu.
For him the polarity between the attractions of Berlin and those
of the southwest was paralleled by a tension between political
acceptance and opposition. (31) They were too old to fight in
WWI. However, some of them like Ludwig Bendix (1877-1954),
Reinhard’s father, served as a soldier in the home guard
continuing nonetheless his legal practice and his writings. Men
of this generation who were born before 1888 stood outside the
20th century’s zone of influence.
Gay in Weimar Culture says that Gropius (1883-1969) developed
his ideas during the Empire, the war gave them political
direction, and they found open expression in the revolution.(32)
Some of the émigrés may seem to belong chronologically to one
generation but their crucial experiences placed them in another.
H. Stuart Hughes gives the example of Karl Mannheim (1893-1947)
saying that he was eleven years younger that Cesare Borgese
(1882-1952), but, Mannheim, in terms of historical experience
was a member of the same generation than Borgese. Both had come
to intellectual maturity before WWI; and both had their base
point in the prewar sense of economic security and social
deference that the cultivated had enjoyed. Hughes also
22
contrasted the smaller age gap that separated Mannheim from
Erich Fromm, and assert that however, it marked a real
psychological watershed. Born in 1900, Fromm belonged to the
generation that went through the war as adolescents and whose
decisive intellectual encounters were to occur in the tormented
early years of the 1920s. (33)
Heinrich Mann brings up the images of his youth in Bismarckian
Germany [indicating that they] reflect not merely nostalgia, but
rather present an ideal period of individual development, a time
whose stability was inextricably linked to the policies of
Bismarck: he not only maintained peace from 1875-1890, but he
strengthened it. Thanks to the peace Bismarck was able to
continue another twenty-five years in spite of arrogance and ill
will. Reflecting upon his youth, Mann perceives in this enduring
peace the basis for the continuity of individual development: In
order for a young person to develop in a coherent fashion, to
develop, to use an expression of the 19th century, historically,
he has to believe that the course of his life is anchored in a
logical scheme of things, which ceases if there is war. Wars are
the violent rupture in a life which had otherwise been
connected. (34) Perhaps an even sharper description of that era
is found in Stefan Zweig’s autobiography (1881-1942). (35)
23
Another revealing case is that of Paul Tillich, the theologian
and philosopher born in 1886 who actually belongs to this
generation. However, he was 28 at the time of WWI and served the
four years of the war as a chaplain. His war experience was very
intense and prolonged enough to leave him shaken and stricken,
but he was already formed as an individual and as a member of
the Wilhelminian generation. His personality was formed in the
1890s and he is clearly a man of the 19th century. Tillich
himself expounded frequently on the idea of his existence being
on a boundary, perhaps he was also in a boundary as to
pertaining to two generations the Whilhelminian and also the war
generation. "In a sermon delivered in 1955, Tillich confessed to
a recognition that the refugees and the tradition they
represented constituted 'a generation of the end.' He and his
compatriots had lost, by virtue of their attachment to a culture
that bred mass destruction and death, the ability to survive
spiritually in the atmosphere of hope that he had identified as
uniquely American. ... He and his generation could only be
'symbols of death,' participants in an ending." (36)
The notion that this generation had reached the end of its road
at the time of WWII was repeatedly communicated by Stefan Zweig
to his friends. In New York, when Zuckmayer told him that they
24
should live to be 90 or 100 to see decent times again, Zweig
answered that "those will never come again to us .. we shall be
homeless ... What is the sense of living on as one's own shadow?
We are ghosts or memories ... However the war may turn out a
world is coming in which we don't belong." (37)
This generation passed away in the forties, fifties and sixties,
and it made up about 20% of the entire IM (38). The oldest
member of the cohort would be Maeterlinck born in 1861 and the
youngest born in 1888. The median age is represented by those
born in 1875 like Thomas Mann. Taking him as an example the
formative years span from 1892 (17 years old) and 1900 (25 years
old).
War Generation (1889 to 1900)
A thorough description and analysis of this conspicuous European
generation was made by Robert Wohl in his definitive The
Generation of 1914 (1979). The members of this generation are
those born between 1889 and 1900 whether or not they served in
the war. (39) Some of them reached influential positions before
the war. Wohl says that to understand this generation,
chronological limits have to be abandoned, and the zone of dates
replaced by a magnetic field (experiential field as a common
25
frame of reference) at the center of which lies an experience or
a series of experiences. The war is undoubtedly the defining
experience. The distinction between the war generation and the
preceding Wilhelmine generation is given by "different
structures of sensibility, different conceptions about the
relation between self and culture that had developed during the
First World War." (40)
They viewed themselves as a distinct generation whose youth
coincided with the opening of the twentieth century and their
lives were then bifurcated. The experiences of this generation
were not only the experiences during the war but also those
acquired growing up and formulating their first ideas in a world
framed by two dates 1900 and 1914, their vital horizon. (41) It
has been said that this generation coalesced around the cultural
atmosphere created by the decadence of the old world, the world
of their parents, the world of the 19th century that reached its
imperial pinnacle "between the 1850s and 1911 [when] the
Europeans carved up into colonies almost the entire
underdeveloped world. According to this view Europe began
cultural disintegration by 1900; and reached its paroxistic
culmination with the war experience." (42)
“The image devised by this generation before the war was a
26
reversal of the qualities that they disliked or feared in the
generation of their parents. They considered themselves as doers
while saw their fathers as thinkers; they sought assurance in a
calm faith while their elders floundered in moral relativism;
and they felt strong and vital while there parents had been weak
and indecisive.” (43) Laura Fermi put this generation between
1890 and 1910.(44)
To this cohort belongs Karl Wittfogel, the sinologist, born in
1896, a member of the German Youth movement before the war, and
politically active during the Weimar period. Others members are
Leo Lowenthal, the sociologist, born in 1900, Kurt Lewin, the
psychologist, born in 1890, Hans Kohn, the historian, born in
1891, and Herbert Marcuse, the philosopher, born in 1898, all of
them served in WWI. Wohl says that “those who belonged to the
war generation are the young who went to war, or managed to
avoid it, and afterwards found themselves confronted with and
spurred into action by the various forms of debris that the war
left behind.” Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) and Karl Mannheim
(1893-1947) are also members of this age group.
Also called “Front Generation”, it is described as integrated by
those born between 1892-1897 (others said, those born between
1890-1900). They are those who had borne WWI’s brunt in the
27
trenches. In general, men born before 1888 stood outside the
twentieth century’s zone of influence. (45)
Zuckmayer in his autobiography lists the influences that
affected his generation, and also distinguishes between the
generations of volunteers who went to war in August 1914 from
the next generation one year and a half or two younger who went
to war the next year or so. He said that Remarque belonged to
that generation and that they did not share the excitement and
the enthusiasm of the volunteer generation. He also discusses
the exhilaration felt by most of the Germans in 1914.(46)
Another landmark experience for this generation and the next
must have been the influenza epidemic of 1918 which at the end
of the Great War inaugurated for many their formative period. It
has been said that this epidemic "affected the course of history
and was a terrifying presence at the end of [the war]. ...
Children were orphaned, families destroyed. Some who lived
through it said it was so horrible that they would not even talk
about it. Others tried to put it behind them as another wartime
nightmare, somehow conflating it with the horrors of trench
warfare and mustard gas. ... It swept the globe in months,
ending when the war did." (47)
28
An Austrian member of this generation is Joseph Roth (1894-1939)
who was 18 at the outset of the war. He wrote: "My strongest
experience was the war and the fall of my fatherland, the only
one I ever had: the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy." (48) The name of
this generation with the addition of the word "empire" has been
used to define the following generation. (49)
Weimar Generation (1901-1917)
They were those too young to fight in the First World War who
came of age during the tumultuous years caused by war and defeat
maturing during the post-war crisis and witnessing the Weimar
instability and the inflation. Historian George L. Mosse, himself
a German refugee, in a review of Henry Pachter's Weimar Etudes,
analyzed and discussed the intellectual assumptions and roots of
the Weimar generation. Mosse pertains to the younger generations
those who were formed by the triumph of fascism unlike Pachter
whose formative years took place during the Weimar period. So,
Mosse said that "the Weimar generation was essentially anti-
historical and optimistic about man, while that which grew to
maturity in the 1930s was deeply conscious of historical
connections, crushed by the weight of history gone wrong."(50)
Kay Schiller says that Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905-1999) belonged
29
to the generation of Germans between 1900 and 1910, wich was
marked by its generally low chances on the oversubscribed German
academic market of the mid 1920s. (51) Most of the members of
this generation have already passed away. (52) It was a truly
post-war generation. As Peter Gay says, the Republic was born in
defeat, lived in turmoil, and died in disaster. (53) Mommsen said
that the dominant generational experience of this group was the
collapse of the prewar bourgeois social order, and also that, for
this generation, war, revolution, and inflation were traumatic
experiences. Reulecke says that "many young people from the
generation born after 1901 (i.e. the cohort not sent to the
front, conscription extending only as far as the birth-year 1901)
reacted with bitterness to the hardships they were suffering and
condensed their frustration into the phrase 'the war is our
parents.'" One of the main representatives of this generation is
Hannah Arendt born in 1906. Whitfield says that "Arendt was
supremely a product of Weimar culture."(54)
It includes those born between 1901 and 1917. In this group we
find T. Adorno and B. Bettelheim both born in 1903. It is
symptomatic that during the 1960s Bettelheim and Arendt both
participated in the Eichmann controversy.(55). Additionally, in
his Foreword to Krohn’s book, Vidich says that, in the 1960s,
30
Arendt collated and synthesized the work done by the original
generation in the New School. He implicitly defined the original
generation as that composed by the two categories here
designated as Wilhelmine and the War generation (56). It was
also called “War Youth Generation” (born between 1900 and 1910,
those who were too young to be called to serve in WWI but old
enough to respond consciously to those events. Perhaps the
Weimar generation may be subdivided in two sub-generations, one
covering those born between 1900-1910 and one covering 1910-
1920, pushing then the younger generation three years ahead.
Franz Neumann born in 1900 did military service at the end of
WWI receiving his first ideological education in the Soldier’s
councils which sprang up in the wake of the armistice of 1918.
Then he became a labor lawyer (57).
Claudia Althaus, elaborating on the trajectory of Arendt’s
thought, characterizes her generation as that of the inter-war
Prussian Jews, and indicated that the formative experience that
informs Arendt’s work bound the consciousness of this
generation- is that of a break in tradition expressed by the
sense of wordlessness and wandering imposed on Jews; the horror
of the Holocaust; and the loss of any reliability of either
tradition or metaphysics as standards of judgment (58).
31
Wohl talks about the class of 1902, as a transitional
generation, followed in turn by those born after 1910, who are
perceived to be essentially different from that transitional
generation. This split would also recognize a distinction within
the Weimar generation. Moreover, even Laqueur says that there
was a tremendous difference between even the youngest of the
older refugees, say those born around 1910 and those ten years
younger. "The older generation [and I think he includes here the
Wilhelmine, the War, and the Weimar generations] suffered
because America was not Europe, but the younger refugees were
less deeply rooted in Europe and more adaptable.” (59).
A witness of the Weimar years in his autobiographical
recollections indicates that "Hitler appealed to the two great
experiences that had marked the younger generation": the "great
war game" of 1914-18 and the "triumphal anarchic looting" of the
1923 inflation. In this twin appeal laid, in essence, the Nazis'
foreign and domestic policies. (60) Hitler may very well
considered the Weimar generation as "his younger generation",
because he himself was a member of the war generation, having
been born in 1889 he belonged to the early veterans of the war
generation.
32
Younger generation
It is called generation exodus by Lacqueur, and includes those
who emigrated, and got their training in America. They were born
between 1917 and 1928 and did not embraced the nationwide
mobilization of 1933 because mainly they belonged to the
victimized group (Jews) or, if they didn't, because they
abhorred of the nature of the new regime (61).
L. Fermi says that the “youngest among those who left Europe in
1940 or 1941 were born close to the opening of the twenties.”
Herbert Strauss was born in 1918, and Walter Laqueur in 1921.
Reinhard Bendix (1916-1991) distinguishes between the older and
the younger generation including in the former the Wilhelmine,
the War, and the Weimar generations. The significance he assigns
to the distinction is that the older generation “never fully
immigrated”, in other words, they did not assimilated or
acculturated. In Bendix’s autobiography “From Berlin to
Berkeley,” it can be found the drama of his father’s (Ludwig,
1877-1954) naiveté, hardheadness, suffering and fastidiousness
concerning his emigration. Even though Bendix was born in 1916,
as a result of his own self-conscious immigrating identity, he
may be included within the younger category (62).
33
All the members of the intellectual migration had two strains in
their personality, one was the cultural imprint of their foreign
birth and the other, as part of the latter, was the generational
imprint of his or her European time. It goes without saying that
the former which is not the base of this classification is found
in all the cohorts while the latter adds a slighter strain for
the younger generations. (63)
In his Foreword to Krohn’s book, Vidich describes this
generation as “the youthful generation of émigrés such as Lewis
Coser (1913-2003) and Herbert Gans (1927- ) who arrived in
the United States in the late thirties or immediately after the
war tended with few exceptions to cut themselves off from their
German origins and sought to Americanize themselves. Apart from
a few young émigrés such as Werner Marx (1910-1994), Peter
Berger (1929- ), Brigitte Berger , Beate Salz, and Thomas
Luckmann (1927- ) who, by studying at the Graduate Faculty
immediately after the war, were exposed to the older tradition
of thought, the new generation of German students confronted a
fractured intellectual culture. For them, studying American
sources was difficult to resist.” (64)
Fritz Stern (1926- ) an historian, identifies himself as
belonging to the postwar generation.(65) Laqueur says that even
34
though he treated this younger generation as a whole, it is
necessary to trace a fundamental dividing line between those
born between 1914 and 1922, and those born between 1923 and
1928. The reason for this is that the latter came to America to
incorporate themselves to the education system which was the law
of the land unlike the former that came to work and help their
families.(66) Some of the refugees felt that clinging to the
German language was an existential necessity because it
preserved their identity; however, the great majority of the
refugees did not share this attitude. For them the German
language was neither home nor emotional pillar.(67)
Laqueur says that he belongs to the last generation of Jews with
conscious memories of growing up in Weimar Germany and under the
Nazis, adding that a great many of the generation before them
have put their recollections on paper, but very few of his
generation had done so. And he believes that the reason for that
discrepancy is obvious: his generation did not root deeply in
their country of origin, as they grew they tended to look
forward rather than backward. Their interest in Germany faded,
they used their native language infrequently, they became
absorbed in the society and culture of their new homes (68).
One of the very young members of this group is Andre Previn born
35
in 1929 who came to America and got established in L.A. in 1938.
He came as an eleven-year-old youngster. His father was a German
lawyer who did not know English and was unable to take the
California bar. Another is Mike Nichols born in 1931. We should
also mention Werner Gundersheimer born in 1937.
My aim in proposing this classification is to make more
intelligible and therefore easier the handling of the large mass
of emigres. We know that most of them were Jews, and came from
Germany and Austria. We will also try to classify them by
profession or scholarly specialty, however, the generational
criteria seems to us to be no only essential but also very
telling at the time of evaluating their views of America.
Occupational Approach
The percentage of intellectual professional and artists within
the intellectual migration has been calculated in about 8.5% of
the total number of émigrés clever enough, or lucky enough to
have reached America during the 1930s and early 1940s. The
professional pursuits, intellectual endeavors, and/or artistic
merits of these people were as diverse as their experiences. The
following is an alphabetical non-exhaustive listing of their
36
occupations with references to literary works focused on that
specific occupation. These references are given as
bibliographical examples.
Actors and actresses (performing arts)
Joseph Horowitz, Artists in Exile, New York: HarperCollins,
2008.
Agriculturalists
Rhonda F. Levine, Class, Networks, and Identity. Replanting
Jewish Lives from Nazi Germany to Rural New York, Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001
Architects
Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to our House, New York: Bantam
Books, 1981.
Peter Hahn, "Bauhaus in Exile," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight
of European Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of
Art, 1997, pgs. 210-223
Franz Schulze, "The Bauhaus Architects and the Rise of
Modernism in the United States," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of
European Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of
Art, 1997, pgs. 224-234
Kathleen James, "Changing the Agenda: from German Bauhaus
modernism to U.S. internationalism," (Van der Rohe, Gropius, and
37
Breuer) Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists from
Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 235-252
Kathleen James-Chakraborty, ed., Bauhaus Culture From Weimar
to the Cold War, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2006.
Art historians
Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Phoenix:
University of Chicago Press, 1982
Karen Michels, "Transfer and Transformation: the German
periodo in American art history," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of
European Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of
Art, 1997, pgs. 304-316
Kevin Parker, "Art history and exile: Richard Krautheimer
and Erwin Panofsky," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European
Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997,
pgs. 317-325
Artists
Stephanie Barron & Sabine Eckmenn, ed., Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Exile & Emigres: The Flight of European Artists
from Hitler, 1997
Chemists
38
Ute Deichmann, "The Expulsion of Jewish Chemists &
Biochemists from Academia In Nazi Germany", Perspectives on
Science, 7.1 (1999) 1-86.
P. Thomas Carroll, “Immigrants in American Chemistry,”
Jarrell Jackman & Carla M. Borden, ed., The Muses Flee Hitler
Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, 1930-2945, Washington D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983, pgs. 189-203.
Cinematographers
Gene D. Phillips, Exiles in Hollywood: major European film
directors in America, Danvers, Mass. Associated University
Presses, 1998
John Baxter, The Hollywood Exiles, New York: Taplinger
Publisher, 1976.
David Wallace, Exiles in Hollywood, Pompton Plains, New
Jersey: Limelight Editions, 2006.
Classicists
William M. Calder, III, "The Refugee Classical Scholars in
the USA: An Evaluation of their Contribution," Illinois
Classical Studies, vol. 17.1 (Spring 1992): 153-173.
Communication Researchers
39
Stefanie Averbeck, “The Post-1933 Emigration of
Communication Researchers from Germany,” European Journal of
Communication, vol. 16 (4): 451-475.
Comparative Politics
Gerhard Loewenberg, “The Influence of European Émigré
Scholars on Comparative Politics, 1925-1965,” American Political
Science Review, vol. 100, No. 4 (November 2006).597-604.
Composers
Michael H. Kater, "Composers of the Nazi Era," N.Y.: Oxford
UP 2000.
Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ed., Driven into
Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United
States, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Conductors
Paul Jackson, "Maestros of the Storm. How European
Conductors Found Refuge at the Met," Opera News, July 1995, 36.
Dermatologists
S. Eppinger, et al., ”The Emigration of Germany’s Jewish
Dermatologists in the Period of National Socialism,"Journal of
40
the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (2003)17,
525-530.
Economists
Keith Tribe, "German Émigré Economists and the
Internationalisation of Economics," The Economic Journal, 111
(November 2001): 740-746.
F. M. Scherer, “The Emigration of German-Speaking Economists
after 1933,” Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 38, No. 3
(Sept 2000), 614-626.
Engineers
D.S. Halacy, Jr., Father of Supersonic Flight. Theodor von
Karman, N.Y.: Messnar, 1965.
Film Producers
Jan-Christopher Horak, "German Exile Cinema, 1933-1950,"
Film History, 8 (4) 1996, 373-389.
Germanists
Mark M. Anderson, "The Silent Generation? Jewish Refugee
Students, Germanistik ,and Columbia University ," The Germanic
Review, Win 2003, 78, No. 1, pg. 20-38
41
Guy Stern, "The Way we were: Reminiscences of Columbia's
German Department," The Germanic Review, Win 2003, 78, No. 1,
pg. 13-19
Jeffrey M. Peck, "Postcript: dedication to an influential
generation of Germanists: the transfer of knowledge from German
to Jews in American German Studies," German Politics and
Society, 23.1 (Spring 2005) pg. 189
Historians
Hartmut Lehmann and James J. Sheehan, An Interrupted Past.
German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after
1933, GHI, Cambridge UP, 1991
Catherine Epstein, A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-
Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933,
German Historical Institute: Cambridge UP 1993
Journalists
Michael Groth, "The Road to New York: The Emigration of
Berlin Journalists, 1933-1945 (Germany, United States)," Diss.
Univ. of Iowa, 1984, AAT8407746.
Lawyers
Ugo Mattei, Review of The Reception of Continental Ideas in
the Common Law World, 1820-1920 by Mathias Reimann, and Der
42
Einfluss deutscher Emigranten auf die Rechtsentwicklung in
den USA und in Deutschland by Marcus Lutter, Ernst C.
Stiefel, and Michael H. Hoeflich; The American Journal of
Comparative Law, vol. 42, No. 1, (Winter, 1994), pp. 195-
218.
John H. Langbein, “The Influence of Comparative Procedure in
the U.S.,” The American Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 43,
No. 4 (Autumm 1995): 545-554.
Librarians
Hildegard Muller, "German Librarians in Exile in Turkey,
1933-1945," Libraries and Culture, vol. 33, No. 3, Summer 1998,
294-305.
Mathematicians
Nathan Reingold, (Refugee Mathematicians in the United
States of America, 1933-1941: Reception and Reaction,( Annals of
Science, 38 (1981): 313-338.
Musicians
Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ed., Driven into
Paradise. The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United
43
States, U. of Chicago P., 1999
Painters
Barbara Copeland Buenger, "Antifascism or Autonomous Art?
Max Beckmann, Wassily Kandisnsky, John Heartfield, and Kurt
Schwitters," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists
from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 57-85
Keith Holz, "Antifascism or Autonomous Art? Oskar
Kokoschka," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists
from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 86-95
Photographers
Deborah Irmas, "Experiencing the New World: Andreas
Feininger, Andre Kertesz," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of
European Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art,
1997, pgs. 195-209
Psiquiatrists
Sanford Gifford, "Emigre Analysts in Boston, 1930-1940," Int
Forum Psychoanalisis 12:164-172 (2003).
Physicians
Alfred E. Cohn, "Exiled Physicians in the United States",
44
The American Scholar, Summ 1943, 352.
Publishers and editors
Leon Sokoloff, "Refugees from Nazism and he biomedical
publishing industry," Studies in History and Philosophy of
Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 33 (2002)315-324.
Richard Abel & Gordon Graham, ed., Immigrant Publishers The
Impact of Expatriates in Britain and America, New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2009.
Sculptors
Matthew Affron, "Construing a New Jewish Identity. Jacques
Lipchitz in New York,1941-45," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of
European Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art,
1997pgs. 120-125.
Sinologists
Martin Kern, “The Emigration of German Sinologists 1933-
1945: Notes on the History and Historiography of Chinese
Studies,” The Journal of the American Oriental Society,
10/1/1998.
Social Scientists
45
Irving Louis Horowitz, "Between the Charybdis of Capitalism
and he Scylla of Communism: The Emigration of German Social
Scientists, 1933-1945," 11 Social Science History No. 2 (Summer
1987), 113-138.
Social Workers
Carel Sternberg, IRC Obituary, Jan 17, 2003
Writers
Dagmar C.G. Lorenz, "Jewish Women Authors and the Exile
Experience: Claire Goll, Veza Canetti, Else Lasker-Schuler,
Nelly Sachs, Cordelia Edvardson," German Life and Letters 51:2,
April 1998.
Egbert Krispyn, Anti-Nazi Writers in Exile, Athens: U. of
Georgia P., 1978.
Wolfgang Elfe, James Hardin, and Gunther Holst, ed., The
Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary
Reception, Columbia: U. of South Carolina P., 1992.
National Approach
This approach seems to lose significance because most of the
refugees were from Germany and those from Austria may even be
46
included in the majority group because of the similarity of
cultural influences. However, distinctions should be made due to
the intermittent nature of the migration and the country
conditions overtime from 1933 to 1945. It is also true that the
overwhelming majority of the migrants got their basic imprint
from the Central European culture. Nonetheless, distinctions
should be made for each nationality, the Spaniards, the French,
the Italians, the Polish, the Russians, the Hungarians, the
Bulgarians, the Romanians, the Checks, the Hollanders, the
Belgium, the Finns, the Norwegians, and the Danes. Laura Fermi,
one of the earliest students of the migration, dedicated chapter
five of her book to analyze the refugees’ national origins. Some
book-length studies are dedicated to specific nationalities.
Once you go to each nationality it is not just the figure of the
individual exile that counts, on the contrary your are opening a
new world and end up deepening your research into the specific
country’s 20th century history, its relationship with the U.S.,
etc.
FRANCE
The characteristics of the French migration are: (1)
relatively few number of refugees compared with other
nationalities; (2) most of the refugees returned to France at
47
the end of the war; and (3) they were not “enemy aliens” but
citizens of an allied country.
Colin W Nettelbeck, Forever French, New York: Berg, 1991.
Jeffrey Mehlman, Émigré New York, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
UP, 2000
Patrick Wilcken, Claude Levi-Strauss. The Poet in the
Laboratory, New York: Penguin Press, 2010. [Chapter 4: Exile,
pg. 115].
Richard Preston Unsworth, “A French Connection,” in Peter I.
Rose ed., The Dispossessed, Amherst: U. of Massachusetts P.,
2005, pg. 157.
Christopher Benfey & Karen Remmler, ed., Artists,
Intellectualas, and World War II. The Pontigny Encounters at
Mount Holyoke College, 1942-1944, Boston: Univ. of Massachusetts
Press, 2006.
ITALY
Charles Killinger, “Fighting Fascism from the Valley:
Italian Intellectuals in the United States,” in Peter I. Rose
ed., The Dispossessed, Amherst: U. of Massachusetts P., 2005, pg.
133.
Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, Chicago: U. of Chicago
P., 1968, pg. 33-34.
HUNGARY
48
Kati Marton, The Great Escape, New York: Simon & Schuster,
2006
Tibor Frank, Double Exile: Migrations of Jewish-Hungarian
Professionals through Germany, Bern: Peter Lang, 2009.
SPAIN
Roberta Johnson, “Spanish Emigres of 1939 as Professors and
Scholars in the U.S.,” Hispania, v. 80, No. 2 (May 1997): 265-267
Samuel G. Armistead, “Americo Castro in the United States
(1937-1969),” Hispania, v. 80, No. 2 (May 1997)L 271-274.
ENDNOTES
1. Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants. The Intellectual Migration
from Europe 1930-41, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968. Donald
Fleming & Bernard Bailyn, ed., The Intellectual Migration, Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1969. For a recent use of the label “intellectual
migration”, see Joseph Horowitz, Artists in Exile, New York: Harper,
2008, pgs. xvi, 1, 9.
2. McClay, an acute observer of the migration, believed (in 1994)
that the “notion of the intellectual migration as a singular episode
in American intellectual history with its own character, its own
49
specific gravity, its own physiognomy, its own internal consistency
and unity, ha[d] not quite precipitated.” Wilfred M. McClay,
“Historical Research on the Refugee Intellectuals: Problemas and
Prospects,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society,
vol. 7, No. 3, pg. 513, 1994. Among the exceptions is John Patrick
Diggins, The Proud Decades. America in War & in Peace. 1941-1960, NY:
Norton, 1988 [Ch. 7: High Culture: the life of the mind in a Placid
Age. The Refugee Intellectual and the Issue of Modernism, pag.
220/231], and Chuck Wills, Destination America, New York: DK, 2005,
234-277. The irrelevancy of the émigrés in America is symbolically
revealed in this anecdote: “During the late 1950s Mrs. Arnold
Schoenberg, the widow of the composer, used to entertain visitors on
the front lawn of their home on Rockingham, just off Sunset, in the
Brentwood section of West Los Angeles. Every half hour or so, a huge
tour bus would wheel round, all of its passengers craning their necks
the other way, gazing out across the street. The metallic voice of the
tour guide would squawk, ‘And on the left you can see the house where
Shirley Temple lived in the days when she was filming …’ And then
they’d be gone. Mrs. Schoenberg would smile indulgently, whimsy (or so
I inferred at the time) masking pain.” Lawrence Weschler, Paradise:
the Southern California idyll of Hitler’s Cultural Exiles, pg. 341, in
Stephanie Barron ed., Exiles + Émigrés, Los Angeles: LCMA, 1997.
3. As to the “elitism” of this designation, George M. Frederickson
said in a somewhat similar context that “[his book The Inner Civil
War] has survived, [he] would think, because even the most zealous
50
proponents of the New Social History would be hard put to deny that
there is some value in knowing about elites, if only because their
thought and behavior has important consequences for the lives of plain
folk. If social history is regarded as the history of social classes
or status groups, [his book] has implication for this field of study.
It focuses on what in sociological terminology might be described as
an upper-class intelligentsia and describes how it was transformed,
partly as the result of its war experience, …” George M. Frederickson,
The Inner Civil War, pg. vii.
4. “The range of their accomplishments is staggering. From the arts
to the social and natural sciences, from the chairs we sit on to the
movies we watch, to the nuclear weapons that trouble our nights –
results of their work are all around us.” Anthony Heilbut, Exiled in
Paradise, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997, see pg. xi. Two
examples to back up Heilbut’s claim are Ralph Baer (video games), and
Victor Gruen (shopping malls).
5. Sidney Rosenfeld, "German Exiles Literature after 1945: The
Younger Generation," in John M. Spalek et al., Exile: The Writer's
Experience, Chapel Hill: Univ. of N.C. Press, 1982, 333.
6. Maurice R. Davie, Refugees in America, New York: Harper, 1947;
and Donald P. Kent, The Refugee Intellectual, New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1953.
7. Fernand Braudel, On History, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
51
1980, 64-82; Roberto Franziosi, "A Sociologist Meets History: Critical
Reflections upon Practice," Journal of Historical Sociology, 1996,
vol. 9, No. 3, 354-392.
8. William Petersen, "A General Typology of Migration," American
Sociological Review, vol. 23, Issue 3 (Jun. 1958): 256-266.
9. Hans Jaeger, "Generations in History: Reflections on a
Controversial Concept," History and Theory, vol. 24, Issue 3 (Oct.
1985): 273-292 [288]. The use of the generation concept is free from
ambiguity when the migration is restricted to a brief period. See,
David I. Kertzer, "Generation as a Sociological Problem," Annual
Review of Sociology, vol. 9 (1983) 125-149, 141.
10. Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1952, 276-322; William Strauss & Neil Howe,
Generations, New York: W. Morrow, 1991, 61; Marc Bloch, The
Historian's Craft, New York: Vintage, 1953, 185-187; Michael Corsten,
"The Time of Generations," Time & Society, 1999, vol. 8 (2): 249-272;
Malcolm Cowley, And I worked at the Writer's Trade, New York: Viking
Press, 1963. Jean M. Twenge, Generation Me, New York: Free Press, 2006
[“The society that molds you when you are young stays with you the
rest of your life”, pg. 2].
11. John Bowlby, Charles Darwin A New Life, New York: Norton, 1990,
pg. 430 [according to Darwin, the first three years of a child’s life
were the most subject to incubative impressions. The brain at that
52
period is entirely formed –it is a virgin brain adapted to receive
impressions, and although unable to formulate or memorize these, they
none the less remain and can affect the whole future life of the child
recipient.] Morton Hunt, The Story of Psychology, New York: Doubleday,
1993, 368.
12. Robert Boyers, ed., The Legacy of the German Refugee
Intellectuals, New York: Shocken Books, 1972 (1969). Boyers tried to
clarify the relationship between the emigre generation that left
Germany in the thirties and the broader culture of the West that
nurtured, appropriated, or rejected them. He also hoped that the
breath of another age, another generation, do more than simple touch
us, that it move us and quicken us, and make us better men.
13. Susan Eckestein & Lorena Barberia, "Grounding Immigrant
Generations in History," International Migration Review, 36 (3) Fall
2002, 799; Anthony Esler, "Review Essay: Social Generations and
Political Power," Journal of Social History, 17 (4) Summer 1984, 695-
704; Mary Gluck, "Toward a Historical Definition of Modernism: George
Lukacs and the Avant-Garde," Journal of Modern History, vol. 58 (4)
Dec 1986, 845-882.
14. John D. Hazlett, "Generational Theory and Collective
Autobiography," American Literary History, vol. 4, issue 1 (Spring
1992): 77-96.
15. Jane Pilcher, "Mannheim's Sociology of Generations: An
53
Undervalued Legacy," The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 45, issue
3 (Sept. 1994):481-495.
16. Davie, 39.
17. Joseph Wechsberg, Homecoming, New York: Knopf, 1946, 26.
18. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914, Cambridge: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1979.
19. German Army Handbook, April 1918, Arms and Armor Press, London,
1977.
20. Carl Zuckmayer, A Part of Myself, New York: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1966. For the distinctions within the war generation, see
pg. 154. For the non-belic part of the war generation's formative
experience, see pg. 127-128.
21. Fermi, Illustrious, 365; Davie, Refugees, 204; Laqueur,
Generations, xi-xv.
22. Detlev J.K. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, New York: Hill and
Wang, 1989, pg. 14.
23. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat, New York: Henry
Holt, 2003, pg. 194.
24. Wohl, idem. 68, 80; and Zuckmayer, supra, 16.
54
25. Zuckmayer, supra 16.
26. See, Fermi, supra, 20.
27. See, Jaeger, supra, 6.
28. Peter Gay, Schnitzler’s Century. The Making of Middle-Class
Culture, 1815-1914, N.Y.: Norton, 2002, pg. 194, ch. 7 theme “The
Problematic Gospel of Work”.
29. Zweig, Stefan, “Ludwig at Fifty,” The Living Age, Ap. 1931, 340.
30. On Thomas Mann pertaining to the Wilhelmian generation, see his
praise of the Wilhelmian society’s achievements bis a bis the British
and French systems in his “Gedanken im Kriege” (1914). Georg Lukacs
also thought Mann to be the ultimate bourgeois writer.
31. H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society, N.Y. 1958, 49).
32. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, pg. 9. Gropius' war experience: he is
another veteran conscripted for the war at age 31 who was fully formed
but was deeply influence by the war experience, like Tillich.
33. See, Stuart Hughes (Consciousness, 337/338) distinction between
the generation of those born in the 1870s and of those born in 1880s.
The former reached maturity in the 1890s and the crucial event for
them was of course the WWI experience BHSH calls them the generation
of 1905. Also, H. Stuart Hughes, Sea Change, 90.
55
34. Heinrich Mann, Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt (1945) Berlin:
Classen, 1974) cited in (Richard D. Critchfield, When Lucifer Cometh.
The Autobiographical Discourse of Writers and Intellectuals Exiled
During the Third Reich, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1994; pgs. 45-46).
35. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday,
36. Cited by Karen J. Greenberg, "The Refugee Scholar in America: The
Case of Paul Tillich," in Mitchell G. Ash and Alfons Sollner, ed.
Forced Migration and Scientific Change, Washington D.C. Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1996, pg. 273, 288.)
37. Donald Prater, European of Yesterday, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1972, 300.
38. For Kent it was 19% as a gross percentage, and for Davie reached
20.7%.
39. If the boundaries of the war generation are to be those
determined by spending the formative years during the Great War, and
being the German draft ages between 17 and 45, then, pertain to this
generation all those who were from 17 on 1914 (born in 1897), those
who were 25 on 1914 (born in 1889). However this latter limit must be
extended to 1900 because a german born in 1900 reached 17 the year
before the end of the war and he could have been drafted. Then, those
born in between 1889 and 1900, experienced the war during their
formative years. It is irrelevant whether they served in the army or
56
not, or whether they experienced the war in the front or on safer
duties, because the war affected everybody whatever there activites or
location.
40. Mary Gluck, "Toward a Historical Definition of Modernism: Georg
Lukacs and the Avant-Garde," The Journal of Modern History, vol. 58,
issue 4 (Dec. 1986), 845-882.
41. See Wohl, pag. 210.
42. Robert O. Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century, New York,
Harcort, 1975, pg. 6.
43. Wohl, 215.
44. Laura Fermi, supra, footnote 1, pg. 36. She does not contemplate
the generation concept, instead she said that by the end of the war
all those born in between 1890 and 1910 felt its impact.
45. See Wohl, Generation of 1914, 65, 210.
46. Zuckmayer, 137, 154. For a distinction between those who served
in WWI but do not belong to the War generation and those who served
and were included in this group, see, E.M.Remarque, All Quiet in the
Western Front, pg. 174, reference taken from Koonz, Nazi Conscience,
pg. 290, n. 9.
47. Gina Kolata, Flu The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of
57
1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused it, New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1999.
48. Curt Sanger, "The Experience of Exile in Joseph Roth's Novels,"
in John M. Spalek et al., ed., Exile: The Writer's Experience, Chapel
Hill: Univ. of N.C., 1982, pg. 259.
49. I think the terminology used by Norpoth is equivocal because he
eliminated the war generation. See, Helmut Norpoth, "The Making of a
More Partisan Electorate in West Germany," British Journal of
Political Science, vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan. 1984), pp. 53-71, 62. The
author indicates that his definition of "generations" follows a scheme
commonly used in studies of German politics citing Baker, Dalton &
Hildebrandt ("Germany Transformed").
50. George L. Mosse, "Henry Pachter and Weimar," Salmagundi, 60
(Spring-Summer 1983): 170-175, 173. See also, David Kettler and
Gerhard Lauer, ed., Exile, Science, and Bildung. The Contested
Legacies of German Émigré Intellectuals, New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005, pg. 6 (“the individuals chosen for study here are members, … of
what may be called the ‘Weimar Generation,’ whose formative
experiences came after World War I.”)
51. Kay Schiller, “Paul Oskar Kristeller, Ernst Cassirer, and the
‘Humanistic Turn’ in the American Emigration,” David Kettler et al.
ed., Exile, Science, and Bildung. The Contested Legacies of German
Émigré Intellectuals, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pg. 128.
58
52. Extreme examples of the span of their passing are Hannah Arendt
born in 1906 who died in 1975; and Peter Drucker born in 1909
who passed away in 2005.
53. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, pg. 2.
54. Stephen J. Withfield, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) Women in America,
NY: Routledge, 1997.
55. Nina Sutton, Bettelheim: a life and a Legacy, NY: Harper, 1996,
pgs. 347-48.
56. Claus-Dieter Krohn, Intellectuals in Exile, Amherst: U. of Mass.
P., 1993, pg.xi.
57. H. Stuart Hughes, The Sea Change, NY: Harper, 1975, pg. 102.
58. Dean Hammer, Hannah Arendt in Germany, Bulletin of the German
Historical Institute London, vol. XXIV; No. 2, Nov. 2002, pg. 40.
59. Walter Laqueur, Generation Exodus, Hanover: Brandeis UP, 2001,
pgs. 158, 289. See also Koonz, Nazi Conscience, 106 and 302, n. 103 on
the characterization of the members of this generation who followed
the Nazi lead.
60. See review of Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner,
Farrar, Straus & Giroux by Daniel Johnson, "History of a German,"
Commentary, 09/01/2002.
59
61. Koonz, Nazi Conscience, 68; Laqueur, Generation Exodus, xi.
62. Reinhard Bendix, From Berlin to Berkeley. German-Jewish
Identities, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1986.
63. Laqueur, Generation, 9
64. Krohn, Intellectuals, 213, note 2.
65. Fritz Stern, A German History in America, 1884-1984, AHR (1984):
131, 132.
66. Generation Exodus, 140.
67. I think here Laqueur refers to the younger generation, because
within the undifferentiated mass of refugees, perhaps the majority
share the contrary attitude. Generation Exodus, 290.
68. Laqueur, Thursday’s Child has far to go. A Memoir of the
Journeying Years, 1992.
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Author: Jorge M. Robert ([email protected])
Argentine-American attorney practicing Immigration Law in the state of
Florida since 1997. Amateur historian since 1969. Previous
publication: “James Monroe and the Three-To-Five Clause of the
Northwest Ordinance,” The Early American Review, vol. Summer/Fall
2001.
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