Hjerneflugt. Tyske emigranthistorikere i skyggen af nazismen

Resumé

Brain Drain German Refugee Historians in the Shadow of Nazism

The National Socialist rise to power in Germany in 1933 was followed by an effective Gleichschaltung of German society. There was room for neither left wing sympathizers nor Jews in the new Nazi state. The result was a massive emigration of intellectuals of all kinds. This veritable brain drain had serious consequences for Germany's leading position in the arts and sciences. Most of these emigrants eventually ended up in the United States; some of them returned after the war, but many of them stayed and became American citizens. The article concentrates on a very small group of emigrants: the historians.

German history even during the Weimar Republic was a highly national discipline, dominated by national-conservative non-Jewish professors, although none had joined the NSDAP before 1933. This set history apart from most other university disciplines. Mostly young, untenured historians emigrated, and very few returned after the war. The article describes the problems that met these immigrants in the US. Those who became teachers at American Universities contributed greatly to the education of American specialists in German history.

The careers of three emigrant historians, who all made their marks on the study of German history in either the US or Germany after the war, are selected for further analysis: Hajo Holborn, Hans Rosenberg and Hans Rothfels. Rothfels, who before the war was a prominent young national-conservative (but Jewish) professor, was the only one of the three to return. His political leanings fit perfectly into the conservative climate of post-war Germany and he became one of the most influential historians of the young Bundesrepublik. But would a return of the younger, more progressive historians like Holborn and Rosenberg and others have made any difference to German historical scholarship? One can only speculate.