Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I: Introduction
- 1 German and American Historiography in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- 2 German Historiography during the Weimar Republic and the Émigré Historians
- 3 The Historical Seminar of the University of Berlin in the Twenties
- PART II: Introduction
- 4 Refugee Historians in America: Preemigration Germany to 1939
- 5 “Uphill Work”: The German Refugee Historians and American Institutions of Higher Learning
- 6 Everyday Life and Emigration: The Role of Women
- 7 The Special Case of Austrian Refugee Historians
- 8 Schicksalsgeschichte: Refugee Historians in the United States
- 9 German Historians in the Office of Strategic Services
- 10 The Refugee Scholar as Intellectual Educator: A Student's Recollections
- PART III: Introduction
- 11 German Émigré Historians in America: The Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies
- 12 The Americanization of Hajo Holborn
- 13 Explaining History: Hans Rosenberg
- 14 Ernst Kantorowicz and Theodor E. Mommsen
- 15 Refugee Historians and the German Historical Profession between 1950 and 1970
- Conclusion
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I: Introduction
- 1 German and American Historiography in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- 2 German Historiography during the Weimar Republic and the Émigré Historians
- 3 The Historical Seminar of the University of Berlin in the Twenties
- PART II: Introduction
- 4 Refugee Historians in America: Preemigration Germany to 1939
- 5 “Uphill Work”: The German Refugee Historians and American Institutions of Higher Learning
- 6 Everyday Life and Emigration: The Role of Women
- 7 The Special Case of Austrian Refugee Historians
- 8 Schicksalsgeschichte: Refugee Historians in the United States
- 9 German Historians in the Office of Strategic Services
- 10 The Refugee Scholar as Intellectual Educator: A Student's Recollections
- PART III: Introduction
- 11 German Émigré Historians in America: The Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies
- 12 The Americanization of Hajo Holborn
- 13 Explaining History: Hans Rosenberg
- 14 Ernst Kantorowicz and Theodor E. Mommsen
- 15 Refugee Historians and the German Historical Profession between 1950 and 1970
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
In 1959, philosopher Karl Löwith offered these reflections on his experiences as a refugee and on his homecoming:
After an absence of eighteen years I returned to Germany in 1952 and found that, despite all that had happened in the meantime, the situation in the universities was remarkably unchanged. Only later did I realize how little the emigration to a foreign country, the experience with other ways of thought, the destiny of history itself could change the character of an adult or of a nation. To be sure, one learned something and could not view the remains of old Europe as if one had never left. But one did not become a different person, even though one did not simply stay the same; one became what one is and within the limits of what one can be.
To what extent does Löwith's assessment hold true for the refugees to whom this book is devoted and to the historical profession to which some of them returned?
The first thing to be said about this question is that it has no single answer. As many of the preceding essays have shown, the character and fate of the refugees, their experience in America, and their relationship to Germany were all extremely diverse. A man like Hans Rothfels, probably the best-established of the refugees before 1933, stayed in Germany as long as he could and returned as soon as possible. His address to the meeting of German historians in 1949, which is described in Winfried Schulze's essay, was an expression of continuity rather than conversion. Rothfels was, as Schulze put it, “at home again.” Few other refugees found it so easy to go home again.
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- Chapter
- Information
- An Interrupted PastGerman-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933, pp. 226 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991