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
PART II: Introduction
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
Soon after the Nazis took power in 1933, the creative world described in Felix Gilbert's memoir collapsed. Those who had supported German democracy faced a choice between silence and repression, while Jews, of whatever their political persuasion, had to endure an ever-increasing constriction of their legal rights and social status. Michael Kater describes, in Chapter 4, how this process of political persecution and professional isolation affected left-wing and Jewish historians. But in order to understand the fate of these historians, it is also important to bear in mind that for most of the German historical profession nazism did not represent a sharp break with the past. The overwhelming majority of the members of the profession stayed at their posts, met their classes, did their research, and carried on with their lives. The Nazis evidently believed that these scholars represented no threat to their regime - and they were, of course, quite right. With very few exceptions, German historians remained silent as colleagues and students were driven from their midst. Some of them surely disapproved of what was happening, but they kept their disapproval to themselves. The Austrian story, as Fritz Fellner tells it in Chapter 7, has a somewhat different shape and chronology, but the conclusion is the same: Here too, the ranks of the profession closed again, after its dissenting members had either left or been expelled.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Interrupted PastGerman-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933, pp. 71 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991