The Second Generation Studies in German History Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C
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The Second Generation Studies in German History Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. General Editors: Hartmut Berghoff, Director of the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. Uwe Spiekermann, Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. Volume 1 Volume 11 Nature in German History The East German State and the Catholic Church, Edited by Christof Mauch 1945–1989 Volume 2 Bernd Schaefer Coping with the Nazi Past: West German Debates Volume 12 on Nazism and Generational Conflict, Raising Citizens in the “Century of the Child”: 1955–1975 Child-Rearing in the United States and German Edited by Philipp Gassert and Alan E. Steinweis Central Europe in Comparative Perspective Volume 3 Edited by Dirk Schumann Adolf Cluss, Architect: From Germany to America Volume 13 Edited by Alan Lessoff and Christof Mauch The Plans that Failed: An Economic History of the Volume 4 GDR Two Lives in Uncertain Times: Facing the André Steiner Challenges of the 20th Century as Scholars Volume 14 and Citizens Max Liebermann and International Modernism: An Wilma Iggers and Georg Iggers Artist’s Career from Empire to Third Reich Volume 5 Edited by Marion Deshmukh, Françoise Forster- Driving Germany: The Landscape of the German Hahn and Barbara Gaehtgens Autobahn, 1930–1970 Volume 15 Thomas Zeller Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, Volume 6 1250–1914 The Pleasure of a Surplus Income: Part-Time Edited by Mischa Honeck, Martin Klimke, and Work, Gender Politics, and Social Change in West Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov Germany, 1955–1969 Volume 16 Christine von Oertzen Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany Volume 7 Edited by Richard F. Wetzell Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: Volume 17 The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Encounters with Modernity: The Catholic Church in Germany the Federal Republic, 1945-1975 Edited by Alon Confino, Paul Betts and Dirk Benjamin Ziemann Schumann Volume 18 Volume 8 Fellow Tribesmen: The Image of Native Americans, Nature of the Miracle Years: Conservation in West National Identity, and Nazi Ideology in Germany Germany, 1945–1975 Frank Usbeck Sandra Chaney Volume 19 Volume 9 The Respectable Career of Fritz K: The Making and Biography between Structure and Agency: Central Remaking of a Provincial Nazi Leader European Lives in International Historiography Hartmut Berghoff and Cornelia Rauh Edited by Volker R. Berghahn and Translated by Casey Butterfield Simone Lässig Volume 20 Volume 10 The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918– Germany as Historians 1933: Battle for the Streets and Fears of Civil War Edited by Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, Dirk Schumann and James J. Sheehan THE SECOND GENERATION Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians With a Biobibliographic Guide S Edited by Andreas W. Daum Hartmut Lehmann and James J. Sheehan berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com First published in 2016 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2016 Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, and James J. Sheehan All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Daum, Andreas W. | Lehmann, Hartmut, 1936- | Sheehan, James J. Title: The second generation : Émigrés from Nazi Germany as historians / edited by Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, and James J. Sheehan. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2016. | Series: Studies in German history ; volume 20 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015033832| ISBN 9781782389859 (hardback : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781782389934 (ebook)- Subjects: LCSH: Germany—Historiography—Philosophy. | Historiography— Philosophy. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Historiography—Philosophy. | Historians—Biography. | Intergenerational relations. | Immigrants—Biography. | Political refugees—Biography. | German Americans—Biography. | Germans— Foreign countries—Biography. | Germany—History—1933–1945—Biography. Classification: LCC DD86 .S53 2016 | DDC 907.2/02331—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015033832 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78238-985-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78238-993-4 (ebook) CONTENts List of Tables ix Preface xi Hartmut Lehmann and James J. Sheehan INTRODUCTION Refugees from Nazi Germany as Historians: Origins and Migrations, Interests and Identities 1 Andreas W. Daum PART I. TESTIMONIES 1. It Hardly Needs Emphasis That My Own Generation, the Second, Is Deeply Indebted to the First 55 Klemens von Klemperer 2. “A Wanderer between Several Worlds” 59 Walter Laqueur 3. External Events, Inner Drives 72 Peter Paret 4. Not Exile, But a New Life 79 Fritz Stern 5. History and Social Action beyond National and Continental Borders 82 Georg G. Iggers 6. Some Issues and Experiences in German-American Scholarly Relations 97 Gerhard L. Weinberg 7. Some Reflections on the Second Generation 102 Hanna Holborn Gray – v – vi | Contents 8. A Life between Homelands 114 Peter Loewenberg 9. Out of Germany 130 Renate Bridenthal PART II. APPROACHING THE SECOND GENERATION 10. The Second Generation: Émigré Historians of Modern Germany in Postwar America 143 Catherine Epstein 11. Thinking about the Second Generation Conceptually 152 Volker R. Berghahn PART III. ÉMIGRÉS AND THE WRITING OF HISTORY 12. The Tensions of Historical Wissenschaft: The Émigré Historians and the Making of German Cultural History 177 Steven E. Aschheim 13. From the Margins to the Mainstream: Refugees and the Successors on the Jewish Question, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust in German History 197 Jeffrey Herf 14. Reluctant Return: Peter Gay and the Cosmopolitan Work of a Historian 210 Helmut Walser Smith 15. Out of the Limelight or In: Raul Hilberg, Gerhard Weinberg, Henry Friedlander, and the Historical Study of the Holocaust 229 Doris L. Bergen 16. Blazing New Paths in Historiography: “Refugee Effect” and American Experience in the Professional Trajectory of Gerda Lerner 244 Marjorie Lamberti PART IV. COMPARATIVE AND TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES 17. German Émigré Historians in Israel 261 Shulamit Volkov Contents | vii 18. German and Austrian Émigré Historians in Britain after 1933 271 Peter Alter 19. The Second-Generation Émigrés’ Impact on German Historiography 287 Philipp Stelzel 20. Encounters with Émigré Historians of the First and Second Generation 304 Gerhard A. Ritter 21. Influences: A Personal Comment 318 Jürgen Kocka PART V. BIOBIBLIOGRAPHIC GUIDE 22. Émigrés in the Historical Disciplines: Research Perspectives 327 Andreas W. Daum 23. Biographies 339 Andreas W. Daum and Sherry L. Föhr 24. Selected Bibliography 454 Index 463 TABLES 1. Second-Generation Émigrés as Historians in North America (107) 33 2. The Second Generation: Year of Escape/Emigration and Age at That Time 36 3. Émigré Historians of the First Generation in North America (98) 37 – ix – PREFACE In 1973–74, Felix Gilbert invited us to spend a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. We occupied adjoining studies where we pursued our indi- vidual projects, but there was ample time to talk during the tea break in the morning and the coffee hour in the afternoon. Felix Gilbert, the most learned of Friedrich Meinecke’s many Doktoranden, was generous with his time. He seemed to like the idea that two young historians, who could have been his children, one from the United States and one from Germany, one from the country of his origins and one from the country to which he now belonged, began an intensive exchange of ideas and became friends. Felix Gilbert belonged to that great generation of German historians who had completed their education in Germany and were forced into exile by the Nazis. When Hartmut Lehmann became the founding director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, he chose this generation as the subject of the institute’s first scholarly conference, held in December 1988. Organized with the help of James Sheehan, it had three aims: first, to explore this important chapter in the relationship between German and American history and histori- ans; second, to celebrate the scholarly achievements of these émigré scholars; and finally, to establish an agenda for the Institute’s scholarly activities for the next several years. This conference on “German-Speaking Refugee Historians” was a moving experience. Of the émigré historians who had received their doctorate in Ger- many prior to 1933, several were able to attend, including Felix Gilbert. In addi- tion, there were members of the second generation: historians who had been born in Germany, were forced into exile as children, and then studied and pur- sued their careers at American universities. In some cases, children of both of these cohorts were present, among them, for example, Catherine Epstein, daugh- ter of Klaus Epstein and granddaughter of Fritz Epstein. In 1988, members of all three generations were able to meet and share their very different academic and personal experiences. Three years later, in 1991, we published the proceedings in a book titled An Interrupted Past. During the German Historical Institute’s first decade, the history of émigré