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 and Generational Conflict, Raising Citizens in the “Century of the Child”: 1955–1975 Child-Rearing in the 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 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 , 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. | —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 HistoricalWissenschaft : 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, , and 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, , 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 historians remained an important topic. Catherine Epstein did research on the biographies and bibliographies of all of the members of the first generation. In

– xi – xii | Hartmut Lehmann and James J. Sheehan

1993, she published her findings in a “Catalog of German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933” under the title A Past Renewed. Sybille Quack dealt with “Women Refugees of the Nazi Period”; her collected volume was published in 1995 under the title Between Sorrow and Strength. Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb, herself a member of the second generation, investigated the special destiny and academic role of “Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges,” and in 1993 published her results in a book with the title From Swastika to Jim Crow. We had always hoped to examine the achievements of the second generation of émigrés. But it was not until the fall of 2007 that we came back to this project, when we had a chance to meet in Berkeley. But how to go ahead? Both of us had officially retired. Fortunately, Andreas Daum, a former member of the German Historical Institute and now a professor of history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, took a strong interest in our project. As successor of Georg Iggers at Buffalo, yet another member of the second generation, he was well acquainted with the topic. Without his generous support, tactful persistence, conceptual ideas, and organizational skills, we would not have succeeded. In May 2012, we joined with Andreas Daum to bring together members of the second generation and other historians at an international conference, which quite appropriately became part of the German Historical Institute’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations. This is the place to express our gratitude. We thank the Academic Advisory Council of the German Historical Institute for supporting our plan, and the Institute’s director, Professor Hartmut Berghoff, for offering us the Institute’s premises and for taking an active part in the project’s organization. Our thanks go to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation as well as the ZEIT Foundation– Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius for their generous support. We thank our colleagues from the United States, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, and Israel who pro- vided intriguing contributions. We are especially grateful to the members of the second generation who came to Washington and shared their memories with us; these are a treasured part of this book. In many ways, this book goes beyond its origins and now presents—recom- posed and enriched by additional contributions—the first systematic exploration of the second generation from a multitude of perspectives, including substantial and new biographical research. We are grateful to Marion Berghahn for accept- ing this endeavor for publication. Above all, we want to use this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to Andreas Daum. His tireless efforts made the entire project and this volume possible.

Hartmut Lehmann, Kiel James J. Sheehan, Stanford

Hartmut Lehmann taught as a professor of modern history at the University of Kiel since 1969. He was the founding Director of the German Historical Preface | xiii

Institute in Washington, DC (1987-93) and served as director at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen from 1993 to 2004. He was also a research fel- low at the University of Chicago, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Princeton University, the Australian National University in Canberra, and Har- vard University. Recent publications include Die Entzauberung der Welt. Studien zu Themen von Max Weber (2009), Religiöse Erweckung in gottferner Zeit. Studien zur Pietismusforschung (2010), Luthergedächtnis 1817–2017 (2012), Das Chris- tentum im 20. Jahrhundert. Fragen, Probleme, Perspektiven (22012).

James J. Sheehan is Dickason Professor in the Humanities and Professor of His- tory Emeritus at Stanford University. He has written five books, most recently Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe. He edited, with Hartmut Lehmann, An Interrupted Past: German-Speaking Refugee Histori- ans in the United States after 1933. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Orden Pour le Mérite. In 2005 he served as president of the American Historical Association.

Introduction

Refugees From Nazi Germany as Historians Origins and Migrations, Interests and Identities

Andreas W. Daum S

This book deals with the biographies, scholarly oeuvres, and intellectual interests of men and women who were both professional historians and, in a particu- lar sense, “participants” in history.1 They were born in the early twentieth cen- tury and grew up in Germany or the surrounding German-speaking territories usurped by the National Socialist regime before 1939. At a young age, they were forced to leave the so-called Third Reich and escaped to other countries. The families of these young refugees reacted to the discrimination and terror that the Nazis imposed on them. They were no longer wanted in Germany. With few exceptions, they were targeted as . In contrast to the older, first generation of émigrés2 who fled the Nazi dictatorship after their university training had been completed, members of the younger, or second, generation acquired their academic degrees after their emigration and in the English-speaking world. Our volume concentrates on this younger cohort, specifically those who ultimately settled, or spent the bulk of their career, in North America; we also cast a look at England and Israel. In this second generation we encounter historians who lost their parents and family members in the Holocaust as well as scholars who escaped the Nazis via a Kindertransport (children’s transport) abroad. We find one historian who was still a baby when his parents brought him to Shanghai, and another who parachuted as a U.S. soldier into Normandy in June 1944, seven years after his escape from Germany.3 The second generation includes others who spent years in France, New Zealand, Bolivia, and Mexico before they found a home in America. They all demonstrated a remarkable persistence in moving on after their escape from

Notes from this chapter begin on page 40.