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Purges in Comparative Perspective: Rules for Exclusion and Inclusion in the Scientific Communityunder Political Pressure

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Purges in Comparative Perspective: Rules for Exclusion and Inclusion in the Scientific Communityunder Political Pressure Purges in Comparative Perspective: Rules for Exclusion and Inclusion in the Scientific Communityunder Political Pressure Richard Beyler,Alexei Kojevnikov,and Jessica Wang* ABSTRACT During the intense political upheavalthat dominatedthe middle decades of the twentiethcentury, modem states intensifiedtheir drives to disciplinebroad sectors of society and ensuretheir political reliability.Subjected to such pressures,scien- tific institutionsfaced the challenge of admittingnew, officially mandatedcriteria into the regulationof scientificlife. We examinethe effects of these policies on the KaiserWilhelm Society in NationalSocialist Germany,the Max PlanckSociety in occupied Germanyafter 1945, the USSR Academy of Sciences throughoutthe Stalinera, and the NationalAcademy of Sciences in early cold warAmerica. In all these cases, while academicelites largelyaccepted the requiredradical changes in the rules for membershipin the scientificcommunity, they also soughtto manipu- late the processto theirown institutionaladvantage. INTRODUCTION The relationship between state power and professional autonomy has long constituted a major theme in the history of science. Throughout the eras of turmoil that defined their respective nations' politics from the 1930s through the 1950s, the states in Ger- many, the Soviet Union, and the United States became obsessively, at times para- noically, preoccupied with defining and adjudicating their citizens' political, ethnic, or moral acceptability. These concerns frequently resulted in purges from scientific institutions of persons deemed undesirable: "non-Aryans," communists, and social- ists in National Socialist Germany; "bourgeois experts" and "cosmopolites" in Stal- inist Russia; "communist sympathizers" and "subversives" in cold war America. Purges of this kind have often been understood as morality plays, with an under- standable emphasis on the victimization of the innocent by the repressive state. In what follows, we attempt to broaden the discussion by going beyond the phenomenon of purges as such. Instead, we examine changes in the rules for inclusion in, and *Richard Beyler, History Department, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207; [email protected] Kojevnikov, History Department, University of Georgia,235 LeconteHall, Athens,GA 30602; [email protected]. Jessica Wang, History Department, UCLA, Box 147303, LosAngeles, CA 90095;[email protected]. The authorswish to thankthe membersand staff of the ForschungsprogrammzurGeschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaftim Nationalsozialismusfor theirgenerously helpful advice and for stim- ulating discussions, as well as two anonymousreferees for theirclarifying comments. Translations are ours unless otherwisenoted. ?2005 by TheHistory of ScienceSociety. All rightsreserved. 0369-7827/05/2001-0002$10.00 OSIRIS2005, 20: 23-48 23 24 RICHARDBEYLER, ALEXEI KOJEVNIKOV,AND JESSICAWANG exclusion from, the scientificcommunity and the ways these changes redefinedrela- tionships between individual scientists, scientific institutions,and their respective statesin the KaiserWilhelm Society (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft,KWG), the USSR Academy of Sciences (AoS), the AmericanNational Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the Max PlanckSociety (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft,MPG), the KWG'spostwar successor. Scientists, like membersof any other sector of society, have formaland informal rulesfor regulatinggroup membership that help establishand maintain their commu- nity's social structuresand identity.During times of political turmoilin the thirties, forties,and fifties, as statesattempted to bindscience moreclosely to theirdefinitions of nationalinterests and ideology, scientific organizationsfaced difficult decisions abouthow to reconcileprofessional autonomy and ethical principleswith visions of science's nationalimportance. The KWG, the AoS, the NAS, and the MPG, as aca- demic societies with formal governmentalties, mediatedbetween the state and the scientificcommunity over the new boundaryrules, in a complex process of negotia- tion involvingboth coercion and collaboration. In some ways, the societies occupiedsimilar positions in theirrespective countries. All of them claimed to comprise in their membershipstheir nations' most accom- plishedresearchers and thus to represent,formally or informally,the publicface of the scientific elite. They all possessed high-level political connectionsand chartersthat specified in legal terms their relationshipswith, and obligationsto, their respective states.Yet the societies differedconsiderably in their core functions,organizational forms, and administrativeobligations and faced differentkinds and degreesof politi- cal pressure.While a comparativeexamination must acknowledgethe significanceof those differences,it also providesan opportunityto overcome,at least somewhat,the historiographicalinsularity that has sometimes affected treatmentsof these events. For all the markedlydisparate conceptions of nationalidentity and the considerable differencesin severityof the purges(e.g., loss of statusvs. physicalviolence), it is still possible to recognize some common institutionalreactions. The history of political repressionis repletewith inhumanityand tragedy,but science as an institutioncan- not be understoodmerely as a passive victimof externalpower. Academic institutions caughtup in turbulentpolitical conditionssought to maintain,as well as they could, traditionalpatterns of internalauthority and to collaboratewith externalauthority. In importantrespects, the KWG, the AoS, and the NAS triedto uphold,and when pos- sible to manipulate,a mutuallybeneficial pact with theirrespective states. THE KAISERWILHELM SOCIETY IN NATIONALSOCIALIST GERMANY The NationalSocialists' vision for a new Germanydepended upon the purificationof the Volkcommunity by exclusion of whole categories of people deemed undesir- able-not only Jews as definedby NationalSocialist racialideology but also politi- cal opponents.Ultimately, this policy resultedin genocide;the "FinalSolution," how- ever, did not appearovernight. Exclusionary measures began in early 1933; the Law for the Restorationof the CareerCivil Service, promulgatedon April 7, provedpar- ticularlysignificant for the scientificcommunity. Its thirdparagraph ordered the dis- missal of persons"not of Aryandescent" (defined as havingat least one Jewishgrand- parent), though there were exemptions for anyone who had been in office since August 1914 or before, who had done combat service in the world war, or whose PURGESIN COMPARATIVEPERSPECTIVE 25 fatheror son had died in that war. (Later,especially after passage of the so-called NurembergLaws of 1935, the statusof "non-Aryans"became even moreuntenable.) Paragraphfour allowed for dismissal of persons "whose priorpolitical activitydoes not offer confidencethat they will be always unreservedlyin supportof the national state."Although this meantabove all Communistsor Social Democrats,it could be interpretedmore flexibly. Employment termination procedures were spelledout in de- tail, particularlyas applicableto the special legal statusof Beamten,that is, officials with tenuredappointments.' The administrationof the KaiserWilhelm Society generally,if unenthusiastically, compliedwith these new mandates,though it also practicedselective noncooperation. For some individuals,the KWG was able to at least defer implementationof the law because of its intricacies.Certain Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes (KWIs) could avoid the law altogetheras the majorityof their fundingcame from nongovernmentalsources (such as industrydonations and privateendowments).2 For the most part,however, dismissalswere carriedout in a bureaucraticallycorrect fashion. The KWG soon im- plementedroutine procedures: workers submitted questionnaires on ancestryand po- litical affiliationsto institutedirectors, who sent themon to the KWGadministration, which in turnreported to the supervisingministries. When necessary, the administra- tion admonishedthe directorsto have theirquestionnaires returned.3 Even if no dis- missals were necessary, administratorsconsidered it importantto have complete paperwork.As GeneralDirector FriedrichGlum wrote to FriedrichKorber at the Institutefor Iron Research,which apparentlyhad no Jews on its roster,it would be useful to have proof that there was "atleast one KaiserWilhelm Institute which had employed ... no non-Aryans."4When dismissals were necessary,the KWGcarefully terminatedemployment on the date fixedby the law (e.g., holdersof fellowshipswere allowedto continueuntil these fundsran out) and followed regulationsfor severance pay to the letter.In a few cases, dismissals were appealedby local branchesof the NSDAP-affiliatedlabor union, which cast the KWG as the agent of centralizedstate policies.5 This patternof self-coordination,in which the KaiserWilhelm Society becamethe instrumentof the state'sexclusionary mandates (with some notableexceptions), was partlythe productof improvisedreactions to NationalSocialist initiatives.Yet it also reflecteda consensusin the top levels of the KWGabout the importanceof maximiz- ing professionalautonomy in personneldecisions, even if new criteriahad to be taken into account.6The KWGthus attempted to preserve,when possible, the outlinesof its "Gesetzzur Wiederherstellungdes Berufsbeamtentums,"Reichsgesetzblatt, 7 April 1933, copy in I Abt., Rep. 1A, Nr. 544, folder 1, Archiv zurGeschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft(hereafter cited as MPGA), Berlin. 2 Namely the Institutesfor Chemistry,Iron Research,Coal Research(Miilheim),
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