They Fled Hitler's Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina

Southern Research Report #8 They Fled Hitler's Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina LSC Spring 1996 Academic Affairs Library Center for the Study of the American South IRSS Faculty Working Group in Southern Studies The silhouette on the cover is one of the earliest representa- tions of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cut by Mrs. William Hooper in 1814, it is part of the Graves Papers in the Southern Historical Collection. The original silhouette is on display in the Manuscripts Department, Wilson Library, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Department houses not only the Southern Histori- cal Collection, but also the University Archives. This publications was made possible with support from: Randleigh Foundation Trust Kenan Foundations Southern Historical Collection Southern Research Report #8 They Fled Hitler's Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina Editors Henry A. Landsberger Christoph E. Schweitzer Photo Editor Frances B. Schultzberg Spring 1996 Academic Affairs Library Center for the Study of the American South IRSS Faculty Working Group in Southern Studies Prepared for the Academic Affairs Library Center for the Study of the American South Faculty Working Group in Southern Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill With support from the North Carolina Humanities Council German Academic Exchange Service Randleigh Foundation Trust Southern Historical Collection Please send inquiries to David Moltke-Hansen [email protected] CB# 3926, Wilson Library University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890 THEY FLED HITLER'S GERMANY AND FOUND REFUGE IN NORTH CAROLINA Henry A. Landsberger and Christoph E. Schweitzer, Editors Frances B. Schultzberg, Photo Editor Preface 7 Introduction by Christoph E. Schweitzer and Henry A. Landsberger 9 America and North Carolina Respond by Henry A. Landsberger 11 Duke University Opens its Doors by William E. King 25 Ernst Moritz Manasse: A Black College Welcomes a Refugee by Christoph E. Schweitzer 41 Welcoming the New Arrivals to Chapel Hill by Edward M. Bernstein 51 Carolina Vignettes: Alfred T. Brauer, mathematician by Henry A. Landsberger 61 W. David Falk, philosopher by Jeanette L. Falk 69 Ernst Morwitz, German literature by Sidney R. Smith 75 Clemens Sommer, art historian by Joseph C. Sloane 83 The Arts: Justus Bier, Second Director, N.C. Museum of Art by Margret Kentgens-Craig 91 Edith London, painter by Henry A. Landsberger 105 Black Mountain College & its Cosmopolitan Faculty by Mary Emma Harris 115 Edward Danzinger - Papa D by James Shumaker 135 List of Contributors 141 Illustrations Frank Porter Graham 13 William Few 26 William Stern 31 Fritz London 35 Ernst Moritz Manasse 42 Ernst Moritz Manasse 45 Ernst Moritz Manasse, in study, after retirement 47 Edward Bernstein 53 Edward Bernstein, with economics faculty 55 Edward Bernstein, with wife Edith 58 Alfred Brauer 62 David Falk, with students 70 Clemens Sommer, in faculty meeting 85 Clemens Sommer 88 Justus Bier 92 Edith London 107 Josef Albers 117 Anni Albers 118 Josef Albers 120 Josef Albers 123 Heinrich Jalowetz 125 Edward Danzinger 136 Mrs. Roosevelt at Danzinger's 137 Edward Danzinger, Papa D 139 Preface The fiftieth anniversaries of different World War II events have helped open the floodgates to memories by participants and sparked questions by members of younger generations. Most North Carolinians do not know that their state received war refugees or that many of these brought distinguished reputa- tions with them and contributed significantly to their adopted home. This issue of the Southern Research Report bears witness to this neglected chapter in North Carolina's World War II history. Drawn from an exhibition and conference funded in part by the North Carolina Humanities Council, They Fled Hitler's Germany is published with additional support from the Coun- cil and with significant funding from the German Academic Exchange Service. The Randleigh Foundation Trust supports the entire Southern Research Report series and the Center for the Study of the American South staff ably brought this issue to production, thanks to funding from the Office of the Provost and the William Rand Kenan Trust. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/theyfledhitlersgOOIand Introduction by Christoph E. Schweitzer and Henry A. Landsberger The idea for the essays in this volume goes back to a symposium held on March 18 and 19, 1994 under the auspices of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the Uni- versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in connection with the University's Bicentennial Observance. Siegfried Mews, chair of the department at the time, and Christoph E. Schweitzer, a retired member of the department and one of the editors of this volume, organized a two-day symposium on "The German Pres- ence in North Carolina: Past and Present". One of its panels, entitled "They left Hitler's Germany," was chaired by Henry A. Landsberger of the University's Department of Sociology, the other editor. Landsberger and Schweitzer soon agreed that the papers presented on the panel dealing with refugees from Nazi Germany, if expanded and supplemented by a further set of specially commissioned papers, should be preserved in print. They began to prepare a collection of essays with the title "They fled Hitler's Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina" and were delighted when both the North Carolina Humanities Council and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) pledged their support for both a much enlarged symposium on the topic and the preparation and printing of the collection of papers resulting from it. The symposium was sponsored by the Cultural Develop- ment Committee of the Durham/Chapel Hill Jewish Federa- tion and was held on the evening of Sunday, April 23, 1995 at Judea Reform Synagogue in Durham, just a year after the original panel. An audience of well over one hundred persons of widely diffferent backgrounds and affiliations attended the widely publicized event which began, an hour and a half before the symposium itself, with the opening of an impressive exhibit of photographs of the refugees featured in the various symposium papers. The exhibit was organized by Frances B. Schultzberg, an artist and experienced organizer of exhibitions, and a selection from her exhibit is included in this volume. They Fled Hitler's Germany With this volume, we want to pay tribute not only to those who came here as refugees and had to rebuild their interrupted lives and careers in an environment, and a language, very different from that to which they had been accustomed. We want to pay tribute also to those many North Carolinians whose con- cern for these refugees and whose efforts on their behalf made it possible for them to settle here. In all probability, many more persons were helpful than those named in the various essays and even when the name and some detail of what these helpers did are known, there is often insufficient documentation to do them full justice. Nor do the refugees whose fate is described in this volume encompass all those who settled here. With the ex- ception noted below, we decided to focus this volume prima- rily on those who had arrived here in the 1930s and 1940s and contributed to the academic and artistic life in the Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh area. However, given the importance of the presence of refugees from Nazi Germany at Black Moun- tain College, we asked Mary Emma Harris to contribute a pa- per on that aspect of the history of that famous college. We wish to thank Bert Chessin, chair of the Cultural De- velopment Committee of the Durham/Chapel Hill Jewish Fed- eration for the support he gave the project from its initial stage to the printing of this volume. The contribution of the German Academic Exchange Service, University of North Carolina's Bi- centennial Observance Committee and of the North Carolina Humanities Council, especially its program diretor, Dr. Harlan Gradin, made the preparation of the book and its printing possible. We are most grateful to David Moltke-Hansen for having accepted the collection as "Southern Research Report #8." Henry A. Landsberger Christoph E. Schweitzer They Fled Hitler's Germany 10 1 America and North Carolina Respond by Henry A. Landsberger I. Introduction In the first months of 1995. we commemorated the 5C" anniver- sary of the liberation of the extermination- and concentration camps in 1945: of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January of that year; of Buchenwald in March; then of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Ravensbrueck and others. But it was eleven years earlier, in 1934, that an event less tinged with sorrow took place, one symboli- cally similar to what we commemorate in this volume. For it was in 1934 that the "University in Exile" for displaced German scholars in the social sciences and humanities, later to become the Graduate Faculty of the Xew School for Social Research was founded in Xew York City by the School's then director. Alvin Johnson. Johnson, a legendary progressive at the university level and a friend of John Dewey's, had a special interest in the more innovative trends in German academia toward which major figures on the academic scene in the United States had steadily looked ever since the end of the last century. Jews were heavily represented in these innovative, progressive trends: for example, among the neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt School of sociology and philosophy, as well as in socially-oriented psycho- analytic thinking. And just one year earlier, in May 1933. Xew York University's Institute of Fine Arts had given a permanent faculty position to its first art historian, the distinguished Erwin Panofsky. already on leave there from the University of Ham- burg.

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