Some academic disciplines, such as philology and philosophy, dared to confront the origins and phenomena of National Socialism directly after 1943 1; using linguistic phenomena, they sought to denounce the brutality and inhumanity of the immediate past and its tendency to live on in the public consciousness. But a good decade elapsed before the historical, political, social, economic, and psychological causes of antisernitism were discussed and the first attempts to demythify Nazism appeared in print.
From 1945 to the mid-1950s a certain attitude, which Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno aptly characterized as "horrified talk of demonic powers," became symptomatic for the exclusion of the Nazi past and its prehistory. This kind of talk served "secretly as an apologia": "that which is supposed to be of irrational origin is withdrawn from rational consideration and magically, it is thus made into something which must simply be accepted".2
Therefore, it is not surprising that the first attempts at a rational and scientific confrontation with German anti-sernitism before and after 1933 came from those very persons who were affected by it, those who had been able to save themselves by going into exile, above all to the United States. Thus, it was not mainly historians or political scientists in the narrow sense-but rather psychologists, philosophers, and above all, social scientists- who at the beginning of the 1940s took up the critical investigation of antisemitism that had been interrupted in Germany in 1933.
For a start, Rudolph M. Loewenstein, a member of the New York Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Bruno Bettelheim, a professor of Education, Psychology, and Psychiatry, broke new ground with their contributions3 in the study of antisernitism as an individual or mass neurotic phenomenon. Moreover, the anthologies Jews in a Gentile World and Essays on Antisemitism,4 both published in the United States in 1942, combined the results of various social scientific studies and methods as well as the historical and sociological dimensions of the phenomenon. The decisive impulse for German historiography after 1945 emanated from the development of this social scientific research on antisemitism, especially from the research projects and publications that were carried on by the Institut ffir Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), which had emigrated from Frankfurt to the New School for Social Research in New York.
The word "antisemitism" was coined in Germany in 1879 and subsequently translated into other languages. We must distinguish between the "broader" and the "narrower" concepts of antisemitism.5 The former includes any hostility toward Jews in the course of the centuries and is independent of specific causes, manifestations, or functions of hatred for Jews. The latter, which is also called modern antisemitism, designates an ideology and a political movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that is historically and systematically different from the earlier hostility toward Jews. In antiquity and in the middle ages, expressions of the hostility of the non- Jewish majority to the Jewish minority extended from legal and social repression to open hatred and pogroms, often rooted in economic causes and motives. Modern antisemitism, however, was directed against the legal and social equality of the Jews and concretely pursued the prevention or abolition of their emancipation, which had been accomplished in Germany and other Central European countries in the middle of the nineteenth century.6
In Germany antisernitic theories were connected with a "pseudoscientific theory of race," and they established a "manichean interpretation of the world,"7 so that modern antisemitism was soon -more than a movement hostile to Jews" and for the repeal of emancipation; it represented an ideology (Weltanschauung),8 which was finally transformed into "practical politics and domination for the extermination of the Jews."9 Antisemitism as an ideology of domination and integration became part of official government policy with Hitler's seizure of power, and after the gradual removal of equal social and civil rights of Jews, it achieved a new dimension, aiming at the annihilation of Jews according to plan. If the bourgeois antisemitism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could still be considered a "diffuse ideology of protest" and an "antiliberal protest movement,"10 the (fascist) antisemitism of the National Socialist state must be characterized as an "antisemitism of extermination" (Silbermann).11
From the late eighteenth century one can point to a tradition of critical research on antisemitism in Germany based on the Enlightenment model. It analyzed causes, forms, and effects of the older type of hostility toward Jews. It opposed the prejudice that the causes of "Jew hatred" can be found in the behavior of Jewry itself. It also propagated the notion that Jews are to be seen as a "product of their history," and suggested that the solution of the "Jewish question" be sought in an improvement of the social and legal conditions and possibilities of their existence-through emancipation.12
While this theory was dominant until the conclusion of Jewish emancipation in, the middle of the nineteenth century, the period from the 1870s to the 1890s, brought new antisernitic theories in the train of modernization, economic crises, and social dislocations.13 These rejected any emancipation and adopted arguments based on racial theory14 in order to declare "Jewry the very principle of evil in world history"15 and to make Jews the scapegoat for contemporary abuses, crises, and conflicts in the social realm, both domestic and international. Thus, under the influence of racial theories, the "Jewish question" was robbed of its historical and social dimension and subjected to a naturalistic determinism, since racial theory tended to "dehumanize" history to some extent and to look at it exclusively from the perspective of natural science. Detached from reality, the theory of the incompatibility of "German" and "Jewish" types was propagated.16 Disconnected from any realistic image of Jews, "the Jew," in volkisch- antisemitic ideology, acquired a symbolic persona for all negative traits of society at that time, a figure contrasted with the "Germanic-German ideal type."17 To the "German nature" were ascribed the virtues of "respect for tradition, . . . reverence for the authorities desired by God," and "making individual desires secondary to the obligation to the community." In contrast, the "Jewish nature" was characterized by its "belief in the existence of general ideas, especially that of the equality of all human beings," and Jewish character was linked with the undesirable traits of "egotism, sordid self-interest," and was "asocial, ugly, slimy, and sensual."18
Starting in the late 1870s, modem antisemitism was used by the social and political ruling circles as a means to distract and manipulate, as, for example, with the Christian-Social Party of court chaplain Adolf Stoecker during the Bismarck period. In addition, in the 1890s the doctrine of volkisch-racial antisemitism was taken up by the peasant movements created by Hermann Ahlwardt and Otto Boeckel respectively in Pomerania and Hesse. Around the turn of the century it became part of the ideology of numerous associations and was widespread as an undercurrent of nationalism among the German bourgeoisie.
As early as the 1870s modern antisemitism challenged politicians and academics to take sharply defined positions and to train and enlighten the public on behalf of Jewish emancipation. The resulting political and scientific theories,19 which condemned antisernitic and racist doctrines and attempted to cut the ground from under daily antisernitic practices, proceeded from the position that Jew hatred on the one hand represented a centuries-old phenomenon but on the other had assumed a novel dimension when it became an instrument of current policy based on the foundation of racial theory. Like the proponents of emancipation at the end of the eighteenth century, opponents and critics of antisemitism at the end of the nineteenth century- except for a few liberals or Social Democrats-likewise stated that Jews were a product of society, marked by social, economic, and legal conditions, not determined by racial components, so that "the Jews taken on the average are no better and no worse than the so-called Christians."20
Insofar as there was a desire to preserve the emancipation of Jews and their integration into the wider society, as well as to pursue the removal of the abuses of the bourgeois economic and social order, a solution to the "Jewish question" and the obliteration of antisemitism seemed guaranteed; after all, according to this analysis, its devotees essentially consisted of the groups most threatened by the process of industrialization, namely, the small-scale industrialists, petit-bourgeoisie, and peasantry, whose economic existence was most endangered and who believed antisemitism would be their salvation.
It is true that the proponents of emancipation and the opponents of modern antisemitism offered an analysis of the function and outward form of modern antisemitism that to a large extent parallels the results of contemporary social scientific research. It is true that in their political engagement they pointed the way in regard to a critical theory and training that would immunize people against antisemitism. Yet essentially they all pursued only one model and thus in a certain sense an antipluralistic concept of the solution to the "Jewish question": They assumed that the integration of Jews and their total assimilation to the prevalent norms of the whole society would be a precondition for the conflict-free coexistence of Jews and non- Jews.21
Neither the political opponents of antisemitism in the nineteenth century22 nor the academic researchers of the twentieth century (who after World War I undertook analyses of this phenomenon with new methods and renewed strength), could imagine that antisemitism in Germany would be declared the official government policy and would have as its goal the annihilation of the Jews. In the 1920s the first interpretations were published from the disciplines of group sociology, social psychology, organizational history, and psychoanalysis;23 these continued and extended the tradition of critical research about antisemitism. This tradition was destroyed by the Nazi seizure of power in Germany and the persecution of Jews as well as the persecution of representatives of humanistic research.
The history of the Jews from 1918 to 1933 24 was characterized by contradictory developments: on the one hand their complete integration as citizens and the growing cultural significance of German Jews, and on the other hand their confrontation with emerging political forces that intended to destroy the republic as well as the Jews. Internally, Jewish life was equally full of tensions, exemplified by the conflicts between Zionists and anti-Zionists and between assimilated German Jews and East European immigrant Jews. These tensions promoted a crisis mentality within the Jewish community that was intensified by the economic and political instability of the Weimar Republic.
Until 1933 the demographic and vocational structure of German Jewry continued to exhibit trends that originated in the nineteenth century: a declining birth rate, an aging population, mixed marriages, concentration in large cities, flight from rural areas, and the immigration of East European Jews. As a response to latent or open antisemitism, German Jews sought to obtain academic positions and economic self-sufficiency, trends that also continued from the nineteenth century through the Weimar Republic. In 1933 approximately 46 percent of German Jews owned their own businesses, in comparison to 16.4 percent of the general population.25 Statistics from the year 1933, when five to ten percent of German Jews had already fled, reflect both the participation of Jews in academic professions (Table 1)26 and the social composition of the group that had emigrated (Table 2).
| Number of Jews | Percentage of the total respective occupational group |
|
| Lawyers and notaries | 3,030 | 16.2% |
| Judges | 286 | 2.7% |
| Physicians | 5,557 | 10.8% |
| Dentists | 1,041 | 8.6% |
| Editors, writers | 872 | 5.0% |
| Rabbis | 434 | - |
| University professors | 192 | 2.6% |
| High school teachers | 317 | 08% |
| Elementary school teachers | 1,323 | 0.5% |
| Private tutors | 461 | 4.3% |
| Percentage of all Jews in occupational group |
Percentage of the general population in occupational group |
|
| Trade and commerce | 61.3% | 19.4% |
| Academic, public or private service | 12.5% | 8.4% |
| Industrial, craftsmen | 23.1% | 40.4% |
| Agriculture and forestry | 1.7% | 28.9% |
| White collar jobs | 33.3% | 17.0% |
| Unskilled workers | 8.7% | 46.4% |
The social stratification of German Jews at the end of the Weimar Republic can be described as a small wealthy upper class, an extensive bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, and a not particularly strong East European Jewish working class.
The memoirs of German Jews published by Monika Richarz are witness to the fact that the Jewish population in Germany was neither homogeneous and isolated nor free of class conflicts,28 although compared to the United States the melting pot process had not even begun for the lower economic groups. While religion no longer played a significant role for many German Jews and the majority of Jews were culturally integrated as citizens, Jews nevertheless remained a "still clearly recognizable social group"29 in 1933. Jews were distinguished from the rest of the population by religion, tradition, heritage, social stratification, occupational structure, and demography. Individual social contacts between Jews and non-Jews did exist, and some German Jews, primarily intellectuals and academics, like those of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, denied their group identity as Jews; they considered themselves fully assimilated and played down both the problem of antisernitism and the problem of discrimination against Jews.30
According to more recent scholarly studies, a marked readiness of the Jewish consciousness to assimilate began yielding even in the nineteenth century to an even stronger desire for self-preservation. If the Zionists did not consider themselves Germans, but only German citizens, the representatives of Jews, such as, for example, members of the Centralverein, sought to preserve their Jewish identity and to harmonize it with their German identity. But these efforts were doomed to failure because the majority of the population, even opponents of any antisernitism such as left liberals and social democrats, still pursued the nineteenth-century expectations according to which Jews would give up their ethnic, cultural, and religious traditions and would integrate and fully assimilate into German society as a whole.
German Jews, at least in the years from 1933 to 1938, reacted to the government's policy of antisernitism with a strong will toward self-assertion and economic reintegration, and with a readiness to relearn and call upon Jewish values and traditions through the creation of Jewish self-help groups or by turning to Zionism. But the predominant reaction to Jewry's threatened existence was represented by emigration, i.e., a complete break with one's previous life.31
The group that decided on emigration immediately after the Nazi seizure of power was composed mainly of well-known artists, writers, and politicians, who were doubly endangered because they had been members of left-wing political parties and had already declared war against the right-wing groups that had threatened the legitimate state during the Weimar Republic. They were joined by a mass exodus in 1938-1939 of Jews whose very physical and economic existence was threatened. There were three main organizations that could help such emigrants: The Palestine Office for Emigration to Palestine, the Hilfsverein deutscher Juden for emigration to all other countries, and the Hauptstelle ffir judische Wanderfursorge for the repatriation or further emigration of foreign Jews in Germany.
The United States, Palestine, and Great Britain were the major nations to which refugees fled.32 Inside continental Europe, before the outbreak of war and German occupation, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland were the most frequent destinations of German refugees. Outside of Europe, several South American countries accepted refugees, although their economic and political cooperation with the so-called Axis powers often resulted in an expressly restrictive immigration policy, sometimes tinged with antisernitic overtones. Many of these countries were often considered only as "waiting rooms" for further flight to the United States, or they were accessible only with the help of bribes. A small number of persecuted Jews were admitted to Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Shanghai. But it is generally true that the possibilities for immigration were limited and became even more restricted, for various reasons, in the course of the 1930s and 1940s.33
Although Palestine held first place among the countries of immigration for German Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1935,34 this position was assumed by the United States after 1937. But even the United States had many rulings and restrictions that limited immigration from European countries threatened by the Nazis.35 Dating from the Immigration Act of 1924, a quota system for visas had been introduced, really "a system for limiting immigration,"36 which remained in force without any fundamental alterations until the end of World War II.
Aside from the special requirements for Asian nations and for North, Central, and South American countries, all other lands were declared "countries with quotas," from which a total of 150,000 people per annum could immigrate into the United States. The quota for Germany was 25,000 and for Austria 2,000 immigrants per year.37
The law divided visas into three categories:
1. Non-immigrant visas for tourists and those in transit;
2. Non-quota immigrant visas for clergy, professors, students on fellowships, former inhabitants of the United States, and relatives of so-called "qualifying individuals"; and
3. Quota immigrant visas which were subdivided into two groups:
a)Preferential visas for parents of United States citizens and wives and children of legal citizens under 20 years of age;
b) Normal immigration visas, which required applicants to show through numerous personal documents and proof of the so-called LPC clause ("likely to become a public charge") that they had Refugees and the Study of Antisemitism sufficient financial resources or means not to become wards of the state. If such proof could not be obtained as a prerequisite for immigration, so-called affidavits of support had to be supplied, which provided confirmation by friends or relatives in the United States that they would guarantee the immigration candidate's economic selfsupport and independence from public welfare. Such affidavits were also subjected to precise economic verification.38
Although there were some family, friendship, and professional contacts between German and American Jews, and American Jewish rescue organizations guaranteed support for the immigrant on arrival and for resettlement, the quotas for Germany and Austria were not filled as late as 1938. This may also have contributed to the American policy of continuing these restrictions.
We can only speculate about the reasons that quotas were not filled. Existing literature suggests the following possibilities:39 - the difficulties of obtaining proof to satisfy the LPC clause;
- careful investigation of potential emigrants by the responsible consulates, which in turn caused long waiting periods;
- language barriers;
- long periods of time required to find relatives and friends in the United States, which was also made more difficult because of the geographic distance;
- restrictions and reservations against potential immigrants, because of intensified investigation of these immigrants by local and regional authorities who were worried by the bad economic situation of the United States; and
- the absence of intellectual contacts and mutual understanding between American and German Jews.
The statistical distribution of German and Austrian emigrants compared to their actual quota allowances reveals the following:40
| Total allowed quota: | 27,370 | 100 Percent |
| Immigration for 1933 | 1,450 | 5.3% |
| 1934 | 3,740 | 13.7% |
| 1935 | 5,530 | 20.2% |
| 1936 | 6,650 | 24.3% |
| 1937 | 11,520 | 42.1% |
| 1938 | 17,870 | 65.3% |
| 1939 | 27,370 | 100.0% |
| 1940 | 26,080 | 95.3% |
| 1941 | 13,050 | 47.7% |
| 1942 | 4,760 | 17.4% |
| 1943 | 1,290 | 4.7% |
| 1944 | 1,351 | 4.8% |
All attempts to move the American government to loosen its immigration laws failed throughout the 1930s, even after Jewish persecution in Germany had escalated following the pogrom of November 1938. In 1937 a few improvements in the LPC clause were introduced, but even the refugee conference at Evian in 1938 brought about no fundamental changes in immigration policy. When the rescue of German and other European victims of Nazi persecution became increasingly urgent and problematic after the outbreak of World War 11, a change in the quotas was still not achieved. President Roosevelt, however, convened an advisory council for political refugees, which was to suggest to the State Department the names of prominent and especially endangered refugees who should be allowed to immigrate; the responsible American consulate would then be permitted to issue an emergency visa with a minimum of delay. Even when Eleanor Roosevelt tried to assist these refugees and through her activities rescued several well-known writers, artists, and political figures,41 only about 2,000 of the approximately 4,000 names suggested by the Emergency Rescue Committee were actually issued visas.42
Despite such efforts, immigration statistics declined further in the 1940s, especially after American entry into the war increased the difficulties of obtaining visas and locating transportation; political motives also hampered what would otherwise have been a readiness to ease up on restrictive immigration. The American public and authorities began to feel that immigration had to be very carefully controlled so as to screen out the entrance of Nazi and communist agents into the United States and to eliminate any risk to government policy and the conduct of the war.43
A War Refugee Board was established in 1944 to ameliorate the requirements for immigration, so that more refugees could be saved. Nevertheless, those who have done research about exile are unanimous in criticizing American immigration law and practice for having been far from an adequate response to Nazi antisemitism, the extermination of the Jews, and the political persecution of those who opposed Nazism.44
The total number of refugees who fled from Germany and Austria to the United States between 1933 and 1945 is generally believed to be 250,000- 300,000; of these, 129,000-132,000 were Jewish. The number of Jews who came from all of continental Europe perhaps reached 160,000 people. 45 Although the German and Austrian refugees made many contributions to the struggle against European fascism during the war,46 they were often categorized as enemy aliens and hence frequently encountered xenophobia as well as antisemitic prejudices as they attempted economic resettlement and social integration.47
The German emigrants found that American Jews 49 consisted essentially of three groups:
1. Those Jews who had been colonists, whether of Sephardic or Ashkenazic background;
2. A large group of primarily German Jews who had left Europe in the 1880s and had been very successful economically in the United States. They had pursued upward social mobility and had assimilated to a large extent, forming their own exclusive stratum of the upper middle class. This group created the primary models for Jewish organizational and social life and supported, both financially and organizationally, the Jewish relief committees that assisted the resettlement of European and German refugees after 1933. But they were also considered to represent typically negative characteristics of an upper class.50
3. The third and largest group consisted of Eastern European immigrants, who had also arrived in the United States after 1880. Upon their arrival the first wave of antisemitism washed over the United States, a wave that may well have been influenced by the simultaneous appearance of antisemitism in Germany. Antisemitism, like xenophobia, was generally fed and strengthened by the isolationist policies of the 1920s and the problems of economic depression and unemployment during the 1930s.51 In contrast to the Jews of German background, Eastern European Jews formed an independent urban proletariat, who lived in crowded ghetto-like enclaves, primarily in the large East Coast cities, continued to use and cultivate the Yiddish language, and established a complex religious and cultural life. This independent proletariat met with the problems of a capitalistically organized labor market, which, under the influence of the Great Depression, was not free of bias against foreigners. In New York and other comparable big cities, a third of all Jews employed in textile manufacturing or similar branches of industry were unskilled workers; another third worked as employees in retail outlets, and 11.3 percent were in academic or intellectual professions.52
However, between 1900 and 1930 some economic and social upward mobility had already occurred: While in 1900 about 16 percent of all Jews were employed as factory laborers, this portion fell to 13-14 percent in 1930 throughout the United States. This economic process not only went hand in hand with a process of assimilation to Anglo-American language and culture, but also a process of acculturation could be discerned in the various groups and social classes of American Jewry during the 1930s and 1940s. Through contacts and marriages among the various original groups of immigrants, a new type emerged-the American Jew.53
Those Jews who had originally been religiously observant, especially those from Eastern Europe, often transferred their field of activity to the public sphere as politicians or union organizers but still felt that their cultural roots lay in the traditions of the old European Jewish centers. The majority of American Jews, despite their economic advancement and social integration, remained more aware of their cohesion as a group with ethnic loyalties than did the average representatives of German Jewry during the same period.
In contrast to the general population in Germany, Americans had several theories and models of integration or acculturation at their disposal:
-assimilation to Protestant Anglo-conformity which could be and also was used, however, as a way of discriminating against Catholics, Blacks, Orientals, and Jews;
-the melting pot theory, which proceeded from the assumption that American society represented a conflict-free melting of various ethnic cultures. But the realities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not conform to this theory, for even the three largest religious groups- Protestants, Catholics, and Jews-normally tended to five as homogeneous and self-contained groups;
-the model of cultural pluralism, theoretically based on a liberalism rooted in tolerance, which would come closest to a description of reality for Blacks, Catholics, and Jews, who for generations had lived in neighborly association and yet had social and familial relations only within each group. Even if, on the basis of this model, the development of a "healthy" national state and national sentiment 54 could be achieved, one must still consider that the reality of American society in the 1930s, when the first refugees from Nazism arrived, did not correspond to the ideal set forth in this theory of acculturation.
If one assumes that the integration of immigrants is facilitated when they are received and supported with sympathy and good win by members of their group that have already settled in the new country, one must then realize that the majority of German Americans did not absolutely condemn the Nazis and that among them, as in fact in other American ethnic groups, there was abundant evidence of nationalism, xenophobia, and antisernitism.55 This was expressed in the widespread support from almost all groups in the population for restrictive immigration policies.
As non-quota immigrants, German as well as European refugeesintellectuals, academics, teachers, professors, lawyers, judges, physicians, and scientists-were admitted in relatively large numbers to the United States.56 The social structure of this group of emigrants that tried to gain a foothold in the United States between 1933 and 1944 57 reveals an approximate congruence with the social structure of
German Jewry before 1933, 58 with a large proportion of professionals and academics noticeable in both groups.
J. Schebera asserted that "the greatest proportion of those fleeing to the United States ... [consisted] of Jewish business people, who were seeking a new livelihood in the United States and even in 1945 ... did not intend to return to Germany."59 But it was the refugee intellectuals who were most explicitly involved in the problems of integration into American society, its repercussions on intellectual life, and the intellectual and academic confrontation with Nazism and antisemitism in Germany after 1945.
Of the German-Austrian refugee group-two-thirds of whom were Jewish-a total of 7,622 entered as academics, and of these 2,352 were physicians, 1,090 teachers and professors, 811 attorneys, 682 journalists, 654 engineers. Those remaining consisted of musicians, artists, actors, writers, scientists, architects, clergymen, etc.60
Although detailed research on the occupational, economic, and social integration of the majority of refugees from Nazism is still lacking, one must proceed from the assumption that despite the support of Jewish welfare and relief organizations and German Jewish clubs in the United States 61, the immigrants experienced a loss of occupational and social status. Many who had previously belonged to the middle class and the educated were forced to secure their existence by working as household employees-butlers, cooks, gardeners-and as unskilled laborers and white-collar employees, especially since at first economic conditions and the labor market in the United States were still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression.
Language problems were an additional difficulty for almost all refugee groups;63 on the one hand this was a question of additional training or language learning, on the other a specific class problem, since the structure of German speech was completely different from Anglo-American norms, and most European immigrants cultivated a different mode of speech from the ethnic groups of large American cities with whom they had to work so closely.
During the economic upswing of 1940-1960 the majority of immigrants experienced gradual economic and social advancement. In 1940 the average weekly income of refugees in New York was $19 for academics, $23 for managers, $16 for unskilled workers, and $15 for service jobs (e.g., household workers). By 1946 the situation had already improved: male academics were now earning $79.60 a week (women $42.30), and many Jewish immigrants who had up to then worked as employees were able to make themselves independent. The entrepreneurial spirit of the Jewish refugees was not the only reason for their economic advancement and social integration; the financial help and support of welfare organizations, banks, and relatives also contributed.64
Among immigrants from all classes, intellectuals and academics had a special place, which in fact has been the focus of most exile research until this point.65 This group, unlike other refugees, encountered similar hardships at the beginning, although teachers in higher education who had been dismissed immediately in 1933 found integration the easiest, in contrast to artists and writers.66 Still, there were difficulties, for even in academic disciplines there was still tremendous unemployment in 1933;67 according to Alvin Johnson, head of the New School in New York, in 1933 about 5,000 holders of the doctorate degree were without jobs.68 Thus when German and European academics applied for professorships or for research positions, this may have aroused some resentment among young American academics, an attitude which in turn may have played a role in the restrictive behavior of organized medicine regarding the distribution of licenses to practice-aside from the problems of the variety of certifications of professional training and practical experience that were required.69
Even if one can assume that the refugees in the academic professions, compared to the average population, rarely encountered xenophobia, prejudice, and discrimination, certain requirements for their admission must be taken into account before accepting this assumption; for example, the requirement that only applicants between 30 and 58 years old could be employed at institutions of higher learning, so that there would not be any competition with young American academics.70
Of course the German and European professors profited from the relatively open and diverse American system of higher education (liberal arts colleges, technical schools, universities), but they too had to overcome language difficulties and language barriers and accustom themselves to completely new methods of teaching and relating to students.71 Language problems and the lack of opportunities to publish had the most severe effect on journalists and writers. In many cases there were problems as well for intellectuals and jurists, who, as attorneys, judges, and professors of law, had to become familiar not only with a new language but also with a new and fundamentally different legal system.72
German and Jewish refugees tended to settle in large cities, not only because they found more employment opportunities there, but also because they still found similar conditions of life to the countries they had left, even with all the differences between the structure and culture of European and American cities.73 Refugee scientists, artists, and intellectuals concentrated in East Coast centers, and later also in California, both of which offered them museums, research laboratories, and employment opportunities at universities.
Besides the Jewish welfare organizations and the German Jewish clubs, and aside from private donors, the following organizations primarily assisted the integration and resettlement of German and Jewish academics: the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Oberlander Trust, the American Committee for Intellectual Refugees, and the New School for Social Research.
The Emergency Committee, founded in 1933 under the chairmanship of Stephen Duggan, tried to rescue the knowledge and the research talents of scientists who had been driven from Europe by the Nazis. It provided help from private, mostly Jewish foundations, in finding positions and support for the refugees. Up to 1945, with its help, 335 Europeans were placed in positions at 145 colleges, universities, and research institutions, of whom 137 were in the humanities and sciences (43 philologists and literary historians, 27 art historians and archeologists, 22 philosophers, 18 musicologists, 110 sociologists and economists including jurists, and the rest from the natural sciences).
The Rockefeller Foundation financed the creation of positions and advice for intellectuals with a total sum of $1,410,778; it aided 303 individuals. The Oberlander Trust, a section of the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, helped academics who had emigrated get grants and research assistance; it gave for this purpose a total sum of $300,000.74
The largest group of German and German Jewish scientists, academicians, and politicians received positions and assistance from the New School for Social Research in New York and the Institut ffir Sozialforschung, which was affiliated with Columbia University; the latter's work during the years of exile had the most repercussions for German scholarly research, especially in the social sciences and humanities, after 1945.
Although both New York institutions bore nearly the same name, they basically differed both in faculty and research structure as well as in their theoretical, methodological, and practical organization, their political affiliations, and their repercussions upon Germany.
The New School for Social Research 75 was founded in 1919 as a private evening adult education school by a circle of liberal academicians and politicians connected with The New Republic magazine. Alvin Johnson was its head until 1945. He is characterized as farseeing and empathic to changing intellectual requirements in the social sciences, and as a convinced liberal and social activist76-but not a Marxist-he was ready to use scientific work to help solve current political, economic, and social problems. One example is his commissioning of Emil Lederer and Hans Staudinger to investigate and publish research on unemployment in the United States. In his capacity as one of the editors of the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, even before 1933 he had already made contact with some of the well-known German and European social scientists and economists. Immediately following Hitler's seizure of power-after having observed with horror the political developments of 1932, the year of his last trip to Germany-he pressed for the rescue of those persecuted by Nazism.
His plan was to create an independent faculty exclusively for refugees-a university in exile. It would offer emigrants the possibility of a secure livelihood and integration within the framework of the New School, but without forcing them to abandon the cultural and scientific traditions of their countries of origin. To the contrary, the University in Exile pursued the notion of academic freedom and the European intellectual tradition, which had been in danger since the rise of Nazism; these would enrich American cultural and academic life. Based on these premises, the courses, which led to all levels of academic degrees, were often taught bilingually. The faculty members of the New School also cultivated a strong group identity in order to bridge the strangeness of the New World, but without isolating themselves or rejecting assimilation and integration, as did the majority of the faculty at the Institut fur Sozialforschung.77
Alvin Johnson, with the help of Hans Staudinger,78 obtained grants to support the University in Exile and to provide $4,000 a year for each faculty member. The money was raised primarily from private funds. In 1940 a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation made it possible to rescue a large number of academics from occupied France, Belgium, Holland, and Scandinavia, and to establish an independent section for French and Belgian emigrants-the Ecole des Hautes Etudes-within the framework of the New School. From 1933 until the American entry into the war, 56 to 60 emigre scientists and artists taught at the University in Exile,79 and during the war years, the New School is said to have saved the lives of 167 scholars and their families.80
Since Alvin Johnson tended to employ teachers who shared his economic and political convictions, the greater part of the teaching staff consisted of social scientists and economists. There were also formerly active politicians and officials of the Prussian state and German national governments, who had belonged to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) or the German Democratic Party (DDP). These faculty members included the Austrian economist Emil Lederer, the economists Gerhard Colm, Herbert Block, Karl Brandt, Arthur Feiler, Fritz Lehmann, Adolph Lowe, Jacob Marschak, Hans Neisser, Karl Niebyl, and Richard Schueller. From the ranks of former social democratic politicans and officials could be found, for example, Eduard Heimann, Hans Simons, Hans Staudinger, as well as the former Ministerialdirektor of the Prussian Finance Ministry Arnold Brecht, who, however, had not been a member of the SPD.
Since the New School could put up with pluralism in methodology and political convictions because of its liberal self-image, leftist radicals like Erwin Piscator and Hanns Eissler also taught there; Bertolt Brecht was invited to give a lecture series but did not respond; and conservatives like Leo Strauss and the Cologne political economist Julius Hirsch, the traditional political scientist Hans Morgenthau, and the sociologist Albert Salomon lectured at the New School. But it was also open to individuals like Hannah Arendt, a lone wolf in academia, whose 1951 study of totalitarianism had a considerable influence on German research about antisernitism after 1945; her first and second husbands, Giinther Anders and Heinrich Blucher, taught there, as did Henry Pachter. The journal of the New School, Social Research, published contributions from the work of the University in Exile after 1933.
Precisely because the New School offered employment possibilities to theoreticians, opened a new field of activity to former politicans, and got involved in current political questions, its activities were observed with a critical and mistrustful eye by American groups that supported an isolationist policy for the United States or sympathized with Nazism.81
In all studies about exile in the United States, the significance of the New School and the University in Exile is emphasized. Most recently Anthony Heilbut has clearly sketched the New School's work from the perspective of its methodology, politics, and content. Nevertheless, there has not been a study that focuses on the pedagogical influence and publications of the New School. It certainly has had such an influence, not only in the United States; it has had significant effects on the intellectual life and the orientation of practical politics in post-1945 Germany.
The Institut fur Sozialforschung 82 was founded in 1923-1924 in Frankfurt am Main and devoted itself to creating Marxist theory and practical social research, independent of academic research and involvement in party politics. The Institut's financial independence, which was guaranteed by the grain merchant Hermann Weil, the father of Felix J. Weil, who was of German descent and lived in Argentina, was a necessary precondition for the independence of its work.
After a short stay in Paris, the Institut moved to New York in 1934. In contrast to faculty members of the New School, the members of the Institut ffir Sozialforschung were on the average younger and took little part in active political life, with a few brief exceptions, either in Germany before 1933 or as refugees.
Their pathbreaking contribution to the social sciences was the development of the so-called Critical Theory,83 a blending of Marxist methodology and analysis of the capitalist economic order on the one hand with psychoanalysis on the other.
With the help of Nicholas Murray Butler, Max Horkheimer, who had headed the Institut since 1930 in Frankfurt, was able to find a home for it and for his colleagues at Columbia University. Except for Walter Benjamin, who committed suicide in France in 1940 during an abortive escape attempt, most of the staff successfully emigrated to New York and continued their research projects. Among them were Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neumann, Leo Lowenthal, Felix J. Weil, Paul Massing, Karl August Wittfogel, Franz Borkenau, Henryk Grossmann, Julian Gumperz, Arcadij R. L. Gurland, Gerhard Mayer, Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm. Theodor W. Adorno worked for the Princeton Radio Research Project during the first years of exile but remained closely connected to the Institit. After Max Horkheimer moved to California for reasons of health, the Institut gained more psychoanalytically oriented collaborators, primarily involved in the "Studies in Prejudice" series; these included, for example, Marie Jahoda, Bruno Bettelheim, Morris Jannowitz, Nathan W. Ackermann, et al.
Even before 1933 the methods and contents of research done by the Institut met with vehement criticism, especially from members of the German Communist Party.84 In New York, as well, the Institut had few friends and remained relatively isolated and Europe-centered, although to all outward appearances it had been able to acquire a firm footing in the United States. A variety of reasons may have been responsible for its position. For example, members of the Institut did not feel comfortable with the American language and American culture, with the result that their periodical for social research was published in German until 1941. Likewise, the first results of their research in the studies about authority and family appeared in German in 1936. The staff members tended to keep themselves apart from other German refugees as much as from Americans and viewed assimilation with some mistrust. In the early years they preserved their professional and personal contacts with Europe and also occasionally traveled there, so that it is not surprising that their research interest continued to concentrate on European history and European political and social development.85
Within this framework, the Institut pursued its "Studies on Authority and the Family,"86 which traced characteristic traits of the bourgeois family that make it susceptible to authoritarian manipulation and which must be interpreted within the framework of analyses of Nazism and fascism. The most influential and precise of these is Franz Neumann's 1942 study Behemoth, although it does not totally conform with the views of the Institut's inner circle.
Antisemitism was not the primary interest of the Institut. Its Jewish collaborators considered their Judaism to a certain extent a "family matter," not to be discussed in public. On the basis of their experiences as assimilated Jews, they played down German antisernitism and even held the opinion that the Germans had fewer antisernitic tendencies than the Americans whom they were getting to know in exile.87 Despite this, the Institut did turn its attention to German antisernitism at the end of the 1930s and presented the first analysis and the concept of a research project on antisernitism that would influence not only its own subsequent work but also German research about antisernitism after 1945.
Max Horkheimer, at the end of September 1939, dealt with the apparition and function of German antisernitism primarily from the economic and political points of view,88 in contrast to the later Studies in Prejudice series (1944-1950) which are dominated by psychoanalytic methods and results and neglect the political, historical and economic roots of antisemitism-with the exception of Paul W. Massing's study on the prehistory of political antisernitism in Germany.
Horkheimer proceeded from the premise that contemporary German antisernitism could not be understood without an analysis of capitalism- not of Nazism, nor fascism. The totalitarianism of the 1930s was already inherent in the liberalism and class domination of the nineteenth century, whose evolution he analyzes in relation to economics and society. The economic foundations of Nazi antisemitism lay in the collapse of liberalism, which had merely been an interlude in German history. All of the functions of the marketplace in a freely competitive capitalist economy had been usurped by the state, which further hastened the concentration of the economy, so that the economic basis of Jewry, which had traditionally lain in the domain of currency circulation-especially commerce and bankingbecame superfluous. The broad support for Nazism came from the unemployed masses, who did not profit in any way from the antisernitic measures of the government but believed that they had found in antisemitic doctrines salvation and remedy for economic abuses.
The function of Nazi antisernitism consisted in winning other countries over to Nazism, even when they did not have fascist governments, on the basis of latent or overt currents inimical to Jews. In his pessimistic picture of the future, Horkheimer prophesied a long fascist period, which could not be shortened or ended by war nor by an alliance of great powers. But in the struggle against the authoritarian state, he saw the possibility of a simultaneous elimination of antisernitism.
In 1941 the Institut delineated the aims and methods of a broad research project on antisernitism that had been conceived in 1939-1940.89 Although the psychological roots were to be taken more strongly into account, the analysis once again concentrated on causes, manifestations, and functions of German and European antisemitism and only tangentially touched on xenophobic and racist currents in the United States. The authors proceeded from the assumption that effective counterpropaganda to antisemitism would require more knowledge of its psychological, historical, and social roots' hitherto lacking: antisernitism had until this point been studied too superficially, so that many contemporaries considered it simply a regression to the Dark Ages or an anachronism, and in either case, a phenomenon that could not be reconciled with the spirit of the Enlightenment or of modern society. But undermining this superficial view was the fact that even during progressive periods and in progressive countries, hatred of Jews had manifested itself, to some degree as an undercurrent, ready to emerge at any time. Therefore it was an aim of the research project to prove that the dangers of antisernitism existed in all recent cultures. The research was to be based on knowledge already established by the Institut on the one hand, and on the other, to present new results with the help of a combination of historical, economic, psychological, and experimental studies on the manifestations of antisernitism. Representative examples from modem European literature and special historical events were to be analyzed to reveal the ambivalence of modem social philosophies and concepts and the deep roots of antisernitism; psychological experiments were also to be pursued, so that the dangers of racist and xenophobic thinking in all countries would be evident. Since antisemitism touched all groups in society, it represented a permanent danger.
The research proposal was divided into seven different sections. Section 1 investigated current theories about antisemitism-rationalist and antisernitic theories themselves. The rationalist theories were subdivided into: 1) the assertion that antisernitism did not exist; 2) the assertion that the accusations against specific Jewish character traits were simply lies; 3) the sociological thesis that hatred of Jews could be traced to the strange appearance of Jews; 4) the assertion that antisernitism was based on feelings of economic inferiority and envy; 5) the notion that antisernitism could be classified as "the idiot's socialism" (this thesis was represented by the socialists of the nineteenth century and it reduced the problem to an economic interpretation); and finally, 6) the assertion made by antisemitic theory that Jews were by nature either revolutionaries or extreme capitalists (Sombart).
Section 2 attempted to analyze antisernitism and mass movements and to show their parallels to Nazi antisemitism: the First Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, Jewish persecutions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the German wars of liberation, and other German upheavals.
Section 3 investigated antisernitism in modern humanism during the French Enlightenment (Voltaire), in German philosophy (Herder, Kant, Fichte, Goethe), and in the French novel (Zola).
Section 4 was devoted to a study of types of contemporary antisemitism from a historical and psychological point of view, such as the born antisemite, who rejected Jews from instinct; the religious-philosophical antisemite, who cherished feelings of religious hatred, culminating in the thesis "the Jew is Judas" (p. 134), and who rejected Jewish religion to a certain extent as a conglomeration of superstitious rituals; the sectarian antisemite, who believed in the thesis of a world Jewish conspiracy and the "Elders of Zion"; the conquered competitor, who made Jewish competition responsible for his occupational and economic inferiority; the well-educated social antisemite who-most often a member of the upper middle class-looked down on ostensibly Jewish character traits such as lack of reserve and immodesty; the mercenary (condottiere), who appeared as a result of the conditions between the wars, especially the high level of unemployment; the Jew torturer, for whom the sadistic element was foremost, and in whose case repressed homosexuality and the rejection of all feeling as sentimentalism played a role. He was represented in the leaders of the SS, but had his antecedents in the mob antisemitism of the late nineteenth century; the fascist-political antisemite, who was distinguished by his nihilistic mentality and emotional coldness, who organized antisemitism and wanted to solve the "Jewish question" in the most hideous, but legal, manner; and finally, the friend of the Jews, who honored the Jews to an unrealistic degree but overcompensated for his true feelings and at bottom nourished antisernitic feelings of resentment.
Section 5 is concerned with Jews in society and their position in the economic realm, with the primary activity of Jews as traders and bankers, which is characterized by racist doctrine as "dirty work" and "parasitism." Section 5 also discusses the thesis that the Jews are devotees of rational rather than natural law, as well as the argument, taken from racist doctrine, that there is a specific Jewish mentality, that ascribes to the Jews a strong affinity for abstract and rational thinking and attributes the philosophy of the Enlightenment solely to so-called Jewish thinking.
Section 6 is concerned with the bases of Nazi antisemitism, particularly in the immediately preceding period, including the reasons for the failure of the Weimer Republic; and also with the changed function of money from liberal competitive capitalism to statedirected capitalism in the total state. It also analyzes the value of antisemitism as propaganda.
Finally, Section 7 undertakes a series of experiments that are supposed to reveal the individual, class- and milieu-specific characteristics of the development and spread of antisemitism (including showing a film with interviews and written reports by the viewers on what they felt as they watched scenes of beatings among non-Jewish and Jewish youths depicted in the film).
On the one hand Horkheimer's 1939 analyses of Nazi antisemitism was formative for the conception of the project, especially for Section 6. On the other hand, the research plan anticipated ideas that Horkheimer strengthened as he worked with Theodor W. Adorno on Elemente des Antisemitismus: Grenzen der Aufkladrung (Elements of Antisemitism: The Limits of the Enlightenment), a part of the 1944 Dialektik der Aufkladrung (Dialectic of the Enlightenment). 90 Here as well as in the Studies in Prejudice, Horkheimer provided support from psychoanalytic arguments. In the explanations of the political and economic causes of antisemitism, the Institut's faculty adopted, without further expansion, their own theses about liberalism, about the development of the economic system, about the role that Jews played in the sphere of monetary circulation, and about the function of bourgeois antisemitism. The deepening of the understanding of antisemitism was to be found in the use of psychoanalysis, and in the typology of individual antisemites and of the antisernitic mass movement of Nazism. Using historical examples, they introduced psychoanalytic categories like the scapegoat theory; the role of racist and nationalist doctrine in popular antisemitism; the religious origins of hatred of Jews as an oedipal problem; the role of projection, castration fear, and aggression in generating paranoia. In fact, they interpreted fascism as a whole as a "special case of paranoid delusion." (p. 172) Both these discussions of antisemitism reflected not only the authors' own experiences as representatives of Jewry and targets of antisernitic discrimination in Germany before 1933, but also their experiences as Jews and political refugees in exile. A passage in the proposed research project on antisemitism 91 reflected the experiences of the collaborators as assimilated Jews in the Weimar Republic; these experiences led to an optimistic misjudgment of the attitude of the German population toward Nazi antisemitism, only possible at a distance. Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectic of the Enlightenment drew a picture of the Jews that also shows traces of the German and Jewish refugee as he was perceived in his new surroundings:
Regardless of how Jews themselves may look as individuals, their appearance, as that of the conquered, bears characteristics to which the totalitarian powers must be mortal enemies: happiness without power, reward without work, a home without a boundary marker, and a religion without myth. These characteristics are despised by the rulers, because secretly, the oppressed subjects long for them.92
A feeling of insecurity that sprang from these experiences may have caused Horkheimer to doubt, in 1944, whether the preliminary experiments for Studies in Prejudice, which from the point of view of the examiners had been conducted by "radical emigrants," would meet with the good will of the American public.93
Within the series Studies in Prejudice, which from 1944 was supported by the Department of Scientific Research of the American Jewish Committee and was published in New York in 1950, the study by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Fraenkel-Brunswick, D. H. Levison, and R. N. Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality, became the most well known and gained the widest readership in Germany. But P. W. Massing's study Rehearsal for Destruction had the most direct influence on post-1945 German research about antisemitism.94
The studies on the "authoritarian character" attempted to prove, by the use of novel experimental techniques, that "there exists a close connection between a number of deeply embedded qualities of character and a hostile attitude toward minorities."95 The authors analyzed the historical, social, and individual conditions of the person who is susceptible to the influence of xenophobic and antisernitic demagogy, and they pointed out the contents of the arguments made by these agitators.
Bruno Bettelheim's and M. Janowitz's study about the Dynamics of Prejudice investigated the connection between character structure and hostile attitudes in the case of war veterans. The study Antisemitism, An Emotional Disorder, by N. Ackerman and Marie Jahoda, intensified the theme by using case histories of patients from various social strata who had had to submit to psychiatric treatment. Prophets of Deceit by L. Loewenthal and N. Guterman lent depth to the analysis of the antisernitic agitator himself. These contributions worked out the individual and social-psychological causes for the susceptibility to antisernitic agitation in contemporary American society, largely omitting specific historical, political, and social factors. But the study by P. W. Massing attempted to shed light on the historical, political, and social conditions prerequisite for German antisemitism.
The influence of the psychoanalytically oriented works in this series on later German research into the subject of antisemitism consisted essentially in introducing and applying categories like: prejudice, projection, compensation, stereotype, minority, and group conflict, concepts also applicable to historical studies. But it was the publication of Massing's study, in conjunction with the reception of works written by Hannah Arendt in exile 96 and by Eva G. Reichmann,97 works that explore the prerequisites and conditions of the totalitarian state, of Nazi antisemitism, and genocide, that gave the decisive impulse for the academic confrontation with modem German antisemitism. The results of copious specialized research confirmed Massing's hypotheses and were in part conceived as counterpropaganda to confirm the socialists' pre- 1914 explanation of antisemitism.
Massing's study attempted on the one hand "to emphasize the continuity between the American production of the Insitut and its research in Germany after 1950." On the other hand, the studies carried out in exile, which concentrated on specifically German forms and the nexus of complex preconditions for antisemitism, also became known in postwar Germany.98
Massing's monograph concerns the history of the origins, form, and function of political antisemitism in Wilhelmine Germany from 1871 to 1914; it focused on the conservative cast of the antisemitism of court chaplain Adolf Stoecker in the 1880s as well as its populistradical manifestations in the movements around Otto Boeckel and Hermann Ahlwardt in the 1890s. Massing also analyzed the position of the political opponents of antisemitism, consisting of left liberals and social democrats. He investigated the connections with economic crises, changing class structures, and the rise of nationalism and imperialism. Massing's conclusion has become generally accepted in contemporary German historiography, namely, that
. . . neither the social democrats and liberals nor the Jews themselves recognized that the decline of antisemitism was due to the rise of imperialism, and that the latter preserved the substance of antisemitism, albeit passively, in both its ideology and its political behavior.... When World War I brought the imperialistic phase and the dream of national harmony based on international primacy to a humiliating defeat, antisemitism-stronger and more evil than ever- could resume the niches it had formerly occupied.99
The development of social scientific research on antisemitism in American exile significantly influenced and enriched post-1945 historiography in Germany. This is, however, not true for the German Democratic Republic, which has devoted little attention to antisemitism as a separate problem, although there have been studies about its function in the class struggle. The "Jewish question" is reduced to its economic and political dimensions, in accord with Marxist and socialist interpretations of the nineteenth century.100 Although few detailed studies of this complex subject have been published, historians' comments in the GDR have remained relatively general and restricted to an explanation of antisemitism as the "method of domination of the ruling class."101
West German historiography after 1945, in contrast, began to produce highly specialized studies about all areas of antisemitism. Detailed monographs analyzed the hatred for Jews in antiquity and in the Middle Ages,102 but the main direction of West German research concerned modem antisemitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
At first following Massing, academic interest concentrated on political antisemitism in the early nineteenth century and in the German Empire,103 but the study of political opponents of antisemitism also received attention in these scholarly investigations.104 This research direction led not only to political but also to social psychological understanding about the connections among the minorities in the Empire-Jews, socialists, Catholics- and their reciprocal effects on the total society and political culture.
This direction was simultaneously supplemented by research done about the same epoch, in part by scholars outside Germany, and about the history of philosophy,105 the critique of ideology, 106 and the critique of language. 107 Research about antisemitism turned relatively late to the economic bases of Antisemitism 108 in the narrower sense, and to the religious roots of antisemitism.109
After this first period of specialized studies, current research tends on the one hand to present its results in anthologies spanning several chronological periods,110 and on the other hand to use the multiplicity of components that comprise the whole weave of the origins of modern antisemitism. The problem of German Jewish history is placed in context as a "piece of social history,"111 utilizing memoirs and other evidence, by both Jews and non-Jews.112
In the framework of this new research on antisemitism, which also includes contributions by regional and urban historians,113 there has also occurred since 1945 a deepening of knowledge about antisemitism in the Weimar Republic 114 and the Nazi era. As a result, individual scholarly contributions have focused on the measures for the legal, occupational, and social discrimination against Jews, and also elaborated on their persecution and extermination. 115 Some of these studies have illuminated the consequences of antisemitism for the relations between Jews and non-Jews and also investigated the patterns of daily life (Alltagsleben) of the Jewish minority.116 Finally, some research has focused attention on the problem of resurgent antisemitism after 1945.117
The creation of three specialized research centers-the Cologne library Germania Judaica,118 the Research Center for the History of National Socialism in Hamburg, and the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University in Berlin-has enriched historical research about the multi- causality of antisemitism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and has continued the traditions of the critical theories and methods of research begun in American exile. Thus research about the events of the Nazi epoch, 1933-1945, "has broken out of the framework of a strictly limited historical analysis."119
An interdisciplinary approach, combining the humanities and the social sciences, has begun to emerge in research about events during the Nazi period. Traditional historical sources have been augmented by returning to the methodology of the psychoanalytically oriented Studies in Prejudice.120 Furthermore, the type of documentary evidence has expanded to include sources from creative literature,121 testimony from the visual arts,122 and personal memoirs or oral history. This material has not only enriched academic publication, but has also begun to be evident in documentary films and television.123 Needless to say, the research results of these new sources and forms of presentation to the public is still fragmentary.
The impact of the recent resurgence of antisemitism and of the hostility toward foreigners during periods of crisis in the Federal Republic,124 mandates that academic "concern with antisemitism ... must aim not only at analysis, but also at therapy," resulting in the understanding and the disappearance of antisemitism.125 it is an open question whether this "practical application of research" about antisemitism can yield the desired results.126 Nevertheless, postwar German investigation of antisemitism has resulted in an understanding that "tolerance does not consist in allowing other groups to exist only insofar as they assimilate completely," but that society must be ready "to respect ... the autonomy and identity" of all minorities.127
NOTES
1. See, for example, Dolf Sternberger, Gerhard Storz, and W. E. Sufskind, Aus dem Worterbuch des Unmenschen (Hamburg and Dusseldorf, 1968), first published in Die Wandlung in 1945-1948 and as a book in 1957. Also Victor Klemperer, LTI: Die unbewaltigte Sprache (Munich, 1969), first published in East Berlin in 1946.
2. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, "Introduction," p. vi, in Paul W. Massing, Vorgeschichte des politischen Antisemitismus (Frankfurt, 1959), first published as Rehearsal for Destruction (New York, 1949).
3. Rudolf M. Loewenstein, Psychoanalyse des Antisemitismus (Frankfurt, 1968), first published in Paris in 1962; Bruno Bettelheim, "The Dynamics of Anti- Sernitism in Gentile and Jew," The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 47 (1947): 153-68.
4. J. Graeber, S. H. Britt, eds., Jews in a Gentile World (New York, 1942); Koppel S. Pinson, ed., Essays on Anti-Semitism (New York, 1942).
5. See Reinhard Rurup, "Zur Entwicklung der modernen Antisemitismusforschung," in Emanzipation und Antisemitismus: Studien zur "Judenfrage" der bargerlichen Gesellschaft, ed. Reinhard Rurup (Gottingen, 1975), pp. 115-25, esp. p. 115.
6. On emancipation, see Rurup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus; Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprunge totaler Herrschaft, translated from English (Frankfurt, 1955), pp. 15-118 (originally published in the U.S. as The Origins of Totalitarianism [New York, 19511).
7. Rilrup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus, p. 116.
8. See Werner Jochmann, "Struktur und Funktion des deutschen Antisemitismus," in Juden im wilhelminischen Deutschland 1890-1914, ed. Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (Tubingen, 1976), pp. 389-477, esp. p. 472.
9. Rilrup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus, pp. 116f.
12. Ibid., p. 120. For an example of this tradition, see Christian Wihelm Dohm, Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (Berlin and Stettin, 1781).
13. For Germany, see for example, Wilhehn Marr, Der Sieg des judenthums uber das Germanenthum. Vom nicht-confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet. Vae Victis! (Berlin, 1873); Eugen Duhring Die Judenfrage als Racen-, Sittenund Culturfrage (Karlsruhe and Leipzig, 1881); Paul de Lagarde, Juden und Indogermanen: Eine Studie nach dem Leben (Gottingen, 1887); Julius Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher: Von einem Deutschen (Leipzig, 1890). For summaries and analysis, see for example, Jochmann, "Struktur und Funktion"; Judisches Leben in Deutschland, Vol. 2: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte im Kaiserreich, ed. Monika. Richarz (Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 35-46; Gunter Zmarzlik, "Der Antisemitismus im Kaiserreich von 1871," in Wieviel Zukunft hat unsere Vergangenheit? Aufsatze und Uberlegungen eines Historikers vom Jahrgang 1922, ed. Gunter Zmarzlik (Munich, 1970), pp. 32-50; Alexander Bein, "Der moderne Antisernitismus und seine Bedeutung ffir die Judenfrage: Antisemitismus als Wort und Begriff," Vierteljahrshefte ffir Zeitgeschichte 6 (1958): 340-60.
14. See Patrik von zur Milhlen, Rassenideologien: Geschichte und Hintergriinde (Bonn and Berlin, 1977).
15. Rurup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus, p. 120.
16. Jochmann, "Struktur und Funktion," p. 403.
17. Zmarzlik, "Antisemitismus im Kaiserreich," p. 141.
18. Jochmann, "Struktur und Funktion," p. 403; and Massing, Vorgeschichte, p. 107.
19. For example, Friedrich Engels, Herrn Dfihrings Umwdlzung der Wissenschaft (Anti-Diihring) (pp. 5-292 in Marx Engels Werke Vol. 20); August Bebel, "Antisernitismus und Sozialdemokrafie," in Protokoll uber die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands ... zu Kdln a.Rh.... 1893 (Berlin, 1893), pp. 223-37 (republished as pamphlet in 1906); Karl Kautsky, Rasse und Judentum (Leipzig, 1880); Hermann Bahr, Der Antisemitismus (Berlin, 1893); Ludwig Bamberger, Deutschtum und Judentum (Leipzig, 1880); Theodor Mommsen, Auch ein Wort uber unser judentum (Berlin, 1879). Also compare Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, ed. Walter Boehlich (Frankfurt, 1965).
20. Bebel, "Antisemitismus und Sozialdemokratie," p. 34 (1906 pamphlet).
21. See also ftidisches Leben in Deutschland, Vol. 3: Selbstzeugnisse zur SozWgeschichte 1918-1945, ed. Monika Richarz (Stuttgart, 1982), p. 27.
22. Compare Bebel, "Antisemitismus und Sozialdemokratie," p. 38 (1906 pamphlet): "Antisemitism, which is always based on the basest drives and instincts of a backward class, represents the moral degeneration (Verlumpung) of the groups attached to it. It is comforting that in Germany antisernitism never had the chance decisively to influence state and society."
23. See, for example, Fritz Bernstein, Der Antisemitismus als Gruppenerscheinung: Versuch einer Soziologie des judenhasses (Berlin, 1926); Kurt Warwzinek, Die Entstehung der deutschen Antisemitenparteien 1873-1890 (Berlin, 1927); Arnold Zweig, Caliban oder Politik und Leidenschaft: Versuch uber die menschlichen Gruppenleidenschaften, dargetan am Antisemitismus (Potsdam, 1927).
24. For a survey, see ftidisches Leben in Deutschland 3: 13-39.
25. Herbert A. Strauss, "The Immigration and Acculturation of the German Jew in the United States of America," in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 16 (1971): 63-94, esp. 77.
26. Based on Jiidisches Leben in Deutschland 3: 24.
27. Based on Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 77. For a survey of demography and occupational structure of the German Jews during the Weimar Republic, see Iiidisches Leben in Deutschland 3: 14-25.
28. ffidisches Leben in Deutschland 3: 25.
30. See Martin Jay, Dialektische Phantasie: Die Geschichte der Frankfurter Schule und des Instituts ffir Sozialforschung 1923 bis 1950, translated from English (Frankfurt, 1976), p. 196.
31. See ftidisches Leben in Deutschland 3: 41-56.
32. For a survey on immigration legislation and practice in the major countries of refuge, see Herbert A. Strauss, "Jewish Emigration from Germany: Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses, Part 2," in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 26 (1981): 343- 409. For the United States, see Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," pp. 63- 67. For an East German perspective, see the not always convincing volume Exil in den USA mit einem Bericht "Schanghai-Eine Emigration am Rande," ed. Eike Middell and others (Frankfurt, 1980), pp. 23-82, esp. pp. 39ff.
33. See Strauss, "Jewish Emigration"; and jiidisches Leben in Deutschland 3: 52-55.
34. Strauss, "Jewish Emigration," p. 345.
37. Strauss, "Jewish Emigration," p. 359.
39. Ibid., p. 360. Also Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 65.
40. Based on Strauss, "Jewish Emigration," p. 359.
41. For example, Heinrich and Golo Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Herbert Weichmann (a Social Democrat who had been the administrative assistant of the Prussian Prime Minister). See Elsbeth Weichmann, Zuflucht: lahre des Exils, introd. by Siegfried Lenz (Hamburg, 1983) for a realistic and impressive description of the problems of obtaining visas and of adjusting to the United States; the memoir of Marta Feuchtwanger, Nur eine Frau: lahre-Tage-Stunden (Munich and Vienna, 1983), which treats the same problems, provides a weaker analysis.
42. See Exil in den USA, pp. 45f.
43. For greater detail, see Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 69.
44. Ibid. Also Exil in den USA, pp. 44ff.
45. Strauss, "Jewish Emigration," p. 362 and "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 64.
46. See Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 79; Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930-1941 (Chicago and London, 1968); and Norman Bentwich, The Rescue and Achievement of Refugee Scholars: The Story of Displaced Scholars and Scientists, 1933-1952 (The Hague, 1953), esp. p. 49.
47. Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," pp. 69f. and "Jewish Emigration," p. 362.
48. Concept based on Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 70 (compare esp. pp. 70-73).
51. [bid. For antisernitism in the United States during the 1930s, see Anthony Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise (New York, 1983), pp. 49f.; and HeIge Pross, Die deutsche akademische Emigration nach den Vereinigten Staaten, 1933-1941 (Berlin, 1955), p. 32.
52. Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," pp. 73-76, esp. p. 74.
54. Ibid., p. 73. Strauss sees this model as the best possible means for the coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups.
55. Ibid., p. 66; and Pross, Akademische Emigration, p. 3.
56. While research about the integration of "normal" refugees, who entered within the established quotas, is incomplete, we already possess several detailed investigations about the special status of refugee intellectuals: Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930- 1960 (Cambridge, MA, 1969); Bentwich, Rescue and Achievement; Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants; Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise; and Exil in den USA. For a bibliography of exile studies, see Ernst Loewy, ed., Exil: Literarische und politische Texte aus dem deutschen Exil, 1933-1945 (Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 1225- 38.
57. See the detailed charts showing how occupations of refugees are distributed, in Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 78.
58. Ibid., p. 77; and Iiidisches Leben in Deutschland 3: 24.
60. Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 81.
61. For example, the German Jewish Club, the American Jewish Committee, the American Federation of German Jews, and the Jewish Labor Committee.
62. Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, esp. pp. 48-71.
63. See ibid., pp. 56ff.; and Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 68.
64. See Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," pp. 79f. I cannot deal here in detail with the complex subject of the process of integration.
65. On the literature, see Loewy, Exil, esp. p. 1238.
66. Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, pp. 72f.
67. Pross, Akademische Emigration, p. 49.
68. Based on Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, p. 29.
69. Strauss, "Immigration and Acculturation," p. 81. For the problem of integration and the contributions of European scholars to the intellectual life of the United States, see Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, part 2, passim; Fleming and Bailyn, ed., Intellectual Migration, passim.
70. Pross, Akademische Emigration, p. 50.
71. Ibid., p. 37; and Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, pp. 77ff.
72. For example, see Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, pp. 352f.
73. See the impressive description in Weichmann, Zuflucht, pp. 139ff.
74. Based on Pross, Akademische Emigration, pp. 49ff.; and Exil in den USA, pp. 57ff.
75. See Exil in den USA, pp. 54ff.; Pross, Akademische Emigration, pp. 51f.; Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, pp. 75 and 326ff.; Bentwich, Rescue and Achievement, pp. 48-52; Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, pp. 80-85.
76. Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, p. 80.
78. Information received from Dr. Susanne Miller, Bonn, who cited unpublished research by Ernest Hamburger.
79. Different figures provided by Pross, Akademische Emigration, p. 52; and Exil in den USA, p. 55; the remaining literature does not cite figures.
80. Based on Bentwich, Rescue and Achievement, p. 49.
81. See Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, p. 81.
82. For the most detailed account, see Jay, Dialektische Phantasie, passim. See also Pross, Akademische Emigration, pp. 52f.; Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, pp. 337ff.; Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, pp. 84-94; Exil in den USA, pp. 232-51.
83. For the origins of this critical theory, see Jay, Dialektische Phantasie, pp. 63-142.
84. Ibid., pp. 21-61; Exil in den USA, pp. 232f.; and Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, p. 86.
85. See Jay, Dialektische Phantasie, pp. 143ff.; and Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, pp. 84ff.
86. See esp. Jay, Dialektische Phantasie, pp. 143-74.
87. Ibid., p. 196; Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, p. 93.
88. "Die Juden in Europa," in Zeitschrift ffir Sozialforschung 8 (1939-40): 114-36.
89. "Research Project on Anti-Sernitism," ibid. 9 (1941): 124-43.
90. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufkladrung (Frankfurt, 1971), originally published in Amsterdam in 1947.
91. "While frank disgust for the anti-Semitism of the government is revealed among the German masses, the promises are eagerly swallowed where fascist governments have never been attempted." Zeitschrift far Sozialforschung 9 (1941): 141. See also Jay, Dialektische Phantasie, p. 196.
92. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufkladrung p. 178. See also Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, p. 164. On Adorno's experiences in exile, see esp. ibid., pp. 160ff.; and Theodor W. Adorno, "Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America," in Intellectual Migration, ed. Fleming and Bailyn, pp. 338-70.
93. See Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise, p. 91.
95. Max Horkheimer, "Introduction," in Theodor W. Adorno and others, Der autoritdre Charakter, translated from English [The Authoritarian Personality] (Frankfurt, 1968), Vol. 1, p. vii.
96. Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprunge totaler Herrschaft, translated from English (Frankfurt, 1955).
97. Eva G. Reichman, Die Flucht in den Hafl: Die Ursachen der deutschen Judenkatastrophe, translated from English (Frankfurt, Zurich, and Vienna, n.d. [1956]).
98. Horkheimer and Adorno, "Introduction," p. v (see above, n. 2).
99. Massing, Vorgeschichte, pp. 224f.
100. For example, Karl Marx, Zur Judenfrage (1844) (pp. 347-77 in Marx Engels Werke Vol. 1), and Bebel, "Antisemitismus und Sozialdemokratie."
101. Based on Rurup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus, p. 119.
102. For examples, see ibid., p. 121.
103. See Eleonore Sterling, Er ist wie du: Aus der Friihgeschichte des Antisemitismus in Deutschland, 1815-1850 (Munich, 1956); Martin Broszat, Die antisemitische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Cologne, 1953); H. C. Gerlach, Agitation und parlamentarische Wirksamkeit der deutschen Antisemitenparteien, 1873-1895 (Kiel, 1956); Klemens Felden, Die Ubernahme des antisemitischen Stereotyps als soziale Norm durch die burgerliche Gesellschaft Deutschlands, 1873-1900 (Heidelberg, 1963).
104. Edmund Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage (Berlin, 1962); Iring Fetscher, ed., Marxisten gegen Antisemitismus (Hamburg, 1974); Amine Haase, Katholische Presse und die Judenfrage: Inhaltsanalyse katholischer Periodika am Ende des 19. jahrhunderts (Munich, 1975).
105. For example, Fritz Stern, Kulturpessimismus als politische Gefahr: Eine Analyse nationaler Ideologie in Deutschland, translated from English (Bern, Stuttgart, and Vienna, 1963).
106. For example, Nathan Rothenstreich, "For and Against Emancipation: The Bruno Bauer Controversy," in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 4 (1959): 3-36.
107. For example, Alexander Bein, "Der 'jildische Parasif: Bernerkungen zur Semantik der Judenfrage," Vierteljahrshefte far Zeitgeschichte 13 (1965): 121-49; Josef Wulf, Aus dem Lexikon der Mbrder: "Sonderbehandlung" und venvandte W6rter in nationalsozialistischen Dokumenten (Gfitersloh, 1963).
108. See Hans Rosenberg, Grofle Depression und Bismarckzeit (Berlin, 1967).
109. Stefan Lehr, Antisemitismus-religidse Motive im sozialen Vorurteil: Aus der Frifteschichte des Antisemitismus in Deutschland, 1870-1914 (Munich, 1974); Hermann Greive, Theologie und Ideologie: Katholizismus und judentum in Deutschland und Osterreich, 1918-1935 (Cologne, 1969); Martin Greschat, "Protestantismus und Antisemitismus: Judenverfolgung in der 'Reichskristallnacht' (9./lO.11.1938) als Exempel," in Judenfeindschaft in Altertum, Mittelalter, und Neuzeit, ed. Anneliese Mannzmann (Kronberg/T., 1981), pp. 80-108.
110. For example, ludenfeindschaft (ed. Mannzmann); Antisemitismus: Zur Pathologie der Wrgerlichen Gesellschaft, ed. Hermann Huss and Andreas Schr6der (Frankfurt, 1965).
111. Dirk Blasius, " 'Judenfrage' und Gesellschaftsgeschichte," in Neue Politische Literatur 13 (1978): 17-33.
112. A good example is jUdisches Leben in Deutschland: Selbstzeugnisse zur Sozialgeschichte, 1780-1945, ed. Monika Richarz, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1976- 1982). For the problem of German-Jewish relations, see Das judentum in der deutschen Umwelt, 1800-1850: Studien zur Friihgeschichte der Emanzipation, ed. Hans Liebeschiltz and Arnold Paucker (Tiibingen, 1977); Juden im wilhelminischen Deutschland (ed. Mosse and Paucker); Deutsches judentum in Krieg und Revolution, 1916-1923, ed. Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (Tilbingen, 1971).
113. See Monumenta judaica. 2000 jahre Geschichte und Kultur der Juden am Rhein: Handbuch, ed. Konrad Schilling (Cologne, 1964); Juden an Rhein und Sieg, ed. Heinrich Linn (Siegburg, 1983); Neunhundert jahre Geschichte der Juden in Hessen, ed. Kommission ffir die Geschichte der Juden in Hessen (Wiesbaden, 1983).
114. Entscheidungsjahr 1932: Zur Judenfrage in der Weimarer Republik, ed. Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (TObingen, 1965); also the study (not always convincing) by Hans-Helmuth KnUter, Die Juden und die deutsche Linke in der Weimarer Republik (DOsseldorf, 1971).
115. Kurt Diiwell, "Das Schicksal der Juden am Rhein im nationalsozialistischen Einheitsstaat," in Monumenta Judaica, pp. 601-46; "Die Juden an Rhein und Sieg unter der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft, 1933-1945," in Juden an Rhein und Sieg, pp. 177-377.
116. For example, Jfidisches Leben in Deutschland, Vol. 3; Wolf-Arno Kropat, "Die hessischen Juden im Alltag der NS-Diktatur, 1933-1939," Geschichte der Juden in Hessen, pp. 411-45.
117. Wolf-Arno Kropat, -Jfidische Gerneinden, Wiedergutmachung, Rechtsradikalismus und Antisemitismus nach 1945," in Geschichte der Juden in Hessen, pp. 447-508; Peter Herde, "Gestaltung und Krisis: Juden und Nichtjuden in Deutschland vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit," ibid., pp. 1- 40.
118. Kdln und das rheinische judentum: Festschrift Germania judaica 1959-1984 (Cologne, 1984).
119. Rurup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus, p. 122.
120. For example, Margherita von Brentano, "Die Endl6sung: Ihre Funktion in Theorie und Praxis des Faschismus," Antisemitismus (ed. Huss and Schr6der), pp. 35-76; Wolfgang Hochheimer, -Zur Psychologie von Antisemitismus und M6ghchkeiten seiner Prophylaxe," ibid., pp. 77-120.
121. Thus Lion Feuchtwanger, Die Geschwister Oppermann, rev. ed. (Frankfurt, 1981); Gabriele Tergit, Effingers (Frankfurt, 1982); Ralph Giordano, Die Bertinis, 2d ed. (Frankfurt, 1982). Research about antisernitism has so far failed to deal with these and other examples of literary treatments of antisernitism during the final days of the Weimar Republic and of Nazi persecution of Jews. But the sociology of literature has already investigated antisernitic tendencies in German pre-1914 literature: Ernest K. Bramstedt, Aristrocracy and Middle-Classes in Germany: Social Types in German Literature, 1830-1900 (Chicago and London, 1966); Karlheinz Rossbacher, Heimatkunst und Heimatroman: Zu einer Literatursoziologie der Jahrhundertwende (Stuttgart, 1975); Peter Zimmermann, Der Bauernroman: Antifeudalismus-Konservatismus-Faschismus (Stuttgart, 1975).
122. See the contributions in Bilder sind nicht verboten, Katalog zur Ausstellung . . . zur Vertiefung des Dialogs zwischen Christen und Juden anlaglich des 87. Deutschen Katholikentages Dusseldorf, 1982).
123. For an attempt, see Erwin Leiser, "Deutschland Envache!" Propaganda im Film des Dritten Reiches (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1968). The television films Die Geschwister Oppermann by Egon Monk, and David by Peter von Lilienthal, can be used for an analysis of the critical treatment of Nazi antisernitism.
124. See Kropat, "Jildische Gemeinden," passim.
