German Refugee Historians and Friedrich Meinecke: Letters and Documents, 1910–1977 (Studies in Central European Histories)

German Refugee Historians and Friedrich Meinecke Studies in Central European Histories Edited by Thomas A. Brady, Jr...

Author: by Gerhard A. Ritter | translated by Alex Skinner

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German Refugee Historians and Friedrich Meinecke

Studies in Central European Histories Edited by

Thomas A. Brady, Jr., University of California, Berkeley Roger Chickering, Georgetown University Editorial Board

Steven Beller, Washington, D.C. Atina Grossmann, Columbia University Peter Hayes, Northwestern University Susan Karant-Nunn, University of Arizona Mary Lindemann, University of Miami David M. Luebke, University of Oregon H. C. Erik Midelfort, University of Virginia David Sabean, University of California, Los Angeles Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri Jan de Vries, University of California, Berkeley

VOLUME XLIX

German Refugee Historians and Friedrich Meinecke Letters and Documents, 1910–1977

By

Gerhard A. Ritter Translated by

Alex Skinner

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Friedrich Meinecke. English. German refugee historians and Friedrich Meinecke : letters and documents, 1910– 1977 / [introduced and edited by] by Gerhard A. Ritter ; translated by Alex Skinner. p. cm. — (Studies in Central European histories ; v. 49) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18404-6 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Meinecke, Friedrich, 1862–1954—Relations with students. 2. Meinecke, Friedrich, 1862–1954— Correspondence. 3. Meinecke, Friedrich, 1862–1954—Archives. 4. Historians— Germany—Correspondence. 5. Historians—Germany—Archives. 6. History teachers—Germany—Correspondence. 7. Historians—United States— Correspondence. 8. Historians—United States—Archives. 9. Historiography— Germany—History—20th century—Sources. 10. Historiography—United States— History—20th century—Sources. I. Meinecke, Friedrich, 1862–1954. II. Ritter, Gerhard Albert. III. Title. IV. Series. DD86.7.M43F7513 2010 907.2’02—dc22 2010000467 Friedrich Meinecke. Akademischer Lehrer und emigrierte Schüler. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen 1910–1977. Eingeleitet und bearbeitet von Gerhard A. Ritter. © 2006 by Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH, München, and Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München-Berlin. Geisteswissenschaften International—Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany. A joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, and the German Publishers & Booksellers Association.

ISBN 978 90 04 18404 6 ISSN 1547-1217 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Foreword to the English Edition ......................................................

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1 Introduction: Friedrich Meinecke and his émigré students ........ I. Meinecke as historian and political contemporary ............ 3 II. Meinecke as academic teacher ............................................... 18 III. Meinecke’s émigré students ................................................... 23 1. Hans Rothfels .................................................................... 23 2. Dietrich Gerhard .............................................................. 32 3. Gerhard Masur ................................................................. 36 4. Hajo Holborn ................................................................... 40 5. Felix Gilbert ...................................................................... 51 6. Hans Baron ....................................................................... 56 7. Helene Wieruszowski ...................................................... 61 8. Hans Rosenberg ............................................................... 65 9. Hedwig Hintze .................................................................. 79 10. Eckart Kehr ....................................................................... 91 11. Hanns Günther Reissner ................................................ 97 12. Gustav Mayer .................................................................... 98 IV. Meinecke, his émigré students and relations between the discipline of history in Germany and the United States ............................................................................ 107 Documents List of Documents .............................................................................. I. Hans Rothfels ........................................................................... II. Dietrich Gerhard ..................................................................... III. Gerhard Masur ......................................................................... IV. Hajo Holborn ........................................................................... V. Felix Gilbert .............................................................................. VI. Hans Baron ............................................................................... VII. Helene Wieruszowski .............................................................. VIII. Hans Rosenberg ....................................................................... IX. Hedwig Hintze ..........................................................................

117 128 173 208 237 272 286 320 330 448

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contents

X. Eckart Kehr ................................................................................. 470 XI. Hanns Günther Reissner .......................................................... 490 XII. Gustav Mayer ............................................................................. 492 Sources and bibliography .................................................................. 529 Index of names .................................................................................... 549

FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION The initial impetus for this book, which for the present editor increasingly became a labour of love, came from an invitation from the Land of Saxony-Anhalt, in which Meinecke’s birthplace of Salzwedel is located, to give a talk in February 2004 at an event marking the 50th anniversary of his death. It was suggested to me that I might draw on some of my own memories of Meinecke. I grew up two houses away from his house in Dahlem. Meinecke ultimately suffered from severely impaired vision, and I used to read to him from academic works, which naturally gave rise to numerous conversations. I was even better acquainted with his wife, who survived him by seventeen years and continued to maintain close contact with most of his American students after his death. I quickly came to realize that personal recollections would form an inadequate basis for a talk. At the same time, as I re-read Meinecke’s major works and reviewed many of the books and articles written about him, I became aware of the deafening silence now surrounding a man who, during the time of the Weimar Republic and the first few years after the Second World War—in West Germany and probably even more in other Western countries—was regarded as the leading representative of the discipline of history in Germany. His approach to research, a subtle history of ideas focussing on the leading thinkers of a given era, was considered obsolete in Germany—to a greater extent than in other countries, where it was developed further—because it neglected not only the reality of economic and social life, but also political structures and processes. The task of coming to terms with National Socialism, which Meinecke had already begun in 1946, without access to source materials, in his book The German Catastrophe, developed into a highly sophisticated, specialized field of history drawing on a wide range of source materials. At the same time, however, it became clear that Meinecke’s students often played a decisive role in shifting the focus of interest to new areas, deploying new methods, drawn particularly from the related social sciences, and disseminating the results of Anglo-Saxon research produced after 1933 in West Germany. I thus began to ask myself whether Meinecke’s most enduring impact—the impact of a man who

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foreword to the english edition

never founded a school in the narrow sense of the term—did not in fact lie in his activities as an academic teacher. My study of Meinecke’s papers in the Secret State Archive (Geheimes Staatsarchiv) of Prussia in Berlin-Dahlem, a voluminous and as yet far from adequately evaluated source, then revealed that Meinecke’s students who were compelled to emigrate because of their Jewish descent or political views—particularly Hans Rothfels, Dietrich Gerhard, Gerhard Masur, Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Helene Wieruszowski and Hans Rosenberg—resumed contact with Meinecke very quickly after the war, supplying him with CARE packages and medicine and thus keeping him alive. In many cases, the old teacher-student relationship was revived and his students provided Meinecke with detailed accounts not only of their lives in the United States, but also of their scholarly plans, though these often involved an extensive—and sometimes conscious—process of their distancing themselves from the historical topics and methods favoured by Meinecke. The letters bear witness to their deep respect for their old teacher, the two-way flow of human warmth between students and teacher, as well as their desire to elucidate to Meinecke how they had developed as historians. I realized that these letters from the émigré scholars to Meinecke are not only a deeply fascinating source on historiography, but also shed light on problems of special concern to researchers in the field of history and political science in the decades before and after World War II. The letters touch on the attempts to come to terms with their German-Jewish identity, at times touching on the tap-roots of their own lives—an effort forced upon Meinecke’s Jewish students by outside forces. Of these students, almost all were acculturated “Jews”, baptised as Christians, who were closely identified with German scholarship and culture. As a result of cultural anti-Semitism, however, they felt excluded, particularly at many universities; because of the often hostile environment, they were forced to seek a new self-image. The letters are a treasure-trove with regard to the issues of emigration and remigration, as well as the significance of restitution to individuals. Some of the letters also tackle the relationship between these scholars’ love for their old homeland and their loyalty to the country that had offered them asylum and aid after their expulsion. Almost all of Meinecke’s American students ultimately saw themselves as bridgebuilders between the United States and Germany, in both a political and academic sense. Time and again, they allude to the United States’


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special relationship with Berlin from 1948 on, key issues of American policy towards Germany, and the evaluation of political and social developments in both countries. The letters also lay bare the émigrés’ major role in the Westernization or Americanization of West Germany and the fusion of German and Western traditions. But alongside these matters of general interest, publication of the letters and other sources is also intended to enhance our knowledge of the personal circumstances, political views, scholarly aims and—in some cases—specific research projects undertaken by these émigré historians. This applies, for example, to the emergence and development of Hans Baron’s concepts of early humanism, which have greatly influenced subsequent researchers, Dietrich Gerhard’s basic ideas about the specific institutions and forces of old Europe prior to the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, and the major, never completed research projects in social history by Hans Rosenberg on the Junkers, German elites in the 19th century, and the inequality characteristic of German society during the period 1348–1525. The sources thus allow us to paint a more detailed picture of the academic profile of at least some of these historians than has been possible so far. The most important findings of my work with the source materials were first summarized in a lengthy paper, but this was far too extensive to appear as an essay in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, as originally planned. I thus gratefully took up the suggestion of publishing the paper, along with the sources, in a special volume for the Institut für Zeitgeschichte. The lengthy introduction to the sources points the reader to particularly significant materials and provides information about the historians dealt with here, their academic work, and the contemporary background to the questions they discussed. Of course, the letters also contain a great many things that could not be addressed in the introduction. The core of the present volume consists of letters to Meinecke from his students found among his papers in the Secret State Archive in Berlin. These were supplemented by selected letters of Hans Rosenberg and Hans Rothfels from the Federal Archive in Koblenz. This archive also contained what I consider to be a highly informative and extensive stock of letters from Hans Baron to Walter Goetz, which was among the latter’s papers, and supplementary materials on Kehr in Gerhard Ritter’s papers. I also drew on the papers of Gerhard Masur in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte and those of Dietrich Gerhard in the

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library of Washington University in St. Louis. On the relationship between Rothfels and Meinecke, which, primarily for political reasons, was tense at times, I have included letters from Rothfels to his friend Siegfried A. Kaehler from the Kaehler papers in the Göttingen State and University Library and from the holdings of the Imperial Archive (Reichsarchiv), which are now in the Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv), Berlin. To cast light on specific problems, I consulted the files of the Oldenbourg Verlag in the Bavarian Economic Archive (Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv) and the archive of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, both in Munich. I also consulted the habilitation and doctoral records of the philosophy faculty and the personal files of the Friedrich Wilhelm University from the 1920s and early 1930s. These are in the present-day university archive of Humboldt University in Berlin. Unfortunately, the papers of Felix Gilbert and private papers of Hajo Holborn are unavailable to researchers. I have, however, included a letter from Meinecke to Holborn relating to the latter’s work on the development of the Weimar constitution from Holborn’s academic papers in Yale University Library. I was also able to incorporate letters from Hans Rosenberg to Rudolf Braun and to myself. The volume’s main emphasis is on letters to Meinecke, which I was able to supplement with replies from Meinecke or his wife, particularly to Gerhard, Masur, Gilbert and Rosenberg. Meinecke’s most important letters to Rothfels, Holborn and Gustav Mayer are already to be found in Meinecke’s Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, to which I refer in the footnotes. The temporal emphasis is on the 1920s and early 1930s, as well as the period from 1945/46 to 1954. I have, however, also included letters from Rothfels, Mayer, and Gerhard from before or during the First World War. In addition, I consciously incorporated a number of letters from or to Frau Meinecke after Meinecke’s death in February 1954 that are especially informative about the émigré scholars considered here. The extent and character of the available sources naturally had a major impact on the present volume. A broad range of source materials was available for Hans Rosenberg, from which I had to make a selection. However, only a few of the more than 100 long letters from Baron to Goetz could be included, and the sources were fairly scant in the case of other historians such as Felix Gilbert, Helene Wieruszowski,


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Hedwig Hintze, and Eckart Kehr. Though Meinecke and his wife were the main addressees of the letters, I have also included letters from one student to another that reflect their relationship to Meinecke or show how they tried to help one another. Also included is a lengthy report by Hans Rosenberg for the State Department on the situation at the German universities in 1950. A particularly large number of letters and other documents from Rosenberg have been included. These reflect the extent and quality of the Rosenberg papers, to which researchers have yet to turn their attention, but also my attempt to illustrate the problem of emigration and remigration in light of his example and to present new material on his assessment of Germany’s development and his research projects. In the case of Rosenberg, my teacher and later friend, whose chair at the University of California, Berkeley, I took up as guest professor in 1971–1972, as I had previously done for Gerhard at Washington University in St. Louis in 1965, I was also able to draw on personal recollections and letters. The main problem in putting together this volume was making out the often scarcely legible handwriting. I often spent whole days hunched over a single letter with a magnifying glass. Overall, though, with the exception of a small number of words, which are indicated in brackets, I have managed to decipher the text of the letters. I have also made an effort to decipher allusions and introduce individuals who are mentioned in the letters. Some abridgment was necessary in cases of repetition or discussion of purely family-related matters. The forms of address and complementary closings, which indicate the degree of familiarity between the letter-writers and Meinecke and among themselves have been included. It was clear to me from the outset that the main appeal of the letters and documents reproduced here lies in the fact that they shed light on the development of the discipline of history in America and the academic teaching of European, especially German, history at American universities. The historians who fled Germany, and particularly Meinecke’s students, did much to strengthen teaching and research on modern continental European history at American universities, helped rebuild the history of ideas, and fostered research on early humanism, the Renaissance and medieval Europe, previously focussed largely on Great Britain. Conversely, the historians who fled the Nazi regime and their students made key contributions after the Second World War in Germany—to the institutional embedding of contemporary

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history, the integration of methods from the social sciences, the development of American studies and the revision of the German view of history, formerly of a strongly national character. Further, the émigrés played a decisive role in the intensive exchange with American historians so important to the discipline of history in Germany. I have therefore made a particular effort to disseminate the findings of my study in the United States. After giving a lecture on “Meinecke’s Protégées. German Émigré Historians Between Two Worlds” on 15 May 2006 at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C., commented on and expanded by James J. Sheehan, I was delighted to take up Roger Chickering’s offer to publish the book in English translation in the series edited by him and Thomas A. Brady, Jr. For the English translation, I have added what I consider to be a highly instructive letter from Gustav Mayer, the historian of the German labour movement, to Erich Marcks. This letter relates to his situation and future academic plans following his failed attempt to habilitate at the University of Berlin. In addition, I have made minor corrections and included references to a number of studies that have appeared since the completion of the German edition. I have received support from many quarters in putting together the present volume. I am particularly grateful to the archives that made their materials available. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Rudolf Braun, who lent me a number of letters from Rosenberg to himself. Andreas Daum took on the laborious task of acquiring material on a number of the American historians mentioned in the letters. Stefan Meineke, Klaus Schreiner and Marc Föcking helped me clarify several unresolved issues. Simone Lässig helped me get hold of the publications by Hans Rothfels and Felix Gilbert during the immediate postwar period that were not available in Germany, for which I would like to thank her and the German Historical Institute in Washington DC. Hermann Graml and Hans Woller helped decipher some of the nearillegible letters from Hans Rothfels. I would like to thank Joachim Stemmler for making me aware of Rothfels’ letters among the papers of Siegfried A. Kaehler. Brigitta Oestreich taught me a great deal about Hedwig Hintze. Peter Thomas Walther selflessly provided me with a copy of his unpublished dissertation “Von Meinecke zu Beard?”. I am also grateful to Nils Güttler, Henning Holsten, and Adréana Peitsch for typing the manuscripts. In addition, Adréana Peitsch helped obtain materials that clarified some initially unresolved questions in the foot-


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notes. Nils Güttler helped compile the index of names. I am grateful to Udo Wengst for editing the original manuscript and his secretary Natalie Curry for transcription of the few typewritten letters. I would also like to thank Roger Chickering, who moderated the presentation of the German edition of the book in Washington, for his constant encouragement. I am deeply grateful to the Thyssen Foundation for funding the translation. My thanks also to the publishers, Brill, who have incorporated the book into their programme, and to Alex Skinner for a speedy and competent translation. Gerhard A. Ritter January 2010

INTRODUCTION: FRIEDRICH MEINECKE AND HIS ÉMIGRÉ STUDENTS Friedrich Meinecke’s life spans a full century. He was born in October 1862 in the town of Salzwedel, which was formerly a member of the Hanseatic League, in Prussian Altmark, now part of Saxony-Anhalt. He was the only son, alongside three daughters, of a Prussian postmaster. As yet without a railway station, the town depended on the stagecoach for its links to the outside world. Meinecke thus writes in his memoirs of hearing the post horn ringing out with a “cheerful blast” in front of his parents’ house during the first years of his life.1 As a result of his father’s disciplinary transfer, Meinecke arrived in 1871 in the 1 Friedrich Meinecke, Autobiographische Schriften, Stuttgart 1969, p. 13. On Meinecke’s life up to 1919, see the two sets of memoirs reprinted in one volume as Erlebtes 1862–1901 (first published Leipzig 1941) and Straßburg-Freiburg-Berlin 1901–1919. Erinnerungen (first published 1949) and his partly autobiographical book Die deutsche Katastrophe (first published 1946), which is included in the same volume. For the period up to 1918, see also Stefan Meineke (no relation of F. Meinecke), Friedrich Meinecke. Persönlichkeit und politisches Denken bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges, Berlin/New York 1995. To the extent that they are included in it, Meinecke’s writings in the present volume are quoted from the 9-volume edition of his Werke, published on behalf of the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut at the Free University of Berlin by Hans Herzfeld, Carl Hinrichs, Walther Hofer, Eberhard Kessel and Georg Kotowski: vol. 1: Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte, edited and with an introduction by Walther Hofer, Munich 1957; vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, edited and with an introduction by Georg Kotowski, Darmstadt 1957; vol. 3: Die Entstehung des Historismus, edited and with an introduction by Carl Hinrichs, Munich 1959; vol. 4: Zur Theorie und Philosophie der Geschichte, edited and with an introduction by Eberhard Kessel, Stuttgart 1959; vol. 5: Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, edited and with an introduction by Hans Herzfeld, Munich 1969; vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, edited and with an introduction by Ludwig Dehio and Peter Classen, Stuttgart 1962; vol. 7: Zur Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung, edited and with an introduction by Eberhard Kessel, Munich 1968; vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, edited and with an introduction by Eberhard Kessel, Stuttgart 1969; vol. 9: Brandenburg-Preußen-Deutschland. Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte und Politik, edited and with an introduction by Eberhard Kessel, Stuttgart 1979. A second volume of Meinecke’s letters is in preparation. A bibliography of Meinecke’s works, which includes the translations, Festschriften and writings about Friedrich Meinecke up to 1979, can be found in: Friedrich Meinecke Heute. Bericht über ein Gedenk-Colloquium zu seinem 25. Todestag am 5. und 6. April 1979. Prepared and edited by Michael Erbe, Berlin 1981. Additions to the bibliography have been published by Stefan Meineke: “Friedrich Meinecke-Bibliographie 1980–2006 mit Nachträgen für die Zeit bis 1979” in: Bock/ Schönpflug (eds.), Friedrich Meinecke in seiner Zeit. Studien zu Leben und Werk, Stuttgart 2006, pp. 257–291.

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introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students

vibrant metropolis of Berlin, the economic and political centre of the newly founded German Empire. One of his most vivid early memories was watching the victorious regiments march into Unter den Linden in June 1871, along with a handful of older gentlemen wearing tall top hats—veterans of the war of 1813.2 Apart from a few interruptions during his studies and in 1943, 1944 and 1945/46, he lived in Berlin from 1871 to 1901, at the end of which period he worked as an archivist and lecturer (Privatdozent), and then from 1914 until his death in 1954, as holder of a chair in history and finally professor emeritus. These two periods bracketed his years, so crucial to his scholarly endeavours and the development of his political views, as a professor at the Imperial University of Strasbourg (1901– 1906) and the University of Freiburg (1906–1914), during which he experienced and learned to love the Upper Rhine cultural scene; the years from 1906 also brought him into contact with the relatively liberal climate that prevailed in the Grand Duchy of Baden. When Meinecke died on 6 February 1954, Adenauer had won the second Bundestag election of 1953, the economic upturn and the integration of Germany into the West had begun, and the course was set for the division of the country, overcome only in 1990. I am unable to deal with Meinecke’s life here. I shall touch only in passing on his crucial importance to the discipline of history in Germany during the first half of the 20th century, as creator of the history of political ideas and editor of the Historische Zeitschrift from 1893 until 1935. I shall restrict myself to some remarks on Meinecke as homo politicus, a fascinating topic that has yet to be dealt with adequately. My main focus is on Meinecke as an academic teacher, particularly on his relationship with his students who were Jewish or had “Jewish family ties” and who fled Germany after 1933. Meinecke’s wife, Antonie Meinecke, née Delhaes (31 January 1875– 2 February 1971), who long outlived her husband, played a crucial role in his life’s work, especially in his relations with his students—a role so far virtually ignored in the academic literature on Meinecke. She was not only his partner after 1895, but also his most important interlocutor. His memoirs are dedicated to her. Above all, though, she made their home a place of intellectual exchange with his colleagues and students, as well as with politicians and leading officials of the time. It

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Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 23.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 3 reveals much about the strength of her personality and human warmth that, right up until her death, a number of Meinecke’s students paid her frequent visits, during which lengthy conversations ensued, and wrote to her on a regular basis.3 It is particularly moving testimony to the émigré students’ devotion to Frau Meinecke that Meinecke’s “American students and interpreters”, who “for a large part” of her “life, have had the good fortune of being her friends”, sent her a “Festschrift” on her 90th birthday as a mark of their gratitude.4 Among the wives of the university teachers, Frau Meinecke continued to play a major role even after her husband’s death. Apart from his wife, other women also did much to enrich Meinecke’s life. These included his much-loved mother, three sisters, four daughters, and female students, of whom there were a large number for the time. These, he writes, proved “particularly grateful for, and receptive to, the intellectual side of history”.5 The Freiburg years were the happiest of his life, a fact due in no small part to women who, with their “combination of elegance, compelling self-assurance and kindness, of joie de vivre and radiant intellectuality”6 moulded the society and conviviality of the university town. I. Meinecke as historian and political contemporary Meinecke was a great academic teacher, and it is hard to overstate his influence on many of the most gifted new historians between the turn of the century and the end of the Weimar Republic. His influence

3 As one example of many, see Gerhard Masur, Das ungewisse Herz. Berichte aus Berlin—über die Suche nach dem Freien, Holyoke/Mass. 1978, p. 87: “The house at 13 Am Hirschsprung remained an intellectual and social magnet for us, even after Meinecke’s death in 1954. Frau Meinecke tends the memory of her husband with touching devotion and treats all her husband’s students like members of the family. On 31 January 1970 I had the opportunity to celebrate her 95th birthday at her house with a glass of champagne.” Masur goes on to write that during his visiting professorship at the Free University in 1956, which lasted for six weeks, Frau Meinecke attended all of his lectures and invited him to dinner every Sunday (ibid., p. 299f.). 4 This bound volume contains essays already published by Meinecke’s émigré students Dietrich Gerhard, Felix Gilbert, Hajo Holborn, Gerhard Masur and Hans Rosenberg, his interpreters Richard W. Sterling and Fritz T. Epstein, who counted himself one of Meinecke’s students in a broader sense, and friend of the Meinecke family Carl C. Anthon. I have Meinecke’s granddaughter Frau Roswitha Classen to thank for making me aware of this “Festschrift”, the dedication to “sehr verehrte, liebe Frau Meinecke” (“dear, most honoured Frau Meinecke”) and the titles of the essays. 5 Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 193. 6 Ibid., p. 211.

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was due to the fact that his approach to the history of political ideas had breathed fresh life into the discipline of history in Germany. Previously, German historians had generally focussed on the state or Prussia’s rise to great power status in a one-sided way. Historians such as Karl Lamprecht, with his studies in economic and social history, had been pushed to the margins of the historical profession. A strong emphasis on the role of ideas in history was already evident in Meinecke’s two-volume biography of the Prussian military reformer and war minister, Hermann von Boyen, which was published in 1896– 1899, and in his short, impressive monograph, The Age of German Liberation, 1795–1815.7 But Meinecke’s history of political ideas truly broke through only with his first major work of intellectual history, Cosmopolitanism and

7 Friedrich Meinecke, Das Leben des Generalfeldmarschalls Hermann von Boyen. vol. 1: 1771–1814, vol. 2: 1814–1848, Stuttgart 1896 and 1899; The Age of German Liberation, 1795–1815, Berkeley 1977; German title: Das Zeitalter der deutschen Erhebung (1795–1815), Bielefeld 1906. In his obituary on Meinecke, who was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences from 1911, Franz Schnabel, underscores the novel approach taken in both works: “Friedrich Meinecke 30. 10. 1862–6. 2. 1954”, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jahrbuch 1954, Munich 1954, pp. 174–200, esp. pp. 179–191. In constructing his history of ideas, Meinecke could to some extent build on the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, and Wilhelm Dilthey. On the question of whether the end of the Empire and the birth of the Weimar Republic brought a fundamental shift in Meinecke’s political views and his way of writing history, see especially: Walther Hofer, Geschichtsschreibung und Weltanschauung. Gedanken zum Werke Friedrich Meineckes, Munich 1950; Hofer, Geschichte zwischen Philosophie und Politik. Studien zur Problematik des modernen Geschichtsdenkens, Stuttgart 1956; Richard W. Sterling, Ethics in a World of Power: The Political Ideas of Friedrich Meinecke, Princeton 1958. Hofer emphasizes the discontinuities, while Sterling, who is concerned especially with Meinecke’s foreign-policy ideas and Stefan Meineke stress the continuities. Hofer and Sterling had close personal relationships with Meinecke. Meinecke himself wrote to Sterling on 13 November 1953 in Solomonic terms: “The continuity of my development persists alongside and above the profound shifts shown so convincingly by Hofer”. Copy of letter in Meinecke papers, no. 203. Of the vast number of essays on Meinecke as an individual and writer of history, I can mention but a few: Ludwig Dehio, Friedrich Meinecke. Der Historiker in der Krise, Festrede, Berlin 1953; Hans Herzfeld, “Friedrich Meinecke. Zu seinem 90. Geburtstag”, in: GWU 3 (1952), pp. 577–591; Hans Rothfels, Friedrich Meinecke. Ein Rückblick auf sein wissenschaftliches Lebenswerk. Trauerrede, Berlin 1954; Walter Bußmann, Friedrich Meinecke. Ein Gedenkvortrag, Berlin 1963; Ernst Schulin, “Friedrich Meinecke”, in: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Deutsche Historiker, vol. 1, Göttingen 1971, pp. 39–57; Felix Gilbert, “Friedrich Meinecke”, in: Gilbert: History, Choice and Commitment, Cambridge/London 1977, pp. 67–87. Gerhard Masur, “Friedrich Meinecke, Historian of a World in Crisis”, in: The Origins of Modern Consciousness, edited by James J. Ethridge and Barbara Kopala, Detroit 1963, pp. 133–147. Walter Goetz, “Friedrich Meinecke. Leben und Persönlichkeit”, in: HZ 174 (1952), pp. 231–250.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 5 the National State of 1908, which quickly went through several editions. In the foreword to the second edition of the book in 1911, Meinecke famously stated that historical research in Germany “must again make the effort to set itself freely in motion and establish contact with the major forces of national and cultural life . . . it . . . can immerse itself more boldly in philosophy and politics; indeed, only by doing so can it develop its most unique character as both universal and national”.8 This assertion struck a chord, particularly with outstanding students who were open to new ideas. Yet with its attempt to demonstrate a close link between power and spirit, its generally positive assessment of the development of the nation state idea,9 its view of nation-states as supra-personal individuals, and its tendency to sublimate politics, state, and power, the book is probably the weakest of Meinecke’s major intellectual histories in the eyes of the modern-day reader. Machiavellism: the Doctrine of Raison d’Etat and its Place in Modern History, which was published in 1924 and is probably Meinecke’s most important work, is more universal in orientation. After the experience of the First World War, it is far more explicit about the dichotomy between power and spirit and the tension between politics and ethics. Meinecke’s third major work of intellectual history, which was published long after his retirement in 1936 in an incomplete state, was Historism, the Rise of a New Historical Outlook. It analyzed the discovery of the principle of individuality and the sense of history characteristic of historism, whose rise he described as “one of the greatest intellectual revolutions in Western thought”.10 This work has attracted a great deal of criticism. This focuses on its apologia for historism, with its tendency to replace generalizing perspectives with an individualizing approach, and the resulting relativization of moral values; its inaccurate identification of historism with Ranke’s view of history and the discipline of history; its lack of precision; its positive evaluation of the decoupling of developments in Germany from natural

8 Meinecke Werke, vol. 1: Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, p. 1f. English edition: Cosmopolitanism and the National State, Princeton/New Jersey 1970. 9 Gilbert for example states: “It is almost shocking to discover that Meinecke regarded the development from universalism and cosmopolitanism to nationalism as clear, unquestioned progress. The process . . . is recognized as a supreme value and final goal of history” (Gilbert, Meinecke, p. 69). 10 Meinecke Werke, vol. 3: Die Entstehung des Historismus, p. 1. The book was never completed. It ends with a long chapter on Goethe, but makes no connection with Ranke and the historiography of the 19th century.

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law; its inadequate investigation of the interaction between interests and ideas; and its emphasis on fully-formed historism as a specifically German achievement.11 In an astute foreword to the English edition of the book, Isaiah Berlin highlighted the turn away from the universalism and scientific rationalism of Western civilization and described Meinecke as the last major representative of an almost official national philosophy of history. However much he acknowledged the individualizing outlook’s capacity to broaden historians’ horizons and perspectives, he saw Meinecke as the last authentic master of a school that ends with him.12 This is not an unreasonable assessment. Meinecke managed to find no suitable successor to carry forward his particular approach to history, though many of his ideas were developed by his students and others. Yet as late as 1954, such a major historian as Franz Schnabel saw Meinecke as a historian “who, like no other of his time, has given direction and character to historical research in Germany over the last sixty years. With his comprehensive and profound life’s work in the fields of politics and history, he can be considered on a par with the great writers of history of the past”.13 Indeed, Schnabel saw Meinecke as the “most representative figure” of the Weimar Republic among the scholars of the day, comparable to “Adolf Harnack in the Wilhelmine

11 On “historism”, see above all the excellent introduction by Carl Hinrichs in Meinecke’s Werke and the penetrating analysis by Ernst Schulin: “Das Problem der Individualität. Eine kritische Betrachtung des Historismus-Werkes von Friedrich Meinecke”, in: Traditionskritik und Rekonstruktionsversuch. Studien zur Entwicklung von Geschichtswissenschaft und historischem Denken, Göttingen 1979, pp. 97–116, 252–259; For a critique of Meinecke’s “historism”, see Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Meineckes Historismus. Über Kontext und Folgen einer Definition”, in: Oexle, Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeichen des Historismus. Studien zur Problemgeschichte der Moderne, Göttingen 1996, pp. 95–136; Eugene N. Anderson, “Meineckes ‘Ideengeschichte’ and the Crisis in Historical Thinking”, in: Medieval and Historiographical Essays in Honor of James Westphal Thompson, Chicago 1938, pp. 361– 396; Benedetto Croce, Die Geschichte als Gedanke und als Tat, Bern 1944 (this is a translation from the Italian of a text by Croce from 1938. See also Meinecke’s attempt to come to terms with Croce’s critique, in: “Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Historismus und des Schleiermacherschen Individualitätsgedankens”, first published in 1939 in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 4: Zur Theorie und Philosophie der Geschichte, pp. 341–357, esp. pp. 342–344); Robert A. Pois, “Two Poles within Historicism: Croce and Meinecke”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 31 (1970), pp. 253–272; Jörn Rüsen, “Friedrich Meineckes ‘Entstehung des Historismus’. Eine kritische Betrachtung”, in: Erbe (ed.), Meinecke Heute, pp. 76–100. 12 Friedrich Meinecke, Historism. The Rise of a New Historical Outlook. Foreword by Sir Isaiah Berlin, London 1972, pp. IX–XVI. 13 Schnabel’s obituary on Meinecke, p. 124.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 7 era”.14 In fact, however, as a scholar-politician, Meinecke played nothing like the same role beyond the discipline of history that Harnack played before and after 1918. As an original, universally oriented historian, Otto Hintze, Meinecke’s longstanding, close friend and colleague in Berlin, was surely at least as significant a figure. It is telling that some of Meinecke’s most devoted students—Dietrich Gerhard, Felix Gilbert and Hans Rosenberg—later tended to look more to Hintze than Meinecke for their academic inspiration.15 After the Second World War, however, because of his scholarly achievements and rejection of the Nazi regime, Meinecke—now well over eighty years old—was the most respected German historian in the Allied occupied zones and later Federal Republic, but especially in the nations of the West, where he stood as a figurehead of the discipline of history in Germany. Soon, however, greater emphasis was being placed on the weaknesses in his approach to history. These included his focus on great individuals, his overestimation of the efficacy of ideas, his tendency to neglect

14

Ibid., p. 125. Dietrich Gerhard, “Otto Hintze: His Work and his Significance in Historiography”, in: Gerhard, Gesammelte Aufsätze, Göttingen 1977, pp. 268–295; Felix Gilbert, “Otto Hintze”, in: History, pp. 39–65 refers to Hintze as “one of the most important, if not the most important, German historical scholar of the period of William II and the Weimar Republic” (p. 39). In his lectures and seminars, Hans Rosenberg frequently referred to Hintze as an exemplary practitioner of a comparative, universally oriented history. In letters to Ernst Posner from 13 July 1964 and Gerhard Oestreich from 19 March 1965, he mentions his efforts to ensure the publication of some of Hintze’s essays in English, a project for which Felix Gilbert was later responsible, and to write a brief introduction to it “if necessary”. See Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze, “Verzage nicht und lass nicht ab zu kämpfen. . .” Die Korrspondenz. Compiled and prepared by Brigitta Oestreich, edited by Robert Jütte and Gerhard Hirschfeld, Essen 2004, p. 256f. In the preface to the German edition of his 3-volume history of Germany, Hajo Holborn too makes special mention of Otto Hintze, alongside Ranke and Meinecke: Hajo Holborn, Deutsche Geschichte der Neuzeit, vol. 1: Das Zeitalter der Reformation und des Absolutismus, Stuttgart 1960, p. XII. He wrote to Gerhard Oestreich on 21 August 1964: “I often wonder which were the greater historian in that generation, Meinecke or Hintze? Although I was . . . a pupil of Meinecke, I have perhaps learned as much from Otto Hintze”, in: Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze, Verzage nicht, p. 254. Though his close friendship with Hintze ended in 1933, Meinecke himself later referred constantly to Hintze’s significance. With his emphasis on collective forces, economic factors and institutions, and his concept of the historical type—an adaptation of Weber’s concept of the ideal type—he represented a position on the other end of the historiographic spectrum from Meinecke’s individualizing approach to history. See Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, for instance his letters to W. Hofer from 8 March 1947, K. S. Pinson from 23 September 1949 and Theodor Heuß from 7 June 1952 (pp. 273, 301, 313); see also: Winfried Schulze, “Friedrich Meinecke und Otto Hintze”, in: Erbe (ed.), Meinecke Heute, pp. 122–136. 15

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the forces of economic and social history, his partial disengagement from Western European and American traditions, which was bound up with his rejection of the Enlightenment, and the consequences of this disengagement for the discipline of history in Germany. In 1971, inspired by developments abroad, Hans Herzfeld spoke of his hopes for a Meinecke renaissance;16 but it was not to be. This failure was due in part to the fact that Meinecke’s political views, which were initially seen in an almost entirely positive light, had begun to attract criticism. Furthermore, he was increasingly regarded as typical of a narrow professorial variant of an outmoded, elitist tradition characteristic of the German educated classes, a tradition which rejected the modern world of industrialization and mass democracy.17 It is beyond dispute that Meinecke’s intellectual roots lay in the Goethe era and German Idealism. He also saw the Janus face of modernity and mass politics. While politics had been made more democratic by enabling all citizens to participate in the state, Meinecke experienced the jingoism of the First World War and the Nazis’ fateful mobilization of the masses and their criminal exploitation of modern technology and science. For him, modernity and mass politics also contained the potential for disaster. Meinecke was no ivory-tower cultural pessimist, but he possessed a clear vision of politics. He was an acute observer of, and commentator on, the contemporary world. He broke with his originally conservative basic attitude in 1895,18 and over the following decade he went on to develop a number of fundamental political convictions that he espoused for the rest of his life. These included the idea, which he

16 Hans Herzfeld, “Meinecke-Renaissance im Ausland?”, in: Festschrift für Hermann Heimpel, vol. 1, Göttingen 1971, pp. 42–62. 17 Imanuel Geiss, “Kritischer Rückblick auf Friedrich Meinecke”, in: Geiss, Studien über Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft, Frankfurt a. M. 1972, pp. 89–107 sees Meinecke as a typical representative of a reactionary historical guild and condemns him as a “historicizing shaman of his class” (p. 107). For a more nuanced but also critical view of Meinecke as representative of an elite educational aristocracy which is spiritually disconnected from modern democracy, see: Shulamit Volkov, “Cultural Elitism and Democracy: Notes on Friedrich Meinecke’s Political Thought”, in: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte Tel Aviv 5 (1976), pp. 383–418. Of this article, Rosenberg wrote to S. Volkov: “You hit the nail on the head! You did a simply excellent job—boldly, clearly and irrefutably” (Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Hans Rosenberg papers, no. 1376, vol. 19); Jonathan B. Knudsen, “Friedrich Meinecke (1862–1954)”, in: Hartmut Lehmann/James van Horn Melton (eds.), Paths of Continuity. Central European Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s, Cambridge/Mass. 1994, pp. 49–71. 18 Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 124.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 9 took from Friedrich Naumann, that the workers must be won over to the nation-state through social reforms and the extension of their political rights. In the last few years before 1914, Meinecke stood on the left wing of the National Liberal Party. Unlike the Prussian National Liberals and the party as a whole, the party in Baden advocated the fusion of political forces—from the National Liberals to the Social Democrats (who had a reformist hue in Baden)—into a political bloc in order to promote democratic reforms. This approach was based on the concept of a Volksgemeinschaft or national community that would bridge, or at least lessen, the sharp social and political divisions of the German Empire. This national community, however, was supposed to introduce the workers to the cultural ideals of the bourgeoisie in order to establish a society of equal citizens; it was an inadequate response to the realities of the industrial world. It was also intended to enable Germany to make a powerful impact internationally without resort to war. As public relations chief in the Reichstag elections of 1911/12, Meinecke vigorously supported Gerhard von Schulze-Gävernitz, the National Liberal candidate in Freiburg. He subsequently attended the National Liberals’ conference as a delegate in 1912, but was unable to get his “left-wing” views accepted within the party. Meinecke argued for the reform of the Prussian three-class franchise and the extension of the powers of the Reichstag. But he rejected a parliamentary system (with ministerial responsibility), primarily because of the fragmentation of the German party system and the sharp differences among the German parties, both in terms of world-view and the economic and social interests they represented.19 However, unlike many of his contemporaries, he accepted modern mass parties with their organizational apparatus, and he saw conflict as a necessary part of the modern political process.20 Meinecke produced a clear analysis 19 On Meinecke’s political views prior to 1918, see, in addition to the meticulous study by Stefan Meineke, Meinecke, Georg Kotowski, “Friedrich Meinecke als Kritiker der Bismarckschen Reichsverfassung”, in: Forschungen zu Staat und Verfassung. Festgabe für Fritz Hartung, Berlin 1958, pp. 145–162. 20 See Meinecke’s unpublished chapter “Die Reichsverfassung” and especially the chapter “Die politischen Parteien”, Meinecke papers, no. 122. The manuscript was part of an introduction to contemporary political questions taken on by Meinecke in 1913, but it remained unfinished as a consequence of the Revolution. See Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 202f., 260. Only the historical introduction to the planned volume was published, as “Reich und Nation von 1871–1914”, in: Internationale Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 11 (1917), p. 907ff.

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of the relationship between Prussia and the Empire, each with its own government and parliament, as an instrument of power deployed by the government against the mass opposition parties in the Reichstag.21 His proposals to break up Prussia, which he put forward in 1918/19,22 were thus intended not only to strengthen the Empire but also to promote democracy. During the First World War, after exhibiting some annexationist tendencies in its early stages, Meinecke spoke out clearly against the unrestricted submarine war that provoked America’s entry into the war, and he advocated a peace of understanding, a “Hubertusburg peace”, as concluded at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, without victors or vanquished. With respect to domestic politics, he became a vehement exponent of political reform. After the Revolution, Meinecke was one of the first major representatives of the educated classes to speak out in support of the Republic and against restoration of the monarchy.23 After the Second World War, Meinecke was often accused of having been no more than a lukewarm supporter of the Republic. Critics referred to his statement during the revolutionary period that he was still a “monarchist of the heart (Herzensmonarchist) with a devotion to the past” but that he would be a “republican by reason (Vernunftrepublikaner) with a devotion to the future”.24 However, more detailed examination of his political impact and the development of his views during the Weimar Republic—only certain aspects of which have been adequately studied—would reveal

21

Meinecke’s manuscript “Die Reichsverfassung”, p. 32, in: Meinecke papers, no. 122. 22 Meinecke, “Verfassung und Verwaltung der deutschen Republik”, written in November 1918 and published in January 1919, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 280–298, esp. 283–285. The problem of incorporating the old Prussia, with its military and feudal structures, into the German state, already constitutes the central topic in the second part of Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, namely “Der preußische Nationalstaat und der deutsche Nationalstaat” and of his oft-noted lecture delivered at the Deutscher Historikertag in Stuttgart in 1906 on “Deutschland und Preußen im 19. Jahrhundert”; see the Bericht über die 9. Versammlung deutscher Historiker zu Stuttgart, Leipzig 1907, p. 13ff. On Meinecke’s views on the constitution in early 1919, see also: “Bemerkungen zum Entwurf der Reichsverfassung”, published in the weekly Deutsche Politik on 31 January and 7 February 1919 in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 299–312. 23 See Hajo Holborn in his essay “Verfassung und Verwaltung der Deutschen Republik. Der Verfassungsentwurf Friedrich Meineckes aus dem Jahre 1918”, in: HZ 147 (1933), pp. 115–128, esp. p. 119. 24 Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, p. 281. See also the defence of his position in the revealing letter to Siegfried Kaehler from January 1919, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, pp. 334–336.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 11 that however much he criticized the dysfunctional parliamentary and party system, and despite his calls for a “dictatorship of trust” to overcome the crisis of the Republic in its closing stages, he was an unqualified if critical defender of the Republic and hence increasingly a “republican of the heart”. This is apparent in a speech delivered at the conference (on 23–24 April 1926) of the “Weimar Circle” of university teachers who were loyal to the constitution, a body he had initiated. Meinecke stated: “To say that something is necessary for reasons of state is ultimately inadequate. Initially, we old monarchists could do no more than become republicans by reason, repressing the internal mental ruptures, which were quite enough to deal with, within the recesses of our minds. But if you have taken the first step, you now have to take a second step as well—again, for reasons of state—and desire that the German people take the new state form to heart, so that it takes root firmly”.25 Meinecke was committed to the proposition that the Republic must be based on a political alliance between the bourgeoisie and the workers, though in the early years he was prepared to concede a leading role to Social Democracy, particularly as represented by Ebert.26 He was a vigorous opponent of Marxism and the communists. He saw his own task, in which he ultimately failed, as being to win over the bourgeoisie and particularly university teachers and students for the new state. He was a member of the left-liberal DDP, but he tried in vain to expand it into a major liberal people’s party through a merger with the DVP.27 In the same vein, he hoped that the conservative groupings would merge to form a large-scale pro-republican party.28

25 Meinecke, “Die deutschen Universitäten und der heutige Staat”, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 402–413, quotation on p. 412. See also: Meinecke, “Das Ende der Monarchie. Zum 9. November 1918/1928” and his contribution to the ten-year anniversary of the constitution, “Ein Tag des Denkens”, from 11 August 1929, ibid., pp. 420–424, 426–431. Meinecke’s development into a republican of the heart is also rightly emphasized by Harm Klueting, “‘Vernunftrepublikanimus’ und ‘Vertrauensdiktatur’: Friedrich Meinecke in der Weimarer Republik”, in: HZ 242 (1980), pp. 69–98, esp. p. 94. On the “Weimar Circle”, see Herbert Döring, Der Weimarer Kreis. Studien zum politischen Bewusstsein verfassungstreuer Hochschullehrer in der Weimarer Republik, Meisenheim a. G. 1975. 26 “Bemerkungen zum Entwurf der Reichsverfassung” in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, p. 307. 27 See his lecture “Die Kulturfragen und die Parteien” at the Liberal Association (Liberale Vereinigung) on 16 May 1925 in: ibid., pp. 385–392. 28 Lecture: “Republik, Bürgertum und Jugend”, delivered at the Democratic Students’ Association in Berlin on 16 January 1925 in: ibid., pp. 369–383, esp. 378f.

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His constitutional views differed in important ways from the basic order set out in the Weimar imperial constitution. His plan to divide up Prussia, which also appeared in Hugo Preuß’s preliminary draft of the constitution,29 came to nothing. Meinecke envisaged a Staatenhaus to represent the states, half of whose members would be appointed by the state parliaments—a chamber he intended to be a weak advocate of the states’ interests. It proved impossible to gain acceptance for this body, however, and its role was assumed by the Bundesrat, which functioned in the Bismarckian constitution as the representative of the Land governments and was renamed the Reichsrat after the war. In the Weimar Republic, Meinecke rejected the parliamentary system of government at both the federal and state levels. This rejection was primarily because he considered the fragmented German party system incapable of supporting parliamentary government. He came to this conclusion in light of the historical burden imposed by the traditions of the Imperial political system, the ideological and social divisions that marked German society, and the German parties’ lack of governmental experience.30 But he also thought that parliaments in Germany and elsewhere had lost the “idealistic sheen” which they had possessed during the “early days of European liberalism”, that their

29 In so far as it contains changes from the first published draft of 20 January 1919, the unpublished preliminary draft of 3 January 1919 was later published in the Quellensammlung zum deutschen Reichsstaatsrecht compiled by Heinrich Triepel, 4th edn., Tübingen 1926, pp. 6–8. 30 For a wealth of examples, see: Gustav Schmidt, Deutscher Historismus und der Übergang zur parlamentarischen Demokratie. Untersuchungen zu den politischen Gedanken von Meinecke—Troeltsch—Max Weber, Lübeck/Hamburg 1964; Georg Kotowski, “Parlamentarismus und Demokratie im Urteil Friedrich Meineckes”, in: Zur Geschichte und Problematik der Demokratie. Festgabe für Hans Herzfeld, ed. by Wilhelm Berges and Carl Hinrichs, Berlin 1958, pp. 187–203; Waldemar Besson, “Friedrich Meinecke und die Weimarer Republik. Zum Verhältnis von Geschichtsschreibung und Politik”, in: VfZ 7 (1959), pp. 113–129. A satisfactory analytical summary of Meinecke’s political ideas after 1918 has yet to appear. Robert A. Pois, Friedrich Meinecke and German Politics in the 20th Century, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London 1972 makes insufficient reference to the sources and presents a flawed analysis of Meinecke’s political statements; he fails to view these in relation to the specific problems of the period 1918–1933 and imputes to Meinecke—who was the first rector of the Free University, founded as a symbol of West Berlin’s determination to resist during the Berlin Blockade—a total rejection of politics for the period after 1945. More convincing is an article by Stefan Meineke that sees Meinecke’s constitutional conceptions during the Weimar Republic as attempts to solve concrete problems of his time rather than the outcome of an abstract notion of the ideal constitution: “Parteien und Parlamentarismus im Urteil von Friedrich Meinecke”, in: Gisela Bock/Daniel Schönpflug (eds.), Meinecke, Stuttgart 2006, pp. 51–93.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 13 “heroic age” lay in the past,31 and that the purely parliamentary system was “in serious crisis”.32 In 1918/19, Meinecke therefore pressed for an Imperial President elected by popular vote, on the model of the United States, a president who would take over the leadership of the government33 and integrate the civil service—which would play a key role in carrying out the nationalization of large parts of the economy that Meinecke initially expected to occur—into the state. Meinecke disliked the unfortunate dualism of a parliamentary government and a popularly elected imperial president with his far-reaching rights to form or dismiss governments and emergency powers. In terms of political practice, later on during the Weimar Republic he advocated strengthening the position of the Imperial President and considered a temporary “dictatorship of trust” an effective means of dealing with the crisis of the Republic.34 However, it has been suggested—correctly in the view of the present author—that following the collapse of the Empire the introduction of a parliamentary system along Western European lines was the only realistic option, and that the provision for an alternative presidential system in Art. 48 of the Weimar constitution weakened the pressure on the parties to accept necessary compromises and adapt to the conditions of a parliamentary system35 and aided the survival of authoritarian tendencies. Further, up until 1932, despite the inevitable friction between the two central governments and parliaments in Berlin, Prussia’s continued existence provided a bastion of democracy and promoted the stability of the Republic rather than being a strain on it.36 Yet despite all his criticisms of the Weimar parties and

31

MS “Die Reichsverfassung”, p. 67. Meinecke papers, no. 122. Lecture “Republik, Bürgertum und Jugend” from 16 January 1925, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, p. 379. 33 Meinecke, “Bemerkungen zum Entwurf der Reichsverfassung”, in: ibid., p. 310. The Imperial President would have been his own Imperial Chancellor and would possibly have been given the title of Imperial Chancellor as well. See also Meinecke’s letter to Holborn from 2 February 1930, below, pp. 248–250. 34 On the concept of the dictatorship of trust in Meinecke’s work, see Klueting, “Vernunftrepublikanismus”, esp. pp. 83–93. 35 See Gerhard A. Ritter, “Deutscher und britischer Parlamentarismus. Ein verfassungsgeschichtlicher Vergleich”, in: Ritter, Arbeiterbewegung, Parteien und Parlamentarismus. Aufsätze zur deutschen Sozial- und Verfassungsgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen 1976, pp. 190–221, pp. 359–372, esp. p. 211. 36 See Horst Möller, Parlamentarismus in Preußen 1919–1932, Düsseldorf 1985. 32

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parliamentary system, Meinecke himself never called democracy or the Republic into question. In the period before 1933, Meinecke firmly rejected the National Socialist movement. Three weeks after the Nazis had seized power, in a newspaper article entitled “National Community, not the Tearing Apart of the Nation” (“Volksgemeinschaft—nicht Volkszerreißung”), he criticized the handover of power to Hitler and Papen and called for the results of the approaching Reichstag elections of 5 March 1933 to demonstrate that “the determination to resist a fascist dictatorship is so strong, not just among the workers but also among the bourgeoisie, that any prospect of eliminating our constitutional order, and domestic freedoms, through de facto illegal means, will become inconceivable”.37 Excerpts from Meinecke’s article were used by the German State Party, successor to the DDP, in an election leaflet. Meinecke made no more public statements on political matters after this date. Over the next two years he made a number of concessions in an ultimately futile attempt to defend the “bastions” of the Historische Zeitschrift, wrested from his control in 1935, and the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), which was wound up in 1935 in favour of the Imperial Institute for the History of the New Germany (Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands), led by fanatical Nazi Walter Frank.38 The highest human cost of these concessions soon came with the dismissal, on 20 May 1933, of Hedwig Hintze, who had written the regular report on new books and journal articles on the French Revolution in the Historische Zeitschrift since 1926. This led to Otto Hintze’s departure from the extended circle of HZ co-editors and ultimately to the end of a close friendship, which had existed since the late 1880s, between probably the two most important German historians of the first half of the 20th century.39 Despite intensive efforts by the publisher and a number of younger historians close to the Nazis, beginning in early 1934, to oust him from

37 Reprint of the article written as a newspaper correspondent and reprinted on 22 February and 26 February, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 479–482, quotation on p. 481f. 38 On Frank’s battles with the Imperial Historical Commission, chaired by Meinecke from 1928 to 1934, and its disbandment in 1935, see Helmut Heiber, Walter Frank und sein Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, Stuttgart 1966, esp. p. 168ff., 241ff.; Ingo Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus. Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der “Volkstumskampf ” im Osten, Göttingen 2000, pp. 171–182. 39 See below, p. 466.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 15 the effective leadership of the HZ and prevent publications by “Jewish” historians from appearing in the journal, Meinecke managed to protect Dietrich Gerhard and Gerhard Masur, the other “Jewish” contributors, alongside Hedwig Hintze, entrusted with regular summaries of new books and articles. When the publisher wished to appoint as co-editor a scholar closely associated with the NSDAP in the shape of ancient historian Helmut Berve, and demanded that he and the existing co-editor, the medievalist Albert Brackmann, be given full rights of participation in decisions on which articles to accept and equal rights to decide on the composition of each issue of the journal, for which Meinecke had been solely responsible as chief editor since 1896,40 Meinecke curtly refused. “It is impossible”, he wrote to the publishers on 25 October 1934, “for me to agree to the conditions laid down by Herr Berve. Even if I could renounce my own past, they would embroil me in ever more clashes with his most likely increasing demands. In conversation with me, he described an immediate ‘abrupt Gleichschaltung’ of the HZ as undesirable. But I cannot reconcile with my conscience even a gradual, though presumably approaching Gleichschaltung as ultimate goal.”41 Finally, by speaking out firmly against a savage attack by leading Nazi historian Walter Frank on his Berlin colleague Hermann Oncken in the HZ,42 Meinecke obstructed the publisher’s plans to oust him as editor and replace him with a Nazi-inclined historian with as little fuss as possible, something they were keen to do in order to avoid negative perceptions in other countries, as well among the historical fraternity in Germany. After losing his formerly key position within the discipline of history in 1935, he withdrew from public life and became an internal migrant. Though compromising statements can be found in certain

40 That Meinecke was in a superior position to Brackmann is also evident in the fact that Meinecke received an editor’s fee of 540 Reichsmark per issue of the HZ, while Brackmann received only a quarter as much, 135 Reichsmark. Letter from W. Oldenbourg to Herr Bierotte, head of the publisher’s Berlin branch from 22 November 1934 (copy, Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, F 5, Verlag R. Oldenbourg, Munich, box 244). 41 Ibid., box 244. For an analysis of Meinecke’s ousting as editor of the HZ, see Gerhard A. Ritter, “Die Verdrängung von Friedrich Meinecke als Herausgeber der Historischen Zeitschrift”, in: Historie und Leben. Der Historiker als Wissenschaftler und Zeitgenosse. Festschrift für Lothar Gall zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Dieter Hein, Klaus Hildebrand and Andreas Schulz, Munich 2006, pp. 65–88. 42 See Meinecke’s discussion of a book by Frank in HZ 152 (1935), reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 7: Zur Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 447–449.

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letters43—in which, for instance, he welcomed the union with Austria in 1938 and the prospect of retaking his beloved Alsace in 1940—and he maintained relations with his successor as editor of the HZ, Karl Alexander von Müller, and with the “Greater German” nationalist Heinrich Ritter von Srbik,44 he did in fact always regard the regime as barbaric and criminal. Once the war had ended, with his German Catastrophe, written entirely without access to documentation or books during his exile in Wässerndorf and Göttingen in 1945 and published in 1946, the 83year-old Meinecke was one of the few German historians45 to make a serious effort to analyze the deeper historical roots of Germany’s abortive development. These he saw chiefly in Prussian-German militarism, a tendency to get carried away with the idea of the powerful state, in anti-Semitism and imperialism and in the failure of the German bourgeoisie. He was emphatic about the need to revise the German view of history.46 However, like other writings of the time, Meinecke’s text fails to grasp the profundity of the historical rupture caused by the Holocaust.47 Meinecke proposed the establishment of “Goethe communities”, associations of “friends with a shared cultural orientation”, as a means of at least “rescuing the German spirit”, a proposal often met with a pitying smile. His aim here was to pick up the thread of venerable values characteristic of the Goethe era and of 43 See Meinecke’s letter to Holborn from 7 April 1938, to his son-in-law Carl Rabl from 12 June 1940 and his note to Siegfried A. Kaehler from 4 July 1940 (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 180, p. 192, p. 363f.). 44 See Knudsen, Meinecke, p. 65f. 45 Alongside Meinecke’s Deutscher Katastrophe, see esp.: Gerhard Ritter, Geschichte als Bildungsmacht. Ein Beitrag zur historisch-politischen Neubesinnung, Stuttgart 1946; Gerd Tellenbach, Die deutsche Not als Schuld und Schicksal, Stuttgart 1947. 46 See the generally positive assessment of the book by Winfried Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945, Munich 1985, pp. 50–55. For a penetrating analysis of mass Machiavellism as a key aspect of the book and the political ideas of Machiavelli in Meinecke’s Staatsräson, see Gisela Bock, “Meinecke, Machiavelli und der Nationalsozialismus”, in: Bock/Schönpflug (eds.), Meinecke, pp. 145–175. Meinecke was sometimes accused of wishing to shift attention away from German guilt and portray Nazism as a mishap without deep roots in German history by referring to authoritarian developments in neighbouring countries and specific errors by individuals that helped the Nazis take power, a claim I consider unjustified. In my opinion, Meinecke was right to highlight the international context and, pointing to the importance of historical contingency, to reject the idea that the seizure of power was a necessary consequence of developments. But for him the crucial issue was to identify which specific aspects of German history made the victory of Nazism possible. 47 On the delayed reception of the Holocaust, see Nicolas Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung, Göttingen 2003.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 17 German Idealism and, following the discrediting of the German nation state and its impending division, to continue the older and better traditions of Germany as a cultural nation (Kulturnation).48 His impressive “Secular reflections” (Säkularbetrachtung) on the Revolution of 184849 and profound attempts to come to terms with Ranke and Burckhardt,50 which brought out the superiority of Burckhardt’s assessments of the contemporary world and predictions for the future, bear witness to Meinecke’s internal struggle to come up with a new view of German history and new criteria of historical evaluation. Meinecke eventually advocated a federal union of the Central and Western European countries and an understanding with France, and called for the zones occupied by the Western allies, and later Federal Republic, to be tied closely to the United States.51 This did not represent a complete break with his earlier views. Following Ranke, he had always underlined that the Latin and Germanic peoples had a great deal in common. From the First World War onwards, he had lamented the estrangement between them. The United States was clearly a source of increasing fascination to him. As early as 1918, he saw the US president as a model for the organization of the executive in Germany. On 9 October 1936, after participating in the 300th anniversary celebrations of Harvard University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate, he wrote to the historian Kurt Breysig that in the United States “slowly and hesitantly, a portion of the masses is developing into cultured human beings [Kulturmenschen]. On our side, the cultured human beings are rapidly and resolutely becoming mass-men [Massenmenschen].”52 After 1933, and 1945, Meinecke never missed an opportunity to learn about the United States from his émigré students. Time and again in his discussions with me he spoke positively of the US and its institutions, emphasizing its importance to the future of

48

Friedrich Meinecke, “Die deutsche Katastrophe, Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen”, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 442–445. On Meinecke’s motives in proposing the establishment of Goethe communities and what he imagined they would do, see also his interview for Neue Zeit, 1 January 1947, newspaper cutting, Meinecke papers, no. 39. 49 Lecture from 1948, reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 9: Brandenburg—Preußen—Deutschland, pp. 345–363. 50 Lecture at the German Academy of Sciences, Berlin, 1948, reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 7: Zur Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 93–121. 51 See Meinecke, “Ein ernstes Wort”, essay for Radio Paris, in: Der Kurier, 31 December 1949, reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, p. 492f. 52 Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 169.

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democracy and liberty. This is another reason why we should be wary of viewing Meinecke merely as an anti-modern representative of the educational aristocracy, rather than a politically engaged contemporary, as well as citizen and democrat. II. Meinecke as academic teacher Meinecke’s successes as an academic teacher can be traced back in part to his political outlook, which I shall therefore examine briefly here. During the Empire, his attempt to explain the ideas underlying the nation state and his support for overcoming the gulf between the workers and the middle classes attracted a large number of students who felt repelled by the prevailing materialism and authoritarian structure of state and society. During the Weimar Republic, Meinecke was considered one of the few resolute defenders of the Republic among the university teachers of the time. This brought many liberal or social democratically inclined students, and especially students of Jewish origin, to his door, prompting elements of the historical fraternity to refer disparagingly to the Meinecke school as the “Jews’ School”.53 Meinecke’s impact as a teacher was based above all else on his personality. He was a brilliant letter-writer and conversation partner. With his warm-heartedness and his ability to listen and to show an interest in others, he was also a man with an exceptional talent for friendship. Furthermore, as his later colleague in Berlin Gustav Mayer writes, he was an unassuming scholar with absolutely no time for “posturing and platitudes”.54 Anything but stiffly formal, he was always open to his students and their ideas. Meinecke suffered from a life-long speech impediment; he was no master orator, could not speak without notes and always had to prepare thoroughly for his lectures, in which he placed the events of national history within a European context. It was in the seminar that his efficacy truly came to the fore. As a “master of interpretation”,55 he had his students read and analyze the key texts by

53

Masur, Das ungewisse Herz, p. 86. Gustav Mayer, Erinnerungen. Vom Journalisten zum Historiker der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (first impression Zurich/Vienna 1949, licensed edition Munich 1949), Hildesheim/Zurich/New York 1993, p. 282. 55 As Masur describes him in Das ungewisse Herz, p. 86; on Meinecke as a teacher and the history department at the University of Berlin, see also: Felix Gilbert, Lehrjahre im alten Europa. Erinnerungen 1905–1945, Siedler Verlag 1989, p. 79f.; Gilbert, “The 54

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 19 major thinkers and statesmen with the utmost care and brought out the dialectical aspects of their ideas. In other words, he insisted on precise analysis of the sources. In addition, Meinecke regularly invited a small group of students to his house for tea and had lengthy oneto-one conversations with his doctoral students about their research. As a mark of honour, some of his established students were invited to join him for his famous fortnightly Sunday walks in the Grunewald among colleagues, leading officials and politicians. He was extremely tolerant. His circle of students included conservatives such as Siegfried A. Kaehler, Hans Rothfels and Gerhard Masur, but also socialists like Eckart Kehr and those with social democratic leanings such as Hans Rosenberg, Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert and Hedwig Hintze. In an article about his friend Hajo Holborn, Dietrich Gerhard writes that above all others they had Meinecke to thank for their “methodological training as well as for intellectual and professional support”. “All our lives we have acknowledged our position as students of Meinecke, with whom each of us—like other students of his—had a very personal relationship.” Holborn, however, had quickly rejected the term “Meinecke School”.56 Felix Gilbert took much the same view. Meinecke was “a great teacher because he urged his students to find their own way, the way most appropriate to their personality. But it is an error to assume, as has frequently been done, that Meinecke founded a school of historians of ideas. Actually his students have worked in the most varied areas of history: political, social, institutional, intellectual. It was Meinecke’s concern for their finding in history both a strict discipline and creative expression that brought students close to him and generated veneration for him, even if in their life and work they went on different roads”.57 His students thus renounced the creation of a school in any narrow sense. Partly because of this, after the Second World War, they were able to provide impetus to the revision of the German view of history and help bridge the divide between the writing of history in

Historical Seminar of the University of Berlin in the Twenties”, in: Hartmut Lehmann/ James J. Sheehan, An Interrupted Past. German Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933, Cambridge Mass. etc. 1991, pp. 67–70; Eberhard Kessel, “Friedrich Meinecke in eigener Sicht”, in: Erbe (ed.), Friedrich Meinecke Heute, pp. 186–195, esp. p. 186. 56 Dietrich Gerhard, “Hajo Holborn”, in: Gerhard, Gesammelte Aufsätze, Göttingen 1977, pp. 296–303, esp. p. 297f. 57 Gilbert, Meinecke, p. 87.

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Germany and in the United States and Western Europe. As Meinecke wrote in his foreword to the Festschrift dedicated to Rothfels, it was undoubtedly “the greatest source of pride for any teacher” to have students “from whom, over the course of time, you yourself can learn so much”.58 Meinecke went out of his way to help his students progress. Contrary to the existing traditions of the German university of the time, which saw it as undesirable to gain one’s habilitation (the post-doctoral qualification for senior university posts) in the philosophy faculty of the same university from which one had obtained one’s doctorate, he eventually supervised both the doctorates and habilitations of Dietrich Gerhard, Gerhard Masur and Hans Baron, all of whom, despite Meinecke’s support, had tried in vain to achieve their habilitation at other universities. Although Meinecke had already been awarded emeritus status at the end of the winter semester of 1927/28,59 he continued to exercise a major influence. This he then lost—following the Nazi seizure of power—as a result of his above-mentioned dismissal as editor of the HZ in 1935 and the disbandment of the Imperial Historical Commission in 1935,60 a body he had headed until 1934. As Jews or “half-Jews”, or because of their “Jewish family ties” or political views, many of his best students lost their jobs. Often enduring great hardship, they had to rebuild their lives following their expulsion from Germany, chiefly in the United States.61 I shall be pro58 Foreword from 1951, reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 7: Zur Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 464–466, quotation on p. 464. 59 It is often assumed that Meinecke was made emeritus professor only in 1932. In fact this occurred at the end of the winter semester of 1927/28. However, Meinecke continued to teach on a significant scale until 1931, for which he was paid a special fee of 3,000 Reichsmark per annum. See archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, personal files, vol. 140. 60 See above, p. 14f. 61 On emigration and that of historians in particular, see Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933, edited by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich and the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration, Inc. New York under the overall direction of Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss, 3 vols., Munich/New York/London/Paris 1983. This work, entitled The International Biographical Dictionary of Central European émigrés, 1933–1945 in English, appeared in two languages. The first volume, Politik, Wirtschaft, Öffentliches Leben (Policy, Economy and Public Life) appeared in German. The second volume appeared in English in two parts and was entitled The Arts, Science and Literature. The third volume is an index (Generalregister). These volumes contain ca. 8,600 biographical sketches of émigrés, including 2,400– 2,500 academics. An important basis for research on the emigration of historians to

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 21 viding an account of their fate and ongoing links with Meinecke, and finally of Meinecke’s efforts to persuade them to return to Germany after the Second World War, by examining his students Hans Rothfels, Dietrich Gerhard, Gerhard Masur, Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Hans Baron, Helene Wieruszowski, Hans Rosenberg, Eckart Kehr and Hans Günther Reissner, along with Meinecke’s colleague Gustav Mayer,62

the United States is the volume by Catherine Epstein, A Past Renewed. A Catalog of German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933, Cambridge 1993. With CVs in tabular form and a bibliography of their most important writings, it lists 88 émigrés who either left Europe with doctorates in history or became historians in the United States having gained doctorates in other fields; see also Horst Möller, Exodus der Kultur. Schriftsteller, Wissenschaftler und Künstler in der Emigration nach 1933, Munich 1984; Peter Thomas Walther, Von Meinecke zu Beard? Die nach 1933 in die USA emigrierten Deutschen Neuhistoriker, dissertation at the State University of New York at Buffalo, 1989. The dissertation, however, deals only with developments up to 1941; Walther, “Zur Entwicklung der Geisteswissenschaften in Berlin: Von der Weimarer Republik zur Vier-Sektoren-Stadt”, in: Exodus von Wissenschaftlern aus Berlin. Fragestellungen—Ergebnisse—Desiderate. Entwicklungen vor und nach 1933, edited by Wolfram Fischer, Klaus Hierholzer, Michael Hubenstorf, Peter Thomas Walther and Rolf Winau, Berlin/New York 1994, pp. 153–183; Heinz Wolf, Deutschjüdische Emigrationshistoriker in den USA und der Nationalsozialismus, Berne etc. 1988. This volume deals in particular with the younger generation of émigré historians born from around 1918 on, who attended schools and universities in the United States. Of the older generation of émigrés, only H. Holborn and Hans Kohn are treated in depth; George G. Iggers, “Die deutschen Historiker in der Emigration”, in: Bernd Faulenbach (ed.), Geschichtswissenschaft in Deutschland. Traditionelle Positionen und gegenwärtige Aufgaben, Munich 1974, pp. 97–111, 181–183; Fritz Stern, “German History in America, 1884–1984”, in: Central European History 19 (1986), pp. 131– 163; Gerald Stourzh, “Die deutschsprachige Emigration in den Vereinigten Staaten. Geschichtswissenschaft und politische Wissenschaft”, in: Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 10 (1965), pp. 59–77; Stourzh, “Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Emigration in den Vereinigten Staaten 1933–1963. Geschichte und Politikwissenschaft”, Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 10 (1965), pp. 232–266; 11 (1966), pp. 260–317; Lehmann/Sheehan (ed.), An Interrupted Past; Lehmann/Melton (eds.), Paths of Continuity; Jürgen Petersohn, “Deutschsprachige Mediävistik in der Emigration. Wirkungen und Folgen des Aderlasses der NS-Zeit (Geschichtswissenschaft—Rechtsgeschichte—Humanismusforschung)”, in: HZ 277 (2003), pp. 1–60. 62 I examine those émigré students whose doctorates were supervised by Meinecke with the exception of Johanna Philippson (b. 1887), who obtained her doctorate under Meinecke in Freiburg shortly before the First World War and emigrated to England in the 1930s. There she was in contact with Gustav Mayer, who mentions that she lent him Meinecke’s German Catastrophe for 48 hours. Meinecke’s offer of a job at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin (see below, p. 520) obviously came to nothing. As no further information could be obtained about J. Philippson and Meinecke’s papers for the period from 1914 include no letters from her, I have had to forego examination of her. Rothfels, who obtained his doctorate under Oncken in Heidelberg in 1918, and H. Wieruszowski, who obtained hers under Wilhelm Levison in Bonn in 1918, have been included because they clearly regarded Meinecke as their most important teacher. Eckart Kehr, who went to the United States on a scholarship from the Rockefeller

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and Hedwig Hintze, who received her doctorate under Meinecke’s supervision but was academically a student of her husband Otto Hintze.63 It is telling that the exchange of letters between Meinecke and a number of his émigré students continued up until the war and that, with the exception of Baron, all of his students still alive in 1945 quickly resumed contact with their old teacher once the war was over. They often helped him out by sending CARE packages and provided him with regular in-depth accounts of their academic research. Time and again in their letters Meinecke and his wife emphasized their tremendous gratitude for the generous support they had received, particularly from the United States. On 25 November 1947, for example, Frau Meinecke wrote to Frau Rosenberg: “We’re now constantly being helped by the USA—it’s quite odd how our lives are being propped up from there. Prof. Pinson brought us to Dahlem, it was Americans that held on to the house for us and then we received your quite unexpected material support, without which we would never have survived these times, which have been indescribably more difficult for others. And now the Epsteins, who really show such loving devotion and circumspection for all those in need, have provided us with penicillin. This has saved my husband’s life. We received a birthday cable [marking Meinecke’s 85th birthday] from the history department at Harvard with some words greatly honouring my husband. And there on his bedside table with the gorgeous flowers was your tobacco tin and the tin of coffee, which I had set aside for a rainy day, and for which, through me, he now expresses his deepest gratitude. Indeed, the coffee from all of you is a source of great pleasure for him twice a day, and every time he sings out his gratitude! He’s long since back in his study by now and his pipe is in continuous use, thanks to your devoted assistance.”64

Foundation before the Nazis seized power, and died there on 29 May 1933, is examined because it is unlikely that he would have returned to Germany. Gustav Mayer, who had received his doctorate at the University of Basle in 1893 with a dissertation on “Lassalle as a social economist” (publ. Berlin 1894), is included because Meinecke helped clear his path to university and he felt particularly close to Meinecke. 63 On the inclusion of H. Hintze, see below, p. 79. 64 See below, p. 394.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 23 III. Meinecke’s émigré students 1. Hans Rothfels One of Meinecke’s oldest students was Hans Rothfels (1891–1976).65 He was from a well-to-do liberal Jewish family resident in Kassel since the late 18th century and was given a non-religious upbringing. He converted to Protestantism at nineteen and was a member of the inner circle of students around Meinecke in Freiburg. As a reserve second lieutenant in the First World War, he lost a leg in a riding accident in late autumn of 1914, which led to a lengthy spell in the military hospital. In search of continued employment in the military field, at Meinecke’s suggestion he began a study of the famous military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, with which he gained his doctorate in Heidelberg under Hermann Oncken in 1918.66 Rothfels was employed at the Imperial Archive from 1920 onwards. From 1919, with numerous interruptions, until emigration in 1939, he worked on a never-to-be-completed research project on state social policies under Bismarck, originally conceived as an edited volume and later as an independent account.67 With Meinecke’s support, he received his habilitation in 1924 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin with a study of “Bismarck’s policy of alliance with England”68 and received a chair in Königsberg in 1926. Heavily influenced by the predicament of the border areas in East Prussia, his research now turned to the nationalities problem in EastCentral Europe. Unambiguously rejecting the principle of the nation 65 On Rothfels, see Werner Conze, “Hans Rothfels”, in: HZ 237 (1983), pp. 311– 360; Hans Mommsen, “Hans Rothfels”, in: Deutsche Historiker, vol. 9, ed. by HansUlrich Wehler, Göttingen 1982, pp. 127–147; Klemens von Klemperer, “Hans Rothfels (1891–1976)”, in: Lehmann/Melton (eds.), Paths of Continuity, pp. 119–135; Johannes Hürter/Hans Woller (eds.), Hans Rothfels und die deutsche Zeitgeschichte, Munich 2005; Jan Eckel, Hans Rothfels. Eine intellektuelle Biographie im 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 2005. 66 Published in a substantially expanded form: Hans Rothfels, Carl von Clausewitz. Politik und Krieg. Eine ideengeschichtliche Studie, Berlin 1920. Rothfels also produced a volume of Politische Schriften und Briefe by Clausewitz (Munich 1922). See also Rothfels, “Clausewitz”, in: Edward Mead Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, Princeton 1943, pp. 93–113 and 525f. 67 See Gerhard A. Ritter, “Sozialpolitik im Zeitalter Bismarcks. Ein Bericht über neuere Quelleneditionen und neuere Literatur”, in: HZ 265 (1997), pp. 683–720, esp. 685–688. An important by-product of Rothfels’ activities was his monograph: Theodor Lohmann und die Kampfjahre der staatlichen Sozialpolitik 1871–1905, Berlin 1927. 68 Hans Rothfels, Bismarcks englische Bündnispolitik, Stuttgart/Berlin/Leipzig 1924.

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state, he spoke in favour of the reordering of the East, explicitly favouring the cohabitation of different peoples within a single political community.69 From then on, Rothfels’ way of looking at history was to be determined by the situation in the East. This is apparent in his contribution to the Meinecke Festschrift issue of the HZ in early 1933, in which he distances himself from his teacher and his book Cosmopolitanism and the National State. Meinecke’s students, who initially felt the impact of the book in the “peaceful southwest of the Empire”, were then “compelled to consider new research subjects and different views by the onset of the war. . . . As the students of a master who taught them to submit to the oath of no master, it is incumbent upon them to prove themselves, particularly by examining contrary positions. . . . Hence, in what follows (coincidentally bound up with my personal situation but surely reflecting a profound transformation of historical reality itself ), I shift the emphasis to the other end of the diagonal, to the northeast, a place where Meinecke’s terms ‘cultural nation’ (Kulturnation) and ‘state-nation’ (Staatsnation) have taken on a different resonance, where the nation state is no longer a progressive principle but rather a reactionary theory, where we are dealing less with intellectual combat between great thinkers than with a primal struggle among peoples, a struggle going on behind the official national peace and under changed social circumstances.”70 Rothfels’ concept of a federalist and corporatist order in the East underestimated the dynamics of nationalism in East-Central Europe, and was rejected by the neighbouring nations, especially Poland, not least because it was linked with the idea that Germany would play a special educational and leadership role.71 With his research and teaching, Rothfels also 69 See esp. Klemperer, “Rothfels”, pp. 125–127. The essays from the Königsberg period, published in a wide range of different publications, some of them quite obscure, were brought together in a volume typically entitled: Ostraum. Preußentum und Reichsgedanke. Historische Abhandlungen, Vorträge und Reden (Leipzig 1935). A reprint, minus some of the shorter pieces, was published by the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, Stuttgart 1960. On Rothfels’ notions concerning a new political order in East-Central Europe, see also: Wolfgang Neugebauer, “Hans Rothfels und Ostmitteleuropa”, in: Hürter/Woller (eds.), Rothfels, pp. 39–61. 70 Hans Rothfels, “Bismarck und die Nationalitätenfrage des Ostens”, in: HZ 147 (1933), pp. 89–105, esp. the introduction by the author, p. 69f. The first issue of volume 147, dedicated to Meinecke, appeared before the Nazis’ seizure of power. 71 See the comment on Klemperer’s article by Douglas A. Unfug, “Comment: Hans Rothfels”, in: Lehmann/Melton (eds.), Paths of Continuity, pp. 137–154, esp. 140–147. On Rothfels’ Volkstumspolitik and Ostpolitik in particular, see Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 70–105. For the debate on Rothfels’ political outlook in the

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 25 provided stimulus to the study of popular history (Volksgeschichte), which was taken up in particular by his students Theodor Schieder and Werner Conze. Another key focus of Rothfels’ historical research was Bismarck’s idea of the state, which he distinguished from nationalistic and unitary notions as essentially federalist.72

Hans Rothfels

Rothfels was a passionate German patriot. In everything he did he assumed the unity of scholarship and life and the significance to politics of the discipline of history. He was a fascinating teacher. During the Weimar Republic his impact was felt far beyond academia in youth organizations and national circles. Rothfels disapproved of the Republic. Particularly in the last few years before 1933, he was located on the nationalist right. This, together with academic differences, led to serious clashes with Meinecke, as is especially evident in correspondence between Rothfels and his friend Siegfried A. Kaehler, a student

closing stages of the Weimar Republic, see also the controversy between Heinrich August Winkler and Ingo Haar, based chiefly on differing classifications and interpretations of sources, in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 49, (2001), pp. 643–652; 50, (2002), pp. 497–505 and pp. 635–652. 72 See esp. Hans Rothfels, Bismarck und der Osten. Eine Studie zum Problem des deutschen Nationalstaates, Leipzig 1934; Rothfels, Otto von Bismarck. Deutscher Staat. Ausgewählte Dokumente, Munich 1925; Rothfels, Bismarck. Vorträge und Abhandlungen, Stuttgart 1970.

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of Meinecke’s from the Freiburg period. The specific reason was the decision by the Imperial Historical Commission, under Meinecke’s leadership, to supplement Rothfels’ planned study of Bismarck’s state social policies with a volume of source materials on the AntiSocialist Law, under the supervision of Gustav Mayer, a member of the Commission.73 Among other things, this was explained to Rothfels as a means of justifying refusal of a request from the Soviet Union to borrow the sources on the Anti-Socialist Law. Rothfels, who constantly underlined that state social policies were of a piece with policies intended to combat the socialist labour movement, saw this as a serious encroachment on his own research project. This also laid bare the deep resentment he felt towards Gustav Mayer and the economist and social policy specialist Heinrich Herkner. “How can a man like M.[einecke] believe that social policy and the Anti-Socialist Law can be considered separately? And how can he smooth the way for those (G. Mayer and Herkner) whose background and party political intentions are clear enough?” Nonetheless, he refrained from asking for a vote of academic confidence and probing into the “underlying politics” of the situation. Meinecke‘s dissatisfaction with him was, he thought, “far more political than scholarly in nature”.74 This was essentially correct. However, Meinecke will certainly have taken exception to the fact that Rothfels did no more to further his research project, which he had been working on for nearly eleven years.75 Rothfels failed 76 to stop Mayer’s rival project. The Nazi seizure of power then made it impossible for either project to be completed. Both politically and academically, Rothfels and Meinecke were leagues apart at the time. This is apparent in the fact that Rothfels, in a letter to Kaehler, referred to the election of 14 September 1930, which turned the Nazis into a party of the masses with 18.3 percent of the votes, “as the first happy event since November”—clearly a reference

73 See Ritter, Sozialpolitik im Zeitalter Bismarcks, pp. 685–688; Lothar Machthan, “Hans Rothfels und die Anfänge der Historischen Sozialpolitik—Forschung in Deutschland”, in: IWK 28 (1992), pp. 161–210. 74 Rothfels to Kaehler, 3 March 1930, see below, p. 141. 75 On Rothfels’ writings on Bismarck’s social policies published by this point, see below, p. 141. 76 The claim by Ingo Haar, “Anpassung und Versuchung. Hans Rothfels und der Nationalsozialismus”, in: Hürter/Woller (eds.), Rothfels, pp. 63–81, esp. p. 65f., that the dispute over Mayer’s access to the records was resolved in Rothfels’ favour, is incorrect.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 27 to November 1918.77 In the second round of the presidential election of 10 April 1932, which pitted Hitler against Hindenburg, Rothfels voted for Hitler, in contrast to his friend Kaehler.78 In a letter to the chairman of the Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive (Historische Kommission für das Reichsarchiv), the retired permanent secretary Lewald, of 2 March 1932, Rothfels had already criticized the fact that “everywhere you look at present extremely urgent scholarly tasks are being neglected” and “even in threatened border regions . . . a highly alarming cultural withdrawal” was occurring; it was “almost impossible . . . to get down to those problems (German populations in other countries, the recent history of colonization in the East, etc.), which are of current foreign policy importance in the sense of intellectual defence and which play or ought to play a role in uniting the nation”. According to Rothfels, “large numbers of people [would] be quite unable to understand why, at a time like this, imperial funds are being spent on an exercise that will at best result in a new round of bitter, partisan squabbling”. He was particularly critical of the allocation of assignments to Oberarchivrat Veit Valentin, whose academic qualifications, like those of Oberarchivrat Martin Hobohm, he called into question. “In more than twelve years, neither gentleman has managed to carve out a role for himself within either the administrative or research functions of the Imperial Archive; people have found things for them to do with a greater or lesser degree of difficulty. I can understand these efforts in human and administrative terms, but again this is increasingly out of touch with current realities. While the best educated young students are obstructed at every turn, while hundreds of able-bodied men are having to be laid off, sometimes under circumstances far more difficult than would be the case here, the issue which I have touched on in the above cannot, so it seems to me, simply be passed by.”79 Rothfels thus pushed for the dismissal of the two historians and archivists.

77

Rothfels to Kaehler, 21 December 1930; see below, p. 149. Kaehler to Rothfels, 25 April 1932, Kaehler papers, letter 176. 79 Rothfels to Lewald, 2 March 1932, Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 15. 06, 349, see below, p. 151. At the meeting of the Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive on 8 March 1932, its president Hans von Haeften explained that, having completed his work at the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry on the Question of Responsibilities for the World War (see below, p. 151), Hobohm had returned to the Archive and set to work on a topic in cultural history. He had, however, made no progress with this and had as yet done no work for the Archive. “Though no doubt academically gifted, [Hobohm’s] intellectual 78

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Following the Nazi seizure of power, there were intensive efforts to keep Rothfels in his chair in light of his emphatically nationalistic views. Rothfels himself wanted to show through his own example “that there is such a type as the German of the will (though not of the blood) who is ready to serve . . . Doctrinaire anti-Semitism (I continue to share the real variety) is simply the most extreme aspect of all those things mixed in like a murky residue with what is otherwise undoubtedly an idealistic awakening.”80 Rothfels, who was attacked precisely because of his emphatically national outlook, which contradicted the Nazi stereotype of the anti-national Jew, was a man of tremendous moral courage prepared to fight for his academic teaching post, and his students supported him in this. His emphasis on the state, which for him was not merely the exponent of the blood and other facts of nature, but a historical ordering principle and “objective spirit”, is clearly apparent here. Yet his hopes for the state as a force for order were disappointed by his dismissal in Königsberg 1934 and pensioning off in 1935. He was by now reconciled with Meinecke, who was “deeply moved” when he read Rothfels’ farewell address at his Königsberg seminar in 1934.81 Even now, however, Rothfels initially decided against emigration and continued with a research assignment at the Prussian State Library (Preußische Staatsbibliothek) while studying sources in the Prussian Secret State Archive (Preußisches Geheimes Staatsarchiv).82 He also tried to get involved in the work of the Northeast German Research Association (Nordostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) founded by

productivity is severely hampered by physical and mental impediments . . . and despite the best of intentions . . . [he] is no longer capable of doing academic work”. At the request of the Commission chairman, permanent secretary a. D. Lewald, an application to the minister of the interior to force Hobohm to take early retirement was accepted (minutes of the meeting, R 1506/349). In fact, however, Hobohm was dismissed only after the Nazi seizure of power, on 30 June 1933, as a result of the law on the restoration of the civil service of 7 April 1933. 80 Rothfels to Kaehler, 23 April 1933; see below, p. 155. On a card to Brackmann of 13 June 1933, he wrote: “There can be no doubt that this spring has inflicted upon us certain things for which we could not have been prepared, but an intervention of the kind we have just seen also puts the real dimensions of life back in their proper place and makes the problems that people cause one another seem smaller” (Brackmann papers, vol. 29). 81 Meinecke to Rothfels, 8 April 1934, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 145. 82 Haar, “Anpassung und Versuchung”, p. 79f.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 29 Albrecht Brackmann.83 Only in 1939—shortly before the outbreak of war—did Rothfels emigrate, via Oxford, to the United States, where he taught at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island from 1940, and at the University of Chicago, a stronghold of émigré Germans, from 1946.84 Rothfels, who lamented the return of old Nazis to the Federal Republic in 1951,85 was much influenced by his time in the United States, which caused a shift in his political values—he came to accept a “society made up of free citizens and regulated by democracy”.86 After the Second World War, Rothfels quickly resumed contact with Meinecke. In a letter of 3 June 1946, Meinecke thanked him for his excellent and courageous essay, in which he strongly criticized the expulsion of Germans from the East.87 On 17 August 1947, Meinecke praised an essay by Rothfels on Bismarck, in which the “federalist and anti-nationalistic element of Bismarck’s thought [received] such powerful” emphasis.88 Meinecke was deeply moved by Rothfels’ famous book on the German resistance movement, already published in 1948,89 in which he countered the notion of German collective guilt and the stereotype of Germans’ subservient and amoral character and brought out the ethical and Christian motives, anchored in moral decisions,

83

Rothfels to Brackmann, 5 August 1934, see below, p. 156f. On 30 July 1934 Brackmann had written to Rothfels: “I have often thought about you and attempted to change the current intolerable state of affairs”. The book which Rothfels had sent him—evidently his work on Bismarck and the East—“shows just how much we need you and your input, and I am quite confident that things will change in this connection in the not too distant future” (Brackmann papers, vol. 29). 84 See Stourzh, Deutschsprachige Emigration, p. 59. Arnold Bergsträsser, Friedrich von Hayek, Hans Morgenthau, Leo Strauss and Otto von Simson, among others, were working at the University of Chicago at the same time as Rothfels. Within the framework of a circle of émigré German scholars, Rothfels again tried to forge links between the United States and Germany and organize aid for German universities through the dispatch of CARE packages (Conze, Rothfels, p. 344f.). 85 See Rothfels’ letter to the émigré archivist Ernst Posner from 20 November 1951, in which he advised him not to take the position he had been offered as director of the Federal Archive in Koblenz. Quoted in: Peter Thomas Walther, “Hans Rothfels im amerikanischen Exil”, in: Hürter/Woller (eds.), Rothfels, pp. 83–96, esp. p. 95. 86 Ibid., p. 96. 87 Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 250f. He was referring to the essay “Frontiers and Mass Migrations in Eastern Central Europe”, in: The Review of Politics 8 (1946), pp. 37–67. 88 Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, pp. 283–285. The essay he had in mind here was “Problems of a Bismarck Biography”, in: The Review of Politics 9 (1947), pp. 362–380. 89 Hans Rothfels, The German Opposition to Hitler. An Appraisal, Hinsdale 1948.

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of the conservative forces within the resistance and the Kreisauer Circle of opponents to Hitler. Meinecke hoped that the book would help “turn the ‘air bridge’ [Luftbrücke] [to Berlin] that currently links Germany with the USA into a lasting bridge of stone”.90 Yet it would be wrong to see Rothfels‘ book on the resistance movement merely as an apologia for the Germans vis-à-vis the rest of the world.91 In the context of the time, the book also had an educational role to play in countering the view, still widespread in the Federal Republic, of resistance as betrayal and in preventing the rise of a stab-in-the-back legend—of the kind that proved such a strain on the Weimar Republic after the First World War.92 Rothfels praised Meinecke’s “Secular reflections” on 1848, which he translated into English and whose publication in the Review of Politics he saw to. “. . . I have no doubt that your article will receive a great deal of attention. It is head and shoulders above all the other examples of German literature marking the anniversary of which I am aware . . . It is of course a difficult anniversary to ‘celebrate’. I feel that you have brought out marvellously the intricate nature of this tragic event. I admire your sure hand. It will not surprise you that I see things differently to some extent. In a long essay of my own, which will be appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Modern History, while referring appreciatively to your specifically German and essentially social interpretation, I strongly emphasize two other aspects, the universal character of a tragic decision made in the middle of the century (in reality, all revolutions have failed, not only the German one; and a turning point occurred in relations between West and East more broadly) and, in connection with this, the dubious nature of the national principle as such. I also wished to rebel against a theory that traditionally sees revolutions in other countries (other than in

90

Letter from Meinecke of 22 August 1948, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 293. See also Meinecke’s foreword to the Rothfels Festschrift of 1951, reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 7: Zur Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 464–466. 91 For a typical example of this view, see Karl Heinz Roth, “Hans Rothfels: Geschichtspolitische Doktrinen im Wandel der Zeiten. Weimar—NS-Diktatur— Bundesrepublik”, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 49 (2001), pp. 1061–1073, esp. p. 1068; Berg, Holocaust, p. 120ff., 145ff. 92 See Heinrich August Winkler, “Ein Historiker im Zeitalter der Extreme. Anmerkungen zur Debatte um Hans Rothfels”, in: Hürter/Woller (eds.), Rothfels, pp. 191–199, esp. pp. 194–196; Horst Möller, “Hans Rothfels—Versuch einer Einordnung”, in: ibid., pp. 201–206, esp. p. 203f.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 31 South America) as a good thing and their failure as reflecting a flaw in national character: very peculiar in a country that has never had a revolution but merely a war of liberation and civil war and which in many ways is the most conservative of all countries.”93 On the issue of returning to Germany, on 14 November 1947 Rothfels wrote to Meinecke that he had turned down a professorship at Heidelberg a few weeks earlier. “It is impossible to simply give it all up from one day to the next, as friends and colleagues seem to think one can do. But I would be happy to come for a visit (perhaps even a ‘trial run’) at some point.”94 Rothfels went to Germany in the summer of 1949, where his guest lectures and seminars at a number of universities were extremely well received. On 14 September 1949, he delivered his highly regarded lecture at the first post-war conference of German historians in Munich on “Bismarck and the 19th century”, in which he highlighted the discontinuity between the Second and Third Reich.95 He subsequently took up a chair in “modern history” in Tübingen in 1951, though he taught again in Chicago in 1953 and 1956. Despite being made emeritus in 1959, he held lectures and seminars in Tübingen until 1969/70. Rothfels, who could count some of the most distinguished German historians of the following generation—such as Waldemar Besson, Hans Mommsen and Heinrich August Winkler—among his students, was a key figure in the discipline of history in Germany in the first post-war decades. It was characteristic of Rothfels that he wished to have an impact politically. In contrast to Meinecke, he did this not as a political journalist, through articles in newspapers and political journals on topical issues, but by taking up historical issues which he believed to be of great significance to key problems of contemporary politics. He was a figure imbued with powerful moral impulses and a deep-rooted patriotism, a man of tremendous moral courage and exceptional personal magnetism. He represented Germany on the international committee charged with publishing records on German foreign policy from 1918 to 1945, was co-editor of the “Documentation

93 Rothfels to Meinecke, 24 September 1948, see below, p. 170. For the article by Rothfels mentioned here, see: “1848—One Hundred Years After”, in: JMH 20 (1948), pp. 291–319. 94 Rothfels to Meinecke, 14 November 1947, see below, p. 166. 95 First published in: Schicksalswege deutscher Vergangenheit. Festschrift für S.A. Kaehler, Düsseldorf 1950, pp. 233–248.

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of expulsion” (Dokumentation der Vertreibung), member of the Commission on Party Law (Parteienrechtskommission) 1955–1957, bearer of the Order Pour le Mérite for Science and Arts from 1961 and chair of the German Association of Historians (Verband der Historiker Deutschlands) from 1958 to 1962. But above all, as chair of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (1959–1974), founded in Munich in 1949, and as de facto chief editor of the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (1953–1976), he played a crucial role in establishing contemporary history as an independent historical discipline in Germany.96 2. Dietrich Gerhard Dietrich Gerhard (1896–1985)97 is the oldest of Meinecke’s students from the Berlin years. His father was a respected lawyer and notary in Berlin, while his mother, Adele Gerhard, who emigrated to the United States in 1938, was a writer and friend of Meinecke.98 As a volunteer in the First World War,99 Dietrich Gerhard finished his studies in history and economics, begun in Heidelberg in 1914, only in 1923, with a study of “The fundamentals of Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s historical and political Ideas”100 in the tradition of Meinecke’s history of ideas. He then edited the first two volumes of Niebuhr’s correspondence in collaboration with Danish classicist William Norvin.101 Gerhard Masur thanked him for sending the introduction, in which he had, according

96 See for example Horst Möller/Udo Wengst (eds.), 50 Jahre Institut für Zeitgeschichte. Eine Bilanz, Munich 1999. 97 On Gerhard, see Rudolf Vierhaus, “Dietrich Gerhard”, in: HZ 242 (1986), pp. 758–762; Dietrich Gerhard, “From European to American History: A Comparative View”, in: Journal of American Studies 14 (1980), pp. 27–44. 98 Meinecke papers, no. 12. 99 In the CV attached to his application for habilitation he states that he joined up in December 1915 and initially served in the West, then in the East, culminating in a period in Ukraine, and was discharged as a reserve second lieutenant. Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1243. 100 The text, subtitled “1. Teil: Die Voraussetzungen” was not published, as the pressure to publish was temporarily relieved as a result of inflation. A summary of the dissertation appeared in: Jahrbuch der Dissertationen der Philosophischen Fakultät der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, Dekanatsjahr 1922/23, Berlin 1925, pp. 295– 299. 101 Die Briefe Barthold Georg Niebuhrs, ed. by Dietrich Gerhard and William Norvin, 2 vols., Berlin 1926–1929. The key conclusions reached in Gerhard’s dissertation on Niebuhr were incorporated into the introduction to this volume.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 33 to Masur, so powerfully portrayed the tragic inner conflict between the vita activa and vita contemplativa in Niebuhr’s life as a famous historian of ancient history and as a diplomat during a period in which the “separation of the intellectual-artistic sphere from political life was unknown”.102

Dietrich Gerhard

From 1925 to 1927, as assistant to the editor, Gerhard was responsible for editorial work on the HZ, mainly the literature reports and the “notes and news” section, and developed a particularly close relationship with Meinecke during this period.103 From 1929 to 1935, he also regularly took on the literature and journal reports on the age of absolutism for the HZ. Following a period of research in England (1927– 1929) supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, he was habilitated at the University of Berlin in 1931 with a study published as “England and the rise of Russia. The Question of the connections between the European States and their political and economic expansion into the

102

Masur to Gerhard, 6 September 1926. Gerhard papers in the University Library of Washington University, St. Louis, Series 02, Box 02. 103 On his editorial work for the HZ, see Meinecke’s letter to Gerhard of 29 May 1925 (see below, p. 181f.), and the records concerning his lively correspondence with Oldenbourg Verlag, Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv F 5, Box 243.

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non-European world in the 18th century”.104 Particularly by bringing out the importance of economic relations, this work shows that he had freed himself from the influence of Meinecke’s history of ideas. Though a Protestant, from 1933 on any further career development in Germany was rendered impossible on account of his “half-Jewish” background. His authority to teach was withdrawn and the allowance he had received hitherto cancelled as early as 24 September 1933. The withdrawal of his authority to teach was initially rescinded because of his front-line service on 10 January 1934, but on 29th January the same year he was informed that there were no plans to continue paying the allowance. Nonetheless, he received one further teaching payment in 1934.105 Before he had even been finally dismissed, Gerhard had accepted an invitation to take up a visiting professorship at Harvard in 1935/36, which led to permanent emigration. From 1936 to 1965, he enjoyed great academic success, first as assistant professor, and later professor of history, at Washington University in St. Louis. In a twelve-page, hand-written letter of 30th August 1948,106 he told Meinecke, whom he had seen during the latter’s visit to Harvard in 1936, about his scholarly development in the intervening period and his research plans. Building on Otto Hintze’s work in comparative constitutional history, he saw his life’s work as a comparative constitutional and social history of Europe from the High Middle Ages to the 19th century. He was more interested in emphasizing constant factors than changes, and wished to focus attention on the common features of Europe’s institutions and social forces rather than national differences. The forces driving his interest in this topic were his personal experiences in the United States, the upheavals of the time, during which the old European order had been largely destroyed, and the tasks with which he was confronted as a teacher of European history in the

104

England und der Aufstieg Rußlands. Zur Frage des Zusammenhangs der europäischen Staaten und ihres Ausgreifens in die außereuropäische Welt in Politik und Wirtschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts, Munich/Berlin 1933. In HZ 150 (1934), pp. 339–344, Gerhard’s work, an early study in the history of globalization, was discussed in great depth and in highly positive terms by Adolf Hasenclever. The topic of his trial lecture for habilitation was “Die englische Navigationsgesetzgebung von 1650/1660 mit ihren Auswirkungen. Das Verhältnis von Staat und Wirtschaft beim Aufstieg Englands”. His inaugural lecture dealt with “Hauptprobleme einer Geschichte des britischen Empire” (habilitation files, vol. 1245). 105 Personal files of Dietrich Gerhard in the archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, vol. 59. 106 See below, pp. 188–197.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 35 United States. Dietrich Gerhard presented his conception in an essay on “Regionalism and the corporative system as a fundamental theme of European history” in a volume of the HZ dedicated to Meinecke on the occasion of his 90th birthday;107 he elaborated it, at least to some extent, in his work Old Europe. A Study in Continuity, 1000–1800108 and other essays, mainly on the corporative system, the role of the cities within the old European order and office-bearers between royal power and the estates.109 The key hallmarks of his ideas are a new periodization of European history, in which the period from the 11th century to the late 18th century is regarded as a unity,110 a universal perspective that constantly strives to include the United States and Russia alongside the Western and Central European countries, and his masterful use of historical comparison. As early as 1948, Gerhard made it clear to Meinecke111 that he would be happy to go to Germany for a visiting lectureship for a summer or longer. Following visiting professorships in Münster in 1950 and Cologne in 1951 and 1954, without giving up his position in St. Louis, he took up a professorship in American Studies at the University of Cologne from 1955 to 1961, and was head of the modern history division of the Max Planck Institute of History in Göttingen from 1961 to 1967. He was one of the co-founders of the “German Society for American Studies” (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien). Gerhard taught European history in America and American history in Cologne and also wrote a number of essays—for example on Tocqueville, Turner and his thesis of the “frontier”, the development of American society, and the American university and education system in comparison with its European counterpart.112 In contrast to

107 “Regionalismus und ständisches Wesen als ein Grundthema europäischer Geschichte”, in: HZ 174 (1952), pp. 307–337. Reprinted in: Dietrich Gerhard, Alte und Neue Welt in vergleichender Geschichtsbetrachtung, Göttingen 1962, pp. 13–39. 108 New York 1981. A German edition appeared under the misleading title: Das Abendland 800–1800. Ursprung und Gegenbild unserer Zeit, Freiburg/Würzburg 1985. 109 Gerhard’s most important essays on this topic appear in the essay collection mentioned above: Alte und Neue Welt and in the volume Gesammelte Aufsätze, Göttingen 1977. 110 Dietrich Gerhard, “Zum Problem der Periodisierung der europäischen Geschichte”, in: Gerhard, Alte und Neue Welt, pp. 40–56. 111 Letter from Gerhard to Meinecke of 30 August 1948, see below, p. 195f. 112 The most important of these were published in the two essay collections from 1962 and 1977 mentioned above.

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Rothfels, whose historical writings essentially remained geared towards German history and the discipline of history in Germany, in Gerhard’s case his encounter with the United States reinforced already existing tendencies towards universal and comparative history and led him to engage intensively with research outside of Germany. 3. Gerhard Masur 113

Gerhard Masur (1901–1975) grew up in an affluent middle class family—his father was a lawyer with a successful practice—of Jewish descent in Berlin. Both his parents had been baptized in 1900 and were Protestants with a highly secular outlook. Masur himself later converted to Catholicism. Masur was an elegant figure, well liked by women, of a marked artistic inclination. Politically, he started out on the extreme right; he was a member of a volunteer corps and took part in the Kapp Putsch, intended to bring down the Weimar Republic. Subsequent to the rise of Stresemann, he dropped his ultra-conservative stance and opposition to the Weimar Republic, which he initially viewed as a form of “mob rule”, shifted allegiance to the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei) and supported Stresemann’s Locarno policy.114 After it had proved impossible to implement his original plan, to obtain a doctorate on Schopenhauer‘s relationship to history under Ernst Troeltsch,115 at Meinecke’s suggestion he examined “Ranke’s concept of world history” in his doctoral thesis.116 He was deeply disappointed by the rejection he encountered, despite being a baptized Jew with a decidedly national outlook, when he attempted to achieve habilitation at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He expressed this in a deeply moving letter to Meinecke: “Love that withers as a result of disappointments is not real love. So I cannot say to this Germany that I seek to win over, ‘If I love you, then why does this matter to you?’, but I can say: I won’t leave you. Then you would bless me.”117 113 On Masur, see: Walter Bußmann, “Gerhard Masur (1901–1975)”, in: HZ 223 (1976), p. 523f.; Masur, Das ungewisse Herz, and the “Erinnerungen an Gerhard Masur. Wegweiser zu seinem Werk” by Wilmont Haacke which appear at the beginning of this book. 114 See Masur, Das ungewisse Herz, esp. pp. 67–72, 111. 115 Ibid., p. 85. 116 Gerhard Masur, Rankes Begriff der Weltgeschichte, Beiheft 6 of the HZ, Munich/ Berlin 1926. 117 Masur to Meinecke, 20 April 1927, see below, p. 210.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 37

Gerhard Masur

The post-doctoral thesis finally accepted by the University of Berlin in 1930, after his plans to habilitate at other universities had failed, examined the development of the conservative political thinker Friedrich Julius Stahl, an assimilated Jew, up to 1840.118 Methodologically he followed in the footsteps of his teacher Meinecke, who described him as an individual exhibiting a high level of “intellectual development at a remarkably early stage” in his detailed, extremely positive expert reference for the faculty.119 Meinecke also took him on as contributor to the HZ, in which he wrote reports on general literature and, from time to time, on the period from 1815 to 1871. In addition, the Archive for Cultural History (Archiv für Kulturgeschichte) employed him to write reports on works in the philosophy of history. Even in his student days, Masur

118 Gerhard Masur, Friedrich Julius Stahl, Geschichte seines Lebens. Aufstieg und Entfaltung 1802–1840, Berlin 1930. His trial lecture dealt with “Die Entstehung der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirchenverfassung während des 18. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland”. His inaugural lecture was on “Die Bedeutung des Reichsgedankens für das deutsche Leben im Zeitalter Friedrichs des Großen und der französischen Revolution”. 119 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1244.

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had begun to formulate the goal of writing an intellectual history of Europe.120 The Nazi seizure of power put an abrupt end to these dreams. In February 1934, in order to meet the conditions of the scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation for which he had applied but which had not yet been awarded, Masur had declared that he had managed to increase his teaching since 1933 and that the publication of his academic work was guaranteed.121 However, the grant from the Prussian state, which he had received since 1 April 1925 on Meinecke’s recommendation, was not extended beyond the 31 March 1935. Some weeks after being asked, on 16 October 1935, to indicate whether and which of his grandparents were “racially of wholly Jewish descent” and “which [had belonged to] the Jewish religious community” he was informed that he had been suspended; his teaching days were over.122 In 1935/36, Masur hastily emigrated via Switzerland to Bogotá in Columbia. There, from 1936 to 1938, he worked as an adviser to the education ministry and then as professor. In 1946 he moved to the United States, where, interspersed with numerous visiting professorships, he taught at Sweet Briar College, an exclusive girls’ college catering chiefly to the upper classes of the American South, until being made emeritus in 1966. One fruit of his activities in Columbia was a major biography of Simón Bolivar, state founder and liberator of South America from colonial rule.123 He resumed contact with Meinecke, whom he kept constantly updated on his activities in Columbia,124 after the end of the war.125 On 18 August 1948, Masur informed his teacher that he would shortly be sending him his biography of Bolivar and that he had received, via Rothfels, an inquiry from the University of Heidelberg as to whether he “would accept the offer of a chair in modern history. Obviously one cannot simply answer yes or no to such a question; I’ve heard nothing

120 See Gerhard Masur, Propheten von gestern. Zur europäischen Kultur 1890–1914, Frankfurt a. M. 1965, p. 5. 121 Masur to Fehling, see below pp. 212–214. 122 Personal files of Gerhard Masur in the archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, vol. 86. 123 Gerhard Masur, Simón Bolivar, Albuquerque 1948. In German translation: Simón Bolivar und die Befreiung Südamerikas, Constance 1949. 124 See the three long hectographed reports that he sent to Meinecke on 28 July 1936, 30 December 1936 and 2 December 1937. Meinecke papers, no. 161. 125 Masur to Meinecke, 3 January 1947, see below, p. 215f.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 39 more since”.126 Two months later he thanked Meinecke for sending him his text on Ranke and Burckhardt, which he said displayed his “old mastery” in bringing out “contrasts and relationships”. “I myself, though a great admirer of Ranke, have long considered myself a stu127 dent of and successor to . . . Burckhardt.” Finally, Masur was closely associated with the Free University (FU) of Berlin, where he held several visiting professorships and which made him emeritus in 1956 and remunerated him accordingly.128 When he was offered the opportunity to take over from Rothfels, made emeritus in 1959, in Tübingen, or to take up a professorship at the FU in Berlin,129 he turned down both offers. His key reason for doing so, he indicated to Rothfels, was that he was unwilling to give up his American citizenship, while the constant shuttling back and forth between Germany and the United States, in which Dietrich Gerhard, political scientist Ernst Fraenkel and previously Rothfels too had been forced to engage in order to retain their American citizenship, represented a “tremendous physical, financial and nervous strain”130 which he was unwilling to accept. In his memoirs he wrote with reference to his rejection of these appointments that “the trench of blood surrounding Germany since 1933 [had been] too wide and deep . . . to leap over”, that he did not want to be disloyal to his new adoptive country, which had taken him in with such magnanimity, and that he had, moreover, decided to marry his longstanding American partner.131 We might add that, had he taken up a professorship in West Germany, he would have lost his income as emeritus in Berlin. In the last years of his life, Masur devoted himself mainly to intellectual and cultural history. This is evident in his study, illustrated through examination of individual actors, of the various strands of European intellectual life in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is also apparent in his history of imperial Berlin, whose transformation 126

Masur to Meinecke, 18 August 1948, see below, p. 220. Masur to Meinecke, 11 October 1948, see below, p. 220f. 128 See below, pp. 225–228. On the question of restitution for those members of the civil service forced out by the Nazis, see also Winfried Schulze, Refugee Historians, p. 212f. As assistant to Hans Herzfeld, I myself remember having to compile material for my teacher’s testimonials. These backed up the case of lecturers likely to have been appointed professors in the absence of Nazi rule and thus to have enjoyed civil servant status, entitling them to pension payments. 129 See below, pp. 229–231. 130 Masur to Rothfels, 12 February 1961, see below, pp. 231-233. 131 Masur, Das ungewisse Herz, p. 313. 127

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from a residential and garrison town into one of the intellectual and culture hubs of the Western world he described with profound love for the city of his birth, and an anthology, “Essays and lectures on European intellectual history”.132 According to Hans Herzfeld, Masur may have held fast to the methods in the history of ideas developed by Meinecke because, as an émigré, he was relatively insulated from revisionist tendencies within the discipline of history in Germany since 1945.133 Masur was impressive not only as a scholar and lively academic teacher, but also as a distinguished man of the world with a fascinating, cultured personality. 4. Hajo Holborn Of all Meinecke’s émigré students, Hajo Holborn (1902–1969) had the most meteoric rise.134 Son of the leading physicist Ludwig Holborn, director of the Department of Heat and Pressure of the Imperial PhysicalTechnological Institute (Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt), he grew up in Berlin in an academic environment and was considered something of a Wunderkind while still a student. He emigrated later because of his marriage to Annemarie Holborn, née Bettmann, daughter of a Jewish professor of medicine with her own doctorate. She was his closest collaborator and translator into German of his later texts written in English. Holborn was also a convinced supporter of the Weimar Republic.

132 Gerhard Masur, Prophets of Yesterday: Studies in European Culture, 1890–1914, New York 1961. In German translation: Propheten von gestern. Zur europäischen Kultur 1890–1914; Masur, Imperial Berlin, New York 1970. In German translation: Das Kaiserliche Berlin, Munich/Vienna/Zurich 1971. He dedicated this latter book to his “Friends at the Free University of Berlin”; Masur, Geschehen und Geschichte. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur europäischen Geistesgeschichte, Berlin 1971. Among other things, this volume includes the essay “Max Weber und Friedrich Meinecke in ihrem Verhältnis zur politischen Macht”, pp. 114–134. 133 Foreword by Hans Herzfeld, dated August 1971, to the volume “Geschehen und Geschichte”, by Masur, published by the Historische Kommission zu Berlin, p. 5. 134 On Holborn, see: Bernd Faulenbach, “Hajo Holborn”, in: Deutsche Historiker, vol. 7, ed. by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Göttingen 1982, pp. 114–132; Hajo Holborn, Inter Nationes Prize 1969, Bonn 1969. In German: Inter Nationes Preis, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1969, and the articles on Holborn by Felix Gilbert, Dietrich Gerhard, Hans Kohn, John L. Snell and Leonard Krieger in issues 1 and 2, dedicated to Holborn, of the 3rd 1970 volume of the journal Central European History, co-founded by Holborn in 1968. This also contains a bibliography of Holborn’s writings and a list of doctoral dissertations supervised by him.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 41

Hajo Holborn

Holborn obtained his doctorate in Berlin in 1924 with a study later published under the title “Germany and Turkey (1878–1890)”.135 This, as well as his study of the “Radowitz’ mission”,136 emphasized Bismarck’s policy of peace in the 1870s and 1880s and showed Holborn’s mastery of the historical craft. These works do not, however, go much beyond the conventional diplomatic history typical of the period since the opening of the foreign ministry records. In contrast, his biography of Ulrich von Hutten, prompted by Protestant church historian Karl Holl’s pioneering research on Luther, with which he was habilitated with Meinecke’s help in Heidelberg in 1926, already points to his profound insight into political, religious and intellectual developments in Germany in the 16th century and hints at his future status as great writer of history.137 In the tradition of Meinecke, he makes connections between the development of Hutten’s personality and the 135

Deutschland und die Türkei 1878–1890, Berlin 1926. Hajo Holborn, Bismarcks Europäische Politik zu Beginn der siebziger Jahre und die Mission Radowitz. Mit ungedruckten Urkunden aus dem Politischen Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes und dem Nachlaß des Botschafters von Radowitz, Berlin 1925. In addition, Holborn also edited Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Botschafters Joseph Maria von Radowitz, 2 vols., (Stuttgart/Berlin/Leipzig 1925) and the collection Briefe aus Ostasien by Radowitz (Stuttgart 1926). 137 Hajo Holborn, Ulrich von Hutten, Leipzig 1929. Dedicated to “Friedrich Meinecke with gratitude and admiration”. Revised and expanded for the English edition: Ulrich von Hutten and the Reformation, New Haven 1937. 136

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ideas of the time, humanism, an embryonic national consciousness, Protestantism and Hutten’s social status as a knight. Holborn places particular emphasis on the autonomy of humanism as a movement distinct from the Reformation.138 In 1929, Holborn was charged by the Imperial Historical Commission with writing an account of the origin of the Weimar imperial constitution, a work whose completion was impeded by his emigration; his research was intensively supported by Meinecke.139 In 1931 he accepted a temporary chair, financed by the American Carnegie Foundation, in history and international relations at the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) while also teaching, following his Umhabilitation (transfer of authority to teach to a new institution) in 1932,140 as a lecturer at the University of Berlin. Politically, and within the discipline of history, Holborn advocated left-wing, anti-authoritarian and emphatically pro-republican positions. In his essay “Protestantism and the history of political ideas” (“Protestantismus und politische Ideengeschichte”), he sharply rejected

138

His later essay “The Social Basis of the German Reformation” in: Church History 5 (1936), pp. 330–339, reprinted in Holborn, History and the Humanities, Garden City, New York 1972, pp. 168–178, went even further in bringing out the social bases of the Reformation. 139 See Meinecke’s letter to Holborn of 2 February 1930, below, pp. 248–250. 140 Holborn’s Umhabilitation in Berlin had not gone as smoothly as Hermann Oncken, who was in charge of it, had wished. As normally happens in German universities in cases of Umhabilitation, Oncken applied to have Holborn exempted from the trial lecture and subsequent colloquium and deliver only the public lecture. Despite the support of Meinecke and Karl Stählin, historian of Russia, this was rejected by a majority of the faculty. Fritz Hartung was particularly firm in his opposition. In his expert opinion on Holborn’s writings, he had argued that “depth and originality” were not Holborn’s strengths. “I cannot see an intellectual development, a wrestling with problems, in Holborn’s work.” Meinecke thought Hartung’s vote “unjust”. Holborn finally delivered a trial lecture on “The Involvement of the German States and the Imperial Parliament in the execution of foreign policy under Bismarck and Wilhelm II” and an inaugural lecture on “Politics and the Discipline of History” (archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1246). Given that most university teachers were very cool towards the Weimar Republic, in the early 1930s Holborn had only meagre prospects of being put forward by a philosophy faculty for appointment to a chair. In a letter of 25 April 1932, Kaehler told Rothfels of a conversation with the Prussian minister for education and cultural affairs Adolf Grimme and Werner Richter, the head of the section for university policies and appointment issues within the ministry, in which the minister declared “that not just any imposition at all but especially that of Herr Holborn in Halle would inspire the establishment of a united front from the rector down to the youngest Nazi student” and that on account of an enquiry concerning Holborn the faculty had expressly rejected him (Kaehler papers, letter 176).

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 43 the identification of Luther’s theology with political conservatism and the authoritarian state as well as the thesis of an unbroken tradition extending from Luther to Bismarck.141 Part of what Holborn was trying to do here was liberate the Protestant religion and churches from their close association with monarchical and conservative ideas in order to strengthen the development of democracy. His clear understanding of the impending dangers is apparent in a lecture, published shortly before Hitler’s seizure of power, on the “The Weimar imperial constitution and academic freedom”, in which he underlined the connection between the mind and the state and warned against the illusion that academic freedom could be maintained in an authoritarian polity that had ceased to be a state based on the rule of law and the will of the people.142 Holborn, who sought throughout his life to achieve a public impact, would in all probability have been active in party politics and in the parliament, had democracy in Germany lasted. Because of his Jewish wife and because there was no longer any prospect of career advancement, in 1933 he decided to emigrate, via Great Britain, to the United States. There, from 1934 until his death in 1969, with a number of interruptions, he worked at the famous Yale University, where he rose from the post of assistant professor to holder of a prestigious endowed professorship. Meinecke, a godfather of Holborn’s son, wrote to him on 12 June 1934: “I believe you have the mental vigour to cope with all the internal and external demands of your new life, and the sliver, and legacy, of German scholarship that you are transplanting will no doubt bear fruit over there. Above all, your heart will remain German, and it is one of the components of the German character to weave intellectual threads between the various nations and cultures.”143 Initially, Holborn obviously believed that his emigration would be no more than temporary, and wrote to Dietrich Gerhard in September 1933, shortly before

141 Hajo Holborn, “Protestantismus und politische Ideengeschichte. Kritische Bemerkungen aus Anlaß des Buches von Otto Westphal: Feinde Bismarcks”, in: HZ 144 (1931), pp. 15–30. 142 Hajo Holborn, Weimarer Reichsverfassung und Freiheit der Wissenschaft, Leipzig 1933, esp. p. 5f., 26ff. This lecture was given by Holborn on 25 October 1932 at the conference of the “Weimar Circle” of German university teachers; in it, Holborn not only rejects a one-party state of a communist or fascist hue, but also Papen’s concept of a return to the authoritarian state. The afterword is dated “January 1933”. 143 Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 144.

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leaving Germany, that he saw this “as a kind of educational and study trip”, one “that will eventually bring us back home again”.144 In a long letter to Meinecke of 7 February 1935, Holborn described in detail the difficulties of settling in to a new environment. But he also underscored the émigré German colleagues’ readiness to help one another and emphasized that he had been gratified to find that the Americans, with the rarest of exceptions, were “entirely approving about the growing numbers” of German émigrés. But above all, the letter shows how intensively he was coming to terms with his host country. “. . . the country is going through a crisis on a scale certainly comparable to that in which Europe finds itself. However, the mental attitude, and the external resources, are significantly different, and the results will probably be fundamentally different as well. It is astonishing to see what has become of the self-confident and optimistic Americans over the last five years. Above all, of course, the young people’s faith in traditions has been radically shaken. It is interesting to see that the crisis has made the people here far more socially-minded and liberal. They have become far more open and unprejudiced than they used to be. Things European have always been studied, but what was formerly more a matter of the play of curiosity is now becoming the medium of a more serious comparison. Under these circumstances, the activities of the Germans here may even prove truly productive.”145 With the United States’ entry into the war, interest in Germany and especially in Europe as a whole then increased rapidly, accelerating the process of Holborn’s Americanization.146 In 1943, Holborn was recruited to the “Research and Analysis” branch of the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS), predecessor to the CIA, founded in 1941 by order of President Roosevelt. He worked as a “special assistant” to the director of the branch, well-know diplomatic historian William Langer, and was responsible mainly for contact with the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division, headed by John H. Hilldring. This division later helped plan the occupation regime. Other German émigrés such as Felix Gilbert, the political scientists and social theorists Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, John Herz and Otto Kirchheimer and art historian Richard Krautheimer, as well as a number of younger 144

See below, p. 255. See below, p. 259. 146 See Otto Pflanze, “The Americanisation of Hajo Holborn”, in: Lehmann/Sheehan (eds.), An Interrupted Past, pp. 170–179. 145

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 45 American historians such as Carl Schorske, Gordon A. Craig, Leonard Krieger, Franklin L. Ford and H. Stuart Hughes, were employed in the research division of the OSS—all scholars who later made key contributions to German and European history.147 The exact nature of the influence exercised by Hajo Holborn, who produced a book on American Military Government. Its Organization and Policies in 1947,148 on American occupation policy in Germany would require thorough examination of the sources and is beyond the scope of the present study. In any event, even after he had returned to his teaching post at Yale from 1946 to 1948, and on numerous subsequent occasions, Holborn was called in by the State Department to advise on issues relating to US policy on Germany. In a report on Germany of January 1948, for example, he criticized the lack of progress in democratizing Germany, the central aim of American policy, while at the same time calling for unification of the Western zones as a means of improving the desperate economic situation.149 Holborn, who had been visited by Meinecke at Yale in 1936, resumed contact with him just a few months after the end of the war. On 27 September 1945, he reminded Meinecke that in 1936 and 1938 they had debated the question of whether the Third Reich represented an epoch or merely a historical episode: “There is no doubt left that it was merely an episode, but an episode which has brought on a fundamentally new period in world history. This is true not only with regard to

147 See Barry M. Katz, “German Historians in the Office of Strategic Services”, in: Lehmann/Sheehan (eds.), An Interrupted Past, pp. 136–139; Erich J. C. Hahn, Hajo Holborn: “Bericht zur Deutschen Frage. Beobachtungen und Empfehlungen vom Herbst 1947”, in: VfZ 35 (1987), pp. 135–166, esp. 137–142. 148 Published Washington 1947. 149 See the document published by Hahn entitled “Einige Beobachtungen und politische Empfehlungen zum Deutschen Problem”, in: VfZ 35 (1987), pp. 146–166. In his laudatio marking Holborn’s receipt of the Inter Nationes Prize of 1969, the influential CDU deputy Kurt Birrenbach claimed—though without citing evidence—that Holborn influenced the United States’ turn towards a positive Germany policy evident in Secretary of State James E. Byrne’s keynote speech on 6 September 1946. He also stated that Holborn had advised the American supreme commander in Germany, General Clay, the first High Commissioner of the United States in Germany John J. McCloy, Secretary of State Herter and President Kennedy on US policies on the occupation and Germany. Holborn, Inter Nationes Preis 1969, pp. 9–16, esp. 12f.; the volume published on the occasion of Holborn’s receipt of the Inter Nationes Prize contains a number of Holborn’s essays on foreign policy issues after 1945 in German translation. Holborn continued to write the annual reports on Germany for the years 1952 to 1963 and 1965 to 1967 in the Americana Annual (New York).

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Germany, but to practically any country the world over.”150 He and a number of others would do everything within their power to improve Meinecke’s situation. But he soon made it clear that there were limits to his commitment to Germany and the discipline of history in that country. On 23 September 1946, he wrote to Meinecke: “In general I would love nothing better than to help German historians to rebuild historical studies in Germany and you may call on me any time you think I could be of help . . . However, I would not consider accepting an appointment in a German university. Our children are American children. They have spent all their formative years in this country and if we go back to Germany they would be exiles. Knowing what that means, we certainly would not want them to go through that experience unnecessarily. Moreover, we have not become American citizens by name only. We are deeply devoted to the country of our adoption. We have been happy here after getting through the first years of difficult adjustment. I have been particularly lucky in attracting a large number of unusually good students. Some of them are already teaching in various places, others, delayed by the War, will soon start their academic careers. I do not feel that I could leave them. I believe it to be my function in life to finish the task of helping to educate and train a new generation of college teachers of European history in this country and I feel that by doing this I shall contribute at least indirectly to maintaining or rebuilding German historical research.” On the other hand, he expressed a willingness to visit Germany regularly and to publish and teach there as far as possible.151 It is not clear when Holborn gave up hope of writing the account of the origin of the Weimar constitution that he had taken on, the working materials for which he had brought with him to America. In his letter of 7 February 1935, he could still write to Meinecke that it was a matter of “urgent” importance to him “to complete the work in its entirety” and he would try to do everything he could to that

150 See below, p 263. For an attempt to flesh out this basic idea, see Holborn’s The Political Collapse of Europe, New York 1951, published in German as Der Zusammenbruch des Europäischen Staatensystems, Stuttgart 1954. 151 See below, p 266f. In a letter from 19 March 1946, Meinecke had asked Holborn whether he generally thought it possible “that émigrés who have acquired American citizenship would now take up a chair at a German university” (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 247).

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 47 end.152 After the war, on 23 September 1946, he told Meinecke that he wished to write a social and constitutional history of Germany, as he did not believe that a mere history of the origin of the Weimar constitution would be widely read in the Anglo-Saxon world. Of course, he explained, he would use the near-complete, in some ways unique source materials that he had accumulated for the 1917–1920 period. For the German edition of his book, he would be happy to publish some of the documents.153 He did not, however, take up Meinecke’s suggestion that he expand the planned documentary appendix of the German edition “into a proper documentary publication dealing specifically with the years 1917ff. and the origin of the Weimar constitution” and have it published by the Berlin Academy of Sciences,154 and neither did he provide the later German edition of his History of Modern Germany with a documentary appendix.155 As a historian, Holborn grappled intellectually with Meinecke both directly and indirectly after 1945. He praised Meinecke’s lecture on 1848 on account of its “inspired linkage of the social and political with the realm of intellectual history. Further, it is by no means merely a ‘revision’ of your earlier views, but also represents a higher-level point of observation. The same applies to your essay on Ranke and Burckhardt”. Holborn, who saw himself in the tradition of Ranke,156

152 See below, p. 260f. Meinecke clearly thought at first that Holborn, through a relatio ex actis destined for the archive rather than publication, ought to safeguard “all the material collected for the future” and subject it to an initial critical organization. A similar approach should be taken to the materials on the Anti-Socialist Law collected by Dr. Alfred Schulz (Meinecke to Brackmann, 9 September 1933, Brackmann papers, vol. 21). In neither case was a compendium of this kind produced. 153 See below, p. 266. 154 Meinecke to Holborn, 1 December 1946, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 263. 155 For some of the results of Holborn’s research on the Weimar constitution, alongside the lecture mentioned in fn. 142, see his essays: “La Formation de la Constitution de Weimar, problème de politique extérieure”, in: Dotation Carnegie pour la paix internationale. Division des relations internationals et de l’education, Bulletin No. 6, Paris 1931; “Verfassung und Verwaltung der deutschen Republik. Ein Verfassungsentwurf Friedrich Meineckes aus dem Jahr 1918”, in: HZ 147 (1932), pp. 117–128; “Historische Voraussetzungen der Weimarer Verfassung und ihrer Reform”, in: Reichsverwaltungsblatt 53, 19 December 1932, pp. 921–924; “Die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Verfassungspolitik und Reichsreform”, in: Deutsche Juristenzeitung 38, No. 1, 1 January 1933, pp. 3–8; “The Influence of the American Constitution on the Weimar Constitution”, in: Conyers Read (ed.), The Constitution Reconsidered, New York 1938, pp. 285–295. 156 Hajo Holborn, Deutsche Geschichte in der Neuzeit, vol. 1: Das Zeitalter der Reformation und des Absolutismus, Stuttgart 1960, p. XII.

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initially feared that “influenced by the present disaster”, the essay “would too simply shift the focus of our affections towards Basle”. His concerns had however been “entirely unjustified” and Meinecke had succeeded in garnering new elements from the work of both historians “in light of a new historical perspective”. He had shown both essays to some of his best American students, all of whom had been very enthusiastic.157 The Berliners’ brave attitude during the blockade was, he stated, arousing “much admiration” in America. He also writes that Meinecke’s role as first rector of the Free University was exciting “much admiration” among professors in the United States, “just as the Free University itself is the object of much interest in America”.158 But his great liking and respect for Meinecke did not prevent Holborn from subjecting Meinecke’s short essay “Did Germany go down the wrong historical path?”, which appeared in the journal Der Monat in October 1949, an essay in which he partially retreated from his critique of German history,159 to very thorough and critical examination. If, Holborn argued, one considered Meinecke’s essay in isolation and forgot his critical comments on German history made elsewhere, “one would gain the impression that, in essence, he can see no more than tragic mishaps in German history and very few genuinely mistaken paths”. He also felt that Meinecke portrayed “the course of German history from 1648 . . . as more or less inevitable”. With reference to Ranke, Holborn underlined “the free moral decision of the individual person or People” and criticized the power politics of the Bismarckian Empire, the constitutionally detached position of the Prussian-German army and the failure of genuine liberalization and democratization. He also viewed Meinecke’s “distinction between cultural and political values” as still influenced chiefly by the “theory of those liberals”, who “attempt to justify philosophically their resigned renunciation of efforts to establish political freedom in favour of power-political unity by seeking to interpret the world of politics as a realm of tragic necessity. In contrast, philosophy, world-view, science and art are seen as the sphere of genuine freedom”. Holborn was concerned with the responsibility of power, the recognition of the unity of life and the state’s duty

157

Holborn to Meinecke, 30 October 1948, see below, p. 268. Ibid. and letter from Holborn to Meinecke of 9 April 1949, see below, p. 269. 159 Friedrich Meinecke, “Irrwege in unserer Geschichte?”, in: Der Monat 2, issue 13, October 1949, reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 4: Zur Theorie und Philosophie der Geschichte, pp. 205–211. 158

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 49 to achieve ethical goals. A “radical historical critique” was “one of the most urgent national duties” in Germany, a major contribution “to the domestic freedom and unity of the German People” and to the necessary development of a “new pan-European consciousness”.160 Holborn‘s famous essay “German Idealism in the Light of Social History” (“Der deutsche Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung”), which appeared in a 1952 volume of the HZ dedicated to Meinecke, also contains a quite fundamental, if implicit, critique of Meinecke‘s specific version of intellectual history.161 It analyzes German idealism, which Holborn believed had brought about a split with the pan-European tradition of natural law, as the creation of a small, specific stratum of the educational aristocracy, made up mainly of civil servants. For him, idealism had no real understanding of the importance of religion and the churches in the integration of society and, because it failed to become a national creation of all Germans, deepened Germany’s class divide. Moreover, Holborn felt, the emphasis on the significance of power and the state within idealism, as well as the German culture of introspection (Innerlichkeit), had diverted attention away from the crucial issue of abolishing the traditional authoritarian state. This process of grappling with Meinecke in the critique of the “Irrwege” and the essay of 1952 already features some of the basic ideas found in Holborn‘s major three-volume modern history of Germany,162 for decades the basis for the study of German history in the United States. Rather than abandoning Meinecke’s intellectual history, Holborn developed further his teacher’s conceptual apparatus, linking intellectual history closely with both political and social history; at the same time, from a broader perspective, he implicitly provided a critical comparison of developments in Germany with parallel developments in Western Europe and the United States. His main aim 160 Hajo Holborn, “ ‘Irrwege in unserer Geschichte?’ Zwei ausländische Historiker kommentieren Friedrich Meineckes Aufsatz”, in: Der Monat 2, issue 17 (1950), pp. 531–535. British historian Geoffrey Barraclough provided the second major critique, ibid., pp. 535–538. 161 HZ 174 (1952), pp. 359–384. In English in: Holborn, Germany and Europe: Historical Essays, Garden City, New York 1970, pp. 1–32. The book is dedicated to Dietrich Gerhard and Felix Gilbert. 162 The work appeared under the title “History of Modern Germany” in three volumes, New York 1959, 1964, 1969. The first volume of the German edition, translated by his wife, was published in Stuttgart (1960), vols. 2 and 3 in Munich (1970 and 1971).

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here was to achieve a more in-depth analysis of the roots of National Socialism. It is hard to overstate Holborn‘s significance to the development of German and Central European history as a discipline in its own right in the United States. With his numerous students, among them Henry Cord Meyer, Leonard Krieger, Otto Pflanze, Theodore S. Hamerow, Harold Jackson Gordon Jr., Arno J. Mayer, Richard N. Hunt, Herman Lebovics and Charles E. McClelland,163 he became the doyen of American historians of Germany. In 1967 he was elected as the first foreign-born President of the American Historical Association. His core idea—the responsibility of power—became the title of the 1967 Festschrift dedicated to him.164 His life was characterized by a close connection between academic work and his efficacy as a political advisor, as well as his view of the historian as educator of the nation, a figure who ought to use his historical knowledge to benefit the present. Both intermediary and bridge-builder, he played a key role in German-American relations, as interpreter of German history in the United States, advisor to the US government as it built a military administration in occupied Germany then transformed it into a civilian authority, interpreter of German politics in America and American politics in West Germany and, from 1960, as director of the American Council on Germany. It thus seems symbolic that Holborn, who was awarded the Great Cross of Merit with Star by West Germany and an honorary doctorate by the Free University of Berlin in 1967, became the first recipient, as he sat in his wheelchair, of the Inter Nationes Prize for international understanding in a deeply moving ceremony on 19 June 1969, shortly before his death in the early hours of 20 June.

163 List of the students and the topics of their doctoral dissertations, in: Central European History 3 (1970), pp. 187–191. 164 Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern (eds.), The Responsibility of Power. Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn, New York 1967. In his speech of thanks when accepting the Inter Nationes Prize in 1969, Holborn confirmed that the title of the Festschrift had captured his central concern, to examine the relationship between power and justice and the responsibility associated with power. “‘Erwiderung und Dank’ von Prof. Holborn bei der Verleihung des Inter Nationes Preises 1969”, pp. 20–22.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 51 5. Felix Gilbert Felix Gilbert (1905–1991),165 a close friend of Hajo Holborn, came from an upper middle class family of Jewish origin, one with particularly deep roots in German culture that had long since converted to Christianity. His father was English. Through his mother, a granddaughter of the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, he was related to Moses Mendelssohn as well as the Oppenheims, the renowned banking dynasty. As he writes, he found his way to history because he grew up “in a world of politics”.166 Disillusioned by the war, he became a Social Democrat voter following the Revolution. His studies from 1923 onwards in Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin were supplemented by two years as one of the assistants to the editors of the diplomatic records of the pre-war foreign ministry. He held Meinecke in high regard as a scholar who tackled the connection between intellectual movements and political action, an academic teacher who gave his students the space for autonomous development, and a defender of the Weimar Republic. He originally wanted to write his doctoral thesis on the “Origin of the idea of the balance of power in the Renaissance”,167 but this was rejected by Meinecke as too difficult and he gained his doctorate in 1930 with a study of the historian “Johann Gustav Droysen and the Prussian-German question” (“Johann Gustav Droysen und die preußisch-deutsche Frage”).168 He demonstrated that Droysen, whose Politische Schriften (“political writings”) he edited,169 had initially declared himself in favour of Prussia‘s absorption into Germany during the Revolution of 1848 and only later—after the failure of the Revolution—advocated a Germany largely dominated by Prussia. But Gilbert retained his primary interest in the Renaissance and was engaged in intensive research in Italian archives in 1932/33. 165 On Gilbert, alongside his autobiography up to 1945, mentioned earlier, Lehrjahre im alten Europa (A European Past), see Hartmut Lehmann (ed.), Felix Gilbert as Scholar and Teacher which contains a lecture by Gordon A. Craig, “Insight and Energy. Reflections on the Work of Felix Gilbert”, Washington 1992, pp. 17–28; Franklin L. Ford, “Introduction to Felix Gilbert”, in: Gilbert, History, pp. 1–14; Hans Rudolf Guggisberg, “Felix Gilbert: Werk und Wirkung”, in: Felix Gilbert, Guicciardini, Machiavelli und die Geschichtsschreibung der italienischen Renaissance, Berlin 1991, pp. 7–13; a bibliography of Gilbert’s writings published by 1976 can be found in: Gilbert, History, pp. 457–463. 166 Gilbert, Lehrjahre, p. 33. 167 Ibid., p. 82. 168 Published in Munich in 1931 as Supplement 20 of the HZ; see also his later essay, “Johann Gustav Droysen”, in: Gilbert, History, pp. 17–38. 169 Published in Munich in 1933.

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Felix Gilbert

He emigrated to England in 1933 before moving on to the United States in 1936. Meinecke supported his search for an academic post with positive references.170 In the United States he started off by working at smaller colleges and then at the famous Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1939 to 1943. Following a highly successful stint at Bryn Mawr College from 1946 to 1962, he returned to Princeton until his retirement until 1975. Like Holborn, Gilbert too was recruited by the Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS from 1943 to 1945 and did research work for the State Department in 1945/46. After working in Washington, in 1944 he was transferred to the US outposts in London and later Paris and in 1945 was employed as an observer of the reconstruction of political, cultural and academic life in occupied Germany.171 In 1947 he returned to Germany and in an article of October 1947 produced a highly critical account of developments since the summer of 1945. He was disappointed that so little had changed, that the ruins of the war were still so omnipresent and that— in contrast to other European countries—the immediate presence and atmosphere of the war could still be felt everywhere. Furthermore, he stated, the intellectual climate had declined since 1945, corruption and

170 171

See Walther, Von Meinecke zu Beard?, p. 275, 277f. Katz, German Historians, p. 138.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 53 demoralization had increased, and the political situation was characterized by apathy among the people, who saw the newly founded Land governments and political parties largely as instruments of the occupying powers. He felt that democratization in Germany had made very little progress and that because of the fragmentation of German life, nationalism was becoming increasingly attractive as an alternative to the present situation. Eradicating the legacy of the Nazi period was a far more complicated and fundamental task than the Americans had initially believed.172 Gilbert resumed contact with Meinecke as early as 1945. Later, in a letter of 14 June 1947, he thanked Meinecke for sending him the German Catastrophe, which he had “of course [read] with the greatest of interest” and mentioned how much he would like to take part in Meinecke‘s colloquium on Ranke and Burckhardt: “In the present era, Burckhardt is increasingly emerging as a quite unique and powerful figure.” Yet he was a “very continental European figure” and a translation of his Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (Eng. title: Reflections on History) had met with little understanding in the USA. He was, he stated, interested to see how the planned translation of Ranke’s Politisches Gespräch (“Political dialogue”) and his Die Großen Mächte (“The major powers”) would be received in America. “On the whole, the influence of German historiography, which was predominant in America around the turn of the century, has greatly weakened; the field is largely dominated by issues in economic and social history, which, by the way, has its good side, as the connection between history and politics has remained very lively as a result.” Commenting on the results of a study of “The intellectual situation in Germany” (“Die geistige Situation in Deutschland”), he remarked critically on the “Germans’ strong tendency to view their own crisis as a world crisis”.173 In a long letter of 25 November 1948, he spoke of a trip to the American West, which was a major experience for him, and thanked Meinecke for sending him his studies on the Revolution of 1848 and on Ranke and Burckhardt, both of which he had found very interesting.

172 Felix Gilbert, “Germany Revisited. Some Impressions after two Years”, in: The World Today 3, no. 10, October 1947, pp. 424–431. 173 See below, p. 277f. On Gilbert’s later assessment of the history produced by Ranke and Burckhardt, see his text: History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt, Princeton 1990. In German translation: Geschichte. Politik oder Kultur? Rückblick auf einen klassischen Konflikt, Frankfurt a. M./New York 1992.

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In a seminar of his own on the Revolution of 1848, he stated, he had paid particular attention to the connections between the various European revolutions and the conflicting views within the leftist camp. He hoped that, given the influence of refugees from the 1848 revolution in the United States, the sessions of the American Historical Association dedicated to the Revolution of 1848 at its annual conference in December 1948 would also provide an opportunity “to get ‘European’ and ‘American’ historians to mix a little; for the most part they maintain a clear distance, which, in my opinion, is of no benefit to American history”. Gilbert also commented on American foreign policy. He explained Truman’s surprising election as president in 1948 by stating that the Roosevelt administration had represented a “revolution”, one “which has in fact largely been accepted by the people. It is also an indication of how the country’s centre of gravity has shifted away from the East; I myself was quite astonished during the summer to see how much the Mid-West and West have developed—even in the few years since I was last there. From an intellectual point of view, there seems to be no doubt that this is where the future of the major universities lies; Chicago and California are already leaders in the natural sciences.”174 He later criticized the fact that the Americans had a very hard time adapting to the necessities of power politics.175 His work on the volume of essays on Makers of Modern Strategy. Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton 1943) edited by Edward Mead Earle and the book The Diplomats: 1919–1933 (Princeton 1953),176 which he later edited in collaboration with Gordon A. Craig, thus aimed to make the Americans more familiar with the prerequisites of modern foreign policy and strategy.

174

See below, p. 281f. Gilbert to Meinecke, 25 May 1951, see below, pp. 282–285. 176 Edward Mead Earle (ed. with the collaboration of Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert), fourth printing, Princeton 1952 (first published 1943). Gilbert wrote: ch. 1: “Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War”, pp. 3–25; ch. 4 was produced by Gilbert in collaboration with Crane Brinton and Gordon A. Craig: “Jomini”, pp. 77–92. Two more of Meinecke’s students contributed to the volume in the shape of Hajo Holborn and Hans Rothfels, who wrote articles on: “Moltke and Schlieffen: The Prussian-German Military School” (pp. 172–205) and “Clausewitz” (pp. 93–113); Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert (eds.), The Diplomats 1919–1939, Princeton 1953. Here, Gilbert wrote the article: “Ciano and his Ambassadors” and “Two British Ambassadors: Perth and Henderson”, pp. 512–536, 536–554. Hajo Holborn contributed to this volume with the article: “Diplomats and Diplomacy in the Early Weimar Republic”, pp. 123–171. 175

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 55 Finally, Felix Gilbert was visiting professor in Cologne in 1959/60 and did what he could to promote cooperation between German and American universities. However, partly because he was firmly anchored in the United States, it is clear that he never seriously considered returning to Germany. Gilbert was a teacher of great erudition with a vast range of scholarly interests. From 1932, his research centred primarily on the Italian Renaissance. His study of Machiavelli and the historian Guicciardini,177 on which he had begun to work before emigration, became a standard work with its analysis of the roots of modern political ideas and their contribution to politics. His study of economic diplomacy in the early 16th century, in which the chief protagonists were Pope Julius II, his banker Agostino Chigi and the Republic of Venice,178 also attracted much interest among historians of the Renaissance. Gilbert’s great interest in recent history found expression in the book The End of the European Era: 1890 to the Present (New York 1970), written for a broad public. His strong attachment to his new country, but also his interest in the fundamentals of foreign policy, led to an important study on the linkage of ideas and diplomacy in the evolution of the basic concepts of early American foreign policy up to the famous Farewell Address of 1796, the political testament of President Washington.179 His family background ultimately prompted him to present hitherto unpublished letters of the Mendelssohn family from the 19th century, in the volume Bankiers, Künstler und Gelehrte, thus making a key contribution to the social and cultural history of the acculturated Jewish upper middle class in Germany.180 In addition, Gilbert was concerned with issues of historiography and in the United States he did his best to disseminate the research of Otto Hintze, whose most important essays he published, and the works of

177 Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli und Guicciardini. Politics and History in SixteenthCentury Florence, Princeton 1965. 178 Felix Gilbert, The Pope, His Banker and Venice, 1980, Cambridge/Mass. 1980. 179 Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address. Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy, Princeton 1961. Gilbert first got the idea for this book from his seminar on “American Isolationism” at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton 1939/40. The book, of which some of the chapters had been published already, was finally completed during Gilbert’s visiting professorship in Cologne 1959/60, where he held a lecture on the beginnings of American foreign policy. 180 Felix Gilbert (ed.), Bankiers, Künstler und Gelehrte. Unveröffentlichte Briefe der Familie Mendelssohn aus dem 19. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 1975.

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Meinecke.181 Gilbert continued the tradition of Meinecke’s history of ideas, but developed it further by placing greater emphasis on how ideas interact with interests, with the social position of individuals and groups and with the addressees of their ideas; in other words, with the political, social and cultural conditions of a given era.182 6. Hans Baron Like Gilbert, Hans Baron (1900–1988)183 too made vital contributions to the study of the Renaissance. The son of a doctor, he grew up in Berlin in an educated middle class German-Jewish family.184 As a student of history, philosophy, German language and literature, geography, history of art and political economy, in Leipzig he took much of his inspiration from Walter Goetz, a distinguished Renaissance expert and Reichstag deputy for the DDP (1919–1928), and from Ernst Troeltsch and Meinecke in Berlin. Baron gained his doctorate in 1922 with a study on “Calvin’s view of the state and the confessional age” (“Calvins Staatsanschauung und das konfessionelle Zeitalter”) that grew out of one of Meinecke’s seminars and was supervised by him.185

181 Otto Hintze, The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze. Edited with an Introduction by Felix Gilbert, with the assistance of Robert M. Berdahl. New York 1975. Gilbert also wrote the introduction to the English translation of Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat: Cosmopolitanism and the National State, Princeton 1970. See also Gilbert’s essay: “Political Power and Academic Responsibility: Reflections on Friedrich Meinecke’s ‘Drei Generationen deutscher Gelehrtenpolitik’ ”, in: Krieger/Stern (eds.), The Responsibility of Power, pp. 402–415. Alongside his work on the historiography of the Renaissance and his studies of Droysen, Meinecke and Hintze, Gilbert’s research focussed mainly on Jakob Burckhardt and Leopold von Ranke. 182 For Gilbert’s analysis of the significance of ideas in the history of historiography and his conception of a modern “intellectual history”, see his essay: “Intellectual History: Its Aims and Methods”, in: Felix Gilbert and Stephen R. Graubard (eds.), Historical Studies Today, New York 1972, pp. 141–158. 183 On Baron, see the articles by Denys Hay and August Buck in the Festschrift dedicated to Baron: Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (eds.): Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, De Kalb 1971, pp. XI–XXIX, pp. XXXI–LVIII. This also contains a bibliography of Baron’s writings up to 1969, pp. LXXI–LXXXVII; Riccardo Fubini, “Renaissance Historian: The Career of Hans Baron”, in: JMH 64 (1992), pp. 541–574; Klaus Große Kracht, “‘Bürgerhumanismus’ oder ‘Staatsräson’. Hans Baron und die republikanische Intelligenz des Quattrocento”, in: Leviathan 29 (2001), pp. 355–370. 184 In his CV, attached to his application for habilitation, he writes that he was born the son of a doctor “of the Jewish faith”, but—in contrast to the other students of Jewish descent habilitated by Meinecke, who explicitly referred to their Protestantism—does not mention his own religion (Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1243). 185 The study, published as Supplement 1 to the HZ, Munich, 1924, is dedicated to Meinecke.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 57 After Troeltsch’s death in 1923, he edited the famous Spectator Letters and two volumes of essays by Troeltsch.186 Thanks to a state grant, which he received from 1 October 1923, he had the opportunity to continue with academic work rather than taking up a teaching post at a secondary school.187 In parallel to editing the Troeltsch volume, he worked on a book, with which he had been entrusted by Meinecke, on the “Worldview of the Renaissance and Reformation” (“Weltanschauung der Renaissance und Reformation”) for a multi-volume textbook planned by Meinecke and Georg von Below on medieval and modern history. Baron’s project never made it to publication.188

Hans Baron

In 1925, in order to carry out research on this topic, he travelled to Italy for 18 months with a scholarship from the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany (Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft). His aim, as he wrote in the CV he submitted as part of

186 Ernst Troeltsch, Spektator-Briefe. Aufsätze über die deutsche Revolution und die Weltpolitik, 1918–1922. With a foreword by Friedrich Meinecke, ed. by Hans Baron, Tübingen 1924; Troeltsch, Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte und Religionssoziologie (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4), ed. by Hans Baron, Tübingen 1925; Troeltsch, Deutscher Geist und Westeuropa. Gesammelte kulturphilosophische Aufsätze und Reden, ed. by Hans Baron, Tübingen 1925. 187 See Baron’s CV in: Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1243. 188 Große Kracht, “Bürgerhumanismus”, p. 359.

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the habilitation process, as well as gathering source materials for the volume, was “initially merely to exploit as yet unpublished humanistic manuscripts for a study, planned as a future habilitation thesis, of Florentine humanism and Platonism and the relationship of the latter to the circle around Erasmus. . . . During my work in Italy, however, it emerged that the current state of published source materials concerning the Florentine Humanists can only be described as so inadequate that it seems advisable to first glean from the manuscripts the major portion of relevant texts and publish them in a coherent form”.189 While engaging in intensive study of the source materials, Baron came across the Italian humanist and chancellor of the city of Florence, Leonardo Bruni (1369–1444, chancellor from 1427), a figure who was to preoccupy him for the rest of his academic life. In 1928, with Meinecke’s support, he gained his habilitation with an as yet unpublished thesis on “Leonardo Bruni Aretino and the humanism of the Quattrocento” (“Leonardo Bruni Aretino und der Humanismus des Quattrocento”).190 He had ambitious plans to edit the writings of Florentine citizens and humanists on the state, church and religion, all of which were to be published by an “Institute for cultural and universal history at the University of Leipzig” led by Walter Goetz,191 but managed to edit just one volume of Bruni’s writings.192 After his habilitation, as an employee of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), he was commissioned to edit the Reichstag records of Maximilian I. But he continued to live in Berlin, worked as a lecturer at the Lindenuniversität and, alongside his work for the Munich Commission, continued his research on Florentine humanism.

189 Baron’s CV in: Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1243. 190 The text is being prepared for publication by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf and Klaus Große Kracht. See Große Kracht, “Bürgerhumanismus”, p. 362. First reference for the habilitation thesis by Meinecke, second from Brackmann. 191 See Baron’s letter to Goetz of 2 July 1925, below, p. 292, as well as his further correspondence with W. Goetz in Goetz’s papers in the Federal Archive in Koblenz, which is not included here. 192 Leonardo Bruni Aretino, Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften und eine Chronologie seiner Werke und Briefe, ed. and with a commentary by Dr. Hans Baron, Leipzig/Berlin 1928.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 59 The material basis of his academic work was abruptly snatched away from him after the Nazi seizure of power: as a Jew, he was dismissed on 30 June 1933 and his teaching contract was terminated in a missive dated 2 September 1933.193 He had already described his desperate situation in a letter to Walter Goetz from 23 March 1933: “This will be a sad time for you as well, but the worst and most terrible thing, that your own compatriots, who you have considered yourself one of your whole life, can come and take from you your People and Fatherland and everything that you thought sacred, that’s an experience reserved for us Jews. Our generation has already been through a lot—war, collapse, the diktat of Versailles, inflation—but all of that now seems like a minor, fleeting episode in comparison with this slow process of being torn apart and dying while still alive.” He now wanted to put all his energies into collating and publishing the findings of his years of study in his book on humanism.194 It was, however, some time before he managed to do this. After several years in Italy in 1935/36 and England from 1936–1938, he finally emigrated to the United States. Baron, who was very hard of hearing, failed to gain a permanent position as professor despite a number of years teaching at Queens College, City University of New York (1939–1942) and, later, numerous visiting professorships at American universities. Having been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1944 to 1948, he found his academic home as research fellow and bibliographer, and later as distinguished research fellow, at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago. In 1955, he published his pioneering work The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny.195 He advocated the thesis that, influenced mainly by humanistic studies of an Aristotelian tenor and practical political activities, a Florentine civic humanism had already developed by the early 15th century, a humanism that was indissolubly linked with republican liberty. Baron’s ideas, backed up by a whole series of

193 See below, p. 278, as well as Baron’s personal files in the Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, vol. 50. 194 See below, p. 298f. 195 2 vols., Princeton 1955, 2nd edn. 1966.

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studies,196 attracted a good deal of criticism and kicked off an intensive scholarly debate that was to run for decades.197 Most contested were the dating of Bruni’s writings, the narrowing down of the emergence of civic humanism to the foreign policy crisis around 1400 and Baron’s rejection of the notion that civic humanism was a mere ideology. It is however beyond dispute that his studies—like that of other émigrés such as Gilbert and Paul Oskar Kristeller198—were a milestone on the United States’ path to becoming one of the leading centres, alongside Italy, of modern historical research on the Renaissance and especially Florence, despite the fact that research on the Renaissance was underdeveloped there prior to 1933. After 1945, Baron’s financial situation was improved in 1956 through the conferment of the status and allowance of a retired associate professor (außerordentlicher Professor) in Germany.199 Though he did not rule out the possibility of returning to Germany, he lacked any real opportunity to do so.200 “I find it hard to imagine . . . that it might still be possible for me to return to Germany”, he wrote to Walter Goetz on 15 October 1954, “though I’ve often dreamt of it. I dream of it when the intellectual isolation here becomes too onerous and when, time and again, new German literature confirms the impression that the tradition of Renaissance studies in Germany, which I absorbed through you and your Institute in Leipzig, threatens to peter out entirely.” In view of the financial difficulties facing the German universities, returning to Germany would, he stated, be near-impossible in material terms, particularly given that his income would have to be large enough “to allow us, in our otherwise frugal existence, either to

196 See Hans Baron, Humanistic and Political Literature in Florence and Venice at the Beginning of the Quattrocento: Studies in Criticism and Chronology, Cambridge/ Mass. 1955; and Baron’s essay collections: From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni: Studies in Humanistic and Political Literature, Chicago 1968; In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols., Princeton 1988. 197 See James Hankins, “The ‘Baron Thesis’ after Forty Years and some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995), pp. 309–338; Ronald Witt, “The Crisis after Forty Years”, in: AHR 101 (1996), pp. 110–118. 198 On this important scholar of humanism, coming from a philosophical background, see: Petersohn, Deutschsprachige Mediävistik, pp. 42–48. 199 Große Kracht, “Bürgerhumanismus”, p. 370. 200 See below, p. 316f. But see also the criticisms of Germany and Europe in Baron’s letter to Herbert Grundmann of 24 December 1951, quoted in: Große Kracht, “Bürgerhumanismus”, p. 366.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 61 travel annually to America ourselves or to allow our children to make the trip to Germany”.201 Baron clearly had no contact with Meinecke after 1945. He had written to him repeatedly in 1923/24 because of his study on Calvin and Meinecke’s support in various endeavours,202 and Meinecke tried to smooth his way with a letter of recommendation even after he had left the country.203 However, there are no letters from Baron for the period after 1924 among Meinecke’s unpublished papers. His key contact in Germany was Walter Goetz, to whom he dedicated his book on the early Italian Renaissance. Baron advanced the history of political ideas, whose close association with concrete political activities he underlined through the case of the civic humanists of Florence. In contrast to the United States and Italy, where they have become classics, his studies have so far attracted little attention in Germany, which is still struggling to come to terms with the brain drain of émigrés scholars working on the Renaissance and humanism, despite the fact that civic humanism may be seen as a predecessor of the now much-discussed civil society. 7. Helene Wieruszowski The medievalist Helene Wieruszowski (1893–1978)204 grew up in Germany as the daughter of upper middle class Jewish parents—her father was chairman of the senate at the Cologne higher regional court (Oberlandesgericht), her mother a granddaughter of the sister of leading liberal parliamentarian Ludwig Bamberger.205 She was baptised and brought up as a Protestant. But her true love was the medieval Catholic milieu in Cologne and the surrounding area: while still a school-girl at the humanistic girls’ school in Cologne, she decided to devote herself to the Middle Ages and the auxiliary sciences of history (Historische Hilfswissenschaften).

201

See below, p. 316. Letters from Baron to Meinecke from 22 August and 29 November 1923, 15 January, 5 April, 14 April and 17 August 1924, Meinecke papers, no. 2, and letters reproduced below, pp. 286–288, from 5 and 16 October 1924. 203 Große Kracht, “Bürgerhumanismus”, p. 365. 204 On H. Wieruszowski, see esp. her foreword to her volume of essays: Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy, Rome 1971, pp. IX–XVII, which also contains a bibliography of her publications up to 1969, pp. 667–669. 205 H. Wieruszowski to Meinecke, 11 August [1946], Meinecke papers, no. 52. The year is missing from her letter, but can be inferred from the content. 202

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Helene Wieruszowski

She was a student of Meinecke from the Freiburg period, but ultimately gained her doctorate in Bonn in 1918 under the guidance of Wilhelm Levison with a study of the Gaulish and Frankish episcopate before the Treaty of Verdun (843).206 After initially working as research assistant at the Society for Rhenish History (Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde) in Cologne (1922–1924) and at the Prussian Historical Institute (Preußisches Historisches Institut) in Rome (1925–1926), she completed a course in librarianship at the Prussian state library in Berlin from 1926 to 1928. During this period she again came into contact with Meinecke, who suggested that she examine Machiavellianism prior to Machiavelli.207 Study of the source materials, however, led her back to the conflicts between state and church in the 13th and early 14th century and their manifestation in the documents kept in the chancelleries of Kaiser Friedrich II and King

206 Published under the title: “Die Zusammensetzung des gallischen und fränkischen Episkopats bis zum Vertrag von Verdun (843) mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Nationalität und des Standes. Ein Beitrag zur fränkischen Kirchen- und Verfassungsgeschichte”, in: Bonner Jahrbücher 127 (1922), pp. 1–83. 207 See below, p. 320.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 63 Philip IV (“the Fair”) of France as well as the scholarly and popular writing of the time.208 Working as a librarian at the university library in Bonn from 1928 on, Wieruszowski’s hopes of habilitation209 and further research on related themes were dashed by her dismissal on 31 January 1934. Her attempts to continue working within German academia in one capacity or another through an unpaid position with the Monumenta Germaniae Historica or a post at one of the German historical institutes abroad,210 came to nothing. After years of intensive research in Barcelona and Madrid (1934–1938) and in Florence from 1938, she emigrated to the United States only in 1940. After several difficult years of transition during which she held temporary research and teaching posts, one of them as a colleague of Hans Rosenberg at Brooklyn College in New York, she finally acquired a permanent position as assistant and later associate professor at City College in New York from 1949 until her retirement in 1961. But her true academic home was the Medieval Academy of America. Alongside the book on the era of Charlemagne,211 written with a colleague for a broad public, and one on the medieval university,212 in which she set out an original analysis, especially in her treatment of the relationship between students and their academic teachers, she produced essays based on broad and intensive study of the sources. Some of the most important of these studies were brought together in an anthology entitled Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and 208 Helene Wieruszowski, Vom Imperium zum Nationalen Königtum. Vergleichende Studien über die publizistischen Kämpfe Kaiser Friedrichs II. und König Philipps des Schönen mit der Kurie, Supplement 30 of the HZ, Munich/Berlin 1933. The book is dedicated to “Friedrich Meinecke, my revered teacher, with gratitude”. In the foreword, H. Wieruszowski writes that the “key question posed by Meinecke as to the origins of the modern idea of the state in the Middle Ages . . . [has] nonetheless [remained] the guiding principle” of her studies. 209 On 4 March 1931 she wrote to Brackmann that she had begun to turn her study “Vom Imperium zum Nationalen Königtum” into a manuscript and that Prof. Levison had promised “to examine [it] as a possible habilitation thesis” (Brackmann papers, vol. 40). 210 See the letters by H. Wieruszowski to Brackmann from 22 October [1933] and 4 November 1933 and Brackmann’s letter to H. Wieruszowski from 25 October 1933, below, pp. 320–323. 211 Stewart C. Easton and Helene Wieruszowski, The Era of Charlemagne. Frankish State and Society, Princeton 1961. 212 Helene Wieruszowski, The Medieval University: Masters, Students, Learning, Princeton 1966. The book is dedicated to “Hannah Arendt and the memory of Ludwig Edelstein”. The émigré Ludwig Edelstein was a respected historian of medicine.

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Italy from 1971. These dealt chiefly with the Mediterranean expansion around Sicily and Italian culture in the age of Dante.213 Helene Wieruszowski was a leading historian whose studies, published in German, English, French, Italian and Spanish, opened up new points of access to the medieval world, particularly that of Italy and Spain. Once the war was over, Helene Wieruszowski and Meinecke began writing to each other again. In her letters, Wieruszowski grappled with the question of a possible return to Germany. On 11 August [1946], after reading Meinecke’s appeal to German students printed in an American newspaper,214 she wrote to him that she had believed that “a door into the old days was being reopened, into my intellectual past in Germany, a past in which I am rooted”. All in all, though, it had been an “illusion”. As happy as she was to re-establish personal friendships in Germany, she could feel the difficulties and obstacles mount “when I try to understand and imagine myself back in Germany. Too much has happened, the scale is too enormous, the collective acts go beyond the episodic and individual kind that history may pass over, other than in special works. Germany, your great Germany, Herr Geheimrat, the one I first came to appreciate in your Cosmopolitanism, was lost in the Germany of the Third Reich; I at least cannot see it anymore.” She had not, however, forgotten her “debt of love and gratitude” to individuals. “You wouldn’t believe how much I am able to draw on the treasures obtained during my university days and especially from your classes.”215 On 16 February [1947], she sent Meinecke a CARE package with the remark that he ought not to thank her for it. “Can I ever thank you enough?” She also told him of a lovely evening in Rosenberg’s house with Masur, “who was beginning to feel bored in South America and has therefore settled in our more interesting, but, as he remarked disdainfully, unromantic North”. They had talked about almost nothing but Meinecke. She hoped to be able to send Meinecke her essay on “The view of the middle ages in Goethe’s Helena” (“Das Mittelalterbild in Goethes Helena”). It was “an expression of my longing for Germany and for my father, who brought the medieval episode of ‘Helena’ in Faust II to my attention back in the old days.”216 213 214 215 216

Wieruszowski, Politics and Culture. See below, p. 324. See below, p. 324f. See below, p. 328.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 65 Her ambivalent, tense relationship with Germany also finds expression in her account of her visiting lectureship in Heidelberg in the summer semester of 1948. It had been an interesting period, rich in experiences: “It may even trigger a decisive change in my life at some point. But for the time being the University of Heidelberg was unable to offer me anything financially secure. As I am also supporting two of my sisters to some extent, for now I must carry on earning money in a ‘good’ currency and wait for any decent offer of a lectureship in medieval history that may come along.” She had had diligent, highly engaged students, but her reaction to their political outlook was less positive; “I found them alarmingly obdurate and blind with regard to the events of the recent past”.217 Helene Wieruszowski, who taught for another four years, from 1962 to 1966, at the New School for Social Research in New York after retiring from City College, lived out her last years in Switzerland, home to one of her sisters. 8. Hans Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (1904–1988)218 was born in Hanover; his father was a businessman of Jewish descent, while his mother came from a family of Protestant civil servants from the Prussian province of Brandenburg. From 1910, however, he grew up in Cologne, his true home, and was raised as a Protestant. The experience of the First World War and the

217 Letter from H. Wieruszowski to Meinecke, 9 October 1948, see below, p. 329. A critical account of her regular discussions with students in Heidelberg was published under the title “Gespräche mit deutschen Studenten” in the journal Wandlung, Heidelberg 1949, pp. 82–91. 218 On Rosenberg, see Gerhard A. Ritter, Hans Rosenberg 1904–1988, in: GG 15 (1989), pp. 282–302; Heinrich August Winkler, “Ein Erneuerer der Geschichtswissenschaft. Hans Rosenberg 1904–1988”, in: HZ 248 (1989), pp. 529–555; Arnold Sywottek, “Sozialgeschichte im Gefolge Hans Rosenbergs”, in: AfS 16 (1976), pp. 603–621, Hanna Schissler, “Explaining History: Hans Rosenberg”, in: Lehmann/Sheehan (eds.), An Interrupted Past, pp. 180–189; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, foreword to: Sozialgeschichte Heute. Festschrift für Hans Rosenberg zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Göttingen 1974, pp. 9–21, which also contains a bibliography of publications up to 1974, p. 652f.; foreword by Gerhard A. Ritter in: Entstehung und Wandel der modernen Gesellschaft. Festschrift für Hans Rosenberg zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Gerhard A. Ritter, Berlin 1970, pp. V–X; see also the essays by William W. Hagen, Eugene de Genovese, Shulamit Volkov and Morton Rothstein on Rosenberg as scholar and academic teacher in the issue, dedicated to him, of “Central European History”, vol. 24, no. 1, 1991, pp. 24–68. See also: Hans Rosenberg, “Rückblick auf ein Historikerleben zwischen zwei Kulturen”, in: Rosenberg, Machteliten und Wirtschaftskonjunkturen. Studien zur neueren deutschen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Göttingen 1978, pp. 11–23.

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Revolution of 1918/19 left a lasting impression on him. His schoolleaving certificate, in which he received an A in German and history but failed physical education, states that he wished to study political economy and sociology.219 His studies in Cologne, Freiburg and Berlin, however, centred on history, his major subject, and philosophy and political economy as minor subjects.

Hans Rosenberg

On 23 April 1924 he wrote in his first letter to Meinecke that his academic inclinations drew him “primarily to problems in intellectual history and philosophy of history”, and he asked Meinecke to admit him to his seminar and allow him to write his doctoral thesis on “Wilhelm Dilthey as a historian”. With astonishing frankness and self-confidence he stated that his aim in life was to carry out academic research and teaching; he wrote to Meinecke that he not only revered him as a great scholar and researcher, but also felt a “sense of personal love” for him.220 For Rosenberg, a very warm-hearted individual, who never enjoyed a close relationship with his utterly different father, who, moreover, had died in 1918, Meinecke was clearly something of a father figure. Though he had already broken away from Meinecke’s form of intellectual history prior to 1930, the emotional, very close personal relationship with Meinecke and, after his death, with his wife, did not suffer as a result. He helped Meinecke after 1945 by sending 219 220

Rosenberg papers, vol. 1. See below, p. 330.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 67 him CARE packages; during his first visits to Berlin, he rented a room opposite Meinecke’s home and regularly joined him for breakfast. A picture of a bust of Meinecke hung in his study until his death. It now hangs alongside one of Rosenberg and Jakob Burckhardt in my own. As one of Meinecke’s students, Rosenberg had already obtained his doctorate in 1927, but it dealt not with Dilthey but with the childhood and young adulthood of Rudolf Haym, philosopher, historian and old-school liberal politician.221 As he wrote in the CV submitted along with his doctoral application, the inspiration for the study came from Meinecke. His studies, we read, had centred on history, “especially intellectual, economic, social and constitutional history”. In his reference on Rosenberg’s doctoral thesis, which was passed summa cum laude, Meinecke remarked that “at times, the young historians of today . . . cheerfully [take on] subjects”, which their counterparts thirty or forty years ago would have baulked at. They would have lacked the courage “to write an account of the educational history of a leading thinker from the recent past, in light of the overall intellectual life of the time”.222 The habilitation thesis which Rosenberg submitted in 1932 with the backing of the liberal historian Johannes Ziekursch at the University of Cologne also dealt with Rudolf Haym, detailing his development up to 1850/51.223 From 1927 to 1928, Rosenberg received a grant from the Emergency Committee (Notgemeinschaft) to produce an edition of letters from Haym,224 published by the Historical Commission in Munich. From 1928 to 1934, he was employed by the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) to prepare a critical bibliography and summary of 1,338 pamphlets and journal

221 Hans Rosenberg, Die Jugendgeschichte Rudolf Hayms, Borna/Leipzig 1928. The publication contains only the first three chapters of the dissertation. 222 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty doctoral records, vol. 669. 223 Hans Rosenberg, Rudolf Haym und die Anfänge des klassischen Liberalismus, Supplement 31 to the HZ, Munich 1933. The book is dedicated to Meinecke “with gratitude and admiration”. 224 Hans Rosenberg (ed.), Ausgewählter Briefwechsel Rudolf Hayms, Stuttgart/ Berlin/Leipzig 1930. See also: Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit. Vorlesungen über Entstehung, Wesen und Werk der Hegelschen Philosophie, 2nd edn., ed. by Hans Rosenberg, Leipzig 1927.

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articles reflecting the intellectual debates on the movement for a German nation state from 1858 to 1866.225 Through a protracted process of inner struggle, during which Rosenberg also grappled with philosophical problems and questions of faith and came to understand that he was by nature a quiet scholar “too delicately strung for public engagement”,226 his view of the tasks and methods of history also began to change under the influence of Eckart Kehr and Eugene N. Anderson. In his second book on Haym, Rosenberg criticized the fact that the liberal German intellectual aristocracy had distanced itself from petty bourgeois and proletarian mass democracy and clung to the dogma of constitutional monarchy; he tried to link intellectual history and the history of ideas not only with political history but also with processes of social change. In a number of further essays, written between 1927 and 1929, Rosenberg supplemented Meinecke’s individualizing analysis of the ideas of leading figures with a “history of collective ideas” based on the “world of ideas, values and emotions” of the middle and lower classes. Rosenberg was concerned to “link intellectual history, social history, political attitudes and party history”. However, because he was as yet inadequately trained in the social sciences, these new methodological ideas were realized only in embryonic form in a total of five essays on early German liberalism and the structural transformation of public life in the Vormärz.227 Rosenberg continued to move away from Meinecke intellectually and broke through to new methods and problems after the experiences of the world economic crisis and the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1932/33 with his pioneering study, written while still in Germany, of “The world economic crisis from 1857 to 1859” (“Die Weltwirtschaftskrisis von 1857–1859”).228 In the context of an examination of European and North American economic development since 1848, and taking up the methods and problems character225 Hans Rosenberg, Die nationalpolitische Publizistik Deutschlands vom Eintritt der Neuen Ära in Preußen bis zum Ausbruch des Deutschen Krieges. Eine kritische Bibliographie, 2 vols., Munich/Berlin 1935. 226 See Rosenberg’s letter to his mother and siblings from 13 February 1929, below, p. 341. 227 The essays were reprinted by Rosenberg under the title Politische Denkströmungen im deutschen Vormärz, Göttingen 1972. On his methodological intentions, see his “introduction” to this volume, pp. 7–17, and Rosenberg, “Rückblick”, p. 13f. 228 Published in 1934 as Supplement 30 to the Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Stuttgart/Berlin. 2nd edn., with a “preliminary report” under the slightly modified title: Die Weltwirtschaftskrise 1857–1859, Göttingen 1974.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 69 istic of the economic theory of business cycles and empirical-analytical research on economic cycles, this study analyzes “the first world economic crisis in human history”,229 its causes, its course over time and its consequences, stretching into the early 1860s. On 23 January 1933—just a few days before the Nazi seizure of power—Rosenberg held his inaugural lecture on “Periods of party political liberalism in Germany” (“Die Epochen des parteipolitischen Liberalismus in Deutschland”).230 The trial lecture, already reflecting his new interest in the relationship between economy and state and comparative studies going beyond German history, examined “The importance of mercantilism to the Western European state system in the early modern period” (“die Bedeutung des Merkantilismus für das westeuropäische Staatensystem in der frühen Neuzeit”). Rosenberg gave no more lectures in Cologne. In early April, a few days after the anti-Semitic riots of 1 April, he informed the dean that “for special reasons” he felt bound to cancel the lectures and seminars he had planned to hold. On 2 September, as a “half-Jew”, his authority to teach was finally withdrawn officially by the Prussian ministry of cultural affairs.231 On 21 April 1933, Rosenberg wrote despairingly to his American friend Anderson: “Quite apart from the associated mental distress, for me personally the ‘national revolution’ in Germany means the radical destruction of my livelihood.” As he had done already with Josef Redlich in Harvard, he asked him for help in his efforts to “create a new life” (abroad, above all in the United States). “As long as there is even a glimmer of hope, I want to try to progress within the framework of my discipline and academic profession.”232 A few weeks later, he saw his situation in somewhat less dramatic terms and informed Anderson that he could be “reasonably sure” of being able to continue his work at the Imperial Historical Commission until the end of 1933.233 In fact, Meinecke managed to ensure that he continued to

229

According to Rosenberg in “Rückblick”, p. 15. The unpublished text can be found in Rosenberg’s papers in the Federal Archive, Koblenz, vol. 97. 231 On Rosenberg’s habilitation, as well as the harsh attacks on him on 27 January 1933 in an article entitled “Jewish cultural politics” (“Jüdische Kulturpolitik”) in the Westdeutscher Beobachter, organ of the Rhenish NSDAP, see Otto Dann, “Hans Rosenberg und the University of Cologne. Ein Nachruf ”, in: Kölner Universitäts Journal 18, 4, 1988. 232 See below, p. 347f. 233 Rosenberg to Anderson on 9 June 1933, see below, p. 353. 230

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receive funding from the Commission up until the end of November 1934 in order to quickly complete his book “National political journalism” (Nationalpolitische Publizistik), and that he received payments for his input to the printing of the book afterwards.234 This provided Rosenberg with the opportunity to continue his work for another two years, an opportunity he used both to improve his knowledge of the English language and to publish, with Meinecke’s support, his books on Haym and on “national political journalism”, as well as his manuscript on the world economic crisis from 1857 to 1859 in supplements to the Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte edited by Hermann Aubin.235 Despite all the difficulties he had to overcome over the next few years, this crucially enhanced Rosenberg’s prospects of continuing his academic career. In 1933, Rosenberg initially considered abandoning his main field of activity, namely the “study of problems in German and Central European history” and instead turning to “those of the British Empire and the United States”. His main focus would then be on “economic and social issues” and the “interplay of world economy and world politics”.236 Rosenberg emigrated to England as early as 1933. There, despite a letter of recommendation from Meinecke to the Academic Assistance Council, in which he described Rosenberg as “a particularly gifted researcher who has already achieved a good deal and promises to make an important contribution in future”,237 he failed to find a permanent position. In September 1935, following an arduous detour through Canada and Cuba made necessary by American immigration laws,238 he and his wife travelled on to the United States. After almost a year of unemployment and very badly paid entry-level positions at the City College of New York and at Illinois College in Jacksonville, he finally taught European economic and social history since the high Middle Ages and modern German history at Brooklyn College in New York from 1939 to 1959. His situation, characterized by a truly punishing teaching schedule, was improved decisively in 1959, when

234

See below, p. 366f. Walther, Von Meinecke zu Beard?, p. 285. 236 Addendum to Rosenberg’s letter to the secretary of the International Institute of Education, 18 November 1933, see below, p. 358f. 237 See below, p. 361. The letter of recommendation shows how positively Meinecke viewed his student’s scholarly progress and interest in economic history. 238 See Wehler, foreword to Sozialgeschichte Heute, p. 13. 235

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 71 he was appointed, with massive support from leading American economic historian David Landes,239 to the Shepard chair in history at the University of California, Berkeley, from which he retired in 1970. From the 1940s, aided by a lengthy sabbatical from his university and a grant from the Social Science Research Council of $500,240 Rosenberg worked primarily on a comprehensive history of PrussianGerman Junkerdom as a social class, from its establishment around 1200 to its collapse at the end of the Second World War. He saw this as a crucial problem of Prussian-German history. His motives were thus partly political, as he wanted to provide a historical perspective on the problem of rebuilding Germany after the war.241 The study, in which comparative perspectives became ever more important to him,242 was finished in June 1947 with the exception of the final two of a total of 15 chapters243 in the manuscript; yet Rosenberg was never to write them. Instead, in 1958, he published a study, based largely on his research for the book on the Junkers, on Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy. The Prussian Experience 1660–1815.244 Here, Rosenberg combined the older, more institutionally inclined historical research of Gustav Schmoller and Otto Hintze—whom he considered the leading German historian of the 20th century on account of his universal historical perspective and his methodological originality—with the concepts and

239

Landes to Rosenberg, 2 March 1959, Rosenberg papers, vol. 42. Social Science Research Council to Rosenberg, 25 March 1943, Rosenberg papers, vol. 1. 241 See Rosenberg’s research plan, below, pp. 372–374. 242 See Rosenberg’s report on the project to the president of Brooklyn College, Harry D. Gideonse, of 31 January 1947, below, pp. 382–387. 243 The manuscript of the work, whose table of contents, together with a letter of 5 January 1947, Rosenberg sent to Meinecke (see below, pp. 380–382), can be found, along with notes on possible revisions, in Rosenberg’s papers at the Federal Archive, Koblenz, vols. 130–137. Related to this project is an essay on “The Rise of the Junkers in Brandenburg-Prussia, 1410–1653”, which appeared in the AHR in 1943/44 (vol. 49, pp. 1–22, 228–242). It was republished in a radically changed German version entitled “Die Ausprägung der Junkerherrschaft in Brandenburg-Preußen 1410–1618” along with the brilliant essay “Die Pseudodemokratisierung der Rittergutsbesitzerklasse”, in: Rosenberg, Machteliten, pp. 24–82, 298–308 and pp. 83–101, 308–312. The second, extremely influential essay initially appeared under the title: “Die ‘Demokratisierung’ der Rittergutsbesitzerklasse” in: Berges/Hinrichs (eds.), Zur Geschichte und Problematik der Demokratie, pp. 459–486. 244 Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy. The Prussian Experience 1660–1815, Cambridge/Mass. 1958. The book contains a postscript which, among other things, criticizes the unsatisfactory revision of the German view of history after 1945, and which is not included in the later paperback edition of 1966. 240

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problems of modern sociology and especially those found in the work of Max Weber. With constant reference to parallel or differing developments in other countries, Rosenberg produced a “collective biography” of Prussian officials as a political and social group and their relations with Junkerdom and the absolute monarchy. The book, a contribution to the history of the bureaucratization of the modern world, was very well received in the United States, but—because of the lack of a translation,245 but probably also because of its radical critique of old Prussia—met with a muted response in Germany.246 By contrast, with his study “Great Depression and the Bismarck era. Economic developments, society and politics in Central Europe” (Große Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa) published in German in early 1967,247 which unintentionally developed into a book out of the translation of an older essay for an anthology,248 Rosenberg became the role model and mentor of the “critical” social history that became established in Germany from the late 1960s. Inspired by the “long waves” model developed in the 1920s by N. D. Kondratieff, the Moscow-based expert on economic cycles, and using the example of the economic downturn from 1873

245 After initial plans for a translation were apparently hindered by the intervention of Freiburg historian Gerhard Ritter, Rosenberg himself hesitated to publish a German edition. The proposed translations, samples of which are to be found in Rosenberg’s papers, failed to meet his high expectations. Ultimately, he would have had to largely rewrite the book, which he evidently wished to combine with his older study on Junkerdom. Partly because of the shift in his interests, however, he lacked both the energy and enthusiasm for the task. He therefore wrote to me on 27 May 1972 that for him personally it was “actually a mental relief” that “nothing is now likely to come of” a “German edition” of his “book on the Prussian bureaucracy—it would after all have been rather more than a mere translation” (Ritter, Rosenberg, p. 295f.). 246 Rosenberg to R. Braun, 6 July 1970, below, p. 440. 247 Published in Berlin, 1967. A forerunner to the book may be seen in an article by Rosenberg published in the EconHR (vol. 13, pp. 58–73) in 1943 on the “Political and Social Consequences of the Great Depression of 1873–1896”. For an analysis of the book and its impact, as well as a critique of the concept of long waves and “Great Depression”, which Rosenberg later wanted to replace with that of the “Great Deflation”, see the article on the book by Gerhard A. Ritter in: Volker Reinhardt (ed.), Hauptwerke der Geschichtsschreibung, Stuttgart 1997, pp. 536–539. The planned American edition of the book, intended both to correct factual errors and conceptual and terminological uncertainties and deepen and extend its arguments, ultimately came to nothing because, among other things, of his criticisms of the “miserable” attempt at a translation with which he was presented (letter from Rosenberg to Gerhard A. Ritter, 21 December 1967). As a result, the book’s reception in the English-speaking world remained far weaker than in West Germany. 248 See Rosenberg’s letter to his wife of 25 April 1965, below, pp. 433–435.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 73 to 1896, the book examines the connections between economic cycles and the economic, social, political, social psychological, ideological and moral changes that occurred during this period. Rosenberg’s aim here was to build a bridge between economic history on the one hand and social, intellectual and political history on the other and—as in his earlier study of the Prussian bureaucracy—contribute to a deeper analysis of the conditions that made Nazism possible. After the war, Rosenberg quickly resumed contact with Meinecke, provided him with a thorough report on his academic work and commented on Meinecke’s own research. He was “deeply moved” by The German Catastrophe. The strength of the book, he stated, lay “in the diagnosis . . . rather than the cure”.249 Rosenberg was obviously referring here to Meinecke’s proposal, so often met with a pitying smile, to establish “Goethe communities”250 as a step towards the renewal of Germany. Rosenberg, an extremely shrewd and critical thinker, admired Meinecke’s “Secular reflections” on 1848 as masterful, wise and penetrating: “You are the last living representative of several generations of great German professors of history.”251 His lecture on Ranke and Burckhardt, Rosenberg thought, showed Meinecke’s tremendous capacity, “both in the details and on a broad scale” to look at “old issues and problems . . . in a quite new and exciting way”.252 In contrast to Rothfels, Masur and Gilbert, in none of his publications did Rosenberg deal directly with Meinecke. Nevertheless, alongside his essays of the late 1920s and a critical lecture on the discipline of history in Germany, held in 1935 in the seminar of the English historian Tawney,253 it is his notes on a lecture254 that reveal how intensively he grappled with Meinecke as an individual, political contemporary, but above all as a historian. As a person, he saw him as a humanistic liberal who combined tremendous erudition and profound modesty and who

249

Rosenberg to Meinecke, 29 June 1947, see below, p. 392. Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 442–444. 251 Rosenberg to Meinecke, 2 May 1948, see below, p. 398. 252 Rosenberg to Meinecke, 6 October 1948, see below, p. 402. 253 Paper in Rosenberg papers, vol. 96. Published with an introduction by Winfrid Halder: “A Forum on Contemporary History: ‘Being accustomed to march with the stronger battalions, the German science of history was fully prepared to become reconciled with Hitlerism’. Eine zeitgenössische Sicht zum Verhältnis von deutscher Geschichtswissenschaft und Nationalsozialismus: Hans Rosenbergs Referat an der London School of Economics im Mai 1935”, in Storia della Storiografia 51 (2007), pp. 83–123. 254 See below, pp. 419–421. 250

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had always defended freedom of conscience. He had, Rosenberg felt, been a tolerant teacher. Politically, he saw Meinecke as a representative of a Notables’ politics, one who had frequently shifted his political loyalties and preferences over the course of his life. As a conservative reformer, he had tried to integrate the working class into the nation and nation state and had been appalled by the Nazi regime. For long a defender of the Bismarckian Empire, he had ended up as a sharp critic of Prussian militarism. For Rosenberg, along with Otto Hintze he had been the leading German historian of his time; alongside the historical school of political economy, he had tried to inject new vigour into the stagnant discipline of history in Germany with the aid of a history of ideas initiated by Dilthey and Haym. For Rosenberg, Meinecke was an epigone of classical idealism from Herder to Ranke and, especially in light of his book on the emergence of historism, the last of the great romantic historians. He was very clear about the limits of Meinecke’s history. Rosenberg felt that Meinecke was ignorant of economic history and had underestimated and failed to understand the social and especially the economic bases of ideas and historical action. Meinecke thus tended to examine the history of ideas in a social and economic, and sometimes even political vacuum. On the other hand, he emphasized the profound subtlety of his analyses of ideas and stressed that Meinecke had always involved himself intellectually as well as emotionally in the issues he studied. Rosenberg counted Rothfels, Kaehler, Holborn, Gerhard, Gilbert, Masur, but also the “heretics” Kehr and himself, as members of the Meinecke School. It is clear from these notes just how much Rosenberg admired Meinecke’s personal integrity and dedication to his work, while at the same time rejecting his history of ideas as outmoded, one-sided and a quite inadequate means of achieving a deeper understanding of the past. The question of Rosenberg’s possible return to Germany played a major role in the correspondence between Rosenberg and Meinecke. As early as 6 May 1946, he informed Meinecke that despite the dreadful situation in Germany, which would no doubt continue for many years, he was “prepared, should the occasion arise”, “to return to a German university”.255 Meinecke thanked Rosenberg for his courageous stance

255

See below, p. 377.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 75 and assured him that if asked he would mention Rosenberg’s name in connection with proposed appointments.256 In 1947, Rosenberg turned down an offer to take up the chair in modern history formerly held by his habilitation supervisor Johannes Ziekursch at the University of Cologne, later occupied by Theodor Schieder.257 It had not, as he told Meinecke, been an easy decision, “for despite the dreadful material situation and political uncertainty, I am drawn to return for many reasons. Furthermore, I believe that the spirit lives on even amid the ruins, or at least that it can be revived.”258 Just one year later, he felt that he had made the wrong decision, one in which “family considerations [had] played a decisive role”. He did not think that he “would say no again in future, [should] another opportunity arise at a good German university”.259 Rosenberg expressed himself in even clearer terms in a letter to his wife of 10 September 1948 following a visit to Cologne: “My stay in Cologne basically confirmed my expectations and calculations, apart from the fact that I found the material living conditions to be far better than I had assumed. As far as the intellectual and political meaning and purpose of professional life, within the context of one’s personal abilities, is concerned, an academic teaching post in Germany offers a quite unique and unrepeatable opportunity over the next 10 to 15 years. Seen from this perspective, I now know even more clearly than I did last winter that it was a fundamental mistake, and a betrayal of my innermost convictions, of my better convictions, to turn down the appointment in Cologne”.260 Meinecke’s aim of winning Rosenberg for the Free University in early 1949 came to nothing, as Rosenberg was clearly put off by the

256

Meinecke to Rosenberg, 12 June 1946, see below, p. 377. No formal offer was made: out of consideration for his wife, unwilling to return to her devastated native city of Cologne because of the appalling conditions, Rosenberg made it clear that he would not accept it. He was originally placed second on the list of candidates after Theodor Schieder. However, after the addition of further information about his scholarly evolution and future plans—particularly his planned book on the Junkers—the list was corrected and Rosenberg was asked first. See Rosenberg papers, vols. 41, 43 and 47. 258 Rosenberg to Meinecke, 4 December 1947, see below, p. 395. 259 Rosenberg to Meinecke, 6 October 1948, see below, p. 402. 260 See below, p. In “Americanisation as Globalisation? Remigrés to West Germany after 1945 and Conceptions of Democracy: The Case of Hans Rothfels, Ernst Fraenkel and Hans Rosenberg”, in: Year Book 2004 of the Leo Baeck Institute 49, pp. 153–170, Arnd Bauerkämper wrongly states that Rosenberg had no desire to return quickly to the country of his birth after the end of the war (p. 169). 257

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uncertain political situation in the divided city, cut off by the Berlin Blockade of 1948/49. On 6 October 1948, he wrote to Meinecke that he considered “the situation of the Western powers in Berlin” to be “untenable”, “unless they are willing to go to war, which I neither believe nor desire”.261 Shortly afterwards, he thought that there was probably only one alternative over the long term: “Either Berlin will absorb the Eastern Zone or the Eastern Zone will absorb Berlin.” At the same time, he admired the Berliners’, and Meinecke’s, composure during the blockade and in founding the Free University. That Meinecke had made up his mind to place “every last ounce of his strength at the service of the ‘Free University’ is a source of moral support and guidance to your students and admirers in America”.262 Rosenberg enjoyed exceptional success as visiting professor at the Free University in the summer semesters of 1949 and 1950. In a report to the State Department from 11 November 1950, following his second semester as visiting professor at the FU Berlin, Rosenberg produced a highly critical analysis of the discipline of history in Germany. It had not, he asserted, taken note of important studies by political scientists, economists, sociologists and historians in the United States, Great Britain and France. He criticized the education of history students, claiming that they learned almost nothing of the achievements of the social sciences. However, most German students were still highly malleable and it would therefore be a good idea to send promising students to the United States and Great Britain for one or two years to inject new vigour into their current and future professional work, enable them to produce critical analyses of significant political and economic problems and prepare them for leadership roles within society. It was also characteristic of Rosenberg that he took a critical view of developments at the Free University, which was increasingly becoming a normal West German university, and feared that—against the wishes of its German and American founders—it was losing its original role of trailblazer within the German university system, which he saw as no longer in keeping with the times.263

261 262 263

See below, p. 401f. Rosenberg to Meinecke, 15 January 1949, see below, p. 405. See below, pp. 407–418.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 77 Over the medium and longer term, Rosenberg himself had a major impact as a result of his visiting professorship at the FU in Berlin. Through his critical assessment of German history and by imparting new methods and problems, he exercised a significant influence on a large number of political scientists and historians later active in West Germany—such as Gilbert Ziebura, Gerhard Schulz, Wolfgang Sauer, Franz Ansprenger, Otto Büsch, Friedrich Zunkel, Helga Grebing and Gerhard A. Ritter and, directly and indirectly, on some of their students as well.264 His involuntary emigration prompted Rosenberg to think long and hard about his German-American identity and the significance of his education in Germany to his academic work, including that done in the United States. To his wife, who obviously had reservations about taking American citizenship in 1944, he wrote that “essentially, one really [ought] to look at these things from a purely practical point of view”. “With an American passport and American currency, the world will be your oyster after this war. That’s the flipside of emigration. An American court itself recently ruled that the acquisition of citizenship does not entail the moral obligation to become an American ‘patriot’, but merely the obligation to respect American laws. In terms of my political persuasion, I myself have been a democrat since I was twenty years old, so I have no need to change my attitude in America in that regard. And narrow-minded, bigoted political nationalism, whether of the German or American or English variety, is equally odious to me. In terms of my cultural affiliation, I am German and always will be.” It was, he stated, ultimately no coincidence that in the United States he quickly “devoted himself [once again] chiefly to the study of German history and culture” and “tried to render ‘the German Problem’ more comprehensible to educated Americans and Englishmen”.265 Two and a half years later, he wrote to the president of his college: “My outlook is no longer that of an emigrant. By degrees I have acquired the mentality of an immigrant who has taken roots in the land of his

264 Rosenberg regarded his time as visiting professor in Berlin as the peak of his academic influence and dedicated his book “The Great Depression and the Bismarck era” (Große Depression und Bismarckzeit) to his “old students at the Free University of Berlin from 1949 to 1950 in grateful remembrance and in honour of our bond of friendship”. 265 Rosenberg to his wife, 24 June 1944, see below, p. 375f.

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adoption . . . At the same time, however, I do not consider it a disloyal attitude if I endeavour in a humble and restrained way to remain faithful to what I value as the fruitful kernel of the German university tradition which, however gleamed or perverted in recent years, has made no trifling contribution to the common treasures of western civilization. In all fairness to my old academic masters, now dead, maimed, or halfstarved, it must be said that it was the magic of that, to some extent transplantable tradition rather than stirring intellectual events at Brooklyn College which furnished me with the major incentive to tackle a bigger and more difficult job than I had ever ventured to handle before.”266 Rosenberg had a close attachment to Germany, and particularly to his German students. It was therefore not only his wife’s desire for closer contact with her grandchildren267 that prompted the Rosenbergs to return to Germany following his retirement in 1977. There he was made honorary professor at the University of Freiburg and honorary doctor at the University of Bielefeld and quickly settled in despite his “initial doubts and reservations”.268 Rosenberg and his American students did much to enhance the understanding of German history in the Anglo-Saxon world. But his influence on the discipline of history in Germany was greater still. With his academic studies and his intensive personal contact with many young German historians, he became the most important pioneer, probably more important even than Conze, of modern German social history. Thus, the key foundation stone of modern social history in West Germany was not popular history, advanced by Conze in particular, but a process of drawing on the research of historical political economists and Otto Hintze’s embryonic attempts to develop a historical sociology based on the method of comparison, as well as the taking up of problems dealt with by adjacent social sciences in Germany and abroad.269

266

Rosenberg to the president of Brooklyn College, 31 January 1947, see below, p. 386f. Hans Rosenberg to Rudolf Braun, 12 December 1975, below, p. 445. 268 Hans Rosenberg to Rudolf Braun, 9 November 1977, below p. 446. 269 See George G. Iggers’ criticisms of Winfried Schulze, who places heavy emphasis on the continuity of popular history with modern social history in Germany. Winfried Schulze, “German Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s”, and the “Comment” by Iggers, in: Lehmann/Melton (eds.), Paths of Continuity, pp. 19–47. There is a general tendency to associate the efforts to fundamentally revise the German view 267

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 79 9. Hedwig Hintze Hedwig Hintze (1884–1942) is treated here as a student of Meinecke, as he was technically her doctoral supervisor,270 though she rightly saw herself as a student of her husband Otto Hintze. She dedicated her magnum opus, “The unity of the state and federalism in old France and in the Revolution” (Staatseinheit und Föderalismus im alten Frankreich und in der Revolution),271 to “my revered teacher and beloved husband, with gratitude” and wrote to the Swiss historian Bonjour that her husband had “always called [her] his best student”.272

of history and enhance German historians’ methodological toolkit with the debates on Fritz Fischer’s book Griff nach der Weltmacht (1961) but this is simplistic and posits too late a date. See Gerhard A. Ritter, The New Social History in the Federal Republic of Germany, London 1991, esp. pp. 19–31. Perhaps I may be allowed to add that the present author’s dissertation on “The labour movement in the Wilhelmine empire. The Social Democratic Party and the free trade unions, 1890–1900” (Die Arbeiterbewegung im Wilhelminischen Reich. Die Sozialdemokratische Partei und die Freien Gewerkschaften 1890–1900) (2nd edn., Berlin 1963), approved in 1952, but published only in 1959, essentially explains the reformism and revisionism within the social democracy in the ascendant during the 1890s as a result—alongside social democracy’s expanded field of activity in the German states, municipalities and the organs of social insurance—of the agricultural crisis of the early 1890s and the economic upturn from 1895/96; in addition, the discussion of the development of the trade union movement of the time has a strong social history orientation. 270 On H. Hintze, see Hans Schleier, “Hedwig Hintze”, in: H. Hintze, Die bürgerliche deutsche Geschichtsschreibung der Weimarer Republik, Cologne 1975, pp. 272– 302; Brigitta Oestreich, “Hedwig und Otto Hintze. Eine biographische Skizze”, in: GG 11 (1985), pp. 397–419; Oestreich, “Hedwig Hintze, geborene Guggenheimer (1884–1942). Wie wurde sie Deutschlands erste bedeutende Fachhistorikerin?”, in: Annali dell’ Instituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 22 (1996), pp. 421–432; Robert Jütte, “Hedwig Hintze (1884–1942), Die Herausforderung der traditionellen Geschichtsschreibung durch eine linksliberale jüdische Historikerin”, in: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte, Supplement 10: Juden in der deutschen Wissenschaft, Tel Aviv 1986, pp. 249–279; Bernd Faulenbach, “Hedwig Hintze-Guggenheimer (1884– 1942). Historikerin der Französischen Revolution und republikanische Publizistin”, in: Barbara Hahn (ed.), Frauen in den Kulturwissenschaften. Von Lou Andreas-Salomé bis Hannah Arendt, Munich 1994, pp. 136–151. Peter Th. Walter, “Die Zerstörung eines Projekts: Hedwig Hintze, Otto Hintze und Friedrich Meinecke nach 1933”, in: Bock/Schönpflug (eds.), Meinecke, pp. 119–143. For a comprehensive analysis of her academic work and political views, see Steffen Kaudelka, Rezeption im Zeitalter der Konfrontation. Französische Geschichtswissenschaft und Geschichte in Deutschland 1920–1940, Göttingen 2003, pp. 41–45, 241–408. 271 Berlin/Stuttgart 1928. 272 Hedwig Hintze to Edgar Bonjour, 21 April–1 May 1942, in: Otto und Hedwig Hintze, “Verzage nicht und lass nicht ab zu kämpfen. . .” Die Korrespondenz. Compiled by Brigitta Oestreich, ed. By Robert Jütte and Gerhard Hirschfeld, Essen 2004, p. 225.

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Hedwig Hintze

Hedwig Hintze was an outsider within the discipline of history in Germany and in the university. She was the second woman habilitated in history, and the first high-ranking professional woman historian.273 She came up against the prejudices towards women in academia and, as she was of Jewish descent, albeit a Protestant, against the widespread disapproval of Jews at universities. What is more, she was also marginalized politically at the university as a radical republican leftwing intellectual, who ultimately inclined ever more towards socialist ideas, and as a pacifist. Only in recent decades, in connection with the increased interest in women’s history, persecution of Jews, emigration and historians’ position in relation to the Weimar Republic and National Socialism, have researchers begun to study her in depth, though so far their task has been impeded by the dearth of source materials.274

273 The first was Ermentrude Bäcker, a relative of the famous historian Leopold von Ranke. She was habilitated in 1922, made professor at the Pädagogische Hochschule Dortmund and died at the age of 38. See Oestreich, Hedwig Hintze, p. 421. 274 There is no literary estate as such. Alongside the above-mentioned volume of letters published by B. Oestreich, we can expect the stock of source materials to be expanded substantially by the publication of newly discovered sources, found chiefly among the Hedwig Hintze papers in the Houghton Library, Harvard University’s

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 81 Hedwig Hintze was the daughter of the very wealthy banker Moritz Guggenheimer. As königlicher Kommerzienrat (an honorary title conferred on industrialists), honorary commercial judge at the Court of Appeal, first president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, founded in 1869, chairman of the local council and leader of the Israelite community in Munich, he was among the most distinguished citizens of the Bavarian capital and royal seat of Munich. The family enjoyed an upper class lifestyle in a villa with a living area of more than 1000 square metres and separate coach house in one the most exclusive streets in Munich. As well as attending a higher girls’ school, the family’s wealth made it possible for Hedwig, who had a very lively mind and great thirst for knowledge, to receive an introduction to historical and philological problems through private lessons from professors. At the age of 17, H. Hintze passed the Bavarian state exam for teachers of the French language, after which she went to a boarding school for girls in Brussels for a year. “The mechanical way in which it was run and perfunctory atmosphere of this establishment”, as she wrote in the CV attached to her doctoral application, “were so repellent to me that I subjected the whole system of such education for girls to thorough and severe criticism”.275 In 1904, she was admitted to the University of Munich as Gasthörerin (which allowed her to attend lectures and seminars without working towards a degree) and over the next few years she published two short studies in cultural history on Richard Wagner and prepared the index of names for the new Lachmann-Muncker edition of Lessing.276 In 1908, with a view to acquiring a knowledge of the ancient languages and preparing for her Abitur, which she passed in Easter 1910, library of manuscripts and unpublished materials, among them the manuscripts of her lecture courses at the University of Berlin. See Steffen Kaudelka and Peter Th. Walther, “Neues und neue Archivfunde über Hedwig Hintze (1884–1942)”, in: Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte 2 (1999), pp. 203–218. On newly discovered source materials relating to her time in the Netherlands, see Peter Th. Walther, “Werkstattbericht: Hedwig Hintze in den Niederlanden 1939–1942”, in: “. . . immer im Forschen bleiben”. Rüdiger vom Bruch zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. by Marc Schalenberg and Peter Th. Walther, Stuttgart 2004, pp. 415–433. 275 See below, p. 452f. For her criticisms, see the article “Zur Erziehungsfrage”, in: Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 December 1903, supplement, p. 438f. 276 Hedwig Hintze, “Novalis’ Hymnen an die Nacht und R. Wagners Tristan und Isolde”, in: Neue Musik-Zeitung, 6 July 1905, pp. 425–428; Hintze, “E. T. A. Hoffmann und Richard Wagner”, in: Richard-Wagner-Jahrbuch 2 (1907), pp. 165–203; index of names for the Lachmann-Muncker edition of the works of Lessing, Berlin/Leipzig 1924.

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she moved into the house of a relative, a grammar school teacher in Berlin. There she began to study German language and literature, history and political economy in 1910. It was the lectures of Otto Hintze that made the most profound impression on her; she was especially captivated by the “productive fusion” [which Hintze] “sought to achieve, of true history with political science and Staatenkunde [the study of the state], while taking full account of the institutional factor”.277 Eventually, in one of Hintze’s seminars, she was asked to produce a paper on “The formation of the unified French state” (“Die Bildung der französischen Staatseinheit”), which benefited from her studies in the National Library in Paris over the holidays. This paper exercised a determinate influence on the future course of her studies and her academic oeuvre as a whole.278 Her encounter with the then 50-year-old Hintze was of crucial importance to the rest of her life both academically and personally. Hintze was clearly fascinated by this wealthy, elegant woman, 23 years his junior, who was also a gifted scholar. They married in 1912. Hedwig Hintze initially broke off her studies and aided his scholarly endeavours by becoming his assistant, primarily because of the poor state of his health. However, in 1915 she resumed her studies and attended lectures by Ernst Troeltsch and political economist Heinrich Herkner in particular. Her studies and research were repeatedly interrupted by her husband’s illnesses and the need to look after him, but she finally registered for her doctoral examination in December 1923. By then she had also advanced her historical studies and gained “great inspiration” for her doctoral thesis from a lecture by Meinecke on “The age of the French Revolution and the wars of liberation” (“Das Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution und der Befreiungskriege”) in the summer semester of 1919.279 The sources do not allow us to paint a more precise picture of her personal and academic relationship to her doctoral supervisor Meinecke, a close friend of her husband. The Meineckes and Hintzes clearly saw each other socially on a regular basis and as a cheerful letter from her to Frau Meinecke of 30 August 1921 suggests,280 this keen mountain climber seems to have gone hiking with Meinecke’s 277 278 279 280

CV submitted as part of doctoral application, see below, p. 455. CV submitted as part of doctoral application, see below, p. 455f CV submitted as part of doctoral application, see below, p. 457. See below, pp. 448–450.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 83 daughter Sabine. The sources do not, however, provide us with comments on any scholarly exchange. In his autobiography, Meinecke describes with mild surprise but also much affection the marriage, which was to remain childless, between the formal, older scholar, generally conservative in his habitus as well as his political views, and his vivacious, politically far more radical young wife with her “independent academic ambitions”, as “a marriage of a unique kind, no doubt possible only within modern academic life and which Hintze is now carrying on with gallant dignity. . . . Before he married, he had years of serious illness behind him, during which he had a very hard time of it, and the marriage may have saved his life.”281 During the famous gatherings over tea on Saturday afternoon, attended by Hintze’s colleagues, friends and students, she clearly played a highly independent role alongside her husband, whom she quite often contradicted.282 As Brigitta Oestreich has convincingly brought out (though the scanty sources have so far made it impossible to prove this), Hedwig Hintze not only benefited from this scholarly partnership, but also encouraged Otto Hintze’s development from a historian of Prussia into the author of major essays in comparative constitutional history, one with a universal orientation deploying the methods of sociology. Hedwig Hintze’s doctoral thesis centred on the “federalistic undercurrent” that was the “constant accompaniment” to the development of the unified and centralized French state,283 something she also examined in several essays on contemporary regionalism in France.284 When she received her doctorate, she had already produced the first twelve of an eventual eighteen chapters of her above-mentioned book, which she later presented for her habilitation; for her doctoral thesis, she formally submitted a chapter on “The municipal legislation of the Constituante” (“die Municipalgesetzgebung der Constituante”). 281 Friedrich Meinecke, Strasbourg/Freiburg/Berlin 1901–1919, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 232f. 282 See Rothfels’ account in his letter to Gerhard Oestreich of 10 July 1965, in: Hintze, Verzage nicht, pp. 247–249. 283 CV submitted as part of doctoral application, see below, p. 456. 284 Hedwig Hintze, “Der moderne französische Regionalismus und seine Wurzeln”, in: Preußische Jahrbücher 181 (1920), pp. 347–376; Hintze, “Der französische Regionalismus”, in: Deutsche Nation 3 (1921), pp. 287–292; Hintze, “Der französische Regionalismus”, in: Volk unter Völkern. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Schutzbundes 1925, pp. 349–367; Hintze, “Staatseinheit und Regionalismus in Frankreich”, in: Sozialistische Monatshefte 64 (1927), pp. 364–371.

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According to Meinecke’s expert reference, this study was “in fact a (wide-ranging) constitutional history of France from the middle ages on from the perspective of federalist and provincialist thought”. Despite criticisms of certain formal deficiencies, the study and the viva received summa cum laude, the highest possible mark.285 It was not her research work but her political studies, which were consciously intended as tools of popular education, that incurred the disapproval of some of the examiners of her 1928 habilitation thesis, though they did not go so far as to reject it. Particular offence was taken at her introduction to the German translation, which she supervised, of Alphonse Aulard’s work on “The political history of the French Revolution”, arranged by Meinecke, and her introduction to a posthumous, uncompleted historical study of “Constitutional developments in Germany and Western Europe” by Hugo Preuß, left-wing liberal creator of the Weimar imperial constitution. For her, attitudes to the French Revolution were a “measure of the minds” in both France and Germany. The Revolution, according to her interpretation of Aulard, was “an ideal whose light radiates out from the past, with whose realization those living now and future generations are entrusted”. Located on the left wing of the non-socialist parties in terms of domestic politics, Aulard, Hintze tells us, did not spurn alliances with the socialists. The Internationale, the “symbol of the republican soul of the young France” and of the future, ought to be considered just as important as “the Marseillaise—the song of glorious historical memories”. For Hintze, political thought in Germany could also be stimulated by studying this book, in which Aulard wanted to bring out the origins of the French democracy and republic and especially the emergence of human rights, particularly given that, in the true spirit of the Revolution, Aulard sought a path away from the nation state, jealously sovereign and bristling with arms, “towards the free and peaceful unification of the democratic states”.286 Hintze’s enthusiastic introduction, in which only the lack of attention paid to issues in economic and social history was criticized,287 triggered sharp and polemical public exchanges with Austrian historian Heinrich Ritter

285 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty doctoral records, vol. 627. 286 A. Aulard, Politische Geschichte der Französischen Revolution. Entstehung und Entwicklung der Demokratie und der Republik 1789–1804, introduction by Hedwig Hintze, Munich/Leipzig, 1924, pp. IX–XV. 287 Ibid., p. X.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 85 von Srbik; however much he might recognize the positively valuable aspects of the French Revolution, he refused to regard it as a “rational political and social ideal”.288 In her response, she stated that each individual is at liberty to view the Metternich system and its underlying ideas as preferable to the system of human rights and the ideas of 1789.289 Her view of German history is particularly apparent in her introduction to the book by Preuß and an essay entitled “The unified German state and history”.290 Like Preuß, she sees in German history a battle between the “princely-feudal” and “bourgeois-corporative” principle, and the former’s victory over the latter.291 She sees positive forces at play in notions of a “radical political restructuring from below” inherent in the popular movement of the Reformation, which lost its leader when Luther turned against the peasants and was ruthlessly crushed. She also took a positive view of the ideas of 1789, in her view the pivot of modern history, and of Freiherr vom Stein and the Revolution of 1848, which attempted to establish “German unity on the basis of popular sovereignty”.292 With respect to the present, she rejected the notion that the Weimar constitution was “un-German”,293 called for the non-socialist democrats and socialists to work together closely and, with Preuß, underlined the “elementary fellowship of the democratic, social and national idea” and the fusion of “democratic politics” and “class politics” in the “higher unity of social democracy”.294 In the spirit of Preuß’s original plans for the constitution, also shared by Meinecke,295 her ideas on Germany’s constitutional future envisaged a unified, decentralized state and the dissolution of Prussia, a reorganization of the Länder disregarding historical boundaries and their 288 Heinrich Ritter von Srbik, “Rezension des Werkes von Aulard”, in: Deutsche Literaturzeitung 46 (1925), col. 2302–2306, esp. col. 2304. 289 Hedwig Hintze, “Geist von Locarno und historische Kritik”, in: Frankfurter Zeitung, 14 February 1926 (morning edition). On the prolonged controversy, see Srbik, “Geist von Locarno und historische Kritik”, in: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 19 (1926), pp. 439–444 and H. Hintze’s reply, “Die Kampfesweise des Ritters von Srbik”, in: Frankfurter Zeitung, 10 January 1927 (evening edition). 290 Hugo Preuß, Verfassungspolitische Entwicklungen in Deutschland und Westeuropa. Historische Grundlegung zu einem Staatsrecht der Deutschen Republik, ed. by Hedwig Hintze, Berlin 1927, introduction, pp. V–XX; Hedwig Hintze, “Der deutsche Einheitsstaat und die Geschichte”, in: Die Justiz 3 (1927/28), pp. 431–447. 291 Introduction to Preuß, p. IX. 292 Hintze, Einheitsstaat, p. 442. 293 Hintze, introduction to Preuß, p. VII. 294 Ibid., p. XVf. 295 See above, p. 10.

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reduction to the status of mere autonomous units.296 She did not explore specific problems of the constitution, such as the dualism between imperial president and parliamentary government or the dysfunctional nature of the German party system, with which Meinecke was so preoccupied. In the discussion of her habilitation thesis, whose academic merit was generally recognized, some of the examiners—Fritz Hartung, Albert Brackmann and Erich Marcks—took offence at her political views, expressed above all in the two introductions mentioned above. Friedrich Meinecke’s generally highly positive assessment criticized her propensity to produce fiery judgements and engage in literary controversies. In the expert opinion of historian of Russia Karl Stählin, she was assailed for her “apologia for the Mountain” and justification of the execution of King Louis XVI. Historian of Eastern Europe and Reichstag deputy Otto Hoetzsch, a member of Otto Hintze’s “school of constitutional history”, spoke with particular force in favour of her habilitation and the acceptance of her “truly significant” work.297 Hedwig Hintze’s habilitation thesis, published in a new edition in 1989, is now considered a “standard work on the history of the French Revolution”,298 while she herself is regarded as a “historian of European standing”.299 There is a certain lack of clarity about the central concept of federalism, which cannot be understood in the German sense of the organization of a state into Länder and which was used during the French Revolution by the supporters of the Montagnards as a term of abuse and means of casting their opponents as particularists or separatists and thus as traitors of the Nation.300 In fact, her book is concerned with the historical development of the conflict, which ended with the centralists’ victory, between “centrifugal and centripetal forces in France”.301 In her book, Hedwig Hintze also examined in depth the social and economic bases of party formation in the Revolution. A review published in 1930 shows that she shared the criticisms of

296

See Kaudelka, esp. p. 288ff. In addition to the habilitation records of the Faculty of Philosophy, vol. 1243, see also Schleier, Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 287–289. 298 Hedwig Hintze, Staatseinheit und Föderalismus im alten Frankreich und in der Revolution, unaltered reprint with a new introduction by Rolf Reichhardt, Frankfurt a. M. 1989, p. VI. The term “foreword” rather than introduction is used in the book itself. 299 Kaudelka, Rezeption, p. 41. 300 Foreword by Reichhardt, p. VII. 301 Kaudelka, Rezeption, p. 369. 297

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 87 Meinecke’s history of ideas already set out by Kehr and Rosenberg. A “history of ideas that operates almost exclusively within a vacuum” was “no longer very palatable”. According to Hintze, from now on the history of ideas must instead “be based on the firm foundation of research in social and economic history”.302 Hedwig Hintze’s work was not only the most important contribution by a German researcher to the history of the French Revolution. It also opened up new possibilities for French researchers, who had largely ignored those forces running counter to tendencies towards a centralized, unified state. However, the originality of her book was not understood by French historians.303 Even before her habilitation in 1926, Hedwig Hintze had been tasked by Meinecke with reporting on research dealing with the French Revolution in the HZ. She thus made a key contribution to the reception of the work of French historians in Germany. As she progressed with her research following her habilitation, she engaged ever more intensively with historical materialism. Rather than Aulard, her new guiding stars were the French economic and social historian Albert Mathiez, with his economic interpretation of the Revolution,304 and above all historian and socialist leader Jean Jaurès, who was murdered by a fanatical French nationalist on 31 July 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. “With his tremendous determination to achieve a synthesis, he is capable, for a moment, of reconciling old-school French socialism with Marxism and syndicalism as he forces together historical idealism and materialism, collectivism and individualism, reform and revolution, internationalism and patriotism into one great unity, one which, however, 302 Hedwig Hintze, “Zur politischen Ideengeschichte Frankreichs im 18. Jahrhundert”, in: Zeitschrift für Politik 19 (1930), pp. 212–217, esp. p. 217. In concrete terms, her critique relates not to Meinecke but to the dissertation by Eva Hoffmann-Linke, Zwischen Nationalismus und Demokratie. Gestaltung der französischen Vorrevolution, Munich 1927. 303 The critique of her book as a blunder by scholar of the French Revolution Albert Mathiez, a man greatly esteemed by Hintze, is a typical example of this. See the discussion of her book in Annales historiques de la Révolution Francaise 5 (1928), pp. 577–586. H. Hintze did not, however, share Mathiez’ equation of Robespierre and Lenin and his view of the Russian October Revolution as a “revival” of the French Revolution. 304 See Kaudelka, pp. 333–362f. In addition to her reviews, for an overview of her assessment of developments in research on the French Revolution, see also her article: “Bürgerliche und sozialistische Geschichtsschreibung der Französischen Revolution (Taine-Aulard-Jaurès-Mathiez)”, in: Die Gesellschaft 6, vol. 2, issue 7 (1929), pp. 73– 95. This article is based on her inaugural lecture, which, however, bore the main title “Epochen der französischen Revolutionsgeschichtsschreibung”.

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rooted in his ingenious character, remains tied to it.”305 In Jaurès, by whom she was fascinated and whose biography she wanted to write, she found the synthesis of a humanitarian-idealistic and materialist socialism, which—despite her criticism of misunderstandings and contradictions in Jaurès’ interpretation of Marxism306—clearly came close to her own ideas, especially in its emphasis on the importance of the Enlightenment. Hedwig Hintze came near to adopting a materialist interpretation of history, and the ethical-humanitarian elements in her understanding of socialism became less important, though she never abandoned them entirely. Nonetheless, particularly in light of her complete rejection of the Communists, she must be considered a social democrat towards the end of the Weimar Republic. As mentioned above, Hintze’s work at the HZ was terminated by editors Meinecke und Brackmann. This was probably less an act of precipitate obedience307 than a consequence of external pressure and a surely questionable attempt to assert the scholarly character of the HZ. It took aim at Hintze not as a Jew, but as a “particularly tainted figure politically”.308 The ministerial revocation of her authority to teach on 2 September 1933, as a result of the law passed on 7 April 1933 on the restoration of the civil service,309 on the other hand, targeted her as a Jew. Both acts resulted in a profound rupture in Hedwig Hintze’s life and academic work. Without entirely abandoning Berlin, she tried in vain to find a permanent position, partly with the aid of grants for a research trip to France, where she found temporary employment until 1935 as Maître de Recherches at the Centre de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine in Vincennes near Paris.310 The situation in Germany became increasingly difficult for her, partly because she was refused access to libraries, and she finally emigrated to the Netherlands on 22 August 1939, probably with the support of a Protestant action committee.311 305 See Hintze, review of Gaetan Pirou, Les doctrines économiques en France depuis 1870, Paris 1925, in: HZ 134 (1926), pp. 142–145, esp. 143. 306 H. Hintze, “Jean Jaurès und die materialistische Geschichtstheorie”, in: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 68 (1933), pp. 194–218, esp. p. 207, 211ff; see also Peregrina (pseudonym of H. Hintze), “Jean Jaurès und Karl Marx”, in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 51 (1936), pp. 113–137, esp. p. 114, 123f. 307 See Kaudelka, Rezeption, p. 334. 308 Meinecke and Brackmann to H. Hintze, 20 May 1933, see below, p. 465. 309 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, personal files, vol. 331. 310 Oestreich, “Hedwig und Otto Hintze”, p. 408. 311 Ibid., p. 411. For more on her time in the Netherlands, see: Walther, Werkstattbericht, pp. 415–434.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 89 She received cards and letters from her husband on a near-daily basis over the following months which show the close bond between the two, but which also reveal that Otto Hintze had obviously abandoned his independent academic research. Unfortunately, her own letters to Otto Hintze, as well as her diaries, were destroyed.312 Under the unfavourable conditions that pertained after 1933, she still tried to continue with her research, and published a number of articles.313 Alongside Jaurès, her main focus appears to have been a comparative study of the emergence of compulsory military service.314 After her husband died on 25 April 1940 and the Germans had established themselves as occupying power in the Netherlands following their offensive of 10 May 1940, her situation became increasingly intolerable. Hopes of a position in the Netherlands or in Bergen, Norway, and of emigration to Cuba or Switzerland came to nothing. Finally, in the autumn of 1940 she was offered an associate professorship in history, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, at the New School for Social Research in New York. Among American historians, Walter L. Dorn, later advisor to General Clay in Germany, went out of his way to help her, comparing her position in Germany prior to 1933 with that of the historian Mary Beard in the United States.315 It was still possible to enter the United States at the time, but she was unable to do so for want of a single document—probably the Heimatschein proving residence—necessary for the renewal of her passport.316 Following the death of her husband, Hedwig Hintze attempted to hold on to his unpublished works, particularly because she wished to publish his writings—above all the manuscript of his “General comparative constitutional history of the modern age” (Allgemeine Vergleichende Verfassungsgeschichte der Neuzeit)—in the United States. Hintze’s siblings refused to hand over his papers. They were

312

See the introduction by B. Oestreich on Otto and Hedwig Hintze, Verzage nicht,

p. 19. 313 See the bibliography in Kaudelka, Rezeption, pp. 500–507, which renders largely redundant the at times erroneous and patchy bibliography produced by the HedwigHintze-Institut: Barbara Deppe/Elisabeth Dickmann (eds.), Hedwig Hintze (1884– 1942). Bibliographie, Bremen 1997. 314 See the postcards and letters from Otto Hintze to Hedwig Hintze from 23 November, 10 December, 12 December and 26 December 1939, in: O. and H. Hintze, Verzage nicht, p. 155f., 163f., 165f., 170–172. 315 Walther, From Meinecke to Beard?, p. 360f. However, as Walther correctly notes, this high evaluation of her social and academic recognition did not in fact tally with her true status in Germany prior to 1933. 316 Introduction by B. Oestreich to O. and H. Hintze, Verzage nicht, p. 38.

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able to refer to the fact that Hintze had made arrangements for the destruction of his “personal manuscripts”, had allegedly refused to allow his wife to take them with her when she emigrated and, moreover, according to his brother Dr. Konrad Hintze, had stated that his work was no longer in keeping with the times.317 But there was clearly also major personal tension between Hedwig Hintze and Otto Hintze’s siblings,318 who were obviously unable to accept the fact that she had “deserted” her husband, who was being well looked after by a housekeeper, in order to continue with her research abroad, and ultimately also for reasons of self-preservation. However, within the Nazi state, it is quite likely that, had his wife been officially designated as heir to his unpublished works, Hintze’s papers would have been confiscated as intellectual property. On the recommendation of Meinecke and Hartung,319 the manuscript of the constitutional history was not destroyed but deposited either in full or in part in the Prussian Secret State Archive, first moved to Merseburg and, after reunification, brought back to Berlin and partially published.320 On 21 April 1942, Hedwig Hintze asked Swiss historian Edgar Bonjour, should they never see each other again, to “hold in honour the memory of my beloved husband and of myself. If it is not granted to me to bring my life and work to a meaningful close, I still very much want my name to live on alongside that of my husband.”321 A few weeks later, shortly before the beginning of the systematic deportation of the Jews to the death camps, which was now beginning in the Netherlands, she wrote to Bonjour with reference to a verse by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer on the last days of Hus and Hutten: “The time for celebration draws near—the great peace draws near. . .” and added “one must force oneself to practice such wise and dignified

317

Dr. Hintze to Meinecke, 8 May 1942, see below, p. 469. B. Oestreich, “Hedwig und Otto Hintze”, p. 416f. 319 See below, p. 467. 320 Otto Hintze, Allgemeine Verfassungsgeschichte der neueren Staaten. Fragmente. vol. 1. ed. by Giuseppe Di Costanzo, Michael Erbe, Wolfgang Neugebauer, Calvizzano 1998. See also below, p. 467f. 321 O. and H. Hintze, Verzage nicht, p. 226. Aware of the intense symbiosis between Hedwig and Otto Hintze as a result of statements by B. Oestreich, at the conference of historians held in Frankfurt a. M. in 1998 the present author unsuccessfully proposed naming the Hedwig Hintze Prize for Outstanding Dissertations, newly established by the Association of German Historians (Verband der Historiker Deutschlands), the “Hedwig and Otto Hintze Prize”. 318

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 91 resignation when all hope of survival has gone”.322 On 15 July, the first train carrying Dutch Jews departed for the death camps. Probably on the same day, Hedwig Hintze attempted to commit suicide and was admitted to the university hospital in Utrecht, where she died on 19 July.323 Hedwig Hintze was an important historian in her own right, who made significant contributions to research on the French Revolution and the reception of French historical research in Germany. Together with her husband, she is also worthy of our attention as an example of a modern academic marriage and—despite differing political and to some extent academic opinions—of a remarkable emotional and intellectual partnership. 10. Eckart Kehr The “extreme left-winger” among Meinecke’s students was Eckart Kehr (1902–1933).324 Son of the director of the Ritterakademie in Brandenburg, a grammar school for rural Junkers, Kehr rebelled against its strict discipline. As well as from Friedrich Meinecke, over the course of his brief academic career he received support above all from his uncle, the medievalist Paul Fridolin Kehr. As director for

322

Hedwig Hintze to Edgar Bonjour, 6 July 1942, in: Hintze, Verzage nicht, p. 227. The verse by C. F. Meyer is from his poem “Hussens Kerker”, in: Meyer, Huttens letzte Tage. Eine Dichtung, Leipzig 1872. 323 However, in his Werkstattbericht, Peter Th. Walther states that one of the nurses told Otto Blumenthal that H. Hintze had died of a stroke. I nonetheless concur with the view of B. Oestreich (copy of a letter to Walther from 20 February 2005), that this information does not rule out suicide. We believe that Hedwig Hintze died of heart failure as a result of her suicide attempt. The nurse would not in fact have been able to provide unauthorized persons with more detailed information. Otto Blumenthal, a professor of mathematics of Jewish descent at the TH Aachen, whose diary, of such great importance to understanding Hedwig Hintze’s last years, Walther consulted, was dismissed as a result of political untrustworthiness in 1933. He emigrated to the Netherlands in 1939 and died in November 1944 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. 324 On Kehr, see: Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Eckart Kehr”, in: Wehler (ed.), Deutsche Historiker, vol. 1, Göttingen 1971, pp. 100–113; Wehler, introduction to: Eckart Kehr, Der Primat der Innenpolitik. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur preußisch-deutschen Sozialgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. and with an introduction by HansUlrich Wehler, Berlin 1965, pp. 1–29; Gordon A. Craig, editor’s introduction to the English translation of Primat, entitled Economic Interests, Militarism and Foreign Policy, Berkeley 1977, pp. VII–XXI; Schleier, Bürgerliche Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 482–530; Pauline R. Anderson and Eugene N. Anderson, translator’s introduction to Eckart Kehr, Battleship Building and Party Politics in Germany 1894–1901, Chicago 1973, pp. XI–XXVII.

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many years of the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome, director general of the Prussian State Archive in Berlin and head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for German History, which started its work on 1 October 1917, he was probably the most influential scholar-politician among the historians of the Weimar Republic. Eckart Kehr’s political evolution, as well as his work as a historian, was moulded by his shock at the collapse of Germany in 1918/19, and a desire to understand the taproots of the disaster in the First World War.

Eckart Kehr

His dissertation, entitled “The battle over the first naval law” (“Der Kampf um das erste Flottengesetz”), originally suggested by Rothfels and supervised by Meinecke after the former had left for Königsberg, was accepted by Berlin University in 1927. In his expert reference on the dissertation, Meinecke explained that Kehr had chosen the topic himself and, using the extensive collection of newspaper cuttings in the Imperial Naval Office (Reichsmarineamt), provided a detailed account of the political struggle over the construction of the fleet. He had, he stated, read the entire manuscript—not just those sections submitted as dissertation—“and [had] learned a great deal, but also [had] some

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 93 reservations about the often overly audacious constructions and interpretations of the political framework”. Kehr’s judgements were “however, not tied to a particular political party”. The text had brought out “Tirpitz’s tenacious genius in winning over public opinion to his work” and the tactics of Centre Party leader Ernst Lieber, whose policies in relation to the naval question had ensured “the Centre Party’s future political hegemony”. Because of weaknesses in the manner of presentation, which sometimes made the text seem like “political journalism”, his first instinct would be to suggest the predicate “laudabile” (cum laude), but on account of the work’s “scholarly merits”, he would consent to the higher “valde laudabile” (magna cum laude), as considered appropriate by Fritz Hartung, the second examiner. Kehr passed the viva summa cum laude.325 After completing his doctoral studies, Kehr worked as an editor in the dictionary department of Ullstein publishers.326 His main focus, however, was on continuing with his scholarly work and printing the substantially expanded version of his dissertation, published in 1930 under the title “Construction of the battle fleet and party politics, 1894– 1901” (“Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik 1894–1901”),327 with the help of a contribution to the printing costs, arranged by Meinecke, from the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany. It constituted a profound challenge to the research of the day. With the use of an exceptionally broad and scattered range of source materials, Kehr analyzed the “class alliance” between the Prussian Junkers, who were keen on high corn taxes, and the industrial magnates of German heavy industry, who wished to profit from construction of the fleet, and their representation by powerful associations and the parties allied with them. For Kehr, the material interests of certain industries and social groups had thus moulded German imperialism and were the decisive reason for Germany’s international isolation as a result of concurrent opposition from Russia, eager to protect the exports of its cereals-based agricultural economy, and Great Britain, which believed its security was at risk. This highly original, if one-sided work, which

325 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty doctoral records, vol. 691. 326 Ibid., CV by Kehr. 327 Berlin 1930. The study was subtitled: “Versuch eines Querschnitts durch die innenpolitischen, sozialen und ideologischen Voraussetzungen des deutschen Imperialismus”.

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appeared to reduce the leading actors in the construction of the fleet to mere marionettes,328 consciously took aim at the dogma of the “primacy of international politics” expounded by the historical fraternity since Ranke. Kehr’s extremely critical essays and lectures, among them the essays “On the genesis of the royal Prussian reserve officer” (“Zur Genesis des Königlich Preußischen Reserveoffiziers”) and on “The social system of reaction in Prussia under the Puttkamer ministry” (“Das soziale System der Reaktion in Preußen unter dem Ministerium Puttkamer”)329 from the 1927–1933 period, which had a major influence on later academic debates, were published in 1965 by Hans-Ulrich Wehler under the title “The primacy of domestic politics” (Der Primat der Innenpolitik). Kehr turned down Meinecke’s offer, later accepted by Holborn, to write a history of the origin of the Weimar constitution. From 1928, supported by a grant from the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany, his next major focus was on Prussian fiscal policies between 1806 and 1815. In addition, from late 1929, he taught at the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in Berlin. As a more far-reaching goal, he had in mind an “overall account of the problem of war and money in the age of the machine revolution”.330 Of the younger generation of Meinecke’s students, his closest associate was Rosenberg. Both, moreover, were friends with American historian Eugene N. Anderson, a student in Berlin in 1930/31, and had contact with the sociologist Albert Salomon, who taught at the German College for the Study of Politics, and edited the theoretical journal of the SPD, “Die Gesellschaft” (“Society”), from 1928–1931, in which they, like Hedwig Hintze, published some of their essays. In 1931, under the title “War losses, reparations and re-ascendance in the politics of Freiherr vom Stein” (“Kriegsverluste, Kriegsentschädigung und Wiederaufstieg in der Politik des Freiherrn vom Stein”), Kehr submitted a 485-page typed manuscript for one of the three state prizes for studies of Freiherr vom Stein announced by the Prussian ministry for science, art and education. This was clearly the first volume of a planned major work on “Economics and politics in Prussia during the reformist era” (“Wirtschaft und Politik in

328

See Wehler, Kehr, p. 102. First published in: Die Gesellschaft 5, 1928/II, pp. 492–502 and Die Gesellschaft 6, 1929/II, pp. 253–274; reprinted in: Kehr, Primat, pp. 53–63, 64–86. 330 See Wehler, Kehr, p. 103. 329

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 95 Preußen während der Reformzeit”). The manuscript, which met with a positive response from constitutional law expert Richard Thoma after he had read “some of the chapters and carried out spot checks”, though he underlined his own lack of expertise, was rejected out of hand by Freiburg-based historian Gerhard Ritter. Apart from the fact that Stein played “only a minor part”—and indeed “an utterly pitiful” one—within Kehr’s study, it had failed to achieve its aim, despite the author’s knowledge, unusual for a historian, “in the fields of sociology and theoretical political economy, particularly the science of finance”, and its justified references to “serious gaps in the existing research”. There was “absolutely no sign” of understanding, the historian’s primary task, in the book “but merely of a know-it-all attitude. . . . He sees nothing but out-and-out dilettantism at play everywhere, in fact it is worse than that: nothing but the lowest form of egotism, the ‘avarice’ of a corrupt bureaucracy and a ‘ruling class‘ shamelessly lining its pockets. Modern capitalism arrives in Prussia in the repulsive form of the Junkers’ agricultural capitalism on the one hand, and the ‘pariah capitalism‘ of the royal Münzjuden [Jews in the employ of princes who provided financial services] on the other. The bureaucracy, incompetent and utterly corrupt, rather than directing this development into tolerable channels, thinks of nothing but extending its control over the state (which appears in Kehr’s work as a mere power structure for the maintenance of the ruling classes). The driving forces of events are exclusively the meanest of material motives, and everything else, especially all forms of patriotism, is nothing but a more or less absurd ‘ideology’, by which the bourgeois discipline of history has of course regularly been taken in hitherto, thanks to its ‘lack of socio-economic instincts’.”331 Meinecke too, for whom the Prussian reformist era had always been one of the best moments of Prussian-German history, concurred “in the main” with Ritter’s assessment. He thought this unfortunate “because we are dealing here with a very gifted author, who was one of my students, and from whom I expected a great deal, and this is a far-reaching achievement based on extensive study of the sources that breaks some new ground, a piece of work which researchers need to grapple with further. In all probability, while acknowledging some persuasive individual results, they will reject the author’s methods and criteria of evaluation and accuse him of having overstepped the 331

See below, pp. 472–479.

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boundaries of historical research and judgement. He has, to put it bluntly, lapsed into the fanatical shrewdness of a detective. . . . What we are seeing here is unrestrained iconoclasm.”332 It was decided not to award the prize to Kehr because of the “unbalanced nature” of his study, but he was awarded a grant of 1000 Reichmarks to enable him to develop his study into a usable habilitation thesis.333 His attempt to habilitate under Rothfels in Königsberg, however, came to nothing.334 In autumn of 1931, Kehr received an offer from the Secret State Archive to edit a four-volume collection of records on Prussian financial policies from 1806 to 1815.335 The first two volumes were completed, and in part already set, when Kehr travelled to America in January 1933, with a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation, to deepen and add to his study by examining the economic relations between the United States and Europe from 1789 to 1815. The historians Hermann Oncken, Fritz Hartung and political economist Hermann Schumacher were against the granting of the scholarship, while Meinecke and the Würzburg-based lawyer and historian Albrecht MendelssohnBartholdy were in favour. The scales were tipped in Kehr’s favour by the president of the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany, retired secretary of state Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, and Kehr’s uncle Paul F. Kehr.336 In view of the looming threats to his existence there,337 Kehr probably accepted the burning of his bridges to Nazi Germany quite consciously. In the United States, in the seminar of American historian

332

See below, p. 479f. See Schleier, Bürgerliche Geschichtsschreibung, p. 515. 334 The habilitation thesis, along with his probably partially identical manuscript submitted for the state prize, is unfortunately lost. Indications of the content in light of Kehr’s letters and the draft of his introduction to the collection of official records mentioned in the following footnote can be found in Wehler, Kehr, pp. 104–106. 335 Kehr was removed as editor of the collection of official records in May 1933. The documents collected by Kehr were initially passed to Alfred Vagts and were transferred in 1968, along with other of Kehr’s papers, to the Federal Archive in Koblenz, small acquisitions, no. 508. The extant parts of the collection of records were published in: Preußische Finanzpolitik 1806–1810. Quellen zur Verwaltung der Ministerien Stein und Altenstein. Compiled and prepared by Eckart Kehr, ed. by Hanna Schissler and Hans-Ulrich Wehler. With an introduction by Hanna Schissler, Göttingen 1984. 336 See Wehler’s introduction to Kehr, Primat, p. 18f. 337 On 10 February 1933 Kehr wrote to D. Gerhard: “You are in a better position than me. You won’t be hanged as I would be if I was to return to the new Swastika Reich.” Quoted in: Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Eckart Kehr”, in: Historische Sozialwissenschaft und Geschichtsschreibung. Studien zu Aufgaben und Traditionen deutscher Geschichtswissenschaft, Göttingen 1980, pp. 227–248, esp. p. 241. 333

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 97 Bernadotte E. Schmitt, Kehr gave a talk on “Recent German historiography” in which he distanced himself from the discipline of history in Germany and particularly from Meinecke’s history of ideas. The study of history in Germany, which, Kehr stated, was closely linked socially with the bourgeoisie, ignored the problems of the capitalist economy. With his history of ideas, a typically German phenomenon, Meinecke in particular, the only German historian associated with a significant school, had temporarily shown the intellectually leaderless German bourgeoisie a way forward, though in the long run this was “merely a dead end”. With its notion of ideas as driving forces of the historical process, the history of ideas was partly responsible for the total exclusion of social and economic history from the German universities and thus for the international isolation of the discipline of history in Germany.338 A few months later, on 29 May 1933, Kehr, not quite 31 years old, died in Washington of a hereditary heart defect. His writings were influenced chiefly by Max Weber, Karl Marx and American historian Charles A. Beard. Because they exploited new source materials and deployed original methods, but also because of their radical, if often exaggerated, theses and the moral impulses underlying them, from the mid-1960s especially they forced the discipline of history in Germany, especially modern social history, to engage in intensive debate and self-examination. It is a telling comment on Meinecke that, if we disregard the fact that he backed the decision not to award Kehr the Stein Prize, he tolerated and supported this “irksome” but brilliant student to the very last. 11. Hanns Günther Reissner The last of Meinecke’s émigré students considered here, at least briefly, is Hanns Günther Reissner (1902–1977).339 He came from a middle class Jewish home and—in contrast to all the other “Jewish” students of Meinecke dealt with here, with the possible exception of Baron— still adhered to the Jewish religion. Under Meinecke’s supervision, he obtained his doctorate in 1926 with a dissertation on “Mirabeau and his Monarchie Prussienne” (“Mirabeau und seine Monarchie

338 The talk, translated from the English, was first published in: Kehr, Primat, pp. 254–268. 339 On Reissner, see Biographisches Handbuch, vol. 2, part 2, p. 959; Epstein, A Past Renewed, pp. 258–264, featuring a bibliography of Reissner’s books and articles.

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Prussienne”).340 He then worked in banks and various businesses before emigrating to India via Great Britain in 1939 and finally on to the United States in 1948. His business career came to an end in 1965 when he took up a post as fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York and began teaching at various colleges and the New York Institute of Technology, which ultimately appointed him professor of history. He published regularly, mostly in newspapers catering to Jewish émigrés, and wrote a biography of the jurist and legal philosopher Eduard Gans (1798–1839), who had also made important contributions to the study of Judaism.341 Finally, he contributed to the International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés, 1933–1945. Reissner, in Bombay, got in touch with Meinecke on 18 July 1947, informed him of his fate and circumstances, thanked him for his education at university and mentioned that he owed his personal education primarily to characters such as Meinecke and political economist Max Sering, and ultimately to the influence of teachers such as Graecist Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Troeltsch and the writings of Max Weber and others. “The memory of men such as you helped me overcome my shock at the Hitler nightmare and to detach my image of Germany from the impressions left by the experiences of the 1930s.” He would not, however, contemplate returning to Germany. “Where there is a rupture, there can be no return. I cannot and do not wish to encounter people who may have been the murderers of my parents and relatives.”342 12. Gustav Mayer Finally, we must turn to Gustav Mayer (1871–1948)343 and his relationship to Meinecke. Mayer, the biographer of Friedrich Engels and the leading historian of the German labour movement in the first half of the 20th century, came from an old-established Jewish family from Prenzlau in der Uckermark. He was not one of Meinecke’s students. After studying political economy—chiefly with the “lecture-theatre 340 341

Published in Berlin/Leipzig 1926. Hanns Günther Reissner, Eduard Gans. Ein Leben im Vormärz, Tübingen

1965. 342

See below, p. 491. On G. Mayer, see esp. Mayer, Erinnerungen. Historiker der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Gustav Mayer”, in: Wehler (ed.), Deutsche Historiker, vol. 2, Göttingen 1971, pp. 120–132. 343

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 99 socialists” (Kathedersozialisten) Gustav Schmoller, Adolf Wagner and later Max Sering—he obtained his doctorate in 1893 under the supervision of political economist and political scientist (Staatswissenschaftler) Georg Adler, who had just switched from Freiburg to Basle, with a dissertation on “Lassalle as a social economist”.344 In 1896 he joined the editorial staff at the Frankfurter Zeitung, for which he worked as correspondent in Amsterdam, The Hague and especially Brussels, from 1897 to 1904. In 1906 he left the editorial team and became a freelance journalist and private scholar. His basic ambition was to obtain an academic post that would allow him to make a career of his pronounced historical inclinations, apparent since his youth.

Gustav Mayer

In the following years he wrote a biography of Johann Baptist von Schweitzer,345 Lassalle’s controversial successor as leader of the “General German Workers’ Association” (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein), and the first volume of his biography of Engels,346 344

Gustav Mayer, Lassalle als Sozialökonom, Berlin 1894. Gustav Mayer, Johann Baptist von Schweitzer und die Sozialdemokratie, Jena 1909. See Mayer to Meinecke, 28 December 1910, below, p. 492f. 346 Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels. Eine Biographie, vol. 1: Friedrich Engels in seiner Frühzeit, Berlin 1920. 345

100 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students to this day one of the key works of history dealing with the foundations of the Marxist socialism of Marx and Engels. In studies that have attained classic status, he examined “The beginnings of political radicalism in Vormärz Prussia” and the probably inevitable process of the “Separation of proletarian from bourgeois democracy”,347 which, over the long term, weakened the forces of liberalism and isolated the emerging labour movement politically. In the First World War, because of his excellent relations with Belgian and Dutch socialists, Gustav Mayer worked for a time for the press division of the German military administration in Belgium and later, in 1917, carried out an unofficial mission for the foreign ministry in connection with the plan to convene an International Conference of Socialists to agree on socialist war aims and smooth the way for peace negotiations in Stockholm.348 In 1914/15 Meinecke developed closer relations with Gustav Mayer, whom he described in his memoirs as an “absolutely honest, open character who craved love and affection”,349 visited him in Brussels and engaged him in intensive discussions of political issues. He became Mayer’s mentor in his efforts to gain a toehold as a historian at the University of Berlin. In 1916/17, at Meinecke’s suggestion, Mayer attempted to obtain the status of private lecturer (Privatdozent) at that institution. The faculty were asked “whether they [considered] it permissible in principle” to apply for habilitation in the subjects “state studies” (“Staatenkunde”) and “party history and general party studies”.350 They rejected this proposal, evidently because of the narrowness of the subject area. On 22 January 1917, Mayer then filed an application for a venia legendi for history, with reference to his publications and the attached unpublished manuscript on “Friedrich Engels in his early period” (“Friedrich Engels in seiner Frühzeit”).351

347 Gustav Mayer, “Die Anfänge des politischen Radikalismus im vormärzlichen Preußen”, in: Zeitschrift für Politik 6 (1913), pp. 1–113; Mayer, Die Trennung der proletarischen von der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Deutschland (1863–1870), Leipzig 1911. Both studies were reprinted in: Mayer, Radikalismus, Sozialismus, bürgerliche Demokratie, ed. by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, 2nd edn., Frankfurt a. M. 1969. 348 Mayer, Erinnerungen, pp. 220–281. 349 Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 264. 350 Letter from Mayer to the Faculty of Philosophy, 21 November 1916, Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1235. 351 Meinecke’s expert evaluation for the faculty, ibid.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 101 In his expert evaluation, Meinecke mentioned that Mayer had come to “the study of modern history” by a “rather unusual route” and that he lacked previous training in medieval history, but that one would simply have to cope with his “unique development”. After positive acknowledgement of Mayer’s publications so far, distinguished by “thorough study of the sources and a desire to bring to light unknown materials and unearth hidden personal and material connections”, he praised the study of Engels: “It captivates from beginning to end with its clear and comprehensible portrayal and sensitive, often profound characterization of the contemporary historical currents that affected his hero’s development.” Mayer strove “to do justice to the socialist movement as a whole, not only . . . in an objective historical sense, but also with a certain appealing empathy and in the conviction that here major historical forces are making themselves felt, forces which, despite all the errors and all the risks which they have posed the existing state, have a positive mission.” In terms of his own political convictions, Meinecke continued, Mayer was on the bourgeois left, but took his “criterion of judgement not solely from its party line, but also from the world of Bismarckian realism and Prussian and German ideas of the state. One might perhaps reproach him for bringing into view the onslaught of the radical movements on the traditional powers that be in an overly one-sided manner at times, while paying too little attention to these powers themselves. But most bourgeois historians make the opposite mistake, paying insufficient attention to the radical movements in light of their own premises. These one-sided approaches will gradually balance each other out.” According to Meinecke, Mayer was mediating between bourgeois and socialist historiography; his “view of the passionate battles between proletariat and bourgeois society and state” was also “based on the conviction that history will eventually tend to overcome these conflicts in the life of the German state and people”. Meinecke, whose own fundamental convictions about the need to bridge the gap between the state and the socialist labour movement are clearly discernible in this evaluation, spoke in favour of accepting Mayer’s habilitation thesis and suggested—as did second examiner Heinrich Herkner—that Mayer be exempted from the trial lecture and the subsequent colloquium that normally forms part of the habilitation process.352 This was rejected by the faculty. The resentment

352

Ibid.

102 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students felt by the nationalistic professors towards the Jew and “socialist” Mayer erupted in a meticulous examination of his historical knowledge, which Mayer failed. In an indignant letter to the faculty, Mayer underlined that he would never have agreed to the procedure had he known that so little account would be taken of his special situation (as an older, established researcher).353 How seriously Mayer was hurt by the rejection of the Berlin philosophy faculty and the nature of his future research plans are apparent in a letter of 6 June 1918 to Erich Marcks, professor of history at Munich University. The year before, Mayer had already been asked by Meinecke to edit the papers of Johann Jacoby, a famous radical politician from East Prussia during the revolution of 1848 and member of the left-liberal opposition to Bismarck in the early 1860s with strong leanings towards the labour movement. Mayer agreed to do so in principle if the conditions were acceptable. He saw this as preliminary work for his planned history of German liberalism. At the same time, he hesitated to apply for habilitation in Munich as suggested by Marcks: “On the basis of a mental depression caused by present realities, the disappointment I suffered here in Berlin gave rise to a sense of uncertainty and doubt about my abilities which I have as yet by no means fully overcome. [. . .] I saw the colloquium as so unworthy of a mature man, especially given that I was burdened by thoughts of what had gone before, that I do not want to expose myself to such a procedure again for reasons of aesthetics and morality as well as health. On the other hand, since I went abroad in 1895, I have had more than enough opportunity to experience what it means and how it stifles one’s productivity to live in a state of constant intellectual isolation— first for years outside of Germany and then as a private scholar after I had returned home. I would have to make one last attempt to break out of this isolation, were your kind efforts on my behalf to lay the ground for me. But of course I shall soon be forty-seven and cannot waste much more time if I want to set about preparing lectures.”354 353 See below, pp. 494–496. See also Mayer, Erinnerungen, pp. 282–286 and Mayer’s letter to his sister Gertrud Jaspers and her husband Karl Jaspers from 6 January 1918, ibid., pp. 390–393. 354 Mayer to E. Marcks, 6 June 1918. Archive of the Historical Commission, vol. 32. The edition of Jacoby’s papers and Mayer’s planned history of German liberalism were never realized. However, Mayer published six volumes of Ferdinand Lassalle’s Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften, Munich 1921–1925, available on the Commission’s homepage since 2007.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 103 Mayer’s speculations as to whether Marcks might be able to bring about his habilitation in Munich and how a colloquium might be avoided were brought to an end by the collapse of the German Empire. Following the Revolution, on 30 November 1918, at Meinecke’s request, a faculty commission in Berlin discussed issuing Mayer with authority to teach (venia legendi) in the special fields of the “history of democracy and socialism” in light of his academic works. Meinecke’s proposal was rejected, with everyone but himself voting against, but the minister was informed that there were no academic reservations regarding the minister’s intention of appointing him authorized lecturer in these special fields. At the same time, however, the commission expressed “fundamental reservations about the growth in the category of authorized lecturers (beauftragte Dozenten)”.355 Finally, in 1922, Mayer took up an appointment as associate professor in the “history of democracy, socialism and the political parties”, newly established for him by the Prussian ministry of education and cultural affairs, at the University of Berlin.356 Mayer became the only Jewish357 member of the Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive and later the Imperial Historical Commission, in which he was in charge of the planned volume of official records on the Anti-Socialist Law.358 The main academic result of Mayer’s work in the Weimar Republic was the six-volume edition of Lassalle’s posthumous letters and writings, and his documentation of the memorable encounter between Bismarck and Lassalle, which caused a considerable stir.359 He also managed to complete the second volume of his Engels biography, which deals chiefly with Engels’ intensive relations 355

Minutes of the meeting in the habilitation records, vol. 1235. Copy of the letter from the Prussian minister for science, art and education to Mayer from 4 February 1922, in: Archive of the Humboldt University, Berlin, Mayer’s personal files, vol. 109. 357 Mayer had an ambivalent relationship to his Judaism. He had ceased to observe the rules of the Jewish religion, but retained a kernel of Jewish religiosity. However, his aversion to religious rationalism prevented any embrace of Reform Judaism and his “strongly German instincts” ruled out a rapprochement with national Judaism (Erinnerungen, p. 364). 358 The volume was never published as a result of the seizure of power by the Nazis. A large array of materials collected by the editor, Dr. Alfred Schulz, can be found in Schulz’s papers in the Hamburg Library for Social History and the Labour Movement (Hamburger Bibliothek für Sozialgeschichte und Arbeiterbewegung). 359 Bismarck und Lassalle. Ihr Briefwechsel und ihre Gespräche, ed. by Gustav Mayer, Berlin 1928. 356

104 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students with the early socialist parties of Europe, and was published in The Hague in 1934.360 Mayer and Meinecke enjoyed an increasingly close personal relationship, and in their political views and assessment of the labour movement and socialism as major historical forces they were also very close. There were, however, differences in their historical views. Mayer, who sought to achieve a synthesis of Ranke and Marx, saw more clearly than Meinecke how greatly the state was shaped by the political groupings active within society, and underlined that the strength and success of the great powers, whose differences Meinecke, like Ranke, saw as the ultimate determinative forces of history, were partly dependent on domestic political preconditions.361 Retired on 4 September 1933 because he was a Jew,362 with just under twelve years of service behind him, a wife of delicate health and two dependent sons, one of whom was emotionally disturbed and constantly unable to work, Mayer had a quite inadequate pension. On the initiative of Meinecke, in late 1933, with reference to Mayer’s services to the Empire in the World War and revolutionary period, his scholarly achievements and “warmly national persuasion”, ten members of the Imperial Historical Commission eventually asked the Nazi minister for science, art and education in Prussia, Bernhard Rust, to take into account the particular hardship of his case in calculating his pension. The request was unsuccessful, as was a similar petition, also initiated by Meinecke, by some of the most prominent members of the philosophy faculty of Berlin University.363 Finally, in 1934, Mayer emigrated with his family via the Netherlands to England and found a number of job opportunities, chiefly at the

360 Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels, vol. 2: Engels und der Aufstieg der Arbeiterbewegung in Europa, The Hague 1934. A second, revised edition of the first volume appeared at the same time. Both volumes reprinted Cologne 1972. 361 See Gottfried Niedhart, “Deutsch-Jüdische Neuhistoriker in der Weimarer Republik”, in: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte, Supplement 10: Juden in der deutschen Wissenschaft, Tel Aviv 1986, pp. 147–176, esp. pp. 161–163. The difference in views was evident in a conversation between Meinecke and Mayer during the first half of October 1918 on the primacy of foreign policy. 362 See the copy of the letter from the Prussian minister for science, art and education of 4 September 1933 to Mayer, in: Mayer’s personal files, vol. 109. Mayer’s suspension had already been ordered by the minister in a letter of 13 May 1933. 363 See below, p. 500f. On the rejection of the application, see the letter from Rust to Hartung of 20 February 1934, in: Mayer’s personal files, vol. 109.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 105 London School of Economics.364 In England, Mayer prepared an edition on the history of the English labour movement between 1857 and 1872, which was published posthumously 1995.365 He corresponded intensively with Meinecke during the 1930s. In a letter of 25 February 1938, Meinecke complained that “with the academic course [I have] taken, [I have become] isolated and [am] no longer understood by the younger generation. It requires the greatest of inner, even religious and ideological counterweights in order to keep a sense of inner stability and not allow the many little daily earthquakes to knock you down. No doubt your suffering is even greater than mine, I know and understand that—but now you know that I too am among the sufferers.”366 Partly because of his lack of familiarity with the English language, Mayer ended up in a state of complete isolation. Towards the end of the war, deeply hurt, he wrote his memoirs—though they extended only as far as 1933. As he wrote to Meinecke on 3 January 1946, during the writing process he had often held “dialogues [with him] as virtually the only intellectual German I still feel close to”. He originally wanted to publish his autobiography, which appeared a year after his death as “A Memoir. From journalist to historian of the German labour movement” (Erinnerungen. Vom Journalisten zum Historiker der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, Zurich/Vienna 1949), under the title “The drawbridge” (“Die Zugbrücke”). What he wished to express here was that the drawbridge always “shot up at the last moment” [whenever] the German Jew regards himself as fully German.367 He had broken with the Jewish tradition, but was not accepted as a German, though he had a sense of belonging to the German spirit and loved the German language. He could put down no real roots in England. He was a wandering outcast between worlds. From early 1946 on, he corresponded intensively with Meinecke about his personal and family situation, his relationship to Germany and historical issues. He thanked Meinecke for the first volume of

364 On Mayer’s time in England, see Gottfried Niedhart, “Gustav Mayers englische Jahre: Zum Exil eines deutschen Juden und Historikers”, in: Exilforschung 6 (1988), pp. 98–107. 365 Gustav Mayer, The Era of the Reform League: English Labour and Radical Politics 1857–1872. Documents selected by Gustav Mayer. Ed. by John Breuilly, Gottfried Niedhart and Antony Taylor, Manheim 1995. 366 Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 178. 367 See below, p. 502. On Mayer’s intensive efforts to come to terms with his GermanJewish identity, see also the chapter “Deutscher und Jude”, in Mayer’s Erinnerungen, pp. 364–374.

106 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students his memoirs (Erinnerungen), in which Meinecke also mentions the great impression made on him by Friedrich Naumann.368 As a student, Mayer himself had pledged his allegiance to Naumann and published a number of articles in Hilfe and Zeit. Before Naumann, however, Lassalle had tried to “call into being a social and at the same time national movement” in Germany and he thus not only preceded Naumann temporally but also did more to break up the “soil” with his “plough”. It had been profoundly unfortunate for Germany that “when it became a mass party”, social democracy “had its feel for the national dimension drummed out of it by the anti-socialists law”.369 In a letter to Mayer of 22 March 1946, Meinecke reflected on the causes of the disaster: “I now see it as lying chiefly in a secular degeneration of the German bourgeoisie and the German national idea stretching far into the past. I first sought a path from cosmopolitanism to the nation state, without losing the cosmopolitanism in the process—the path I’m now in search of runs in the opposite direction—the only problem is that the nation state itself is broken and all that is left to us is the possibility of a cultural nation (Kulturnation) that keeps its spirit pure—and we don’t know whether this possibility can ever become a reality.”370 Returning to Germany was out of the question for Mayer: “Now there is a wide river of blood there, which I can no more cross over again than visitors to Hades could cross the Styx, which banished them irretrievably from their world.”371 Frau Mayer’s reply to Meinecke’s letter of condolence is also harrowing. They had thought about Meinecke a great deal and her husband had missed his conversations with him. The exchange of ideas had been a feature almost entirely lacking in his life over the previous few years. After bidding farewell to his family in his sickbed just a few days before his death, he had “the urgent need to get up and go to you, Herr Geheimrat. I could do nothing to talk him out of it and was quite at a loss. My husband said that he still had so many things to discuss with you. At last I took a number of your books from the shelf and laid them on his bed. We had pasted in the wonderful pictures of your 70th birthday at the front. My husband looked at them for a long time and was visibly happy. Then he said: 368 369 370 371

Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 125. Mayer to Meinecke, 9 November 1946, see below, p. 518. Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 247f. Mayer to Meinecke, 3 January 1946, see below, p. 502.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 107 “ ‘This is a truly great scholar, very different from me’. He passed away on 21 February peacefully and without pain.”372 IV. Meinecke, his émigré students and relations between the discipline of history in Germany and the United States Determining precisely how Meinecke’s students influenced the development of history in America is no easy task. With their publications and through their students, Holborn in particular, but also Gilbert and Rosenberg—alongside other émigrés—helped make continental European history, and especially German history, formerly of marginal interest, an established subject at American universities. They were decisively aided in this by the increased interest in European and German history as a result of the rise of Nazism, the Second World War, the Cold War and the United States’ renunciation of isolationism. Research on the Renaissance and humanism in the United States, which had been largely underdeveloped, received a powerful boost from émigré German scholars. As well as Paul Oskar Kristeller, Meinecke’s students Hans Baron and Felix Gilbert played a significant role in this. In medieval history, the generally one-sided orientation towards constitutional and administrative history and the emphasis on England were supplemented by the inclusion of intellectual and church history and the Central and Southern European countries. As well as Theodor E. Mommsen, Ernst Kantorowicz and Stephan Kuttner—and Kuttner made the US the leading centre for the study of medieval canon law373—Meinecke’s student Helene Wieruszowski also played a substantial role here. High-level intellectual history had existed in the United States before the arrival of the émigrés. It initially emerged in association with social history at the beginning of the 20th century. This occurred within the framework of a New History in close contact with the social sciences, which were relatively strong in the United States, and political science, in opposition to the one-sided dominance of political history. It featured a heavy emphasis on social criticism.374 The role of social and

372

Frau Flora Mayer to Meinecke, 21 March 1948, see below, p. 527f. See Petersohn, Deutschsprachige Mediävistik, pp. 32–37. 374 See Gilbert, Intellectual History, p. 141, 150f. The term “intellectual history” was used as early as 1904 by James Harvey Robinson, one of the founding fathers 373

108 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students economic interests, public opinion and the ideas prevailing among the lower classes received much attention—in contrast to Meinecke’s history of ideas, which analyzed the thought of eminent individuals. From the 1930s on, alongside and to some extent in opposition to this school, with its strong tendency towards ideological critique, there arose a second school that placed emphasis on the intrinsic value of ideas and their effects on the social life and actions of specific individuals, groups or even whole societies. An outstanding example of this history of ideas was the book The Great Chain of Being (1936) by American philosopher and literary historian Arthur Oncken Lovejoy,375 who elaborated the notion of a God-given, hierarchical world and social order, chiefly with reference to the English literature of the 16th and early 17th century. Of similar importance was the penetrating analysis of the theological and philosophical ideas of the early Puritans in Perry Miller’s classic work on The New England Mind, the first volume of which appeared in 1939.376 In 1940, this school established its own journal, which saw itself as a forum of interdisciplinary debate for all humanities disciplines, in the shape of the Journal of the History of Ideas,377 founded by Lovejoy. Hajo Holborn and Felix Gilbert, who emphasized the filtering of historical processes by the human mind,378 can be considered members of this school. Historians did not, however, develop Meinecke’s specific variant of the history of ideas, with its one-sided focus on elites. The émigrés themselves, influenced by new experiences and faced with new tasks, and to some extent by developing older approaches,

of the New History. See also the essay “Some Reflections on Intellectual History” in: Robinson, The New History, New York 1912, pp. 101–131. For typical examples of this “intellectual history” with its critique of ideology, see Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought. An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920, New York 1927–1930; Charles A. Beard with the assistance of G. H. E. Smith, The Idea of National Interest. An Analytical Study in American Foreign Policy, New York 1934. 375 Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being. A Study of the History of an Idea, 6th reprint of the 1st edn., Cambridge/Mass. 1957 (first published 1936). 376 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, Cambridge/ Mass. 1939; From Colony to Province, Cambridge/Mass. 1953. 377 On the journal’s profile, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, “Reflections on the History of Ideas”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940), pp. 3–23; on “intellectual history” and the “history of ideas”, see also: Ernst Schulin, “Friedrich Meinecke und seine Stellung in der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft”, in: Erbe (ed.), Friedrich Meinecke Heute, pp. 25–49, esp. pp. 39–42. 378 Gilbert, Intellectual History, p. 155.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 109 expanded their horizons, adopted a more comparative perspective and went much further in elaborating the connections between ideas on the one hand and economic and social forces and interests on the other. In both the United States and Germany, Meinecke’s émigré students, and their own students, played a significant role in critically revising the view of German history among historians in Germany. From the 1950s on, Hans Rothfels made a key contribution to establishing contemporary history as an academic discipline; Hans Rosenberg gave much impetus to the development of modern social history and the history of societies, one of the leading schools of German history since the 1960s. Dietrich Gerhard breathed new life into the study of the estates in Germany and did much to establish American studies there. Meinecke’s relationship to his émigré students remained very close in human terms. With the exception of Baron, who was in contact with Meinecke’s friend Walter Goetz, they resumed contact with Meinecke after the war, often provided him with support and generally stood by him. They also maintained close contact with one another. On 5 January 1947, for example, Hans Rosenberg informed Meinecke that Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Dietrich Gerhard, Helene Wieruszowski, Hans Baron and he had met at the annual conference of the American Historical Association in December 1946. Rothfels, he explained, who had been expected from Chicago, had to cancel at the last moment. They had talked a great deal about Meinecke and thought about him with “grateful loyalty”. It must, he stated, give Meinecke great satisfaction to know that “all the ‘Meineckians’ have gradually established themselves within American academic life. . . . Each of us, and each in his own way, has followed his own path, without forgetting how greatly indebted we all are to you and how much you have given us”.379 As mentioned above, Meinecke did not establish a school in any narrow sense. It was probably as an academic teacher that he served most effectively as a role model. His students valued his tolerance, his engagement with their personal as well as academic problems, and ultimately also the methods of precise critical interpretation of source materials which they had learned in his seminar.380 Most 379

See below, p. 380f. The impressive account of Felix Gilbert’s teaching by Barbara Miller Lane, “Felix Gilbert at Bryn Mawr College” (in: Felix Gilbert as Scholar and Teacher, pp. 11–16) demonstrates how much he borrowed from Meinecke as a teacher. 380

110 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students of his students—especially Holborn and Gilbert—shared Meinecke’s interest in political problems. It was typical of the history produced by Meinecke’s students in the United States that, much like their teacher, their interest in history was not antiquarian. Instead, they sought in history the driving ideas and forces of historical processes, though they tended to locate these differently than Meinecke. Of course, their interest in problems of universal history was roused in Berlin not only by Meinecke, but also by Troeltsch and Hintze, who fascinated some of Meinecke’s students with his method of historical comparison. Meinecke’s efforts to fetch his students back to Germany succeeded only in the case of Rothfels and, following Meinecke’s death, Dietrich Gerhard, who returned annually for about six months. Others such as Rosenberg, Masur, Baron and Wieruszowski seriously considered returning, at least for a time. In the case of Baron and Wieruszowski, their plans were clearly thwarted by the lack of a suitable job offer, while in the case of Rosenberg and Masur it was specific circumstances that stopped them—initially the uncertain, catastrophic situation in Germany immediately after the war, and later the fact that they had put down deeper roots, both academically and in family terms, in the United States. Gilbert, Masur, and especially Holborn had also begun to experience a strong emotional identification with their new country. Almost all of them worked as visiting professors and built bridges between West Germany and the United States.381 Meinecke was already emphasizing this in a letter to the proposed new editor of the HZ, Ludwig Dehio, of 21 July 1947, in which he commended his students Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Hans Rosenberg and Helene Wieruszowski: “In the main, with regard to these émigré Jewish historians, I have the impression that they do not view our fate with the migrant’s resentment, that they know and understand us better than the Americans and that they could bring us many benefits in their

381 For a general account of remigration and visiting professors’ efforts to intensify cultural exchange and the internationalization of science, see Horst Möller, “Die Remigration von Wissenschaftlern nach 1945”, in: Möller, Aufklärung und Demokratie. Historische Studien zur politischen Vernunft, ed. by Andreas Wirsching, Munich 2003, pp. 265–278. See also the articles on remigration by Marita Kraus, Meron Mendel, Tobias Winstel, Arnd Bauerkämper, Lars Rensmann, Nicolas Berg and the “comment” by Gabriel Motzkin, in: Year Book 2004 of the Leo Baeck Institute 49, pp. 107–224.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 111 role as intermediaries within our discipline”.382 Meinecke was deeply touched by the “loyalty” of his American students and was particularly proud of them.383 Meinecke’s close connections with the United States, which were mediated primarily through his students, also found expression in a series of unusual honours. The most significant was an honorary doctorate awarded on the occasion of the 300th anniversary celebrations of Harvard University in 1936, whose president James Conant was later American high commissioner and the first ambassador to West Germany. Meinecke was one of many scholars to receive this honour. Harvard’s conferment of an honorary doctorate on Meinecke was not only a means of highlighting his scholarly achievements. After he was forced out as editor of the HZ, an event which caught the attention of many foreign observers, this honour was also an act of political demonstration against the Nazi regime, as was the simultaneous conferment of the same title upon three Jewish scholars. Meinecke’s wish to accept this great honour384 was jeopardized by the strong tensions between the university and the Nazi regime. Harvard had curtly rejected an offer from the Nazi international press chief, Hanfstaengl, to establish scholarships at Harvard, emphasizing that it was “incapable of accepting a contribution from a man so close to the leadership of a political party that has damaged the German universities through measures that contradict the principles which Harvard University regards as fundamental to the university system the world over”.385 Like the other honoured German scholars, Meinecke was finally allowed to take part

382 Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 281. Nicolas Berg’s thesis that Meinecke—like German historians in general—felt resentment towards emigrants (Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker, p. 159) and that he—like other German historians—accepted Rothfels’ return as the sole exception to this (Berg, “Hidden Memory and Unspoken History: Hans Rothfels and the Postwar Restauration of Contemporary German History”, in: Year Book 2004 of the Leo Baeck Institute, 49, pp. 195–220, esp. p. 210), is contradicted by Meinecke’s clear statement here as well as his actual conduct, particularly his intensive efforts to have his émigré students return to Germany. 383 See Frau Meinecke to Frau Rosenberg, 17 April 1954, Rosenberg papers, vol. 33. 384 See Meinecke’s draft reply of 20 March 1935 to Conant’s invitation of 5 February 1935, in Meinecke papers, no. 177. 385 Decree by Rust, the imperial and Prussian minister for science and education, to the vice-chancellors of the German universities and colleges of advanced technology (Technische Hochschulen) and the educational authorities of those Länder with universities and colleges of advanced technology (excluding Prussia) of 27 April 1936, Meinecke papers, no. 177.

112 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students in the celebrations as an individual, but it was made clear that “any participation, however, [bears] no official character”.386 The trip to the United States was a major experience for Meinecke and his wife. Meinecke extolled the incomparably delightful and natural hospitality he experienced there and was greatly impressed387 by American president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who unambiguously professed his faith in freedom and implicitly condemned the Nazi regime in his speech at Harvard. “In this day of modern witchburning, when freedom of thought has been exiled from many lands, it is the part of Harvard and America to stand for the freedom of the human mind, and to carry on the torch of truth.”388 As early as 1933, Meinecke had become a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and honorary member of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1935. In December 1947, he was made honorary member of the American Historical Association. In his letter of thanks, Meinecke wrote: “During the years when academic freedom came under terrible pressure here in Germany, it was particularly gratifying that my scholarly endeavours were recognized, particularly in North America, by a number of similar honours. Truth, freedom and humanity were the guiding stars of our historical discipline. During this turning point in world history, it was granted to the North American historians to maintain an unobstructed view of these stars at all times. Here in Germany the clouds that obscured them are only now beginning to clear, but new storm clouds are gathering from a different direction. We are united in the belief that they can never permanently darken the lustre of our guiding stars. And it is our duty to keep this belief alive among our people through the nature of our work”.389 Deeply moved, Rosenberg commented: “It would scarcely be possible to express more beautifully and profoundly in a few words

386 Express letter from Rust to Meinecke, 27 April 1936, Meinecke papers, no. 177. 387 Meinecke to his son-in-law Carl Rabl, 10 November 1936, in: Meinecke Werke: vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 170. 388 Text of the speech from a newspaper cutting of 24 September 1936, Meinecke papers, no. 177. Meinecke quotes these words in his Deutsche Katastrophe, see Meinecke Werke: vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 412. 389 Meinecke to Guy Stanton Ford on 18 January 1948, reprinted in: AHR 53 (1948), p. 696.

introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students 113 what needs to be said about the position and mission of history in our time”.390 After returning to his Berlin home in the summer of 1946, at the age of 83, Meinecke resumed teaching at the university on Unter den Linden, albeit on a reduced scale. He held seminars with a small, select group of students who, as he wrote to Holborn on 1 December 1946, combined “the historical knowledge of a fifth-year Gymnasium student with the manner of speech of a philosophy lecturer” and were “ravenous for our discipline to tell them something” that might “save them from a nihilistic worldview”.391 When the Free University was founded in the autumn of 1948, in significant part through the initiative of the students, the 86-year-old Meinecke offered his services as vice-chancellor. In numerous letters to Meinecke and in his foreword to the Festschrift marking Meinecke’s 90th birthday, the famous mayor of Berlin Ernst Reuter repeatedly invoked the scene that unfolded when he and Professor Redslob, who as pro-vicechancellor was to relieve Meinecke of the burden of managerial duties, called on Meinecke one Sunday morning at Am Hirschsprung 13 and he persuaded him to take on the vice-chancellorship.392 As Reuter related in an extremely impressive speech (delivered at the ceremony held to mark the renaming of the history department as the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut on 1 October 1951), as a young student of history he had been captivated by Meinecke’s Cosmopolitanism and the National State, so for him this was also a very personal affair. Meinecke’s great prestige in Germany, abroad and especially in the United States stood the Free University in good stead—an institution which many of his colleagues initially rejected as a political move on the part of the Americans and as “stillborn”. Meinecke was a distinguished historian. Yet precisely because of the quality of his scholarship and his impressive personality, he brought the discipline of history in Germany to an impasse in international terms. The culprit here was the particular form of the history of ideas

390

Rosenberg to Meinecke, 2 May 1948, see below, p. 398. Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 263. 392 Letters from Reuter to Meinecke of 21 July 1949 and 23 August 1949. See also Hanna Reuter to Frau Meinecke, 3 November 1953. Meinecke papers, no. 221, 266. Ernst Reuter, “Zum Geleit”, in: Das Hauptstadtproblem in der Geschichte, special publication marking the 90th birthday of Friedrich Meinecke, dedicated by the FriedrichMeinecke-Institut at the Free University, Tübingen 1952, pp. V–VII. 391

114 introduction: friedrich meinecke and his émigré students that he initiated, which was geared towards great individuals—though he himself always saw it as just one of the many branches of history. He was an incorruptible, politically engaged observer of his era who tried to correct the weaknesses of the German Empire through reforms. Later, however much he might criticize the functioning of the parliamentary and party systems, he was one of the most resolute defenders of the Weimar Republic and an unambiguous opponent of the Nazi regime. After the war, with his book The German Catastrophe, he made the most powerful attempt by a German historian to analyze the deeper historical roots of Germany’s failed development and to produce a new vision of German history. But it was probably as by far the most significant academic teacher among the historians of the time in Germany that Meinecke exercised the greatest and most lasting influence. His émigré Jewish students in particular played a key role as intermediaries between history in the United States and Germany and in re-integrating German historians into the international scientific community.

DOCUMENTS

LIST OF DOCUMENTS I. Hans Rothfels 1. Summer 1914

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Speech by Hans Rothfels at the farewell ceremony for Friedrich Meinecke in Freiburg 6 November 1914 Hans Rothfels (Soissons) to Friedrich Meinecke 24 February 1917 Hans Rothfels (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke 29 October 1927 Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Friedrich Meinecke 13 December 1927 Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Friedrich Meinecke 3 March 1930 Hans Rothfels to Siegfried A. Kaehler 3 June 1930 Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Siegfried A. Kaehler 21 December 1930 Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Siegfried A. Kaehler 2 March 1932 Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Theodor Lewald 23 April 1933 Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Siegfried A. Kaehler 5 August [1934] Hans Rothfels (Neuhäuser) to Albert Brackmann 12 October 1946 Hans Rothfels to Friedrich Meinecke 30 April 1947 Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rothfels 14 November 1947 Hans Rothfels (Chicago) to Friedrich Meinecke 4 June 1948 Hans Rothfels (Chicago) to Friedrich Meinecke 24 September 1948 Hans Rothfels (Chicago) to Friedrich Meinecke 4 January 1949 Hans Rothfels to Friedrich Meinecke

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documents II. Dietrich Gerhard

1. 9 August 1914

Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke 2. 31 December 1914 Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke 3. 16 June 1915 Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke 4. 8 September 1923 Dietrich Gerhard to Friedrich Meinecke 5. 29 October 1923 Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke 6. 29 May 1925 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard 7. 19 November 1935 Dietrich Gerhard (Cambridge, Mass.) to Gerhard Masur 8. 27 August 1936 Dietrich Gerhard (Norwich, Vt.) to Friedrich Meinecke 9. 5 March 1947 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard 10. 11 January 1948 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard 11. 5 August 1948 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard 12. 30 August 1948 Dietrich Gerhard (Lindenbrook Farms) to Friedrich Meinecke 13. 31 May 1950 Dietrich Gerhard (St. Louis, Mo.) to Gerhard Masur 14. 9 September 1953 Dietrich Gerhard (St. Louis, Mo.) to Antonie Meinecke 15. 21 March 1954 Dietrich Gerhard (St. Louis, Mo.) to Gerhard Masur 16. 18 September 1954 Dietrich Gerhard (S. S. Caronia) to Antonie Meinecke 17. 24 March 1955 Dietrich Gerhard (Princeton, N.J.) to Antonie Meinecke

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III. Gerhard Masur 1. 24 January 1927 2. 20 April 1927 3. 26 April 1927 4. 12 February 1934 5. 4 February 1936 6. 3 January 1947 7. 7 February 1947 8. 22 July 1948 9. 18 August 1948 10. 11 October 1948 11. 15 August 1950 12. 3 September 1950 13. 5 March 1952 14. 5 April 1954 15. 30 July 1956 16. 29 March 1957 17. 25 January 1961 18. 12 February 1961 19. 27 August 1961 20. 14 October 1961

Gerhard Masur (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke Gerhard Masur (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke Gerhard Masur (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke Gerhard Masur to August Wilhelm Fehling Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Friedrich Meinecke Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur Gerhard Masur (Peekskill, N.Y.) to Friedrich Meinecke Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Friedrich Meinecke Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Friedrich Meinecke Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) an Gerhard Masur Decision on Restitution for Gerhard Masur Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Antonie Meinecke Hans Rothfels (Tübingen) to Gerhard Masur Gerhard Masur (Lynchburg, Va.) to Hans Rothfels Gerhard Masur (Raymond, N.H.) to Antonie Meinecke Gerhard Masur (Lynchburg, Va.) to Antonie Meinecke

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documents IV. Hajo Holborn

1. 14 October 1924 2. 9 June 1925

Hajo Holborn (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke 3. 1 March 1926 Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke 4. 28 April 1926 Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke 5. 7 January 1929 Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke 6. 26 August 1929 Hajo Holborn (Sils-Baselgia, Engadine Valley) to Friedrich Meinecke 7. 2 February 1930 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hajo Holborn 8. [1932] CV of Hajo Holborn, submitted for his Umhabilitation [transfer of teaching authority to a different institution] in Berlin 9. 14 April 1933 Hajo Holborn (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard 10. 11 September 1933 Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Dietrich Gerhard 11. 28 May 1934 Hajo Holborn (on board RMS Majestic, White Star Line) to Dietrich Gerhard 12. 7 February 1935 Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke 13. 22 February 1935 Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke 14. 27 September 1945 Hajo Holborn (Hamden, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke 15. 28 June 1946 Hajo Holborn (Hancock, N.H.) to Gerhard Masur 16. 23 September 1946 Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke 17. 30 October 1948 Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke 18. 9 April 1949 Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke

list of documents 19. 23 October 1951 20. 3 April 1954 21. 23 July 1969

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Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Dietrich Gerhard Annemarie Holborn (Hamden, Ct.) to Gerhard Masur V. Felix Gilbert

1. 29 March 1929 2. 17 May 1930 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Felix Gilbert (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg Felix Gilbert (Fiesole da Firenze) to Friedrich Meinecke 25 July 1930 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Felix Gilbert 28 April 1932 Felix Gilbert (Florence) to Friedrich Meinecke 14 June 1947 Felix Gilbert to Friedrich Meinecke 25 November 1948 Felix Gilbert (Bryn Mawr) to Friedrich Meinecke 25 May 1951 Felix Gilbert (Bryn Mawr) to Friedrich Meinecke 25 October 1958 Felix Gilbert (Bryn Mawr) to Hans Rosenberg VI. Hans Baron

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

5 October 1924 16 October 1924 18 January 1925 2 July 1925 27 June 1927 5 June 1928 23 March 1933 9 November 1937 17 May 1938 4 April 1954 15 October 1954 15 August 1956

Hans Baron (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Baron (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Baron (Berlin) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (Rome) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (Berlin) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (Berlin) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (Berlin) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (London) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (London) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (Chicago) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (Chicago) to Walter Goetz Hans Baron (Chicago) to Walter Goetz

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documents VII. Helene Wieruszowski

1. 3 November [1926] Helene Wieruszowski (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke 2. 22 October [1933] Helene Wieruszowski (Bonn) to Albert Brackmann 3. 25 October 1933 Albert Brackmann to Helene Wieruszowski 4. 4 November 1933 Helene Wieruszowski (Bonn) to Albert Brackmann 5. 11 August [1946] Helene Wieruszowski (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke 6. 16 February [1947] Helene Wieruszowski (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke 7. 9 October 1948 Helene Wieruszowski (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke VIII. Hans Rosenberg 1. 23 April 1924 2. 2 September 1925 3. 15 April 1927 4. 13 February 1929 5. 8 December 1931 6. 23 July 1932 7. 2 September 1932 8. 21 April 1933 9. 2 May 1933 10. 22 May 1933

Hans Rosenberg (Cologne) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Rosenberg (Kempten, Bavaria) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to his mother and siblings Hans and Leni Rosenberg (Berlin) to Eugene N. Anderson Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Leni Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Eugene N. Anderson Hans Rosenberg (Cologne) to Eugene N. Anderson Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Oldenbourg-Verlag

list of documents 11. 9 June 1933

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Hans Rosenberg (Cologne) to Eugene N. Anderson 12. 5 September 1933 Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Leni Rosenberg 13. [18 November 1933] CV and educational background of Hans Rosenberg, for submission to the secretary of the International Institute of Education 14. 20 November 1933 Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Oldenbourg-Verlag 15. 5 December 1933 Friedrich Meinecke’s (Berlin) testimonial on Hans Rosenberg, for submission to the Academic Assistance Council in London 16. 29 January 1934 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg 17. 17 April 1934 Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Friedrich Meinecke 18. 30 June 1934 Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Friedrich Meinecke 19. [August 1934] Hans Rosenberg to Friedrich Meinecke 20. 21 August 1934 Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Oldenbourg-Verlag 21. 9 September 1934 Testimonial from Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) on Hans Rosenberg 22. 19 November 1934 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg 23. 27 August 1935 William L. Langer (Annisquam, Mass.) to Hans Rosenberg 24. [1943] Hans Rosenberg’s outline for a work on the “Junker” 25. 24 July 1944 Hans Rosenberg to Leni Rosenberg 26. 6 May 1946 Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke 27. 12 June 1946 Friedrich Meinecke (Göttingen) to Hans Rosenberg 28. 28 November 1946 Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg 29. 5 January 1947 Hans Rosenberg (New York) to Friedrich Meinecke

124 30. 31 January 1947 31. 12 February 1947 32. 11 June 1947 33. 29 June 1947 34. 27 November 1947 35. 4 December 1947 36. 12 January 1948 37. 2 May 1948 38. 10 September 1948 39. 11 September 1948 40. 6 October 1948 41. 17 November 1948 42. 15 January 1949 43. 9 April 1949 44. 11 November 1950

45. [After 1948] 46. [1953/1954]

47. [1957] 48. 12 August 1964

documents Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Harry D. Gideonse Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (New York) to Friedrich Meinecke Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) to Leni Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Rosenberg to Leni Rosenberg Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans and Leni Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke Hans Rosenberg to the Department of State, Division of Exchange of Persons (Washington, D.C.) Hans Rosenberg’s notes on Friedrich Meinecke Hans Rosenberg’s outline of a project on the history of the German bureaucracy since 1815 Hans Rosenberg’s statement concerning his claim for restitution Hans Rosenberg’s outline of a project on “Inequality in German Society, 1348–1525”

list of documents

125

49. 25 April 1965

Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Leni Rosenberg 50. 21 December 1967 Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Gerhard A. Ritter 51. 8 March 1969 Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Gerhard A. Ritter 52. 30 September 1969 Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Gerhard A. Ritter 53. 6 July 1970 Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Rudolf Braun 54. 10 November 1970 Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Rudolf Braun 55. 8 May 1974 Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Leni Rosenberg 56. 12 December 1975 Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Rudolf Braun 57. 9 November 1977 Hans Rosenberg (Freiburg) to Rudolf Braun IX. Hedwig Hintze 1. 7 February 1920 2. 30 August 1921 3. 10 December 1923 a. 10 December 1923 b. 11 April 1928 4. 6 July 1924 5. 9 October 1924 6. 7 April 1927 7. 20 May 1933

Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Antonie Meinecke Hedwig Hintze (Schönau bei Berchtesgaden) to Antonie Meinecke Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to the dean of the philosophy faculty, Berlin University Hedwig Hintze’s CV/appendix to doctoral application Hedwig Hintze’s CV (excerpt)/appendix to application for habilitation Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Albert Brackmann Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Albert Brackmann Friedrich Meinecke and Albert Brackmann to Hedwig Hintze

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documents

8. 21 May 1933 Otto Hintze (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke 9. 18 November 1933 Otto Hintze (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke 10. 8 May 1942 Konrad Hintze (Pyritz) to Friedrich Meinecke X. Eckart Kehr 1. 28 February 1929 2.

Eckart Kehr (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg Expert opinions on the manuscript by Eckart Kehr: “War losses, reparations and re-ascendance in the politics of Freiherr vom Stein” (Kriegsverluste, Kriegsentschädigung und Wiederaufstieg in der Politik des Frhrn. vom Stein) a. 13 August 1931 Expert opinion by Richard Thoma (Bonn) b. 24 September Expert opinion by Gerhard Ritter (Freiburg 1931 im Breisgau) c. 15 October 1931 Expert opinion by Friedrich Meinecke d. 11 November Expert opinion by Heinrich Herkner 1931 3. 18 January 1932 Adolf Grimme, Prussian minister for science, art and education (Berlin), to Friedrich Meinecke 4. 13 November 1932 Eckart Kehr (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg 5. 11 August 1933 Hanna Kehr (Brandenburg) to Hans Rosenberg XI. Hanns Günther Reissner 1. 18 July 1947

Hanns Günther Reissner (Bombay) to Friedrich Meinecke XII. Gustav Mayer

1. 28 December 1910 2. 10 January 1918 3.

Gustav Mayer (Berne) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (Berlin) to the philosophy faculty of the University of Berlin Dismissal and retirement of Gustav Mayer

list of documents a. 21 May 1933

b. 7 June 1933

c. 23 June 1933

d. 25 January 1934

4. 3 January 1946 5. 30 March 1946 6. 12 May 1946 7. 13 July 1946 8. 3 October 1946 9. 9 November 1946 10. 23 January 1947 11. 17 July 1947 12. 21 March 1948

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Note by Gustav Mayer on his situation according to the “law on the restoration of the civil service” of 7 April 1933 Circular from Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to members of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) Submission from members of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) to Bernhard Rust, Prussian minister for science, art and national education Submission from members of Berlin University to Bernhard Rust, Prussian minister for science, art and national education Gustav Mayer (Oxford) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (Oxford) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (Oxford) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke Flora Mayer (London) to Friedrich and Antonie Meinecke

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documents I. Hans Rothfels

1. Summer 1914: Speech by Hans Rothfels at the farewell ceremony for Friedrich Meinecke in Freiburg NL Rothfels 167 My dear Professor, If I have the temerity to speak this evening on behalf of the members of your seminar, there is one thing alone that gives me the courage to do so, namely that I can feel absolutely sure of being the mere exponent of a generally held sentiment, one that demands articulation regardless of who does the speaking. The sentiment I would like to express is, first of all, the most heartfelt thanks to you and your wife for delighting us with your presence one last time today. In doing so, you also give us the opportunity, indeed the right, to express in words what we are thinking and feeling at this time—a right, admittedly, of which I cannot simply make use without hesitation. On several occasions over the last few years, more eloquent speakers than I have expressed their feelings about the meaning of their relationship with you, their revered teacher. I would not presume to add anything new to these statements, and the finest and best necessarily eludes all attempts at verbal expression. The special nature of the present moment nonetheless justifies another attempt, which might perhaps allow me to convey at least a hint of the web of relations that extend imperceptibly between teacher and student until external circumstances bring them more fully into our awareness. For many years, your name has been something of a banner for all those who have had the opportunity to work under your supervision, a banner around which your students, near and far, have gathered, a battle-cry allowing us to recognize one another even when far from home. This may seem surprising at first, for our contemporary cultural life is not dominated by any preponderant ideal centred on the state, nation or religion to such an extent—as has happened so often in the history of our discipline—that it might serve as the focal point for a closed-off community. And you of all people, my dear professor,

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would surely be the last to wish to inspire the establishment of an intellectual school in this sense. What makes your students into a unified group is not a common aim with respect to content. As well as being united in the gratitude and veneration we feel for our master, it is rather a shared form characteristic of the way in which you have taught us to think scientifically, a form that typifies how you have taught us to understand history. I do not dare to analyze more closely your species of historical critique and historical portrayal, which is an immediate, living presence in all our minds,—I have neither the energy nor time to do so. But as important, for each one of us, as the scientific principles that you implanted, as epoch-making as your exhortation not to remain on the surface of things but to penetrate to their interior connectedness, have been—above and beyond these things you did us an even greater service. The reason why the Wednesday class from eleven to one seems to us the apex of the week in the truest sense of the term is not just the sense of actual material enrichment, not just the intellectual pleasure of observing how the atoms of individual historical facts merge, fit into chains of causality and are related to living values in your hands, it is not just the aesthetic pleasure of seeing the process of historical understanding unfold in the most sublime manner—beyond all of this, there is a further boon, something which resists straightforward definition, an immediate effect on the moral powers, on the powers of the soul. Along with the richest of intellectual stimulation, you give us something even greater: the most profound and productive influence on our own most unique existence, again not so much in the sense of any content-related or formal certainty—rather, the way you taught us to approach historical life also becomes the ideal for practical-political and personal conduct in the midst of the thunderous, bewildering torrent of the present. I must forego further elaboration of this idea. We feel particularly compelled to articulate it at the present moment, when there is a possibility that the nation will have to make a direct claim on the most personal, active powers of each individual. In this respect we feel doubly grateful for the realistic way in which you taught us to interpret history.

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The catchword “science for science’s sake” no more entails an ultimate truth than the slogan “l’art pour l’art”. There is always a living human being behind the intellectual and artistic process. Precisely by allowing us to practise history without an immediate, practical secondary aim, it became a “vitae magistra” for us, not in the sense intended by a not so distant past, which wished to glean from a non-recurring historical process rules and prescriptions for the future, but in a deeper and more comprehensive sense, perhaps best expressed in the words of Jacob Burckhardt. At once modest and ambitious, he defines the task of history as follows: it should not make us clever for next time, but wise for ever.1 In this way, beyond the equality between the field of research and scientific principles, you have forged your students into a community: this is what we wish to avow this evening with grateful admiration. We feel connected to one another because there lives within each of us a spark of one and the same spiritual power, because all of us bear traces of the scientific, intellectual and moral training which you provide us with. Because of this, to their great delight your current students see their ranks reinforced by an impressive number of former Freiburg Meineckians; we might invoke Adam Müller’s reference to a “connection across the generations”.2 The inner unity of historical events, the continuity of all social relations, which you so often made us aware of—we may, as it were, return the favour by demonstrating this continuity to you this evening through a small portion of your life’s

1 Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897), important Swiss historian. The precise quotation: “We want experience to make us not so much clever (for next time) as wise (for ever)”. The quotation is from Burckhardt’s lecture “On the study of history” (“Über das Studium der Geschichte”), delivered several times between 1868 and 1873, which was published in 1905 in slightly revised form as Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, a carefully edited version of manuscripts found among his unpublished works. The quotation appears in the “Einleitung. Abdruck von Teilen der Vorlesung”, in: Wolfgang Hardtwig (ed.), Über das Studium der Geschichte, Munich 1990, pp. 118–181, quotation p. 126. 2 Adam Müller (1779–1829), political and philosophical writer and diplomat, representative of political romanticism. Meinecke’s Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat includes a chapter on “Adam Müller in den Jahren 1808–1813”, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 5, pp. 113–141. Meinecke also quotes (p. 124) Müller’s definition of the people in his book Die Elemente der Staatskunst (1811) as “the magnificent community of a long series of past, currently living and future lineages, all of whom are linked in death as in life within one great intimate formation”.

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work, through the tribe that has passed through your school here in Freiburg. Here in Freiburg! This brings me to a distressing point, but one that cannot be evaded. If I may turn again, in accordance with my task this evening, to the feelings of your students: for those of us based here, your departure from Freiburg, my dear Herr Professor, means a painful separation from you, while for the others it means a break with the old, cherished Alberto-L.3 And we must also forego another value, a sentimental value: your name and that of the University of Freiburg had almost become one and the same for us. It seemed to us, if I may be allowed to say so, that the very personal style of your life found a palpably appropriate external setting here; indeed, between the specific nature of your scientific point of view and the warmly intimate atmosphere of the city on the Dreisam,4 as expressed in incomparably delightful fashion in the rooms and thick-walled corridors of the old university, there seems to us no lack of interconnection. This harmonious unity is now a thing of the past, and this thought may well make us melancholy. But I do not wish to conclude on this note: I have merely [been] casting an eye on the distance covered, before it is obscured by a backdrop of mountains and the path takes a new and promising turn upwards. For this is something that all of us instinctively feel. Though a delightful form is being broken up here, this is occurring only so that a new and greater one can take shape. And if, to build on this thought, I may deploy here the same objectifying method with which you described to us the beginnings of your historical life on that unforgettable evening which we had the pleasure of spending at your home ten days ago, then a thought arises that is capable of silencing, once and for all, all our individual feelings of pain and melancholy. If you are now going to Berlin, then, so it seems to us, this is not only a necessity in an external sense, an event that had to happen

3 The university, founded in 1457 by archduke Albrecht VI of Austria, bears the name Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in honour of Grand Duke Ludwig I. 4 The River Dreisam runs through Freiburg.

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sooner or later; it is not only H. v. Tr’s lectern5 that calls you there. Rather, so it seems to us, there is also something fateful in this change, an inner logic of development, a deeper meaning; one, however, which I shall now dare to hint at. By taking you from Berlin to two Southern German universities that are home to students from the whole of Germany, then back again to Berlin, your academic path recapitulates the same rhythm and is inspired by the same triad that dominates the domestic history of Germany in the 19th century, particularly one of your most characteristic fields of interest, the development of the Prussian-German problem.6 We thus believe we can divine the outline of that ultimate life-equation, that highest identity, in which Hegel7 found the meaning of the world, the identity between the spirit that dwells in things and the spirit that dwells in us. I shall conclude here. If I understand correctly, my dear Herr Professor, there are three things that we wish to express to you this evening. We wish to thank you once again from the bottom of our hearts for everything that you meant to us during your Freiburg years, both as a teacher and role model. We wish to profess our faith in those general principles of science and, moreover, of life, that you implanted in us. Finally, we would like to offer you our most sincere and best wishes for the approaching new era. For you as well, may this third stage be the synthesis of all your powers and capacities, the crowning achievement of your scholarly and personal life. In this spirit, I would like to ask you, my dear fellow students, to rise from your seats and to hail with me our. . . . . .

5 Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), professor of modern history, heavily involved in politics, who consciously sought a wide audience. Succeeded Ranke in Berlin in 1874. Reichstag deputy from 1871 to 1884. 6 The following text was crossed through by Rothfels: “Drawing once again on your remarks on the personal roots of historical understanding, perhaps I may dare to speculate that what prompted you to penetrate so deeply into the nuances of PrussianGerman friction, and enabled you to do so, was the very fact that you yourself had experienced something of this thesis and antithesis within yourself ”. 7 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), renowned philosopher. Professor in Berlin from 1818.

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2. 6 November 1914: Hans Rothfels (Soissons) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Rothfels 167 Dear Herr Professor, I have long felt the need to send you and your dear wife my greetings from the field, partly in order to make, as it were, an external reconnection with what has been, with the tenor of the last years of peace, which concluded with my unforgettable last few days in Freiburg. The last few days have now provided me with a specific reason for doing so: I read your short article in the September issue of the Süddeutsche Monatshefte8 and would like to thank you for what you have given me and some of my chums. Please forgive the rather flapper-like tone of this introduction, but this really is the case. People out here are thirsting for a completely new tone, for the clarification and interpretation of the irrational things they see happening on a daily basis. I think people back home imagine our life to be more strenuous than it really is but also have an overly idealistic and heroic view of it. In fact there are few real men of action, and all are afflicted to a greater or lesser degree by the “curse of reflection”. Even here, one is easily caught up in the minor worries of daily life and feels more inclined towards criticism than one would like. Perhaps I have been particularly unlucky in this regard: certain things do in fact happen in my reserve corps that might make one pessimistic. The ideas which you elaborate in your latest essay, which are of course not entirely unfamiliar to your students, and contact with the culture to which one feels drawn, are the best and most pleasing remedy for such sceptical tendencies. I believe that the people back home will have more morale and ability to truly appreciate the greatness of this era than we do out here, where one has no chance to gain one’s composure. I am of course nonetheless happy and cheerful to have the chance to be active, and above all have cause to be grateful that so far my body has borne up extremely well—my regiment was part of Kluck’s army,9 so we took part in the

8

Friedrich Meinecke, “Politik und Kultur”, in: Süddeutsche Monatshefte 9 (1914), p. 796ff., also reprinted in: Meinecke, Die deutsche Erhebung von 1914, 2–5 edns., Stuttgart/Berlin 1914, pp. 39–46. 9 Colonel general Alexander Kluck (1846–1934), commander of the First Army, whose advance on Paris was halted in the Battle of the Marne and which, along

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triumphal procession through Belgium and Northern France, and then in the “Steinmetziade”10 against Paris, which culminated in five days of terribly heavy fighting in the Meaux area. Through a retreat (or “bringing back” as the officers called it), which succeeded both tactically and strategically, we only just avoided being surrounded. Those days were probably the greatest thing which our army has achieved—and will achieve—in this campaign. Now, since 11 September, we have been positioned behind the Aisne, engaged in battle as if defending a fortress. It may be no bad thing that victory is proving so terribly difficult to achieve. Hopefully, this will spare us the limpness and reaction that followed the uplift of 70.11 That might make it worthwhile to experience victory. My closest friends and companions have so far largely been spared—I hope that your household too has been untouched by grief. I heard from Kähler of the painful gaps left among the ranks of your students [. . .]12 I must close here, as there is “work” to do outside. With best wishes to your dear wife, Gratefully yours, H. Rothfels

with the Second Army, had to retreat on the orders of the German chief of staff von Moltke. 10 Critical comment on the failed advance on Paris, alluding to the Prussian general Karl Friedrich von Steinmetz (1796–1877). Steinmetz took part in the first battles of the Franco-German war of 1870/71 as corps commander of the First Army. In response to his numerous unauthorized actions and failure to conform to the strategy of the central command, he lost his command post and was made governor general of Silesia and Posen on 15 September 1870. He was retired as field marshal following the peace treaty of 1871. Steinmetz was a conservative member of the constituent Reichstag of the North German Confederation and of the Reichstag of the North German Confederation from 1867 to 1870 and member of the Prussian upper house from 1872 to 1877. 11 Reference to the war of 1870/71. 12 Siegfried August Kaehler (1885–1963), modern historian. Student of Meinecke from the Freiburg period and friend of Rothfels. Habilitated in 1921. Professor in Magdeburg, Breslau and Jena and in Göttingen from 1936 until his retirement in 1953.

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Hans Rothfels

3. 24 February 1917: Hans Rothfels (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Professor, As the Secret State Archive wants a detailed reference attesting to my “comprehensive academic training”, I must turn to you once again with a troublesome request. I thought I would come to Berlin towards the end of the first week of March, as soon as I’ve seen to a leg operation, so that over the course of these holidays I might finish collecting, as far as possible, unpublished material of relevance to my next, limited objective. I would very much like to ask your advice once again on my

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specific angle on the topic. I am keenly aware of the risk of lapsing into a biography13 of the years up to 1815 and of spending far too much time repeating points which have already been expressed better on many occasions. All my plans are uncertain, however, because the “Heldengreifmission”14 has recently extended its activities to include the category of “invalids”. Thus, in the few months since I was discharged, the system has begun to change completely in this respect as well, and since yesterday I have been proudly back on the muster role. Over the course of March further medical examinations will be held and a certain percentage will then be signed up again. I think I shall be among them, and I would be happy if I managed to get another little job, the more military in nature the better. As enthralled as I am by my study of Clausewitz, over the next few extremely difficult weeks it is more satisfying to be able to be [word illegible] in some way, however modest in nature and scope one’s contribution may be. Even if the decision about me is made very quickly, I am thinking of coming to Berlin anyway, in order to hoard away as much [additional material] as possible. It is still possible that I will be turned down again or given a rather unfulfilling job. I would therefore be very grateful if you would recommend me to the Secret State Archive just in case. With the very best regards to your wife, Gratefully yours, H. Rothfels

13

Reference to a biography of Carl von Clausewitz. Attempt to recruit men previously exempted from military service for various reasons. 14

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4. 29 October 1927: Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Professor, I have just received your book from Oldenbourg15 and hastened to thank you wholeheartedly for such a delightful gift. I am pleased to receive it not only on account of the insights it will offer, the extent of which I have for the time being merely tried to get a feel for through a quick leaf through, but also in a very personal sense. Now that you have set out your heresy, I will no longer be at risk of being reprimanded for my own,16 and I for my part certainly have no intention of digging out the old battle axe, which, by the way, seems to me in any case to have become rather small and blunt. I shall see how things turn out for me now with respect to the new sources and shall try to learn wherever I can. However, I shall not have the opportunity to give you my proper, heartfelt thanks between the hurdles of the first weeks of the semester. At any rate, I wanted to waste no time in expressing my provisional thanks. Particularly in light of the fact that, as your package fortunately reminded me, tomorrow is a special day. I would thus like to send you my best wishes, along with those of my wife, for your 65th birthday. That is, it is of course not a “special” birthday at all but, to quote freely from Schlieffen,17 merely “ordinaire”. The lustrums don’t yet count in the seventh decade and no doubt all your students thought—and saw it as a deep need that would break with rigid adherence to a set routine—that we would be able to salute you on your 70th birthday as we did on your 60th, still in the same full possession of your academic offices and a teaching post at the university. But with your decision to follow the letter of the law on conferment of emeritus status, you

15

Friedrich Meinecke, Geschichte des deutsch-englischen Bündnisproblems 1890– 1901, Munich/Berlin 1927. 16 Allusion to Hans Rothfels’ habilitation thesis: Bismarcks englische Bündnispolitik, Stuttgart/Leipzig/Berlin 1924. 17 Alfred Graf von Schlieffen (1833–1913). Chief of staff of the Prussian army from 1891 to 1905 and author of the so-called Schlieffen Plan, a violation of Belgian neutrality that became the strategic basis for Germany’s western offensive in 1914.

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yourself have made the 65th a mark of significance that we perceive as a more general turning point than it may seem to you yourself.18 In any event, my conception of our historical-academic life is too closely connected with your leading place within it, I know only too well what your teaching means—not only from my own recollections but also from the impressions of the current generation of students, which acts as a control—for me not to experience your decision as a very painful rupture. How good it is that for now we go on with one of those halfmeasures that are otherwise not exactly congenial but which do in fact serve a genuine need for continuity in this case. May you find this sacrifice of ongoing obligation relatively easy to cope with19 and achieve the freer movement and production without distractions that you hope for. Alongside the health, happiness and prosperity of your family, that is the best thing one can wish you on your 65th birthday. [. . . . .] You will hopefully have received the borrowed books I sent you from Heidelberg. Ex. Schiffer had probably told you about what went on there, or at least the first part of the story.20 Among your other close friends, Kühlmann21 also appeared towards the end. I myself 18 Meinecke retired after turning 65 towards the end of the winter semester of 1927/28. 19 Meinecke continued to lecture on a reduced scale after his retirement. See above, p. 20. 20 This probably refers to the petition initiated by the Heidelberg professor of pedagogy Ernst Hoffmann, together with a group of prominent local supporters, for a “proclamation to the People and Reichstag” in opposition to the bill for an imperial schools law put forward by the minister Keudell (DNVP). Deviating from the pre-eminence of the interdenominational school as the standard school form set out in art. 146 of the constitution, the bill declared all forms of school equal applicants for government money. The proclamation was ultimately signed by 1,539 German university teachers chiefly on anticlerical grounds and was the largest-scale political proclamation produced by academics during the Weimar Republic. It was submitted to the Reichstag and imperial government on 27 September 1927. The bill failed. Eugen Schiffer (1860–1954) was a judge and politician and member of the National Assembly and Reichstag for the DDP, 1919–1924. From 1904 to 1918 and 1921 to 1924 Schiffer was also a deputy in the Prussian Landtag. In a number of cabinets (1919–1921), Schiffer was vice-chancellor and/or Imperial finance or Imperial justice minister. Subjected to numerous repressive measures and impediments during the Nazi period on account of his Jewish origins, he survived as a “protected” Jew with his daughter in a Jewish hospital. From 1946 to 1948, he directed the central justice authority in the Soviet occupation zone. Meinecke gave one of the speeches at the celebratory banquet marking Schiffer’s 70th birthday in 1930. Speech appears in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 470–474. 21 Richard von Kühlmann (1873–1948), diplomat. Entered the diplomatic service after studying law. As counsellor in London from 1908, he advocated AngloGerman understanding. Became envoy in The Hague in 1915 and ambassador in

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was gratified by the fact that the artificially de-electrified atmosphere exploded—not in my case but in that of the Austrian of all people. Despite the salon-like nature of the whole undertaking, which emerged very clearly, there was no lack of rich and powerful impressions. But I do not wish to bother you with that now, but shall close here, once again with warmest wishes. Ever gratefully yours, H. Rothfels 5. 13 December 1927: Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Professor, With your lines from the day before yesterday, in as much as they referred to me, you have made me greatly and just as unexpectedly happy. I had in no way suspected anything of that kind, but am of course very willing to play a part in the subcommittee.22 You know as well as Oldenbourg, who talked to me about it on several occasions at historical conferences, that I have a genuine interest in the journal. If I can ever contribute anything within a specialist field or through personal relations with the younger generation, I am at your disposal. I am, conversely, very despondent about the closing passage of your letter. I know the Humboldt study23 through numerous individual parts and revisions of the manuscripts, but not yet as a whole, and

Constantinople in 1916. Appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1917, he was forced to resign after giving a speech on the need for a peace of understanding in the Reichstag in July 1918. In his autobiography on the period from 1901 to 1918, Meinecke relates his encounters with Kühlmann between 1915 and 1918. Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 266–271, 274f., 280f., 296f. See also Meinecke’s article in the Vossische Zeitung, no. 204, of 1 May 1931 on the book by Kühlmann, which appeared the same year, Gedanken über Deutschland. In: Meinecke, Werke, vol. 8, pp. 481–486. 22 This refers to Rothfels’ admission into the group of scholars who were mentioned on the title page of the HZ as supporting editors of the journal. It was in fact an honorary appointment as members of the subcommittee had no real influence on the editing of the journal. 23 Siegfried A. Kaehler, Wilhelm v. Humboldt und der Staat. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte deutscher Lebensgestaltung um 1800. 2nd edn., Göttingen 1963. (first

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will have no chance to read it before Christmas. I have always had some reservations but nonetheless regard it in an extremely positive light as an accomplishment which, through a critical analysis of tremendous acuity, is highly edifying and superior to all other works of my generation. I certainly suspected that you would have far greater reservations than me,24 but clearly without grasping their full extent. You will understand that I too am greatly saddened in every respect by the impression that you convey. Incidentally, K.[aehler] and I have arranged to meet in B.[reslau] on Friday. As you know, I’m coming over for 36 hours on account of the Roloff lecture: more out of a sense of duty than in the belief that I can say anything significant on the topic in light of my now very different preoccupation. With best regards, Yours ever faithfully, H. Rothfels 6. 3 March 1930: Hans Rothfels to Siegfried A. Kaehler NL Kaehler 1, 144b, Brief 147 My dear friend, [. . . . .] That brings me to another subject, one I find very awkward. In sharp contrast to his usual painfully polite and conscientious manner, after five weeks I had had no reply from the master to my letter, of which you are aware, of 2 January. I then made enquiries. I enclose the card he sent me in reply. The first part is distinguished by an unusually cool, partly resigned, partly threatening tone, the second by a foolish yet crafty naivety or shyness that I find appalling. How can a man like M.25

published 1927). The book is dedicated to “the ‘Freiburg Circle’, 1907–1911, both the living and the dead”. 24 For Meinecke’s fundamental critique of his student Kaehler’s book on Humboldt and his defence of his views, see Meinecke’s letter to Kaehler of 11 December 1927 and his reply of 15 December 1927, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, pp. 338–340. 25 Reference to Friedrich Meinecke.

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believe that social policy and the Anti-Socialist Law can be considered separately?26 And how can he smooth the way for those (G. Mayer and Herkner)27 whose background and party political intentions are abundantly clear? I initially decided to ask for a vote of academic confidence or to probe into the underlying politics. But I pursued the matter no further and enclose the reply I sent instead so you can check it. In terms of substance, I think it is clear enough while at the same time essentially harmless. I would like to have believed that in response they were abandoning the plan for the time being, which I have characterized as good dissertation material, if not for the fact that they already have a man ready to do the whole thing instead of me. In any case, even if I end up with a reprieve and a period of probation, I am quite certain that there will be further difficulties. Meinecke’s dissatisfaction with me is, in my view, far more political than scholarly in nature.28 If I serve as my own judge and jury, there are all kinds of reasons to criticize my scholarship, but others have no grounds for criticism, for I have written more, in detail, than many typically do in the first semesters of their professorship. And I have also provided samples in the socio-political field.29 Yet the warped attitude that is now erupting is no doubt due to the sense of political discomfort generated by these very samples [. . .]. At the same time, M. evades all my questions as to what material conditions and above all what non-material safeguards I am to be offered. I have already told him clearly that it is one thing to publish a [documentary] publication under the auspices of a Commission and quite another a literary work of one’s own (the old Imperial Archive problem in intensified form!). There is no question of me recognizing any board of censors presumably consisting 26

See below, pp. 145–147. Heinrich Herkner (1863–1932), political economists and social policy specialist. Professor at the University of Berlin from 1912. 28 Marginal note by Kaehler: “correct”. 29 Rothfels published on social policy until early 1930: “Die erste diplomatische Aktion zugunsten des Arbeiterschutzes”, in: VSWG 16 (1922), pp. 70–87; “Bismarcks sozialpolitische Anschauungen”, in: Deutsche Akademische Rundschau 6, no. 16 (1925), pp. 1–4; “Zur Geschichte des Bismarckschen Innenpolitik” [letters and notes of Theodor Lohmann], in: Archiv für Politik und Geschichte 7 (1926), pp. 284–310; Theodor Lohmann und die Kampfjahre der staatlichen Sozialpolitik (1871–1905), Berlin 1927; “Zur Geschichte des Krankenversicherungsgesetzes”, in: Ärztliche Mitteilungen 29 (1928), pp. 220–223; “Bismarcks Sozialpolitische Anschauungen”, in: Ärztliche Mitteilungen 29 (1928), pp. 988–991; “Prinzipienfragen der Bismarckschen Sozialpolitik”. Speech given at the ceremony marking the foundation of the Empire on 18 January 1929. Königsberger Universitätsreden 3, Königsberg 1929. 27

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of Meinecke, Mayer and Herkner or of [. . .] a vote being taken as to the correctness of my opinions. I must have unambiguous assurances on that front and if I am not given them I will write independently. I have merely a certain moral commitment to M. but absolutely no legal obligations, as most of the funds come from the Imperial Archive, which has released me from all obligations,30 and is in fact sensitive about M.’s aspirations to take great credit [for supporting Rothfels’ study]. It goes without saying, my dear friend, that I tell you all of this in the strictest of confidence and not even the merest hint of it may be repeated to M.—I simply needed to get it all of my chest. There is, by the way, no need to worry. The aggravation has actually been good for me. Quite apart from that, affected by the shameful nature of current events, I am quite keen to get stuck into historia militans. As a consequence, I have been enjoying the lectures again more (most recently and for the first time Fridericiana)31 and I’m dying to get to social policy and break through the fog. Until 1 September, all other minor matters are to be stacked away, and then I won’t move from my chair until the first volume is finished.32 In any case, I hope we can soon speak about this and other matters face-to-face Your H. R. 7. 3 June 1930: Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Siegfried A. Kaehler NL Kaehler 1, 144b, Brief 154 My dear friend, The relative peace of the first day of Whitsun at last gives me an opportunity to respond to your letter and tell you of certain things that may be of interest to you. But first I’d like to send you my very best,

30 Rothfels worked for the Imperial Archive on “Special Historical Projects” until he took up his appointment in Königsberg in 1926. 31 Matters relating to Friedrich II, King of Prussia (1740–1786). 32 In fact, Rothfels never completed or published his planned book on “State social policy in the Bismarck era”.

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belated wishes for your birthday. I did not forget “about it”, but the last week was rather hectic and I had to pay dearly ex post for the trip to Berlin, which, by the way, provided a lot of interesting insights. My relationship with Mcke [Meinecke] and Hireiko [Imperial Historical Commission] in particular became a good deal clearer. I must begin my account by disappointing you. While you were not as badly misled by the newspaper item concerning my “appointment” as a great number of people unfortunately were, you too are very much mistaken. It was referring not to the Hireiko but to the Hiko of the R. A. [Historische Kommission des Reichsarchivs—the Historical Commission of the Imperial Archive]33 (which is something quite different, despite a degree of overlap in their membership). All your kind and optimistic remarks are thus inapplicable. Still, in this body too I am pretty much the only one under 60 and will be able to provide support to the R. A. As for the rest, the proceedings surrounding my election were rather delicate. Rupp34 blabbed to me about it, and I feel the need to tell you about it in confidence. Apart from me, Roloff 35 was also put forward. After Mertz36 had spoken vigorously

33 The Potsdam Imperial Archive was founded through a cabinet decision of 5 September 1919. Alongside the collection and preservation of imperial records dating from the foundation of the Empire, and the activities of the information division, its task was to “research and relate the history of the Empire, which reached its peak and came to an end in the World War” with reference to the records. Through a decree issued by Imperial President Ebert on 17 July 1920, a “Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive” (“Historische Kommission für das Reichsarchiv”) was founded, which was to advise the Imperial Archive in its scientific work, propose topics for research and decide on their publication. The members, whose number was limited to fourteen, included the chairman of the Prussian State Archive Paul Kehr and the historians Meinecke, Hans Delbrück, Walter Goetz, Erich Marcks, Hermann Oncken and prelate Georg Schreiber, a politician with a focus on science policy (Wissenschaftspolitik, which included the humanities as well as the natural sciences). 34 Karl Ruppert (1886–1953), initially an officer, then Prussian army archivist. At the Imperial Archive from 1919. Made Archivrat in 1920. Promoted in 1927. Head of the administrative and central division of the Imperial Archive. Had general responsibility for the official work on the First World War. Played a leading role in the Army Archive, founded in 1937. Head of the Army Archive from 1942 to 1945. Briefly head of the newly established Central Archive of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany in 1946. 35 Gustav Roloff (1866–1952), historian, professor in Gießen, 1909–1939. 36 Retired colonel Hermann Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim (1866–1947) was the last Oberquartiermeister of the military history division of the Prussian general staff. From 1919 until his retirement in 1931 he was president of the Imperial Archive, which was accommodated in the former military academy in Potsdam. Father of Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, executed with Stauffenberg as a member of the resistance following the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944.

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in my favour, Mcke [Meinecke] rose to express his reservations. As Ru. put it, he kept on talking “rubbish”, about my being too young, though no-one could actually understand what he had against me. By this point, Aloys Schulte37 had come up to Ru. and asked him how he could put forward an idiot like Roloff. Finally, someone called out to Mein. [Meinecke], but he’s your student! The one who then saved the day was the prelate, Schreiber.38 He gave a thundering speech on my behalf before emphasizing in particular that something must be done for East Prussia. In hoc signo vincis.39 I was then elected unanimously. A fine state of affairs, isn’t it? It very much brought back to mind Schuhmacher’s [actually Schumacher’s]40 explanations to Marcks,41 deliv-

37 Aloys Schulte (1857–1941), historian. From 1986 to 1903 holder of a chair at the University of Breslau earmarked for a Catholic historian and from 1902 to 1903 also director of the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome. Professor in Bonn from 1903 until his retirement in 1925. His work focussed on the economic history of the Middle Ages, social and constitutional history of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period and the history of the Rhineland. Politically close to the Centre Party. Member of the Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive. 38 Prof. Dr. Georg Schreiber (1882–1963), Catholic theologian, Reichstag deputy for the Centre Party from 1920 to 1933 and one of the most influential politicians concerned with culture and science in the Weimar Republic. 39 “By this sign you will conquer”. Allusion to the famous promise made to Emperor Constantine. This was a celestial phenomenon about which Eusebius von Caesarea has the following to say in his Vita Constantini (I, 28): before the battle of the Milvian Bridge (312) against his adversary Maxentius, Emperor Constantine prayed urgently to God that He might stretch forth His right hand to help him in the looming battle. “But while the Emperor was praying . . ., a quite incredible sign from God appeared to him.” For in the sky “above the sun [was] the victorious sign of the Cross, formed of light, and near it were written the words: ‘By this conquer!’” Medieval authors who wrote about Constantine’s vision of the Cross described the proceedings as follows: “In the night, while he lay in a deep sleep, he saw in the sky the sign of the Cross light up with fiery brilliance. When he asked what this meant, the angels told him: Constantine, in hoc signo vinces!” 40 Hermann Schumacher (1868–1952), political economist. After studying law and state sciences (Staatswissenschaften) and a study trip through the USA, worked in the Prussian Ministry for Public Works from 1896. Became professor extraordinarius of state sciences at the University of Kiel in 1899 and was the first director of studies at the Cologne Commercial College (Städtische Handelshochschule Köln) from 1901 to 1904. Professor ordinarius of state sciences at the University of Bonn from 1904 to 1917 and professor ordinarius of state sciences at the University of Berlin from 1917 to 1935. 41 Reference to the appointment of the historian Erich Marcks (1861–1938) to the University of Berlin in 1922. Habilitated in 1889, he was professor ordinarius in Freiburg from 1892. Subsequently held chairs in Leipzig, Heidelberg, Hamburg and Munich, before being appointed professor ordinarius in Berlin and at the same time Historiographer of the Prussian State in 1922. His work focussed especially on the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the biography of Bismarck. Politically Marcks was a conservative and an opponent of the Weimar Republic.

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ered in my presence, on Mein[ecke’s] attitude to Marcks’ appointment. There is obviously a very primitive complex that presses one to keep away the competition. I knew nothing of this episode, which I found very unpleasant, when I decided off my own bat to make some concessions to Mcke [Meinecke] with respect to the socialists’ question. From the minutes of the Hireiko (sent me discretely by Ru.), I had seen that there had been a special reason, namely a request from the Bolshevists to send them the material on the Anti-Socialist Law in order that they might make a copy of it. There is an archival treaty of exchange (we have an interest in the question of war guilt) that entitles them to make such requests. They decided on the special project as a preventative measure.42 Once I knew that there was a (partial) reason, I took a more lenient view of the whole thing. I therefore wrote to M. [Meinecke] that I would attach great importance to communicating with him personally while in B. [Berlin]. I then received an invitation to appear before the subcommittee. However, I then received a telegram stating that I might call him straight away upon my arrival in B., and when I did so we agreed to meet in person beforehand after all. This meeting went very satisfactorily in human terms. M. was in a very delicate state—one of his sisters43 had died the day before. He admitted that I had a right to feel hurt and that no-one could expect me to go there in a cheerful state, but there was a higher necessity at stake and room to come to some sort of arrangement about the question at issue. We then argued somewhat about Gustav Mayer. In the face of my vigorous protests, he stated that what I say about G. M., he might also say about me. When confronted with the evidence he then conceded that he knew what divided him from G. M. and Herkner, though objectively he had more in common with them than with “us”. When I then asserted that we were the better Meineckians, he positively lit up, and his feelings of loneliness came so shockingly to light that I literally felt sorry for him. We then spoke about Westphal44 etc. and

42 The planned edition on the Anti-Socialist Law supervised by Gustav Mayer, which Rothfels saw as a rival to the project with which he had been entrusted, “State social policy in the Bismarck era” (“Die staatliche Sozialpolitik in der Epoche Bismarcks”). 43 Martha Meinecke (1859–1930). She was Meinecke’s youngest sister. His middle sister Margarete Drollinger, née Meinecke, born in 1857, had died in 1904. 44 Otto Westphal (1891–1950), historian. Habilitated in Hamburg in 1922, became professor in Hamburg in 1933 and Königsberg in 1936. Gave up his chair in 1937 because of illness and a court case. Strongly influenced by the ideas of the conservative revolution of the 1920s and early 1930s and National Socialism.

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parted in a state of reasonable “agreement”. The official meeting was rather more spirited. I pretty much spoke my mind, and among other things I said that if the Bolshevists’ request had truly been the motive, then my work would also have served as a barrier, and pointed out the risk of political misinterpretation and the compromising, not of me as an individual, but of the Hireiko [Historische Reichskommission— Imperial Historical Commission]. The reactions were very interesting. Brackmann,45 who has obviously become quite the administrator and Braunian,46 defended the decision, which he said had been a diplomatic necessity and could not be undone. That the decision had been a good one was shown by the successful outcome: the Bolshevists had gone very quiet!! (o sancta simplicitas!) He also assured me that while my name had not been mentioned positively, it had not been mentioned negatively either; he himself was obviously unfamiliar with my work in any detail. Herkner claimed with great naivety that social policy came under social security legislation and that while there were “tactical” relations with the Anti-Socialist Law, it was quite unnecessary to deal with both developments together. Little Gustav [Gustav Mayer] also acted as if he had always assumed that I would not be dealing with the Anti-Socialist Law at all. However, I pretty much brought his parade grinding to a halt by referring to previous conversations and an exchange of letters two years ago, and at the same time I set out the unity of my topic very forcefully with reference to Oncken’s book on Lassalle.47 As I had suspected, Oncken proved the most dangerous opponent. He spoke at length about the desired two-sidedness [. . .] as complete a work as possible with numbered volumes, etc. At that point I interrupted pretty firmly, stating that I had no time for compensatory procedures and coalition cabinets in the world of scholarship. I demanded the right to compose a complete work myself, and if

45

Albert Brackmann (1871–1952), medieval historian. Professor in Berlin from 1922. Appointed director of the Prussian State Archive in Berlin in 1929 and provisional head of the Imperial Archive in 1935. Retired in 1936. Co-editor of the HZ from 1928 to 1935. 46 Allusion to the Prussian prime minister Otto Braun. 47 Hermann Oncken (1869–1945), historian. Obtained doctorate in 1891, habilitated in 1895. After ordinarius professorships in Gießen, Heidelberg and Munich, took up a chair in modern history in Berlin in 1928. Dismissed in 1934 following sharp attacks on him by the Nazi historian Walter Frank. Published a biography in 1904, reprinted many times since, on the philosopher and politician Ferdinand Lassalle, who founded the German General Workers’ Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein or ADAV), one of the predecessors of the SPD, in Leipzig in 1863.

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I could not do so within the Commission, then I would do so outside of it. This proved amazingly successful. O. [Oncken] stated that he had of course not meant it in such a mechanical sense and that I must keep going, otherwise, if it was only Gustav M., then people would say . . . Things then developed in such a way that I could have won a total victory. Meinecke: I should first complete my project and then one could see what form the other one might take! Brackmann protested, and I too stated that I was against such a psychological burden and being tied to a deadline. On the other hand, Hartung48 backed me up (too) strongly: neither study was right for a Commission, and both should be entirely independent projects. Finally, Gustav declared that having got to know my work plan, he could see that there was nothing left that might provide him with sufficient stimulation, so he would withdraw. Dismay all round. At that moment, I had the feeling that it would be better if I were not too victorious, partly out of human consideration for Mein. [Meinecke] and also because it is obviously better to have Gustav involved rather than someone else. He still has a year to go with his study of Engels49 and—one is afraid to be alone with him. So we ended up with the following compromise. I have complete freedom with respect to my work plan; I am to submit a more precise draft in six months’ time and have no obligations in the meantime. M. [Mayer] also has a free hand. After I have submitted my plan, he is to decide whether he feels there is still enough scope for him to contribute, especially if his study goes beyond 1890. In the meantime, under his direction, the assistant is to collect material, namely that produced by the federal states which I have not yet consulted, first in Hamburg, where he studies, then unpublished social democratic works, etc.50 We plan to exchange catalogues of records. I think I can be satisfied with this. It will no doubt be possible to make

48

Fritz Hartung (1883–1967), constitutional historian. Obtained doctorate under Otto Hintze in Berlin in 1905, habilitated in Halle in 1910. Became professor extraordinarius in Halle in 1915, professor ordinarius in Kiel 1922 and, as successor to Hintze, holder of the chair in constitutional, administrative and economic history in Berlin from 1923 until his retirement in 1949. 49 See above, p. 103f. 50 Dr. Alfred Schulz, who was employed by the Commission, gathered an extensive collection of material on the Anti-Socialist Law that shows his positive attitude towards the socialist labour movement. The planned edition failed to materialize as a consequence of the Nazi seizure of power. The material can be found in the Hamburg Library for Social History and the Labour Movement (Bibliothek für Sozialgeschichte und Arbeiterbewegung).

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many amendments, and I now have the confidence to complete my work freely and at an earlier date. Especially given that I have been promised that if there is agreement in six months’ time then I will also be given an assistant and backing with regard to holidays. So after three hours of palaver I felt quite at peace as I joined Meinecke for dinner at his place. However, with artful tenacity, he wanted to wheedle a few more things out of me, but I avoided any further commitments. [. . . . .] But I must bring this mammoth letter to a close. Very best regards, Your H. R. [. . . . .] 8. 21 December 1930: Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Siegfried A. Kaehler NL Kaehler 1, 144b, Brief 158 My dear friend, [. . . . .] But actually I wanted to tell you about Meinecke. Our meeting [. . .] was extremely cool. First, I conducted myself badly with respect to the ceremonial address by Walter Goetz, who had obviously looked in the wrong place (“Ullstein-Weltgeschichte”), and second, M. was very officious and kept company only with the excellencies, though quite a few big shots deigned to pay me a good deal of attention. I again found the situation with my unrequited love highly paradoxical, and in passing I heard from Brackmann that the archival treaty,51 which was the ostensible reason for the Gustav Mayer edition, has long since been annulled, but I forced myself to get in touch by telephone the next day. The result was that we arranged to meet in the afternoon after the meeting of the Commission for the Imperial Archive. [. . . . .] He was suddenly extremely warm. To save me trouble, he proposed

51 Reference to a treaty on the exchange of archival materials with the Soviet Union, see above p. 145.

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that it would be better to go to a café, to Josti on Postsdamer Platz! Try to imagine it, Friedrich catechizing to me for two hours amidst the hustle and bustle! After fairly sharp disagreements about social democracy and the state, the amazing happened: he let me speak for at least half an hour about the 14 September52 as the first happy event since the November,53 etc., and not only let me talk but also acknowledged the relative legitimacy of seeing things differently. With a relapse into the old impartiality, which, however, had a shocking aspect as it seemed like resignation. He wanted to explain the turnover with reference to the necessary contrast between a rationalist and irrationalist generation, but I wouldn’t let that pass either, and I did manage to put forward a number of points in light of my own experience showing that we are not “romantics”. The resignation, by the way, extended to the personal realm. He said that he no longer had any influence on the students and did not understand young people; it was time for him to retire completely and devote his remaining energies to Montesquieu.54 What I found worst of all was that I could not contradict him. In any case I wanted to tell you about this talk in case you make your usual New Year’s Eve trip to Berlin. [. . . . .] With all best wishes from the whole family, Yours always, H. R.

52 The Reichstag election of 14 September 1930, in which the NSDAP, which received only 2.6% of the votes in 1928, took 18.3% of the votes and 107 of a total of 577 seats. 53 The revolution of November 1918. 54 At the time, Meinecke was working on his book on Die Entstehung des Historismus (2 vols., Munich 1936; English edition: Historism, the Rise of a New Historical Outlook, London 1972), which included a detailed chapter (Meinecke Werke, vol. 3: Entstehung des Historismus, pp. 116–179) on Montesquieu, famous French theorist of the state (1689–1755). He published his initial findings in a 1932 essay: HZ 145, pp. 53–68: “Montesquieu, Boulainvilliers, Dubois. Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Historismus”.

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9. 2 March 1932: Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Theodor Lewald55 Federal Archive Berlin, holdings of the Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive, R 1506/349, copy To the Chairman of the Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive. To my great regret I am forced to withdraw my commitment to attend the meeting on the 8th of this month. I have been asked to give a series of lectures from the 9th in Reval [modern-day Tallinn] and Dorpat [Tartu] and in accordance with my position here I must give priority to these duties. I shall take the liberty of sending my vote on point III on the agenda in written form over the next few days. I shall also allow myself to make a few remarks on point II. I have certain reservations with respect to the academic qualifications of Oberarchivrat Valentin,56 both in themselves and with regard to the specific task at issue. I presume that other members of the Commission have similar thoughts. Apart from that, I also have a further objection. Everywhere you look at present extremely urgent scholarly tasks are having to take a back seat. Even in threatened border regions a highly alarming withdrawal from culture is occurring, and it is almost impos55 Theodor Lewald (1860–1947), administrator and sports policy specialist. After studying law and completing his military service, he entered the Prussian civil service in 1885. In 1904 he was made imperial commissioner for the World Exhibition in St. Louis. Undersecretary of state (1917) and permanent secretary (1919) in the Imperial ministry of the interior. Left the civil service in 1921. Became chairman of the German Imperial Commission for Physical Education in 1919 and championed sport and physical education. Campaigned from 1927—with eventual success—for the 1936 Olympic Games to be held in Berlin. Though he was a “half-Jew”, he became president of the Organizational Committee for the Summer Olympic Games held in Berlin in 1936, founded in 1933. Forced by Hitler to resign from the International Olympic Committee in 1937, which he had been a member of since 1924. 56 Veit Valentin (1888–1947), archivist and historian. Habilitated in Freiburg in 1910, he was appointed professor extraordinarius there in 1916, but had to return his venia legendi as a result of pressure from the faculty and the ministry of education and cultural affairs following a press scandal. Archivrat at the Imperial Archive from 1920. Taught in Berlin at the Commercial College (Handelshochschule) and German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik). Convinced supporter of the Weimar Republic, active supporter of the DDP. Lost his job in 1933 and emigrated first to England and then the United States in 1939. His major work was the Geschichte der deutschen Revolution von 1848/49, 2 vols., Berlin 1930/31. Reprinted Cologne 1970.

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sible to get to grips with those problems (German populations in other countries, the recent history of colonization in the East, etc.) that are of current foreign policy importance in the sense of intellectual defence and which play or ought to play a role in uniting the nation. I believe that large numbers of people will be quite unable to understand why, at a time like this, imperial funds should be spent on an exercise that will at best result in a new round of bitter, partisan squabbling. I do not fail to recognize that these reservations are connected with reservations with regard to staffing policy that I must express even more forcefully with regard to Oberarchivrat Hobohm.57 In more than twelve years, neither gentleman has managed to carve out a role for himself within either the administrative or research functions of the Imperial Archive; things have been found for them to do with a greater or lesser degree of difficulty. I can understand these efforts in human and administrative terms, but again, the clash with current realities is increasingly glaring. While the best educated young students are obstructed at every turn, while hundreds of able-bodied men are having to be laid off, sometimes under circumstances far more difficult than would be the case here, the issue which I have touched on in the above cannot, so it seems to me, simply be passed by. I myself do not wish to raise it, as I am unable to attend the meeting. I would therefore request that this letter be regarded as confidential and intended only for Your Excellency and the president of the Imperial Archive.58

57 Martin Hobohm (1883–1942), archivist and historian. Student of Hans Delbrück. Habilitated in Berlin in 1913. Entered the foreign service in 1915. Archivist at the Imperial Archive from December 1920. Appointed to teach on the history of warfare at the University of Berlin in 1920, where he was made untenured professor extraordinarius on 1 February 1923. Expert contributor to the 4th subcommittee of the “Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry on the Question of Responsibilities for the World War”, whose task was to investigate “the causes of the military collapse of 1918”. His expert testimony on “Soziale Heeresmißstände als Teilursache des deutschen Zusammenbruchs von 1918” (“Social grievances in the army as a partial cause of the military collapse of 1918”) led to sharp exchanges with his colleagues at the Imperial Archive, most of whom had been officers. As a pacifist and fierce opponent of the stab-in-the-back legend, he was dismissed on 30 June 1933 on the basis of the law on the restoration of the civil service of 7 April 1933. His authority to teach at the University of Berlin was withdrawn on 16 September 1933. 58 Hans von Haeften (1870–1933), officer and later Prussian army archivist. Member of the general staff. Towards the end of the First World War he was the chief of staff’s liaison officer responsible for dealings with the Imperial Chancellor. Head of the

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Should the matter be addressed during the meeting by others, however, then I would ask you to convey my opinion. I remain with my best respect Yours faithfully, Hans Rothfels 10. 23 April 1933: Hans Rothfels (Königsberg) to Siegfried A. Kaehler NL Kaehler 1, 144b, Brief 191 My dear friend, I was delighted to receive your telegram for my birthday. However, the letter that you mentioned in it has not yet arrived. I imagine you will have plenty of other things on your plate, and I probably have a pretty accurate idea of your current mood. The discussion in H. [Halle] prefigured it in a whole number of ways. We often think back with much gratitude to the lovely time we spent with you. It was very stirring yet, despite the clarity of your insight, in essence still highly theoretical. All kinds of things have happened in the meantime that have consequences. P. J. and similar things have become quite insignificant in the face of a crisis—I’m thinking above all of 1 April59—that reaches into the foundations of one’s private and professional life and thus the foundations of one’s inner life and inclinations as well. But I do not wish to write about things in general, but assume that you wish to be informed above all about the situation in concreto, which gives rise to general perspectives. First of all, the law60 and the form that must be filled in are the fundamental thing. On this basis, almost all of my current fellow sufferers would require protection, while some of the Aryans stink. And of

army’s military history division from 1919 to 1931. President of the Imperial Archive in Potsdam from 1931 to November 1933. 59 Presumably a reference to the organized boycott of Jewish businesses of 1 April 1933. 60 Reference to the so-called “law on the restoration of the civil service” of 7 April 1933 on the basis of which “non-Aryans”, unless they had been front-line soldiers or members of the volunteer corps, were dismissed from their civil service posts.

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course I also accept the law for the time being. But that doesn’t settle the matter either for me or the ‘others’. As for me, in principle I share the view of the Göttingen Nobel Prize winner Frank61 [Franck]: participation in a world war is an accident of world history. One cannot demand that such an event be staged in every generation simply for the purpose of personal vindication. To go on teaching as an ‘exception’ while—apart from other restrictions [. . .]—my children are kicked out of school or are refused admission to university or can attend only as aliens, can only lead to new impossibilities, which one must perhaps put up with for a while, but which no more constitute a basis for life than possible qualifications out of consideration for the stock market. In light of this state of affairs, neither materially nor ideally am I capable of coming to Franck’s conclusion. I say ideally because I am a historian rather than a physicist, and because I feel particularly obligated to uphold the principle that there is such a type as the German of the will (though not of the blood) who is ready to serve and that this state in particular has need of the warning voices of our meagre generation at the university, amidst the failures both old and young. Politically, this would end up not in a negative but positive form of toleration, a kind of legal form of ‘reception’, but, unless a Prussian principle of state reasserts itself, involves a rapid and ‘inglorious’ end. This is confirmed by the stance of those on the other side. I certainly hear lots of “words of encouragement”, and not just from people who have suddenly discovered incriminating grandmothers. My students in particular have conducted themselves irreproachably. During the holidays at least 40 men got together and sent to me personally and to the D. St. [Deutsche Studentenschaft, the federation of student unions] a presentation of a very creditable standard in both cases. Every single member of the managing committee of the D. St. acknowledges the legitimacy of this document and its content—but precisely because of this, precisely because I refute the principle (“the Jew who writes German is lying”) I have to leave. Or as one of my people quite rightly put it: the fact that you have done successful work in the East is an

61 James Franck (1882–1964), physicist, from an upper middle class Jewish family in Hamburg. Publically expressed his opposition to the dismissal of Jewish colleagues in 1933 and resigned from his post as professor of experimental physics and as one of the two directors of the Institute of Theoretical Physics—the other was Max Born—in Göttingen, though as a veteran he was not himself dismissed. Emigrated in 1933. Awarded the Nobel Prize for physics together with Gustav Hertz in 1925.

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aggravating circumstance rather than a mitigating one. This is in other words a dialectical situation, whose positive demand I shall fight for (that is, that I must be “tolerated” not just anywhere, but here, at one of the “national universities”), but which is going badly for me at the moment and looks very likely to end badly as well. On Easter Monday, our “A.u.Srat”,62 consisting of an Obersekretär and a professor extraordinarius of jurisprudence, who was still a committed S.P.D. man a few weeks ago, called for the vice-chancellor to suspend me and threatened to send in the S.A. if this was not done in both my case and that of Hensel.63 Technically, the vice-chancellor conducted himself quite correctly in comparison, but advised me in a roundabout way (!) and then directly when I had exposed this method, to apply for leave of my own bat. The private lecture which I then gave this former regular officer on the concept of moral courage and the nature of the university is, I believe, one of my best, but perhaps my last at the Albertina. I see three possible outcomes: the vice-chancellor himself now demands my suspension “to maintain law and order”. I suspect that this has already happened. Or the matter is settled from above in accordance with the law: they are trying to prohibit local action (our Gauleiter here is locked in the most intense of battles with the Oberpräsident). Or no action of this kind is taken from above. The first option is by far the most likely. Objectively, I would find it shameful and would feel particularly sorry for my children. Subjectively, it probably wouldn’t be too bad. It would spare my nerves, would obviously entitle me to claim a pension and trigger all kinds of measures—perhaps resulting in the third outcome. My approach to this is to officially refuse to assume that this is the case for the time being, and advise against every action intended to oppose it. I am focussing provisionally on II and III. I have resigned from all my honorary posts, in some cases with quite blunt letters, but at the core, in my teaching post, I will make it a question of either/or, that is, only brute force will stop me from holding my lectures, which will probably lead to conflict in the lecture hall. But if I get to speak, I intend to state quite clearly in both personal terms and in terms of historical philosophy why I regard

62 Presumably a reference to the “workers’ and soldiers’ councils” established during the revolution of 1918/19. 63 Albert Hensel (1895–1933), jurist. Made lecturer in Bonn in 1922 and professor extraordinarius in Bonn in 1923. Professor ordinarius in Königsberg from 1929. Died in Pavia in 1933.

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it as my right to go on lecturing as normal and why this is in the best interests of the state. I will not, of course, ever do this in a provocative way, but with a clear [“demand” crossed through and replaced with:] reference to positive toleration and free room for manoeuvre within the generally given line, which cannot, however, be re-affirmed every hour. I think this is the only approach worthy of me, and it is also what my students expect of me. If the universities are to mean anything at all, the crucial thing will be to separate clearly between character and lack of character and set oneself clearly apart from the mere frenzy. Fate has decreed that, if I should make it to the lectern, I shall be asking myself this question sooner than others, including you, though in my opinion you can wait to ask it. Doctrinaire anti-Semitism (I continue to share the real variety) is simply the most extreme aspect of all those things mixed in like a murky residue with what is otherwise undoubtedly an idealistic awakening. The role played by the officers’ epaulettes in 191864 is being played by the “Jew as the enemy” in 1933—the only opportunity for a “total victory”. This “as if” in the Wilhelmine and Weimarian style plays a decisive role in every sphere (journeys and festivals, foreign policy and reform of the Empire) and, even more than in March 1918, consumes the psychological reserves of this last-ditch stand. We are, I suppose, of one mind on this. This is precisely why those who can should not give up their academic duties. Except that my situation is more paradoxical in this regard. I probably have a more positive relationship to certain features than you, or I could take part in the attempt to rebuild things here in the East (should the Masurians for example become Polonized—just as they want to Hebraize the Jews), but first I have to fight for the preconditions. As seriously as I am willing to take the Volkstum movement, for me the state is not the exponent of the blood and other facts of nature, but a historical ordering principle and objective spirit. I must close, though there is much more to say. Make sure that you write back to me soon so that I can scrutinize my actions in light of your opinion before the crucial week is past. My wife and children are very brave. I myself worked very well in March, but am now becoming

64 Many officers were stripped of their epaulettes by revolutionary soldiers in the revolution of 1918.

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quite lame. It is easier to learn to walk again on one leg at 24 in a physical sense65 than it is to do so mentally at 42. With old loyalty, Your H. R. 11. 5 August [1934]: Hans Rothfels (Neuhäuser)66 to Albert Brackmann NL Brackmann 29 Dear Herr Brackmann, I am most grateful for your lines and the friendly sentiment which they convey. As you yourself refer to an “untenable state of affairs”, I feel entitled to tell you that I have certainly experienced the numerous setbacks—and now the fact that it was clearly impossible to obtain an invitation to Kahlberg67—as materially injurious and personally insulting, but that I was prepared to stick it out as long as I could still be of use up here within the narrower boundaries of my post. Over the last three semesters, this was, I believe, still very much the case, and was confirmed by the fact that the history students have unanimously stuck by me. Their ranks were even swelled by new first-year students. Three weeks ago, the history department unanimously rejected a request by the leadership of the national students’ association to distance themselves from me. Just a few days later I was informed of my transfer “to another university”. Your diagnosis has thus been confirmed, though in a manner which, at this point in time and in this form, has surprised me and which is very hard to bear. I am thus all the more eager to make use of your offer of a verbal discussion whenever the opportunity should arise. But as it will probably be some time before that can happen, I would like to emphasize on principle that I would still feel obligated to contribute 65

Allusion to the loss of a leg in the First World War. Estate in the Prussian administrative division of Königsberg, Fischhausen district, seaside resort. 67 Reference to the first conference of the Northeast German Research Association, held from 6–10 August 1934 in the East Prussian seaside resort of Kahlberg. See Haar, Historiker, p. 203. 66

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to research and teaching in your organization’s field of activity in the northeast, should there be a loyal intention of this kind and should a way be found that is compatible with honour. I would not, however, cling to this speciality but, as I have tried to do already, pursue it within the framework of general history. I hope that the Kahlberg conference is a great success. As ever yours faithfully, Rothfels 12. 12 October 1946: Hans Rothfels to Friedrich Meinecke NL Rothfels 167 Future address: 6007 Woodlawn Ave Chicago 37, III. U.S.A. My dear Herr Meinecke, I ought long since to have replied to your letter of 3 June,68 by which I was very touched and moved. But I wanted to wait until I knew that you were safely in Dahlem. We have finally been reassured on that front, first indirectly through a letter from Lina Mayer69 to my sister, then through your wife’s letter to Edith,70 and finally last week, when we saw your card while visiting Frau Holborn at Yale. You can see how eagerly we suck up any news, and we share your pleasure that this at least has worked out. As difficult as the circumstances remain, the fact that you are together again and in the old neighbourhood makes everything much easier to bear, as so clearly apparent in your wife’s stoical letter to Edith. Is Professor Pinson, who arranged this

68

Reprinted in Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 250f. Lina Mayer (1886–1971), née Kulenkampff, student of Meinecke from the Freiburg period. Obtained her doctorate in Freiburg in 1911. Town councillor (DDP) in Heidelberg from 1919 to 1922. Teacher from 1922 until her enforced retirement in 1934. Worked in the field of social education for the Protestant Church after 1945. 70 Edith Lenel, b. 1909, historian, emigrated to the USA in 1936, where she worked as professor of German. Ultimately became chairperson of the German department at Montclair State College. Retired in 1972. Meinecke and his wife were close friends of her parents from the time of Meinecke’s teaching post in Strasbourg from 1901 to 1906. 69

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for you, the student of Hayes who worked on “pietism and nationalism in Germany”?71 I would like to shake his hand should I ever meet him here. I was of course particularly interested—actually that doesn’t begin to cover it, I was deeply moved—by what your wife wrote about your return to teaching, despite all the physical obstacles and problems, and what you yourself told me about the circumstances and thrust of your work. I think I am fairly energetic and flexible myself, and I have experienced something of Muenchhausen’s remedy of pulling yourself out of the bog by your own hair, but I am filled with amazed admiration at such determination and intellectual tenacity. Whether I can fully endorse the content of your ideas is of minor importance compared with that. I suspect that I would come to more radical conclusions in some areas and less radical ones in others than you currently do. When I read the advance copy of your chapter, I was reminded of a conversation I had with you once in which you said that Ad. Wahl72 was not so very far from the truth with his theory that the French Revolution would not have happened if colonel such and such had acted differently at a particular moment. There have been many opportunities to contemplate this conundrum over the last twelve years, and I am not suggesting that I am done with it yet. So I shall give careful consideration to what you say in your book.73 I received it just a few days ago—thank you very much—but have been able to do no more than leaf through it as yet. As I myself have now got to know more about the West, I would probably go further in some respects than you do, yet for that very reason I would take a less harsh view of Germany’s wrong turns than you do. If I am able to find the time, I would very much like to write something about crisis and historical consciousness or the like further to your book or in order to inform people about it.

71 Koppel S. Pinson (1904–1961), American historian, a student of the historian Carlton J. H. Hayes, to whom he dedicated his book Modern Germany. Its History and Civilization, New York/London 1954: “To Carlton J. H. Hayes, distinguished historian, inspiring teacher, devoted friend.” Pinson published the book Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism in New York in 1934. In 1946, he helped Meinecke and his wife to move from Göttingen to Berlin. 72 Adalbert Wahl (1871–1957), historian, taught at the University of Tübingen from 1910 to 1938. Wrote several books on the prehistory, history and after-effects of the French Revolution. 73 Meinecke, German Catastrophe.

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At the moment, however, I am in a state of transition that leaves me little time or opportunity for reflection. As the letterhead shows, we are in the process of moving to Chicago. Implicitly, this means that my guest role over the summer was pleasing to both parties. We found the atmosphere far more open, in both human and academic terms. The resumption of intellectual links with Germany is a conscious item on the agenda here. The first picture that I saw hanging in the corridor of the history department was that of Hermann Oncken.74 The German element is strong and respected at the university. Among others we have Arn. Bergstraesser from Heidelberg, Bachhofer, the Chinese art scholar from Munich, Pauck, a student of Holl, the best historian of the Reformation in the country, Middeldorf 75 from Florence is chairman of the art department, etc. The size of the place and the more elevated niveau are having a highly stimulating effect after the many years of more or less school-like teaching. In my course on German foreign policy from 1871–1945, for example, I had about 80 graduates and in one on historic thought about 40. It may amuse you to know that in the latter, which, following a lengthy introduction on the turn of the 19th century, did in fact lead from Ranke and Michelet

74 Hermann Oncken had to give up his chair in Berlin in 1935. Meinecke’s intervention on Oncken’s behalf provided the final impetus for his ousting from the post of editor of the Historische Zeitschrift; see above, p. 15. 75 Arnold Bergsträsser (1896–1964), political scientist and sociologist, habilitated in 1928. First a lecturer at the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in Berlin, he was professor extraordinarius of state sciences in Heidelberg from 1932. Dismissed in 1935, he emigrated to the United States where he initially taught in California and at the University of Chicago from 1944. After numerous sojourns as visiting professor he returned to Germany for good in 1954 and became professor of political science and sociology at the University of Freiburg. President of the German branch of UNESCO from 1960 to 1964. Wilhelm Pauck (1901–1981) was a theologian and leading church historian. Born in Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1925. Professor of church history and history at the University of Chicago from 1939 to 1953. Professor of church history at the Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1953 to 1967. Visiting professor at the universities of Frankfurt a. M. and Marburg in 1948/49. Ludwig Bachhofer (1894–1976) became a lecturer in Munich in 1927. Professor of art history, especially the art of Japan, China and India, at the University of Chicago from 1935. Ulrich Middeldorf (born in Strassfurt in Saxony in 1901, died in Florence in 1983) obtained his doctorate in Berlin. Worked at the Institute of Art History in Florence from 1924 to 1926. Was considered an opponent of National Socialism. Emigrated to the United States in 1935, where he worked in Chicago until 1953, initially as assistant professor, and later professor in, and head of, the department of art history, and concurrently, from 1941 to 1953, as honorary curator of the sculpture collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1953 to 1968 he was director of the Institute of Art History in Florence.

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to Spengler and Toynbee,76 you of course played a role as well—with “Causalities and values” (“Kausalitaeten und Werte”), “History and personality” (“Geschichte und Persoenlichkeit”) and the introduction and conclusion of Machiavellism (Staatsraison). One of my students got seriously hooked on you and thinks that Anderson and Beard-Vagts,77 the only ones who have written about you here, failed to do you justice. He wants to write a master’s thesis on you78 and because he persisted after I had made the difficulties sufficiently clear to him I have given him the green light. I am quite curious to see what comes of it. The students as such, mostly veterans who know at least something about European complexities and are decidedly keen to get away from slogans, have made a very good impression on me, and the feeling appears to be mutual. The result was that I was offered the professorship made available by the retirement of Bernadotte E. Schmitt.79 This not only brings to an end a period of great personal uncertainty but also provides material possibilities of a kind I have not enjoyed so far and would be unlikely to improve upon anywhere in this country, as there will be plenty of PhD students (probably too many) and as I am expected to teach history of ideas, foreign policy, and Central European history, particularly nationality problems. I hope that this field of study will provide objectively justifiable opportunities for visits, but apart from that, as I did not choose it for myself, I take it as

76 Leopold Ranke (von Ranke from 1865; 1795–1886), the leading German historian of the 19th century; Jules Michelet (1798–1874), one of the great French historians; Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), author of the contemporary bestseller Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte (2 vols.), Munich 1918–1922 (English title: The Decline of the West, London 1922), Spengler was a philosopher and political journalist; Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975), classical philologist and ancient historian from England, attracted a great deal of international attention with his book The Study of History (12 vols., London 1934–1961), a study of the rise and fall of world civilizations, of which he initially referred to 23, though this was later reduced to 13. 77 Eugene N. Anderson, “Meinecke’s ‘Ideengeschichte’ and the Crisis in Historical Thinking”, in: Medieval and Historiographical Essays in Honor of James Westfall Thompson, Chicago 1938, pp. 361–396; Charles A. Beard/Alfred Vagts, “Currents of Thought in Historiography”, in: AHR 42 (1936/37), pp. 460–483. 78 Philipp J. Wolfson, “Friedrich Meinecke and the German Nation”, unpublished masters thesis, University of Chicago. See also, Wolfson, “Friedrich Meinecke 1862– 1954”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956), pp. 511–526. 79 Bernadotte E. Schmitt (1886–1969), famous American historian, professor in Chicago from 1925 to 1946. Chief American editor of the Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945 from 1949 to 1952. Editor of the Journal of Modern History from 1929 to 1946.

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given that in this way and in this place, as far as possible, I shall live up to the things I had in mind twenty-five years ago. Incidentally, I also met Gerhard in Chicago, and we had a good talk. I had a lengthy reply to my letter from Kaehler, and I hope that the old feeling of closeness will gradually take hold again. One never forms new friendships of the same kind at our age and in a foreign country. Letters from my students give me much pleasure. I would be grateful if you would pass on my regards to Hartung, who I was pleased to hear had made it through, and of course to Lina Mayer, who I wrote to recently, and above all to your family. With all best wishes Your Hans Rothfels 13. 30 April 1947: Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rothfels NL Rothfels 186 Dear Herr Professor, Your letter of 5 February reached us only a fortnight ago and my husband and I were very pleased indeed to receive it. It really is very nice of you to take the time to write to me when you are so overburdened with work and setting up a new home in Chicago. It is a gift of fate that old threads can be woven together once again, that before one departs this earthly realm one has another chance to correspond with those who have shown one kindness in past years of abundance. Our contact stretches so far back in time and Freiburg and Jena come to mind, and then the Berlin years. For my husband, it is also so heartwarming and gladdening that the loyalty of his students helps him cope with his old age and this time of great hardship and bolsters his physical strength. Once again, you have spoiled us—I thanked your dear wife in the letter and my husband, like the rest of us, is enjoying this very real support from America. The German people are going through a very difficult time at the moment—it is hard to get hold of potatoes, there are no vegetables at all, we’ve only had meat, in the form of sausage, once since Easter—so those who are getting nothing extra are in a dreadful predicament. People are becoming sullen and

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unfriendly—and steal whenever they get the chance. One is often so sad about it and must sadly agree with the victor’s harsh appraisal of our youth. We find explanations for these lapses and when the people have enough to eat they will get back in line. There are also decent boys and girls who quite understand their lonely mother’s plight. They never complain and are always ready to help out. Frau Thimme (Rehbrücke)80 popped round yesterday with a manuscript by her husband, who was buried under the rubble of the archive when it was bombed—so that my husband could appraise it, and she spoke with such enthusiasm of her two children, who are always so willing to lend a hand. She herself is facing great financial hardship, looked truly wretched and said that her children were in a similar bad way, but her eyes lit up with gratitude for the happiness that she had found through her relationship with her husband. The widows’ lot is a very hard one everywhere and the financial adjustment is extremely difficult for many. The widow’s pension is currently being decided upon here—I believe it is 90M a month, which is not much for a professor’s wife. Some get by, others don’t. But Vice-chancellor Stroux81 really is very kind and helpful and has managed to ease some anxieties for the time being. Frau Marcks82 lives with her elderly sister on Lake Constance, receives CARE packages from America and a pension and makes ends meet by knitting—but she’s managing. Andreas’83 fate is still not clear. Our local circle of colleagues is very small. [. . .] I have neither the time nor energy to cultivate more of a social life. I am often exhausted in the evenings, and am profoundly grateful that I still have duties that have meaning and provide fulfilment, and am grateful above all that my dear husband is still with us. That is a tremendous gift of fate. He says a special hello to you and warmly expresses his gratitude to you, as your review of his Catastrophe did him a great

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Hans Thimme (1889–1945), Prussian state archivist. Johannes Stroux (1886–1954), classical philologist, professor in Berlin 1935–1954, vice-chancellor of Humboldt University from 1946 to 1947, president of the German Academy of Sciences from 1946 to 1951. 82 Wife of the historian Erich Marcks (1861–1938), who was a close colleague of Meinecke from 1922 until his retirement from Berlin University. 83 Willy Andreas (1884–1967), professor in Heidelberg from 1923. Considered a liberal democrat in the 1920s, but came to an accommodation with the Nazi regime and lost his post in 1946. He was reappointed in 1948. Retired in 1949, and subsequently taught in Tübingen and Freiburg until 1959. 81

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deal of good.84 All of us were also deeply moved by the address by your [female] student during the Christmas period. It was marvellous stylistically and showed great inner strength—how edifying such distinguished individuals are. It was lovely of you to give us this pleasure. How, I wonder, will your new life turn out? Incredible demands are being made of you with respect to language and style, those things for which you have such tremendous talent. It must be truly gratifying to have reached the heady heights of a place like Chicago after all the upheavals you have been through! Our “summer” (!) has begun again and my husband concluded his 1st session85 with satisfaction and was very satisfied with its make-up. His increasingly poor hearing is a hindrance and very sad. I am hoping that a hearing aid will make things a little easier for him, but my husband is so completely untechnical that it is hard for him to make such an adjustment. The days of the stagecoach were the best! But he let himself be talked into flying and then condemned the express train—so with any luck modern technology will win him over again! Otherwise, he is amazingly sharp of mind. A departing foreigner recently said to me “sounds tired and hears poorly—but his mind is so sharp and so old”. He is having so many positive experiences and is evoking much interest. People visit him and his eyesight still allows him to read a great deal. In the morning, before breakfast in bed, boosted by your generous gifts, he enjoys the luxury of looking at art portfolios—all the art books in the house are passing through his hands once again and a thousand wonderful impressions of the times we have enjoyed together appear before him, or are passed on to me in fragments as I “skip through the house as stoker and housekeeper”. I often long to make use of the few years left to me with a mind that still works very well to go through my books and art materials, but there’s so much to do, and one is consumed by everyday tasks. The life of the German housewife is strenuous these days, and she gets only the meagre ration provided by Card V, though she does get Card III for two months.86 We had a very lively afternoon

84 Review published in: Mitteilungen der Literarischen Gesellschaft von Chicago, Illinois, vol. 3, no. 4, 10 January 1947, pp. 8–10. 85 Reference to Meinecke’s seminar. 86 Karte V was the ration card for the non-working, who received the least rations. Karte III was for white-collar workers, while workers and labourers received Karte II or I.

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at the house of the sociologist Oswald Schneider87 and got on well with an invited couple through our common friendship with Krauske88 and Königsberg. You would have enjoyed taking part in our discussion. Unter den Linden [street in the Soviet sector of Berlin] was decorated with red flags today and the university hoisted the flag too! But here in the American sector we had a quiet time of it, merely sighing at the fact that the special day89 brought such cold weather and rain despite the blossoming of the fruit trees. People are desperate to see some sunshine and there is still very little sign of the natural world coming to life. But where can one go? Even a trip to Potsdam is impossible, so we are left with our little garden and its vegetable beds. There’s not a flower left in it, we’ve become materialists, a professorial household of Mangold-scoffers! Frau Lina90 is in a very delicate condition, but is never far from our thoughts. [. . .] Best wishes to you and your wife and once again thank you so much for your friendship, gift and letter. Did your wife receive my letter? Your Antonie Meinecke91

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Oswald Schneider (1885–1965), political economist and professor in Berlin, who had a close relationship with Meinecke. 88 Otto Karl Krauske (1859–1939), historian. Professor in Königsberg. Close friend of Meinecke since his time working at the Prussian Secret State Archive in Berlin. See Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 90–99. 89 Reference to 1 May, a public holiday. Evidently her letter was not finished on 30 April. 90 Lina Mayer, née Kulenkampff. 91 Addition by Frau Meinecke at the bottom of the first page of the letter: “Lina received letter and medicine”. Reference is to Frau Lina Mayer, née Kulenkampff. Additions on the final page: “My husband is always deeply touched by the smokers’ greetings. He is still a great lover of tobacco! Niemöller will soon be bringing me your greetings. He wants to become our minister again”. Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), Protestant theologian. Minister in Dahlem from 1931 until his arrest in 1937 as one of the most high profile champions of the church opposition to the Nazi regime. In various concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. Made acting chairman of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland or EKD) and head of its foreign department in 1945. Resigned from these offices in 1956. Regional church leader of the newly constituted Protestant Church of Hesse and Nassau from 1947 to 1964.

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14. 14 November 1947: Hans Rothfels (Chicago) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Meinecke, Thank you very much for your detailed letter of 17 August,92 which arrived yesterday. I find it deeply moving that you have devoted so much time and effort to me. And it means a lot to me that you did so. If the lines slant upwards more than they used to, the characteristic shape of both your thoughts and handwriting is nonetheless of an admirable firmness that many a younger man might envy. 92

Printed in Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, pp. 283–285.

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I am of course particularly grateful for the kind words which you included for Wolfson.93 I read them out to him and he was “thrilled”, as they say here. Both of us know how much still requires improvement, and I will see to it that not only the “partial blindness” but other misunderstandings as well are weeded out as far as possible. But I am pleased that I sent you the incomplete draft. It seems to have served its purpose of giving you pleasure. I am also very grateful for your kind and understanding words with regard to Bismarck.94 How good it would be to talk about all these things. If only that could happen and in good time. Just a few weeks ago I turned down an appointment in Heidelberg. It is impossible to simply give it all up from one day to the next, as friends and colleagues seem to think one can do. But I would be happy to come for a visit (perhaps even a “trial run”) at some point. A few days ago I received a letter from Dehio,95 who informed me about the planned revival of the H.Z. and asked for help making contact with publishers. I think that will be quite possible, and again I’m especially pleased for you, as you can look forward to seeing the product of so much effort rise again. In a general sense, this symbol of unbroken will can only have a positive impact, and it is moving for all of us here to see the energy with which the work of reconstruction is being tackled in a field in which there is at least some freedom. I was also very impressed by the brochure for the “Studium Generale” [general studies courses]. But I don’t want to write a long letter today. To save you the trouble of reading, I have asked Epstein to convey a special request. My wife and I thank Frau Meinecke very much for her lovely letter.96 We thought of you on your 85th birthday, though unfortunately I neglected to write in time. Yours affectionately, H. Rothfels

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See above, p. 160. Hans Rothfels, “Problems of a Bismarck Biography”, in: The Review of Politics 9 (1947), pp. 362–380. 95 Ludwig Dehio (1888–1963), historian and archivist, worked as a “non-Aryan” in the household archive of the Hohenzollerns during the Nazi period. Director of the State Archive in Marburg from 1945 to 1954. Also honorary professor in Marburg from 1946 and editor of the HZ from 1949 to 1956. 96 See the letter of 30 April 1947, above, pp. 161–164. 94

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15. 4 June 1948: Hans Rothfels (Chicago) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Rothfels 167 Dear Herr Meinecke, It has been a long time since I have written because one feels so “emptyhanded” in every respect. I have now finished your essay on 48 for the Review of Politics, where it will appear in the October issue.97 It was not an entirely straightforward task, and I had to take a relatively free approach to the translation—hopefully not too free. I think I managed to correctly bring out the essence of your opinion, which impressed me greatly in its cohesiveness and balance, though inevitably I had to simplify certain expressions and break up some sentences, etc. One learns a great deal oneself about both languages in the process. I would have liked to have asked you about the term “hybrid”98 formation (applied to militarism). I know that you have always liked to use it and that it was never entirely clear to me what you meant. In English, the word has the unambiguous meaning of “hybrid” (Zwitterbildung) and if you stretch the interpretation sufficiently then that does in fact make sense when applied to modern militarism. But I am not entirely sure whether this is what you meant. Against my will, I myself was more caught up in 48 than I wanted to be. The American Historical Association (belated congratulations on your honorary membership, through which the Ass. has honoured itself )99 wished to devote the major part of its winter conference to the year 48 and I have agreed to give a lecture on revising our historical assessment with respect to the European revolution. And in addition I am to write an article on “1848. 100 years after” for the Journal of Modern History. Amid the pressures of the semester I have not managed to write a single line, though I am holding a seminar on the nationality problems associated with 48. From a European standpoint and with respect to the questionable nature of “progress” in the 19th century (Burckhardt), I am inclined to evaluate the issue of failure in a very different way than is common here, where revolution is quite unquestioningly “good”, so

97 Friedrich Meinecke, “The Year 1848 in German History”, in: The Review of Politics 10 (1948), pp. 475–492, translated by H. Rothfels. 98 By “hybrid”, Meinecke meant “something that in a sense goes beyond the happy medium and thus becomes harmful”. Letter from Meinecke to Rothfels of 22 August 1948, reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 293f. 99 See above, p. 112.

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long as it does not occur in South America, and where the Germans are berated for never having had a proper one. I do not deny that there is something to this view, but it is only a half-truth. And it needs to be shaken up in a country which has itself never had one, but only a war of liberation, and which is basically ultra-conservative, with a constitution that is fundamentally unchanged over nearly two centuries, and social practices that allow for almost no deviation, a country that now finds itself compelled to play a role in the greatest of global affairs. My little book on The German Opposition to Hitler, An appraisal100 is at last ready to be dispatched. I will try to get it to you through my sister. Unfortunately the print is rather small and you shouldn’t put yourself to the trouble of reading it. I just want you to have it and hope that through you it might be accessible to interested parties. I have no doubt overlooked certain things, and am in no way aiming for completeness, but on the other hand I was able to make use of a great deal of material that is quite unknown in Germany and highlight aspects which can be discussed more clearly here and which do in fact look very different now than in 1945. Essentially, my aim was to produce an interpretation anchored in universal history of what is only apparently a minor subject. With best regards, from my family to yours, As always faithfully yours, Hans Rothfels 16. 24 September 1948: Hans Rothfels (Chicago) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 221 Dear Herr Meinecke, We have often thought about you with concern over this critical summer and only hope that, alongside the inevitably heavy psychological burden, the new material hardships have not hit you and your family too hard. I heard through a third party about your daughter Brigitte’s

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Hinsdale/Ill. 1948.

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journey to England and you can evidently be very proud of her. We are now curious to see when and if Ilse Mayer-Kul.101 will turn up here. These new connections between people are the best possible thing that can happen. I am happy to know that my short study reached you, as my sister wrote me. You should of course have a copy as a symbol of devotion and attachment, whatever you think of this rather risky but for me very necessary effort. I would only ask that you do not torment yourself too much with the very small English print. A German translation102 is being negotiated. I have sent around 100 copies, but there are still a lot of demands, and I hope that the difficulties that may stand in the way of the translation will be surmountable. Your article on 48 will at last appear in the October issue of the Review of Politics and I will send it to you as soon as I have the opportunity. It was not easy to translate it into English, and I learned a great deal about the laws of both languages and how they rub off on historical and political thought. I hope I have managed to remain very faithful to the content while also producing a convincing translation into English, and I have no doubt that your article will receive a great deal of attention. It is head and shoulders above all the other examples of German literature marking the anniversary of which I am aware. I may not have seen everything, but apart from the pleasant little book by Heuss,103 I found everything painfully distorted. It is of course a difficult anniversary to ‘celebrate’. I feel that you have brought out marvellously the intricate nature of this tragic event and I admire your sure hand. It will not surprise you that I see things differently to some extent. In a long essay of my own, which will be appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Modern History,104 while referring appreciatively to your specifically German and essentially social interpretation, I strongly emphasize two other aspects: the universal character of a tragic decision made in the middle of the century (in reality, all revolutions have failed, not only the German one; and a turning

101 Ilse Mayer-Kulenkampff (b. 1917), historian. Daughter of Lina MayerKulenkampff. Published the essay “Rankes Lutherverhältnis dargestellt nach dem Lutherfragment von 1817” in HZ 172 (1951), pp. 65–99, which presented some of the findings of her Göttingen dissertation of 1943 supervised by Kaehler. 102 A German translation entitled Die deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler. Eine Würdigung appeared in Krefeld, 1949. 103 Theodor Heuss, 1848. Werk und Erbe, Stuttgart 1948. 104 See above, p. 167.

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point occurred in relations between West and East more broadly) and, in connection with this, the dubious nature of the national principle as such. I also wished to rebel against a theory that traditionally sees revolutions in other countries (other than in South America) as a good thing and their failure as reflecting a flaw in national character—very peculiar in a country that has never had a revolution but merely a war of liberation and civil war and which in many ways is the most conservative of all countries (though the term “conservative” is considered a rebuke) and which now finds itself in a Metternich situation.105 I hope that, as I shall propose, the Review sends you a CARE package as a goodwill gesture. None of the American journals pay fees. We have had a good summer. I had my first proper holiday, which we spent in a deserted corner of northern Michigan far from the noise, filth and heat of Chicago. It was good to see nothing but water and trees again, and a lake as large and magnificent as the Baltic. There is also good news about our children. After nine years apart, we hope that our youngest will be coming over early next year. It will interest you to know that I have been invited by Göttingen to give guest lectures in the summer of 49. I would of course have to overcome a whole number of difficulties, but I hope it will work out. With the very best wishes to you and your wife, and all our best for the new year, Yours as always, Hans Rothfels 17. 4 January 1949: Hans Rothfels to Friedrich Meinecke NL Rothfels 167 My dear Herr Meinecke, From your wife’s card I was pleased to see that both packages arrived successfully. I hope they helped you in a small way to get through these dismal winter months. I’ve indirectly sent you copies of your

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Clemens Fürst von Metternich-Winneburg (1773–1859), conservative Austrian statesman, who championed a restorative, anti-liberal policy in the struggle against revolutionary tendencies in Europe. He was dismissed during the revolution of 1848 and fled into exile in England, returning to Vienna in 1851.

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essay, as well as the issue of the Review in which it appears. I have just returned from the gathering of historians in Washington, one third of which was dedicated to 48. You will be interested to know that your essay received frequent mention, from Walter Dorn106 among others, who spoke about problems of German unity; he was interesting but very much open to attack. My own paper, “Is There a Revisionism in the Historiography of 48?”, was very well received. Indeed it seems to me that all the new conceptions revolve around or are directed against Marx’s thesis. Even you take it far more seriously now than you used to. In other words, we have again learnt to think in terms of a universal crisis. And in that regard, with its confrontation between East and West, 48 is closer to us than any other event. I shall get a major essay on 48 to you through my sister. Above all though, I would like to say how moved I am by your departure from the Linden University.107 I heard about it from Lina,108 and about the scene in your house. It must be difficult for you, especially with respect to the Academy109 (or is that not included?), but it had to happen eventually, and we all feel a sense of satisfaction that you still play a representative role. I hope that the honorary duties of the vice-chancellorship do not give you too much stress! Your wife touched on the possibility of a reunion next year. As yet I hardly dare write about it, as so much is still unclear or might prevent it from happening. But there are plans to go to Heidelberg from April to June and Göttingen in July. If the army gives its placet, I would

106 Walter Louis Dorn (1894–1961). Grew up in a German-American family, the son of a minister. Studied theology and worked as a minister before becoming a historian. Professor at Ohio State University in Columbus from 1931 and Columbia University in New York from 1957. Came into contact with Meinecke in Berlin in 1932/33, when he took part in his Sunday walks. Special advisor to American military governor in Germany Lucius D. Clay on issues of de-Nazification in 1946/47. 107 See above, p. 113. 108 Lina Mayer, née Kulenkampff. 109 Meinecke resigned from the German Academy of Sciences only in 1950. This was a response to the publication of a flattering birthday telegram from the president of the Academy, Johannes Stroux, to Stalin on the occasion of his 70th birthday on 21 December 1949, which appeared in the Berlin Tagesspiegel on 28 June 1950. Because of the telegram, Meinecke, along with four other members of the Academy who taught at the FU Berlin, had already refused to take part in the ceremony marking the Academy’s foundation, which dated back to an endowment in 1700, and was merely formally a member. See Meinecke’s letter to W. Goetz of 31 March 1950 and to Spranger of 5 July 1950, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 303f. and p. 624.

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probably have reasonable freedom of movement during the time in Heidelberg and would of course attempt to come to Berlin. Would it perhaps be possible under these circumstances to provide me with a reason, through a lecture invitation that would place a financial burden neither on myself nor the Free University? This is of course a very hypothetical question. I will let you know if Heidelberg becomes a certainty, but it would perhaps be a good idea to consider the possibility in advance. With all best wishes for your good health, Yours faithfully, Hans Rothfels

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II. Dietrich Gerhard 1. 9 August 1914: Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat,1 In these momentous times, which show each one of us with particular force just what the nation means in the life of the individual, that he cannot exist at all without it, I feel compelled to thank you, as herald of the most profound and truest patriotism, for all that you have given me through your books. I would not dare thank you in this rather unusual manner if I did not feel the urgent need to, indeed, if it did not seem to me an obligation of gratitude. For, in my case, reading your books has not only been the source of the most profound stimulation, but far more than that: an experience. You have taught me to look at history with quite new eyes and at the same time—and I want to thank you for this in particular, especially now—in doing so you have enabled me to discern the fundamental forces of the present clearly and distinctly. “This is precisely what we are hoping for”, you state in last year’s address, “that in making an intellectual connection between past and present, we become more positive and more courageous in both our work and observations.”2 You have fulfilled this primary mission of history, its most difficult and greatest, for us, the new generation. Not in the sense that we can twiddle our thumbs and need not continue to work towards this goal—each one of us must achieve it for himself anew—but rather in the sense that you are our leader, you have shown us the way. And how much that means at a moment like the present one! How much strength flows from such knowledge! We cannot—for better or for worse—claim as our own the simple force possessed by the peasant and workman, that strength which flows from not thinking and not reflecting. We need different, more complicated, more refined values and yet ones which supply us with

1 “Geheimrat” was a title of honour bestowed, among others, on many leading professors until 1918. 2 Friedrich Meinecke, “Deutsche Jahrhundertfeier und Kaiserfeier”, in: Logos, 4.2. The lecture, held in Freiburg on 14 June 1913 is reprinted in: Meinecke, Preußen und Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, historische und politische Aufsätze, Munich 1918, pp. 21–40.

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courage and strength. This you have given me: you have taught me to recognize the intellectual forces of the time of awakening [in the early 19th century]. You have shown me the development of the German national idea, and under your direction I have got to know all the ideas and opinions that have come to light within it. And so I would like to say to you that I also view the great battle that has now begun from this point of view. Time and again, I feel consciously or unconsciously that this is the first war that we have waged over the existence of the German nation state, over that which has grown through that lengthy process of development that you have portrayed. Unfortunately, as I am still too young and undeveloped, it is not granted to me to join the masses in supporting the state myself, and so I must content myself with helping the combatants; but during this whole difficult period I draw strength from thoughts that have come alive within me through your stimulation. Since it is probably the one thing in my letter that might interest you in these times, I would also like to take the opportunity to thank you for all the stimulation you have given me through your books in a purely historical sense—if it possible in the first place to separate out these things in your case. For that, I believe, is the characteristic feature of your books: they are written solely for the sake of understanding, without secondary aims, and yet, through the uniquely elevated nature of the vantage point, through the clarity of their outlook, they impart not only knowledge of the past, but thereby—like no other book that I know—also strength for the present. Every one of your books ensures “that we become more positive and more courageous in both our work and observations”. It does not, therefore, seem out of turn to speak to you at this moment about purely historical stimulation as well. There is also the personal circumstance that I have just completed my Abiturium and, when not occupied by my job with the volunteer nursing, can therefore devote my thoughts entirely to history; indeed, should the war be over by then, I hope to be able to attend your lectures in the next semester. It is you, dear Herr Geheimrat, who first convinced me to study history. This does not mean that I only enjoy books like your own—that would merely be to savour the pick of the bunch. Rather, through the nature of your approach, the whole broad field of history, which formerly captivated me only to a certain extent, has come alive for me. The history of ideas perspective that prevails in all of your books and whose special appeal is based on the fact that one is always “con-


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fronted with the living personality as bearer of the idea”, has provided me with quite new perspectives on history. That which was once a disorderly chaos for me—political history, cultural history, etc.—that consisted of disconnected fragments, has now become a cosmos, indeed, only in this way has the significance of political history become clearer to me. It goes hand in hand with this that your books—especially Cosmopolitanism and the National State—put the forces, which always lead an intellectual life, in their rightful place for the first time, indeed elevate them to a position of dominance. What a boon this is for those who, with Wilhelm von Humboldt,3 believe “that the results in themselves are nothing, all that matters is the forces which they generate and which originate in them”! Then there is nothing that is dead; instead there is life everywhere. Then you see the course of developments. You will understand that Cosmopolitanism and the National State is therefore my favourite of your books. May I add something else? It also seems to me the most personal of your books. Your own view of the life of states and nations is also present within it, is itself anchored in history and thus itself provides new nourishment to other views. But all your books have made me familiar with the intellectual content of a particular era, while at the same time—like “Boyen” and “Radowitz”4 above all—they pulse with life because of the strong emphasis you place on personalities. I have you to thank for all of this, for endless stimulation. Forgive me—as a young person—if I have done so in such a candid manner. I hope that you do not mind my doing so, and draw comfort from the fact that it is perhaps interesting for you to see how strongly your books impact on a young person, particularly at times such as these. With the greatest respect, Gratefully yours, Dietrich Gerhard

3 Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), scholar and statesman. Meinecke deals in depth with the development of his ideas, particularly on the relationship between state and nation, in Cosmopolitanism and the National State. 4 Friedrich Meinecke, Das Lebens des Generalfeldmarschalls Hermann von Boyen, 2 vols., Stuttgart 1896–1899; Meinecke, Radowitz und die deutsche Revolution, Berlin 1913.

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2. 31 December 1914: Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat, Please allow me to send you my best wishes for the New Year. It is not only my personal gratitude for the extremely kind interest which you have shown in me that prompts me to write to you today. Above all, on behalf of many others as well, I would like to express my hope that you might work with undiminished strength and vigour in the new Germany that this year should bring us. I want you to know how deeply each of the words you have spoken over the last few months has penetrated my soul. I know—and I have heard the same thing from many individuals, both young and old—how your ideas have caught on. You yourself will no doubt have been thanked profusely from many quarters. Still, I hope that these few lines are in no way troublesome to you. I cannot thank you enough for holding aloft the flag of true patriotism at this time, which is both productive and dangerous with respect to the development of national feeling, for descending tirelessly into the deepest of shafts in order to uncover hidden sources and connections. How marvellously you have clarified the connection between state and culture, power and spirit in your essays, thus satisfying our most urgent need. Through your books you have shown us the connection between “Schiller’s human nation [Menschheitsnation] and Bismarck’s national state” in such a way that their development as a whole has become palpable to us. Hence, for us you have been both the disciple of classical idealism and the promulgator of Prussian-German Realpolitik, a symbol of that wonderful alloy that will hopefully always be characteristic of our Germany. Please allow me therefore, at the beginning of the new year and in the midst of a still unsettled situation, to write you to express my hopes that you might continue to be active in this way for a long time to come and impress the spirit of Humboldt and Bismarck upon the German people. Please allow me to add another, more personal note of thanks. You know how eager all we young men are to be out there. When the war broke out, and a fair number of us had to stay at home for physical reasons, at first we simply couldn’t believe it. But now I know that


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there are good things for me to do here as well. If, as your student, I can now absorb all your ideas, I hope to be able to pay you back later, again as your student, by faithfully administering your legacy, by propagating your ideas in a different form in the distant future. By taking me so kindly under your wing, you have also made the kind of impression upon me that is anchored in personal contact with you. For this too I would like to express my warmest thanks to you. For the New Year I wish you and your wife, to whom I would ask you to give my best regards, the fulfilment of all that we are hoping for. With great respect, Gratefully yours, Dietrich Gerhard 3. 16 June 1915: Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I was very sorry to hear about your illness. I can only hope that it is not too serious and that you are restored to health before long. As I do not know the nature of your illness, I would ask for your forgiveness should I be disturbing you with the short paper enclosed. It is intended as a small symbol of gratitude for the stimulation that you have so often provided me with hitherto, and for the very kind reception that I was so privileged to receive. For a certain period is coming to a close. That which I mentioned to your wife at the beginning of the semester as a possibility has now—since Whitsun—come to pass: following my enrolment, I have now been successfully assigned to a telegraph battalion and shall join up over the course of July. The only remaining uncertainty is exactly when, but that too will become clear in the next few days. You will understand why, under these circumstances, I am sending you the work now. It may also be that you have more time to look at it now than otherwise. Should I be wrong about this, I would ask you not to take it amiss that I have sent it you. I would not be bothering you with these pages in the first place if I did not wish to show you

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that, thanks to your guidance and stimulation, in the short time that I have been studying I have in fact already made some headway in history. This is the main reason I wanted to send you my work: in order to show you that I have truly got to know the vast field of history properly only through your guidance, that the ideas expressed in your books and lectures have been decisive for me, that your way of looking at things has also set me on the right path with respect to medieval history. The essay is a seminar paper from the earliest stages, something, in other words, which you probably never set eyes on otherwise. I am quite aware how skewed and immature much of it is, that much of it came out wrong because I had to finish it off so quickly. [. . .] You know how beholden I feel to you. Not just for the great personal kindness you showed me, but above all for the rich academic stimulation. That it is not merely “academic”, but is for the whole person, is something I learned in particular from Cosmopolitanism and the National State. Allow me to conclude by thanking you once again for reissuing, before the war has even ended, the book which we need so urgently at this of all times.5 I hope you feel well again soon and can resume your work afresh. Unfortunately I will be able to attend your lectures only very rarely, as I am now giving up my studies entirely apart from absolutely necessary seminars, in order, as you will understand, to do further physical training. I apologize once again for sending you these pages. With best regards to you and your wife, who, I am afraid, I have still not managed to thank for her kind letter. Respectfully yours, Dietrich Gerhard

5 The third edition of Meinecke’s Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat appeared in 1915.


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4. 8 September 1923: Dietrich Gerhard to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Professor, Forgive me for not writing this in my own hand; I am bedridden following an operation on a fracture suffered during the war. The Copenhagen project appears to be taking off.6 Herr Professor Friis7 will soon present my memorandum, a copy of which I recently gave you, to the board of trustees of the relevant fund. He has asked me to send a statement from you that he wishes to include, regarding the publication and my “qualifications as editor”, as soon as possible. Would you be so kind as to send the information requested to Professor Friis in the enclosed envelope? I would very much like to discuss the matter further with you, as I will have to strike a balance between the Literature Archive Society’s (Literatur-Archiv-Gesellschaft) plan to publish the first volume next year and the contradictory wishes of Professor Friis and the Danish co-editor,8 and I would greatly appreciate your advice. Would you be so kind as to let me know how long you will be in Berlin? If necessary, should I be bedridden for some time to come, I would ask you to do me the special favour, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, of visiting me at some point when you are in the city anyway, for I must quickly make my final suggestions to Copenhagen regarding the work’s form and date of publication. I feel very awkward about making this request, but in my current predicament, should you be leaving soon, I see no other option. As ever with respect and gratitude, Your Dietrich Gerhard

6

Reference to the publication of Niebuhr’s letters, see above, p. 32. Aage Friis (1870–1949), leading Danish historian and professor in Copenhagen. Corresponded actively with Meinecke. 8 William Norvin, professor of classical philology in Copenhagen. 7

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5. 29 October 1923: Dietrich Gerhard (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Professor, Unfortunately, we did not manage to implement our plan to send birthday greetings from Rothfels’ inaugural lecture9 from all those who attended the celebration last year—largely because we were so caught up in the events that we even forgot that we had planned to do so. So I for my part am taking this opportunity to tell you what a good number of others will no doubt say for themselves: that for us the 30 October 2210 is a vivid and ever-present memory. So many difficult things have befallen us since then that your statement, which I did not truly want to accept in my heart at the time, that we were far from being past the worst of our ordeal, has become the sad reality and the year that has since passed by is ending with a prospect that could be no more grave and bitter. Forgive me if I commemorate your birthday under such auspices, something which you probably wish to be largely ignored. Indeed I can only state explicitly once again that which this morning showed you implicitly with particular clarity: that there exists a vital community made up of those who call themselves your students, a community in which grateful respect for the human aspect of history has become so deeply rooted that we are unable to say whether we have become this way as your students or whether we have become your students because of it. The restrained warmth which we felt emanating from Rothfels’ speech today and which captivated us so utterly is the spirit of your spirit, and it is in this very [word illegible] which, I think, all your students feel connected, as different as the generations may be and as much as mine may differ even from that of Rothfels in some respects. [. . .] I truly hope that the awareness of what you have lastingly given us all may mean something to you, particularly in these

9 Inaugural lecture by Rothfels on 29 October 1923 following his habilitation in Berlin. 10 Meinecke’s 60th birthday.


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difficult, tension-filled days, and keeps alive the remaining confidence of victory within you, a confidence with which we look to the future, however much we might acknowledge our cruel fate. With grateful respect, Your Dietrich Gerhard 6. 29 May 1925: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 2 Dear Herr Doktor, [. . .] I have asked Brackmann to take the place of Vigener11 as co-editor of the Hist. Zeitschr. He is prepared to do so but wants to take on the full range of responsibilities only in around nine months12 and even then he wants an editorial assistant to relieve him of some of the regular duties. In the course of our search we thought of you, so I would like to ask you the favour of taking on this burden, which does after all entail certain attractions and benefits. Thus, during the first few months, until Brackmann has fully taken over as co-editor, you would be responsible for most of the tasks formerly handled by Vigener, while later on you would share these tasks with Brackmann. The fee is set at 100 Mk per issue (600 Mk per annum) for later; during the first months, after discussing this with Brackmann, you would receive more. I estimate that you will have about one hour on average to do per day later on—as far as possible, the best approach is to do all the work on specific days of the week and, as Br[ackmann] has suggested, one could get the bulk of the work done in the rooms of the history department. It’s best if I explain the details in person. For now I am merely asking for your acceptance in principle and would be sincerely pleased to receive it.

11 Fritz Vigener (1879–1925), medievalist, professor in Gießen. Co-editor of the HZ, 1914–1925. 12 Brackmann was in fact designated co-editor of the HZ only from 1928 on (vol. 137). See below, p. 239.

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I shall finish editing the forthcoming issue (131.2) with the help of my daughter Sabine. So you would have to start work only at the beginning of July. With best regards, Your Fr. Meinecke 7. 19 November 1935: Dietrich Gerhard (Cambridge, Mass.) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 58 Dear Masur, Your sister will have told you about my telephone call. I really was particularly sorry that you had had to leave by then and that I have now gone overseas without us being able to say goodbye properly or discuss possible future plans. In light of what your sister implied, I hope that everything has gone fairly well and that I shall soon receive news from you with all the details. I believe that every new start immediately gives us an opportunity to gather new strength. And productive action then generates greater enthusiasm for work overall and strengthens our power to cope with all the pressures we face. I myself of course still have some time to go before the real work begins here. But I am very pleased with how I have been received in this country and especially here in Harvard. The close links with German scholarship, evident at every turn, are of much benefit. Anything but narrow in this regard, people are highly attentive to the full range of issues in the overall intellectual life of the European peoples. They are clearly better informed and more receptive that I was accustomed to in Europe intra et extra muros [within and outside of the walls]. Though this may be a feature particular to Harvard. I hope with all my heart that if you leave you will make a similarly good start. I hope to hear more about your latest decisions soon. You know that I am thinking of you with the most earnest hopes for a dear friend.


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With best wishes from my wife and I, Your Dietrich Gerhard 8. 27 August 1936: Dietrich Gerhard (Norwich, Vt.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 177 My dear Herr Professor, I’m delighted to welcome you to New York and wish you all the best for your first week in America. I also want to inform you that we have decided to postpone our departure for the Middle West. We want to stay in this mountain country (where I can also use the library of Dartmouth College) until around the 7th and then make a short trip to Cambridge so that we can be there at least during the first few days of your stay in Harvard.13 I can thus attend your lecture on the 9th and we shall leave shortly afterwards. We are sorry that we will be armed with neither apartment nor car in Cambridge in order to make it comfortable for you (we ourselves are as yet unsure where we will stay). But we hope to be able to give you at least one or two practical tips or assist you in some small way. And in any event we are absolutely delighted to be able to greet you in a place dear and familiar to us. [. . .] My very best wishes once again, until our joyful reunion in Harvard Yard. Your Dietrich Gerhard

13 Meinecke’s sojourn in Harvard in order to accept an honorary doctorate from the university. See above, p. 111f.

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9. 5 March 1947: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 2 My dear colleague and friend, What wonderful gifts you have sent us! We are deeply moved and send you our most heartfelt thanks. In fact, my old students in the USA, all of whom are now teaching there, have shown me so much loyalty and kindness that I am deeply touched.


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You will no doubt have heard how we are doing from the Kuhns.14 Enormously privileged in comparison with the fate of millions of Germans, we too continue to suffer dreadfully, in my case particularly on account of the aches and pains of old age, which make work very difficult. A bit of teaching with a few students in my own home— for I can no longer go into the city unaccompanied—makes me very happy. I would be very pleased to hear in due course about your own work and how you are doing in general these days. Your great early work15 actually predestines you for the particular historical tasks with which we are currently faced: to view, understand and portray the world historical conflict between East and West within the context of a new drama. But someone will eventually have to continue the work on your Niebuhr edition.16 The Academy has received ample funds for such work. Could you perhaps give me some idea of what would be required? Of course there is a severe lack of younger workers—our junior staff is a field of rubble. Still! Our will to live is unshaken! With warmest wishes, Your grateful Fr. Meinecke

14 Helmut Kuhn (1899–1991), philosopher, and his wife Käthe Kuhn. Helmut Kuhn habilitated in 1930 in Berlin and worked as a lecturer there until 1937. Denounced as an opponent of National Socialism during a lecturing trip to the Netherlands, he emigrated to the United States in 1937. He taught at the University of Chapel Hill in North Carolina from 1938 to 1947. Returned to Germany in 1948 and was appointed to a chair in philosophy at the University of Erlangen. Professor of philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich from 1953 to 1967. Also vice-chancellor of the College for the Study of Politics (Hochschule für Politik) in Munich from 1960 to 1970. Kuhn did what he could to ensure the translation of Meinecke’s book Die Deutsche Katastrophe in the USA in 1946/47. See Meinecke’s letter to G. Mayer of 29 December 1946, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 266. 15 Reference to Gerhard’s book England und der Aufstieg Russland, see above, p. 34. 16 See above, p. 32 and Gerhard’s letter to Meinecke of 30 August 1948, below, p. 194f.

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10. 11 January 1948: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 2 My dear friend, Once again you have delighted and strengthened us with an exceptionally generous and well-chosen charitable package—for our diet can now be described as good, as a rare exception to the general state of want, thanks to the gifts of old friends and my émigré students. Who would have thought that our intellectual bond would ever have such material implications for us. In a way, however, that turns the materialist philosophy of history on its head: the material as the superstructure of the ideal! Thank you so much! From the lovely letter that I received from your mother,17 I hear that you yourself are facing a difficult struggle—which makes your gift all the more touching. I also hear that you are already working on a letter for me! Please don’t go to so much trouble. I myself can only write a poor and short letter, because my eye trouble is gradually getting worse and I must focus the rest of my capacity to work on a modest seminar with around ten students held in my own study, though it is now very cramped. We are currently going through W. v. Humboldt, and it is astonishing and heartening to see how they engage with it. We have a lot of young people with a real intellectual hunger here at present—which gives us hope for the future! If only one of these young characters could continue your Niebuhr edition! Or perhaps you yourself might even do so? The Academy would easily find the funds (granted by the Russians). But of course the technical difficulties—libraries and archives in ruins, every journey a challenge—are enormous and hard to overcome. I am not in the picture about where the sources for the edition currently are. Can you tell me anything about this or give me any kind of advice?18 I suffered another bout of bronchopneumonia in the autumn, and was cured by penicillin, though it aged and weakened me further overall. Whether I will live to see the resolution of the great global conflicts 17

There are three letters from 1948 (4 October, 16 October, 3 December) from Adele Gerhard, mother of Dietrich Gerhard, in Meinecke’s papers, but none from 1947. 18 See below, p. 194f.


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I do not know. Things look very gloomy, though not entirely hopeless. There is one thing I would wish for both you and us! That you are invited to give guest lectures at the university here at some point. Hartung, the only professor ordinarius in modern history here, would be very much in favour! With warm greetings, Gratefully your Fr. Meinecke 11. 5 August 1948: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 2 Dear Herr Gerhard, Once again you have delighted us and brought us welcome relief from the privations of everyday life with a charitable package containing the choicest of items—thank you so much! I am so deeply moved by every such parcel from my old émigré students and friends because they are a symbol of something far greater yet, of a loyalty and inner solidarity in matters of ultimate import, and this at a time of global destiny and change, whose extent and outcome we are as yet far from grasping. Again and again one is compelled to consider the causes of this global change in the recent and distant past and it is hard to shake off the sense of shock. For all the wretchedness of everyday life, in human terms we are doing fairly well in these chaotic times. Despite the blockade of Berlin, the food situation has remained the same here in the Western sector—thanks to the planes of the Western powers that roar above our heads. I am still more or less managing to do the seminar at home with a dozen gifted and keen students. But I am suffering greatly from the continual decline of my sight and hearing. I no longer have the time or energy to produce work of my own, but with any luck you will soon receive my lecture on Ranke and Burckhardt,19 delivered in the academy one year ago.

19

Meinecke, “Ranke und Burckhardt”, see above, p. 17.

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My warmest regards to you and your wife, and please send your mother my best wishes as well. Yours most faithfully, Fr. Meinecke 12. 30 August 1948: Dietrich Gerhard (Lindenbrook Farms) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Professor, I have just sent off a letter to your wife at last, in response to goodness knows how many letters from her! I was delighted to receive every one of them, though I failed to respond to any of them. Only this short stretch of holiday in the East (following two months of teaching in the old place, Harvard, at the summer school ) has given me the peace and quiet to write a detailed letter—and how much there is to say, if one wishes to bridge the gap created by time and space over the twelve years since the last time we saw each other in Cambridge.20 In the other letter21 I went into detail about the external form of our lives, about the family, our children growing up, general issues of professional life and especially the American education system. This gives me the courage to send you at last my long delayed report on what I might call my scholarly evolution, which I have long owed you. Your first letter, already almost eighteen months old,22 was itself so understanding, always accurately envisaging my current preoccupations, as only an old teacher, an understanding observer of his erstwhile student’s development, can do. Yes, you are right: for several years I have been making a start on a study which can at least in part be viewed from the angle of the East-West relationship. It is, however, very different in its structure and objectives than my book on England and Russia. There is some common ground with Hintze’s studies in comparative constitutional 20 Dietrich Gerhard met Meinecke in the USA when Meinecke was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University in Cambridge/Mass. in 1936. See above, p. 108f. 21 Unfortunately, this letter is not among Meinecke’s papers. 22 See above, p. 184f.


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history,23 but its point of departure is very different and it does not focus exclusively on constitutional history. I am not yet sure when and in what form I will be in a position to present at least provisional conclusions. I would need the time and leisure to focus. The nature of university life here makes this almost impossible to come by. Much of the time, I have as yet been able to work on this project only in the late evening and at night. Furthermore, in St. Louis I am generally dependent on borrowing books from other universities in the country. Nonetheless, I am making progress. My most fervent wish is that I might at some point manage to finish this study, which I see as a kind of life’s work. The best thing is for me to tell you about the motives which gave rise to it. Personal experiences, the upheavals of the age, the tasks facing the teacher of European history in America—you will find all of these different factors in my report. The best thing is for me to begin with the latter, as this will also give you an insight into my academic field and teaching methods and because a fair bit of personal experience is of course fused with the teaching. In professional terms I have had a particularly hard time here in some ways, while on the other hand things have gone particularly well. Hard in the sense that I have been and still am extremely overstretched, to what seems to me an excessive degree. For years, in addition to the seminar and the various weekly lectures of three hours each, for financial reasons I have also been giving an evening lecture as well as regular lectures over the summer (though these last two are usually in my regular field). Things have gone well in the sense that I have had an almost entirely free hand in the choice of my lectures and I was not forced—not even during the war, when I mainly taught soldiers assigned to us by the army through a special programme—to tackle materials that would not have been my thing in terms of research and teaching. That’s rare in this country. The big universities such as Harvard and Yale are excessively specialized, while the small colleges often limit themselves to courses providing a cursory overview. I only give one of my lecture courses every year: a kind of introduction to “European history since 1815” (though this is not open to

23 Otto Hintze, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. 1: Staat und Verfassung. Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Allgemeinen Verfassungsgeschichte. Ed. by Gerhard Oestreich with an introduction by Fritz Hartung, 2nd, expanded edn., Göttingen 1962. 1st edn. Leipzig 1941.

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first-year students); this is the only course not intended for graduates. All the others are intended both for later semesters in the college and for graduate students (as you will know, only the latter take history as their actual subject, the college students are often future jurists, businessmen, young men who want to go into the foreign service, etc.). In these other lectures I have developed a rota of 3-year periods. The first corresponds roughly to how it was usually done in Germany in the field of modern history: from the Reformation to the present. The other is an alternation between national histories: German history, Russian history, the history of the British Empire. For several years, however, I have done little to develop the latter in terms of research— first because it was too much for me and second because in this country it seems far more important to me to introduce the students to the nature of the old European society than to the history of the colonial countries, so similar to the development of their own country. Even Russian history, which seems to me important in itself, but even more so in comparison with—and in contrast to—its European counterpart, offers certain parallels with America despite the very different background: in the penetration of vast regions, the significance of a border advancing ever further into unsettled territory, and generally in terms of the institutional fluidity of a society not yet fully formed. This is easier to teach here than any part of old European history—by which I mean pre-industrial Europe. Europe before the final breakthrough to modernity in the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution. It is highly instructive for the European historian to teach European history in America, especially in the Middle West, where the link with Europe in social forms and architecture is a fair bit weaker than in the East—where, in fact, it has never existed. When teaching, one therefore has to start right at the beginning. And one feels all the more bound and compelled to do so the more one has to convey not merely a small part of European history, but a subject area in which the fundamentals of intellectual trends, institutions and society make themselves felt to the observer of their own accord. But if there is no parallel to the village and village community or to a peasantry living in closely adjacent dwellings, then the artisanry has never been truly at home here either and was suppressed early on and rapidly destroyed, while the civil service appeared only at a very late stage, and was created by democracy rather than preceding it. All of these points are in fact truisms, and yet one fully grasps the consequences of these differences in the country’s


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subsequent historical development and in the consciousness of the people only if one has to think them through. Of course, the tasks facing me here professionally coincided with my own experience of life in a country so very un-European in so many ways and with the awareness of having witnessed first-hand the menaces to the old European order and its comprehensive destruction since my youth. I think I have already written to your wife about the “un-European” dimension in connection with the question of upbringing and the mental growth of children. Much of this is a sign of the times—not in the sense of something temporary, but as a consequence of modern mass society and modern technology: the pressure to conform, the volatility and lack of independence in matters of taste, the fast pace of life, the danger of being consumed by one’s work for organizations and institutions (which is in fact expected). This is all part of the 20th century, only the countervailing forces were, understandably enough, stronger in Europe. This process as such was of course already discerned by wise observers such as Burckhardt and Tocqueville, and in his unrivalled account Tocqueville described it as already commencing in the 18th century.24 And one can certainly resist this process, attempting to foster the development of the personality within the family and professional realms (my main success as a teacher is founded just as much on the method as on the content imparted to the students), and you can be quite sure that day after day over all these years I have been gratefully aware that no political pressure of any kind has disrupted or inhibited my life. Without question, as a result of generations of living in individual freedom and the democratic construction of society, there is in this country a very lively tradition of resistance to all forms of violent political suppression. But the forces of modern collectivism are at work here in another “unpolitical” form. Toqueville also analyzed much of this—even with respect to the language—in astonishing fashion more than one hundred years ago, in the third volume of his book on America. In Europe, the standardization of customs and thought was hampered by the old diversity of regional and corporative ties, a diversity whose effects, it seems to me, were still being felt well into the 19th century; these ties

24 Alexis de Tocqueville, Ouvres, Papiers et Correspondance, vol. I: De la Démocratie en Amérique, Paris 1951. First published 1835–1840.

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were the substratum of modern individualism, forming a natural as yet undestroyed part of it, even when this individualism rebelled against them. You will understand that what preoccupies me most in your recent work—in your essay on 1848 and even more so your book on The German Catastrophe, which Schneider25 got to me perhaps as long as eighteen months ago—is above all the attempt to place events in Germany within a world historical context. “Again and again one is compelled to consider the causes of this global change in the recent and distant past and it is hard to shake off the sense of shock”, as you have just written in your latest letter of 5 August,26 which has arrived as I write this. I admire the elasticity and openness of your thinking and only wish that some of it might also remain alive within me. You will also understand that for all my deep interest in the old fatherland, I have not looked into events in Germany under Hitler with the same intensity as Rothfels. I am glad that his book27 has appeared, and wish that it would have a greater impact, particularly in this country, than it is probably destined to have. I saw the Rothfelses in Chicago during the winter, and they came to visit us for a couple of days in spring. We got on very well on the whole and actually forged a closer relationship than we ever had in Germany. I am at one with his semi-political goal of demonstrating to the Americans the strength and intensity of the opposition (here, this has often been made out to be purely practical-utilitarian and arising solely from the awareness of looming defeat) and its early and profound ideological taproots. But I myself have no such directly political objective. And I have been even less attracted over the last few years by the prospect of exercising a direct political influence in the manner of Hajo [Holborn] and so many native and non-native American historians and social scientists. And I would have little to offer in that regard. My main—if you like, political—preoccupation has been the attempt, after the war, to lead the country into the work of international reconstruction in the same way that it largely sacrificed normal private life to the task of ensuring victory during the war. I wanted to contribute to this in my own way when I attempted, in St. Louis in 1945/46, beyond the

25 26 27

Presumably a reference to political economist Oswald Schneider. See above, p. 187f. Reference to Rothfels’ book The German Opposition to Hitler, 1948.


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specific nationalities and church groups, to set in motion a general movement to underpin active government policies for the reconstruction of Europe. But this proved beyond my strength and ability, and it was mainly interesting negative experiences that I gleaned from this work, in pursuit of which I gave up my scholarly work and to which I devoted all my free time for almost a year—apart from the sole positive that I aroused no suspicions as an immigrant. That really is something unique, and could only happen here in America. I returned to my own work following this failed attempt. And I shall conclude by telling you about this work in more depth. What I have in mind is a kind of comparative constitutional and social history of Europe from the high Middle Ages to the 19th century. However, the term “history” is a little misleading, because what matters to me is not so much the change as the constant factors. I would certainly bring out the national differences, but my main interest lies in the common characteristics. In contrast to you and Gerhard Ritter28 for example, in such an account or analysis, even when examining the relationship between Germany and Western Europe, I would place less emphasis on the differences in political development in the modern period and more on the similarities between the estates, judiciary, regional nobility, in universities, etc., which stem from the Middle Ages. These are the conservative, retarding elements—the social forces and institutions that stood in the way of the drive to power and centralization, in the way of expansion and rapid change, the forces of stability, often leading to paralysis and ossification, often tending to exploit their position to their own advantage. And yet forces whose existence—rooted in feudalism—introduced into the European community principles of order that were absent from developments in Russia: forces which, institutionally and as social strata, facilitated the passing on of cultural tradition, autonomy and the safeguarding of law to later generations. You may feel that such an endeavour runs the risk of making me too much of a laudator temporis acti. But I take comfort from the fact that the material entails its own corrective. I am also very far from expecting such research to have any political impact. Yet I am aware that one’s ultimate personal convictions and

28 Gerhard Ritter (1888–1967), one of Germany’s leading modern historians. Taught in Freiburg from 1925 until his retirement in 1956.

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experiences are the underlying inspiration for such work. In my own way I am attempting to find out which forces have endowed Europe with continuity and individuality for a millennium despite all the crises and wars. It is these forms of human life, for the individual and for the collectivity, which are at serious risk in our time. In this sense, as is in fact self-evident, such an endeavour is also underpinned by a contemporary objective, namely, as a minimum, to foster and heighten the feeling for continuity and individuality through historical analysis. In what form we can preserve or regain it under the very different living conditions of the 20th century, I cannot say. As you can see, I too am haunted by the experience of the present age in all my work, and it has determined my research. Neither should you have any fear that I will neglect the analysis of the real-life factors such as population and economy, producing a false picture of the past. I am well aware of the connection between such studies and economic, church and intellectual history. Despite the work of several years (though it was work for which I had to save a bit of time here and there whenever I could), I am still in the initial stages and am telling you about this only to show you that I have not become sterile and, in my own way, am passing on your legacy. I found out more about you and your family from the Epsteins,29 who I spoke to briefly in Cambridge. That you are still able to influence a small group of select students in your seminar, despite all the impediments, is for me not only an object of constant admiration, but also a sign that the intellectual life in which my roots lie continues to exercise an influence in the old country despite all the disasters and devastation. I look forward to your lecture on Ranke and Burckhardt with great anticipation. I wish I could thank you by reciprocating with something truly well-formed rather than the outlines which are all I have been able to offer you. You asked me in your last letter about the options for continuing the Niebuhr edition.30 I brought over bits and pieces of material myself (copies of letters made for the third volume before I emigrated) but it amounts to very little. I have copies from various unpublished collections, above all from the Niebuhr papers themselves. Whether a third volume would be possible would depend chiefly on whether

29 Fritz T. Epstein (1898–1979), specialist in Eastern European history and librarian, who also studied under Meinecke in Berlin in the early 1920s. 30 See above, p. 186.


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the Niebuhr papers that were in the literature archive (housed in the rooms of the Berlin Academy at the time) have been saved.31 If there really is a political détente that would make it possible to carry out such a task in practical terms, then in my view it would not be unfeasible—provided that these core materials have been preserved. In those cases in which I myself have not yet copied those letters not among the Niebuhr papers and located elsewhere at the time, I have at least made a note of the locations (that is, the places where the relevant papers were to be found). Unfortunately, my colleague Norvin,32 as you will know, died a number of years ago. Frau Norvin wrote to me about a manuscript more or less ready for press—Niebuhr’s first work on the agricultural history of Rome, which I had found and reconstructed and which Norvin wanted to publish. I could perhaps publish this now, if only I could find the time. It goes without saying that I would like to come over myself to get the work on editing the third volume up and running, perhaps to train someone there who could then go ahead with the work himself.33 As difficult and emotionally draining as a trip to Germany would be, I would very much like to make one. I would also be very happy to go there as guest lecturer—for a summer or even longer! I would probably be granted leave, and I’ve been told, though I haven’t yet been able to verify conclusively, that there would be funds available here in America to support the family: because they wouldn’t be able to survive on my wife’s meagre salary, and we’ve been living for years exclusively from income, with absolutely no assets in the background. My dear Herr Professor, whether Berlin would really be a possibility for such a trip is something that you will be able to judge better than I can from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I don’t so much mean the increasing gravity of the political situation—I’m very much hoping for an at least temporary détente. But in this country I’ve had the one great advantage that no political pressure or consideration of

31 The papers survived. Formerly part of the literature archive of the “Prussian Academy of Sciences” (“Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften”), it was now incorporated into the “Central Archive of the Sciences of the GDR” (“Zentrales Archiv der Wissenschaften der DDR”) in Berlin. 32 William Norvin, co-editor, alongside Dietrich Gerhard, of the first two volumes of Niebuhr’s letters. 33 Another four volumes of Niebuhr’s letters were published under the title: Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Briefe. Neue Folge 1816–1830, edited by Eduard Vischer, Berne/Munich 1981–1984. Dietrich Gerhard made available the unpublished correspondence on the second half of Niebuhr’s life that he had collected to the new editor.

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external factors has impeded my teaching. I would certainly mention tact, patience and human understanding as the qualities which have everywhere paved the way to the hearts of my students. And it would be a task with its own unique appeal, both rousing and rewarding in human terms, to find out how one finds common ground after experiencing the most recent stage of world history under such different circumstances, and how one might construct a common basis for understanding. But of course, as you know, I am no Marxist, and however much understanding I may have for modern society and its problems and especially for the economic upheavals (in Harvard this summer I read among other things about Central and Eastern Europe from 1848 to 1890, with the main emphasis on the shift in social structure, on the impact of the freeing of the peasants in the East, industrialization and the construction of the railways in every region), I am basically a conservative whose heart very much lies in the preindustrial world. That may be enough to give you an indication of the doubts that assail me when I consider the possibility of teaching in Berlin.34 You and above all Hartung will of course be able to judge that better than me. In human terms, any trip to Europe, and especially to Germany, would have the great appeal of allowing me to engage in a genuine exchange of ideas, something I can scarcely do in St. Louis at all—not to mention my desire to see you and old colleagues and friends again: how good it is even now to have the chance to exchange ideas in our letters (though, admittedly, I have gone a bit overboard with this in this letter and in my letter to your wife). I would be of no use as some kind of official intermediary: sent by the American government, I would always feel responsible to it, and I would then feel the personal weaknesses of the occupation yet more keenly—while at the same time I have never distanced myself from the old fatherland to the point that I would not perceive the dangers, anxieties and shortcomings along with my old friends. In this sense, as my wife puts it, one always stands between the two countries, in search of a human ideal from which one is oneself still far distant and whose realization is blocked in various ways by the deficiencies of both countries. Neither would I be keen to take on a long-term position that would pull me away entirely from my own research, which I see as a kind of

34 The letter was written a few weeks before the foundation of the FU Berlin. Gerhard was therefore discussing the possibility of teaching at Humboldt University.


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life’s work, unless that position would directly or indirectly benefit it. For these two reasons, with a heavy heart, early last spring I replied in the negative to a provisional enquiry as to whether I might be inclined to come to Berlin to replace Epstein.35 For the time being, we shall be returning to St. Louis in a week’s time (our address: 6108 McPherson Avenue, St. Louis 12, Mo.—this is already our third home since the address your wife used: I wrote to her about all of this in an equally long letter now on its way to her), having had our first real holiday for years—my wife and children for the whole summer, while I at least had almost three weeks off. The American friends who are sharing this holiday house with us are surprised at the long letters I write and fear that they are making it impossible for me to relax. And yet it is not only hugely important to me, but also does me a huge amount of good to be able to express my thoughts to you at last after such a long break. It is a part of my relaxation and contemplation—and as soothing and liberating as the silence, vastness and solitude of the New England landscape that surrounds us. If, after such a long silence, I have now placed excessive demands on your strength and patience with this interminable letter, I hope that your wife will act as go-between and identify the most important points within it. With best wishes and thoughts to all of you. Yours always, Dietrich Gerhard 13. 31 May 1950: Dietrich Gerhard (St. Louis, Mo.) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 58 My dear friend, Unfortunately I’m managing to write to you just one day before my departure for Germany. The last few weeks were fairly unpleasant here

35 Fritz T. Epstein was involved in the project of publishing the German diplomatic records (1919–1945) from 1946 to 1948. See Astrid M. Eckert, Kampf um die Akten. Die Westalliierten und die Rückgabe von deutschem Archivgut nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart 2004.

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in St. Louis as I had to wind up the semester early while at the same time helping reorganize the department and preparing for my trip to Europe. I have now completed all the formalities in Washington and am on my way to the airport (Springfield, Mass.), from which I am to fly to France tomorrow. I shall think about you over there. That will happen naturally, not so much because of the past, but in the present: the key task will be to achieve contact with the students in lectures, seminars and conversations in light of my own expanded horizons and altered views. Understandably, everyone—including Rothfels—was embarrassed by Meinecke’s book.36 However, partly in light of Rothfels’ experiences, partly because of an encounter in St. Louis with German students and teachers, I have great hopes that my work at the university will help advance genuine mutual understanding. It will certainly be exciting. [. . .] I plan to travel to Berlin in August and also to see Meinecke briefly. Understandably, he has clearly become a good deal frailer over the last year. Please forgive the brevity of this letter. I haven’t got any work done over the last three months. I can at least reckon with a free study year, or rather working year, in 1951/52 (Guggenheim).37 I hope that the summer lectures in Virginia38 will be enjoyable and useful and that the students will be as responsive as they were last year.

36 It is not clear from the documents which of Meinecke’s books Gerhard is referring to and why he and Rothfels were “embarrassed” by it. As Meinecke published only the second volume of his memoirs (1949) on the period 1901–1919 after 1945, apart from collections of earlier essays, the only candidate is probably his book Die Deutsche Katastrophe. Given their generally conservative views, they may have taken exception to the radicalism of Meinecke’s critique of German history. This is suggested by a passage in Rothfels’ letter to Meinecke of 12 October 1946 (see above, p. 158): “As I myself have now got to know more about the West, I would probably go further in some respects than you do, yet for that very reason I would take a less harsh view of Germany’s wrong turns than you do.” In his later, generally very positive review of the book (see above, p. 162f.), he concludes with what is perhaps a mild attempt to distance himself from Meinecke: “Meinecke does not accept mere fatality but sees in history a struggle of higher and lower forces to be controlled by the individual human mind. These views may be debatable and may ring pathetic. But they also give to the book a venerable touch and the stamp of an idealistic philosophical attitude, not a theoretical but a practical one.” However, Rothfels also took exception to Meinecke’s notion of Goethe communities as the “saviour of Germany” (Eckel, Rothfels, p. 286). 37 Dietrich Gerhard had received a Guggenheim fellowship for 1951/52 to further his research. 38 Masur taught summer courses on Latin American and modern European history at the University of Virginia in 1949, 1950 and 1951.


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It is a good sign that they asked you again. Let’s talk about all things professional again in peace in August. For now I wish you all the best for the coming months, and I look forward to seeing you again towards the end of the summer. [. . .] With warmest wishes, Your Dietrich Gerhard 14. 9 September 1953: Dietrich Gerhard (St. Louis, Mo.) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 212 How long it has been since I’ve written to you, dear Frau Meinecke, and yet how often our thoughts have been with you and your husband. Herzfeld,39 who paid us a welcome visit in St. Louis in spring, has no doubt told you that we are in good health and I am happy at work, though under a great deal of pressure. We have not been out of the city this summer. Our finances were too depleted by our year in Europe, so despite the sweltering heat (it was un unbearably hot summer, and on top of that the second driest ever recorded here—a serious drought) I had to give lectures here in the summer school. Furthermore, we had to sell our house, which caused us no end of trouble, and buy a smaller, nicer one instead, which we eventually managed to do. We hope to move in a few weeks. For the time being it’s best to contact me through the university (Washington University). At least we were able to live outside the city, in the pretty cottage of a colleague who was spending the holidays in Europe, amidst all the expanse and liveliness (tree frogs, cicadas, etc.) of an almost tropical environment, though by degrees even this natural world was almost paralyzed by the heat. But it finally began to cool down a few days ago, and an exhausted nature is beginning to recover a little. It’s astonishing how quickly that occurs, at least in the case of lawns and meadows—a brief, light rain shower and the enveloping brown is transformed back into a lush green. People take a bit longer to recover, but I too am gradually beginning to make progress with my work again, to which I could devote 39 Hans Herzfeld (1892–1982), modern historian, professor at the Free University of Berlin from 1950.

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little time during the academic year (I am now saddled with heading our history department) or during these very busy holidays. It’s always the people that make up for it, especially in the summer schools and evening lectures: receptive, willing to work, and genuinely growing in understanding and intellectual grasp despite the short time available and across the age range. Over the last few months, in my lectures on Russian history, I have had ministers and rabbis, [several words illegible], teachers, a [word illegible], who now wants to study law, a jurist and his wife, a [woman] sculptor, and a diverse group of students, including pre-foreign service ones, and there was no lack of intelligent discussions and sincere attempts to understand the state of the world and its background. Lots of interest in Germany as well. This will be reinforced by the outcome of the elections,40 which are of course being welcomed on all sides. Despite success and greater—though not always particularly welcome—involvement in the administration of the university, amazingly I am sometimes keenly aware of the distance from Europe. Perhaps I will have the chance to spend another sabbatical or fellowship year in Europe in the foreseeable future, or at least another summer giving guest lectures. Does your husband still take in enough to fully appreciate the election victory? How nicely balanced his life was just two years ago—gathering himself for the timeless and eternal while at the same time being involved in the most lively fashion in the most important decisions of the day. It must have got more difficult caring for him by the day. I often wonder how you still manage and whether you are getting enough help and relief. Particular during this exciting summer in which my thoughts have often turned to Berlin and East Germany since the events of June.41 Perhaps young von Laue,42 who will no doubt have seen you (I think very highly of him), will be able to tell me more at some point. I have had the occasional short

40

Reference to the Bundestag elections of 6 September 1953, won by the CDU/ CSU. 41 Allusion to the uprising of June 1953 in the GDR. 42 Theodor von Laue (1916–2000), German-American historian. Son of the famous physicist Max von Laue. After studying for a year in Freiburg, was sent by his father to continue his studies in the United States, as he did not want him to grow up in a country governed by “gangsters”. Studied in Princeton. Later taught at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, at the University of California, Riverside, and at Washington University in St. Louis, until being appointed to the Frances and Jacob Hiatt chair in European history at Clark University in Massachusetts, where he taught from 1970 until his retirement in 1982. Expert on Russian and Soviet history with a strong interest in universal history. A convinced Quaker, he was involved in the civil rights and peace movements. Colleague and close friend of Dietrich Gerhard in St. Louis.


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letter from Herzfeld, but he doesn’t manage to write in any depth. It’s good that you have the understanding and support of your daughters. No doubt everything will have become more exhausting physically and psychologically day by day. We also have the feeling that Maria has grown to become a real young adult. I’m pleased to think that she herself has told you about her positive experiences over the summer. We ourselves, thank God, are “Americanized” enough that we let her organize and set off on her 24-hour bus journey herself without giving it a second thought. And I almost think that it is only in this country that young people become so independent at such an early stage that one can let them get on with it without worry. Of course as a person Maria has a good foundation, and with any luck she will make it safely through the present phase of her life, a phase when young Americans are too self-centred for the most part. I can’t tell you how happy I am that this personal bond has taken hold between the two of you. In other ways too, the ties binding her to Europe have never been broken. She corresponds with a large number of people, now ranging from the Indian girls to her friend in Erlangen. Meanwhile, Barbara too is growing up, for the time being unswervingly convinced that she will be either a natural scientist or vet. Admittedly, such forecasts are reinforced by her life out here with a dog, three cats, five kittens and a collection of creatures ranging from spiders and beetles of the most exotic kind to toads (for a time the toad was regularly taken for a morning walk and swim in the little pond). In the new house we will at least have a garden of some length—it’s a bit like yours in terms of layout—so hopefully even this nature lover will be able to cope in the city. My wife is happy that at least the house issues, a constant source of depression, appear to be resolved. Unfortunately she had no teaching job over the last year, which is a financial worry, but she still manages to maintain—like me fairly consciously—a brave and positive attitude in this life between (or is it really across?) the continents. My work also moves back and forth between Europe and America; this winter’s yield was an essay on American educational history.43 My mother was better this year. She even went to see my sister again in

43 Presumably a reference to Dietrich Gerhard, “The Emergence of the Credit System in American Education as a Problem of Social and Intellectual History”, in: Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 41 (1955), pp. 647–668, reprinted in Gerhard, Alte und Neue Welt, pp. 232–249.

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the East this summer, in a place you know (near Cambridge). My very best wishes to you and your husband. Yours always, Dietrich Gerhard 15. 21 March 1954: Dietrich Gerhard (St. Louis, Mo.) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 58 Dear Masur, [. . .] The news of Meinecke’s death44 will not have come as a surprise to you. What little I heard since last autumn suggested that he had already declined physically some time before. So one must accept his demise and be grateful that he survived into old age, still interacting with his fellows both mentally and emotionally, as a symbol of the world in which we ourselves are rooted. I myself still had the meaningful get-togethers during my summer visits of 1950 and 1951 quite fresh in my mind. But his powers had declined greatly since then, and it is probably for the best that you have your unspoilt memories of him in his former state [. . .]. Your Dietrich Gerhard 16. 18 September 1954: Dietrich Gerhard (S. S. Caronia) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 212 Dear Frau Meinecke, Once again, I have waited till I am on the high seas to write to you. It is scant consolation that you are used to this kind of thing from me. “True to form”, as they say over there. Admittedly, I can say in my defence that I am having my first holiday here on this ship. First of all the semester in Cologne simply didn’t want to end, as it were, 44

Meinecke died on 6 February 1954.


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and there were still all kinds of things to wind up or even to set in motion in the first place for the America Institute into the August. And then, in Marburg, I had to use the short time remaining to prepare for the year of research in Princeton, which I’m heading back to begin, chiefly in the “West German” library, in the old volumes familiar from Berlin.45 It will soon be three months since I saw you in Berlin. You could sense how happy I was to see you and how I felt as if your husband was still with us in the old place. Thank you not only for your very kind welcome but also for allowing me to relive so many stages of your life together in conversation with you, including quite a few things prior to the days when I came to see your husband at Am Hirschsprung for the first time. My own relationship with Berlin has of course always been a rather ambivalent one. I never felt entirely at home there and it drove me out into the countryside time and again. And the places where I myself grew up and later lived, Wilhelmstraße and the old West, no longer exist or are unrecognizable. So for me, every time I visit, everything is always concentrated on my father’s grave and now the grave in Dahlem46 and your house, where that which has meant most to me in Berlin lives on. How nice of you to find time and space for me at a time when everything was being rearranged in the house. I hope things have worked out well with the new tenants. Of course, the past summer will not have brought you the sun you were longing for at the time. I thought about you often in July and wondered whether the holidays were tolerably pleasant. We did have some sunny days in Cologne amidst a great deal of rain. Admittedly, I couldn’t pay too much attention to such things, for I needed all my time and energy to work my way into the institute’s areas of interest. But I am very pleased with the results. A lot of important new contacts were made, not so much with respect to myself or my scholarly work (though I draw comfort from the fact that it too will benefit from this indirectly), but with a view to making the institute, which means so much to me, into a bridge between Germany and America that fosters mutual understanding, and also a place which can give the exchange between the two countries a more personal slant. If I manage to have an influence on the selection and distribution of students

45 Many of the volumes of the state library (Staatsbibliothek), located in the Soviet sector of Berlin, had been evacuated to Marburg during the war. 46 The grave of Friedrich Meinecke in the Annenkirche cemetery in BerlinDahlem.

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going to both countries, even to a modest degree, I will be quite satisfied. I can still remember the fundamental importance to my entire life of my first long visit abroad on my own, to Denmark, arranged by your husband and Aage Friis. The ministry in Düsseldorf continued to be very obliging in every respect, such that I have reason to hope that, should my university in America consent, I will be able to carry out my plan to do two jobs, with a regular rota from November to January in Cologne, February to May in St. Louis and May to July in Cologne. How and where the family would get together during the late summer and autumn terms will remain a tricky issue in terms of both money and work. But I am tempted by the dual role, with the prospect of being interpreter for both sides, and I think I was fairly successful in Cologne within the given limits. I very much enjoyed young Mommsen’s47 work and involvement and expressed my appreciation to his father48 during a brief visit to Marburg. You should have seen me during the last month in Marburg: how I enjoyed immersing myself in this old world, under Dehio’s expert direction, and how these congenial surroundings also benefitted my work—up to and including the gray barrack bread sold to me by my baker in the Marburg suburb of Weidenhausen, a place with a character all its own, a bread that inspired such outpourings of praise that all the way across the ocean my wife warned me that the S. S. Caronia would mistake me for a barrel and roll me down into the hold. Seeing the old volumes from the Berlin library was a quite melancholy experience, some of them having reached Marburg in a damaged state. For one as obsessed with continuity as I am, even the pleasure of reconnecting in this personal way is a happy event after all the destruction. They made major concessions to me and gave me first an overturned crate, then before long even a proper table, to work on in the stacks. So I’m heading for Princeton well prepared. My wife, who has already arrived there, writes with great satisfaction about the job and accommodation prospects there. Down in the ship’s “hold” is the big suitcase with the excerpts for the work I plan to further in Princeton. As these things go, they filled only a small suitcase after my first European tour four years ago. Now there is so much that the porter can hardly carry it. And all of this now trav47

Wolfgang J. Mommsen (1930–2004), German historian. Wilhelm Mommsen (1892–1966), German historian. Student of Meinecke in Freiburg, habilitated in Göttingen in 1923. Made professor extraordinarius in Göttingen in 1928 and professor ordinarius in Marburg from 1929. 48


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els back and forth across the ocean with the funny author-producer (I have no idea what I should call him). Will I manage to be more economical in future, leaving part here and part over there? The problem with this is that, at least with respect to teaching, I tackle American subjects in Europe and European ones in America and cannot even find the materials solely in the relevant countries: the Swedish materials I was unable to get hold of in Copenhagen I discovered later on in Harvard in the Widener Library,49 and the “West German” Library has just spared me a second journey to Copenhagen. A complicated world that makes one a kind of scholarly hawker, carrying his bundle from continent to continent—an image that your husband, for all his tolerance, would surely have shaken his head at. The family news is more straightforward, if fairly unremarkable. From her earnings as countergirl (in German: Kellnerin hinter der Theke [waitress behind the counter]) Maria seems to have put by around 500 dollars and has come up with an audacious plan to use it to finance a trip to Germany next summer—though this presupposes that her father’s wallet will be full enough to help her through college alongside the scholarship and, periodically, a small income of her own. It would be nice if she could come over; for if everything goes according to plan (and that will only become clear over the course of the next few months), my wife and Barbara are to come with me to Cologne towards the end of April, where we would like to set up a small second home. If possible, Barbara is then to attend a German school for eighteen months, from Easter 1955 to autumn 1956. How the relationship between the prospective new headmistress, a strict East Prussian, and my unrestrained cowgirl, will turn out, remains to be seen. One placatory aspect is that the aforementioned school for Barbara is on Georgsplatz, where her grandmother spent her entire youth. It would be nice if it were granted to me to bring mother over again as well at some point. But I shall wait and see how things develop on that front. For the time being she seems to have arrived back in Ohio from the East quite invigorated. My wife and the children, at Cape Cod in New England, got through one of this year’s hurricanes unscathed. We hope to have some productive and trouble-free months ahead of us in Princeton. [. . .] My very best wishes once again to you and your daughters and thank you for the

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Important academic library at the University of Harvard.

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lovely time in Berlin. Perhaps you will find the time to send me a short letter at some point? Yours always, Dietrich Gerhard 17. 24 March 1955: Dietrich Gerhard (Princeton, N. J.) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 212 Dear Frau Meinecke, Your letter is already a month old and only now I am managing to thank you for your kind words and for sending me the separatum from the Goethe Yearbook,50 which arrived a few days ago. So far I’ve lacked the peace and composure to read it. But Wachsmuth’s introduction51 (we both started out under your husband’s tutelage, in the little seminar between the semesters held in your house in the spring of 1919) reconfirmed for me in a particular way what you yourself told me about these last few years, about his “gradual withdrawal from existence”. I am already rushing around winding things up and making preparations over here. The contract with my signature should go off to the ministry in Düsseldorf later today.52 Hopefully I will manage to do the two jobs, which both sides have made it possible for me to do, on a long-term basis without too much stress. In the meantime, I shall be turning up in Cologne during the first half of May (I’m not yet entirely sure when). Maria,53 as you know, is following on later in early June

50 Friedrich Meinecke, “Lebenströster. Betrachtungen über zwei Goethesche Gedichte”, in: Goethe. Neue Folge des Jahrbuches der Goethe Gesellschaft 16 (1954), pp. 198–212. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 492–508. These comments were written in 1945 and 1946. 51 Andreas Bruno Wachsmuth (1890–1981), Germanist. (Established graduate secondary school) teacher and later headmaster of the Arndt-Gymnasium in BerlinDahlem, chairman of the Goethe Society, 1951–1971, then its honorary president until his death. Wrote a “foreword as obituary” to Meinecke’s text. Wachsmuth was a close friend of Meinecke. 52 Reference to the contract for his professorship in Cologne. 53 Gerhard’s daughter.


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for the summer, while Grete and Barbara54 will arrive towards the end of July for about a year. I shall have to look around for a place to live as well. For now though I’d like to ask Ursula and Brigitte another favour.55 The various addresses mentioned by you and others for Maria’s work camp have unfortunately come to nothing. For everything organized by the Quakers in Europe from here is closed to her because of a strictly observed age limit. She can of course go to such a camp here and did in fact have a wonderful time working in an Indian reservation two years ago. But at just under eighteen she is still three years below the age limit applied to Europe. Is there some way of finding another group, and can Ursula or Brigitte come up with any solutions? Maria really is a capable, kind and adaptable chap, willing and able to help, who can put up with all kinds of things and is always cheerful and well-balanced. And of course she also speaks perfect German. We would be grateful for any tips you might be able to give us. But unfortunately the Quaker camps are still closed to her. Hajo Holborn left a few days ago, initially for Italy. I hope to learn more from Masur about his plans next week in Washington. I have to go there on behalf of the Cologne institute and would like to take the family along. This will also mean a “reunion” after many years: with the Epsteins and Masur. I was very pleased to hear all about your eightieth.56 You know that you were very much in our thoughts. I was delighted to hear how pleased you were to receive our greetings from America, which showed you how much we all still hold to you as much as ever—and not only on such special occasions. I hope to see you again in summer or autumn. For now I send you best wishes for your health from all of us and we hope that your plans for the summer holidays work out. Your Dietrich Gerhard

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Grete was Gerhard’s wife and Barbara his second daughter. The Meineckes’ daughters. Frau Meinecke’s 80th birthday on 31 January 1955.

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1. 24 January 1927: Gerhard Masur (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 Dear Herr Geheimrat. It was with sincere sadness that I heard today at the university that you are not yet fully restored to health. So I must express my thanks for your efforts with these lines, which I hope reach you in an advanced state of recovery. The letter from Breslau came at a good time; for however much I might acknowledge the reasons that have led to the decision reached by the gentlemen in Frankfurt,1 the decision itself hurt me very deeply, and I felt very much inclined to surrender to all kinds of depression and melancholy. But now I see things rather more positively again. I shall write to Professor Ziekursch2 as soon as I’ve had the chance to talk to you again. Everything else I hope to resolve through a faceto-face discussion in Breslau. On Saturday I attended a lecture by Scheler3 on morality and politics. The philosophers still believe in the old superstition that if they classify and categorize everything and place all the elements neatly side-by-side they can get to the root of such a problem. They fail to see or have no wish to see the tragically intricate dimension, and they can no more explain how one is supposed to make a decision in case of conflict than anyone else. But this is the core of the entire problem. Perhaps I may tell you about it at some point. With best wishes for your health and my best regards to your wife, Gratefully yours, Gerhard Masur

1 See the following letter from Masur to Meinecke of 20 April 1927, below, pp. 209–211. 2 Johannes Ziekursch (1876–1945), left-wing liberal historian. Professor extraordinarius in Breslau from 1912, personal professor from 1917. Went to Cologne in 1927 as holder of a chair, where among other things he supported the habilitation of Hans Rosenberg in 1932/33. 3 Max Scheler (1874–1928), philosopher. Was one of the directors of the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Cologne.

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2. 20 April 1927: Gerhard Masur (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I assume that you are back in Berlin, hopefully well-rested, so I shall waste no time in sending you my [word illegible] essay on Stahl.4 It is the first one I have published on Stahl and deals with just one of the elements of his character (the origin and form of his extreme Lutheranism), but one which it seemed worthwhile examining in its own right. A study such as this allows one to examine the circle in which, and through which, an individual has developed in a little more depth than would be permissible in a monograph. I have accepted the looser form made necessary by publication of the letters. I had already completed the essay last summer and now see certain things rather differently after a year of intensive study. But this is surely inevitable. I cannot close this letter without speaking to you once again, my dear Herr Professor, of that which has preoccupied me, more than ever before, throughout the winter. I am referring to my relationship to Germanness and Judaism. Since the events of this winter,5 I have felt the need to talk to you about this quite openly at some point, and if this letter takes on a little of the character of a confession, please do not hold it against me! It is of course a very personal matter, but I think I can address it more easily in this way than in conversation. As I held your letter with the decision from Frankfurt in my hands, my astonishment at the reason for my rejection was greater than my pain. It wasn’t the fact that such opposition was possible in the first place that astonished me, I was of course aware of that, but I would never have expected to face it myself. I had thought that all kinds of anti-Semitism, other than purely racial anti-Semitism that solely considers provenance and ignores personality, I thought that for all other kinds of anti-Semitism the decisive thing would be the historical relationship and intellectual responsibility which an individual feels with respect to the values and content of German history. And I believe I can say, in terms of disposition, education and my own free will, that I have an immediate relationship and a genuine sense of responsibility

4

Gerhard Masur, “Aus Friedrich Julius Stahls Briefen an Rudolf Wagner”, in: Archiv für Politik und Geschichte 5 (1927), pp. 261–301. 5 Reference to the rejection of his application to habilitate at the university in Frankfurt a. M.. See above, p. 36f.

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with respect to the values and course of German history. Furthermore, I have never seen myself primarily as a Jew. I was born a Protestant Christian, as my parents had already converted in light of their inner convictions (as I know for certain). I was raised in the ways and traditions of the middle class (Bürgertum), which naturally felt itself to be at one with its state, nation and national culture. All of this was as natural, almost conventional, to me as the very air one breathes. And I regained this immediate, taken-for-granted relationship, which could of course no longer be taken for granted in the same way after the Revolution and the collapse of the Empire, through literature and art, but above all political history. You, my dear Herr Geheimrat, know the path I have followed. You know that coming into contact with you and your work helped me develop a new and positive and reasonably secure relationship to state and nation, and also to the West. I am grateful for your constant references to Ranke, to whose work and view of history I feel so deeply bound. And all of this really was a determined process of crossing over, or rather, as such an act of decision was no longer required, a process of growing into and empathizing ever more deeply with the values of German culture. I thus truly believe that I have the right to call myself a German and to see myself as German, though I will never deny my origins in any way. I am of course aware that I possess talents—above all intellectual ones—that one generally tends to identify as Jewish. But as to the effect of such intellectualism, whether it is constructive or destructive—that depends on how one uses it. It is this whole relationship that is the deeper reason for my preoccupation with and love for Stahl.6 For it seems to me that Stahl represents this relationship on a historical level. But he and his impact are at the same time the guarantors that there are, and must be, ways of resolving this problem. And so I too am deeply convinced that while this relationship is extremely tense and painful, it does not have to be tragic. Love that withers as a result of disappointments is not real love. So I cannot say to this Germany that I seek to win over, “If I love you, then why does this matter to you?”, but I can say: “I won’t leave you. Then you would bless me”. Even after this, my first conflict, I cannot see things differently and I refuse to entertain any bitterness. You know me well enough, my dear Herr Professor, to know that I do not find it easy to speak of such things, which it is best to lock up

6

See above, p. 37.

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inside or demonstrate through one’s life, because they are all too easily profaned by programmatic statements. But I felt I owed you, and myself, this confession out of the sense of genuine reverence that I feel for you. Your Gerhard Masur

Gerhard Masur

3. 26 April 1927: Gerhard Masur (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 Dear Herr Geheimrat. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to you for the warm words of your letter. As you wish me to speak candidly, I would like to ask you not to contact Frankfurt again for the time being. I wrote to Prof.

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Ziekursch recently and may perhaps go to Breslau to discuss things with him at some point in the near future. As long as this possibility exists, I feel bound not to pursue any others. I would on the other hand be very pleased if the off-putting misunderstanding could be explained to the gentlemen in Frankfurt and Marburg. If you see any opportunity to rectify this at some point, dear Herr Geheimrat, should you be writing to them in any case, I would be sincerely grateful. As soon as I return from Breslau I shall let you know how things went and I hope that I may ask your advice once again at that juncture. With sincere respect, Your Gerhard Masur 4. 12 February 1934: Gerhard Masur to August Wilhelm Fehling NL Masur 58, copy Dear Herr Dr. Fehling,7 After carefully reading the guidelines of the Rockefeller Foundation, which you kindly gave me, and thoroughly recapitulating the course of our conversation, I consider it appropriate to describe my situation to you once again. The thrust of the Foundation’s conditions is that for the period after one’s return one definitely intends to continue with academic work and has reasonable prospects of taking up an appropriate position. Given your many years of work for the Foundation, in no way do I believe myself better able to interpret its guidelines than you. But it seems to me as though these conditions can undoubtedly be met in my case. I have so far been able not only to carry on my teaching unhindered, but to increase it both in scale and intensity, as is clearly borne out by

7 August Wilhelm Fehling (1896–1964), representative of the Rockefeller Foundation and managing director of the Cecil Rhodes Foundation in Germany. Curator of the University of Kiel from 1945.

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the increased number of attendees and the number of my doctoral students. In the event that I should be awarded a scholarship, there could be no problem with resuming this post as I would interrupt it only through a sabbatical expressly approved by the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. Neither are there any constraints on my potential to publish. I have in fact recently received requests to contribute from newspapers and journals, so this also guarantees the continuation of my academic work. As I mentioned on Saturday, my income remains the same. I therefore believe I can state unambiguously that I would certainly be able to take up an appropriate position again. An alternative evaluation of this situation is possible only if, as you have indicated, one believes that the legal situation might continue to change. But it seems to me that just as one is justified in considering it likely that things will get worse in light of certain realities, in Hamburg for example, there are other symptoms which point in precisely the opposite direction. Just the other day I heard observations to that effect from someone who works in a key position in the central academic administrative authority [Wissenschaftsverwaltung]. In no way do I wish to attempt to weigh up the pros and cons in this case, as I believe that this is currently impossible. But I would like to believe that the situation is not such that it conflicts with the conditions of the Foundation. Even assuming that there was no chance for me to progress in my academic career, I would still continue with my scholarly activities, and I can see no factors that might prompt me to give them up. The fact that the material returns on such activities lie on or below subsistence level may be compensated for through personal resignation on the one hand and the willingness to help of those close to one on the other. Moreover, the scholarly achievement that the Foundation promotes cannot be equated with a career. Like me, you are familiar with enough cases in which there is a large gap between intellectual achievement and actual position, yet the scholar cannot let this put him off. I would ask you to reconsider these arguments, because for the sake of the task that I have set myself it would mean a great deal to me to receive a scholarship and because it is still so long until September 1935. If the list for this year is already complete, perhaps there would be a possibility of an interim solution? In any event I would be grateful

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if you would give me another opportunity to discuss all of this with you in the near future. With best regards, Yours faithfully, 5. 4 February 1936: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 61 Dear colleague, I was very touched by your warm words from Lausanne. I have already heard about your fate, and as strange and “unreal” as it would seem at other times, it was comforting—that is, only relatively comforting—to learn that you have found a stable place to live and work. There is something healing and liberating about positive, clearly defined tasks in times of confusion. I find your idea regarding Simón Bolivar an excellent one. The Antipodean world into which you will enter is also part of our world and may, in as much as it currently is not, be won for our world in intellectual terms. Who knows what kind of webs you and the others might begin to weave over there to create new intellectual and academic connections. Things have been pretty good with me since we walked together in the parks of Dahlem. I have mild catarrh, but there has been no major disruption to my work, so I was able to deliver the requested commemorative address marking the fiftieth anniversary of Ranke’s death on the Academy’s Friedrichstag on the twenty-third of last month.8 I shall send you the printed version, which won’t be available for some time yet, either to your current or new address. In preparing for the speech, I also re-read your book on Ranke,9 and was greatly impressed by the precocious sureness of your judgement. I am now in the process

8 Friedrich Meinecke, “Leopold von Ranke. Gedächtnisrede”, in: Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, pp. XXXIII–XLV, Berlin 1936. The Friedrichstag was celebrated in honour of Frederick the Great, who in 1744 undertook the thorough reorganization of the “Scientific Society of Electoral Brandenburg” (“Churbrandenburgische Societät der Scienzien”), proposed and conceived by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and founded by Elector Frederick III, which only then received the designation “Academy”. 9 Gerhard Masur, Rankes Begriff der Weltgeschichte, Munich 1926.

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of preparing my book on historism for publication, which has made me aware that there is still much that it lacks and that certain things written years ago are no longer satisfactory. The number of those willing to read it will be small. But that no longer concerns me. One must try, here as everywhere, to live in a “timeless” manner, or at least to maintain a timeless sphere alongside the simply [word illegible] from a surging torrent of time. You will no doubt be doing the same thing in your new life over there. My best wishes go with you! Yours always, Fr. Meinecke 6. 3 January 1947: Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear Herr Geheimrath. I recently heard at the congress of American historians that you are back in your house, so I now know where to send this letter, which is merely intended to let you know how happy I am that you have emerged from the catastrophe unharmed, at least physically. I read your appeal shortly after the end of the war10 and heard about your new book.11 How I admire your strength and constancy amidst the general confusion and breakdown. But I do not wish to touch on that painful subject today in this first epistle. I merely intend it as a sign of gratitude and friendship. Spiritual ties such as those that link me with you, your work and your family are unbreakable. I was in Bogotá until the spring of last year, where I had a peaceful, productive life with my wife and mother. My mother died in the autumn of 1945. I have of course described my activities in Columbia to you on numerous occasions. They were somewhat distant from history,

10

Probably a reference to Meinecke’s essay “Zur Selbstbesinnung” in the Münchner Zeitung, 16 June 1945. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 484–486. 11 Meinecke, Deutsche Katastrophe.

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but they were interesting and allowed me to do, learn and comprehend many unfamiliar things. In 1941, in the middle of the darkest years of the war, I began to write a biography of Simón Bolivar,12 which I completed in the spring of 1946 with the help of a Rockefeller scholarship. I am now here in the United States to see to the translation (I wrote the book in German) and publication. Concurrently, I have taken up a visiting professorship at Sweet Briar. So much for my life. I have no end of questions to ask you. What I would give to be able to talk with you once again about fathoming the German and European tragedy. But it is at least something that one can write letters again. I am very anxious to know the fate of two friends of mine: Professor Erich Kaufmann13 of Berlin Nicolassee and Professor Ernst Robert Curtius14 of Bonn. I have no news of either. I hope that these lines find you, your wife and daughters in good health. It would make me very happy if you could find the time to write to me at some point. With grateful respect, Your Gerhard Masur

12 Simón Bolivar (1783–1830), liberator of South America from Spanish colonial rule. Founder of the states of Columbia and Bolivia. 13 Erich Kaufmann (1880–1972), jurist and legal philosopher. Professor in Kiel, Königsberg, Berlin and Bonn. Legal adviser to the foreign ministry. Dismissed because of his Jewish ancestry in 1934, emigrated to the Netherlands in 1939. Taught at the University of Munich from 1946 until his retirement in 1950. Subsequently legal adviser on international law issues at the Federal Chancellery until 1958. 14 Ernst Robert Curtius (1886–1956), scholar of Romance literature.

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7. 7 February 1947: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 61 Dear Herr Masur, I was very happy and reassured to receive your letter of the third of last month. I was afraid you had gone under amid the torrents of history! That you have emigrated to the U.S.A. and found a teaching position gives me hope that in human, intellectual and academic terms you will now be able to develop more freely again and allow the talents with which you have been endowed to take full effect. The very best of luck for the future! How much we would have to tell each other if we could see each other now! Those of us left face global changes in the context of terrible disasters! One must summon up all one’s remaining mental reserves in order to keep on going, and still one would like to cry out loud on occasion. Yet fate has been infinitely kind to us in comparison with millions of others. In spring of 1945 we found sanctuary, first in a castle in Mainfranken, then, when this was burned down in the fighting, in a farmer’s house, before being taken to Göttingen by our friends Kaehler and Oncken in the summer of 45, where we were terribly cramped for space but received a lot of support and stimulation—and then in July of last year we were able to return to Berlin to our daughters, who had remained there, and to our undestroyed house. I have been able to hold a little colloquium at home with a few older students. I enjoy it a great deal and it is also in keeping with my own desire to revise the view of history with which we have worked hitherto. An extremely serious and difficult task, as salvation and disaster are often so inseparably entwined in Prussian-German history. I would like to have my book on the German catastrophe,15 which I managed to write in Mainfranken and Göttingen, sent to you, but there is as yet no way of doing so, and there may be an English translation for the U.S.A., which various offices are endeavouring to achieve. My wife and daughters are under a great deal of stress but in a good state of health. I myself am suffering from cataracts, which make

15

Meinecke, Deutsche Katastrophe.

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letter-writing difficult, and hardness of hearing. But I can still manage fairly well in one-to-one conversations. Do you remember our last walk in the parks on Thielplatz? I often think of it when I go there—the only bit of nature, as it happens, that I can still enjoy, as the complaints of old age and the division into zones hinder any more extensive excursions, let alone longer journeys. With warmest regards, Your Fr. Meinecke

8. 22 July 1948: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 61 Dear Herr Masur, What a delightful surprise you have given us once again! In the midst of the blockade now imposed on Berlin, such a parcel is like a ray of sunshine through dark clouds. My heartfelt thanks! I would very much like to tell you in rather more detail about our situation and the thoughts going through our heads, but my declining eyesight makes reading and writing ever more difficult, and I have to concentrate my remaining capacity for work on preparing for the seminars with students which I still hold every few weeks at home. Topics such as Gervinus, Droysen, the younger Bismarck before 1848, and now even Friedr. Engels and 184816 will give you an overview

16 Johann Gustav Droysen (1808–1884), historian. As an influential deputy in the German National Assembly in 1848/49, he supported a “little German” solution to the German Question—that is, the unification of Germany to the exclusion of German-speaking Austria. After the failure of the Revolution, he advocated the establishment of a German nation state under Prussian leadership. His history of Prussian politics asserted that Prussia had had a “German mission” since the 15th century. Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805–1871), historian and literary historian. Member of the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848/49. Sharp critic of Bismarck’s power politics after 1866. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), socialist theorist and politician, who founded Marxism together with his friend Karl Marx. Involved in revolutionary movements in 1848/49, in such places as the Rhineland and Baden. Having already worked as

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of the kind of problems we are grappling with as we seek new ways of reflecting on history. Our goal is to keep our own minds free and receptive at a turning point in world history. The students give me a great deal of pleasure—a small but fairly homogenous group is taking shape there, a little glimmer of hope for the future. But how terribly dark the future looks overall. A young American, a student of Holborn, is also taking part in my seminar, a particularly alert and receptive student. I hope you will experience the same thing with your students, that intellectual links are beginning to form between good German and American minds. Once again with warmest regards, Your Fr. Meinecke 9. 18 August 1948: Gerhard Masur (Peekskill, N.Y.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear Herr Geheimrat. I have just received your lovely letter of 27 July17 and really am very pleased to hear that my little gift just made it through the blockade. How pleased I am that you are still able to guide and lead the young. I am spending the summer holidays here at the home of my relatives the Strassmanns, who you may know from Berlin. I have just finished a paper on Dilthey,18 who is still quite unknown here, and hope to be able to publish it soon. My biography of Simón Bolivar19 will appear towards the end of this year in German and English, and I shall see to it that you receive a copy of the German version. It is very much the fruit of my many years in South America. I am very happy with

a businessman in Manchester for several years after 1842, he lived permanently in England from 1849 until his death. 17 Meinecke’s letter is in fact dated 22 July. 18 Gerhard Masur, “Wilhelm Dilthey and the History of Ideas”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 13 (1952), pp. 94–107. 19 Gerhard Masur, Simón Bolivar, Albuquerque 1948, 2nd edn. 1969; in German: Simón Bolivar und die Befreiung Südamerikas, Constance 1949.

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my [female] students, though of course it is not quite as it once was in Berlin. Over the last year I found myself in a paradoxical situation, as I had to fight against an excess of intellectual history and history of ideas in the first few semesters. I would never have thought that I of all people would be called upon to do so. In June, via Rothfels, I received an enquiry from the University of Heidelberg as to whether I would accept an offer of the chair in modern history. One cannot of course simply answer yes or no to such a question; I’ve heard nothing more about it since. It is an excruciating time for every individual who tries to account for world affairs, though it is easier to bear from over here than for you over there. My best regards to your dear wife, and to your daughters, all of whom are hopefully well. As ever, respectfully yours, Gerhard Masur ps. Do you have any contact with Erich Kaufmann or Brigitte Eltze, née Stieve? Both are good friends of mine, with whom I have, unfortunately, so far failed to re-establish contact. I recently received a very friendly letter from Ulrich Noack.20 G. M. 10. 11 October 1948: Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear Herr Geheimrat. I have just received your essay on Ranke and Burckhardt,21 which I immediately read with great pleasure and from which I learned a great deal. It displays your old mastery in bringing out contrasts and relationships. I myself, though a great admirer of Ranke, have long con-

20

Ulrich Noack (1899–1974), historian, habilitated at the University of Frankfurt a. M. in 1929. Professor of medieval and modern history in Würzburg from 1946 to 1964. 21 Meinecke, “Ranke und Burckhardt”.

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sidered myself a student of and successor (toute proportion gardée) to Burckhardt. I read his Reflections on History22 for the first time at the age of seventeen, and it made an unforgettable impression on me, as did his book on the Renaissance,23 and his lectures and letters. Of course, his ideal of cultural history represents a step beyond Ranke, or at least a broadening of the purely political religious horizon. So I am very pleased to find both masters reunited by a third. I am giving a new course of lectures this year, which I introduced here: Central and Eastern European history from 1500 to the present. A lot of work but very rewarding. My book on Bolivar is finished and will appear in December. I hope that you and your nearest and dearest are well, to the extent permitted by the world situation. As ever, respectfully yours, Gerhard Masur 11. 15 August 1950: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 61 Dear colleague, How long I have been meaning to thank you for your wonderful book on Bolivar!24 But the aches and pains of old age grow steadily worse and are a hindrance to every physical activity, even the dictating of letters, though my mental engagement with your book did not suffer as a result. I find you so perfectly matched to your hero in terms of the tremendous energy with which you champion a great idea and rapidly get back on your feet after every failure. What a tremendous amount of genuine critical study your (critical ) book contains—and now I am also full of admiration for the artistry of your simple and

22 Jacob Burckhardt, Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. First edition 1905, new critical edition 1982. See also above, p. 130. English version: Reflections on History, London 1943. 23 Reference to Jacob Burckhardt’s book Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, first published 1860. English version: The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, London 1890. 24 Masur, Bolivar, see above, p. 38.

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captivating narration, which I would never have expected from you, the subtle analyst. My colleagues here and I would like you to join us as visiting professor in the summer of 51. Then we could discuss all the enormous problems of the day as we used to! Here in Berlin we constantly live as if in the shadow of Vesuvius. You will hopefully have received the copy of my memoirs.25 My wife also sends you her best regards. May I also add our greetings to your sister? As ever yours, Fr. Meinecke 12. 3 September 1950: Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear Herr Geheimrat, Thank you very much for your nice letter of 15 August. It gave me a great sense of gratification and satisfaction to know that you liked my book.26 I read your lovely memoirs27 with great interest and emotion. Thank you very much for getting them to me. I have a very hardworking summer behind me, which I spent as visiting professor at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson.28 I would love to come to Berlin next summer and thank you very much for the invitation, which I regard as a great honour and responsibility. When do the lectures begin and what would I teach? It would be good to know the details as soon as possible so that I can begin taking the necessary steps. Here in America one makes commitments for

25 Friedrich Meinecke, Straßburg-Freiburg-Berlin 1901–1919. Erinnerungen, Stuttgart 1949. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, Stuttgart 1969, pp. 137–320. 26 Reference to Masur’s book on Simón Bolivar. 27 Meinecke, Straßburg-Freiburg-Berlin, 1901–1919. 28 Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), one of the founding fathers of the United States. Author of the Declaration of Independence of 1776, president of the USA, 1801– 1809.

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the following summer in the autumn. Everything of course depends on peace being maintained; but I am still optimistic. With best wishes for your health and wellbeing and my regards to your dear wife, I remain yours respectfully, Gerhard Masur 13. 5 March 1952: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 61 Dear colleague!29 Once again your charity package came as a great and delightful surprise to us! Please accept out heartfelt thanks, above all for the sentimental value of your parcel as an expression of an old, loyal spirit of like minds. The times of material lack have in fact been over for quite some time now. It is such a shame that we have had no opportunity so far for intellectual dialogue! Though I can no longer see, hear and write properly, I’m still thinking about various problems, the question of the secular after-effects of the era of monarchical absolutism on the political thought of the continental peoples, for example. And the fundamental metaphysical and religious questions also come up again and again in recent times. Questions without end. But the very act of grappling with them helps keep one’s spirits up in old age. In the old loyal spirit of like minds, Fr. Meinecke

29 Letter dictated by Meinecke to his wife in his wife’s handwriting but signed by Meinecke. Among other things, her postscript states: “You can see from his dictated lines how he is ageing but at pains to endure everything stoically. I read out to him a great deal and the assistants at the history department are always willing to read to him as well, so he always has his connections with the field of history”.

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14. 5 April 1954: Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 61 Dearest Herr Masur, I must express my heartfelt thanks to you for your kind letter. All of you who identify yourselves as my husband’s students give me strength with your devoted remembrance and the respect with which you mourn him. He always felt a special bond with all of you and was proud of his American school. It was a disappointment to him that you were unable to come last summer. His life was so filled with, and borne up by, tasks, responsibilities and ties with the young historians until his powers gradually faded. We then had a happy existence, just the two of us, and I read out to him a great deal. Many a valuable book in his library now looks back at me laden with memories. Speaking was such a strain on him in the last few weeks. His vocal cords failed him and he often said “if only I could get it out, I have so many thoughts”, and in the end these always revolved around things eternal—God and the ultimate. He constantly spoke of the “highest” and that is how he ascended, as his eyes ceased to see within this earthly realm and he looked all the way up, his hands folded. His dying radiated a sacred gravity, and he lives on unshakeably inside me and, I think, inside of many of those who revered him. He is borne up by respect and the two ceremonies30 gave us a great deal. How many reflections and fond memories the speakers brought with them. You will of course receive a copy of the speeches later. He now lies in the Annen cemetery, and I can commune with him in peace every day at his grave. The bells of the little church can also be heard at his resting place. Eight historians bore him to his grave. That was a profound symbol that he would surely have acknowledged with great emotion. The house has lost its soul, 8 ½ weeks have brought many profound blows and changes and once the library has gone I shall feel very lonely. I have sent your book on Bolivar, which I read out to him, to Kaehler. I think you will be pleased at this idea. It was decided today that the library will remain here at the Free University. That’s a wonderful solution and very much in the spirit of my husband. We had lots of offers—four from America.

30 For the keynote address at the official funeral service at the university for Friedrich Meinecke, see Hans Rothfels, “Friedrich Meinecke. Ein Rückblick auf sein wissenschaftliches Lebenswerk. Trauerrede, gehalten in Berlin am 27. Februar 1954”, Berlin 1954.

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Herr Professor Herzfeld tells me that you are coming to Dahlem in the summer of 55. How nice to know that you will be working here and I trust you will visit me and we shall go to the grave together. To see my husband’s former students’ activities is a great joy to me and invigorates my soul. Gerhard and the Epsteins will be coming soon. I hope they are restored to health. I thank you for your words, I found them exceptionally touching. For now I shall say: “see you in Dahlem”. Your Antonie Meinecke 15. 30 July 1956: Decision on Restitution for Gerhard Masur NL Masur 71 The Federal Minister of the Interior. Decision on Restitution.31 With respect to the application of Prof. Dr. Gerhard M a s u r, b. 17 September 1901 in Berlin, resident at 2024 Rivermont Avenue, Lynchburg, Virginia US, for restitution in accordance with the law on the regulation of restitution for wrongs committed by the National Socialists for members of the civil service

31 Masur was alerted to the third law on restitution for members of the civil service of 23 December 1955, which provided for compensation for lecturers whose academic career was interrupted by the Nazi seizure of power, in a letter from Dietrich Gerhard of 15th June 1956 (Masur papers, vol. 58). Alongside the payments for emeriti, Masur also received compensation of DM 10,488 on account of damage to professional advancement, of which DM 960 was deducted for costs and expenses, as set out in a letter from the United Restitution Organization dated 16 January 1962, on the basis of a decision by the compensation office (Entschädigungsamt) in Berlin of 9 January 1962. The period of damages was identified as extending from 1 November 1935 to 31 October 1947, as Masur obtained an appointment, appropriate to his educational background, as university teacher at Sweet Briar College after the 1 November 1947, which offered him a satisfactory livelihood. His emeritus pension payments began from 1 April 1950. For the 144 months from 1 November 1935 to 31 October 1947, remuneration of 69915,43 Reichsmark was calculated, of which ¾, that is, 52436,57 Reichsmark was allocated. This sum was converted at a rate of 10:2 to DM 10 487,32.

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living abroad of 18 March 1952 (BGBl. I p. 137), the amending law of 19 August 1953 (BGBl. I p. 994) and the law of 23 December 1955 (BGBl. I S. 820), the Federal Minister of the Interior has decided as follows: 1.) With effect from 1 January 1954 the applicant will receive a pension (remuneration for emeriti)32 appropriate to an office in the salary grade H 1 b (6th seniority grade) as set out in the regulations governing salaries (Reichsbesoldungsordnung)—RBO—plus a pensionable accommodation allowance in accordance with a pensionable period of service ending on 31 March 1951. 2.) For the period from 1 April 1950 to 31 March 1951, the applicant shall receive compensation to the amount of one year’s payment of the pension awarded to him in 1) as at 1 April 1951. 3.) [. . . . .] 4.) The applicant is authorized to use the title “professor” [ordentlicher Professor] with the addition “em.”. Statement of Facts: The applicant obtained his Dr. phil. summa cum laude on 23 February 1925 at the University of Berlin. On 23 July 1930 he received the venia legendi [granting authority to teach] from the philosophy faculty of this university as lecturer. According to a statement confirmed by Prof. Kaufmann,33 his authority to teach was withdrawn on grounds of race in October 1935. He then emigrated, initially to Columbia, where he worked for the ministry of education, as advisor from 1936 to 1938 and division head from 1938 to 1946. On 1 November 1947 he became professor of history at Sweet Briar College, Virginia, where he is still employed today. In his application for restitution of February 1956 the applicant asserts that the withdrawal of his authority to teach occurred solely as a result of National Socialist policies of persecution and repression on grounds of race. In the absence of this measure he would have become professor of history at a German university.

32 Upon attaining emeritus status, professors holding a chair in Germany at the time received their full salary, with the exception of the fees for teaching. 33 On Professor Erich Kaufmann, see above, p. 216.

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He claims: continued retirement on the basis of § 4 of the law of 18 March 1952. Granting of the pension (remuneration for emeriti) appropriate to this office and compensation for the period from 1 April 1950 to 31 March 1951. As evidence he refers to the reference from Prof. Dr. Friedrich Meinecke of 13 August 1935 and confirmation provided by professors Dr. Kaufmann, Dr. Rothfels and Dr. Herzfeld. As the applicant was resident in the USA on 23 May 1949 and the government of that country has diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany, reparation to the applicant is made on the basis of the law of 18 March 1952 on the regulation of restitution for wrongs committed by the National Socialists covering those members of the civil service living abroad. He was not a member of the NSDAP or any of its organizations. No reasons have been established that might result in disqualification from or forfeiture of restitution. Reasons for the Decision: According to § 22 par. 2 BWGöD the Federal Government is responsible for restitution for losses suffered at the University of Berlin. In line with the regulation of 25 May 1951 on the enforcement of § 25 par. 2 BWGöD, the Federal Minister of the Interior is responsible for the decision. The application for restitution, including supporting materials, was made and substantiated within the time limit. The applicant was a lecturer at the University of Berlin from 1930. His authority to teach was withdrawn in 1935. In accordance with the confirmation provided by the above-mentioned professors, it may be assumed that he would have become a full-time university teacher. Hence, in line with § 5 no. 4 BWGöD (inland) as amended by the 3rd amending law of 23 December 1955 (BGBl. I p. 820) he has suffered injury and belongs to the group of individuals identified in § 2 par. 1 clause 2 BWGöD (inland) as amended by the 3rd amending law and is entitled to restitution in accordance with § 21b BWGöD. In accordance with this legal stipulation, the regulations set out in §§ 9, 10, 11, 18 and 19 apply to his claim for restitution given that he would in all probability have become a professor in the course of his academic career. This conclusion is based primarily on the detailed assessment of the applicant’s

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academic importance and teaching qualifications by major historian Prof. Friedrich Meinecke, who describes him as one of his best and most gifted students and conveys his firm conviction that the applicant would do credit to any chair in modern history abroad. According to Meinecke’s statements, his constant, indefatigable struggle for ever deeper understanding of historical problems, deploying every tool of research, including painstaking and detailed work in the critique of sources and establishing of facts, is also characteristic of the applicant’s academic production hitherto. As early as his study of Ranke’s concept of world history from 1926 and even more so in his later work on Friedrich Stahl, Masur showed the ability not only to analyze, but also to grasp historical objects synthetically, producing highly realistic accounts that are both clear and emphatic. According to Meinecke’s statements, this book is among the best biographies of German statesmen and political thinkers of the 19th century. Meinecke also points out that after his habilitation in 1930, the applicant was soon highly popular among students, and he has heard nothing but good things about his teaching. He also states that his lectures and seminars went down particularly well. Professors Rothfels, Herzfeld and Hartwig,34 and especially Prof. Kaufmann, expressed similar sentiments acknowledging the applicant’s academic achievements and teaching qualifications. They unanimously conclude that the applicant would have received a chair in Germany had he not been forced to emigrate as a result of the Nazi regime’s violent measures. He must therefore be granted the legal status and remuneration that would have applied had he occupied an office in the salary grade H 1 b RBO. He would in all likelihood have attained such an office on 1 March 1940. As the applicant has applied to continue in retirement in line with § 4 of the law of 18 March 1952, he is entitled to the remuneration for emeriti. In accordance with art. VII of the 3rd amending law, he will receive regular payments with effect from 1 January 1954. [. . . . .] p.p. Dr. Pfister

34 Unfortunately it was impossible to ascertain from the papers who Prof. Hartwig was. It may be a reference to Hans Hartwig (1894–1960), jurist and professor of civil and commercial law, who taught at the University of Halle after 1945.

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16. 29 March 1957: Gerhard Masur (Sweet Briar, Va.) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 217 My dear Frau Geheimrat, Last Tuesday I spoke about The German Catastrophe35 here in our history seminar. I was able to incorporate everything you told me last summer about the genesis of this unique book. The students were greatly impressed. This is how influence is passed on from one generation to the next. I think so often, with tremendous gratitude, of the delightful hours I was able to spend with you last summer.36 I hope you’ve made it through the winter in good health. I’ve been tolerably well. But there have been too many odds and ends to deal with and I haven’t had enough time to write. But I hope to do something [two words illegible] in the summer. Best wishes to everyone in Dahlem. With respect and affection, Yours as always, Gerhard Masur 17. 25 January 1961: Hans Rothfels (Tübingen) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 62 Dear Herr Masur, It was very painful, I have to confess, for me to read your letter, which I received today—and not only because of the now vanished prospect of having you here as my successor, but also because of the circumstances surrounding your refusal. I don’t know whether you misunderstood

35

Meinecke, The German Catastrophe. Masur was visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin in the summer of 1956. 36

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my and Stuttgart’s insistence.37 It was solely intended to ensure clarity by the end of January as to whether you were in principle minded to accept or not, about which you had so far remained silent. I realized of course that the issue of citizenship would be a major difficulty, and I did point out possible solutions to you on several occasions, as I am to a certain extent an expert in this field. I did after all keep my citizenship for eight years, and could have kept it for longer if I hadn’t grown weary of commuting. Stuttgart promised to fulfil the one precondition, that you wouldn’t automatically have to become a German citizen, and 37

After Rothfels had already written to Masur several times, on 30 July, 13 August und 30 August 1960 in connection with the impending appointment of his successor in Tübingen, Masur was finally offered the chair in a letter from the minister of education and cultural affairs of Baden-Württemberg, Dr. Storz, on 29 October 1960. In his reply of 12 November 1960 to the relevant official in the higher education division, Frau Dr. Hoffmann, Masur accepted the appointment in principle, but alongside the questions of salary and teaching obligations, underlined that he was unwilling to give up his American citizenship and that, because of commitments at his college, he could begin teaching in Tübingen in the autumn of 1961 at the earliest. At the same time he informed her that he had received a request to take up a chair in history from the Free University of Berlin. In his letter to Masur of 13 August, Rothfels had already stated that should he accept the appointment Masur would not automatically have to become a German citizen. To avoid losing his American citizenship as a result of a lengthy period in the country of his birth, Rothfels explained that he could travel to live as a resident in the United States every 2–3 years. It would be enough for him to take unpaid leave in Germany for a semester every two-and-a-half years or so; he himself had had a similar arrangement for eight years before finally becoming a German citizen once again. Further, in a letter of 12 November, he urged Masur to decide quickly, clearly fearing that he would opt for the appointment in Berlin. He strongly advised him against carrying out twin-track negotiations with Berlin and Stuttgart: “You don’t need the lever of Tübingen. In Berlin they’ll give you everything you could possibly expect.” The faculty in Tübingen, he explained, was keen to have the chair occupied by April 1961, partly because an extraordinary professorship in contemporary history had been applied for that would definitely be available from 1 April 1961. But the faculty was unable to put anyone forward for it as long as his successor as chair of modern history was unknown and had had no opportunity “to express his views on possible candidates or participate in the discussions”. A “hot” candidate for the extraordinary professorship in contemporary history, he stated, was his student Waldemar Besson, a lecturer in Tübingen, but he had now been offered an appointment as professor ordinarius in political sciences in Erlangen and was expecting to be offered an extraordinary professorship in Freiburg. Besson would have to make a decision in January or February. He asked Masur to decline promptly “should you already know in your heart that you would prefer Berlin”. On 1 December 1960, Frau Dr. Hoffmann wrote to Masur that his American citizenship was no obstacle to the appointment, but that he should resolve the issue of how he might retain American citizenship in the event of a return to the country of his birth in America itself. She also informed him about the salary he could expect, moving expenses and the staff of the department of modern history and the other chairs in history at the University of Tübingen. She did not go into the question of when he should begin teaching. The appointment at the Free University of Berlin also clearly came to grief chiefly over the issue of retaining American citizenship. All the letters concerning the appointments offered by Tübingen and Berlin can be found in Masur’s papers, vol. 62 (Tübingen) or vol. 69 (Berlin).

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I believe they did their utmost to accommodate you in general. There was no need for the negotiations to break down over the issue of a period of paid leave for one semester every three years—that would certainly have been enough to satisfy the State Department—had you taken up these points in earnest. Apart from that, I don’t know whether there would have been a possibility of securing a semester as visiting professor every three years in Sweet Briar, as I and others have done. In any event, I have to say that after hearing from Herzfeld how keen you were to return, I did not imagine that you would turn down the appointment because of this particular obstacle, which could certainly have been negotiated, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone to such lengths in supporting you here. I did not conceal from my faculty the fact that you might opt for Berlin, in which case the blame would have lain with the faculty’s rather hesitant approach. But now I’ll surely get the blame for being too optimistic in my assessment of the situation. Now, the last thing I want to do is pin the blame on you. I’m well aware of the complexities of our lives and can therefore only sincerely hope that your decision proves to have been in your best interest. The people here will simply have to get over their disappointment, and anyway the long break, which has caused certain aspects to fade, has already given me a certain distance from the affair. On that note, I close with best wishes to you and your wife, Your H. Rothfels (Prof. Dr. Hans Rothfels) 18. 12 February 1961: Gerhard Masur (Lynchburg, Va.) to Hans Rothfels NL Masur 62, letter signed though probably a copy Dear Herr Rothfels, I didn’t want to leave your last letter38 unanswered, for nothing would pain me more than if the issue of the appointment to Tübingen were to lead to any bad feeling between us. First of all: a number of misunderstandings certainly appear to have crept in. I took your exhortation and that of Frau Dr. Hoffmann in

38

See above, pp. 229–231.

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Stuttgart to mean that a quick decision was of supreme importance to you. But as matters stood, this could only be a negative one. I am still busy finishing off my book; the mechanical aspects of a big, or to be more accurate, long book simply demand a great deal of time. The proofs will probably be ready only in the spring. Second, the possibility of a period of paid leave in order to return periodically to the United States was never mentioned, either by you or Frau Dr. Hoffmann. There is no prospect of the kind of solution that worked for you in Chicago and Gerhard in St. Louis in Sweet Briar. We are too poor, too small and, moreover, in the throws of major construction work. I could return to Sweet Briar only if someone, namely Beth Muncy,39 were to go on holiday and I stood in for her. I even took up the issue with our president, but she was less than impressed. I undoubtedly view the issue of citizenship itself quite differently than those individuals who have decided to return to Germany. For me, it is not merely a technical problem that can be got round with a bit of luck and dexterity. It has become increasingly fundamental to me over the last few years. In other words, I would be happy to work at a German university as long as it didn’t call my American citizenship into question. You know very well how Washington views these things. They are quite happy for you to take up a short-term position; but they look with suspicion upon any permanent post, and it is impossible to predict what the immigration authorities will decide in an individual case. You yourself write that you eventually grew tired of commuting back and forth. I observed the same thing in the case of Gerhard and Herr Fränkel40 and concluded that it is a major physical,

39 Lysbeth Walker Muncy (b. 1910), American historian. Student of Rothfels who obtained her doctorate with a dissertation on “Junker in the Prussian Administration under Wilhelm II, 1888–1914” in 1943. Began her academic career at Mount Holyoke College. Later taught at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and for 25 years at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Active in the peace, women’s and civil rights movements. 40 Ernst Fraenkel (1898–1975), leading political scientist of Jewish descent. As a lawyer, he defended individuals persecuted on political and racial grounds until his emigration to the United States in 1938. Military and legal advisor to the US government, particularly in Korea, from 1944 to 1951. Returned to Germany and became department head at the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in 1952 and professor ordinarius of political science (theory and comparative history of political systems) following its incorporation into the Free University of Berlin as the Otto-Suhr-Institut from 1953. A few years before his retirement in 1967, he played a key role in the foundation of the John F. Kennedy Institute for American

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financial and nervous strain, which I could cope with only if I received a binding commitment from Washington. I don’t feel strong enough “to commute” between Germany and the U. S. Ultimately, though, it seems to me that the entire problem comes down to the question of which place you feel the strongest ties with, and which tasks you view as most important. I am quite aware that the chair in Tübingen offers educational possibilities not open to me here in my little college, and I underwent an intense internal struggle. (Believe me, the choice of Berlin or Tübingen had no bearing on my decision, for the key problem applies just as much in the former case.) But I could have carried out the duties of the teaching post only if I could have made up my mind to subordinate everything else to it, that is, research and writing, while accepting the possibility of losing citizenship. My wife and friends could tell you what a hard time I had making a decision, how it preys on my mind and I continue to agonize over it. But when you’ve reached the age of fifty-nine and been tossed around as much as I have, you can’t rush such a fundamental decision—and as I said before, any quick decision could only be a negative one. Of course, only time will tell whether I have made the right choice, and even that will scarcely be ‘conclusive’, as I had to choose between two options, so I cannot know and will never know how the other would have turned out. I am genuinely sorry that my refusal will cause you problems in the faculty, but I believe that I emphasized right from the outset that I saw the issue of citizenship as the crucial problem. My very best regards, Your Gerhard Masur

Studies at the Free University of Berlin, where he took up a chair in American politics in addition to his professorship at the Otto-Suhr-Institut.

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19. 27 August 1961: Gerhard Masur (Raymond, N. H.) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 217 My dear Frau Geheimrat, Your kind letter from Holland was sent on to me here, where my wife and I are spending the holidays. It’s an idyllic spot, an old farmhouse on a hill surrounded by ash and fir. But as we’re living in America, it has of course been converted and modernized, and we have all the comforts of home. We were very tired when we arrived here in early July, but now the holidays are almost over, and in September we shall be back to work. Even over here we are aware of the fate of Berlin, and we listen to the news every day with great concern.41 Of course no-one can predict how things will turn out, not even Mr. Khrushchev.42 But there is hardly likely to be a positive outcome. It is in essence an unsolvable problem, and I am often very anxious about my friends in Berlin and the Free University. Believe me, it became exceedingly difficult to turn down the appointment. Tübingen was also hard to decline,43 but ultimately I saw no other way. Perhaps our path shall lead us to Germany next year. I have been invited to lecture in Tübingen, and if we can arrange it we shall come to Berlin as well. Then I can talk to you about my reasons in detail. Here I have got another lengthy essay ready for press, which will appear in April.44 The printing of my book45 has been delayed by a few weeks; I hope it will appear in late September. The German edition is to be published by S. Fischer.

41

The Berlin Wall was erected on 13 August 1961. Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party from 1953 as well as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR from 1958. Dismissed as party leader and head of government in 1964. 43 Masur turned down appointments to the chairs occupied by Hans Herzfeld at the Free University of Berlin and Hans Rothfels in Tübingen. On the reasons, see above, p. 39. 44 Probably a reference to the essay “Distinctive Traits of Western Civilization”, in: AHR 67 (1962), pp. 591–608. 45 Gerhard Masur, Prophets of Yesterday: Studies in European Culture 1890–1914, New York 1961. The German edition appeared in 1965 under the title Propheten von Gestern. Zur europäischen Kultur 1890–1914, published by S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt a. M., 1965. 42

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I noticed that Herr Anthon46 found a good position in Washington; he is the successor to Ernst Posner,47 who is retiring. The Gerhards want to visit us in September. How is Rothfels? I was deeply shocked by his wife’s death and I can imagine how difficult it must be for him to go it alone, as we say here. I hope that you yourself got through the operation on your cataracts in good order and that your trip to Holland did you good. I would like to write something about Friedrich Meinecke in 1962.48 Do you think the letters will be published soon, or that Herr Herzfeld or whoever is publishing them might send me the proofs?49 It seems incredible that we shall already be celebrating your husband’s hundredth birthday—but of course we’re all getting older. Our very best wishes to you and yours, As ever respectfully yours, Gerhard Masur

46 Carl Gustav Anthon, b. 1911 in Wismar, d. 1996 in Washington. American historian. Arrived in the United States in 1923. Obtained doctorate at Harvard in 1943. Advisor on Higher Education to the US High Commission in Berlin, 1950–1953. Professor at the American University in Beirut, 1955–1958. Executive Secretary of the US Education Commission in Germany, 1958–1960. Professor of history (19611976) as well as chairman (1961–1967) of the history department of the American University in Washington, D.C.. Fulbright Professor at the Free University of Berlin, 1967/68. Wrote on German post-war politics among other things. On his time in Berlin, see: “My Work as Higher Education Adviser in Berlin. A brief memoir”, in: Manfred Heinemann (ed.), Hochschuloffiziere und Wiederaufbau des Hochschulwesens in Westdeutschland 1945–1952. 3 parts, part 2: Die US-Zone, Hildesheim 1990, pp. 65–70. Friend of the Meinecke family. 47 Ernst Posner (1892–1980), historian and archivist. Emigrated to the United States via Sweden in 1939, then moved to Switzerland in 1972. Archivist in the Prussian Secret State Archive (Preußisches Geheimes Staatsarchiv) from 1921 until his compulsory retirement in 1935, lecturer at the Institute of History and Archival Science (Institut für Geschichtswissenschaft und Archivwissenschaft) in Berlin, 1930– 1935. Professor of history and archival administration at the American University, Washington, D.C. from 1945 until his retirement in 1961. Director of the School of Social Sciences and Public Affairs, 1947–1955. Made important contributions to the development of archival science in the USA. 48 Gerhard Masur, “Friedrich Meinecke, Historian of a World in Crisis”, in: The Origins of Modern Consciousness, ed. by James J. Ethridge and Barbara Kopala, Detroit 1963, pp. 133–147. 49 Meinecke’s Ausgewählter Briefwechsel appeared in 1962 and was edited by Ludwig Dehio and Peter Classen.

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20. 14 October 1961: Gerhard Masur (Lynchburg, Va.) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 217 My dear Frau Geheimrat, Thank you so much for your letter. We are now back in Virginia and the academic year is in full swing. My book50 finally came out on 25 September and looks very respectable. You may be interested in the enclosed article, which appeared here two weeks ago. The Berlin crisis is a great worry to all of us. I don’t believe, as you write, that Berlin will be sacrificed for the sake of world peace, but it is uncertain whether West Berlin and the Free University will survive in their current form. It is nice that you will see Holborn again. I usually meet up with him after Christmas at the historian’s conference. Dietrich Gerhard and his wife visited us in early September and we spent a day of enjoyable conversation together. I have written to Herr Classen and I believe that he may send me the proofs of the collected letters.51 Then I could get started with the reading, and insert the page numbers later. Overall, I am trying to work to a rather more modest schedule this year, for the final stages of the work on the book last spring were very hard and I’m still feeling the after-effects. [. . . . .] My wife sends her warmest regards. There is a possibility that we shall come to Germany in the summer of 1962. I’ve been invited to speak about South America in Tübingen, and if we can get a few more invitations, we would be happy to come over. In which case we would of course stop over in Berlin. I hope that your stay in the Harz Mountains did you good. I was last there in 1933 with my dear mother. Yours with respect, Gerhard Masur 50 51

Prophets of Yesterday, see above, p. 40. See above, p. 235.

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IV. Hajo Holborn 1. 14 October 1924: Hajo Holborn (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 1 Dear Gerhard, My heartfelt thanks for your letter. A number of things have become clear to me over the last few days, while at the same time I have got over a severe cold and am gradually beginning to get my strength back. The events in Heidelberg had such an effect on me because they seemed to show the futility of my urge to escape from personal solitude. The fate of individual isolation is of course a particularly menacing one for our generation, one I feel especially exposed to. But I am very keen to avoid letting this menace hold sway over me. After some depressing experiences, it is hard to regain the courage to continue on this path. Your remarks on the “political historian” are correct and worth heeding. Despite all the occasional doubts and anxieties and the fact that there is of course much work still to be done and obstacles to be removed, I too believe in my calling to history and will never give it up. But at the same time I am tempted to involve myself directly in public life, a desire that at times deprives me of all peace of mind. But you are no doubt right that both tendencies are fundamentally quite compatible, and may even be fused into a single impulse. At all events, for the time being I shall press on with my studies, which is in any case the only option open to me. I’m afraid that for the time being all of this amounts to a rather bitter-tasting sense of resignation, while the fire continues to smoulder, but I hope to get over it and, indeed, to achieve a highly positive outlook. You have truly glorious weather for your trip and I deeply regret not being able to see you again. Which makes me look forward all the more to seeing you again in the not-too-distant future. I am particularly keen to hear a detailed report on Roth. and Schramm.1 Your devoted friend, Hajo Holborn 1 Reference to the medievalist Percy Ernst Schramm (1894–1970), who habilitated in Heidelberg in 1922, and probably to the philosopher Erich Rothacker (1888–1965), who taught in Heidelberg at the time.

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2. 9 June 1925: Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Geheimrat, Having begun to feel somewhat at home here in Heidelberg, I would like to express my sincere thanks to you once again for your goodwill and kind efforts in support of my future habilitation.2 Everywhere here I have had the friendliest of welcomes and everyone has been so kind and obliging. Should my habilitation thesis go down well, everything seems likely to proceed smoothly. I have not, however, yet managed to pass on your best wishes to Anschütz, Thoma and Lenel3 as you requested; Prof. Andreas wants to present me to the faculty only towards the end of the semester and is keen to avoid my or his intentions becoming generally known before then. I shall therefore keep quiet and give nothing away. You were so kind as to raise the prospect of the printing of my lecture on Bismarck and the German question from 1866 to 1870. But Prof. Andreas has now advised me not to present myself to a general public here. Because my view of the topic has shifted significantly as I have elaborated on the lecture, and I have been faced with new issues that cannot be properly set out within the framework of a brief essay, I am happy to forego publication for the moment. I would like to develop the subject matter further, which requires me to carry out further studies that will keep me occupied for some time. What I want to do is sift out the constant aspects of Bismarck’s policies more clearly and forcefully than has been done so far, and to show that their roots lay not solely in considerations of Realpolitik but to a large extent in a political ideal in which Bismarck himself believed. How he differs from both the Gerlach-Radowitz generation and that of Prince Bülow. This distinction is based not only on the external dimensions of his political thought but also its innermost essence. I hope that, alongside

2

Meinecke arranged Holborn’s habilitation in Heidelberg in 1926. Gerhard Anschütz (1867–1948) and Richard Thoma (1874–1957) were well-known experts in constitutional law who held professorships in Heidelberg. Thoma became professor in Bonn in 1928. Walter Lenel (1868–1937), a historian from a Mannheimbased family of Jewish manufacturers, was a close friend of Meinecke’s from his time in Strasbourg, where Lenel worked as a wealthy private scholar. Christened in 1906 and married to the daughter of the admiral Borckenhagen, a family friendship developed between the Meineckes and Lenels. 3

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the studies of humanism on which I have now embarked, I shall also manage, little by little, to complete this work on Bismarck.4 I would be happy to take on the reviews you suggested I might write for the Historische Zeitschrift (A. Hajek, Bulgaria under Turkish Rule [Bulgarien unter der Türkenherrschaft], and Jagemann, Memoirs [Erinnerungen]), and I would ask you to be so kind as to send me the books. I would also be happy to review Schlözer’s letters from America soon to be published by the Deutsche-Verlags-Anstalt for the HZ,5 if you have no objection. I hope you will have managed to find a solution to the HZ editorial problems,6 in such a way that you may be freed from the burden of sole responsibility, which is surely a heavy one in the long run. I used the first weeks of my stay here to travel a great deal through Southern Germany and have seen unexpectedly beautiful sights. This has brought me closer to medieval Germany in particular than one could probably ever come in “Ostelbien” [the German territories east of the Elbe]. The old historical buildings are fused in such a vital way with the landscape of Swabia and the Upper Rhine region that it takes very little reflection and imagination to gain a vivid idea of medieval life. As a Prussian, it is more difficult to get used to the political life of Southwest Germany: a great deal of sterile agitation and a great lack of energy in all the goings on was my first impression, though one gradually comes to less harsh conclusions the more one begins to get

4 Holborn eventually held a public lecture on Bismarck at the University of Heidelberg in early December 1926, an abridged version of which was published under the title “Über die Staatskunst Bismarcks”, in: Zeitwende 3, April 1927, pp. 321–334. 5 See Holborn’s review: “Eugen von Jagemann, 75 Jahre des Erlebens und Erfahrens (1849–1924)”, in: HZ 133 (1926), p. 175. There is no evidence of reviews of the books by Hajek and the letters of Schlözer by Holborn in the HZ. 6 For vols. 72–75 (1894/1895), Meinecke was co-editor of the HZ alongside Heinrich von Sybel, 1817–1895; vol. 76 (1896) was edited by Heinrich von Treitschke and Meinecke. From vol. 77 (1896) to vol. 112 (1914), Meinecke appears as sole editor. From vol. 113 (1914) to vol. 131 (1925), he was assisted by Fritz Vigener, a professor of medieval history in Gießen, as co-editor. Meinecke was mainly responsible for essays and miscellany, Vigener for the reviews of historical literature and “notes and news” (“Notizen und Nachrichten”). After Vigener’s death, Meinecke edited vols. 132 to 136 (1925 to 1927) alone. Dietrich Gerhard was employed as assistant editor in 1925 and from then on the editorial work was carried out in the rooms of the history department of Berlin University (see above, p. 181). The medievalist Albert Brackmann appeared as co-editor for the first time in vol. 137 (1928).

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a sense of the circumstances and becomes aware of initially unappreciated positive aspects. I now have one eye on Berlin, particularly on the occasion of your speech7 at the conference of the Liberal Association, which found in me a silent but grateful listener. I’m afraid it is uncertain to what degree it will be possible to disseminate the political views which you promote in the reactionary period that has now set in. It will be hard work simply to maintain the present precarious position. Much of the future of our state depends on this, and if you were perhaps able to do something for me in this connection on occasion, I would be extremely grateful. Herr Prof. Andreas sends his best wishes. I hope this finds you enjoying the holidays in Berlin with a spring in your step. Please pass on my best regards to your wife. Faithfully yours, Hajo Holborn 3. 1 March 1926: Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I am also sending you my newly published dissertation.8 I would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for all the encouragement and support you have given me. Upon publication of my book, my greatest wish was that you might consider it not entirely unworthy of the instruction and historical guidance that you bestowed upon me. From your daughter, whom I recently visited with my fiancée, I heard that you wish to come here shortly after Easter. I am very much looking forward to that; for if there is one thing that sometimes makes

7 Meinecke’s talk on “Die Kulturfragen und die Parteien” at the Liberal Association (Liberale Vereinigung) on 16 May 1925, printed in: Die neue Rundschau, vol. 36, July 1925, pp. 673–680. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 385–392. 8 Hajo Holborn, Deutschland und die Türkei 1878–1890, Berlin 1926.

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me perceive my being here as a kind of banishment, it is above all the impossibility of being able to ask your advice as I used to in Berlin. We were both astonished by your daughter’s lovely flat in Schlierbach. Despite the small rooms, which now seem to be unavoidable, it is extremely homely and comfortable, not to mention the splendid surroundings, which one may admire from the large terrace. I have once again seriously discussed with my fiancée whether we ought to open up the shop that has been demanded in the house, in order to acquire a similar flat. I am sitting here writing the first part of my study of Hutten, which is to cover the period until he joined forces with Luther. I hope to finish it by early May. For part two I shall probably need to do more extensive preparatory work on the history of the Diet of Worms, unless the dissertation by the student of Marcks in Berlin prepares the ground somewhat on that front. The work on Hutten is interesting and rewarding, though the manifold intellectual and political relations and conditions make it hard to write about him. There is still an endless amount of work to be done in the field as a whole: first of all, Mestwerdt’s studies of Erasmus9 would have to be continued, but the other forms of German humanism would have to be brought out more clearly as well. At present, one can move only very carefully within this field, as it is impossible to gain a reliable overview of the entire literary production of German humanism. I am glad that I shall be able to tell you more about this in a few weeks and in the meantime I wish you and your dear wife a good rest from the strains of the winter semester in Berlin. With best wishes, Gratefully yours, Hajo Holborn

9 Paul Mestwerdt, Die Anfänge des Erasmus. Humanismus und ‘Devotio Moderna’, ed. by Hans von Schubert, Leipzig 1917.

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4. 28 April 1926: Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Geheimrat. You asked me in person about a successor to Herr Dr. Christern10 and were kind enough to take me into consideration. At the time I told you that I hoped that things would go smoothly here. In the meantime, since your departure, things have become less rosy for me, not only because Baethgen’s departure (for Cologne)11 has become very uncertain, but above all because to my surprise Andreas is not content with an account of Hutten extending to the Diet of Worms, but wants a complete biography. As long as I could hope to put my habilitation behind me over the summer, it made no difference to me whether Baethgen stayed or went, for I had the confidence that I could bring in with my own—by then free—hands, through writing work, whatever I lacked to establish a household. It seems doubtful that I shall be able to complete the full biography, as I am nonetheless trying to do, in such good time that I shall at least manage to do the faculty colloquium this summer. The faculty can do nothing for me prior to my habilitation. Given the current political and financial situation of the Baden state, it is even uncertain whether it will be able to do anything for me later on. I am unable to take decisive action to “help myself ” as long as my hands are tied. Under the present conditions here I am thus facing a highly uncertain future. I would therefore like to have discussed with you whether you think it might perhaps be possible for me to be given the Berlin assistantship. For the time being, my dear Herr Geheimrat, I would merely like to request that you leave open the question of who to appoint, should you have no other preferred applicant, until I have told you about my situation in person in more detail towards the end of next week. Until

10 Hermann Christern (1892–1941), historian. Sometime assistant at the history department of Berlin University. 11 Fritz Baethgen (1890–1972), medievalist, habilitated in Heidelberg in 1920 and became professor extraordinarius there in 1924. Worked at the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome from 1927 to 1929 and concurrently as honorary professor in Berlin. Went to Königsberg in 1929 to take up an appointment as professor ordinarius. Holder of a chair in Berlin from 1939 to 1947, he was president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica from 1947 to 1958 and president of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences from 1956 to 1964.

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then, I would also ask that you treat what I have told you today as confidential. I am travelling to Berlin on Wednesday evening to visit my parents for eight days. I was delighted to hear from Herr Prof. Thoma that the Weimar conference12 went well. I hope it wasn’t too stressful an end to your holidays. Please pass on my cordial greetings to your dear wife. Best wishes, Gratefully yours, Hajo Holborn 5. 7 January 1929: Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Geheimrat, As well as wishing you a Happy New Year I would like to congratulate you on the birth of your second grandchild. We were delighted to hear about this happy event, albeit out of partly selfish motives, for we hope that any reason for a trip to Saarbrücken13 might provide the pretext and opportunity for a detour to Heidelberg. Professor Schreiber was in Heidelberg yesterday to throw a party celebrating his honorary doctorate. He kindly invited me along, and afterwards he discussed the issue of the Weimar constitution with me.14 That is, he seemed to take it as read that I had already been given the task and merely discussed with me how I could obtain the material 12 At the Weimar conference of German university teachers on 23 and 24 April 1926, Friedrich Meinecke gave a lecture on “Die deutschen Universitäten und der heutige Staat”, reprinted in: Referate erstattet auf der Weimarer Tagung deutscher Hochschullehrer am 23. und 24. April 1926 von Wilhelm Kahl, Friedrich Meinecke, Gustav Radbruch, Tübingen 1926, pp. 17–31. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 402–413. 13 The only one of Meinecke’s four daughters who was married, Sabine Rabl, lived in Saarbrücken from 1926, where her husband Carl Rabl was a medical specialist. 14 See above, p. 42.

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and offered to introduce me to the relevant gentlemen in the Centre Party and Bavarian People’s Party. Further, though I had in no way alluded to this aspect, he also promised to see to the funding of my work. Our discussion was pleasant and—probably helped along by the atmosphere of the doctoral celebration—particularly benevolent and accommodating. Incidentally, he recommended that I get on with it, which does in fact seem imperative in light of the interviews, etc. If, partly because I am standing in for Andreas and have to finish off the work for the Commission on the History of the Reformation,15 I am not in fact able to start work for the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) before 1 October (because I shall be working on it for much of the summer, I would like to have my current grant from the Reformation Commission extended for six more months), then I would request to be allowed to go to Berlin as early as September. That is, while I would request that I be permitted to receive the regular grant from the Imperial Historical Commission only in October, I would ask to be given the funds to cover the travel costs in September. Otherwise I would have too little time to study the records in depth; I would need two months in Berlin to gain an overview of the material. Alongside the issue of the start date of my study, I have also had another think about the question of its material basis. Would it perhaps be possible to formulate the contract with the Imperial Commission in such a way that the sum of 600M is specified as fee per printed folio? And would it be possible for the Imperial Commission to pay me the same sum monthly in advance (on which, in contrast to the grants from the Emergency Committee, I would probably have to pay tax) over the course of the next two years? This would entail drawing up the contract in line with exactly the same schema as forms the basis for the contracts relating to the source publications. I suggest a fixed period of two years because the fee per printed sheet can hardly be calculated as more than twice as much as that for the source editions. After adding travel expenses, etc., it would be used up after about two years. I believe, however, that I need more than two years for the work, but hope that I shall no longer require material support, as I believe that after two years I shall, at the very least, be at a point where 15

Reference to the following work: Hajo Holborn with Annemarie Holborn (eds.), Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Ausgewählte Werke. Veröffentlichungen der Kommission zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Reformation und Gegenreformation, Munich 1933, reprinted Munich 1964.

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I have the plan for the work and its structure under control and could entrust it to a publisher, whom I could probably persuade to finance it. I think it’s fair to assume that a study such as that of the history of the Weimar constitution would also be worthwhile from a publisher’s point of view. In this case, though, one could not—and neither is there any plan to this end—put it together with source publications in a series; it would have to be treated as a book in its own right. I would ask you, dear Herr Geheimrat, to regard my thoughts as merely private and non-binding suggestions, as they have developed in the course of our conversations. Perhaps you can see other possibilities that would be more agreeable to the Imperial Commission or to me. And the Commission has as yet not even decided whether to approve my candidacy! But it is almost beginning to look as if it will, so I have already begun, beyond my work on Hutten—I am now writing the last chapter—to look around a bit for materials on the Weimar constitution. I did not give Herr Andreas your regards as you requested because of the irritated questions I encountered on my return from Berlin. But I did have the opportunity to state very clearly how any impartial observer must view his concerns and to explain that there is no question of deliberate insult to his person. I may have somewhat underestimated him, for he took it all very well and I was able to convince him or at least calm him down, a sign that he has in all likelihood simply been too long and one-sidedly under the influence of characters who have an overinflated view of him and who, in their fervour for him, begin to see phantoms. And perhaps I still take too seriously what is merely the product of Palatine hotheadedness. I thus believe that he will learn to assess things calmly and, above all, that in future he will resist being put off by such questions when forming an objective opinion—or even in his academic teaching. In terms of paving the way for such a calmer state of mind, it is very fortunate that the people in Göttingen put him at the top of their list, and since then he has once again made a happy and unaggressive impression. I think I may even be able to pass on his regards next time. With best wishes to you and your wife, As ever yours faithfully, Hajo Holborn

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6. 26 August 1929: Hajo Holborn (Sils-Baselgia, Engadine Valley) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Geheimrat, Thank you very much for seeing to my requests so swiftly. Even if I have to wait a while to receive broad permission to use the archival documents, for the time being I shall be able to get hold of enough material in Berlin to familiarize myself with the subject. During the

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imperial chancellor’s stay in Heidelberg16 I extended my feelers into the group around him. Radbruch17 put me in touch with secretary of state Joël,18 so now I shall easily be able to obtain at least a provisional permit to work in the Imperial Chancellery, Ministry of Justice and Ministry of the Interior. I shall also call at the Imperial Archive at some point; but of all the authorities I hope that the Imperial Archive will be the one most willing to send me records in Heidelberg. I shall contact Rohden19 at once. We are truly sorry that you won’t manage to come to Heidelberg on this occasion; but we hope that your visit is merely delayed and that your next journey to the South will bring you here. I’m afraid I am unable to present you with my book on Hutten myself, but shall have it sent to you in Dahlem as soon as it is published. Making use of the permission you gave me some time ago, I have dedicated it to you.20 Years ago, by alerting me to Hutten, you gave my studies a more specific goal and more definite focus than I originally had in mind with my vague plans to examine the relationship between the Reformation and humanism, and furthermore I sought to harness the principles of your research approach to study the 16th century. I believe I am aware of the book’s flaws and imperfections. It was written rather too quickly three years ago for the sake of my habilitation, and I have been unable to eradicate entirely the traces of its hasty emergence without going beyond its biographical scope as originally planned. However, my hopes of accommodating some of the more wide-ranging reflections and investigations in intellectual history in my book on Erasmus prompted me to publish the book on Hutten in its present form. Above all, after Kalkhoff ’s foggy antiquarian essays,21 it seemed necessary to 16 Hermann Müller (1876–1931), Social Democrat politician, foreign minister in 1919/1920, imperial chancellor in 1920 and 1928–1930. 17 Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949), leading jurist, legal and cultural philosopher and Social Democrat politician. Reichstag deputy from 1920 to 1924, imperial justice minister in 1921/22 and 1923. Professor in Heidelberg from 1926 until forced out by the National Socialists in 1933 and again from 1945. 18 Curt Joël (1865–1945), jurist and politician, secretary of state at the imperial justice ministry from 1920, one of the most important politicians concerned with legal affairs in the Weimar Republic. 19 Presumably a reference to Peter Richard Rohden (1891–1942), historian and student of Meinecke. 20 Hajo Holborn’s book, Ulrich von Hutten, Leipzig 1929, is dedicated to “Friedrich Meinecke with gratitude and admiration”. 21 Reference to the books and essays by Paul Kalkhoff, which Holborn subjected to critical examination in his book on Hutten and his essay “Eine Schrift Luthers gegen

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provide an accurate outline of the individual and the extent of his inner vitality. But what I wish above all as I publish this book is that, for all its shortcomings, you can recognize it, so to speak, as your natural intellectual progeny. I’m afraid the weather in the Engadine was changeable in August, and only now does a consistently pleasant late summer seem to have set in. I hope you shall still encounter this weather before your trip is over, as Swabia in September can be wonderful under such conditions. My best wishes to you and your dear wife, As ever yours faithfully, Holborn 7. 2 February 1930: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hajo Holborn Holborn papers in Yale University Library, ms. 579, box 1, folder 6 Dear colleague, I have transferred your request for reimbursement of expenses arising from your stay in Berlin to von Mertz.22 As far as Payer23 is concerned, I can tell you that Heuss24 recently committed an interview with him to

Ulrich von Hutten? Bemerkungen zu Kalkhoffs Forschungen”, in: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 81 (1929), pp. 617–623. 22 Mertz von Quirnheim. 23 Friedrich von Payer (1847–1931), jurist and politician. Member of the Reichstag and parliamentary party leader from 1877 to 1887 and 1910 to 1917, first for the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei) and from 1910 for the leftliberal Progressive People’s Party (Fortschrittliche Volkspartei). Chair of the inter-party committee (Interfraktioneller Ausschuß), consisting of members of the SPD, Centre Party and Progressive People’s Party and sometimes the National Liberal Party, 1917– 18. Vice-chancellor in the governments of imperial chancellors Georg von Hertling and Max von Baden, 1917–18. Leader of the parliamentary DDP in the Weimar National Assembly from 1919 until his withdrawal from active politics in 1920. 24 Theodor Heuss (1884–1963), journalist and politician. Studied political economy; member of left-wing liberal parties from 1903. Colleague of Friedrich Naumann at his weekly Die Hilfe from 1905. Co-founder of the DDP in 1918; represented it or its successor, the German State Party (Deutsche Staatspartei), founded in 1930, in the Reichstag (1924–28, 1930–32 and 1932–33). Taught at the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in Berlin. Driven out of politics following the Nazi seizure of power; non-political journalist and freelance writer until 1945. Co-founder of the Democratic Party/Free Democratic party (Demokratische Partei/Freie Demokratische Partei) after 1945. Deputy in the Landtag of Württemberg-

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paper for us, which is limited to the period up to and including 1917. Heuss had the impression that Payer’s memory of the revolutionary and Weimar period is failing. But perhaps you will manage to set his latent knowledge in motion by asking him certain key questions. I had heard about the prospects in Prague only from you and alluded to them at New Year. I’m afraid the job opportunity in Marburg, which I would very much like to have worked out for you, has now faded away entirely for time being. Mommsen25 tells me that the post is not to be filled for now for in order to make savings. Furthermore, there were other candidates for the post. So you will have to stick it out a while longer—and that’s something you tend to get a good grounding in as a German lecturer outside of the faculties of law. Now to my relations with Solf 26 in Nov. 1918. If I am correct, I put the date of 19 November on the draft of the lecture by Solf that I gave to you. I must have done this shortly afterwards, mixing up two different days. My diary, which took the form of brief summaries back then, includes the following entry for 18 November 1918: “Discussion with Solf and Riezler27 on the future constitution. My backing for the fundamentals of the constitution in North America made sense to them. Riezler thought that the Christian-Catholic trade unions would form the core of their own party alongside the big democratic party, because the latter would seem overly capitalistic to them and also because they would champion a more robust view of the state than the other nonsocialist parties that would come together within the new democratic party. In both cases, their general sentiments with respect to possible Bolshevist developments were, like mine, very pessimistic”. I had just one conversation with Solf a few days before 18 Nov., namely the one in which he asked me to assess the usability of the

Baden from 1946–49 and influential member of the parliamentary council when it drew up the constitution in 1948–49. First president of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949–1959. 25 Wilhelm Mommsen. 26 Wilhelm Heinrich Solf (1862–1936), diplomat and orientalist. Took up a post in the foreign ministry from 1888, worked in its colonial division from 1896. Made governor of Samoa in 1900. Secretary of state heading the Imperial Colonial Office (Reichskolonialamt), 1911–1918 and also foreign minister from October to December 1918. Member of the DDP from 1919. German ambassador in Tokyo, 1920–1928. Resisted the Nazi regime as founder of the Solf Circle after 1933. 27 Kurt Riezler (1882–1955), political journalist, close confidant of Bethmann Hollweg.

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Frankfurt constitution of 49.28 I certainly had the impression that my idea of drawing on the American model was new to him but that he immediately embraced it, stating, for instance: “This would be a good move for us politically now and Wilson29 would feel flattered.” Now yesterday I spoke to Solf himself at a breakfast and asked him what he remembered. He could certainly remember that evening (that is, of the 18 Nov. at Riezler’s); he stated that afterwards Riezler drew up the first draft of his memorandum on the question of the constitution, which he had sent to Ebert,30 and that the dates of the official memoranda cannot be taken too literally and often differ by whole days from the true date. He asked me to tell you that you can’t rely too much on the minutes of meetings of the time as they were not usually checked and instead notes were scribbled down rather chaotically at Erzberger’s31 behest. Very best wishes, Your Fr. Meinecke

28 The constitution of the German Empire, adopted by the National Assembly in Frankfurt on 28 March 1849. 29 Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), president of the United States, 1913–1921. 30 Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925), leading Social Democratic politician. Paid official in the Bremen labour movement and chairman of the Social Democrat group in the Bremen city parliament from 1900 until his election to the SPD party executive in 1905. One of the chairs of the Social Democratic Party from September 1913 until February 1919 and co-chair of the Social Democrat group in the Reichstag from 1916 to 1918. Member of the Reichstag from 1912 to 1918. Chair of the Council of the People’s Deputies (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) from November 1918 until February 1919. Imperial president from February 1919 until his death. 31 Matthias Erzberger (1875–1921), politician. Started off as an elementary school teacher. Member of the Reichstag for the Centre Party (Zentrumspartei) from 1903, in which he soon played a leading role as representative of its left wing. Advocated a peace of understanding from 1917 and supported the parliamentarization of the empire and acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. As imperial finance minister, from June 1919 to March 1920, when he was forced to resign because of a smear campaign, he was responsible for a major financial reform, which expanded the Empire’s authority in financial matters and placed a major burden on the very wealthy. Murdered on 26 August 1921 as supposed “November criminal”, wrongly alleged to be one of those responsible for the revolution of November 1918.

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8. [1932]: CV of Hajo Holborn, submitted for his Umhabilitation [transfer of teaching authority to a different institution] in Berlin Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, 1246 CV I was born on 18 May 1902, the son of Geheimer Regierungsrat [a senior civil servant] Professor Dr. Ludwig Holborn, director in the Imperial Physical-Technological Institute [Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt], in Berlin-Charlottenburg. After 12 years at the KaiserinAugusta grammar school in Charlottenburg, which I left in Easter 1920 having passed my leaving examination, I studied history, church history, philosophy and state sciences (Staatswissenschaften) at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Berlin from the summer semester of 1920. [. . . . .] I feel deeply indebted to the training and stimulation I received in the classes of professors Brackmann, von Harnack,32 Holl33 and Meinecke. I obtained my Dr. phil. in Berlin in March 1924. My dissertation topic was: “Germany and Turkey, 1878–1890” (“Deutschland und die Türkei 1878–1890”). I turned down an invitation to join the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany [Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft] as a member of the academic staff in 1926. I received the venia legendi [granting authority to teach] in medieval and modern history from the philosophy faculty of the University of Heidelberg in autumn of 1926. My habilitation thesis was on “Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation” (“Ulrich von Hutten und die deutsche Reformation”). Information on my teaching responsibilities as lecturer (Privatdozent) in Heidelberg—where I stood in for the professor ordinarius in the summer of 1928 during his sabbatical—can be found in the enclosed outline.

32 Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), leading Protestant theologian and historian. Probably the most influential political figure among university professors in the German Empire. President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (Kaiser-WilhelmGesellschaft), 1911–1930, on whose conceptual foundations and future development he exercised a significant influence. 33 Karl Holl (1866–1926), leading Protestant church historian, who had a major impact chiefly through his interpretation of Luther, whose works he attempted to use to help theology define its role after the First World War. Professor in Berlin from 1906.

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In the summer semester of 1931 I took up an appointment to the chair in international politics and history established by the Carnegie Foundation at the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik). I am responsible for the teaching of history within the framework of the School’s academic courses and doing my best to inform a broader public about issues in international politics and foreign area studies through independent teaching and research. I attach a copy of the last report I compiled for the governing board of the Carnegie Foundation in order to clarify the nature of my activities. When I took on the Carnegie lectureship, initially on a three-year fixed-term basis, the state of my academic research was of crucial importance for me. My main fields of activity are Reformation history and modern political history. In the field of Reformation history, my studies benefited from the support of the Commission on the Promotion of Historical Studies of the Reformation and CounterReformation (Kommission zur Förderung geschichtlicher Studien zur Reformation und Gegenreformation) headed by his Excellency SchmidtOtt;34 with its help, in Heidelberg and while based in Heidelberg, I was able to build substantially on its provisional findings and complete this research project. Based in Heidelberg, I was less able to further the work on the history of the origins of the Weimar imperial constitution with which I was entrusted by the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission). Completion of this book depends on a very extensive study of the Berlin archives and libraries, and occasional holiday visits do not provide sufficient time. I was thus happy to take advantage of the opportunity that the appointment to the newly established Carnegie chair offered with regard to my current academic priorities. The philosophy faculty of the University of Heidelberg and the Baden ministry of education and cultural affairs have enabled me to take up a position in Berlin by granting me leave, initially extending until 1 April 1933.

34 Friedrich Schmidt-Ott (1860–1956). Jurist, administrative official and politician with a core focus on science and academia. Entered the Prussian civil service after studying jurisprudence and became a very close colleague of Friedrich Althoff in the Prussian ministry of education and cultural affairs. Minister of religions and educational affairs in Prussia, 1917–1918. President of the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany (Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft), 1920–1934.

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While my work at the German College for the Study of Politics has opened up a very intensive field of work to me and has also enabled me to advance my next research plan, I have found it difficult to give up teaching at the University. For my teaching there made it possible to gradually penetrate the field of history as a whole and prevented any premature specialization. And the same applies to the pedagogical field: as much as I wish to participate in the efforts to develop a specific course in political science, involvement in the teaching of the humanities more generally nonetheless seems more satisfying to me. In addition, in purely practical terms, I am faced with the problem that, should my teaching contract from the Carnegie Foundation be extended beyond 1 April 1933, the University of Heidelberg could scarcely approve a renewal of my leave, while on the other hand, for material reasons, there seems virtually no prospect of me returning to my teaching post, which was essentially made possible by the Commission on the Promotion of Historical Studies of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Holborn 9. 14 April 1933: Hajo Holborn (Berlin) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 1 My dear Diether, Many thanks for your letters and sympathy. You know how firmly I feel tied to you by our bond of friendship. And of all those things that one may experience as consoling and pleasing amid so many perils and horrors and while undergoing all the shocks and upheavals, it is the sense of human closeness and togetherness that stands out above all else. I don’t need to tell you how deeply moved I was by what you wrote about yourself. From a purely practical and material point of view, I don’t believe that as a front-line soldier you will encounter any difficulties at the university. There is no threat to your teaching position;35 as to your future progress—none of us are currently sure about that.

35 In fact, D. Gerhard did temporarily lose his venia legendi, giving him the authority to teach, in 1933. Because he had been a front-line soldier in the First World War, however, it was initially returned to him (see above, p. 34).

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The School may present more difficulties.36 It looks as if it will be fully nationalized in the autumn and become a purely National Socialist institution. Whether the likes of Carnegie will go along with that, I don’t know, but I am equally unsure as to whether the new imperial authorities will keep on any of the current lecturers. This perspective does not apply to the summer however; the current lecture programme will be carried out with a few cancellations. A kind of state commissioner was assigned to us a few days ago, with whom we shall come to a final agreement over the next week. I assume that the decision will be made on Friday or Saturday of next week. One can say nothing until then. I think it’s pointless for you to come to Berlin during Easter. You won’t be able to learn anything about the School, but the university is even further behind. It would be far better for you to return to Berlin at the end of the week. I myself will be going there on Thursday. I understand perfectly how difficult it will be for you to come to a decision about when to hold your wedding under these circumstances.37 But of course marriage is largely a matter of total mutual consent and understanding, along with the resolute courage and will to demonstrate this togetherness before and within the world. On these conditions, which apply to the two of you, one can surely say: where there are two wills united in purpose, a way will be found. Easter is deadly serious this time around. But let us not lose either our reverence for life or our faith in it. With best wishes to you and your fiancée, Yours always, Hajo

36 Reference to the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in Berlin, where Holborn taught from 1931 to 1933 as Carnegie Professor in history and international relations. Alongside his work as lecturer at the University of Berlin, Dietrich Gerhard also lectured at the German College for the Study of Politics in 1932/33. 37 Despite the uncertainty of his situation since the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Gerhard married the Protestant Grete, née Fischer, who emigrated with him to the United States in 1935.

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10. 11 September 1933: Hajo Holborn (Heidelberg) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 1 My dear Dieter, We arrived here yesterday and have to be on our way again the day after tomorrow. I lost a lot of time because of my angina, then an extremely bothersome problem with my teeth, which put me at the mercy of the dentist until the very last day. All of which I could have done without in my current state, but another day or two no longer made any difference. My belated thanks for your friendly and comforting letter. Please do not be afraid that we are leaving in a bitter mood—we feel just as strongly attached to all those things you hold in such high regard. But we do not wish to have to infringe in any way upon what we regard as our life’s work and as an obligation to where we come from and our intellectual desires. Especially not because of events and phenomena as changeable and transitory as those at issue here. Nowhere do I feel refuted in terms of the essential core of my present attitude and convictions (as much as I have of course learned in individual cases). Naturally, things may (and probably will ) develop in such a way that one would have to begin again from scratch. There might then be a new place for me to work . . . but it is not yet the time to speak of such things. For now, the situation simply calls for one to remain true to one’s profession and to oneself and, in this spirit, to make the best of one’s fate. So I am trying to think of our journey as a kind of educational and study trip, that will eventually bring us back home again. By the way, before I left Berlin I had a conversation with Fehling,38 who believed that I would lose the venia [granting authority to teach] and was pessimistic about the historians in other ways as well. I hope he is wrong. Above all, I hope that you manage to hold your own in line with your plans without having to make any serious concessions! My dear friend, I am truly sorry that we are unable to meet up properly and have a good talk again, as I had in fact promised. But we

38

Representative of the Rockefeller Foundation in Germany, see above, p. 212.

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must continue our journey as quickly as possible if we wish to get to a point, before too long, where we can step out socially with renewed energy. After all the trials and tribulations we have just eight days to lie in the sun and fortify ourselves for the coming events. Much of our fate will depend on the conversations in Geneva. I don’t want to tear myself away from the children for the three days that we are here. This is not only my last chance to enjoy them undisturbed for some time, but the first time I’ve had a chance to do so in ages. We shall probably be able to catch up around Christmas. We want to fetch the children together, and I would be able to come and see you either in Berlin or Southern Germany. I was really delighted to be able to see your mother39 in Berlin, to whom I feel such a strong sense of inner obligation in so many ways. She told me about you and the family and the special day in Augsburg.40 [. . .] For now my very best wishes to you and your wife, Your Hajo H. 11. 28 May 1934: Hajo Holborn (on board RMS Majestic, White Star Line) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 1 My dear Dietrich, Thank you so much for all the signs of life you have sent me from time to time. It was a great help to me over these last nine months that all of those who were close to me have provided me with amiable and attentive companionship during this time. When I received your second-to-last letter from England, I had just come from Harvard, having already been in Yale and Washington. I already knew that the goal of my trip to America had been achieved. It was another five weeks or so before the formalities had been sorted out and I could go to Yale41 and

39 40 41

The writer Adele Gerhard, mother of Dietrich Gerhard. The marriage of Dietrich Gerhard to his Augsburg-born wife. Holborn was appointed to a position at Yale University in 1934.

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another fourteen days before I was at peace with Carnegie42 (for the summer). I am now happily back on solid ground and hope that my immigration can also be sorted out without too much trouble. For the time being I am established as visiting professor at Yale, which of course entails a degree of uncertainty. But overall things look very promising for the future as well. Two things have helped me decisively: first, the fact that I had the support of the Rockefeller Foundation as well as that of the committee run by Murrow and Duggan.43 All of the departments of history are in fact very helpful, and there is no lack of space, but there is currently a lack of money. This will probably get better as soon as they have sorted out their budgets, but is a great hindrance. Harvard probably still has the money, but has such a large history department that they will feel the least urgency. I consider Chicago and (of the small universities) George Washington University in Washington D.C. the best prospects. I believe it would be very advantageous to you if you could find a route into these places. And I would recommend that you mention more than just English history as your field of study. While that is certainly regarded as useful, the Americans feel that they know enough about it themselves. They are genuinely keen to develop those areas they have not worked on so far, in other words German as well as Eastern European history, medieval Europe, Renaissance and Reformation. I believe you would do well to mention your knowledge of Slavic languages. There’s a lot of interest in that field in America, particularly at the moment. The future of the Murrow committee is as yet quite uncertain. All their funds have been used up and there’s little prospect of any new funding. Nothing can be done about it until the autumn, if at all. But with any luck the universities will step in with their own financing over the course of the year. This is the situation at present, as far as I

42 Reference to the Carnegie Foundation, which financed Holborn’s professorship at the German College for the Study of Politics in Berlin from 1931 to 1933. 43 Stephen Pierce Duggan (1870–1950), American political scientist and educator. Founded the “Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German [later: Foreign] Scholars” in the United States in 1933; Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965), well-known American journalist. Joined the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars in 1933, and soon began to play a major part in it. Played a significant role in American radio from 1935 and television from 1951. Left the radio and TV station CBS in 1961, for which he had worked since 1935, and became director of the US Information Agency under President Kennedy until 1964.

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have most recently been able to determine. I expect things to get much better over the longer term, because they are very keen to develop history in particular. Further, the discipline of history in Germany has an undeservedly good reputation in the U.S.A.. After all this uncertainty and commotion I am enjoying the benefits and blessings of the sea journey with greater reverence than in February. While the three months in America were certainly a strain because of the many new faces, they were undoubtedly more balancedout. Because I was able to be with my siblings,44 and saw my mother again as well for the last ten days, I even managed to enjoy myself as if back home. Nevertheless, I need a rest and am looking forward to being able to work in peace just as I please in London. This time around I also want to study something of the life outside London. Write me a few lines while I’m in London and let me know how you are doing and whether there’s anything else I can do. I assume that I will meet with Duggan in London in June. He was a great help to me, though not as much as Murrow, with whom I quickly forged a good relationship in New York. My very best wishes to you and your wife. Your Hajo Holborn 12. 7 February 1935: Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Professor, We received with deep gratitude and joy all the signs of friendship— and that you were thinking of us—which you and your dear wife sent us and the children at Christmas. Yes, we celebrate real German Christmases here in New England, which, by the way, also has some lovely old Christmas traditions more akin to our own than the loud and merry English-style Christmas. And now and then one even finds 44 A brother of Holborn, the physicist Friedrich Holborn, had already emigrated to the United States after the First World War.

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a little bit of the old culture of home here. One afternoon our children saw an old Silesian Christmas crib that came to Pennsylvania with the first German immigrants and has been preserved to this day in the family (descendents of the Zinzendorfs).45 It is hard to express what a great support it is to us to receive all the words of encouragement from our German friends and to know that we are in their thoughts. The faith that you gave us as we set off on our migration enables us to have faith that we shall manage to go on with our work here. We have already experienced so much straightforward helpfulness and simple humanity here, though we will probably never have friends here in the German sense of the term. The past six months have been extremely arduous and difficult for us. Despite everything, it was a chapter one does not regret having gone through despite being happy to see it closed. We have of course learned how things work here from scratch, but are hopeful that we will gradually be able to master the situation. But it is particularly hard to get a true sense of America at the moment, for the country is going through a crisis on a scale certainly comparable to that in which Europe finds itself. However, the mental attitude, and the external resources, are significantly different, and the results will probably be fundamentally different as well. It is astonishing to see what has become of the self-confident and optimistic Americans over the last five years. Above all, of course, the young people’s faith in traditions has been radically shaken. It is interesting to see that the crisis has made the people here far more socially-minded and liberal. They have become far more open and unprejudiced than they used to be. Things European have always been studied, but what was formerly more a matter of the play of curiosity is now becoming the medium of a more serious comparison. Under these circumstances, the activities of the Germans here may even prove truly productive. But there is no way of knowing and it will depend on numerous factors, chief among them our ability to cope with the practical side of things. We have by no means completed this stage as yet. You are quite right to assume that I have had to live entirely from hand to mouth 45

Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf and Pottendorf (1700–1760), German Protestant theologian and leading representative of Pietism. Founded the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde) on his estate in 1722. Offshoots in Pennsylvania in America among other places.

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so far. One has at times felt exhausted and embittered, having had to struggle time and again to deal with the primitive things common even to the older American student. On the whole, however, I am content to have settled in relatively quickly and to have attracted interest relatively quickly. The students are very attentive and my colleagues are very happy with what I’m doing. The department (roughly equivalent to our faculty) wants to give me a permanent position, but the university has major financial problems. So it is as yet unclear what will ultimately happen, but for the time being we are well enough provided for from other sources that there is currently no problem, and can stick it out for now. My main work consists of preparing my lectures and familiarizing myself as much as possible with the English and American literature. Most of the students read French very well, though very rarely German (in contrast to the professors, incidentally, most of whom follow the German literature very conscientiously); so it’s vital that I have the English literature completely fresh in my mind. For reasons relating both to pedagogy and my own understanding, I cannot restrict myself too narrowly to the specialist literature in teaching the courses here. There is no doubt that it will be highly beneficial to immerse myself in Anglo-Saxon culture in this way. There is, however, no really perceptible enjoyment so far. Everything has to be done with too much haste and my faith in many categories has been shaken, categories into which I was formerly accustomed to group all incoming knowledge without further ado. It will be some time yet before I really come to terms with the theory and practice of history in this country. This is another reason why I would like to get through this practical apprenticeship as rapidly as possible. I am as yet unsure what exactly my responsibilities here are going to be. I shall have more lectures next year than I did this year, yet I believe it will be less work than this year because I will find everything easier. But I’m afraid I may have to devote a fair part of the summer holidays to extra lectures. (The universities here have holidays only once a year—from mid-June to mid-September. But a number of people also hold summer courses for teachers during this period). If I have to participate in this, I shall have scarcely any time for my own work, and I am pessimistic about completing my study of Weimar.46

46 Hajo Holborn worked on behalf of the Historical Imperial Commission (Historische Reichskommission) on a history of the origins of the Weimar imperial

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Can this issue remain in suspenso for a while? It is a matter of urgent importance to me to complete this work in its entirety, and I shall try to do whatever I can to that end. Of course, if worst comes to worst, I can send in the material as I have collected it so far, but I would only ask to be allowed to do so if I can discover no other way. There is nothing but good news about the children; they are currently suffering from chickenpox, that is, Friedrich has just got over them and Hanna has just succumbed. But it is no great worry. They have been so content and full of life the whole time that they’ve been nothing but a joy to us. Relations among the German colleagues are also very pleasant; they are all quite different from one another, but all are very willing to help one another. With the rarest of exceptions, incidentally, the Americans are entirely approving about their growing numbers. That’s very gratifying to all of us. I spend a lot of time with Wolfers47 in particular. Tillich48 is scheduled to give lectures here in March, and will stay in New Haven for a few weeks. I hope to be able to write more often again from now on. How often our thoughts turn to Dahlem, while my joy at the news that my mother was with you for Christmas was mixed with envy. With very best wishes to you and yours and warm regards from my wife, I remain Yours faithfully, Hajo Holborn

constitution from 1929 on. The work was never completed. A broad range of material on the topic can be found among the Holborn papers in Yale University Library. 47 Arnold Oskar Wolfers (1892–1968), Swiss-born historian. Completed his studies in jurisprudence with a final exam at the University of Zürich in 1917. Obtained his doctorate at the University of Gießen in 1924. Lecturer at the University of Berlin from 1929 to 1933. Lecturer in political science at the German College for the Study of Politics, 1924–1930, subsequently director of the School until 1933. Emigrated to the United States in 1933, where he taught international relations, first as visiting professor (1933–1935), then as professor and finally as holder of an endowed chair in international relations at Yale University. Wolfers was founding director of the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research, which he headed from 1957 to 1965. He acted as advisor to numerous organizations, among them the National War College, the Office of Strategic Services and the Institute of Defense Analysis. One of the leading historians in the field of history of international relations. 48 Paul Tillich (1886–1965), important Protestant theologian and philosopher. One of the founders of a “religious socialism”. He was the first non-Jewish university teacher to be driven out of Germany in 1933 and taught at the Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1940 to 1955. Professor at Harvard from 1955 to 1962 and then in Chicago. Became chair of the Council for a Democratic Germany in 1944.

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13. 22 February 1935: Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Professor, Many thanks for your nice card. I assume that you have by now received my detailed, unfortunately very belated letter49 and that it provides a basis for you and the Imperial Commission to make a decision. I have nothing new to report beyond the contents of that letter, as it will only become clear around mid-March what I can do over the summer. I was delighted to hear that the shell of your book50 is complete and that your family has been free of illness; we can only hope that you will be spared the—so often treacherous—spring flu as well! I have been deeply moved to observe the blows of fate that have afflicted the German historical fraternity: Oncken’s51 departure and the death of Caspar.52 The former was reported in detail here. Perhaps they have not realized the consequences that this will have over there. I would have liked to have written to your friend in Dahlem, but have deliberately refrained from doing so. Perhaps you will have the opportunity to thank him. Our children have recovered well from the chickenpox. It was not particularly worrying, but my wife was kept even busier than usual. But we seem to have had more luck with the new, I believe fourth, domestic help. She is an upright Swabian, a diligent worker who converses with the children in the purest of Swabian dialect. The spring is still a long way off here, but we can at least hope for a few warm days. For the most part these are of an unmatched beauty. A bright blue Italian sky (we’re on the same latitude as Rome here),

49

Holborn’s letter of 7 February 1935, see above, pp. 258–261. Reference to Meinecke’s book, Die Entstehung des Historismus, published in 1936. 51 Hermann Oncken, professor in Berlin from 1928, was forced into retirement in 1935 after clashing with chief Nazi historian Walter Frank (see above, p. 15). 52 Erich Caspar (1879–1935), historian. Caspar took up an appointment as professor ordinarius in medieval history at the University of Königsberg in 1920, and taught in Berlin from 1930. 50

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though interspersed with Asiatic storms. The so-called spring is harder for Europeans to cope with climatically than the winter. My very best wishes to you and your wife! And once again—thank you very much. Your Hajo Holborn 14. 27 September 1945: Hajo Holborn (Hamden, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16, typewritten letter in English Dear Meineckes: Ever since I received the article in the Munich newspaper of June 16th53 I was anxious to establish direct contacts again. We learned first from Ted Hartshorne54 about the circumstances of your life in the final phase of the war. Now we are delighted to get word from you directly and to hear that you have found a relatively safe refuge and that you know that all the members of your family have survived the holocaust. In all these years we have thought of you and constantly tried to visualize your reactions to the events and the personal hardships which you have to bear. I am certain that if we could come together tomorrow we could take up our conversations just where we left them in 1936 or 1938. I remember most vividly that both in 1936 und 1938 you raised the question of whether or not the third Empire was to be judged as an episode or an epoch in history. There is no doubt left that is was merely an episode, but an episode which has brought on a fundamentally new period in world history. This is true not only with regard to Germany, but to practically any country the world over. I hope that some of our friends will come to see you. There are many who like ourselves would like to do everything in their power to 53 Friedrich Meinecke, “Zur Selbstbesinnung”, in: Münchner Zeitung, 16 June 1945. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 484–486. 54 Edward Yarnell Hartshorne (1912–1946), American sociologist. Son-in-law of American historian Sidney B. Fay, a friend of Meinecke. Hartshorne, who was in contact with Meinecke while working on his book The German Universities and National Socialism, Cambridge 1937, was the American education officer in Heidelberg. He helped Meinecke find a publisher for his book Die deutsche Katastrophe.

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alleviate the circumstances in which you live. I have asked in particular Walther Dorn to keep your problems in mind. He is at the American headquarters—Frankfurt. A short while ago we have returned from Washington to New Haven, and four weeks from now I shall start my courses at the University again. Friedrich is now a first year student at Harvard. So far he seems to tend towards History, though he may still end up in political science or even politics. Hanna is finishing her last school year in New Haven and plans to go to college next year. All the family is well. I hope we shall hear from you often. I know the Wilhelm-WeberStrasse in Goettingen very well indeed, as practically all the streets and environs. As a boy I spent many an Easter or Michaelmas vacation with my grandmother there. The Holborn family is actually a Goettingen family. Thus I was glad to hear that Goettingen seems to have come through the war unharmed. With kind regards and all good wishes from all the Holborns, Cordially; Hajo Holborn 15. 28 June 1946: Hajo Holborn (Hancock, N. H.) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 59 Dear Herr Masur! Many thanks for your letter of 24th, which reached me yesterday evening here in New Hampshire. I was very glad to hear from you again after so many years and especially to learn that things have gone well for you overall. Our life in the United States has been extremely simple. We have been in New Haven since 1934, with the exception of the 1943–45 period, when we were in Washington. I was granted leave by the university to work for the Office of Strategic Services and the War Department. I was never in the army. Since last autumn I have again been fully focussed on my academic work and have been in Washington only for a few days now and then for conferences in the State and War Departments. You were probably already in Washington when I was there last, about two weeks ago. Since then we have settled in here in New

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Hampshire for the summer and we shall not return to New Haven before the last days of August. I’m afraid the chances of seeing you are thus pretty poor if you are not staying beyond August. I shall be happy to see what I can do to keep you here. In itself that probably wouldn’t have been terribly difficult, particularly in the field of South American history. But the college budgets and appointments for the next academic year have already been decided for the most part and little tends to happen before September. Nevertheless, this is a rather unusual year because of the overabundance of colleges and major gaps in the faculties. If you still need any references, I would be happy to provide them. Wolfers is in Switzerland this summer. With very best wishes, Your Hajo Holborn 16. 23 September 1946: Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16, typewritten letter in English Dear Mr. Meinecke: Your postcard of 21 August came into my hands a few days ago and I was sorry to learn that earlier messages of mine did not reach you. I assume that this had something to do with your transfer from Goettingen to Berlin. I was happy to hear, first from Felix Gilbert after his return from Germany, that the good old place in Berlin-Dahlem, which in a way you have made me feel to be my second home in Germany has escaped undamaged from the War and that you and Mrs. Meinecke are safely back in it. I wished we could get together there and discuss history and world affairs, but this will not be possible for at least another year. My present plans are to go to Germany for a short visit of a month or two in fall 1947. I do not know whether I wrote you that during the years 1943–45 I was on leave from Yale and was in government service in Washington. Even since my return last November I am still going to Washington once a month for consultation and this makes my life still a unusually busy one. The end of the War has resulted in an unbelievable crowding of colleges and universities and the new academic year,

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which started last week, will be a considerable strain. However, there are many rewards. The students were never as good as they are now. They are deeply interested in philosophical questions and, incidentally, have come back from Europe with a profound interest in European, including German, problems. Teaching is under these conditions quite exciting. In these circumstances it was not easy for me to get sufficient time for writing. For obvious reasons I did not try to publish in the years 1934–40. Thereafter the War made it pretty well impossible to go ahead with my plans. Now after my return to academic life my chief ambition is to do my long-delayed books. One is now in the press,55 another one I hope to complete during the year. Thereafter, I want to turn to the writing of a Social and Constitutional History of Germany since 1806. I do not think that a mere history of the origins of the Weimar constitution would attract a large audience in the Anglo-Saxon world, and incidentally there is not even in German an adequate constitutional history of Germany in the 19th century. Of course, I want to use the source material I collected before 1933 for the history of the years 1917–20 and I have the impression that it is pretty complete. In certain respects it may even be unique. I hope very much that this book will be published in German as in English. There may be some good reason to publish some of the documents, which it would not be worthwhile publishing in English translation, in a German edition and if conditions should permit I would be glad to do so. In general I would love nothing better than to help German historians to rebuild historical studies in Germany and you may call on me any time you think I could be of help. (Or anybody you may designate in your place.) However, I would not consider accepting an appointment in a German university. Our children are American children. They have spent all their formative years in this country and if we would go back to Germany they would be exiles. Knowing what that means, we certainly would not want them to go through that experience unnecessarily. Moreover, we have not become American citizens by name only. We are deeply devoted to the country of our adoption. We have been happy here after getting through the first years of difficult adjustment. I have been particularly lucky in attracting a

55 Hajo Holborn, American Military Government: Its Organization and Politics, Washington 1947.

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large number of unusually good students. Some of them are already teaching in various places, others, delayed by the War, will soon start their academic careers. I do not feel that I could leave them. I believe it to be my function in life to finish the task of helping to educate and train a new generation of college teachers of European history in this country and I feel that by doing this I shall contribute a least indirectly to maintaining or rebuilding German historical research. These are some of the major reasons why I would not consider to return to Germany permanently. But, of course, from now on I would like to visit Germany at regular intervals and would like to publish or lecture in Germany as soon as that will become possible. You will have been shocked as much as we were by the death of Ted Hartshorne. It is particularly hard on Sidney Fay,56 who incidentally will come to Yale once a week during the present academic year. Thus the two of us will get together more regularly again as in the years before I went to Washington. Always German problems form a good part of our discussions. It may interest you to hear that the interest of American students in German history has not declined. On the contrary it has rather become more intense as a result of their war experiences. With all good wishes to you and your family, Yours as always, Hajo Holborn 17. 30 October 1948: Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 213 Dearest Herr Meinecke! I have let so much time pass by since my return that I wished to avoid letting the 30 October come and go as well without writing to you. You

56

Sydney B. Fay (1876–1967), American historian. Worked mainly on the history of diplomacy and German history. Professor in Harvard from 1929 until his retirement in 1945. President of the American Historical Association in 1946/47. Friend of Meinecke.

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have already heard from my wife how lively this last year has been for us. Following my return from Germany and England, I initially had a good deal of work still to do on my official and unofficial reports. And when I resumed teaching in February, so much work had piled up that it took up all of my time until we went to California in June.57 It was of course very nice for us, not only to see the attractions of the American West, but also to have the chance to get to know the American continent as a whole. One sometimes tends to forget that New England is just a small peninsula of this enormous country. Many thanks for sending me your two essays. The essay on 184858 will remain especially dear to me because it was the subject of a fair number of our conversations last October. I find it outstanding in its inspired linkage of the social and political with the realm of intellectual history. Further, it is by no means merely a “revision” of your earlier views, but also represents a higher-level point of observation. The same applies to your essay on Ranke and Burckhardt. I must admit to being a little anxious, when I first heard about the lecture, that, perhaps influenced by the present disaster, it would too simply shift the focus of our affections towards Basle. When I read it for the first time, however, I discovered that my concerns were entirely unjustified. You have in fact succeeded in garnering new elements from the work of both Ranke and Burckhardt in light of a new historical perspective. I have shown your essays to some of my best American students, all of whom were very enthusiastic. We are of course constantly worried about the present situation in Berlin and are all too aware of the hardships it entails for all Berliners. We are hoping that it might somehow prove possible to achieve a settlement, but one that ensures the Berliners’ rights. The one good thing I can see in the situation is that any settlement of the disputes over Berlin may bring about a new debate on all-German issues. In that respect, in its current situation, Berlin itself is still, or is perhaps especially now, the place where the all-German issue finds its clearest

57 Holborn was visiting professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto in California in 1948. 58 Meinecke, “1848. Eine Säkularbetrachtung”, Meinecke, “Ranke und Burckhardt”, see above, p. 17.

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reflection. The Berliners’ plucky attitude is arousing much admiration here in America. The election is just about to be held here, and there can be very little doubt about the result.59 But whoever wins, I don’t expect there to be any fundamental changes in American foreign policy. But I hope that, once the election campaign and elections themselves are over, it will be possible to pursue a rather more supple foreign policy. With best wishes from my wife and I to you and the whole family— we hope all of you are doing well. Yours faithfully, Hajo Holborn 18. 9 April 1949: Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dear Herr Professor, I must add at least a few brief lines of a more personal nature to my official reply.60 I am very sad that I cannot come to Berlin during the summer semester, at a time when all of us ought to be adding our support to your brave and high-minded resolve and helping the Free University to victory. Your decision to take on the vice-chancellorship has excited much admiration among professors here, just as the Free University itself is the object of much interest in America. I hope that you more or less approve of America’s stance and policies. Once the provisional West German state has got off the ground, it should be possible to establish a modus vivendi with the East and thereby to make things easier for the Berliners. Admittedly, there are no grounds for optimism as yet.

59 It was generally expected that Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey would win the election in 1948. In fact the candidate of the Democratic Party, VicePresident Harry S. Truman, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt upon his death in 1945, was confirmed in office. 60 Probably a reference to his rejection of an invitation to give a series of lectures or take up a visiting professorship at the Free University of Berlin.

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I am still hoping that I can return to Germany again at some point in the near future and also visit Berlin. Shortly after I returned from Europe in late 1947 I was able to bow out of all the extra work for the government and can now focus entirely on my historical work, at least to the extent that the students, of which there are too many at present, allow me to do so. But things are moving forward! With my best wishes to your dear wife, I remain with respect Yours faithfully, Hajo Holborn 19. 23 October 1951: Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 16 Dearest Herr Meinecke! The “two pretzels” birthday is followed by the 89th birthday. When the second “8” has turned into a “9”, children must have bitten off a piece of the pretzel, and we may perhaps regard this as a parable of the unceasing impact of your work, whose influence on historical thinking continues to grow. The students here in Yale read your books with eagerness and enthusiasm and I know that this is the case in many places in America. We all hope that the approaching ninth decade of your life will find you in the best of health. From the bottom of our hearts, your students and friends wish you a pleasant and kind old age. Tremendous historical upheavals have taken place over the course of your life and yet the ideas that you have handed down to us from the past and developed further have lost none of their power. Warmest wishes, As ever faithfully yours, Hajo Holborn

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20. 3 April 1954: Hajo Holborn (New Haven, Ct.) to Dietrich Gerhard NL Gerhard, series 2, box 1 Dear Dieter, A few days holiday, which are unfortunately almost over, give me an opportunity to write you a letter, if only a short one. [. . .] I was very moved by Meinecke’s death.61 I know that he had long been yearning for death, but for us his demise ended our direct relationship with a world on which we continue to draw. With best wishes to Grete and the family, Yours always, Hajo 21. 23 July 1969: Annemarie Holborn (Hamden/Conn.) to Gerhard Masur NL Masur 59 Dearest Herr Masur, Many thanks for your friendly letter. You are right: we must take comfort from my husband’s last words, that his life was a happy one. He had of course been seriously ill over the last three years and had to undergo endless complicated operations. Yet he never lost heart, and he had lots of plans for future work. But I am thankful that he completed his three-volume Deutsche Geschichte, which is testimony to his life’s work. My best wishes to you and your wife, Your Annemarie Holborn

61

Meinecke died on 6 February 1954.

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1. 29 March 1929: Felix Gilbert (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 144 Dear Herr Dr. Rosenberg, It has taken me until today to write to you because I did not, as I had hoped, meet Kehr in the State Archive over the last few days, but only today managed to establish that Wednesday of next week is the best day for both him and me. There is no exchange of letters between Droysen and Gervinus; I am very keen to read your essay on Gervinus,1 partly because of a certain feeling for him, but also because of your comment on him in your “vulgar liberalism” essay2 with which—or more accurately with whose consequences—I cannot entirely agree; I generally take a fairly dim view of judgements ex eventu in history and, particularly in the case of intellectual history, the “success” or “coming to pass” of what has been predicted seems to me no criterion: for me, Ranke is still a greater historian that Droysen, though the latter produced a more accurate assessment of the future than the former. But “that’s a wide field” as old Stechlin3 would say, and cannot be sorted out in passing with a few words in a letter. I find your fears regarding your essay quite baseless. Personally, what interested me most was the passage on “liberalism” and the account of the “Lichtfreunde movement”, while your comments on the concept of liberalism clarify very effectively the difficulties of the situation and indirectly entail a very sharp—though well-deserved—rebuke to the majority of historians. If I may make a criticism, I find the methodological reflections rather too copious; for in essence these cannot be resolved in “our” discipline, and it is ultimately difficult to see how, in light of all these methodological

1 Hans Rosenberg, “Gervinus und die deutsche Republik. Ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte der deutschen Demokratie”, in: Die Gesellschaft 6 (1929/II), pp. 119–136. Reprinted in: Rosenberg, Politische Denkströmungen im deutschen Vormärz, pp. 115–127. 2 Hans Rosenberg, “Theologischer Rationalismus und vormärzlicher Vulgärliberalismus”, in: HZ 141 (1930), pp. 497–541. Reprinted in: Rosenberg, Politische Denkströmungen, pp. 18–50. 3 The words “That’s too wide a field” (das ist ein zu weites Feld) conclude Fontane’s novel Effi Briest. As a result it came to be used as a standard expression. Previously used by Freiherr von Knigge in 1788 in the preamble to Umgang mit Menschen and in Adalbert Stifter’s novel Der Nachsommer.

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considerations, anyone still has the courage to tackle the kind of account you go on to provide so nicely in the final section in the first place. Forgive me for these fragmentary and disorderly remarks, but I must dash off to meet someone now. I shall see you on Wednesday (between 8 and 8.30). Your Felix Gilbert 2. 17 May 1930: Felix Gilbert (Fiesole da Firenze) to Friedrich Meinecke4 NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I was delighted to discover from your letter that you consider the edition of Droysen’s shorter political writings as good as certain. It is however far from easy for me to answer your question as to the scope of such a volume, as I have not the slightest practical experience in making such assessments. It is therefore perhaps best if I give you a rough idea of what, it seems to me, such a volume of “Droysen’s shorter political writings”5 would have to include, so that you yourself can judge whether my estimates sound about right. All of Droysen’s political essays that had appeared by the time of the revolution of 48 would likely have to be included [. . .] It seems to me that Droysen’s writings from the Paulskirche in 1848/49 would also have to be included in full. Droysen’s memoranda and essays composed during this period would take up about the same amount of space as those of the preceding period. After his return from Frankfurt of course Droysen produced a very extensive body of journalistic writings while based in Kiel over the next two years: I think one could work with summary registers on this 4 Meinecke had jotted down the key points for his reply on the first page of the letter, which indicate that a fee per printed folio of 16 pages of 50 Marks with monthly or quarterly advance payments and 30–32 folios (480–512 pages) was provided for. The design and structure of the volume was to be in keeping with the Geschichtsquellen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Meinecke wanted to ask Gilbert whether he agreed to this and when he might begin the work. 5 Johann Gustav Droysen, Politische Schriften. On behalf of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, ed. by Felix Gilbert, Munich/Berlin 1933.

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and that it would be sufficient to publish in extenso those memoranda of significance to his fundamental political views and the essays that characterize the nature of his journalism particularly well. From the 1850s, I believe, the only relevant texts are the three essays he wrote in the Minerva about the events of the Crimean War, of which he included only the first in his Abhandlungen. I cannot really assess the extent of his journalistic activities during the “New Era” period, but I don’t believe that he wrote a great deal for newspapers at the time. One would have to investigate in more depth whether there are any memoranda for Duncker6 or the crown prince.7,8 I estimate that a volume containing the material briefly outlined above, along with the necessary scholarly apparatus, would run to 450 to 500 pages;9 I am assuming here that it would be structured similarly to the Nachgelassene Schriften by Radowitz10 edited by Möhring (?). I hope that these lines give you something of an overview and that this information helps you to pursue the financing of the volume by the Academy. For me, the carrying out of this plan would be a highly [word illegible] assignment, and I truly hope to see it realized. With best wishes, I remain Faithfully yours, Felix Gilbert

6

Maximilian Duncker (1811–1886), historian, politician and journalist. Head of the Erbkaiserliche Partei, located on the liberal centre right, in the Frankfurt National Assembly, 1848/49. Appointed professor ordinarius in political history in Tübingen in 1857, he returned to Berlin in 1859 where he was head of the press office of the Prussian cabinet (Staatsministerium). Political advisor to the crown prince from 1861 to 1866. Director of the Prussian Archives from 1867 to 1874. 7 Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm (1831–1888) was Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia as Friedrich III for 99 days in 1888. Married to the English princess Victoria (1840–1901), a daughter of Queen Victoria. 8 As it turned out, Gilbert published a total of thirty-four articles and memoranda by Droysen in his edition of Droysen’s Politische Schriften, four for the period prior to the Revolution, eleven relating to his activities in Frankfurt a. M. in the National Assembly in 1848/49 and seventeen drawn from his journalism in Kiel from 1849 to 1851. For the subsequent period he published two essays, neither of them from the time of the New Era from 1858. 9 The printed volume ultimately comprised 393 pages. 10 Josef von Radowitz, Nachgelassene Briefe und Aufzeichnungen zur Geschichte der Jahre 1848–1853, ed. by Walter Möring, Stuttgart/Berlin 1922.

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3. 25 July 1930: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Felix Gilbert NL Meinecke 12, copy Dear Herr Dr. Only now has the issue of financing from the Academy11 for the political writings of J. G. Droysen been more or less resolved. The Academy’s finances are generally in a very bad way, and so far it has not been possible to achieve completely secure funding for the Droysen publication. But when I made as if to abandon the plan they went out of their way to persuade me not to do so, stating that they would in fact manage to find the necessary resources after all. For the rest of this financial year (up to 1 April 1931), however, a maximum of RM1200 are available, out of which you could be paid an advance fee of RM200 per month from 1 October this year. I felt that I had to set out this state of affairs to you with the utmost clarity so that you can make a decision. But it is my wish and hope that you are not put off by these things. Knowing the situation as a I do, I feel that you can place your trust in the Academy. I have just received a copy of the book by W. Fenske: J. G. Droysen und das deutsche Nationalstaatsproblem (“J. G. Droysen and the German nation state problem”) (244 pages). Would you be prepared to review it for the Historische Zeitschrift when the review copy arrives?12 R. Oldenbourg is willing to include your work on Droysen in the supplements to the H.Z.,13 but is requesting a contribution to the printing costs of RM80 for the printed folios. Best wishes, Your [Friedrich Meinecke] 11 The Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. In his letter to Meinecke of 29 July 1930, Gilbert declared himself willing to take on the edition: “I find the work so tempting that I wouldn’t like to see the plan founder because of the ultimate uncertainty of the funding” (Meinecke papers, no. 12). 12 Gilbert agreed to review the book by Walter Fenske, J. G. Droysen und das deutsche Nationalstaatsproblem, Erlangen 1930, not least because he had come to an agreement with Fenske regarding where the dividing line between his dissertation on Droysen and Fenske’s dissertation ought to lie and he was interested to see how Fenske’s book had turned out (letter from Gilbert to Meinecke of 29 July 1930, Meinecke papers, no. 12). The book was however reviewed in the HZ not by Gilbert but Rudolf Bülch (HZ 146, 1932, pp. 567–569). 13 Gilbert told Meinecke that he would try to find the contribution to the printing costs (Gilbert to Meinecke, 29 July 1930, Meinecke papers, no. 12). Gilbert’s dissertation appeared as a supplement to the HZ in 1931.

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4. 28 April 1932: Felix Gilbert (Florence) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat, It was rather difficult to find suitable accommodation in Florence, and only now am I in a position to inform you of my address here. [. . .] I am very keen to hear whether the Academy has now finally decided on who is to publish Droysen’s Politische Schriften,14 and I would be very grateful if you would instruct me as to where I should send the manuscript once the decision has been made. I am gradually beginning to get back into my work here, and I hope to be able to tell you about it in more detail at some point in the near future. It was very peculiar to observe the decisions made in Germany over the last few weeks15 from Italy, which quite openly sided with Hitler and National Socialism; in general, however, given the much calmer, pro-German, but above all anti-French atmosphere that prevails in this country, there is a tendency to begin to assess the situation in Germany with greater optimism. Please give my best regards to your wife. With sincere best wishes, my dear Herr Geheimrat, I remain As ever yours faithfully, Felix Gilbert

14

The volume was published by R. Oldenbourg, Munich/Berlin 1933. Probably a reference to the election of imperial president (first ballot on 13 March 1932 and second on 10 April 1932) and the elections to the Prussian Landtag of 24 April 1932. In the second round of voting for the presidency, with 53.0% of the votes, Imperial President Hindenburg prevailed over Hitler (36.8%) and German Communist Party candidate Thälmann (10.2%). In the elections to the Prussian Landtag, the Nazi Party received 36.3% and the Communists 12.8% of votes cast. With 219 of 423 seats, together they had a negative majority in the Landtag. The parties in the governing coalition of the SPD, Centre Party and German State Party led by prime minister Otto Braun (SPD) together accounted for 38% of the votes and 163 seats. 15

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5. 14 June 1947: Felix Gilbert to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I have to thank you for two letters, and for sending me your book,16 which I have of course read with the greatest of interest. It was especially pleasing as a sign that you are able to continue working. I can well imagine that your seminar on Ranke and Burckhardt keeps you very busy, and I would be happy to participate in it. In the present era, Burckhardt is increasingly emerging as a quite unique and powerful figure. Burckhardt is of course a very continental European figure; a translation of his Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (Eng. title: Reflections on History) was published in the United States during the war, but it met with very little understanding. A friend of mine (the son of the physicist von Laue)17 is currently preparing a translation of Ranke’s Politisches Gespräch (“Political dialogue”) and die Grossen Mächte18 (“The major powers”), and I am interested to see how Ranke will be received in this country. On the whole, the influence of German historiography, which was predominant in America around the turn of the century, has greatly weakened; the field is largely dominated by issues in economic and social history, which, by the way, has its good side, as the connection between history and politics has remained very lively as a result. There is much interest in Europe at the moment, and a great deal is being written on Germany. A whole number of studies have dealt with the 20 July; Allan Dulles has written a really good book on the German Underground.19 A friend of mine, Franklin Ford, has published a very good study of this topic in the American Historical

16

Meinecke, Deutsche Katastrophe. Theodor von Laue wrote an intellectual biography of Ranke. Theodore H. von Laue, Leopold Ranke: The Formative Years, Princeton, N.J. 1950. Reprinted 1970. The book is dedicated to Helene Weyl and Felix Gilbert. 18 Leopold von Ranke, Große Mächte, first published 1833, in: Ranke, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 24, 2nd edn., Leipzig 1977, pp. 1–40; Ranke, Politisches Gespräch, first published 1836, in: Ranke, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 49/50, Leipzig 1887, pp. 314–339. 19 Allan Welsh Dulles, Germany’s Underground, New York 1947. 17

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Review,20 and a whole series of “memoirs” have been translated into English (Schlabrendorff, Gisevius; of all these memoirs, Hassell’s diary made the greatest impression on me personally).21 I myself have tried my hand at recent German history over the last year. At the last conference of American historians I gave a talk on “Mitteleuropa—the final stage”,22 then I wrote a short paper on German historical production over the last few years for the American Historical Review,23 and finally—for an anthology on “Germany after defeat”—a chapter on “The intellectual situation in Germany” (“Die geistige Situation in Deutschland”).24 What struck me in examining this last topic was Germans’ strong tendency to view their own crisis as a world crisis. I believe that—despite all the problems and post-war crises—things are far more stable in the non-German world than the Germans appear to assume. But I regarded these shorter studies merely as by-products or post-products of the war, and I shall now return to the Renaissance as quickly as possible; I hope at some point in the near future to be able to send you my various essays on Machiavelli, all of which were published during the war.25 But first I want to focus on Guicciardini

20 Franklin L. Ford, “The Twentieth of July in the History of the German Resistance”, in: AHR 51 (1946), pp. 609–626. 21 Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler, first published Zurich 1946; English edition: Revolt Against Hitler, London 1948; Bernd Gisevius, Bis zum bitteren Ende, Zurich 1946; English edition: To the Bitter End, London 1948; The von Hassell Diaries, 1938–1944, London 1948; new critical edition of Hassell’s diaries, first published in 1946, entitled: Die Hassell-Tagebücher. Ulrich von Hassell. Aufzeichnungen vom Anderen Deutschland, ed. by Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen, Siedler Verlag 1988. 22 Felix Gilbert, “Mitteleuropa—The final stage”, in: Journal of Central European Affairs 7 (1947), pp. 58–67. 23 Felix Gilbert, “German Historiography during the Second World War: A Bibliographical Survey”, in: AHR 53 (1947), pp. 50–58. 24 No relevant chapter by Gilbert is mentioned in the bibliography of his publications up to 1976 (in: Gilbert, History, pp. 457–463) and no evidence could be found of one. Gilbert discusses the intellectual and mental situation of Germany two years after the end of the war in his grim account of the dire material circumstances, the political situation in view of general apathy, lack of acceptance of democracy and poor social cohesion in his essay: “Germany Revisited”, in: The World Today 3, October 1947, pp. 424–431. He does not, however, address Germans’ tendency to view their crisis as a global crisis here. 25 Apart from a number of shorter publications, Gilbert is referring to the following essays: Felix Gilbert, “The Humanist Concept of ‘the Prince’ of Machiavelli”, in: JMH 11 (1939), pp. 449–483; “Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War”, in:

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again. Have you seen the lengthy historical manuscript—a previously unknown Florentine history—which was found in the Guicciardini archive and has just been published?26 It seems to me of crucial importance to the historical thought of the Renaissance. I write this letter on my way to Europe. I wish to spend most of my holidays (we have a good three months) in Italy, but it looks as though I shall also make it to Germany—including Berlin—for a time, so I hope I may visit you at Am Hirschsprung 13 in the not-too-distant future. Until then, with best wishes to your family, I remain As ever yours faithfully, Felix Gilbert My permanent address is: Department of History, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pa. But you can reach me through my sister over the summer months: c. o. M. E. Gilbert, 37 Eton Avenue, London NW3. 6. 25 November 1948: Felix Gilbert (Bryn Mawr) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I’ve been meaning to write to you for a long time, but first I put it off until the summer holidays, then I divided these into two halves, the first for work and the second for lazing around, and I wanted to tackle my correspondence in this second half. But the second part then turned into a car trip to the West, and while it was highly interesting and enjoyable, I was usually too tired in the evenings to write letters. I was already familiar with California, but I saw New Mexico and Arizona for the first time, and these desolate plateaus with their old

Edward M. Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, Princeton 1943, pp. 3–25. 26 See Francesco Guicciardini, Le Cose Fiorentine Dall’Anno 1375. Ora per la prima volta pubblicate da Roberto Ridolfi, Florence 1945; reviewed by Gilbert in: AHR 53 (1948), pp. 318–321.

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Indian settlements were a great experience, particularly because the landscape is so utterly unlike anything to be found in Europe. I got back here shortly before my lectures began, and am having a fairly strenuous semester, as I am teaching in Swarthmore—as well as Bryn Mawr—so these short Thanksgiving holidays in late November are the first real opportunity to write. I was particularly keen to thank you for the materials you sent me—your paper on Ranke and Burckhardt and the work on the Berlin Revolution of 1848;27 I found both very interesting, and am very grate27

See above, p. 17.

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ful to you for sending me them. The work on 1848 arrived at a point in time when it held a very special interest for me. I held a seminar on 1848, and the main problem I was interested in was the connection between the various European revolutions. Though this is not, of course, the subject of your study, we did pay a fair amount of attention to the differences within the left and attempted to reconstruct exactly how the revolutions went in the specific capitals, so everyone in the seminar had to read your study at once. But I also had a special interest in 1848 because I am on the programme committee for the next convention—in December—of the American Historical Association, and many of the sessions will be dealing with 1848. This seemed advantageous to us because, on account of the influence of refugees from the 1848 revolution in the United States, it will provide an opportunity to get “European” and “American” historians to mix a little; for the most part they maintain a clear distance, which, in my opinion, is of no benefit to American history. In my own work I am rather torn between modern and Renaissance history. In my seminars here I deal mainly with very modern history; with “Munich, 1938” in the first semester of last year, with “GermanRussian relations between the world wars” this year; this is very exciting because of the many new publications, and I devote more time to it than I really ought to. But I have nonetheless managed to complete a lengthy essay on some Renaissance problems—relations between humanism and Florentine party politics as the background to Machiavelli and Guicciardini28—and I shall send it to you when it is published, though the printing always takes some considerable time here. Over the summer, Europe was very much on everyone’s minds; at the moment, people are more interested in China, and it is above all domestic American politics that stand centre stage. The result of the presidential election was a huge surprise.29 The only real comparison, it seems to me, is with the British elections of 1945;30 people simply failed to grasp just how much the social and economic consequences

28 Felix Gilbert, “Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellari: A Study on the Origin of Modern Political Thought”, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 12 (1949), pp. 101–131. 29 See above, p. 269. 30 In the British general election of 1945 it was the Labour Party that won a clear majority of the seats rather than the Conservative Party under popular wartime prime minister Churchill.

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of the war had changed the whole basis of politics, and of course the extent to which the Roosevelt administration represented a “revolution”, which has in fact largely been accepted by the people. It is also an indication of how the country’s centre of gravity has shifted away from the East; I myself was quite astonished during the summer to see how much the Mid-West and West have developed—even in the few years since I was last there. From an intellectual point of view, there seems to be no doubt that this is where the future of the major universities lies; Chicago and California are already leaders in the natural sciences. That the advance of these universities is linked chiefly with the rise of the natural sciences is a cause for some concern from the perspective of the “humanities”, and there will probably be quite a struggle to secure their place within a visibly changing education system. Please give your wife my very best wishes—I thank her for the book she sent me, which provided a good insight into German thought. I hope to see all of you next summer, when I plan to come to Europe. Yours always Felix Gilbert 7. 25 May 1951: Felix Gilbert (Bryn Mawr) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 12 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I haven’t been in touch for a long time, but have had some news of you from Holborn, Epstein and Rosenberg, as well as from Professor Fritz Ernst31 from Heidelberg, who visited me in Bryn Mawr in December. I have no particularly good excuse for my silence—and can refer only to the hectic nature of academic life in the United States. I have a few days of peace right now—I am in fact writing this letter on board the Mauretania on the way to England. I shall be in London for five or six weeks to give a few seminars and lectures at the Warburg Institute, and then I want to spend the rest of the summer on the continent,

31 Alongside Meinecke’s students Holborn and Rosenberg, dealt with in the present work, Gilbert is referring to Fritz T. Epstein and Heidelberg-based historian Fritz Ernst (1905–1963), whose work focussed on the late Middle Ages.

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mainly in Italy, but I am also planning a short visit to Germany— though to Frankfurt, Heidelberg and Munich rather than Berlin. I am very curious to find out how the world looks from a European perspective. In the United States the past year was rather depressing politically. Unfortunately, the government (in sharp contrast to the Roosevelt era) is incapable of truly getting across its foreign policy to the people, and because of this emotional motives (and one must bear in mind that on an emotional level many Americans are far more interested in the Far East than in Europe) can easily take the upper hand. But as unpleasant as the MacArthur affair32 is in many ways, it did mean that the opposing viewpoints of the key people were finally presented to the public, and I believe that overall it has cleared the air. Many elements of the often rather exaggerated American statements can be traced back to the fact that—after 150 years of relative isolation—they simply find it hard to adjust to the requirements of “power politics”, and to get the broad public used to “rearmament”. But while it probably often seems otherwise from outside, the overall political approach is to pursue a determined foreign policy while avoiding adventurism. The main reason for my journey is of course of a scholarly nature; I have been working on various things over the last few years. Perhaps you have heard of the book—Hitler Directs His War33—that I brought out; it is of course intended for an American readership to some degree, and it would be important to publish a complete volume of what are after all incredibly revealing documents in Germany. Together with my Princeton friend Gordon A. Craig, I am in the process of publishing a kind of symposium on diplomacy between the world wars;34 we are attempting to tackle the subject in a rather novel way: we wish to place emphasis on the diplomatic bureaucracy (permanent undersecretaries, etc.) and attempt to characterize the relationship of bureaucratic tradition to the influence of the parties, interest groups, etc.. Holborn will

32 Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), American general. Led operations against Japan from 1942. Made supreme commander of the UN forces in the Korean War in 1950. He was dismissed by American president Truman in 1951, as he threatened to extend the war to China. 33 Felix Gilbert (ed.), Hitler Directs His War (the secret records of his daily military conferences on the basis of the manuscripts in the University of Pennsylvania Library), New York 1950. 34 Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert (eds.), The Diplomats 1919–1939, Princeton 1953.

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write one of the “German” chapters.35 I also had to review the two new volumes of Ranke’s letters, and that gave rise to an essay on Ranke,36 which I shall send you as soon as it comes out. But fundamentally I have always continued my work on the Renaissance, and that is slowly developing into a book. I had a really nice Machiavelli seminar this winter, and we came across some very novel theories about the composition and time of writing of the Discorsi;37 I shall now present this in London and test how others react to it. I hope that your family is well. With best wishes, I remain, as always, Yours faithfully, Felix Gilbert 8. 25 October 1958: Felix Gilbert (Bryn Mawr) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 44, written in English Dear Hans, I want to thank you very much for sending me your book.38 I don’t quite know why I didn’t write you earlier because I read it immediately after I had received it at the beginning of September: During the summer I have been working on a collaborative volume (with Ford and Krieger) on European History 1500 to 1800,39 and I was just writing a chapter 35 Hajo Holborn, Diplomats and Diplomacy in the Early Weimar Republic, ibid., pp. 123–171. 36 No essay on Ranke is mentioned in the bibliography of Gilbert’s writings, nor does it appear in Gilbert’s book: History. Choice and Commitment, Cambridge/Mass. and London 1977, which reprints Gilbert’s historiographical essays. 37 Nicolo Machiavelli, “Discorsi supra la prima decadi T. Livio (1513–1517)” appears in all editions of Machiavelli’s works. On Gilbert’s views, see: “The Composition and Structure of Machiavelli’s Discorsi”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 14 (1953), pp. 136–156. 38 Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy. The Prussian Experience 1660–1815, Cambridge, Mass. 1958. 39 There is no evidence of any book with this or any similar title and the mentioned authors either in Gilbert’s bibliography or the catalogue of the Library of Congress in Washington. Leonard Krieger (1918–1990), American historian. Obtained his doctorate in 1949. Taught at Yale University, the University of Columbia in New York and the University of Chicago. Published chiefly on problems of modern European and especially German intellectual history and on the philosophy of history.

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on Absolutism when the parcel containing “Bureaucracy, Aristocracy und Autocracy” arrived. It was a most appropriate moment, not only because I could “use” your book, but because I had just been reading in older and recent literature about Absolutism and had become very much interested in the problems with which you deal: the new bureaucratic elite, bureaucratic hierarchy, Merits and Spoil System etc. I had studied again the various articles by Hintze, and thus I enjoyed immensely the precization and concretization which you give in your book to problems, which Hintze had only sketched out. And I believe that, as a result of my reading, I was able to appreciate particularly the last chapters on the emergence of bureaucratic Absolutism. The entire book, of course, is most interesting, but this detailed analysis of the evolution of bureaucracy into the “real ruler” of Prussia seemed to me most original and important for the understanding of Prussianism. (Shall I also make a critical remark, or, at least, raise a question? Your criticisms of the Hohenzollern are certainly justified, but were they worse than other rulers of the time? Peter the Great40 seems to me always a most detestable figure, but even Louis XIV.41 must have been rather a “pain in the neck.” Political effectiveness seems almost dependent on personal unpleasantness, almost abnormality, in the absolutistic age, or am I still under the influence of the Hohenzollern myth?) – In order to finish this collaborative volume as quickly as possible— since a lot of other and more interesting work has to be done –, I spent the entire summer in Bryn Mawr and hardly ever get to New York. But I hope things will clear up in a few weeks and I shall be able to get again more around. Many thanks again for sending me the book; I truly appreciate it. Yours, Felix Gilbert

40

Peter I (the Great) (1672–1725), Czar of Russia from 1689. Louis XIV (1638–1715), King of France from 1643, took over the government after the death of Mazarin in 1661. 41

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1. 5 October 1924: Hans Baron (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 2 Dear Herr Geheimrat, After a long wait, I am delighted to be able to tell you that my grant from the ministry has been approved for another year. My uncertainty hitherto was due merely to the fact that I received no official notification this time, but was informed only when I asked at the university finance office that the allotted sum had long since been sent directly to them. Now that my wishes have been so thoroughly fulfilled, I would once again like to express my tremendous gratitude to you, my dear Herr Geheimrat, for your kind efforts in this matter. At the moment I am still busy writing down the short essay on the “Sources of German humanism” (“Quellen des deutschen Humanismus”),1 which I’m afraid I rashly told you I had completed 14 days ago. In fact it then proved necessary to complete a number of specialized, time consuming preliminary studies. And I have not yet entirely succeeded in producing a neatly condensed version of the whole thing taking up the limited space necessary for possible printing as a Miszelle in the Historische Zeitschrift. But I certainly hope to finish the work by the end of next week at the very latest, and will have it sent to you straight away in legible, typewritten form with a request for your opinion. Regarding the Troeltsch editions, I can inform you that the printing of the volume in intellectual history is now well under way.2 In addition, the little volume in cultural philosophy, which is to be sent to Siebeck for publication as soon as the big volume is completed, can now finally be published.3 The individual publishers have already

1 Hans Baron, “Zur Frage des Ursprungs des deutschen Humanismus und seiner religiösen Reformbestrebungen. Ein kritischer Bericht über die neuere Literatur”, in: HZ 132 (1925), pp. 413–446. 2 Ernst Troeltsch, Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte und Religionssoziologie von Ernst Troeltsch, vol. 4 of the Gesammelte Schriften of Ernst Troeltsch, ed. by Dr. Hans Baron, Tübingen 1925. “Preliminary report” by the editor, pp. V–XX. 3 Ernst Troeltsch, Deutscher Geist und Westeuropa. Gesammelte Kulturphilosophische Aufsätze und Reden, ed. by Hans Baron, Tübingen 1925. “Preliminary remarks” by the editor, pp. II–IX.

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agreed to reprint all his significant writings from the last few years. So we shall be able to produce a fairly complete collection in this case as well. I hope that you have continued to recuperate during the last weeks of holiday amid the glorious autumn weather. With best wishes to your dear wife, I remain In grateful respect, Yours faithfully, Hans Baron 2. 16 October 1924: Hans Baron (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 172 Dear Herr Geheimrat, After a long wait, the first copies of my work on Calvin arrived today,4 suddenly and unexpectedly, just a few hours after my letter with the manuscript on humanism had been sent off to you.5 Thus, after manifold metamorphoses, I am finally in a position to present to you this new and yet old study, whose origins now lie almost three years in the past, in your seminar. It may not have been to this little book’s advantage that it was put together and written not in one coherent push but as a result of numerous attempts—that it was in fact by composing it that I learned to write in the first place. But I’ve grown more fond of it as a result. If I leaf through it and compare its current form with that first draft for your seminar, I am keenly aware of how much I owe in rebus historicis to the three years after being permitted to call on you for the first time in your house in Dahlem. At the time I was still highly immature and lacked the means to reconcile the impression which Lamprecht’s6

4 Hans Baron, “Calvins Staatsanschauung und das konfessionelle Zeitalter”. Supplement 1 of the HZ, Berlin/Munich 1924. The book is dedicated to Meinecke, see above, p. 56. 5 See above, p. 286. 6 Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915), one of the most controversial German historians. In opposition to traditional German history he championed a cultural history that sought to grasp the totality of social, economic, political and intellectual phenomena.

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incredibly wide-ranging approach had just made on me during my sojourn in Leipzig under Professor Goetz with Ranke’s more refined philosophical outlook, which you, my dear teacher, then helped me to appreciate. And it was only your tutelage which, from that point forward, increasingly endowed my interest in intellectual history with a specific direction and methodology and opened my eyes to the presence and necessity of the “great powers”7 in this field of history. Prepared by your instruction, I also came to appreciate Dilthey8 and Troeltsch, and I am gratefully aware that it was within the framework of the stimulation provided by these two thinkers and yourself that I dared to make my first solo flights. When asked to which “school” I belong, it is in this stimulation above all else that I profess my faith. It is not, perhaps, a terribly appropriate way of expressing my thanks if I take the liberty of dedicating such an imperfect little book to you, which is what this erstwhile dissertation has remained despite all the subsequent efforts put into it. But considering this first work, I am keenly aware that it came about not only through the determinative influence of Troeltsch, whose name of course crops up so often in its pages, but is also a product of your school in its form and methods. It is thus a dear thought, as a symbol of this, to be able to put your name on these pages as well. I shall be happy if, having had a look at my study in its present form, you do not regret kindly permitting me to dedicate it to you. With this hope, I remain As ever faithfully and gratefully yours, Hans Baron

Rejected by Meinecke and others, who accused him of advocating historical materialism. Worked at the University of Leipzig from 1891 to 1915, where he was succeeded by Walter Goetz. 7 Allusion to Ranke’s famous essay of 1832 on “Die großen Mächte”, published repeatedly ever since. Brings out the development of the European state system as the most important process in early modern European history. 8 Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), philosopher who set out reasons for the independence of the humanities amidst disputes with the natural sciences and exercised a significant influence on the development of Meinecke’s history of political ideas.

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3. 18 January 1925: Hans Baron (Berlin) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 Dear Herr Geheimrat, It was an especially great and unexpected pleasure for me to receive the promised copy of your article in Geschichtswissenschaft der Gegenwart9 yesterday in the post. Having used the free time provided by a Sunday to subject your book to thorough examination today, may I immediately take this chance to express my deep gratitude to you, not least for the especially kind dedication. Indeed, all my old memories of Leipzig came back to me as I read. Best of all, though, I was permitted a retrospective glimpse of the plans and objectives that undergirded the institutions and stimuli so valued and dear to me during my years of education at your institute. Previously, I knew only some of this from your programmatic report in the Archiv10 on the occasion of your appointment to the chair in Leipzig and from what you told me in person. When I went to Leipzig in the spring of 1920, I was in precisely the same state as you describe with reference to your own student days in your autobiography. I had not managed to gain a firm and fruitful point of departure in Berlin for my vague desire for historical instruction; I had as yet no awareness of the valuable things that Meinecke and Troeltsch might have offered me. But I immediately found what I was looking for in the regular courses held at your institute and within the group of students that so naturally banded together there. And having made this initial, most difficult beginning, everything else has fit together of its own accord right up to the present—not least thanks to your constant kind interest. I cannot deny, of course, that we students could get quite annoyed with you at times, that the politician often deprived us of the teacher,11 though in another sense we had

9 Walter Goetz, “Aus dem Leben eines deutschen Historikers” [autobiography], in: Geschichtswissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, ed. by Siegfried Steinberg, vol. 1, Leipzig 1925, pp. 129–170. Printed in a substantially expanded version including the period up to 1957 in: Walter Goetz, Historiker in meiner Zeit. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Cologne/Graz 1957, pp. 1–87. 10 Walter Goetz, “Das Institut für Kultur- und Universalgeschichte an der Universität Leipzig”, in: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 12 (1916), pp. 273–284. 11 Walter Goetz was a deputy in the National Assembly or German Reichstag for the German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei) from 1919 to 1928.

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reason to be grateful to the former. Which makes me look forward to the future all the more enthusiastically, my dear Herr Geheimrat, one in which, with the help of your personal encouragement and advice, I hope to grow increasingly into the circle of those interests whose foundations I received from you in your lectures and classes during my student days in Leipzig. I would ask that you regard these lines, which I may perhaps have spun out at excessive length, merely as a sign of my sincere gratitude to you. Respectfully yours, Hans Baron 4. 2 July 1925: Hans Baron (Rome) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 Dear Herr Geheimrat, If I am only now complying with your kind request to hear more about how my trip is progressing, this is because I wanted to wait until the beginning of the month in order to enclose, as you indicated I might, the new application to the ministry. Above all, though, please allow me to express belatedly my heartfelt thanks for your extremely kind phone call to my parents, which was the first time they had heard news of me from anyone in person. My parents wrote to me at the time, expressing how delighted they were to receive your kind attention, and asked me to thank you once again on their behalf in my next letter. The journey to Rome proceeded very much in line with your advice. A moonlight walk through the old walls and courtyards in San Gimignano gave me the chance to reflect on the Middle Ages in both north and south, in its Gothic and Italian variants; in Siena I was struck by the depth of feeling in the work of old Duccio,12 which only made me more aware of the subsequent stagnation and singularity of Quattrocento Florence; in Orvieto I had my first glimpse of the Umbrian landscape. But Rome made such an impression on me that it pushed everything else to one side. Admittedly, the old gentle12 Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255–1319), Italian painter, founded a school of Gothic painting in Siena.

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men I am in contact with here are very disappointed with modern Rome, which does in fact threaten to swamp the old buildings and monuments. Anyone hoping for the romanticism of ruins and the splendour of Campagna is likely to be frustrated. But if one looks upon the old Roman buildings in light of what they once were, before they became ruins, as testimony to a tremendous spirit of construction of a kind quite unfamiliar to us Northerners, then there is much to admire even in this modern metropolis of Rome, where new buildings have gone up at breakneck speed over the last few decades. The oldest and newest are of equal interest, and the days go by in a whirl of powerful impressions of nature and history. Now, of course, my main focus is on library research. Though there are certain things missing, the Institute’s collection13 has in fact provided me with incomparable opportunities for the purposes of my Renaissance studies. [ . . . ] Since yesterday I have occupied Dr. Holtzmann’s14 room, which I have at last been authorized to do after several direct requests to Geheimrat Kehr15 in Spain. [ . . . ] I have divided up the work in such a way that my initial focus is on exploiting the Institute library and the Vatican collection in order to collect and work through recent Italian literature on humanism. I am increasingly aware of how necessary it is for me to gain a comprehensive sense of the overall extent and structure of humanist literature myself so that I have a firm foundation for any more extensive attempts to explore the contours of intellectual history. But of course the handbook16 should not be encumbered with all of this later on.

13

Reference to the collection of the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome. Walter Holtzmann (1891–1963), historian. Assistant at the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome in 1925. Having habilitated in Berlin in 1926, he became professor ordinarius in medieval history at the University of Halle in 1931, and in Bonn in 1936. He was director of what is now the German Historical Institute in Rome from 1953 to 1961. 15 Paul Fridolin Kehr (1860–1944), one of the leading organizers of German extramural historical research and of collections of medieval documents in the first half of the 20th century. Headed the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome, closed in 1915 after Italy entered the war, from 1903. Part-time director after it reopened in 1924. General Director of the Prussian State Archives in Berlin from 1915 to 1929, Director of the 1917 newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of German History (KaiserWilhelm-Institut für Deutsche Geschichte). 16 Baron had been charged with writing a volume on “The worldview of the Renaissance and Reformation” (“Weltanschauung der Renaissance und Reformation”), for the “Handbook of medieval and modern history” (Handbuch der Mittelalterlichen und Neueren Geschichte) edited by Friedrich Meinecke and the Freiburg-based 14

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I am now structuring my work in such a way that this inventory of the humanist literature and all of its branches can at some point be combined with the bibliography, which I mentioned to you earlier on, to make a separate book. It would be an account of the sources in the manner of Wattenbach and Lorenz,17 but for the humanist literature as a whole; in other words a study of sources in intellectual history. This would give the handbook a good deal less to cope with and free up space for genuine issues in the history of ideas. In the meantime, among the treasures of the Vatican, I have remained faithful to an old love and have set seriously to work on Leonardo Bruni;18 he is equally important to me for the beginnings of Platonism and older Florentine views of the state. Yet in his case the written records are in a particularly bad way. With respect to those of his works of interest to the history of ideas, one must more or less manufacture them oneself; only his historiographical texts have been published in new editions, and among the humanists, Leonardo is almost the only one never to have been published in a complete edition in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento. Would you see any value in a new edition of the writings of most importance to the history of ideas—including the substantial introductions to the translations of Plato and Aristotle, etc.? I would probably have gathered the material by the end of my journey and I have already begun to compare texts. I will of course have to have copies or photographs made of certain things. Unfortunately, the Vatican library will already be closed on 15 July, and Feruccio is also going on holiday on 1 August. Then I shall begin a long tour through central and southern Italy, as far as Sicily. From September onwards I shall remain in Florence and will not leave until I have finished the work for my habilitation thesis. Only then, should

historian Georg von Below (1858–1927) (see CV of Dr. phil. Hans Baron from 1928 in the archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records, 1243, folio 259–264). The book was never published. 17 Wilhelm Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., 5th edn., Berlin 1886; Ottokar Lorenz, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter seit der Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts, 3rd edn., 2 vols., Berlin 1886/87. Both works appeared in new editions or were reprinted on numerous occasions. 18 Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444), often with the addition Aretino (Arezzo being his home town). Leading humanist, chancellor of the city of Florence, 1427–1444. Bruni’s Historia florentini populi is considered the most important work of humanist historiography.

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there be enough time, will I return to Rome again in spring to make more use of the Vatican library and the Institute library. I hope that all these plans meet with your approval. Finally, in accordance with your kind permission as granted to me some time ago, I have taken the liberty of sending to you directly my application to the ministry for an extension of my scholarship, on the granting of which I am of course dependent if I am to complete my study trip. I am well aware that I am putting you to some trouble with my request to pass on the application; but in light of Herr Ministerialrat Richter’s19 statements to Herr Geheimrat Meinecke, which I mentioned to you previously, it seems to me that there is too much doubt as to whether they will approve the extension, particularly this time around after the second year, for me to be sure that it is enough for me merely to write from Rome. I hope that you agree with the details of my application. If not, I would immediately make the necessary changes. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to you in advance for all your efforts. In the hopes of receiving very soon a favourable reply from you with regard to this matter of such importance to me, and with my best wishes from Rome—along with my regards to your dear wife—I remain As ever in grateful respect, Your Hans Baron

19 Werner Richter (1887–1960), Germanist and official. Obtained his doctorate in 1910 and habilitated in 1913; he became professor extraordinarius in German literature and philology in Greifswald in 1919 and professor ordinarius in 1920. Highlevel official (Ministerialrat and later Ministerialdirigent) in the Prussian ministry of science, art and education as well as honorary professor at the University of Berlin from 1920 to 1932. Became professor ordinarius in Berlin in August 1932. Forced into early retirement in 1933 on account of a Jewish grandmother. Emigrated to the United States in 1939. After returning to Germany in 1949, he became a professor at the University of Bonn and its vice-chancellor from 1951 to 1953.

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5. 27 June 1927: Hans Baron (Berlin) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 Dear Herr Professor, Please forgive my impatience if I send these lines to you by express delivery. But I want to make absolutely sure that they reach you before you leave. I had the opportunity to talk to Herr Geheimrat Meinecke today, and mentioned my hopes of going to Göttingen.20 To my dismay, however, Prof. Meinecke informed me that he had already written to Brandi21 with regard to the same matter on behalf of Dr. Dietrich Gerhard. As there is very unlikely to be room for two salaried lecturers (Privatdozenten) in Göttingen (even after Mommsen’s departure), I now find myself in a particularly unfortunate situation. Heidelberg and Breslau have to be ruled out, as Meinecke has already put the names of Dr. Holborn and Dr. Masur (from Berlin) forward in these cases. There are no current vacancies in Frankfurt or Marburg, as he discovered when making these applications. I have thus fallen far behind my contemporaries as a result of my long study trip,22 and there is absolutely no time to lose if I wish to avoid finding every door closed to me. Herr Prof. Meinecke thought there might still be a chance at Gießen, where there is no lecturer (Privatdozent) at present. However, it remains highly uncertain whether Roloff of all people will be interested in my research, and whether the Hessian ministry will approve a new lectureship for a Privatdozent any time soon. Nevertheless, in order to leave no stone unturned, I must make enquiries at Gießen as promptly as possible, as soon as I know what Göttingen have decided. As I may assume that you will be coming to Berlin at some point during the week because of the Reichstag sittings, I shall waste no time in asking you if you would be good enough to give me the opportunity (I could perhaps meet you at Anhalter station) to discuss the whole thing with you face-to-face. Would it perhaps be possible and appro-

20

Reference to his hopes of habilitating at the University of Göttingen. Karl Brandi (1868–1946), one of the leading German historians of the 1920s and 1930s. Taught in Göttingen as a lecturer from 1895, professor extraordinarius from 1897 and professor ordinarius from 1910 until his retirement. 22 Study trip to Italy, 1925–1927, financed by the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany (Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft). 21

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priate, under the circumstances, to contact Herr Prof. Brandi once again requesting that he reply as speedily as possible? I have held onto the proofs of the Bruni book23 since our last conversation as you requested. When should I send the corrected sections back to Teubner?24 I would like to talk this matter over with you as well. Thank you very much in advance, Faithfully yours, Hans Baron 6. 5 June 1928: Hans Baron to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 Dear Herr Professor, Soon after I had sent off my last letter to you, I submitted my habilitation thesis to Prof. Hartung for his preliminary inspection. Prof. Hartung’s assessment was essentially the same as I had heard from Prof. Brackmann. Prof. Hartung also stated that he was willing to accept it, but explained frankly that, while he had no problem with how I had dealt with my topic, in his opinion it lies on the outermost periphery of the discipline of history and could almost be considered just as much a work in the history of literature or history of philosophy. Though I hadn’t said a word to him about my own concerns at that point, he again strongly advised me to have another careful think about whether I wished to rely solely on the very slim prospects that such an off-beat field would offer with regard to an academic career. Prof. Meinecke, whom I spoke to again afterwards, thought I should take Hartung’s reservations seriously, and when I then mentioned the possibility of ensuring a firm foundation for the future, to be on the

23 Leonardo Bruni Aretino, Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften mit einer Chronologie seiner Werke und Briefe, ed. and annotated by Dr. Hans Baron. Veröffentlichungen der Forschungsinstitute an der Universität Leipzig. Institut für Kultur- und Universalgeschichte. Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, ed. by Walter Goetz, vol. 1, Leipzig/Berlin 1928. 24 The volume was published by B. G. Teubner.

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safe side, through practical training as a teacher, he strongly advised me, as did the other gentlemen, to sign up for it without delay. Under the circumstances, I thought it best not to let the deadline for registering for the pedagogical seminar this summer pass by, particularly given that, after our last conversation, I could assume that you, my dear Herr Professor, would not advise me any differently in light of these repeated warnings from the gentlemen assessing my work. During this summer I shall therefore have to divide my time between academic and practical work. But in informing you of this and sincerely requesting your consent—in circumstances in which the impetus has come not from my own anxieties but others’ warnings—I would like to repeat that I am taking this step while wishing and secretly hoping that there might after all be a research post at a historical commission in the foreseeable future that allows me, before long, to devote all my time to scholarly work once again. Above all, in line with your intimations, I hope that there might be an opening for an assistant at the Munich Commission working on one of the volumes of Reichstag records in the autumn. Over the last few months, in preparation for the planned trial lecture,25 I have familiarized myself fairly well with the Imperial and alliance policies of the Protestant Upper German free cities in the Reformation era.26 Any contribution to the volumes of Reichstag records from the 16th century could thus be combined with my own future research plans in the best possible way. But I would also be happy to work on the older series, from the 14th and 15th century, as that would take me directly into the late Middle Ages. This morning I had the opportunity to discuss the whole issue with Herr Geheimrat Kehr. He was also of the opinion that it might be possible for me to work on the Reichstag files and that it is probably the task best suited to me in my current situation. He also promised, should it be necessary, to speak in favour of giving me a contract at the meeting of the Munich Commission in autumn and will prob-

25 The “trial lecture” was required as part of the habilitation process. From 1928 until his dismissal on account of his Jewish descent in 1933, Baron was a researcher at the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften) in Munich. 26 Only after emigrating did Baron publish an essay in this field: “Religion and Politics in the German Imperial Cities during the Reformation”, in: EHR 52 (1937), pp. 405–427, 614–633.

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ably contact you then. However, Prof. Kehr thought it quite possible that they might be rather reluctant to appoint a non-Bavarian to such an assistantship. He thus suggested, should the occasion arise, that I commit myself only to a less time-consuming post with a lower wage than the other assistants have received; and he thought such a solution worth considering for other reasons as well. But I then told him openly about my current situation, the other gentlemen’s assessment of my research field and my resulting desire to gain a firm, enduring foundation for the relatively long wait I believe I can expect. I thus cling to the hope that, thanks especially to your kind intercession, it might perhaps be possible for me to put all my energy into academic work again this autumn. In the meantime—as best I can, as my preparation for the habilitation is taking up most of my free time—I am working on the second volume of the edited collections, concerned primarily with the Roman humanist Francesco da Fiano.27 On the basis of photographs of a thematically related, hitherto almost unknown defence of ancient literature by Coluccio Salutati28 that I recently received from the Vatican library, I shall be able to incorporate this treatise and provide an overview of ideas on ancient literature and mythology in trecentist humanism in my introduction. As all the preliminary work is already at an advanced stage, I hope to be able to finish in just a few months’ time, probably in August or September. Once again, in light of the circumstances outlined above, I would be grateful if you would indicate your consent for my hasty decisions. As ever faithfully and gratefully yours, Hans Baron

27 Francesco da Fiano, late 14th/15th century, Italian humanist. Studied in Bologna. Carried out various assignments for the city of Rome and the papal Curia. Corresponded with Petrarch and Salutati. 28 Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), Italian humanist, chancellor of the city of Florence from 1375 to 1406.

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7. 23 March 1933: Hans Baron (Berlin) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 Dear Herr Professor, I, and all those with whom I live, feel so sad and sick at heart that you will understand why it has taken me so long to get in touch and surely forgive me for it. This will be a sad time for you as well, but the worst and most terrible thing, that your own compatriots, who you have considered yourself one of your whole life, can come and take from you your People and Fatherland and everything that you thought sacred, that’s an experience reserved for us Jews. Our generation has already been through a lot—war, collapse, the diktat of Versailles, inflation—but all of that now seems like a minor, fleeting episode in comparison with this slow process of being torn apart and dying while still alive. We shall eventually forget the outer horrors of these last few weeks, which we experienced even in our own home merely because a cousin of my mother, whose family lives in the same house as us, was in the Reichsbanner,29 and which we saw first-hand within our circle of Jewish friends (worse things have happened in some cases than the uninvolved are aware of ). What is much worse is the futility of the future existence that awaits us German Jews, at least those of us who are not Zionists but real Germans and, even with respect to our intellectual work, cannot live elsewhere. Like so many others, I shall probably be in financial dire straits in a few weeks or months.30 Yet one wonders whether there is any point worrying about such things. For the thought of having to live on in a Germany dominated by racial anti-Semitism under the Swastika Flag is so depressing that I am almost unable to hope, in my relatively unimportant post in Munich, that I shall be overlooked and can continue to flourish in obscurity, though after the economic collapse of these last few crisis years it has, for some time, been more than just my own immediate family that depends on my income. It is rather futile at this stage to think too much about the future and one’s personal fate. For the time being, the one thing I am sure of is

29 The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold. A leftist combat unit tasked with defending the Weimar Republic, founded in 1924, formally non-partisan but dominated by SPD supporters. 30 In line with the “law on the restoration of the civil service” of 7 April 1933, Baron was dismissed from his post in a letter from the executive secretary of the Historical Commission, Karl Alexander von Müller, on 13 May 1933 with effect from 30 June 1933 (Goetz papers, vol. 32).

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that I must at least finish the book on humanism, which I have been writing for so long and which summarizes the results of years of study, before I think about anything else. I shall probably be able to stick it out for the six to twelve months which this might at most require, even if my income dries up. That this work is going so slowly has partly to do with the troubled times; despite the best of intentions and however hard I might try, there are always days when I am simply unable to get anything sensible down on paper. But the crucial thing—this at least is my hope—is that the whole thing is developing into a major book, one not just voluminous but also rich in content; one which, in terms of its methods and key ideas, often brings a new perspective to bear on the notion of what Renaissance humanism and humanism in general is, and which also enlivens one’s inner relationship to what humanism is. While there will undoubtedly be a clear focus on both Petrarca31 and the Florentine humanism of the 15th century, I believe I may dare to give it the general title “The humanism of the Renaissance in Italy”,32 because it is an entirely consistent intellectual development that I am pursuing through these key stages, from the High Middle Ages up to the Florentine Platonists. The first draft of the second half, on the Quattrocento, is already largely finished. It is the section on Petrarca that I have been occupied with over the last few months. I am having to produce a highly detailed and entirely new reading of the sources, despite the existing accounts of Petrarca, as my new interpretation of Quattrocento humanism brings out entirely new aspects of his work. That my ideas are fruitful is apparent in the fact that new characteristics of the Petrarca material are revealed on almost every page, characteristics that did not catch the attention of earlier writers. This I say in defence of the fact that I am wasting so much time and space in my work on Petrarca, who has been worked on so much already! I am keen to keep you informed about how the work is progressing—when I have at last finished it, this book will always be yours as well, for in the absence of your stimulation I would never have started these studies and without your help I would never have carried them through. There is little to report about my work on the Reichstag records. I am exploiting [word corrected and illegible] and after the results of the last autumn research trip (which were nothing spectacular in terms of content), my efforts have so far been entirely unhindered by Prof. A.33 31

Francisco Petrarca or Petrarch (1304–1374), famous Italian writer. The book that Baron was working on was published only in 1955 under the title The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in the Age of Classicism and Tyranny in two volumes by Princeton University Press. 33 Reference to Professor Willy Andreas. 32

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I have heard from him just once: the reply to my first letter of introduction, which you know about. It was cold and formal, but clearly sought to do what it could to facilitate an outwardly smooth relationship. I received no reply to my account of my journey; A. merely sent on my travel expenses claim to the cash office of the Academy. I shall follow this up off my own bat with another report on my work in the near future. Given how things stand overall, I am of course even more afraid of A.’s dubious non-anti-Semitism than I was before. Recently, when I bumped into Marcks at the university, it seemed to me that he returned my greetings only reluctantly and in the most perfunctory fashion. I wondered whether this might have something to do with A.’s conspicuously long silence. If you were able, at least when things have quietened down a little, to find the time for the enclosed review article,34 I would be most grateful. It is my first foray into the early Middle Ages and a first attempt to establish a settled form for the category “medieval intellectual history” in the Jahresberichte, after many years during which the review of literature, which had been written in the style of A. v. Martin,35 often highly abstract and unhistorical [word illegible] was missing. My belated thanks for your obituary on Karl Bücher!36 My wife and son are well. The boy is coming along splendidly so far. He’s bringing a lot of joy to my father, who has aged greatly in recent times as a result of my mother’s illness (severe premature calcification), which has hit her very hard mentally. Please do let me know how you and yours are doing at some point. We often talk about you and imagine that this must be a hard and anxious time for you and your wife as well. All best wishes from my wife and I, In grateful respect, Yours, Hans Baron.

34 Hans Baron, “Staatsanschauung und allgemeine Geschichte des geistigen Lebens. Frühes und Hohes Mittelalter (bis 1300)”, in: Jahresberichte für deutsche Geschichte, 6 (1932), pp. 544–567. 35 Alfred von Martin (1882–1979), sociologist and historian. 36 Walter Goetz, “Karl Bücher”, in: Berichte der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil.-hist. Klasse 83, 5 (1932). Reprinted in: Goetz, Historiker in meiner Zeit, pp. 277–285.

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8. 9 November 1937: Hans Baron (London) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 Dear Herr Professor, Your seventieth birthday is the right time to let you know that my gratitude for so many good things, which I received from you over the course of many years, has not diminished—despite the fact that I have of necessity remained silent for so long. I have heard nothing of you, even indirectly, for some time, but very much hope that you, your wife and children are all well. Above all, I wish you many more

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years of the wonderful sprightliness that is part and parcel of every memory of you. A happy coincidence has ordained that I am able to send you a study I wrote on this special day. Despite being in English, it very much fits within the context of the studies that have grown out of my interests in the Reichstag records37 and are thus connected with you in a special sense. The way my life has gone, I have had so little opportunity to thank you with completed work that I am especially pleased not to be entirely empty-handed today. That these articles are the first thing of mine published in English already tells you that I have continued to have an unutterably difficult time with English and American scholars in terms of what matters most to me, namely my interest in the Renaissance and intellectual history. Admittedly, Speculum wants to publish a lengthy paper on “Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth in the Making of Humanistic Thought”38 next January, and I hope to be able to send you a copy of it then. But that is the sum total of my accomplishments so far. I failed to find a publisher for my article on the political and intellectual background to the early Florentine Renaissance,39 or for my little book on Cicero’s after-effects in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which I mentioned to you some considerable time ago.40 After a great deal of exhausting discussion the ‘Academic Assistance Council’ denied me the scholarship I had requested because my studies were insufficiently interesting, and I finally had to content myself, since early 1937, with financial aid from a non-academic Jewish action committee, which enabled my wife and children to join me here one month ago, and which (after numerous difficulties) I am likely to receive until autumn 1938. This will at least enable me to complete some major studies and thus to build a springboard to America. I am currently in the process of re-writing my study of Cicero once again within a far broader framework. I intend to call it ‘Cicero and the Formation of the Humanistic Mind’, and I think I can present my main findings on the internal development of the 15th century, its ancient sources and the position of Petrarch in this paper. 37

See above, p. 296f. Hans Baron, “Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth as Factors in the Rise of Humanistic Thought”, in: Speculum 13 (1938), pp. 1–37. 39 Hans Baron, “The Historical Background of the Florentine Renaissance”, in: History, no. 22 (1938), pp. 315–327. 40 However, Baron did manage to publish an essay on this subject: “Cicero and the Roman Civic Spirit in the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance”, in: Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 22 (1938), pp. 72–97. 38

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Then a volume on the ‘historical thought’ of the Renaissance should be coming up.41 In light of my experiences so far, however, I dare not predict whether any of it will be published next autumn. The translations, to which I have already begun to contribute actively, take up far more precious time than completing the studies themselves, and in some cases their financing is still a rather puzzling problem. But if it is finished, the book has yet to be published. It is difficult to find private publishers for topics in intellectual history of this kind and German issues of the kind I explore, and funded university series only include the work of ‘members’ or at any rate those who have a post in this country. Nonetheless, I think the most important thing is to get these studies finished in the first place. Sooner or later, it will be possible to publish with even the most minor of positions in America, but then I will no longer be able to work independently. I have thus been going all out to further my work by making use of every day of this final extended period of time that has been granted to me. We do our best not to think about the gloomy future, other than my plan to travel to the USA in the autumn of 1938, hold a few lectures and ultimately try to gain some kind of foothold.42 We are happy at the moment, back in our own home for the first time. We brought at least a small part of our furniture over with us—this we could do as we have a two-room flat. The children, who are robust and developing well intellectually, had long needed to have some kind of family life again. They can attend nursery school here, which takes enough pressure of my wife that she can cope with household and children. I am happy to be able to give you good news at present, at least with respect to our personal situation. Once again the very best wishes to you and your family! As always in gratitude, Yours faithfully, Hans Baron. Postscript: Thank you very much for the volumes of the Dante yearbook, which I greatly enjoyed.

41 42

There are no books by Baron on either of these subjects. Baron emigrated to the United States in 1938.

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9. 17 May 1938: Hans Baron (London) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 Dear Herr Professor, You wrote me such a warm and detailed letter in February that I would have thanked you far sooner had I not wished to wait for publication of the studies that I now send you as printed matter. I believe you are currently working on the Renaissance volume for Meinecke’s handbook43 and my essays may be arriving just when you need them. I am pleased that at least something has in fact come of all the years of preparation, while at the same time I feel depressed when I look at the pitiful fragments that are supposed to represent the true fruits of these efforts. If you find time to read, I hope that you will feel that something of these general results shines through from the individual studies.44 What the whole thing boils down to is a defence of the old Burckhardtian and humanist view of the Renaissance against the modern blurring of Renaissance and Middle Ages with new means. Unfortunately, it still seems very doubtful to me that these and the earlier English studies can help me advance. With a few exceptions, which do nothing to change the situation overall, there is no interest, and in fact I believe no understanding, for this German-style intellectual history in England. I receive more friendly, in fact very appreciative letters from America, some from leading scholars in history and the classics. Yet even there I fall between two stools. It’s possible to stimulate the historians, but at the end of the day no-one is working independently on Renaissance issues. And the native classicists are really only interested in philology rather than intellectual history. In any case the fact is that despite appreciation for my efforts, so far I have received no invitations to deliver guest lectures and thus had no opportunities to create a springboard. The economic situation in America is so bad at present that having someone with influence intervene personally and quite specifically on your behalf is the only thing that might help. But it is just such an individual that I am unable to find as I follow my independent course. From October to December I

43

See above, p. 291f. Georg von Below had died (1927) by this point. Probably a reference to the three essays mentioned in the preceding letter, see fns. 38–40. 44

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shall be able to test things out on the spot. They want to send me over there at the expense of the relief organizations here, but they are only really doing it in order to have fulfilled their duties to me. They have told me openly that they consider new positions over there unlikely at the moment (even at insignificant colleges), but that they are unwilling to help me further here beyond the end of 1938, as they have a less than high opinion of my work. Unless I was lucky enough to find something quickly after all, I would have to give up my profession. This is probably the most likely scenario, at least initially. I know you reproach me for not making a move earlier. But I don’t think that’s right. From the moment that my hopes of Italy (a matter of the heart) were finally shattered, I have thought about nothing but America. But I couldn’t go there immediately as others did. I needed time. Who was I to turn to with my half-finished Renaissance studies, as there are no historians there who have worked on the Italian Renaissance? I sent off a few letters but got immediate flat refusals in response. My only option was the indirect route of either publishing a major, impressive book beforehand, or at least attracting the attention even of scholars in quite distant fields through a few essays of general interest in important journals. The first came to nothing because of the suspicion of everything to do with intellectual history in England. Given the time necessary for the translation and how long one needs to get anything published in journals, the second has taken two years, until now. Besides, this time was absolutely necessary for my English. After leaving Italy, my knowledge of English was no more than the ability to read easy academic English books at a slow pace. The language I had a good command of was Italian. Even now I have not had nearly enough practice, as I have no talent for languages. I only wrote the last of my five essays myself in English, the one on Cicero,45 and my manuscript required very extensive correction. I shall have to devote the three months remaining before my departure almost exclusively to speaking, reading and preparing lectures, if I want to be able to deliver them in English in the autumn. As a result I will scarcely be able to finish other work during this summer, though the many things that are three-quarters and more finished prey on my mind day and night. For the time being things

45

See above, p. 302.

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will go on like this, as if no crisis was looming at the end of the year. I am far too attached to my work and my intellectual world for me to do anything other than my utmost to try and fight my way through in the end. I was keen to write to you about all these things at some point because I want you to have an accurate memory of me and my fate. Hopefully I will be able to write and tell you of some positive solution from America towards the end of the year. At the moment we’re living a fairly quiet life in our nice two-room flat and are enjoying being together in a way that will of course come to an end again in October for an indefinite period. My wife and children are well. Our son, now just over six years old, is attending a state school here, our daughter a nursery. I truly hope that you, your wife and sons continue to enjoy the best of health. Please pass on our best wishes to your wife. Your ever grateful and faithful, Hans Baron. 10. 4 April 1954: Hans Baron (Chicago) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 My dear Herr Professor, It has been far too long since I wrote to you. And I had twice as much reason to write this time, as you sent me your essays on Meinecke and Kühlmann last autumn, to my great delight.46 The tremendous diversity of the topics brought the old range of your interests right back to me, something that meant so much to me during the days when I used to meet you in the Wandelhalle of the Reichstag in order to help you restore the original text of the Kultur der Renaissance in Italien.47

46 Walter Goetz, “Friedrich Meinecke. Leben und Persönlichkeit”, in: HZ 174 (1952), pp. 231–250; Goetz, Die Erinnerungen des Staatssekretärs Richard von Kühlmann. Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 52, no. 3, Munich 1952. 47 Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch. Reprint of the original edition, revised by Walter Goetz, Leipzig 1922. English version: The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, London 1890. See also Hans Baron, “Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance a Century After its Publication”, in: Renaissance News 13 (1960), pp. 207–222.

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Of course, I read your most recent writings with keen interest to see whether they differ from those of many years ago in terms of your way of thinking and language, and to my satisfaction I ascertained that in this respect it is as if the years have passed you by without leaving a trace. In any event, my best philological methods were inadequate to the task of distinguishing a page you wrote in 1952 from one dating from 1922. I have had news of you now and then in letters from Herbert Grundmann48 and therefore know that you are again enjoying your old admirable vigour while only your eyes demand rather careful treatment. Would not an addition to your autobiography, perhaps together with a revised edition of your historiographical essays, be a task in which an eye complaint is relatively little hindrance?49 I told Grundmann in a letter that I had always hoped for this, and he replied that he shares precisely the same wish. Is there not a chance that this wish might be fulfilled, one that many others certainly share? I had planned to send you a sign of life every year, but the last few years have been so busy that this resolution has remained unfulfilled along with other good intentions. My library post, among whose disadvantages is the fact that it allows me neither the time nor money to travel, not even within America, let alone to visit Europe, has luckily proved a far more favourable place for my work than I dared hope when we moved to Chicago five years ago. At least the first of the books so long in the offing should definitely appear in summer or autumn, and I hope to finish two more on related topics over the next few years, which largely date back to preparatory work done before 1933, but which have not yet been completed due to unfavourable external circumstances. That the book I have now completed, which I claimed would “soon be finished” in a letter to you three years ago, has again been delayed for so long, was due largely to the fact that it required unusually extensive preliminary critical studies. I had discovered that many of the humanist and publicistic sources of the period around 1400 are wrongly dated and have therefore been misunderstood, and I had to convincingly solve these chronological problems if I was to reliably reconstruct the relationship between the political experiences of the Florentines in the early Renaissance and their historical-political views (a key theme of my book). Having completed this work after 48 Herbert Grundmann (1902–1970), medievalist, student of W. Goetz. Became president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in 1959. 49 W. Goetz did in fact produce an expanded version of his autobiography in one volume, together with his essays on historiography and historians in 1957, see above, p. 289.

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years of effort, it long seemed impossible to have such critical-philological studies accepted for publication in America in book form, until I had the good fortune that Prof. Werner Jaeger50 took a great interest in the work, as it applies to the Renaissance sources the methods of analysis and criticism that have been so successful in classical philology. Eventually, with Jaeger’s help, I managed to get the book accepted by Harvard University Press, which intends to publish it later this year.51 Thus, the historical account based upon it can now be published at last by Princeton University Press.52 I have already read the proofs, and publication is set for late summer or autumn; there is to be an Italian translation based on the proofs for the “Biblioteca storica del Rinascimento” published by Sansoni.53 I always wished to be permitted to dedicate the first Renaissance book of mine to be published (all my other studies have been essays) to you and thus to acknowledge once again my status as your student.54 Had I been able to travel to Europe at any point over the last few years, I would have told you more about the content of the book in person and asked whether such a dedication meets with your approval. From this distance I can only send you a table of contents and tell you in writing how delighted I would be if you were to consent to this. Why I wish to dedicate this book to you, and what I am most grateful to you for, is set out in the planned dedication. Of course, for me personally, the key thing was not just the introduction to the Renaissance, but also to Italy—the impetus to learn the first scraps of Italian while staying with your family in Leipzig with the help of your wife (who is just as much a part of this “introduction” in my memory), my first encounter with Italian cities under your guidance in the spring of 1925 (the

50 Werner Jaeger (1888–1961), well-known classical philologist and philosopher. Migrated to the United States in 1936, where he taught at the University of Harvard from 1939. 51 Hans Baron, Humanistic and Political Literature in Florence and Venice at the Beginning of the Quattrocento: Studies in Criticism and Chronology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/Mass. 1955. 52 See above, p. 59. 53 An Italian translation of the Crisis in its revised second edition of 1966 appeared only in 1970 under the title: La Crisi del primo Rinascimento italiano, published in Florence by Sansoni. 54 The Crisis bears the following dedication: “To Walter Goetz, my teacher and friend who introduced me to the Renaissance and taught me that history should be a study of both politics and culture, on his 87th birthday, November 11, 1954 in gratitude”.

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Certosa di Pavia, Piacenza, Cremona and Parma, I believe), and my first glimpse of the Mediterranean from the house of your parents-inlaw in Genoa. Despite all these unforgettable memories of my youth, you will probably feel that the use of the word “friend” in the dedication is too bold. I wouldn’t use it in German without adding that your friendship was of the fatherly kind (eine väterliche Freundschaft), but one can’t say that in English, and together with teacher and gratitude, the English “friend” conveys more or less the same impression. Princeton University Press have just written to tell me that they will allow me to insert a dedication, but that it must be done quickly. I am therefore sending this by airmail and would ask you to please reply by airmail as well. If you would prefer me to omit the dedication for any reason, please don’t hesitate to tell me. Nothing would sadden me more than to think that you were quite unwilling or half-unwilling to approve the dedication because we have no opportunity to talk about it in person, and you find it difficult to decline by letter. I can imagine many reasons which you might perhaps mention to me in conversation; but there is no need to state your reasons should you decline by letter. But if you say yes, then you know from the planned wording of the dedication why I would like to express my thanks to you in this book, and thus how delighted I would be to do so. I would also be delighted to hear a word or two about how your family is doing; Grundmann told me nothing about that. We have nothing but good news. All of us are well. Reinhart is now studying physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. and is happily settled in a small town between the hills and lakes. Renate is still at the college of the University of Chicago. She is thinking of marrying a biology student in the near-future,55 but wants to continue with her studies in the history of art afterwards. However, she is more interested in art than history. On the whole, then, natural science has triumphed once again. With the very best wishes and greetings, Yours faithfully, Hans Baron

55

Reinhart and Renate were Baron’s children.

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11. 15 October 1954: Hans Baron (Chicago) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 My dear Herr Professor, I want to assure you of my gratitude—all appearances to the contrary. I would soon have answered both your letters (the detailed report that crossed my April letter in the post, and the shorter letter in which, much to my delight, you accepted the dedication of my book) and your essays on Theodor Heuss and “Romans and Italians” (“Römer und Italiener”),56 for all of which I was very grateful, had problems with the printing of the book and all kinds of family events (including our daughter’s marriage) not constantly prevented me from doing so. Now the year is already so well advanced that I must combine my reply with wishing you many happy returns for your imminent birthday. My joy at being able to send you my very best wishes for another year is mixed with my sense of disappointment that, contrary to all expectations, the promised book has not been finished on time. Although I had seen to the proofs as early as winter 1953/54 and the publisher was in such a hurry to sort out the dedication to you as late as March, shortly afterwards there were unexpected delays at Princeton Press as a result of staffing changes, and rather than explaining the situation to me, it took them until just a few days ago to clarify things. Now at last I know that there have been problems in their operations, but that these have now been resolved. My book is to be printed in February 1955 and dispatched in April. Worryingly, that is five months after your 87th birthday. But the book is long since finished and set, and I therefore hope that you are happy for us to leave the dedication in the form I indicated to you. The book to be published by Harvard Press, which is dedicated to Prof. Werner Jaeger,57 will now appear before the Princeton book; I hope to be able to send you a copy around New Year, so that you at least get to see a forerunner in the near future.

56 Walter Goetz, “Römer und Italiener”, in: Festgabe für S. Königl. H. Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern, ed. by Walter Goetz, Munich 1953, pp. 127–151; Goetz, “Begegnung mit Theodor Heuß”, in: Begegnungen mit Theodor Heuß, ed. by Hans Bott and Hermann Leins, Tübingen 1954, pp. 33–38. 57 See above, p. 308.

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I was so delighted to receive so many of your recent essays. I read the essay on “Romans and Italians” (“Römer und Italiener”) with particularly great interest and I am sure I was correct to conclude that your remark to the effect that you were very interested in my current research was connected in particular with the problem examined in “Romans and Italians”. I think what we have in common is the same scepticism about identifying the new Italian culture emerging in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance with Roman traditions. I had noticed a similar common perspective many years ago when corresponding with Walter Lenel, who, like you, opposed Solmi’s58 ideas. I am of course very pleased to encounter similar questions in your work in particular—it may be that, more than I realize, the roots of my own questions lie in your school of thought with respect to this issue. On the other hand, I hope that when you have a look at my book later on you are not disappointed to find that my answer to our question is rather different in some respects. May I explain this in some detail? One of the steps which, I believe, one must take beyond the points made in your essay, is to come up with a positive assessment of the “particularism” that makes Italy’s Renaissance era so dissimilar to Roman Italy, as you emphasize. The independence of the city states and regional states in both ancient Greece and the Italian Renaissance was doubtless one of the principal causes of their cultural achievements—one would hardly have been possible without the other. Is not then the use of the term “particularism”, with its censorious undertones, an anachronism from the perspective of the era in which the modern unified nation state became the rule and the dominant value? The second point in which I would go even further in a direction already indicated by you relates to your critique of attempts to trace the blossoming of a new Italian culture back chiefly to the injection of

58 Presumably a reference to Arrigio Solmi (1873–1941). Professor of law in Cagliari, Parma, Pavia, Milan and Rome. Fascist deputy in the Italian parliament from 1924; undersecretary of state in the education ministry from 1932 to 1935. Among other studies, published on Sardinian history, Italian medieval history and the political thought of Dante. The New York Times Book Review of 26 April 1931 published a revealing contribution to a dispute among Italian historians of the time. It asserted that Benedetto Croce saw Italian history as beginning only in 1860, while in his book, Discorsi sulla storia d’Italia, Florence 1935, A. Solmi placed its beginning in the time of Emperor Augustus and referred to Virgil as an Italian rather than a Roman. Baron is probably referring indirectly to this dispute.

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Lombard blood. Despite great circumspection, if I understand correctly, you adhere largely to the conclusions reached by Fedor Schneider.59 But is their validity not crucially qualified by the fact that, according to Schneider’s own results, the influence of Lombard blood was felt least among the urban nobility in Tuscany? Hence, given that there is no doubt that the roots of the new Italian literature and art lay above all in the soil of Tuscany, Fedor Schneider’s findings, as interesting as they are, clearly do not lead us to what matters most. Would you not agree? Apart from that, so much of Solmi’s views remains correct: that Italy, in comparison with the northern countries, was “more ancient” than the rest of Europe as a result of its city-state structure, even in the Middle Ages. Where Solmi requires correction, it seems to me, is only in his too one-sided emphasis on the Roman legacy. The kinship of Italian life with Antiquity as a result of the role of the city in politics and culture common to both must be acknowledged, and this kinship largely explains the relationship of early humanism to Roman Antiquity (especially to Cicero) and the humanist rediscovery of the literature and ideas that arose within the Greek polis. I think this Greek influence on the early Italian Renaissance, particularly in Florence, is often underestimated because the role of public spirit and patriotism in the Italian city republics into the 14th and 15th centuries receives too little attention. And this happens in turn because, under the sway of the modern idea of the unified national state, too little account is taken of important expressions of the political spirit of the humanism of the Quattrocento, solely because they are bound up with particular city states. I was surprised to discover recently that Stadelmann,60 who I once saw eye-to-eye with on these issues, has come up with a very different assessment of the role of public spirit and politics in the Quattrocento than most others; he was nearer the mark in his excellent essay on personality and state in the Renaissance.61 As soon as one

59 Fedor Schneider (1879–1932), historian. Holder of the chair in medieval and modern history at the University of Frankfurt a. M. from 1923. Author, among other things, of: Die Reichsverwaltung in Toskana. Von der Gründung des Langobardenreiches bis zum Ausgang der Stauffer (568–1268), vol. 1: Die Grundlagen, Rome 1914. Reprinted, Frankfurt a. M. 1966. 60 Rudolf Stadelmann (1902–1949), modern historian. Professor in Tübingen from 1938. 61 Rudolf Stadelmann, “Persönlichkeit und Staat in der Welt der Renaissance”, in: Welt als Geschichte 5 (1939), pp. 137–155.

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removes the notorious nation state spectacles, one can find plenty of impressive material illustrating the kinship with the ancient city-state. The elaboration of some of this material is, I hope, what makes my book valuable. To give you a sample right away I am sending you the proofs of an appendix and the final chapter of the book. With respect to your essay, I am doubly sorry that I cannot yet send you the book itself for your birthday. But at least one of my key themes will probably be apparent, even from these few pages. I hope you shall find here one possible and fruitful continuation of the ideas I gleaned from you. Your questions about my career in America and future plans are none too easy to answer; but I am particularly grateful for your interest in my fate. Your assumption was correct: accepting the position in the library in Chicago meant foregoing certain things. It became evident at the time that I, like certain other immigrant scholars such as Leonardo Olschki,62 would be unable to resume my academic career. I can best answer your question by briefly indicating the reasons for this. Lack of American interest in my field of research and personal factors came together. It is hard to find doctoral students or young scholars working independently in the field of Renaissance history (with the exception of the English variant) in the USA, as adequate linguistic skills are acquired almost exclusively by those who elect to study the relevant language and literature as a special subject. The not inconsiderable interest in source-based studies of the Renaissance that exists here is thus limited entirely to the Romance, German and English “departments”. The historians require a few people to provide generally comprehensible and engaging accounts, textbooks and lectures on the Renaissance, as an appendage to a teaching post in modern history at best; on the other hand, there is very little interest in original work or criticism of conventional views in this “minor field”, or these are even considered irritating. Thus, right from the outset, there was little room here for my kind of research in cultural and intellectual history in light of the sources. Despite this, one or other of the big universities might have made use of the fact that I was available had there not

62 Leonardo Olschki (1885–1961), professor of Romance languages in Heidelberg, 1924–1933. Removed from office on account of his Jewish origins in 1933. Exchange and visiting professor in Romance philology in Rome from 1932 to 1938. Emigrated to the United States in 1939, where he taught at various universities, lastly the University of California, Berkeley.

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been such a widespread, almost hateful resistance to humanism, intellectual history and anything that bears the least resemblance to the Burckhardtian tradition among the ever growing numbers of increasingly powerful “historians of science”. When I wished to hold a lecture on the Renaissance at Columbia University in New York after arriving in the country in 1938, Lynn Thorndike,63 one of the leaders of this school, wrote to me that he and most other American historians no longer believed that there was a Renaissance, so I could hardly hold a lecture on it. There are of course many other people in the numerous history departments in the country, but my particular misfortune was the slanders and lies with which Bertalot cast suspicion not only on my working methods, but also my personal integrity, in his reviews of my book on Bruni;64 these always provided my academic opponents with plenty of ammunition when decisions were made. I heard this on several occasions, but by then it was already too late; in such cases, an immigrant scholar, whose foreign-language production is known to very few (no-one had seen my response to Bertalot in the Archiv für Kulturgeschichte), finds himself in a difficult situation. In any case, between 1945 and 1950, none of the prospects that existed at several universities back then came to anything, and I assume that, the matter once having been discussed and decided upon, these rejections are final with respect to the future as well. As a result, I have taught at the university level in America just once for three semesters—at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, which I drove to from Princeton once a week.65 I was happy there, and found my students to be a recep-

63 Lynn Thorndike (1902–1963) was not a “he”, as Baron writes, but a leading woman historian of the Middle Ages. Taught at Columbia University in New York from 1924 until her retirement in 1952. Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, founder of the History of Science Society and president of the American Historical Association from 1955 to 1956. 64 On these controversies, see Ludwig Bertalot’s sharply critical reviews of Baron’s edition of Bruni’s Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften, in: Archivum Romanicum 15 (1931), pp. 284–323 and in the Historische Vierteljahrsschrift 29 (1934), pp. 385–400, Baron’s response: “Forschungen über Leonardo Bruni Aretino. Eine Erwiderung”, in: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 22 (1932), pp. 352–371 and the repudiation of the second critique in a statement by Walter Goetz, according to which Bertalot was persecuting Baron “with near-fanatical hatred”. Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 25 (1935), p. 251f. 65 In 1946/47. Baron was a member of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton from 1944 to 1948. Later, Baron was visiting professor at Ohio State University in 1958/59, Cornell University in 1961, Dartmouth College in 1964 and Harvard University in 1970. From 1963–1968, in addition to his post at Newberry Library, he

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tive and grateful bunch. I would have remained there permanently had I not had the misfortune that my predecessor, who retained for two years the right to return to his old chair, suddenly decided, contrary to expectations, to do just that—and he has remained at Johns Hopkins ever since. I am of course not the only immigrant who has not managed to resume his original university career in America for one reason or another. As a rule, such people have to make do with more or less school-like college posts—which, luckily rather than unluckily as far as I’m concerned, are closed to me because of my hardness of hearing, which makes constant discussions in classes of 25–30 students both too difficult and too strenuous. In these circumstances, the library post here has proven highly advantageous in relative terms, though I greatly miss the teaching and contact with young people, which are of course among the best aspects of the scholar’s life. One compensation is the library job, not unpleasant in itself, which consists of the gradual development of one of the best libraries for the history and literature of all continental European countries from the early Middle Ages into the 18th century;66 this alternates with furnishing the complex scholarly information requested from the library, and with studies and publications on Renaissance manuscripts which the library occasionally acquires on my advice. As this job requires only about 4 to 5 hours a day and the library is of course getting better year on year for the purposes of my own work, I am beginning to tell myself that this overly reclusive, too little respected and underpaid refuge is perhaps not the worst solution for me in many respects. I have well advanced, more than half-finished manuscripts of three other books on the Renaissance (two in German and one in English), which await completion, and I am busy with various other plans. If the ratio of time spent working at the library to time spent on my own work continues to be so favourable (unfortunately, this cannot be stipulated in a contract, as there is no planned academic post at the library and they merely granted me privileges for reasons of prestige),

was also “professorial lecturer” in Renaissance Studies. He was fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford in 1967/68 and Guggenheim fellow in 1975. 66 Newberry Library in Chicago, where Baron worked from 1949 until his retirement in 1970. Baron regularly published unsigned reports on the library’s acquisitions in: The Newberry Library Bulletin.

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then I have reason to hope that I shall finish all these studies in peace over the next few years; and even if I am unable to travel, I can always contribute to German journals from here (which I have firm plans to do), and rather than the missing teaching post and professorship, I can use the time to contribute to promising publications—for example, I recently produced an article on the Renaissance for the new edition of the Cambridge Modern History, which is currently in the pipeline.67 This, then, gives you a rough idea of the life which, barring mishaps, I believe I have ahead of me (a life with restrictions, but also sufficient satisfactions). I find it hard to imagine that it might still be possible for me to return to Germany, though I’ve often dreamt of it. I dream of it when the intellectual isolation here becomes too onerous and when, time and again, new German literature confirms the impression that the tradition of Renaissance studies in Germany, which I absorbed through you and your Institute in Leipzig, threatens to peter out entirely. Our children will soon be at a point where they no longer have such need of us. But how would it be possible to return to Germany in material terms given what I constantly hear about the financial difficulties of German universities, as confirmed by the report in your last letter? A chair that gave me the opportunity, in the roughly twelve years remaining to me, to train some young scholars in the fields of Italian and German Renaissance history is the only thing that might make any sense. And the income would have to be large enough to allow us, in our otherwise frugal existence, either to travel annually to America ourselves or to allow our children to make the trip to Germany; in light of our situation, there is no need to explain this imperative. Only a personal chair or a specially created post at somewhere like the Petrarca Institute in Cologne or Renaissance Institute in Munich (which is obviously in a very weak state) could meet these requirements. So there would have to be a good fairy at one of the ministries, and I fear that the fairies have countless urgent problems of the day to alleviate through their gifts at the German universities at the moment. I therefore believe that what I have just written belongs solely to the

67

Hans Baron, “Fifteenth-Century Civilization and the Renaissance”, in: The New Cambridge Modern History I. The Renaissance, 1493–1520, Cambridge 1957, pp. 50–75.

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world of fantasy, and that the above outline of my current position indicates the direction in which I must seek my future. Finally, I must reply briefly to your enquiry regarding the planned Erasmus edition. I need not belabour the point that a new edition represents an extremely important and urgent task. As regards me personally, however, someone in my insignificant position is hardly the right man to involve himself in the organizational work—at least not in America, where one’s public position counts most in any joint venture. And I shouldn’t take on the editing of any of Erasmus’ writings, I think, as long as I have the half-finished manuscripts of several books lying on the shelf. The right two people for organizational collaboration in the USA, it seems to me, are Wallace K. Ferguson68 and Paul Oskar Kristeller (both in New York). If, rather than writing directly to them, you would prefer to send appropriate material to them through me, I am of course delighted to offer my services. I know both of them very well. My letter (please forgive me!) is now far too long, but I wanted to tell you all these things at some point. Thank you so much for your interest in my situation! Other that that, I would only ask that you pass on my regards to your wife from my wife and I. Please tell her how grateful I am that she has made it possible for me to have the great pleasure of receiving such long and substantial letters from you by taking on the writing. My very best wishes for 11 November. I hope you remain in the best of health and continue to work vigorously on the studies you mentioned to me. Your ever grateful and faithful, Hans Baron.

68

Wallace K. Ferguson (1902–1983), leading expert on Erasmus; Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–1999), philosopher. Obtained his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1928. Funded by the Emergency Committee on Academic Research in Germany (Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft) in 1932–1933. A Jew, he emigrated to Italy in 1934 and to the United States in 1939. Taught at Columbia University in New York from 1939 until his retirement. One of the most important scholars of the Renaissance and humanism.

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12. 15 August 1956: Hans Baron (Chicago) to Walter Goetz NL Goetz 32 My dear Herr Professor, No, I really don’t expect you to write me long letters or to review my books! Last December you sent me a wonderful long letter of acknowledgment for the books, which made me far happier, grateful and proud than any printed announcement could have done. You should have seen how happy we both were to receive it! Back then, in December, you expressed some doubts about the further progress of your book on Wilhelm II,69 and I am thus all the more delighted to see that you are getting on with the book. I am very, very well aware how important it is that you complete this book, if at all possible, for no-one will ever be able to write a biography of Wilhelm II again the way you will, as one of the few historians who lived through that time, playing a critical and active role. Personally, I must admit, I am just as keen to see your plan for a history of the Munich Historical Commission (Münchener Historische Kommission) move further forward, for with your long experience and active involvement you would have an incomparable advantage over all the younger editors of the jubilee history in this subject too.70 [ . . . ] I am quite satisfied with how my books have been received. A large number of reviews have appeared in the American academic journals. Admittedly, I feel that the basic problems and solutions in intellectual history that I explore have been little understood by the reviewers, but there has been plenty of interest and praise. I have heard little from Italy for the time being (other than a nice review by Nino Valeri), as, though the translation is already finished, Sansoni’s Italian edition of

69 There is an unpublished manuscript entitled “Kaiser Wilhelm II. Eine Biographie”, 1958, in the Goetz family archive in Rome. See Wolf Volker Weigand, Walter Wilhelm Goetz 1867–1958. Eine biographische Studie über den Historiker, Politiker und Publizisten, Boppard am Rhein 1992, p. 383. Goetz had already published an essay entitled “Kaiser Wilhelm II. und die deutsche Geschichtsschreibung” in the HZ, 179, pp. 21–44 in 1955. 70 Goetz was extraordinary member of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences from 1911, full member from 1913, President from 1945 to 1951 and finally Honorary President. The volume on the Commission’s hundredth anniversary, Die Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1858–1958, Munich 1958, contains no article by Goetz.

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the books seems to be taking for ever,71 while in view of the promised speedy appearance of the Italian edition, the American publishers have sent just a few review copies to Italy. From Germany, I have received a short but particularly pleasing review by M. Seidlmayer in Das Historisch-politische Buch, vol. IV, 4 (1956), p. 107f. A review by F. Schalk (the Cologne Romanist),72 who has long been interested in my interpretation of humanism, is likely to appear in the Historische Zeitschrift. My wife and the children are well. Both my son and daughter are still in the latter stages of their degrees (Reinhart in physics and Renate in history of art). As for me, I have some more news for you: I was made emeritus professor extraordinarius a few weeks ago as a result of the restitution proceedings. We are very pleased that the matter has been settled in this way. Assuming that the approved payments are not stopped again in future as a result of international problems or possible domestic developments in Germany, this will mean an end to our financial worries and there is a good prospect that, after reaching pensionable age in the library in eight or nine years’ time, I will be able to continue my academic research without financial problems, perhaps by moving to Germany or Italy for our old age. But it’s best if I tell you about my future work schedule and current research next time we see each other, which will of course be soon. [. . . . .] Until then, with the very best wishes from both of us to you and your wife, Your ever grateful and faithful, Hans Baron

71 An Italian edition of Crisis appeared only in 1970 in Florence, published by Sansoni under the title La Crisi del primo Rinascimento italiano. 72 Review of Baron’s books The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance and Humanistic and Political Literature in Florence and Venice by F. Schalk, in: HZ 186 (1958), pp. 416–420.

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1. 3 November [1926]:1 Helene Wieruszowski (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL M.einecke 52 Dear Herr Geheimrat, Having talked it over with Herr Prof. Brackmannn in some detail, I have decided to follow your advice and investigate Machiavellianism prior to Machiavelli. Perhaps I can tell you more at your seminar at some point over the next few weeks. With thanks and best wishes, Yours faithfully, H. Wieruszowski 2. 22 October [1933]: Helene Wieruszowski (Bonn) to Albert Brackmann NL Brackmann 40 Dear Herr Professor, My current situation gives me the courage to approach you once again with a request. I really have been laid off, that is, forced into retirement in accordance with § 3 of the law on civil servants. My remaining period of employment, during which I will still receive a salary and must continue to work, runs until 31 January 34. In the meantime I shall have to look around for a new job or at least obtain the means to do so. I have been in touch with the Emergency Committee on German Scholars Abroad (Notgemeinschaft deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland), whose office is in Zurich, and they have

1 No year is indicated. The card probably dates from the first year of her training as librarian (1926–1928) at the Prussian State Library in Berlin.

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asked me to send in my CV and references. Prof. Levison,2 Geheimrat Hansen3 in Cologne and above all my boss here, Prof. v. Rath,4 are going to provide me with references. May I ask you the large favour, dear Herr Professor, of jotting down a few words for me to the effect that you know my work and that my book5 will be published as part of the series edited by you and Meinecke, and perhaps also that you know me from your classes? I am quite sure that a few words from you would stand me in very good stead. If nothing permanent turns up, as may well be the case given the run on positions abroad at present, I intend to head first for Spain or Italy and work in the academic field. If I live frugally and perhaps find some small source of extra income, I can hold out for some time. My greatest wish would be to begin large-scale research of some kind, which perhaps had some kind of loose connection with German academic life. I have already been in touch with Geheimrat Finke6 because of Spain. He wants to discuss this with me at some point. But for the time being it is impossible to assess whether the situation in Spain will be favourable to my plans. How good it would be to have the chance to discuss with you whether Rome or Florence might be more advantageous and whether there might be any possibility of playing some kind of role within the framework of the Monumenta7 for example,

2

Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947), medievalist, habilitated in Bonn in 1903, made professor extraordinarius in Bonn in 1912 and ordinarius in 1920. Member of the board of directors of Monumenta Germaniae Historica from 1925. Forced into retirement because of his Jewish descent in 1935. Emigrated to Great Britain in 1939, where he taught as honorary fellow at the University of Durham, which had awarded him an honorary doctorate as early as 1925. 3 Joseph Hansen (1862–1943), Prussian state archivist, later director of the Cologne city archive. Obtained his doctorate in Münster in 1893, chairman of the “Society for Rhenish History” (“Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde”) from 1893. 4 Erich von Rath (1881–1948), librarian. Doctor of Laws. Head of the university library in Bonn from 1921. Honorary professor in Bonn from 1924. 5 Helene Wieruszowski, Vom Imperium zum Nationalen Königtum. Vergleichende Studien über die publizistischen Kämpfe Kaiser Friedrich II. und König Philipps des Schönen mit der Kurie, supplement 30 to the HZ, Munich/Berlin 1933. 6 Heinrich Finke (1855–1938). Medievalist. Habilitated at the Academy in Münster in 1887, where he was made professor extraordinarius in 1891 and ordinarius in 1897. Professor in Freiburg from 1899 to 1924. President of the Catholic Görres Society (Görres-Gesellschaft) from 1924 and founder of a historical institute under the Society’s auspices in Madrid. 7 Monumenta Germaniae Historica, leading institution producing edited volumes of sources on medieval history.

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on an unpaid basis of course. I am aware that in light of the current tendencies there can be no commitment from the other side, such as guaranteed publication. But it would be a source of support and consolation if I could get an assignment in some field or other—in order to avoid being completely detached from the soil on which, I believe, I have acquired a right of abode not only through birth and education but also through my own work. If you think, dear Herr Professor, that I might further my goals by discussing them with you in person and that this would not be too much of a burden on you, I would be willing to come to Berlin in the near future. I wanted to visit my old friends there once more in any case given that I will be going away for some time. I would also welcome your thoughts on whether I should talk to Geheimrat Kehr8 as Prof. Levison advised me. Please forgive me for turning to you with this request. Best wishes, Yours faithfully, Helene Wieruszowski 3. 25 October 1933: Albert Brackmann to Helene Wieruszowski NL Brackmann 40, copy Dear Fräulein Doktor, I enclose the requested reference9 and hope that it will be of use to you. It is very difficult to say anything about a new research topic at the moment. Everything is in a state of transition here, and no-one knows how things will be organized in future. No doubt things will be clearer in six months’ time. So it is probably advisable to wait a little longer. Still, you could ask Herr Geheimrat Kehr in Rome whether there was anything to be done in Rome or Florence; I’m in complete agreement

8 9

Geheimrat Prof. Paul Fridolin Kehr. H. Wieruszowski had requested this reference in her letter of 22 October 1933.


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with Professor Levison on that point; they will of course retain institutions such as the Mon. Germ.10 Very best wishes, Your 4. 4 November 1933: Helene Wieruszowski (Bonn) to Albert Brackmann NL Brackmann 40 Dear Herr Professor, Oldenbourg, the publishers, have just informed me that that they have already sent you a copy of my book.11 I would of course have done so myself otherwise. But I shall take this opportunity to repeat the thanks expressed in the published foreword. I can’t tell you, in my current situation, how pleasing and comforting it is to me that it was still possible for these long-term studies to be published. Who knows whether it would have been feasible at a later point. I have you alone to thank for that and will not forget it. But I also want to thank you for the fine reference and accompanying letter. A copy of the letter of recommendation has been sent to Zurich. But I do not think there is much chance that my application will be successful, as the number of applicants far outweighs the small number of opportunities. I suspect I shall have no other option than to go somewhere abroad with a research plan and then to look for the necessary academic basis there. At any rate, in line with your advice and because I will be in office for another three months, I wish to wait for a while until things become a little clearer. For the time being, I have merely sent my book to Herr Geheimrat Kehr and I’ve just

10 The Monumenta Germaniae Historica was renamed the “Imperial Institute of Ancient German History” (“Reichsinstitut für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde”) in 1935, but remained essentially unchanged. 11 See above, p. 62f.

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received confirmation that he has received it. In a few weeks I shall write to him properly and ask for his advice. My heartfelt thanks to you once again for all you have done. Best wishes, Yours faithfully, Helene Wieruszowski 5. 11 August [1946]:12 Helene Wieruszowski (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 52 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I have had news of you ever since you and Rosenberg resumed contact, and it was one of the most exciting moments of the post-war era for me when I read your appeal to German students13 published in one of the newspapers here. It was as if a door into the old days was being reopened, into my intellectual past in Germany, a past in which I am rooted. That you are alive, that it was your voice that brought them back to life again in my mind, seemed at the time like good news and a sign that I too would be able to open the door that had been closed. All in all, though, it was an illusion, and this, dear Herr Geheimrat, is why I had not yet written to you, though I eagerly imbibed all the news Rosenberg gave me from your letters. I am so happy that you, your dear wife and daughters have emerged safely from the pandemonium, that the people in Göttingen were able to help you and that you even plan to return to your own house in Dahlem.14 I myself am also back in contact with old friends in Bonn and Cologne. It is wonderful that the bonds of personal friendship are being revived. Yet I feel the difficulties and obstacles mount with every passing day when I try

12

No year is indicated. However, the context clearly points to 1946. Probably a reference to Meinecke’s article “Zur Selbstbesinnung”, published in the Münchner Zeitung on 16 June 1945 and regularly reprinted in other countries. This is not, however, an appeal to German students, though the final paragraph does address the German youth in particular. 14 In fact, Meinecke was brought back to Berlin by K. S. Pinson as early as 9 July 1946. 13


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to understand and imagine myself back in Germany. Too much has happened, the scale is too enormous, the collective acts go beyond the episodic and individual kind that history may pass over, other than in special cases. Germany, your great Germany, Herr Geheimrat, the one I first came to appreciate in your Cosmopolitanism (Weltbürgertum), was lost in the Germany of the Third Reich; I at least cannot see it anymore. But you should not imagine that I have forgotten my debt of love and gratitude to individuals, and thus I am writing this letter in the hope that it reaches you and your wife and expresses these feelings to you. You wouldn’t believe how much I am able to draw on the treasures obtained during my university days and especially from your classes here. I have learnt an endless amount [word illegible] of new things, and as I have been teaching general courses on European history for two years in the same college as Rosenberg (with his help, but not, unfortunately, on the basis of a permanent position like him), it has become intellectually routine to place Germany within a European context. As I have always been very interested in the Western democracies and parliamentarism, partly because of family tradition—I no doubt told you that my maternal grandmother was the sister (Klara) of Ludwig Bamberger15—and my own inclinations, this has never posed a problem. I am grateful to have received the fundamentals from you, Oncken and Betzold.16 I have also had good opportunities to carry on the tradition myself. In the first two years I was a research associate at Johns Hopkins University at the same time as Fr. Engel-Janosi17—you are probably most familiar with him from his studies of Prokesch.18 He has subsequently worked in many other areas here. E.-J. gave lectures on historiography and I took part in the discussions. Both of us kept

15 Ludwig Bamberger (1823–1899), leading liberal politician and journalist. Member of the Reichstag from 1871 to 1893, initially for the National Liberal Party and from 1880 for a breakaway grouping which merged with the German Progress Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei) in 1884 to make the liberal “Free Thought” Party (Freisinnige Partei). Champion of free trade. 16 Probably a reference to the historian Friedrich von Bezold (1848–1928). After habilitating in Munich in 1875, he taught as professor ordinarius in Bonn from 1896. H. Wieruszowski obtained her doctorate in Bonn. 17 Friedrich Engel-Janosi (1893–1978), Austrian historian. Emigrated first to Great Britain in 1939, then the USA in 1940. Returned to his native city of Vienna as honorary professor in 1959. 18 Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Die Jugendzeit des Grafen Prokesch von Osten, Innsbruck 1938.

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coming back to you, especially your historism.19 (This and the little collected volume Vom geschichtlichen Sinn . . .20 are the only books of yours that I managed to save from the triple auto-da-fé of my library in Cologne, Barcelona and Florence). E.-J. went on to publish his lectures, but I have to say that he never did any more than to paraphrase and popularize your ideas, on Goethe for instance. I myself then tried my hand in this field with a German essay on Goethe’s view of the Middle Ages in “Helena”, which I shall send you.21 I have otherwise remained faithful to the Middle Ages, the 13th century, the Dante era, Spain and Italy. After my last essay on the tradition of a famous passage in the Convivio and its role models,22 Engel-Janosi wrote to me that “all the merits of Meineckian humanities-based methodology are combined here in the most pleasing way . . .” I do not write this, my dear Herr Geheimrat, out of vanity: I want you to know that I have remained true to you. As ever yours faithfully, Helene Wieruszowski My best wishes to your wife. Marginal additions: 1.) Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you. I’m afraid it’s impossible to send anything to Berlin as yet. 2.) Should this letter reach you while you are still in Göttingen, would you be so kind as to give my regards to my old friend Richard Reitzenstein in the university library? 3.) My father died in February 1945 in the Jewish old people’s home in Berlin at the age of 87. His second “Aryan” wife managed to shield him from the worst.

19

Meinecke, Entstehung des Historismus. Friedrich Meinecke, Vom geschichtlichen Sinn und vom Sinn der Geschichte, Leipzig 1939. 21 Helene Wieruszowski, “Das Mittelalterbild in Goethes ‘Helena’ ”, in: Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht 36 (1944), pp. 65–81. The journal was published in Madison, Wisconsin. Helena is a major character in Goethe’s Faust II. 22 Helene Wieruszowski, “An early anticipation of Dante’s ‘Cieli e scienze’ ”, in: Modern Language Notes 1945, pp. 217–228. 20


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6. 16 February [1947]:23 Helene Wieruszowski (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 52 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I was awfully pleased to get your card, of 28 November, which reached me early in the new year. To think that you can still work and even

23

No year is indicated. 1947 is apparent from the content.

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teach after all the years of mental suffering and despite the physical strains and hardships. Rosenberg also let me read both your letters. How wonderfully vigorous and able-bodied your wife too evidently is. I am happy that your charming house, which I remember very well (the first time I visited you there was when you had hurt your finger), is still standing and that you have your daughters with you. I also had a lovely evening in Rosenberg’s house with Masur, who was beginning to feel bored in South America and has therefore settled in our more interesting, but, as he remarked disdainfully, unromantic North. Your ears must have been ringing that evening. We talked about almost nothing but you. I had just borrowed from R.24 and read your fine memoirs.25 My sister has promised to send me your book The German Catastrophe (Die Deutsche Katastrophe) from Switzerland. Unfortunately I am not yet able to send you my essay on Goethe. (Printed matter is not permitted as yet.) It’s nothing special in scholarly terms, more an expression of my longing for Germany and for my father, who brought the medieval episode of “Helena” in Faust II to my attention back in the old days. It may interest you to know that I have just been asked to contribute to a major work: A History of the Crusades (chapter on the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Crusades).26 That would have pleased my great teacher Wilhelm Levison, who has just died in Durham, England. Yes, it is nice that Rosenberg is also here at BC.27 But unfortunately my post here is merely an interim one. It is very difficult to find a permanent position in my field! I’ve just had a CARE package sent off to you. Please, do not thank me for it. Can I ever thank you enough? My warm regards to both of you. Your ever admiring, Helene Wieruszowski

24

Hans Rosenberg. Meinecke, Erlebtes 1862–1901. 26 Helene Wieruszowski, “The Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Crusades”, in: A History of the Crusades, ed. by Kenneth M. Setton, vol. II: The later Crusades 1189– 1311, ed. by Robert Lee Wolff and Harry W. Hazard, Philadelphia 1962, pp. 3–42. 27 Brooklyn College in New York. 25


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7. 9 October 1948: Helene Wieruszowski (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 52 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I feel very guilty on account of my long silence. The Akademie-Verlag sent me the booklet of your lecture at the Academy on “Ranke and Burckhardt” on your instructions.28 This served as a reminder to write to you again at last. As well as expressing my sincere thanks for sending me your interesting booklet, which I will add to my historiographical collection—which already contains a whole number of your writings— as a kind of autograph, I want to provide you with some explanation of my silence. I was in fact in Heidelberg for the German summer semester, where I gave a lecture and postgraduate seminar as visiting lecturer (history of the Italian cities in the early Middle Ages and problems relating to the sources on the history of the Crusades). It was an interesting period, rich in experiences. It may even trigger a decisive change in my life at some point. But for the time being the University of Heidelberg was unable to offer me anything financially secure. As I am also supporting two of my sisters to some extent, for now I must carry on earning money in a ‘good’ currency and wait for any decent offer of a lectureship in medieval history that may come along. But I shall not forget that I had diligent, highly engaged students and that for me this is the most agreeable kind of teaching. My reaction to their political attitudes and potential to achieve a deeper understanding is less positive: I found them alarmingly obdurate and blind with regard to the events of the recent past. My “Conversations with German students” (“Gespräche mit deutschen Studenten”),29 based on my regular discussion evenings, will likely be published in Wandlung, where you will be able to read it. I wish I had had more time. I hope you and your family are well. Your always grateful and admiring, Helene Wieruszowski

28

See above, p. 17. Helene Wieruszowski, “Gespräche mit deutschen Studenten”, in: Wandlung 1949, pp. 82–91. 29

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1. 23 April 1924: Hans Rosenberg (Cologne) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, At last the moment has come for me to ask you to admit me to your seminar. I began my studies in my native city of Cologne, but stayed there for just one semester as there was no-one there other than Max Scheler that captured my imagination. I was enticed to Berlin by your Cosmopolitanism (Weltbürgertum),1 and have been studying there for the last three semesters. I have found the embodiment of my scholarly ideal in you and Herr Spranger.2 My academic inclinations draw me primarily to problems in intellectual history and philosophy of history. I not only revere you as a great scholar and researcher, but also feel— and I say this without inhibition—a sense of personal love for you. I consider myself fortunate, and feel proud, to be introduced to scholarship under your guidance. I love academic scholarship above all else and I wish to dedicate my life to research and teaching, unless I come to doubt my talent for it. I am not a student who has distinguished himself through special knowledge, as I have increasingly striven to attain understanding rather than knowledge as such; contexts have always been more important to me than facts. I have worked a great deal and suffered a great deal of privation over the last few years and have been very ill over the last few months. But I am now hopeful that I shall be able to set to work again with renewed vigour. Before coming to see you in person, I want to at least hint at a request I would like to make of you. I would like to obtain my doctorate under your guidance with a study of “Wilhelm Dilthey as a writer of history” (“Wilhelm Dilthey als Geschichtsschreiber”),3 my primary concern being to shed light on the peculiar aspects of his view of

1

See above, p. 4f. Eduard Spranger (1882–1963), philosopher, psychologist and educationalist, professor at the University of Berlin, friend of Meinecke. 3 Meinecke advised Rosenberg against his planned dissertation on Dilthey and suggested he examine Rudolf Haym. See above, p. 66f. 2

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history and to place this within the overall philosophical and historiographical context. I am well aware of the difficulty of this project but would nonetheless hope to be able to complete it in two-and-a-half years. This is the one piece of work that I would truly put my heart and soul into, because it would introduce me to all those problems I have in mind as later fields of study. If I am to begin my research only at the end of this semester, then it is very important to me—in terms of acquiring the relevant books apart from anything else—to know soon whether I can count on your approval and, should that be the case, on your help in accessing handwritten material. For it seems to me that given the kind of figure Dilthey represents, I shall be able to complete my task only if I relate his work to the person he was and his intellectual development. I can do no more for now than put my request to you. I must leave it to your seasoned judgement to decide whether such a study would be of value to scholarship, to which all personal wishes must be subordinated. I shall take the liberty of introducing myself to you this coming Monday. I come to you full of the faith of a devoted follower and full of respect and I hope that you will not push away a young soul that rushes to open itself to you, and that, at least with respect to academic matters, you will be willing to furnish me with your assistance and advice. Your ever faithful Hans Rosenberg 2. 2 September 1925: Hans Rosenberg (Kempten, Bavaria) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I would like to make a request—appealing to your indefatigable generosity—which requires me to provide you with a brief account of the state of my research. In the spring I spent two months looking through Haym’s papers in Halle. Thanks to the generosity of Frau Prof. Schmidt-Haym, the entire corpus of his unpublished papers has been made available to me until I have completed my research; everything I need will be sent

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to me in Berlin. As I worked twelve to fourteen hours a day for those two months, I was able to make a note of all the essential material. I shall try to give you a brief outline of the most important items. His lecture notebooks, more than thirty hefty tomes, make up the core of the material. [. . .] Only on the basis of these manuscripts could one dare approach the task of, for example, producing a watertight account of his far from insignificant philosophical stance, which often anticipates Dilthey; [. . .] I hope to have got together the most important source materials by Christmas of this year and to be able to complete my dissertation, covering the period up to 1857, by the end of next year. The emphasis—inevitably in light of the material—will be on elucidating


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Haym’s educational history, his development over time and his view of history, but I shall also have to take thorough and precise account of the interplay of scholarship and politics—a problem with special appeal to me given that my intellectual approach tends so strongly towards the empirical. And if ever it was necessary to fall back time and again on the individual, on his personality, this is especially true of Haym.4 How his character developed amid the tumult of life, how his soul was formed—to portray this will be perhaps my most interesting and undoubtedly most pleasant task. The awe I feel when faced with the enigma of an important figure, and the love with which I seek to encompass all that is truly and authentically human, make this aspect of my assignment especially valuable to me. The manuscript that I venture to write will be an initial effort and as yet rather rough; I can perhaps express my intentions most pithily in the words of Constantin Rößler,5 someone I have long held in high regard: “True biography is a soulful contemplation of the eternal within the transitory, and a profound marriage of both.” This in itself makes it clear that it is not my intention to offer a narrative that rolls along at a sedate and leisurely pace, that deals with external circumstances in breadth and detail while passing over in silence key aspects that transcend several intellectual contexts; I want always to have one eye on the whole, without neglecting the specific. It is one thing to tell the life story of a great poet, quite another to write the biography of an important scholar. The tendency towards objectivization, which is, or in my opinion must be, characteristic of the biography of a scholar, can undoubtedly be combined with lively contemplation and depiction of individual and human aspects. The historian will be on his guard against the abstract conceptual schematics and sometimes rash typifications and generalizations that have become so common in certain parts of the contemporary humanities, but on the other hand he will be able to—and have to—make use of the instructive sources of stimulation on offer there,

4 Rudolf Haym (1821–1901), philosopher, historian and liberal politician. Member of the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848/49. Founded the Prussian Yearbooks (Preußische Jahrbücher) in 1858, which he edited until 1864. Made professor extraordinarius in history of literature in Halle in 1860 and ordinarius in 1868. 5 Constantin Rößler (1820–1896), journalist and diplomat. As a journalist he defended the policies of the Prussian government and Bismarck. Headed the press office of the Imperial government from 1877 to 1892 after which he took up a post in the foreign ministry.

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such as Jaspers’ types6 in the field of psychology, without overstepping the bounds of his domain. I believe one must always bear in mind that people exist beyond the borders of history. But perhaps I myself am presuming to make overly general and apodictic assertions which it is impossible for me to explain in more detail here. In any event, I am convinced that the biography is the form best suited to the rich life, progressing in accordance with such striking patterns, of Rudolf Haym, while Dilthey, who never emerged from the narrow confines of his professorial existence, may be best dealt with in a monograph. I now feel grateful to you, Herr Geheimrat, for advising me against a study of Dilthey.7 Over the course of the last year I have gained clarity about myself in many respects and I can state that both Haym’s personality and intellectual stance are significantly closer to my views. The love with which I devote myself to my work entails no risk of me becoming a panegyrist. I am of a sufficiently critical disposition—and may perhaps have an overly pronounced inclination towards scepticism and everything antinomical—for me not to be aware of the limits of humanity as represented by Haym. Yet I would still agree with Treitschke that he was: “a marvellous man!” It is hardly necessary to point out that this study will be an absolutely splendid way for me to grow into the intellectual history and philosophy of history of the 19th century, while not losing sight of the connections extending back to the 18th century. But more important to me than this selfish sating of my thirst for knowledge is my desire to contribute to the advancement of scholarship and thus of life itself through a precise and thorough piece of research. I shall take the further liberty of telling you about my impressions of my semester in Freiburg. The last four months have been of only negligible benefit to my work. As a consequence of a nervous illness, of which I suffered increasingly severe episodes, and powerful internal upheavals—which I certainly have no desire to complain about,

6 Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), philosopher, psychologist and doctor. Jasper had a background in psychology when he took up philosophy. Made extraordinarius in psychology in Heidelberg in 1916, he became professor ordinarius in philosophy in 1922, again in Heidelberg. On account of his Jewish wife, a sister of Gustav Mayer, Jaspers was forced into early retirement in 1937. Reinstated following the end of Nazi rule. In 1948 he took up an appointment at the University of Basle. After 1945 he published various writings critical of contemporary political development, particularly in West Germany. Member of the Order Pour le Mérite from 1964. 7 See above, p. 66f.


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for it is only these that facilitate genuine understanding and endow one with the capacity to appreciate things and people soft-heartedly and yet critically—my creative powers have been crippled. My intellectual capacity was—and is still—so weakened that it became quite impossible for me to study Hegel. As I had to find my feet in southern Germany for the first time in my life for any length of time, I initially found it very difficult to settle in. This Baden indolence and nonchalance, laxness, sluggishness and bourgeois attitude, which are coupled with a certain guilelessness and enjoyment of life’s pleasures, are very alien to my nature. And I can feel, not without some satisfaction, just how Prussian and Protestant I am. The university was a great disappointment to me, especially Herr Husserl.8 As much as I respect this great scholarly figure, his total lack of understanding for the historical dimension, his distance from real life and his conviction, expressed in dramatic turns of phrase, that philosophy begins with him, make it impossible for me to relate inwardly to his work. I also have the impression that Husserl is not exactly having the most positive of influences on his inner circle of students. Never before—and the experiences of my friend Schaidnagl, who has lived here for a whole year, are identical to my own—have I encountered such one-sidedness and narrow horizons as among these phenomenologists. Nothing exists for them outside of phenomenology. They read nothing else, they grapple with no other ideas; every other branch of philosophy and especially historism, they claim, has been outgrown and brushed aside, and it is therefore pointless to study them. This partiality no doubt gives them a certain drive, as they consider themselves the custodians of the Absolute, but on the other hand it seems to me that they shy away from history because the second part of that famous line from Nietzsche9 applies to them: “History can be borne only by strong personalities; it obliterates the weak.” As far as the students in general are concerned, I have often heard it said, with satisfaction and a fair degree of self-righteousness, that the “social level” here is significantly higher than in Berlin. If I am to 8 Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), philosopher. Founder of phenomenology. Professor ordinarius in Freiburg from 1916 until his retirement in 1928. Stripped of the title of professor because of his Jewish wife in 1936. 9 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), famous philosopher, classicist and psychologist. Rejected the historism of the 19th century in his work “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life”, (“Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben”) which appears in his Untimely Meditations, Cambridge 1983.

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judge according to my own, of course limited observations, I can only say that while the wallets are all rather fatter, the heads are a good deal emptier, and the will and sense of social responsibility weaker despite lots of lovely, high-sounding platitudes, which stand in sharp contrast with the frivolous, all too often pleasure-seeking lifestyle. I am certainly not so Philistine as to think that one should begrudge young people, a group to which I belong, their gaiety. But I believe one has to distinguish between noble and base forms, and in any case I take the perhaps rather too one-sided and absolutist view that one must first of all work and achieve something in the contemporary era. Jonas Cohn10 is said to have declared recently that at the time when you were still working in Freiburg everything was quite different, far better and more pleasant. Among many historians, especially Below’s students, I have encountered the view that in order to become a professor the first thing you have to be is a staunch German nationalist. A strange idea, presumably based on the assumption that accomplishments will simply fall from the skies if the “correct” mentality is present. But it has become quite obvious to me here how fateful the lack of philosophical and in particular ethical formation can be for the academic specialist and his inner freedom. One could become quite pessimistic in view of the fact that Germany’s future depends on this new generation, of which I too am a member. But even the so-called youth movement, to which so many had looked with such hope, such as Eduard Spranger, has now fallen apart. I never had much confidence in this movement, which often degenerated into club mania and collective thinking. Those I have got to know here from among these circles make an extremely weary, crestfallen, indeed at times hopeless impression on me. But perhaps I am taking far too dim a view of things. It may be that I am too quick to generalize about observations gleaned from a limited range of experience in a comparatively short period of time, observations which have given rise to a great longing for the seminars of Friedrich Meinecke and Erich Marcks. As I have had a bit of a look behind the scenes here, I am keen not to leave you in the dark about a matter that indirectly concerns you. As I know from a reliable source, people have crossed themselves against the candidates you put for-

10

Jonas Cohn (1869–1947), philosopher, psychologist and educationalist. Professor in Freiburg, emigrated to Great Britain in 1933.


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ward for Rachfahl’s chair,11 and dropped all kinds of derisive remarks about the whole affair. People generally refer to Erich Marcks as the “novella writer” (Der Novellist). Please, dear Herr Geheimrat, do not misunderstand me if I speak about things about which it is better to keep quiet and about which I shall say absolutely nothing to anyone else. The great admiration I feel for you, and the debt of gratitude I owe you, make it my obligation, without mentioning names, to make you aware of a sentiment you might otherwise have remained in the dark about. Perhaps I ought to apologise for talking so candidly and openly about matters both personal and factual, but it is simply in my nature to say what I think and feel clearly, bluntly and firmly. I shall be back in Berlin, fully restored to health with any luck, from 1 October. I actually wrote to ask if you might sacrifice no more than an hour of your precious time to me sometime in October, as there are a number of questions I would like to put to you that I lack the knowledge to answer on my own. It is my honour, in great admiration and gratitude, to be Yours faithfully, Hans Rosenberg [. . .] 3. 15 April 1927: Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, As I have to go away during the Easter week for a few days, I am unfortunately unable to submit my dissertation to you in person. In order to avoid delaying submission unnecessarily, I delivered my work yesterday to your home. Despite all my efforts, I did not manage to complete the third section of my study to the point that I could include it in the dissertation. I have in fact already completed several chapters of this third section.

11 Felix Rachfahl (1867–1925), modern historian. Professor ordinarius in Freiburg from 1914 until his death in 1925.

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But I had to work so quickly that I was unable to complete my task in an academically satisfactory way. Certain parts only may be regarded as more or less acceptable, such as my examination of the relationship between Haym and Lessing, my account of the Lichtfreunde movement and the brief sketch, based on a wide range of source materials, of the history of the historiography of philosophy, which forms the prelude to the analysis of Haym’s article “Philosophie”.12 This article, which is 460 columns long, in fact contains an entire history of philosophy as well as Haym’s own philosophical position. In this third section of my study my aim was again to eliminate any trace of an in-group mentality and historian’s chauvinism and, regardless of my personal inclinations and passions, to investigate all the problems that fall within the scope of my topic. It pains me that I am unable to present you with a dissertation that is a coherent whole rather than mere fragment.13 This is all the more unfortunate in that the structure and composition of my study can only truly be understood through the addition of the third section. Furthermore, in many respects the third section would have furnished the evidence for assertions made in the first two sections. I lacked the time, relaxed state of mind, spare time, freedom from worries and above all sufficient sleep to put the finishing touches to my dissertation. I am well aware how uneven and choppy, how unbalanced and juvenile my study is, how it suffers from the lack of a refined form, how dull and rationalistic it is in parts. But there has been no lack of good will and sincere aspirations. I have done the best I could. Hence, despite the many deficiencies of my treatise, I still have a clear conscience. To quote Ranke: “No-one can do more than he has the intellect and strength for.” With grateful respect, Yours faithfully, Hans Rosenberg p.s. I would like to suggest the following title for my study: “Haym’s early years, to 1844” (“Hayms Jugendgeschichte bis zum Jahre 1844”).

12 See the article “Philosophie” in: Johann Samuel Ersch/Johann Gottfried Gruber (eds.), Allgemeine Encyclopaedie der Wissenschaften und Künste, Leipzig 1818/1889, Section 3, vol. 24, 1848, pp. 1–231. 13 See above, p. 67.


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4. 13 February 1929: Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to his mother and siblings NL Rosenberg 4 Dear all, Though I wrote to you just recently, I feel compelled to thank you without delay for this latest token of your love. I can hardly express how pleased I was to receive the parcel—despite my admonitions. How dependent we all are on our stomachs. If you’ve had nothing to eat for weeks but barley, porridge, vegetables cooked without fat and marmalade you fairly pounce on anything sweet or fatty. And of course you’ve done too much again by sending me five bars of chocolate, among other things. Like the smoking of cigars, such luxury is more than I deserve. You really mustn’t do that again. I had an exquisite Sunday lunch: hot dogs, enough to do me next Sunday as well. In two weeks’ time I shall make myself some really fatty fried potatoes with the bacon fat. Overall, I am thus living quite the life of luxury at present. [. . .] As I am another few thousand marks in the clear according to Walter14 and still have M14,000 myself, there will probably be no need for me to break into any more of my money for the time being, as I will be earning a salary again from 15 March. It’s a good thing too, as I do not know how much I will be making. On the whole, I am really in an enviable position. I have enough to eat, can research and study whatever I like, am dependent on no-one, and am surrounded by much love from afar. And yet my life lacks variety and stimulation. I think a tour or a few weeks in Ruppichteroth15 would do me a lot of good. I’m also pretty worn-out. But of course I must abandon such longings. In two weeks’ time I will be degraded to the status of a calculating machine, and then my soul, on a flight of fancy of particular intensity these last few days, will descend into the stale greyness of mundane reality. Since Christmas I have almost entirely disregarded history and devoted myself to philosophy. So far, philosophy has brought me more suffering than joy; it has robbed me of the carefreeness of youth, the cheerfulness. And yet I can’t seem to tear myself away from it. I am compelled to contemplate the human being, life and the world. When all is said and done, in history too it is the human being, the idea that

14 15

wife.

Rosenberg’s brother. Climatic health resort in the district of Cologne, home to his fiancé and later

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I seek; this is why I am so often beset with doubts about the value of the historical as traditionally imparted. But to prevent any misunderstanding by Walter, I notice that the speculative mind, of the kind that I have, never asks what is of value to practical life, but only what might have value for knowledge of the truth. For me, history without philosophy is a dead, mute thing; [. . .] And as a result my knowledge of historical facts is negligible. I am in search of the hidden intellectual forces of history that make up the essence of life. Some of my views differ from those of Ranke and the historical establishment. If my internal development continues along the same lines as hitherto, I shall have a hard battle to fight at some point, but one I cannot avoid if I want the truth. If I am to succeed, I will require peace and leisure and freedom from all material concerns, though there is almost no prospect of this happening. Everything is still in a state of flux. My intellectual struggles are far more exhausting, but also more profound and radical than applies to most people in my field. The last few weeks have brought me one step forward; I now see the relationship between history and philosophy rather more clearly. In a few years, I think, my point of view will have taken on a clear shape, at least with respect to its main features. In the holidays I shall have a closer look at Spranger, to whom I am already greatly indebted, if I am not half-stupid from all the adding up in the evenings. Since last week I have been reading Wilhelm Dilthey’s “The worldview and analysis of the human being since the Renaissance and Reformation” (Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation).16 I never went to bed before one or two in the morning—that’s how gripped I was by this book, which I shall often re-read and which I would certainly buy if it wasn’t so expensive. I am clearer about certain things than before but more muddled about others. Please don’t hold it against me if I tell you about these things again and again: it unburdens my heart, so I have also been keeping a kind of diary for a few weeks. Yesterday I attended a plenary session of the Reichstag. It confirmed the views I had previously formed on a theoretical level. Engraved in letters of gold above the Reichstag building are the words: to the German people (Dem Deutschen Volke). It really ought to say: the talk-

16 Wilhelm Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Religion, vol. 2 of the Gesammelte Werke Wilhelm Diltheys, 3rd edn., Leipzig/Berlin 1923.


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ing shop of the German people. It’s disgusting to hear how they run each other down and hurl abuse at one another, and at this of all times. From what I heard, the representatives of all the parties produce nothing but platitudes, trifles, commonplaces and superficial knowledge. Kahl, of the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei), professor ordinarius in canon law in Berlin, was the least objectionable.17 But on the other hand, it has shown me that I am essentially a very unpolitical person, a quiet scholar too delicately strung for public engagement, that my heart belongs more to the past than the present. This unsavoury bickering is quite alien to me. I am interested solely in the eternal within the human being, what some would call the divine. At bottom I am not merely of a theoretical and aesthetic, but also religious character, as paradoxical as this may sound to Walter, given that I have championed the cause of atheism. Religion is not—to quote the best thing Carlyle18 ever said—a person’s profession of faith in a particular church, but his actual beliefs about himself and the universe. A few days ago I was pleased to read how, in his Heptaplomeres, Jean Bodin,19 a figure who stands at the very beginning of the modern era, has Toralba—a character very similar to Nathan20—say: the deity will be agreeable to everyone who worships it with a pure heart, even if his particular notions of this deity are completely wrong. In my opinion, what matters is the sacredness of constant change. My thanks once again for your love. Warmest wishes, Your Hans

17 Wilhelm Kahl (1849–1932), jurist and politician. Member of the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly in 1919 and of the German Reichstag from 1920 to 1932. Professor in Berlin from 1895. 18 Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), British historian. 19 Jean Bodin (1530–1596), leading French humanist, teacher of law and political thinker. Rosenberg mentions the work Heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis, a dialogue between seven disputants concerning the existing religious parties, in which Bodin showed that each had a right to be recognised as long as it did not attack the state, morality or piety. 20 Reference to “Nathan the Wise” (Nathan der Weise), the central figure in the drama of the same name by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

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If I write to you so often, please feel no obligation to reply with the same frequency. I think I’m a bit of a monk deep down. On Sunday I wrote to Dr. Floßmann, who I hadn’t written to for more than two years. I set out some of my theories to him. I wonder what he’ll say about how I have changed intellectually over the last few years? 5. 8 December 1931: Hans and Leni Rosenberg (Berlin) to Eugene N. Anderson NL Rosenberg 14 Dear Herr Anderson!21 I have to say it is gradually beginning to weigh rather heavily on my mind that I have yet to send you a more detailed letter. And yet it is already two-and-a-half months since we returned from England! It was a lovely time, our stay in England, and it was highly stimulating, varied and instructive. Considering that we were there for five weeks, it’s remarkable how much we managed to see. When we returned to our native soil, things in Germany had changed fundamentally. You will know from the newspapers how rapidly and disastrously things have gone downhill over here and how much the “Nazis”, pathologically euphoric with victory, are already acting like the future rulers of Germany, though they are, by the way, still a good way from achieving that. The economic crisis has assumed proportions here in Germany greater than even the most pessimistic of forecasts. The living standards of all social strata have taken a terrible battering. I too have suffered from one cutback after another. These have forced me to look around for a new field of activity, especially given that it is doubtful that the

21 Eugene N. Anderson (1900–1984), American historian, focussed chiefly on 19thand 20th-century German history. Came into contact with Meinecke while carrying out research in Berlin in the early 1930s and was friends with his students Rosenberg, Kehr and Gilbert. Became assistant professor at the University of Chicago after his return to the United States. During the war he succeeded Dorn as leader of the Central European section of the OSS Research and Analysis Branch in 1944. After the war he was made professor at the University of Nebraska and subsequently professor at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1955 until his retirement in 1968.


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Imperial Commission (Reichskommission) can avoid total financial collapse towards the middle of next year. In all probability I shall move to Cologne over the course of the coming year in order to habilitate in modern history and newspaper science (Neuere Geschichte und Zeitungswissenschaft) at the university. I have already started taking the necessary steps; at some point in the next few days I shall be travelling to Cologne to clarify and organize all the personal aspects. Though it is currently difficult to engage in scholarship, let alone historical scholarship, at a time that virtually demands that one take practical action, the studies I have begun are nonetheless progressing as normal. I shall enlarge the little book on Rodbertus I told you about by editing his unpublished political writings in their entirety in collaboration with Dehio.22 For the time being, however, it remains uncertain how the printing costs will be met. And you? What are you up to? [. . .] I hope this dreadful economic crisis is not an obstacle to the realization of your marriage plans in the near future. We shall be very pleased to hear from you again at some point. With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year [. . .] Your Hans and Leni Rosenberg

22 The planned edition of Rodbertus’ (1805–1875) unpublished political writings was never to appear. However, Rosenberg published his copies of a memorandum by Rodbertus from 1859 and of letters by and to Rodbertus from 1859 to 1862 in an addendum to his essay “Honoratiorenpolitiker und Großdeutsche Sammlungsbestrebungen im Reichsgründungsjahrzehnt”, in: Jahrbuch für Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschland 19 (1970), pp. 155–233. Essay reprinted in: Rosenberg, Machteliten und Wirtschaftskonjunkturen. Studien zur neueren deutschen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Göttingen 1978, pp. 198–254, 326–337. Rosenberg wrote that these were copies in his possession that were originally to be brought together to form a chapter in a volume of sources on Rodbertus-Jagetzow and his circle of political acquaintances, which he had planned in collaboration with the then state archivist Ludwig Dehio. The manuscript was to appear as a special issue of the Historisch-politisches Archiv zur Deutschen Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, a series published by the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission). The Archiv, however, never made it beyond a second issue, “which meant”, as Rosenberg wrote, “that our project was buried without a word” (p. 156).

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6. 23 July 1932: Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 4 My dear, beloved sweetheart, Your letter and parcel have arrived successfully. Thank you so much. It was very sweet of you to enclose the plans of the flat. It gave me a very positive view of the place and I would be delighted if it worked out. I had no idea the rooms were so large. I am very much enjoying the work as such, and am making fairly good progress. It’s just that everything’s taking too long. There is absolutely no prospect of finishing the draft before you return. I am only on page nineteen. And it will certainly be fifty pages long. I really hope it will be a decent piece of work; it is the first study in the history of crises23 ever undertaken by a historian, and is virgin academic territory in that sense. I have been, and still am, very excited by political developments. There is no prospect of a general strike. The leftists’ strategy is to keep very quiet for the time being until the elections have passed off peacefully. It is of course as yet quite impossible to predict what will happen afterwards. For now there is no chance of any kind of revolutionary impetus from the SPD. It is very doubtful whether they will ever get to that point again. That the opposition will strengthen and fortify itself and make preparations for future action goes without saying, in light of current realities and power relations. The reactionary forces are digging their own grave through their actions. The ascendancy of a tiny upper class can be maintained only temporarily given the present class situation. You are quite right about that: the more extreme they become, the stronger the reaction will be and the sooner it will come. At the moment, however, people are paralyzed by the fear of naked violence. I too expect the Nazis to suffer a setback in the elections.24 But this setback might possibly be cancelled out by the around one-

23 Reference to drafts of Rosenberg’s book Die Weltwirtschaftskrisis von 1857–1859, Stuttgart 1934. 24 The NSDAP increased its share of the votes from 18.3% at the previous Reichstag elections of 14 September 1930 to 37.3% at the elections of 31 July 1932. Hitler won 36.8% of the votes in the second round of voting in the presidential elections of 10 April 1932.


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and-a-half million new voters added to the voting rolls since the last Reichstag elections. Quite unexpectedly, the stock market initially reacted positively to the coup in Prussia.25 But this has less to do with any assessment of events than with the completely flat nature of the market, which has already been typical for a week. The most trifling of purchase orders is all it takes to increase prices at the moment. I continue to expect greater fluctuations in the run-up to the elections. I always think of you with so much affection and very much hope that you are having a nice Sunday. I’m not worried about little Fritz;26 after all, we must bear in mind that changing school is a major event for him. Soon you’ll be in my arms again and then we shall be very happy together and very sweet to one another. Tender kisses from Your Hans 7. 2 September 1932: Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Eugene N. Anderson NL Rosenberg 24 Dear Anderson, Just a few weeks ago I would never have dreamt that I would so soon be in the position of congratulating you and Pauline—on behalf of my wife as well, who is back in Cologne at the moment—on your marriage, which has passed off so successfully. You can imagine what a pleasant surprise your letter was for us and how much we laughed at your hilarious account of your journey! Our days in Berlin are numbered. We’re moving to Cologne on 1 October. [. . .] The habilitation process has officially been underway since April. Even if everything goes smoothly and there are no

25

Reference to the so-called “Prussian Putsch” of 20 July 1932, the dismissal of the caretaker government in Prussia, led by Otto Braun as prime minister, by Imperial Chancellor Franz von Papen, who became Reichskommissar for Prussia. 26 Son of Leni Rosenberg from her first marriage.

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complications, and there might well be given my left-wing political views, the whole business will not be resolved before December. Too many people have a say in what happens and the process is a longdrawn-out and complicated one. So I will not be able to begin teaching before spring of next year. To answer your question as to how my work is going, I’m happy to report that the overall situation is quite satisfactory. Though I greatly neglected my critical bibliography over the past year, I did make significant progress with my book on “Haym and classical liberalism” and got started on or completed a number of other studies. For example, and this may be of particular interest to you, I completed a short study on “The eras of political liberalism in Germany” (“Die Epochen des politischen Liberalismus in Deutschland”) (1800–1932), an abridged version of which I wish to use as my inaugural lecture in Cologne and then publish as a pamphlet.27 In this study I tackled the subject in close connection with socio-economic structural changes and especially with the developmental stages of capitalism. I then wrote a short study on the power struggle over the German-Austrian customs union, though I would like this to be regarded merely as the forerunner of an as yet unwritten book on the “Struggle over German-Austrian economic agreements from 1815 to 1931”.28 Finally and above all, I am currently working on a book which, if the question of a publisher can be resolved, will hopefully appear in the coming spring. This is a book on “The world economic crisis of 1857. Causes, course and consequences”.29 It is the first sources-based account of the subject that draws equally on the German, Austrian, French, British and American material, and, as far as I know, it is the first examination of the history of economic crises ever undertaken by a historian. It is also my first contribution to the history of your country. I am very curious to see what you think of my treatise once you have a chance to look at it. If I look back over the past year, I do feel quite satisfied with how my work has gone. I have worked very hard and I also have the feeling that the hard work has yielded results. [. . .]

27 The inaugural lecture, to be found in Rosenberg’s papers (vol. 97), was not published. See below, p. 362. 28 Hans Rosenberg, “The Struggle for a German-Austrian Customs Union, 1815– 1931”, in: The Slavonic and East European Review 14 (1936), pp. 332–342. Nothing came of the planned book. 29 Hans Rosenberg, Die Weltwirtschaftskrisis von 1857–1859, Stuttgart 1934. 2nd edn. With a “preliminary report” entitled: Die Weltwirtschaftskrise 1857–1859, Göttingen 1974.


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Kehr will be heading over there around Christmas. He’ll soon be joined by his wife once he’s found his feet. I would be happy to have your Chicago student pay us a visit. Everyone who comes to visit us on your recommendation will receive a warm welcome. We are always delighted to receive any sign of life from you. My wife will also be writing letters to what is now the “Anderson family” from time to time. Very best regards to you and Pauline, Your Hans Rosenberg It’s a shame that you won’t be coming to Germany again in the near future. Given the state of permanent political, social and economic revolution in which we are living, everything is even more interesting than when you were here. 8. 21 April 1933: Hans Rosenberg (Cologne) to Eugene N. Anderson NL Rosenberg 24 Dear Anderson, You will no doubt have learned from Kehr that while I have been a well-established lecturer (Privatdozent) in medieval and modern history at the University of Cologne since the end of last year, I am nonetheless facing a virtually hopeless situation in professional terms. I am unable to write as openly as I would like to, so I shall have to make do with a few pointers. Quite apart from the associated mental distress, for me personally the ‘national revolution’ in Germany means the radical destruction of my livelihood. The way things stand, it is quite impossible for me to progress here, even on the most modest scale. I am therefore determined to seek a new place for my life to unfold abroad. I have been thinking chiefly of the United States. I’ve already been suspended from the university for the coming semester. I have to assume that my right to give lectures will be withdrawn entirely within a few weeks.30 So there’s no point hiding my head in the sand. I have no choice but to create a new life abroad. As long as 30 Already barred from teaching for the summer semester, his venia legendi was formally withdrawn on 2 September 1933.

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there is even a glimmer of hope, I want to try to progress within the framework of my discipline and academic profession. So I shall try to acquire a new sphere of activity at an American university or, if that doesn’t work out, at an American research institute. To this end I would be most grateful if you would give me your advice as soon as possible and provide me with a list of influential individuals whom I might contact with requests for references and other forms of assistance. I wrote a similar letter to Josef Redlich of Harvard University a few days ago.31

31 A three-page handwritten reply to Rosenberg’s letter to Redlich of 11 April 1933 appears in Rosenberg’s papers, vol. 34. The Austrian jurist, politician and historian Josef Redlich (1869–1936), who held a chair at the Harvard Law School, writes on 2 May 1933: “As for your wish to move to the USA as an individual and as a scholar, I certainly understand it—for six weeks, I have been receiving several letters a week from younger and older academic colleagues arising from the same impulse as your wish and your letter. Among those prominent ordinarius professors expelled by the universities who have fled abroad, there is a close relative of mine and several scholars very well known to me personally. I have to say the same thing to you as I have to those close to me. To put it in a nutshell: it is next to impossible to immigrate to the United States and obtain an academic post that secures one’s livelihood at the moment. For this country is in the grip of a severe economic crisis that has long affected the universities and which is placing them under increasing financial strain. Younger scholars from Germany, unless they have a good mastery of the English language and already have good relations with leading figures in academic circles here forged at an earlier point in time, thus have very little prospect of achieving anything here. For one or other of the leading German scholars, who have now been divested of their academic posts in Germany, it may prove possible—in time, though again not at present—to obtain an appointment at one of the American universities. Especially in the case of doctors and physicists, etc.” By emigrating, Redlich felt, Rosenberg would jeopardize and likely wreck his academic career. Rosenberg, he thought, had pursued a research path and, through the study of intellectual and socio-historical problems, had developed a European way of thinking, “for which there is very little understanding in contemporary America and for the cultivation of which there is, if not no basis at all in this country, one that will be even narrower than hitherto over the next few years. Even at our colleges and universities, it has become very difficult to accommodate the next generation of young American scholars.” He advised Rosenberg to complete the books he had written to him about, which he could just as well work on in Germany. “Despite Germany’s current politically & socially lamentable state, arising from its intellectual and spiritual plight, I am convinced that this state of affairs cannot last long. As a student of Meinecke, I am sure that you can continue your research for the Imperial Commission (Reichskommission).” He also advised Rosenberg to try to get a Rockefeller scholarship and to take advantage of “the guaranteed year in the United States that this offers” and “to acquire a thorough knowledge of the English language and [forge] personal ties with the country and its universities”. Later, on 5 September 1934, Redlich wrote a two-page testimonial for the “Comité international pour le placement des intellectuels refugiès” in Geneva for Rosenberg and in a letter of 26 July 1935 from Vienna informed him that he had been delighted to hear that Rosenberg’s plans to immigrate to the United States were going well: “Mr. Murrow,


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Please send me the private addresses of the leading American historians and Rockefeller’s private address. I’m sure I don’t need to say anything to you about my academic qualifications. Luckily, my studies are so far advanced that, as long as the question of a publisher is soon resolved, I will be able to publish two books before the year is out. First, my habilitation thesis on “Rudolf Haym and the origins of classical liberalism” and second my book, which will be finished in a few weeks, on “The world economic crisis of 1857–1859” (Die Weltwirtschaftskrise von 1857–59), which goes significantly further than the title suggests to provide an account of global economic trends from 1848 to 1862. My “critical bibliography” will also be ready for press by spring of next year. I have collected almost all the material and will begin to prepare the final manuscript in just a few months. As I can largely get by without libraries now, the manuscript could also be finished outside Germany. Thus, if necessary, I am in a position to up sticks as early as autumn of this year and set off across the ocean. I am of course well aware that I will be able to realize my plans for emigration, if at all, only with the greatest of difficulties. I view the problem of language ability in a more optimistic light. As I can now read English books with a fair degree of fluency, I believe that six months in the English-speaking world will be enough to master the English language. Fortunately, of course, I also have the option of going to England for a few months to brush up my language skills before any emigration to the U.S.A. Over the last few years I have increasingly devoted myself to studies in economic theory and economic history. Over the long term, I therefore believe I can work successfully not solely in the limited realm of history, but also in the broad fields of social economics. It is on the basis of this particular set of scholarly skills that I hope to be able to advance in the U.S.A. Please excuse me if I have spoken only about myself today in such a self-centred way. But my very future is currently at stake. And as

the secretary of the Emergency Committee, no doubt helped bring about this turn of events. I talked to him at length in his office in New York and would be absolutely delighted if he continues to act so effectively on your behalf. I shall be very happy to help you as you requested, as far as possible.” He would, he stated, write a letter of recommendation in English “and give my opinion on your character and your impressive research and recommend you most highly”. As well as this general letter of recommendation, he would write specific ones to William L. Langer and Sidney B. Fay. Letters and testimonial in Rosenberg’s papers, vol. 34.

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I am married, I have twice as much reason to focus all my time and energy on solving the problem of my career. I would thus be particularly grateful if, with your exhaustive knowledge of the situation over there, you would tell me more about the options open to me. In the meantime the very best wishes to you and your wife. Your Hans and Frau Rosenberg 9. 2 May 1933: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear colleague, Your warm words of 29 April were very moving and I read them with much sympathy. There is still a space free in the series of supplements to the H. Z. for 1933, and so I am also writing—with some difficulty, as I have just got over another lengthy bout of bronchitis—to Oldenbourg and warmly recommending that he include your Haym monograph among the 1933 supplements. There is however very little chance of him publishing it before autumn, as two other issues are already in press. In any case we must await his decision, for as publisher he always has the final say with regard to the supplements. There’s another decision we’re waiting for. This is for your ears only, but I can tell you that about eight days ago, in accordance with the civil servants’ law of 7/4/33, the imperial minister asked me to provide the personal details of those working for the H. R. K. [Historische Reichskommission or Imperial Historical Commission].32 I therefore had to mention your name among those of non-Aryan origin, but I also put forward every possible academic reason for allowing you to maintain your present relationship with the H. R. K. until you have completed your work in 1934. At the same time I requested a private audience, and asked that it be granted once I have fully recovered. So for now we have to wait and see.

32

See above, p. 69f.


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I’m sure I can take it as read that you will, as far as possible, expedite completion of the final manuscript for the critical bibliography.33 Very best wishes, Your Fr. Meinecke 10. 22 May 1933: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to OldenbourgVerlag Bavarian Economic Archive (Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv) F 5/ 248 To the publishing division, With regard to your kind letter of the sixteenth of this month34 concerning supplements and Rosenberg, I would like to try once again 33

See above, p. 70. Wilhelm Oldenbourg replied to a letter from Meinecke of 2 May 1933 concerning the supplements to the HZ planned for 1933 that “two studies in modern history” by Rudolf Stadelmann (Das Jahr 1865 und das Problem von Bismarcks deutscher Politik, Munich/Berlin 1933, supplement 29 to the HZ) and Georg Lenz (Demokratie und Diktatur in der englischen Revolution 1640–1660, Munich/Berlin 1933, supplement 28 of the HZ) were already in press and that Albert Brackmann had suggested the studies by Helene Wieruszowski “Vom Imperium zum nationalen Königtum” (see above, p. 62f.) and Ruth Hildebrand “Die Monarchie Heinrich des Löwen” for the other two supplements of 1933. As he assumed, in line with a letter from Brackmann, that he had reached an agreement with Meinecke, he consented to Brackmann’s suggestion. The length of the manuscript by H. Wieruszowski was estimated at 16 folios (256 pages). As he had come to an agreement with Meinecke that the supplements should not exceed 10–12 folios, he had sent back the manuscript and asked for a reduction of at least two folios, to which the author had agreed. He had as yet heard nothing about the other work. For the time being, he asked Meinecke to come to an agreement with Brackmann about the fourth issue, for which Meinecke had warmly recommended Rosenberg’s study on Rudolf Haym. With regard to Rosenberg’s study, he had reservations about its length and a possible contribution to the printing costs. “As Herr Dr. Rosenberg is a lecturer (Privatdozent), I would rather avoid asking him for a contribution to the printing. On the other hand, the financial situation in the book trade is absolutely disastrous at present. The turnover of academic books has declined every month for a year, so that to be quite honest I would prefer to publish supplements for which I can receive a contribution to the printing costs.” Rosenberg, he wrote, wished to see his work published “very soon”. As the supplements by Stadelmann and Lenz would be published during the summer semester, it was quite impossible for the next issue to appear before mid-September. 34

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to facilitate the inclusion of Rosenberg’s work on Haym in this year’s supplements. First of all, it might be stipulated that he shorten the length of his study to twelve folios. I would then forego any editor’s fee for this issue, and for the two supplements currently in press by Lenz and Stadelmann. Herr Brackmann is quite willing to move the study by Frl. Ruth Hildebrand to the supplements for 1934,35 if it could appear at the beginning of the new year. It is highly doubtful whether Dr. Rosenberg himself would be in a position to make a small contribution to the printing costs. But if worse comes to worse the question could be put to him.36 I believe his work would be a particular credit to the supplements. Yours truly, Fr. Meinecke

35 The study by Ruth Hildebrand, “Der sächsische ‘Staat’ Heinrichs des Löwen”, dedicated to A. Brackmann, was published not as a supplement to the HZ, but as issue 302 of Historische Studien, Berlin 1937. 36 Oldenbourg informed Meinecke on 24 May 1933 that he would publish Rosenberg’s work, by which Meinecke “set such great store”, particularly in light of the fact that Meinecke had waived the editor’s fee for the three supplements and Rosenberg had agreed to a reduction to twelve folios. In his letter of 2 June, Oldenbourg notified Rosenberg, among other things, of the following conditions: reduction to twelve folios (192 pages), print run: 800 copies, of which 80 review, deposit and complimentary copies. 25 complimentary copies for Rosenberg, cover price 7 marks. The first 350 copies free of charge. From the 351st copy on Rosenberg would receive a turnover fee of 20% of the retail price. Delivery of the manuscript by 1 August 1933, distribution of the work by mid-October 1933 at the latest. The publisher did not insist on a contribution to the printing costs. Rosenberg’s study, which ultimately ran to 13 folios (208 p.), was later requested from the publisher by the “Official party review board for the protection of National Socialist literature” (“Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission zum Schutze des NS-Schrifttums”), which was connected with the office of the deputy Führer. On 7 June 1935, the publisher was notified: “Ideologically the work lies outside of the sphere of the NSDAP. The way the subject matter is dealt with also fails to meet the demands of National Socialism.” (All these letters are in the Bavarian Economic Archive [Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv], holding F5, Oldenbourg Verlag, box 248).


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11. 9 June 1933: Hans Rosenberg (Cologne) to Eugene N. Anderson NL Rosenberg 24 Dear Anderson, My warmest thanks for your dear letter,37 which did me a great deal of good. I’m sending this letter to your old address, as I’m afraid I was unable to make out your new one. I’m still reeling from the terrible news that Eckart Kehr died quite suddenly in Washington eight days ago. I don’t know any more than that.38 As yet, neither does Kehr’s wife. We got a letter from her today explaining that she had already obtained her visa and tickets for travel to the U.S.A. and was expecting a telegram to arrive at any moment letting her know when she should leave. Instead she received news of her husband’s death. My personal situation has become somewhat less tense over the last few weeks. I can be reasonably sure of being able to continue my work at the Imperial Historical Commission until around the end of this year. If I can evade dismissal until after the 1 July, I will probably even manage to hold out until early next year and, if I’m very lucky, I may even be able to complete my bibliography in its entirety, that is, by spring of 1934.39 Given the circumstances I want to stick it out for the time being and wait and see how things develop, particularly as there seems very little prospect of obtaining a post in the U.S.A. from here. I want to use the time remaining to me exclusively for the completion and publication of my major studies. I’m glad to say that my habilitation thesis on Haym will be published as a book as soon as the first half of October. I shall send you a copy when it comes out. Given how things stand at present, it’s uncertain whether I’ll manage to find a publisher for my “World economic crisis of 1857–1859” (“Weltwirtschaftskrise von 1857–59”) despite the topicality of the

37

Anderson’s letter to Rosenberg, 18 May 1933, Rosenberg papers, vol. 24. See the letter from Frau Kehr to Rosenberg of 11 August 1933, below, pp. 486–489. 39 In fact, Rosenberg’s position at the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) came to an end only on 30 November 1934. Subsequently, he was also remunerated for time spent correcting and drawing up the index for the publication Nationalpolitische Publizistik. See below, p. 366f. 38

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subject.40 From what you know of the situation there, do you think it might perhaps be possible to have the book printed by an American publisher? It would of course first have to be translated into English at the publisher’s expense. In terms of the subject matter and content, the book is ultimately of greater interest to the English-speaking world than the German readership. I would owe you yet another debt of gratitude if you would give me your thoughts on this at some point and provide me with the addresses of a few potential publishers. As I will definitely be able to stick it out financially for the next six months, I don’t need to plan for the future with quite the degree of urgency that seemed necessary a few weeks ago. To buy some time and gain the necessary access to the U.S.A. by fully mastering the English language and making contacts, I wish to try and obtain the Rockefeller scholarship from 1934 for one or two years.41 At present I simply don’t know whether this will be possible in practical terms. Some time ago I heard that the relevant German government departments would prohibit the acceptance of scholarships from foreign sponsors. Even if this is not the case, it is of course extremely uncertain whether my application would be successful. First, given how things stand at present, the number of applicants will be far larger than normal, and second, the commission charged with allocation of the scholarships will have adapted to the changed power relations by then and yielded to the tendency towards “Gleichschaltung”. As I intend to go to Berlin for a month towards the end of July, I will very soon know exactly how things stand with regard to these things. With respect to this set of problems, I would be grateful if you could give me your views on the following points: 1) Is there a chance that my application might receive firm backing from the U.S.A. and my candidacy be commended to the Berlin branch office? If so, is it advisable to contact Mr. Rockefeller, among others, directly? 2) Should my application stipulate a specific research topic or can I leave that open for the time being? Though I do in fact intend to make a contribution to the history of America, I am reluctant to pin myself down too precisely before having fathomed the material in greater depth. As it is quite uncertain, as I have said, whether I will be awarded the scholarship, I want to try, on the basis 40

Die Weltwirtschaftskrisis was published in 1934 as supplement 30 of the Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte by W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart/ Berlin. 41 Rosenberg did not manage to obtain a Rockefeller scholarship.


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of the addresses you have given me,42 to get one or other American scholar or patron of scholarly endeavour interested in my work. So I will write to all of them over time. Should I have to leave Germany at the beginning of next year, without having a position elsewhere, then I would like to stick to my plan to go first to England for a few months to work on my language skills. With the support of our relatives, we can live there far more cheaply than in the U.S.A. As we have to be prepared for the possibility that we will initially have to live in the U.S.A. without an income for a while, could you please let me know how many dollars my wife and I would likely need per month if we are extremely undemanding and limit ourselves to one furnished room? If we are to take this step into the unknown, we must at least be able to make reasonably precise calculations regarding these questions. Despite all the major problems and obstacles I must overcome in order to gain a toehold in the U.S.A., I am quite convinced that I shall prevail. Thus, as long as I manage to keep my head even slightly above water, I do not intend, should the occasion arise, to accept a position that offers me no prospect of advancement in accordance with my abilities. It is of course still quite uncertain how I will get on with the immigration authorities. Is it more advisable to apply for the entry permit merely for a number of years initially or immediately on a permanent basis? If I take the step of crossing the ocean, without being equipped with the Rockefeller scholarship, it will be with the intention of settling permanently in America and with the goal of acquiring American citizenship. As far as my confessional and racial affiliation is concerned, for your personal information I would merely like to state that I am a Protestant and come from a family of Protestant officials resident in the Mark of Brandenburg on my mother’s side, and a family of Jewish businessmen from the Lower Rhine region on my father’s side.

42 In the letter of 18 May 1933, Anderson informed Rosenberg of the addresses of John D. Rockefeller, Felix M. Warburg, Stephen S. Wise, W. A. Wieboldt, Alfred E. Smith, Dean Balduf and Professor H. E. Bourne, editor of the AHR. Rockefeller, Wieboldt and Warburg were businessmen, Wise, according to Anderson, was a very powerful rabbi, Smith a former candidate for President. Dean Balduf, he explained, was a German-American and worked at a college in Chicago that was growing steadily and might need teachers. In a supplement he also mentioned the professors W. L. Langer, Professor C. J. Hayes, Professor Carl Becker, Professor James W. Thompson and Professor W. E. Lingelboch. Anderson later provided Rosenberg with a detailed recommendation in a testimonial of 14 October 1935 (Rosenberg papers, vol. 24).

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Thank you once again so much for your advice and support. For now I shall make just one more request of you: could you please make sure that your letter answering my questions reaches me before I depart for Berlin, that is, by around the end of July. The steps I am considering taking in Berlin depend on how you answer them. Best wishes to you and your wife, Your Hans and Leni Rosenberg 12. 5 September 1933: Hans Rosenberg (Berlin) to Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 4 My darling Leni, When I get home this evening I hope to find a few lines from you telling me that you are tolerably well. I’m already getting ready to leave and will certainly arrive on Thursday on the train I indicated. I was naturally very pleased and reassured that M.[einecke] is taking such a positive view of my plans to move and has expressly volunteered to go on helping me in future, as far as possible, though he expects moves to be made against him too despite his emeritus status.43 He and his wife are even considering subletting rooms. There will be mass dismissals and redundancies at the Prussian universities before this month is out. But that will by no means be the end of the “great cleansing”. The sword of Damocles will continue to hang over all those who are not Pgs [members of the Nazi Party] far into the future. According to Meinecke’s information, Ziekursch44 is also among those at immediate risk, as in fact applies to a whole number of pure Aryans. It seems that we will have more personal contacts in London right from the outset than we had in Cologne over the course of an entire year. By the way, Frau Meinecke is in favour of you getting involved in the musical field or similar while abroad like Frau Lennox. I tell you this only to convey the prevailing mood. Perhaps we shall be lucky there in the

43 Meinecke’s status as emeritus was not challenged, but he had to give up the editorship of the HZ and his position as president of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), disbanded in 1935 (see above, p. 14f.). 44 Ziekursch was able to continue teaching after 1933.


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coming years despite strong competition. Meinecke reckons that I will be recognised as an academic figure internationally through publication of the bibliography. With respect to my emigration, his only reservation was that I might perhaps neglect my obligations to the H.R.K. [Historische Reichskommission or Imperial Historical Commission]. But I managed to reassure him on that front. I hope you look at me on Thursday with shining, affectionate eyes and are less sad as a result. That’s always very hard for me. My little Leni is so brave really. I love you so much. Kisses from Your Hans 13. [18 November 1933]: CV and educational background of Hans Rosenberg, for submission to the secretary of the International Institute of Education45 NL Rosenberg 1, copy [. . . . .] In my academic research, as evident in the appended list of publications, my primary point of departure originally lay in intellectual, party political and domestic political problems of 19th-century German history. I have tackled this complex of problems in a number of longer and shorter studies published since 1925, as well as my book on “Rudolf Haym and the origins of classical liberalism” (Rudolf Haym und die Anfänge des klassischen Liberalismus). This attempts to cast light on the genesis, as reflected in the individual, of the liberalism of the German educational aristocracy—a liberalism rooted in the classical era of German thought and literature, one that became manifest in a worldview of “ideal-realism” and is closely bound up with the intellectual, political and social changes of the 19th century, but also with the problems of the present. That my academic research has gained breadth and perspective as I have become older and more mature is, I believe, apparent in my book on “The world economic crisis of 1857–1859” (Die Weltwirtschaftskrisis von 1857–1859), to be published by W. Kohlhammer in Stuttgart in

45

Appended to Rosenberg’s letter to “The Secretary, International Institute of Education”, 18 November 1933. Rosenberg’s CV in note form has been omitted.

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late January 1934. This work, based on a combination of historical research and the scientific analysis of business cycles and statistics, aims to provide an account of structural changes in the global economy and cyclical movements in countries at various stages of development from 1848 until into the 1860s; these are discussed in connection with mid-century intellectual, domestic political, colonial and world political upheavals. I have devoted the vast majority of my efforts over the last five years to the groundwork for a comprehensive study of “National political journalism in Germany from the beginning of the New Era in Prussia to the outbreak of the German War. A critical bibliography” (Deutschlands nationalpolitische Publizistik vom Eintritt der Neuen Aera in Preussen bis zum Ausbruch des Deutschen Krieges. Eine kritische Bibliographie), which I have been preparing since October 1928 on behalf of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission). This undertaking, designed to get to grips with what initially appeared to be an endless mass of material—necessitating research in about ninety libraries and archives—aims to cast light on the attempts of the national movement to establish a German empire in connection with the struggles of socioeconomic interests and clashes of moral and intellectual ideas, while including as much material as possible. This study, which discusses all the significant domestic and foreign, economic and social problems of Central Europe during the era in question and attempts to provide a cross-sectional view of the entire party political scene that does justice to both liberalism and conservatism, political Catholicism and the dawning labour movement, is now close to completion. As I was able to start work on the final manuscript some months ago, the study should be completed in its entirety by spring of 1934. It will then be printed in two volumes by the publisher of the Imperial Historical Commission, Gerhard Stalling in Oldenburg, during the second half of 1934.46 Assuming that it will be possible to find a new position within my field in the distant future, I am determined to turn from the study of problems in German and Central European history to those of the British Empire and the United States. I feel bound to emphasize that this resolution is not a consequence of the political upheaval occurring in Germany, but has grown gradually within me over the last few

46

The work was in fact published by Oldenbourg, Munich/Berlin 1935.


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years, as will be apparent in my Weltwirtschaftskrisis von 1857–1859. As my academic interests have begun to focus increasingly on economic and social issues, my research plans will revolve chiefly around this aspect of Anglo-American history, but especially the interplay of world economy and world politics. However, given the nature of my methodological convictions, my aim will not be to isolate specific factors in a way that fails to convey the richness of historical events, but rather to explain the overall historical context in any given case on the basis of the deepest possible structural analysis of economic, social, political and intellectual factors. I shall conclude, if I may, by mentioning the following individuals who can provide more detailed academic and personal information about me:47 [. . .] 14. 20 November 1933: Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Oldenbourg-Verlag Bavarian Economic Archive F5/248 [. . .] Rudolf Haym, a figure so well known around the middle of the last century until into the early days of the Bismarckian Empire, has been pushed somewhat into the background as a result of the historical events of the last few decades. The author of the present book brings out his contemporary relevance, chiefly in the political sense. Rudolf Haym took the cultural historical and psychological biography to brilliant new heights thanks to a combination of philosophy, history and philology in his studies of Gentz, W. von Humboldt, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Herder48 and the “Romantic School”, which broke new ground not only in terms of the ideas underlying them but also their

47

Rosenberg then mentions, in the following order, with their titles, names and addresses: Friedrich Meinecke, Johannes Ziekursch, Josef Hansen, Albert Salomon, G. P. Gooch, Josef Redlich and Eugene N. Anderson. 48 Friedrich Gentz (1764–1832), politician and journalist. Opponent of the French Revolution and early German liberalism. Sometime close colleague of Metternich; Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), scholar, statesman and university reformer. Head of the section for culture and teaching in the Prussian ministry of the interior in 1809/10. Founded the University of Berlin in 1811. Advocated, among other things, the unity of research and teaching at the university; Arthur Schopenhauer (1788– 1860), philosopher; Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Protestant theologian and philosopher. Herder is considered one of the pioneers of historism. On Hegel, see above, p. 132.

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literary form. He is an abiding figure within the history of the humanities in Germany as writer of history, biographer and essayist. Yet he also plays an important role as a politician and political journalist. With regard to the “classical liberalism” among whose champions and pioneers he must be included, he already exercised an influence on his era as a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly and later as editor of the Preussische Jahrbücher. The study of his character touches on political contexts and issues which help us understand contemporary realities. By carefully combining research methods and problems in political, intellectual and social history, this account, which aims to bring out changes in the character of the system of culture as a whole, extends from its biographical point of departure to include an analysis of the system of liberal ideas. While revising traditional evaluations, it casts a critical light on how this system of ideas collided with political realities, with the basic questions of our national existence and process of becoming a nation state, beyond the revolutionary era of 1848 and up to the beginnings of the reactionary period. [. . .] Yours faithfully, Dr. Rosenberg 15. 5 December 1933: Friedrich Meinecke’s (Berlin) testimonial49 on Hans Rosenberg, for submission to the Academic Assistance Council in London NL Rosenberg 33 To the Academic Assistance Council in London I would like to recommend most warmly Herr Dr. Hans Rosenberg, until recently a lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Cologne. After his authority to teach in Cologne was withdrawn because of his non-Aryan background in line with the new civil service law, he is compelled to seek an academic career abroad. He is one of the

49

Handwritten testimonial signed by Meinecke. Rosenberg received a maintenance grant from the Council from June 1934 to the end of July 1935. The Academic Assistance Council was founded in May 1933 on the initiative of William Beveridge to support German scholars forced into emigration.


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students closest to me, and I believe him to be a particularly gifted researcher who has already achieved a good deal and promises to make an important contribution in future. He started out with studies of Rudolf Haym and the intellectual and political currents of the 19th century, produced an exemplary edition of Haym’s selected correspondence50 on behalf of the Historical Commission at the Munich Academy of Sciences and has now completed his studies of Haym in a monograph that has just appeared in the supplements to the Historische Zeitschrift.51 Further, on behalf of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), he has been working for five years on a “Critical bibliography of national political journalism from 1859 to 1866”, which will attempt to provide an account of the endlessly complex currents of the national movement during this era on the basis of thousands of pamphlets, journals, etc. Rosenberg is, I believe, the right man to take on such a task, which requires not only tremendous diligence, conscientiousness, a nose for little-known sources, etc., but also [word illegible] intellectual qualities, a feeling for the intellectual background of all political will, the power to see every small and isolated element within a broad context. Apart from his monograph on Haym, a number of published essays on the history of specific 19th-century problems also display this combination of great learning and rich material with subtle, penetrating interpretation. Of much interest to me recently was another essay that has just been published on the world economic crisis of 1857–1859.52 Beyond his interests as pursued so far, which have lain within the humanities, here he demonstrates his training in economic history. To combine intellectual history, political history and economic history to create a coherent method is a great and productive ambition. I sincerely hope that fate might grant him the opportunity to realize it. Fr. Meinecke

50 Hans Rosenberg (ed.), Ausgewählter Briefwechsel Rudolf Hayms, Stuttgart/Berlin/ Leipzig 1930. 51 Hans Rosenberg, Rudolf Haym und die Anfänge des klassischen Liberalismus, Munich 1933. 52 Hans Rosenberg, “Die zoll- und handelspolitischen Auswirkungen der Weltwirtschaftskrisis 1857–1859”, in: Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 38 (1933), pp. 368–383. This essay was a forerunner of Rosenberg’s book on the world economic crisis of 1857 to 1859.

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16. 29 January 1934: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear Dr., The Fisk Teachers Agency in Chicago asked me for an academic reference. I am sending it off today and hope to have composed it in such a way that it is of real use to you. There is little I can do for you, but I do it with great pleasure. So it saddens me all the more that I must return your lecture to you.53 As I was thinking of publishing it in the next issue, I read and considered it again carefully and have realized that it is no longer acceptable for the H.Z. I could only explain why in person. But I must add that even academically I endorse your views only partly. I feel that there is too much one-sided criticism, too little empathy for the positive internal forces of the opposing parties, and too much about the external dynamics of the parties’ process of regrouping. I noticed the same difference in our views when reading your excellent book on Haym as well. It is very well thought through, has a richly independent take on tortuous problems and is highly stimulating—but at the point where the criticism of the Erbkaiserpartei’s (party favouring the Prussian king as Kaiser—Emperor—by inheritance)54 stance in 1848 begins, I can no longer go along with it. The party could in no way have acted otherwise if it wished to remain true to its ideals, and you generally fail to appreciate, I believe, the amount of natural conservative sentiment that secretly lives within it and within right-wing liberalism in general. Even if the party came to grief because of this— senno senza forza (Campanella) is still better than forza senza senno.55

53

This refers to Rosenberg’s unpublished inaugural lecture, which formed part of his habilitation, on “Die Epochen des parteipolitischen Liberalismus in Deutschland” (“Periods of party political liberalism in Germany”); see above, p. 69. Meinecke was initially against printing the lecture in the HZ as he thought it too political, and suggested publication in a more general periodical. On 8 February 1933 he wrote to Rosenberg: “In light of the changed circumstances, however, I would like to publish it after all—you understand”. But he requested that Rosenberg “tone down some overly general conclusions and acknowledge the presence of spiritual values among the opposing forces as well” (NL Rosenberg 33). 54 The Erbkaiserpartei, to which Haym belonged, was on the right wing of German liberalism. 55 “Wisdom without power” is still better than “power without wisdom”. Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) was an Italian theorist of the state imprisoned by the Spaniards for twenty-seven years. Among other things, he wrote the famous utopia


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I grew up in this conservative world, and although I have outgrown it, I know the values that it entailed. Around 1848, the people too were still largely so conservative-minded, the miles perpetuus56 was so implicitly superior, that the kind of revolutionary politics that you imagine the Erbkaiserpartei might have pursued would also have come to grief. The fate of our nation is and remains simply tragic. I believe, as you have intimated, that you will be able to find a place for the article elsewhere. You will easily eliminate the minor changes that I began to insert here and there in the text to bring it into line with the H.Z. Many thanks for re-addressing my letter to Holborn. I think of all of you with constant concern and hope so much for your advancement. With very best wishes, Your Friedrich Meinecke I would be very grateful if you would send me the next quarterly report57 in early March, as 14 March is the annual meeting of the HRK. [Historische Reichskommission or Imperial Historical Commission]. As long planned, I will then resign from the chairmanship, but retain the report on your work. 17. 17 April 1934: Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Friedrich Meinecke58 NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, Among the many anxieties by which I am currently troubled is that concerning the speedy publication of my critical bibliography. It is The City of the Sun (Città del sole), of 1623. Campanella’s ideas, particularly his central concern with how, in addition to wisdom without power, to gain “the power necessary” to create the combination of “power, wisdom and love” for which he yearned, are explored in depth by Meinecke in his Staatsräson (Werke, vol. 1, pp. 106–138, esp. 114f; English title: Machiavellism. Epping 1984). 56 The regular soldier. 57 Rosenberg’s quarterly reports on his work for the Imperial Historical Commission. 58 Note by Meinecke at the end of the letter summarizing his reply of 2 May: after checking we can print the ms. “if everything proceeds as normal”. Number of folios should be indicated to expedite negotiations with the publishers.

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quite crucial to my plans for the future. In light of this, would you be so kind as to let me know, in accordance with the decisions of the annual meeting of the H.R.K. [Historische Reichskommission or Imperial Historical Commission], whether I can expect the printing to begin as soon as the manuscript has been submitted? With grateful respect, Yours faithfully, Hans Rosenberg 18. 30 June 1934: Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, The final stages of the work on the critical bibliography have progressed according to schedule in the period under review. As a total of 880 pages of the final manuscript have now been completed, I expect to be able to send you the whole manuscript, as planned, in the first few days of August, with the exception of the introductory chapter and indices. I very much hope that the negotiations with Oldenbourg have led or will soon lead to a satisfactory conclusion, so that the printing can commence shortly. As far as my prospects of a new sphere of activity in England are concerned, I’m afraid everything is still up in the air. Attempts to find me a lecturing post at the University of Birmingham or Manchester, which seemed very promising at first, sadly came to nothing. Ultimately, the chances of a “permanent appointment” in this country are still vanishingly small. To begin by making greater personal contact with our English colleagues, I have got in touch with the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that this will eventually lead to a teaching position. Once my bibliography is finally finished, should the problem of material survival be more or less resolved, I shall devote myself to research on 17th- and 18th-century British History. However, as my situation is unclear as regards both the material and inner dimensions, I am of course unsure as yet what will become of my plans, if anything.


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With best wishes for your wellbeing, I remain with grateful respect, Yours faithfully, Hans Rosenberg 19. [August 1934]: Hans Rosenberg to Friedrich Meinecke59 NL Meinecke 39 [want to] complete the corrections despite this of course. As far as my commercial and financial relationship to the H.R.K. [Historische Reichskommission—Imperial Historical Commission] is concerned, the way things stand it is by no means the case that after submitting the outstanding introductory reflections I would merely be engaged in proofreading. As well as completing the corrections, I also have to prepare and complete the indices. While completing the index of journals will not take long, far more effort will be involved in drawing up the index of names and authors. As this is a source book, I feel that an index merely showing names and page numbers is insufficient. In order to be able to assess the individual texts and place them in historical context, it is imperative to add brief biographical notes to the names listed in the index, in so far as these are not already contained in the individual titles. I will of course have to consult a large number of reference works to this end. My plan for the final stages of the project is to combine the proofreading with compilation of the indices; as you have already underlined, I would be paid in line with the same principles as have applied hitherto. One question that still needs to be resolved is that of the title of the work as a whole. According to the contract, it is a “Critical bibliography of national political journalism from 1858 to July 1866” (“Kritische Bibliographie der nationalpolitischen Publizistik von 1858—Juli 1866”). I have regarded this title as purely provisional from the outset and, having considered the problem at length, would, if I may, like to propose the following version: “National political journalism in Germany from the beginning of the New Era in Prussia to the outbreak of the

59 The first page of the letter is missing from Meinecke’s papers according to information obtained from the Secret State Archive (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz) on 24 October 1988.

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German War. A critical bibliography” (“Deutschlands nationalpolitische Publizistik vom Eintritt der Neuen Ära in Preußen bis zum Ausbruch des Deutschen Krieges. Eine kritische Bibliographie”).60 In my opinion, the important thing is to come up with a title that conveys the factual content as exactly as possible while still being pleasing to the ear, in such a way that the interests of the author, editor and publisher are all accommodated. As it has become increasingly common to choose the kind of title typically used for interpretative accounts even in the case of such source books merely containing copies of documents, I do not believe it would be immodest for my work, which entails a certain interpretative element, to be given a corresponding title. I hope you won’t feel disappointed when you read the manuscript. The “preliminary report” provides information about the principles that have guided me in my work. As I had to complete my study at an “accelerated” pace in accordance with orders from above, in terms both of its content and external form it is not quite what it would have been under more “normal” circumstances. Had I wished to fully achieve my goal, I would have to have spent another year on the study. As this was impossible in present circumstances, I have had to make do with this solution and come to terms with it, though with a heavy heart. Very generally, I would merely like to remark that it was not easy to bring the complex material to life through the rigid form of a “critical bibliography”. A straightforward account would actually have better fitted my inclinations and, I would like to believe, my abilities as well. As I was charged with this study on the basis of your trust in me, my primary concern is to satisfy you. I will not deny, therefore, that it would be very hard for me if you were to be dissatisfied with my work. Thank you so much once again for everything you have done for me. Yours faithfully Hans Rosenberg61

60 The final title was: Die nationalpolitische Publizistik Deutschlands vom Eintritt der Neuen Ära in Preußen bis zum Ausbruch des Deutschen Krieges. Eine kritische Bibliographie. On the publisher’s ideas about the title, see Rosenberg’s letter to the Oldenbourg Verlag of 21 August 1934, below p. 367f. 61 Meinecke made the following notes on a sheet enclosed with the letter: 16/8 agreed with Oncken 1. Send to members of the Imperial Historical Commission allowing six weeks for responses 2. Payment of fee until Nov. incl., from then on he should


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20. 21 August 1934: Hans Rosenberg (Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, England) to Oldenbourg-Verlag NL Rosenberg 57, copy As far as the title of the work is concerned, the following version has now been chosen in agreement with the Imperial Commission: “National political journalism in Germany from the beginning of the New Era in Prussia to the outbreak of the German War. A critical bibliography” (“Die nationalpolitische Publizistik Deutschlands vom Eintritt der Neuen Aera in Preussen bis zum Ausbruch des Deutschen Krieges. Eine kritische Bibliographie.”) With respect to the wishes expressed regarding the form of the title in your letter of 13 June this year, I would, if I may, make the following remarks: the key thing was to find a title that did equal justice to the interests of the author, editor and publisher and which was, therefore, both melodious in its external form while conveying the factual content as precisely as possible. I do not believe it would be possible to find a title that better meets these requirements than the one above. In itself it would no doubt be desirable to replace the word “journalism” [Publizistik] with the word “literature”, if the terms were identical, which unfortunately they are not. As far the title’s temporal delimitation is concerned, an objection to the term “New Era” is unfounded in as much as, in accordance with writings on Prussian-German history generally acknowledged hitherto, only the period from 1858 to 1862 is viewed as the so-called “New Era”. Strictly speaking there have no doubt been a whole number of “new eras” within Prussian history, which, however, have nothing whatsoever to do with the so-called “New Era”. Neither do I believe that it would be clearer to use “Prussian-Austrian War” rather than “German War”. First of all, it is simply the case that this war tends to live on in the historical memory as the “German war” and, second, in reality, it was of course not a war between just Prussia and Austria, but one in which the small and medium-sized German states and Italy played an active role. This war is known as the “German War” because virtually all the German states were directly involved in it and because

indicate the actual amount of time worked, 6 hours = 1 working day. To be paid later in line with our current regulations. Eventual deduction for working hours of less than six hours in the months since Sept. 3. Title Die Nationalpolitische Publizistik Dtschl. Thank you for your work on 24/8, ms. sent to Oldenbourg.

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it largely settled the so-called “German question”, that is, the problem of Germany’s unification as a nation state. I for my part am also very grateful that you have decided to publish the book despite the destitution of our time. In truth, there is practically no historical subject of greater contemporary relevance than the one discussed in my book. Though the basic questions of Germany’s destiny are examined here only in the form of a source book, as Herr Meinecke has already acknowledged of his own accord this is a source book of an entirely novel type—the first of its kind. Yours faithfully 21. 9 September 1934: testimonial from Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) on Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33, copy Herr Dr. Hans Rosenberg, who habilitated at the University of Cologne, has been compelled by the Aryan laws to seek a new life and academic career abroad. I wish him every success with this, for I consider him among my most capable and promising students. His initial interests lay in intellectual history and he chose to study Rudolf Haym, the great exponent of a national liberalism in the mid-19th century. Both through an exemplary edition of his correspondence, on behalf of the Munich Historical Commission, and his recently published monograph on Haym’s development up to 1850, he has shown the ability to appreciate the life of an important individual within the overall intellectual and political context.62 I do not agree with all the views set out in these studies, but nonetheless consider them among the most penetrating and informative contributions to the history of ideas in the 19th century produced over the last few years. His sound knowledge of philosophy is also evident in his introduction to the new edition of Haym’s great work on Hegel.63 But Rosenberg has gone beyond intellectual history. In order to attain a deeper understanding of the 19th century, he has also grappled with studies in social and economic

62

See above, p. 67. Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit. Vorlesungen über die Entstehung, Wesen und Werk der Hegelschen Philosophie, 2nd edn., ed. by Hans Rosenberg, Leipzig 1927. 63


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history. His recent writings in the field are again distinguished by vigorous research that gets at the heart of things. His most extensive academic work is still in manuscript form. It is the critical bibliography of political journalism in Germany from 1858 to 1866, which he prepared on behalf of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), with my guidance, from 1928 to 1934 and which has now been sent to press.64 Those members of the Imperial Historical Commission whom I have asked to inspect parts of the manuscript share my opinion that here an exceptionally difficult problem, requiring excellent instincts and a great deal of careful selection, has been solved in such a way as to produce a very significant enrichment of our view of the will and thought of the German nation at the time of the Empire’s foundation. A deft approach manages to avoid the tedium of a mere bibliography. Both hefty volumes of the work are always stimulating and often even exciting to read. I am quite sure that what we have here is a standard work on the history of the Empire’s foundation that will henceforth be indispensible. I hope it will help smooth the author’s path through life. Professor Dr. Friedrich Meinecke. 22. 19 November 1934: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear Herr Dr., I’m delighted that the printing of the bibliography is progressing so rapidly and that we can therefore expect it to be published in the near future. As far as your “introduction” is concerned, it has been a headache for both me and Herr Oncken. You yourself write that you had a hard time with it. It isn’t quite there yet in a literary sense. If only you could break up all of your informal, confusing and convoluted sentences into four short, powerful and lively ones! Please don’t be offended at this deep sigh from your old teacher. We took less exception to the content, but even it would automatically gain a more powerful and tangible form if you were to change the prose.

64

See above, p. 366.

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But we came to the conclusion that such an “introduction” is not absolutely necessary for the publication itself.65 It will have an impact on the reader in its own right anyway, just as it already had a very pleasing effect on the gentlemen who read the various parts of the manuscript. It occurred to me that you might rework your introduction, as an essay advertising the book, for publication in the Hist. Zeitschr.. In this case, you would have to take due account of the needs of the H.Z.’s readers as well as their situation at present. In principle I am quite prepared to include such an essay in the H.Z. and would have written to you some time ago had I myself not been waiting to discover whether my editorship of the H.Z. is to continue.66 I have been waiting for the publishers’ decision for several weeks and have yet to receive it. The thing is, the publisher is also dependent on other factors. Should they decide to keep me on, I will let you know and ask you to rewrite the introduction as an essay. Congratulations on the fellowship. Let’s hope that gives you a more solid basis. Perhaps you might come to Berlin when you are in Germany? Many thanks for your concern for my wellbeing. In fact, despite the general process of getting older, I’m faring not too badly. Please send the index of journals directly to Oldenbourg. Best wishes, Your Fr. Meinecke

65 Nationalpolitische Publizistik was finally published with merely a “preliminary report” (Vorbericht) but no “introduction”. The unpublished eleven-page manuscript entitled “Zur Einführung” in Rosenberg’s papers (vol. 95) deals with the development of journalism on the German question in connection with the great political problems of the time: the world economic crisis of 1857 to 1859, the war fought by Piedmont and France against Austria in 1859, the new era in Prussia, the army and constitutional conflict in Prussia, plans to reform the Habsburg Empire, the German-Danish war of 1864, the dualism between Austria and Prussia. The social agents of journalism and the development of the great schools of thought—liberalism, conservatism, political Catholicism—as well as the material interests underpinning the different views are also discussed. 66 After Meinecke was ousted as editor of the HZ there was of course no longer any prospect of such an essay. Rosenberg’s work was not even reviewed in the HZ.


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23. 27 August 1935: William L. Langer67 (Annisquam, Mass.) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 32, letter in English My dear Dr. Rosenberg, I recently received a letter from my friend Professor Redlich68 telling me of your desire to come to this country and your hope of finding some academic position. I am glad, therefore, to have received from you a list of your publications and the letters of recommendation of men like Meinecke, Ziekursch, Gooch and Webster.69 When you do arrive in New York, I hope you will get in touch with me. I shall be in Cambridge at that time and shall be very happy indeed to make your personal acquaintance. With regard to finding a position, I should not be frank if I did not warn you that this will be very difficult, even if the Emergency Committee70 is willing to supply the funds to pay your salary for two years. Professor Redlich must have told you how tight things are on this side of the water. This year we have had rather better luck than in the past years in placing the younger men who finish their work at this university, but there has been such an accumulation and so few positions, that many really good men found it impossible to get work or were obliged to content themselves with very inferior positions. Of course, German scholars have found places here and it may be that something suitable for you will turn up. I shall certainly do my utmost to be of assistance, but I hardly know where to turn, the more so as I have long since exhausted the possibilities of which I knew. 67 William L. Langer (1896–1977), leading American historian, who produced important studies, especially on the history of international relations before 1914. Professor at Harvard from 1927 until his retirement in 1964. Langer was the key contact for many German historians persecuted by the National Socialists who attempted to acquire a post in the USA. He was also head of the “Research and Analysis” section of the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS) from 1942 to 1945, in which a large number of German émigrés—such as Meinecke’s students Holborn and Gilbert—were employed. Special Assistant to the American Secretary of State in 1946. See also above, p. 44f. 68 See above, p. 348f. 69 Sir Charles Kingsley Webster (1886–1961), famous British historian and influential adviser to government departments and international institutions. Professor in international relations at the London School of Economics from 1932 until his retirement in 1953. President of the British Academy from 1950. 70 The “Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German (later Foreign) Scholars” in the United States. See above, p. 257.

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Painful though it may be to you, I ought also to say that there is not a little anti-Semitic feeling here. It goes back a long time and is not the result of recent developments. But we have always had great difficulty in placing young Jews in academic positions. We have here now a young Jewish scholar of unusual brilliance, who is working in the same period as yourself, but with reference to French intellectual and social history. Despite his undoubted ability we have as yet been unsuccessful in finding him a position. I mention this merely to indicate to you that the possibilities in this country are distinctly limited. If you feel nevertheless that you wish to come, it goes without saying that I shall exert myself to the utmost to assist you. Sincerely yours, William L. Langer 24. [1943]: Hans Rosenberg’s outline for a work on the “Junker”71 NL Rosenberg 1, copy in English This project has crystallized in my mind under the impact of the war. Its primary objective is to give a thoroughly integrated picture of the economic, social, political, administrative, military and ideological role that the Junkers have played in German history from the era of east-Elbian colonization to the present. As to methods of research and presentation, the study is and will be strictly academic in character and, consequently, based essentially on primary sources, such as the medieval and modern Ständeakten, the Acta Borussica, the Acta Brandenburgica, the Publikationen aus den Preuss. Staatsarchiven, and the Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. Jahrhunderts. A secondary though vital short-run objective of the project, consists in stimulating thought and developing a proper historical perspective with regard to that crucial chapter of post-war reconstruction which concerns the future status of the Junkers. They, after all, represent the

71 Undated typewritten copy of a research plan by Hans Rosenberg. This plan was part of an application either for a research grant from the Social Science Research Council or a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In a letter from the Social Science Research Council of 23 March 1943, Rosenberg received a contribution of $500 to complete his book on the Junker. He held an eighteenmonth fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation from 1945 until early 1947. The dating of the document is based on the reference to the essay mentioned in fn. 73.


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only “governing class” produced by Germany that has retained an almost unbroken record of preeminence in public life for the last five hundred years. The study is subdivided into four chronological units of uneven length. Topical analysis prevails within each unit. The first and longest part traces the complex social and ethnic origins of Junkerdom and its functional position in society from the eastern frontier movement to the middle of the seventeenth century. This part puts emphasis on the emergence and further growth of the Junkers as a landowning aristocracy and their gradual transformation into a squirearchy through the conquest of political power and public administration in consequence of processes of “feudalization”. In addition, this first part describes and explains the economic and social institutions of Gutsherrschaft, i.e. the entrepreneurial leadership of the Junkers in the development of a system of agrarian capitalism, especially during the period of the Price Revolution. In the era of dynastic absolutism and dynastic state-making under the Hohenzollerns the Junkers of Brandenburg-Prussia, replenished by immigrants of Germanic, Slavic, and French origin, passed through a psychological revolution. The second part (ca. 1660 to 1807) of the project, therefore, will stress the emergence of a new mentality, new loyalties, a new conception of social ethics, and a new esprit de corps. As to the institutional manifestations of this process of change, particular attention will be paid to the role of the Junker class in shaping the organization and the spirit of the newly created instruments of Prussian militarism and the Prussian bureaucracy, both of which were used for political expansion in an eastward and westward direction. The third part (1807–1918) will concentrate on the concessions and adjustments which the Junkers—in their triple capacity as a military and bureaucratic office-aristocracy—saw themselves compelled to make in clashing with the principles and developing institutional fabric of modern nationalism, liberalism, constitutionalism, industrial capitalism, socialism, and imperialism. The last part (since 1918) will sketch the post-war recovery of the Junkers, through the Reichswehr, the bureaucracy, the Landbund, and the organized exploitation of political, social, and economic tensions. The concluding section of the project will draw particular attention to the Junkers’ fateful sacrifice of the traditional idea of the Rechtsstaat, and their continuing moral and ideological reorientation under the Nazi system.

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The project differs from similar work done by myself or by others in two fundamental respects. It represents the first attempt made so far by anybody to write a continuous history of the Junker caste and class from their beginnings to the present. In the second place, the project aims at total treatment in the sense that it integrates the diversified functional activities of the Junkers in German History, i.e. their fluctuating group-career not merely as landed rentiers or agricultural and industrial entrepreneurs, but also as army officers, public administrators, politicians, and moulders of social values. With regard to the method of analysis my intentions, roughly stated for the sake of brevity, come nearest to what Caroline F. Ware has termed the “cultural approach to history”.72 I would not venture such an ambitious attempt if I had not devoted most of my research conducted during the past eighteen years to different phases of central-European history. Moreover, on account of almost ten years of continuous residence in England and America I believe to have developed a sharpened sense of intellectual distance and a broad perspective which, I think, adds to my qualifications for the comprehensive job of revaluation. The work already completed includes (1) the collections of all data needed for the writing of the history of the Junkers down to the early 18th century, (2) the collection of part of the materials concerning developments since the early 18th century, (3) the writing of several drafts covering the history of the Junkers down to the middle of the 17th century. A large section of one of these drafts, entitled “The rise of the Junkers, 1410–1653” (ca. 40– 45 pages in print), has been recently accepted by The American Historical Review for publication.73

72

Caroline Farrar Ware (1899–1990), American historian and social activist in the New Deal era. Taught at the Vassar Women’s College and later at the American University in Washington, D.C. Edited the book The Cultural Approach to History, New York 1940, to which some of the leading American historians contributed. This was an attempt to make the social reality of life, especially industrialization and workers’ experiences, the focus of historical analysis rather than institutions and social elites. C. Ware was later chief editor of vol. VI of the History of Mankind sponsored by the UN. Cultural and Scientific Development, vol. VI by Caroline F. Ware, K. M. Panikkar and J. M. Romein: The Twentieth Century, London 1966. 73 Published under the title: “The Rise of the Junkers in Brandenburg-Prussia 1410– 1653”, in: AHR 49 (1943/44), pp. 1–22, 228–242. He concluded his application with a bibliography of his writings and provided four references (Dr. William R. Gaede, Dean


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25. 24 July 1944: Hans Rosenberg to Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 4 Dearest darling, [. . .] The Junker insurrection74 is surely the beginning of the end. Even you will now be convinced that the war will be over this year. The collapse of the German army from within, quite apart from the devastating military defeats, is already well underway, and with the bloodbath that Hitler is likely to carry out, he is also writing the final chapter of my book.75 Of the two questions with which I concluded my two essays on the Junker,76 the first has already been answered in part. The rest will follow in the next few months. And next summer or autumn you will certainly be able to travel to Europe again. As far as citizenship77 is concerned, essentially, one really ought to look at these things from a purely practical point of view. With an American passport and American currency, the world will be your oyster after this war. That’s the flipside of emigration. An American court itself recently ruled that the acquisition of citizenship does not entail the moral obligation to become an American ‘patriot’, but merely the obligation to respect American laws. In terms of my political persuasion, I myself have been a democrat since I was twenty years old, so I have no need to change my attitude in America in that regard. And narrow-minded, bigoted political nationalism, whether of the German or American of English variety, is equally odious to me. In terms of my cultural affiliation, I am German and always will be. It is ultimately no coincidence that over the last five years, after learning the language and adapting myself to some extent to the American college business,

of Faculty, Brooklyn College; Dr. Jesse D. Clarkson, Professor of History, Brooklyn College; Professor Guy Stanton Ford, American Historical Association, Library of Congress; Dr. J. Salwyn Chapireau, Professor Emeritus of History). 74 Reference to the failed assassination attempt on Hitler of 20 July 1944. 75 Rosenberg’s planned book on the “Junker”. 76 See above, p. 374. At the end of the essay, Rosenberg concludes that the Junker had outwitted the German liberals of the 19th century, the Hohenzollern in 1918, the Allies in 1918/19 and the Social Democrats and the Weimar Republic and asks: “Will they be able to outwit the Nazis? And if so, will they be able to outwit again the German and the non-German enemies of the Nazis?” (p. 242). 77 Rosenberg obtained American citizenship in 1944.

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I have devoted myself once again chiefly to the study of German history and culture and tried to render “the German Problem” more comprehensible to educated Americans and Englishmen. And from 1947 on I am thinking of going to Europe more often again. This is by no means a fantastical notion. The travel costs will go down dramatically within a few years, and one will be able to live splendidly on the continent for 20–25 dollars a week. Apart from that, I’m convinced that my book will bring us a few hundred dollars per annum for a number of years. [. . .] With love and an affectionate kiss good night, Your Hans 26. 6 May 1946: Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, From Professor Fay in Harvard and Dr. Felix Gilbert I have learned that you have been living a life of quiet seclusion in Göttingen these last few months. I have often thought anxiously of my old teacher and his loved ones during the terrible years of war, and I am of course extremely glad and relieved to know that you and your closest relatives have survived the pandemonium in relatively good shape. All of our own relatives are still alive, apart from our only nephew, who fell two years ago. If we disregard the mental distress, neither my wife nor I have suffered directly from the war. It has been quite clear for many years, and really right from the outset to anyone with any understanding, that the terrible leadership would meet a terrible end. So I have had a long time to think about the social and political forces of the postwar Germany to come and this has led me to study German history intensively once again. Apart from a series of shorter studies which I have published in England and America since 1939, these efforts have produced a book that will likely be published next year under the title “The Prusso-German Junkers: A History of a Social Class”. I have been on leave for a year, and it has just been extended to February 1947 to


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allow me to complete the book.78 This study is a sociological history of Junkerdom from the Middle Ages until 1945; in other words, it is my scholarly and ideological contribution to the democratic restructuring of Germany. As dreadful as the situation over there is and will probably remain for years to come, should the occasion arise I would be willing to return to a German university, though I have had lifelong tenure as professor here in New York since 1941. My wife will travel to Germany as soon as she gets the permit from the State Department. There’s very little chance of me myself making it over before summer 1948. How lovely it would be to see you and your dear wife again after all the long years! With the very best wishes from my family to yours, Yours faithfully, Hans Rosenberg 27. 12 June 1946: Friedrich Meinecke (Göttingen) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear colleague, I was delighted to get your news, and such good news, in your letter of 6 May,79 which I received yesterday. All my relatives and I have also made it through all the terrible events of the last year in pretty good shape—but all of us have suffered, in terms of internal and external values, and continue to live under the greatest of pressures. That you would take up an appointment in Germany is very brave. If I am asked I shall mention your name. Though everything is in such a state of chaos that I rarely get such opportunities. At the moment I am severely impeded by cataracts and the difficulties of having them operated on. Your planned book relates to one of the most basic and central issues of modern history and a burning one at present, that of the values and inner justification of Prussia-Germany’s unique development amid the

78 Reference to the Guggenheim fellowship that Rosenberg held from mid-1945 to early 1947. See above, p. 372. 79 See above, p. 376f.

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overall development of the West. I myself have written a little book on The German Catastrophe,80 which will be published in the near future (by F. A. Brockhaus in Wiesbaden), in which I tried to say at least a few things in broad outline about this subject. Above all, I avoided an opportunistic black-and-white account that sees certain things in a wholly negative light and others in a wholly positive one. Sidney Fay managed to avoid this, much to my delight, in his little history of Brandenburg-Prussia.81 On the other hand, there can be no doubt that we must take a far sterner view of the negative aspects of Prussian Junkerdom than hitherto. I hope you manage to write a genuinely historical, truly impartial assessment of Prussian Junkerdom. Fontane’s Altersbriefe82 would be of much use to you—always, of course, in connection with his roots in his native soil, to which his life so clearly attested. We are about to return to Berlin-Dahlem, where our house has remained largely intact. It would be lovely if your wife, and perhaps you as well eventually, were to visit us there! Though an eighty-three-yearold must cherish such hopes only with an inherent sense of resignation. Best wishes, Your Fr. Meinecke Addition by Frau Meinecke: Dear Frau Rosenberg! How happy I am to send the two of you my warm regards. Perhaps you will make it to Dahlem again as our guests. We dream of going back home—it is as difficult as if we wanted to emigrate! We’ve been through some very hard times and have become quite poor. My husband is advancing in years but is still amazingly sound of mind. Come to Berlin, come and stay with us. It will be simple but you will be well received. Your Meinecke

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See above, p. 71. Sydney Bradshaw Fay, The Rise of Brandenburg-Prussia to 1786, New York 1937. 82 For Fontane’s Altersbriefe, see: Theodor Fontane, Werke, Schriften und Briefe, section IV: Briefe, vol. 3: 1879–1889; vol. 4: 1890–1898, Munich 1980–1982. 81


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28. 28 November 1946: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear colleague, The arrival of the CARE package you sent to us was a source of quite unexpected joy and relief to my family and I. Thank you so much! Who among us, fifteen years ago, would have thought that you would do us such a good turn all the way from America and that we would be so moved and grateful to accept it! But what hard times you yourself had to go through before attaining your present position! It is marvellous how, in every event of our daily lives, no matter how small, one perceives the stamp of tremendous world historical events and the dawning of a new historical era. Certainly, I too am having a hard time of it at the moment, and I’m also burdened with deteriorating sight (cataracts) and hearing. And yet, along with my family I still feel utterly privileged in light of the appalling fate suffered by countless Germans at present. Our house survived, though it was damaged. All our children and grandchildren are alive, and I’m still surrounded by my books—with the exception of the very best of them, which I wanted to save. Despite being eighty-four, I am now trying to do a bit of teaching for the university in the shape of a “historical colloquy” in my own home. I don’t know whether you have received my work The German Catastrophe, which I wrote last year. If not, I shall try again to make it available to you. I was delighted to receive a lengthy letter from Fräulein Dr. Wieruszowski.83 Should my reply fail to reach her because of the almost illegible address, would you please be so kind as to pass on my heartfelt thanks. Your Nationalpolit. Publizistik 1859/6684 is constantly on my desk at the moment as it is one of the basic texts for my colloquy. Bit by bit, the German journalism of the 19th century in its entirety will now have to be dealt with on this model in order to attain a deeper understanding of the development of public spirit in the 19th century. With best wishes, Yours gratefully, Fr. Meinecke 83 84

See Helene Wieruszowski’s letter to Meinecke of 11 August 1946, above, pp. 324–326. See above, p. 67f.

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29. 5 January 1947: Hans Rosenberg (New York) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, Before I had a chance to thank you for your warm letter from Göttingen,85 I was delighted to hear from you again from your old house in Berlin,86 though we were of course extremely sad to hear how much you and yours have been affected by the general state of misery. The reason it has taken me so long to get in touch is that unfortunately I have been very unwell over the last few months. This has caused terrible disruption to my research plans, and I have ceased to write any letters at all. But I’m feeling better now and I hope to be able to catch up this year on those things I neglected last year. Your ears really must have been ringing eight days ago. For a whole number of your old students came together at the annual conference of the American Historical Association: Holborn, Gilbert, Gerhard, Baron, Wieruszowski, and yours truly. Rothfels was also expected from Chicago, but he had to cancel at the last minute. We talked about you a great deal and thought about you with grateful loyalty. My old friend Anderson told me many things both happy and sad about his visit to Dahlem.87 It will please you and must be a source of great satisfaction that all the “Meineckians” have gradually established themselves within American academic life. Fräulein Wieruszowski, who had some particularly hard years behind her, has been a successful and widely respected member of my department for two years. Gilbert has been working at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania since October. Masur will shortly be taking up a post at Sweet Briar College, a little girls’ college in Virginia. I’m sure he’ll move on from there before too long.88 85

Meinecke to Rosenberg, 12 June 1946, see above, p. 377f. Meinecke to Rosenberg, 28 November 1946, see above, p. 379. 87 On Anderson, see above, p. 342. There are three letters from the 1947–1950 period in Meinecke’s papers (no. 1) in which Anderson thanks Meinecke for letters and for sending him his books and essays and states that he will be sending him CARE packages. He also offers to get Meinecke any books he might need. In a letter of 12 October 1947 he informs Meinecke that he had left his government post, sold his house in Washington and had taken up his earlier profession as historian with his appointment to a chair at the University of Nebraska. 88 Despite the offer of chairs in Tübingen and at the Free University of Berlin and numerous visiting professorships, Masur taught at Sweet Briar until his retirement 86


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Each of us, and each in his own way, has followed his own path, without forgetting how greatly indebted we all are to you and how much you have given us. I recently read the first volume of your memoirs.89 I obtained a copy through an old friend, who managed to send it to me through one of my former students. It was of course very moving to read it and it helped me understand better many aspects of your life’s work. I’m afraid I never received the copy of The German Catastrophe you had earmarked for me. I have a burning interest in this book for both personal and intellectual reasons. Should you have a spare copy available, I really would be much obliged if you would be so kind as to get it to me. There should be an opportunity to do so in the near future. For towards the end of January or beginning of February you will receive a visit from a former student of mine, a Herr Ralph Spritzer, who is currently working for the American military government in Berlin and who has already served as intermediary for us on many occasions. Since spring we have heard from our relatives and old friends in Germany on a regular basis. All are victims of the collapse in one way or another and more or less dependent on supplies from America. It makes us happy to be able to help relieve the hardships of everyday life a little. But we are particularly grateful that you permit us to send you and yours a tangible greeting from so far away from time to time. Incidentally, how do things stand with the smoking? Do you still smoke cigars exclusively, or have you come to an arrangement with the pipe? Pipe tobacco would be the easiest thing to send, particularly from spring onwards, as it is available here in hermetically sealed tins and thus keeps its aroma. All of us have been deeply impressed by the fact that you have resumed teaching despite your advanced age and poor health. I must admit, I am very pleased that my Nationalpolitische Publizistik, which was hushed up under the Nazis, has found favour in this context. I hope you will live to see the completion of my study of the Junker and that it will meet with your approval. It is the first substantial study produced by the Meinecke students in America. I’m currently working on the thirteenth chapter. I hope to finish the rest of the book during in 1966, where he also served as chairman of the department of history from 1957 to 1965. 89 Friedrich Meinecke, Erlebtes 1862–1901, Leipzig 1941. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 3–134.

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the coming long summer holidays. My teaching job here demands so much time and energy that it’s not always easy to concentrate on research or writing. To give you an idea of the book’s structure, I have taken the liberty of copying out the table of contents overleaf.90 With best wishes and warm regards to your dear wife, In grateful respect, Your Hans Rosenberg 30. 31 January 1947: Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Harry D. Gideonse91 NL Rosenberg 65, in English Dear Mr. President, It is with a strange mixture of elation and uneasiness that, upon the expiration of my leave of absence, I respectfully submit to you a report on the work accomplished and not accomplished during the past year and a half. My feeling of uneasiness stems from the fact that, contrary to expectations, I am not ready yet to “deliver the goods”. My sense of elation, on the other hand, is sustained by the inner certainty that after prolonged strife I have actually overcome, with a comforting degree of success, the cardinal intellectual and methodological obstacles imbedded in my project. Until the late spring of 1946 progress was almost according to plan, except for the failure of keeping up with the time schedule which I had set myself. Throughout the early part of that year, although dimly

90 Rosenberg enclosed the plan for his book on the Junker in his letter, which is largely identical with the plan included in Rosenberg’s letter to the president of Brooklyn College of 31 January 1947 (see below, p. 384f.). 91 On the first page of the letter, signed by Rosenberg, he has added the words: “the original draft”. Harry D. Gideonse (1901–1985). Born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, he went to the United States in 1904. Studied economics at Columbia University in New York and at the University of Geneva as a graduate student. After teaching economics at various American universities, he became chairman of the department of economics and sociology at Barnard College of the University of Columbia. President of Brooklyn College in New York from 1939 to 1966. Later chancellor of the New School for Social Research in New York until 1975.


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aware of, but not yet seriously perturbed by, an undercurrent of doubt in the back of my mind, I was indeed under the impression, pleasing, as it were, while it lasted, that I had passed the “hump”. For that fatal delusion, in months to come, I paid dearly in “sweat and tears”. In retrospect, as I see it now, the real trouble started in dormant form as early as the late fall of 1945 when I began to write about the nineteenth century. Taken off guard by the fact that my knowledge of that century, relative to that of any other historical period, is more detailed and thorough I felt somewhat cocky about the remainder of my job. Hence, when plunging into the analysis of an increasingly intricate secular process of social disintegration I woefully underrated the baffling subtleties inherent in the study of nineteenth century society. I simply did not envisage the traps and difficulties which I was to encounter. Moreover, by that time I was already embarking upon a race against time. In good faith I had committed myself to completing my book until February 1947. This psychic pressure acted both as a stimulant and a deterrent. It functioned as a stimulant by tempting me to go ahead without a sufficient degree of preliminary patient reflection. In consequence, to go on more or less meant to drift along. Measured by results, it was plain folly to attempt a short cut by making a bargain with the devil, symbolized by the seductive principle of speed-up in the work of the mind. Only slowly—tardiness, in good part, being due to mental fatigue which had set in the meantime—did I grow conscious, first, of the possibility, then, of the probability and, finally, of the certainty that I had chosen the wrong road. Only reluctantly did I pay attention to the recurrent appearance of symptoms indicating a gradual breakdown of the unity of thought which, by and large, I had managed to maintain previously. Thus, only by degrees did I come to face the fact that what I was doing was becoming dull, pointless irrelevant; that it ceased to be “suggestive” and “interesting”; that the tools of analysis which I was employing were too crude and naïve for the tricky task in hand; in short, that my handling of the subject matter was too amateurish, if gauged by the exacting standards of a good, historically-minded sociologist (rare as that species still is, whatever the glories of its future). The ultimate recognition of having reached an impasse, of the need for a fresh start and the adoption of an essentially different scheme of organization and integration for the last 150 years was, believe me, a very unhappy, an almost exasperating experience. Midway, after having lost the self-inflicted mental “battle of the bulge” I was forced to turn back and to marshal all my resources before I could set out again under a new course.

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The focus of my study is concerned neither with the history of the state or any other institution, nor with the history of an idea, but with a social group in the whole complexity of its historical evolution. My fundamental problem, therefore, was to work out a method of analysis and scheme of synthesis which fits both my material and my objectives without imposing a fanciful pattern of thought upon social reality. As seen in long-run perspective, “my Junkers” have proved the most crucial, the most influential and, by force of the wide range and functional diversity of their historic activities, perhaps the most intriguing segment of German society. To make the fluctuating career of such a group understandable, a group which in unbroken continuity for more than half a millennium performed strategic social functions, calls, among other things, for an attempt to contrast it, at least on the side line, with comparable social strata in other European countries. To have moved in the direction of such a comparative treatment, largely by implication, constitutes, in my own estimation, a distinguishing feature of my study which in its present and, as to all essentials, ultimate form is organized as follows: THE PRUSSO-GERMAN JUNKERS A HISTORY OF A SOCIAL CLASS PART ONE The Formation of the Junker Class, 1200–1653 Ch. I Social and Ethnic Origins of the East German Nobility92 II The Transformation into a Political and Administrative Oligarchy III Junker Entrepreneurship and the Rise of Agrarian Capitalism IV The Great Depression of 1618–1650 and the Compromise of 1653 PART TWO The Differentiation of the Junker Class, 1653–1806 Ch. V The Impact of Dynastic Absolutism upon Social Stratification VI Prussian Militarism and the Army Service Nobility VII Prussian Bureaucracy and the Civil Service Nobility VIII The Squirearchy of East Elbia IX The Emergence of an Intellectual and Artistic Junker Elite

92 “East Elbian Nobility” was the phrase used in the plan enclosed in Rosenberg’s letter to Meinecke of 5 January 1947 (see above, pp. 380–382).


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PART THREE The Transmutation into a Modern Social Class, 1806–1914 X Secular Trends of Class Consolidation and Disintegration XI The Social Crisis of 1806–1815 XII The Broadening of Class Structure, 1815–1848 XIII The Dilution of Aristocratic Status, Outlook and Way of Life, 1848–191493 Epilogue XIV The Downfall, 1914–1945 As for the present status of my project, I am now in the midst of Chapter XIII. The rest of that chapter, together with the Epilogue, I expect to complete during the summer of 1947. Thereafter, a certain amount of final revision and polishing up will still have to be done until I feel ready to turn over the manuscript to the publisher. That is, in brief, where the matter rests. Not an altogether satisfactory situation, to be sure. Yet, all things considered, the outcome could have been worse. The whole adventure might easily have ended in disaster. Instead, there is now the near prospect of a “happy ending”. This gives me, I cannot deny, a feeling of elation. I am not returning to school with empty hands. I won’t have to face my students either with the barren shabbiness of an intellectual bankrupt or with the preposterous claims of a swaggering charlatan. I clearly realize that I did not accomplish as much as I had hoped to accomplish. I also know that my finished product will be far from perfect. Still, I am not disheartened. I have done all I was capable of doing, and I am indeed confident that my study will be recognized by serious reviewers and serious readers as a non-emotional contribution, however small, to permanent knowledge and as a step toward better social and international understanding among men of good will. I am inclined to close this “official report” in a personal vein. As you know, I spent about half, in fact, the more impressionable half of my adult life in Europe and the other half in North America. My book, as it stands, is an organic outgrowth of this eye-opening inter-continental experience as a whole. My research project is closely linked to

93 In the draft plan sent to Meinecke there are two chapters before the epilogue: XIII The Dilution of Aristocratic Status, Outlook and Conduct, 1848–1879; XIV The Restabilization of Aristocratic Society 1879–1914.

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the perennial puzzle of “the German problem”, which only too often has been studied either in morbid self-absorption or under the wobbling impact of political passions and moral wrath. In the light of the course of events since 1933 the German question, more than ever, is of world-wide concern. I have been drawn to this confusion of faces at a time when the German Janus found its most sordid expression in history, and when it was quite uncertain whether the designs looming underneath its ignoble head would clatter down in ruin or provide the world with a new Leitmotiv. Since then the anxiety and the nightmare of those trying years have largely faded away. But the yearning for finding out more about the whence and whither of the turmoil that has come to all of us not only has remained; it has gained in force. I find it worth my while to attempt the historical dissection of an old-established aristocratic ruling class and to trace its twisted course through social life from birth eventually down to the bitter end, hastened, as it were, by the reckless, frantic, tipsy alliance with a group of fraudulent political gamblers, tossed up by the incidents of fate in the age of the fleeting masses. To a certain degree, my study is intended to be a kind of “case history”. As such, it is founded on the deep-rooted conviction that the search for truth as much as the impelling need for “re-education”, a need which, although differentiated, is nonetheless both eternal and universal, demand a deliberate assault upon national boundaries of the mind and on the various brands of nationalist complacency and self-glamorization. By virtue of being aware of my “mobile” background and of the problems of social disorder, brought home to me by the temporary loss of personal security and stability, I am prompted by the conscious desire to serve sine ira et studio, if at all possible, as a mediator and interpreter of the conflicting valuations, real and fancied, of different national cultures. My outlook is no longer that of an emigrant. By degrees I have acquired the mentality of an immigrant who has taken roots in the land of his adoption. How much so became crystal clear to me half a year ago when siren calls “from the other side” urged the native’s return. I am profoundly grateful to the United States, to Brooklyn College, the Department of History and its students for what they have done for me, both in an external and an inner sense. At the same time, however, I do not consider it a disloyal attitude if I endeavour in a humble and restrained way, to remain faithful to what I value as the fruitful kernel of the German university tradition which, however gleamed or perverted in recent years, has made no trifling contribution to the common treasures of western civilization. In all fairness to my


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old academic masters, now dead, maimed, or halfstarved, it must be said that it was the magic of that, to some extent, transplantable tradition rather than stirring intellectual events at Brooklyn College which furnished me with the major incentive to tackle a bigger and more difficult job than I had ever ventured to handle before. Obviously, from its successful completion, now no longer an empty dream, I will derive considerable personal satisfaction. And as I do not hold a prejudice against money, the slim eventuality of a modest “commercial” success, if it were to materialize, would strengthen, not weaken my sense of gratification. But, whatever the rewards in the quest for the fulfilment of personal aspirations and self-seeking interests, I am also conscious of something else which promises to affect our college community more directly. Aided by the Social Science Research Council and the Guggenheim Foundation, I have been privileged enough to join hands with those of my colleagues, who are bent on demonstrating that Brooklyn College is not only a good teaching institution, but also a place where significant work in the social sciences beyond the Ph.D. level is and can be conducted. Naturally, after a lengthy period of seclusion, introspection, and lonesome mental stock-taking I have now reached the point when I look forward again to direct association with alert, suspicious, inquisitive, bewildered young students, hardened and matured by grim contact with the social cataclysm of war and its ugly aftermath. Sincerely yours, Hans Rosenberg 31. 12 February 1947: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear colleague, I was really delighted to receive your dear, detailed letter of 5 January.94 How nice that you were able to get together with my other old émigré students! And how wonderful that all of you have managed to gain a position within the academic life of the U.S.A.! I am especially pleased that Masur is now also in the U.S.A.

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Herr Ralph Spritzer says he will come to see me tomorrow. I shall give him this letter and a copy of The German Catastrophe and the little volumes on historical meaning and aphorisms to take along with him, which were published during the war.95 You’ve already showed your willingness to help us out once before. Indeed, as things stand, with all the deprivation and hardship, we accept with heartfelt thanks the gifts we have received out of human feeling and kindness. You asked me whether I had taken to smoking a pipe,—yes, I have, and would be very grateful to receive the tobacco you plan to send. It is in extremely short supply here. Overall, fate has been infinitely kinder to us than to millions of others who have lost practically everything other than their bare lives. In the dreadful cold that heaven has imposed on Europe as an extra punishment, life and work have become even more difficult for an old man like me, with all the aches and pains of old age—but this suffering must come to an end at some point, and there are sufficient inner consolations to keep one’s spirits up. I often think of the difficulties that you and your companions in misfortune had to face when you were compelled to leave Germany. Though pressure from the Party blunted the impact of your “National political journalism” (Nationalpolit. Publizistik), it was well-regarded and appreciated by the experts. Have you had a chance to read Srbik’s very appreciative review, I think in the Mitt. f. österr. Gesch.?96 He also makes a lot of use of your work in his four-volume “German unity” (Deutsche Einheit),97 and you were also much used by the last biographer of Bismarck, A. O. Meyer, whose c. 700-page book I am currently reading and getting quite a lot out of,98 but which will be unavailable to you because the greater part of the print run has been destroyed. As a Junker, Bismarck is portrayed through rather rose-tinted spectacles, but one can still learn many new details of his character. 95 Reference to the following books by Meinecke: Die deutsche Katastrophe, Wiesbaden 1946; Vom geschichtlichen Sinn und vom Sinn der Geschichte, Leipzig 1939; Aphorismen und Skizzen zur Geschichte, Leipzig 1941. 96 Srbik’s review in: Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Instituts für Geschichtsforschung 50 (1936), pp. 501–504. 97 Heinrich Ritter von Srbik (1878–1951), Deutsche Einheit. Idee und Wirklichkeit vom Heiligen Römischen Reich bis Königgrätz, 4 vols., Munich 1935–1942. The “Greater German” Srbik believed in a German mission to provide the peoples of Central Europe with a new, just political order. A conservative nationalist by background, he supported Nazi policies and showed anti-Semitic tendencies in his historical writing. 98 Arnold Oskar Meyer (1877–1944), Bismarck. Der Mensch und Staatsmann, Leipzig 1944.


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I am very curious to see your book on the Junker. A topic worthy of the most intensive examination on the basis of the highest of scholarly standards and the need for truth. How typical that Fontane could love these Junker while at the same time seeing through them and criticizing them in the sharpest of terms. His letters contain a great deal on that. Your plan for the book is very much to my liking. My warm regards to Fräulein Wieruszowski, whose last letter I answered some time ago. And my best wishes to you yourself. Gratefully yours, Fr. Meinecke99 32. 11 June 1947: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear colleague, Your second charitable package arrived yesterday and again filled us with amazement, joy and gratitude. I am very touched by your selfsacrificing loyalty—and particularly touched by the generous gift of tobacco which will give me many pleasant and stimulating hours of quiet reflection for a long time to come. For my sins I once wrote a few lines on this subject, which I include overleaf as a small symbol of my deep gratitude. With any luck you will have received my letter of 12 Febr.100 We have escaped from the prison of winter since then and the sun is shining once again—yet on the horizon of the world itself we still see nothing but the most dense and threatening of clouds. Many here are panicking about the prospect of war. I myself am struggling not to, but do regard the situation as very serious. No-one wants war. I pray that this sentiment prevails. I am increasingly aware of my age because of my ever declining sight and hearing, but I can still read and work a little, though at a

99 A large ink stain renders Meinecke’s postscript of 13 February only partly legible: Mr. Spritzer and his friend came yesterday evening and brought [. . .] new charitable gift so lavish that we are quite overwhelmed. Our heartfelt thanks! 100 See above, pp. 387–389.

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much slower pace, and recently gave a talk at the Academy on “Ranke and Burckhardt”, the published version of which I will hopefully be able to send you soon.101 I would also like to send you the reprint of my Entstehung des Historismus,102 which has now been published, but am unable to do so as yet. Or perhaps you know a way of sending it? My warmest wishes and thanks, Your Fr. Meinecke Today I long reflected Oh, how’s the spirit so deflected. Its ascent to ethereal Leads always through material. Caffeine and nicotine Have oft to give it wing. So the great Jakob [sic] Burckhardt, The spirit’s high warden, Found cigars and coffee Essential to his creativity. In truth, when could spirit ever be Free of material reality. Or does God’s breath wind Through spirit and mind? In a daze I often get Over this universal secret. However much the problem stays ripe I still smoke my pipe. Should shame make me glum? Calmly I say: homo sum.103

101 Friedrich Meinecke, “Ranke und Burckhardt”, in: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Vorträge und Schriften, no. 27, Berlin 1948. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 7: Zur Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 93–121. 102 Friedrich Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus, 1st edn., 2 vols., Munich 1936. 2nd edn. in one vol. 1946; English edition: Historism. The Rise of a New Historical Outlook, London 1972. 103 Translation by Roger Chickering. The German version reads: Lange dacht’ ich heute nach. Ach, wie ist der Geist so schwach. Immer nur durchs Materielle Steigt er auf ins Ideelle.


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Koffein und Nikotin Müssen oft beflügeln ihn. Selbst dem großen Jakob Burckhardt, Unsres Geistes hohem Burgwart, War Zigarre und der Kaffee Unentbehrlich beim Geschaffe. Ja, wann wär’ der Geist wohl je Frei von der Materie. Oder weht durch Geist und Sinne Gottes Odem mitten inne? Ich gerate in Verträumnis Über dieses Weltgeheimnis. Wie mich dies Problem auch kneife, Rauch’ ich weiter doch die Pfeife. Soll ich mich nun schämen drum? Ruhig sag’ ich: Homo sum.

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33. 29 June 1947: Hans Rosenberg (New York) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I’m ashamed that it’s taken me so long to reply to your dear letter, which meant a great deal to me.104 The past semester was, however, exceptionally demanding. And I was constantly plagued by sleeplessness, so that I had to restrict myself to the fulfilment of my professional obligations and put all private correspondence on the back burner.105 It’s lovely to think that we were able to bring you and yours a little pleasure in the midst of that terrible winter. Herr Spritzer will have passed on our greetings to you again a few weeks ago. I’m afraid the rules have changed again, so that for the time being we won’t be able to send any kind of tobacco products. We sent a second CARE package in January that should have been delivered in March or April. As the CARE organization sent us no acknowledgement of receipt, I recently made enquiries about the parcel. So we may assume that it will reach you very shortly, if you haven’t received it already. I am of course much obliged to you for the books you sent me through Herr Spritzer,106 all of which reached me in perfect condition. I was particularly moved by The German Catastrophe. The strength of the book, if I may be permitted to say so, lies in the diagnosis rather than the cure. In any case it is astonishing that you managed to produce such far-reaching conclusions in your twilight years. I hope to write the final two, very short chapters of my book on the Junker over the summer. Whether I will manage to do so and how they will turn out, depends largely on whether I manage to sleep more or less normally. We all have our little crosses to bear! I’m afraid it is still quite uncertain when my wife will make it to Germany. The regulations that currently apply make it impossible to obtain a visa.

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Letter from Meinecke to Rosenberg of 12 February 1947, see above, pp. 387–389. Meinecke’s letter of 11 June 1947 was obviously yet to reach Rosenberg. 105 Meinecke noted on the letter: Thanked him for the package on 11/6. 106 See above, p. 388.


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I sincerely hope that, after the winter, which was terribly harsh in almost every respect, you and your loved ones have had a chance to recuperate a little over the last few months. Very best wishes from my family to yours. I remain always, in grateful respect, Your Hans Rosenberg 34. 27 November 1947: Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) to Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear Frau Rosenberg, I wonder if this will reach you before the year is out. I have succumbed to the urge to include a German pamphlet107 that presents our current perspective so precisely and paints such an accurate picture—and which the two of you may get something out of as well. I also enclose a photograph of my husband that may remind you, or rather your husband, of him from time to time. It was taken in Salzwedel—without his knowledge—when he had to sign his name in the town’s honorary book (Ehrenbuch). His old hometown arranged for a car to bring us for a two-day stay (in August) to attend an official ceremony in his honour. It was quite delightful and almost certainly our last journey. For he is truly growing older every day now, not least as he has—miraculously—just got over a serious bout of pneumonia. He was seriously ill in bed on his 85th birthday and only Holborn, who had arranged his tour through Germany in such a way that he could be here on that day, popped in to shake his hand. We’re now constantly being helped

107 As evident in Rosenberg’s letter to Meinecke of 2 May 1948 (see below, p. 398), the book in question is by the journalist and writer Ernst Friedlaender (1895–1973), who emigrated first to Locarno then Liechtenstein in 1931 in response to political developments in Germany. Returned to Germany in 1946 and was deputy editor of the weekly Die Zeit until 1950. As one of the leading exponents of the idea of the political unification of Europe, he was president of the Europa-Union Deutschlands from 1956 to 1958. Probably a reference to his 1945 work: Das Wesen des Friedens.

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by the USA—it’s quite odd how our lives are being propped up from there. Prof. Pinson brought us to Dahlem,108 it was Americans that held on to the house for us and then we received your quite unexpected material support, without which we would never have survived these times, which have been indescribably more difficult for others. And now the Epsteins, who really show such loving devotion and circumspection for all those in need, have provided us with penicillin. This has saved my husband’s life. We received a birthday cable from the history department at Harvard with some words greatly honouring my husband. And there on his bedside table with the gorgeous flowers was your tobacco tin and the tin of coffee, which I had set aside for a rainy day, and for which, through me, he now expresses his deepest gratitude. Indeed, the coffee from all of you is a source of great pleasure for him twice a day, and every time he sings out his gratitude! He’s long since back in his study by now and his pipe is in continuous use, thanks to your devoted assistance. As he always says, “I’m not going to be stingy when I have so little time left”! All he now hopes for is to be able to continue holding the colloquy and we hope he will be doing so in nine days’ time. He has had the blue-covered volumes by Humboldt at his side in bed at all times. He has long since worked through them and has often said “If only I have the chance to convey Humboldt to the students as he lives in me”. He has aged greatly these past few weeks, walks with quite a stoop and very slowly—but his mental vigour is still intact. I am truly grateful that he wants for nothing: warm underthings, a warm suit, good food, good coffee, good tobacco—all from the U.S.A.—all thanks to his loyal students. How blessed he is in his old age. The Mayor of Berlin (Friedensburg)109 has asked him for an essay for the 18 March.110 He’s already delivered it. Will this be his final work? Does your husband have the first edition of Historismus? It has been reissued and, if he does not have a copy, my

108 The American historian Koppel S. Pinson, a friend of Meinecke, in Germany as an officer in the army of occupation. Drove Meinecke and his wife back to Berlin from Göttingen on 9 July 1946. 109 Ferdinand Friedensburg (1886–1972), politician and economist. Co-founder of the CDU in Berlin after 1945. Became deputy mayor from late 1946 to early 1951. Briefly acting mayor of Berlin, from 14 August to 1 December 1948. 110 The Revolution of 1848 erupted in Berlin on 18 March with unrest and fighting in the streets. Meinecke’s essay “1848. Eine Säkularbetrachtung” appeared in the Berliner Almanach, pp. 44–77. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 9: BrandenburgPreußen-Deutschland, pp. 345–363.


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husband would be happy to send him one.111 But how can we send it to you? The best thing is for you to come and get it! There is a chance of that happening this year. You must come and stay with us. Holborn was in Berlin officially and was put up in good style. We can only offer a bed in our attic room, but with the warmest of welcomes! Our warmest wishes to both of you. How is your husband? Your Antonie Meinecke 35. 4 December 1947: Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I’m ashamed of taking so long to get in touch. But I have often thought of you and yours, and I was with you in spirit for your eighty-fifth birthday. I hope you will forgive me if I send you my warm wishes only today. Since the start of the semester I’ve had literally no time to think. To really understand this, you have to know the ins and outs of the American college “business”. With fifteen hours of teaching a week and an enormous number of student veterans, you have to draw on all your strength and energy if you want to maintain the standards you’ve set yourself. I was recently offered an appointment as ordinarius and successor to Ziekursch at the University of Cologne. I turned it down a few days ago.112 It was not an easy decision, for despite the dreadful material situation and political uncertainty, there are many reasons I would like to return. Furthermore, I believe that the spirit lives on even amid the ruins, or at least that it can be revived. There is some chance that I might go to Cologne next autumn for a semester. In any event, I plan to spend the summer of 1948 in Europe. I will probably stay in England for two months to visit my

111 112

See above, p. 6. See above, p. 75.

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elderly mother, who moved to East Anglia a few months ago. I’ll go to Germany as well for a few weeks if I’m granted permission. And I’ll certainly make my way to Berlin, for it is extremely important to me to see you again and to visit my old friend Martin Groppler in BerlinWaidmannslust. My wife left for Germany in mid-October. Since her arrival, apart from a telegram, I’m afraid I’ve heard nothing from her, for the postal service has become very sluggish again. My wife has a residence permit for thirty days. Should it be extended, she will also go to Berlin and pass on my best wishes to you. As yet I have no idea when I might complete my study of Junkerdom. Last summer was so tropically warm that it was quite impossible to think clearly, work briskly and get enough sleep. I’m hoping that my four weeks of winter holiday and next summer will take me a good bit further. Hopefully this winter will be less harsh and cruel than last year. How hard it must be for all of you not to lose heart entirely. Most of the letters I get from Germany paint a shocking picture. My best wishes to you and your family for the New Year. I remain as always your loyal and grateful Hans Rosenberg p.s. A pack of lard is on its way to your address. May I ask your dear wife if she would be so kind as to sign and send off the enclosed postcard once it has arrived? 36. 12 January 1948: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear colleague, In addition to all your other generous gifts, you have now sent us a pack of lard as well—even while facing a hard struggle for your own job. My sincere thanks. I hope we see each other again here and that you come and stay with us. Only then will we be able to have a full and proper discussion about all the great problems of our terrible times. I had already discussed in depth and expressed my support for your appointment to Cologne, which you told me about in your letter of


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4 December,113 in conversation with the dean of Cologne University, who paid me a visit, despite suspecting that you would have reservations. I understand these all too well—Rothfels also ultimately turned down the chair in Heidelberg. But a practical substitute is available in the form of guest lectures, so I hope you will come and we will get to see each other. Thanks also for wishing me a happy eighty-fifth birthday. As I celebrated it I was still ill with pneumonia, but the penicillin donated by the Americans here helped and gave me a little more time. And I shall try to fill it as well as I can with my remaining capacity for work and declining sight. My little colloquy with around ten students in my own study—which also has to serve as living and dining room for my family—gives me a fair bit of work but a great deal of pleasure. For there is a tremendous need for intellectual support, for the most valuable of knowledge, among the better of our youth. The good German spirit is still there, however abused and crushed, one of the few signs of hope for a better future. We’re going through W. von Humboldt at the moment, who has a powerful affect on the young people, especially through his early work on the limits of the efficacy of the state114— which is easy to understand today! At the request of the Mayor of Berlin, before falling ill in October I wrote a short reflection on the one hundredth anniversary of 1848115 for the planned commemoration ceremony. It’s currently in press and will show that I have tried to learn from what we have gone through, without having been untrue to myself as a result. Justice, including for one’s opponents, no matter whether of the right or left—offers the only prospect of achieving scholarship that will endure into the future—everything else is merely [word illegible]. My earlier talk on Ranke and Burckhardt116 is also in press and with any luck will soon be ready for dispatch. All printing is bedevilled

113

See above, p. 395. Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Gränzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen”, 1792, in: von Humboldt, Werke, ed. by Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, vol. 1, Darmstadt 1960. This famous work by Wilhelm von Humboldt is tackled by Meinecke in his Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, Meinecke Werke, vol. 5, p. 40ff. 115 See above, p. 17. 116 Ibid. 114

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by the dearth of paper, etc. An English translation of my Deutsche Katastrophe, the third edition of which is already out of print, is apparently underway at Harvard Press.117 My wife will write more to you. With warmth and gratitude, Your old Fr. Meinecke 37. 2 May 1948: Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, After you and your dear wife had already sent us a particularly moving Christmas greeting (I am referring to the stirring little book by Ernst Friedlaender),118 one week ago I also received your serene, wise and penetrating reflections on the one hundredth anniversary of 1848.119 My most sincere thanks for this fine gift, which I value greatly. You are the last living representative of several generations of great German professors of history. It is nonetheless astonishing to see how, amidst the inner and outer hardships and after serious illness, you still manage to see a critical chapter in our often tragic past in a new light. And the day before yesterday I also read your deeply moving letter to Mr. Ford, published in the latest issue of the American Historical Review.120 It would scarcely be possible to express more beautifully and profoundly in a few words what needs to be said about the position and mission of history in our time. My wife was very sad not to be able to go to Berlin. In fact, her trip to Germany as a whole really took it out of her. After she had returned, it took months for her to regain her physical and mental equilibrium. I myself will leave for Rotterdam on 2 July. I plan to spend the best part of the summer in France and England. But I will go to Germany for

117

The German Catastrophe. Translation by Sidney B. Fay, Cambridge/Mass., Harvard University Press 1950. 118 See above, p. 393. 119 See above, p. 17. 120 See above, p. 112.


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two weeks in July. I had it all planned out so nicely—I would visit you in Berlin and, after an interruption of fifteen years, have the chance to talk to my heart’s content once again with you, my dear old teacher. But it seems very doubtful whether this dream will become reality, as the cutting off of Berlin from the outside world has become a bitter reality for the time being.121 During my brief stay in Germany, I also want to get in touch with the University of Cologne. It is likely, though by no means certain as yet, that I will go to Cologne as visiting professor early next year, initially for one semester. Considering the large number of student veterans, it is quite difficult to obtain leave here. But I will keep at it and hope that the technical difficulties can be overcome. Kind regards and warmest wishes from my family to yours. I remain as always your grateful Hans Rosenberg 38. 10 September 1948: Hans Rosenberg to Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 4 My darling, [. . .] Mummy was very “well-behaved” throughout the week. She’s had a good cry and expressed all her deepest feelings, so she is calmer and more sensible now. Her nerves suffered terribly from the war, especially the bombing, and one must of course take this and various other things into account in order to understand her oddities. Both mummy and Thea122 are literally overwhelming me with their love. Their focus is on the external things of course, as they have no or only very little notion of inner needs. Mummy bought me a lovely new tie and I treated myself to one as well. But that’s going to be it, as I have abandoned my plan to buy a pair of shoes here. Practically everything here is very expensive and of poor quality. Even if one changed the rest of the pounds at a poor rate of exchange in New York, one would still be better off than if one spent them on the junk available here.

121 West Berlin was cut off by the Berlin Blockade imposed by the Soviet Union. The city was maintained by an airlift carried out by the Western powers. 122 Sister of Hans Rosenberg.

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[. . .] The essay I’m working on is largely intended to earn money and help meet the costs of the crossing next year. This is a very average reporting job of little literary merit. It’s really not my thing at all and demands a disproportionate amount of time and energy. And it is anything but easy to reconcile the highly conflicting trends in German society. I will probably finish the draft123 and be able to make a start on revising it only during the crossing. I will then have to complete the final revision during the first few weekends in New York. And now to your question concerning the problem of remigration. My stay in Cologne basically confirmed my expectations and calculations, apart from the fact that I found the material living conditions to be far better than I had assumed. As far as the intellectual and political meaning and purpose of professional life, within the context of one’s personal abilities, is concerned, an academic teaching post in Germany offers a quite unique and unrepeatable opportunity over the next 10 to 15 years. Seen from this perspective, I now know even more clearly than I did last winter that it was a fundamental mistake, and a betrayal of my innermost convictions, of my better convictions, to turn down the appointment in Cologne. I know, of course, that accepting it would have meant a sharp drop in material living standards, at least for a number of years. But what’s the point of life if one subordinates it solely or almost exclusively to utilitarian considerations? [. . .] My very best wishes and a tender kiss from Your Hans 39. 11 September 1948: Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear colleague, I was very glad to receive your friendly letter of 2 May124—thank you very much. I wonder whether your stay in Germany passed off smoothly. What a shame you were unable to come to Berlin.

123 Probably a reference to an essay Rosenberg planned but never published on the currency reform in Germany in 1948. The relevant manuscript, which runs to thirtytwo pages, is in Rosenberg’s papers, vol. 100. 124 See above, p. 398f.


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As you may know already, a new, free university is being established here with American aid that will be highly dependent on visiting professors. This might be of some interest to you! I’m still doing relatively well amid the incredible chaos that currently prevails in Berlin. I am still free to teach without restriction in the little colloquy with students that I hold at home. But how dark and imperilled our whole situation here is! At the end of the day I am still hoping that the global crisis can be resolved positively and peacefully. Or at least that the world can take a breather. I delivered the enclosed lecture one-and-a-half years ago in the Academy here.125 Would you be so kind as to forward the second copy to Dr. Wieruszowski, whose address I am unable to find? And what a great debt of gratitude I still owe you for the gifts of tobacco you sent me, which continue to relieve the burdens of everyday life. Best wishes, Your Fr. Meinecke Addition by Frau Meinecke: The second copy went directly to Frl. Wieruszowski, as did your copy. 40. 6 October 1948: Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, As I gather from the lines from your dear wife that arrived today you did not receive my brief letter from Cologne. Yes, I was in Germany, though unfortunately only for two weeks. I spent the rest of the summer in France and England. For all sorts of reasons it was impossible for me to come to Berlin and visit you this time around. I’m sure I hardly need emphasize how greatly I lamented and still regret this. At bottom I am sad that you live in Berlin, for to be quite honest for the past two years I have been convinced that the situation of the Western powers in Berlin is untenable. It is entirely possible that the

125

Lecture on “Ranke und Burckhardt”, see above, p. 17.

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American and British occupation in Berlin will continue. But as far as the political and economic control of Berlin is concerned, the Western powers will not be able to hold out in Berlin, unless they are willing to go to war, which I neither believe nor desire. For the poor Berliners and the East Germans, the international and political situation has tragic implications. The chair in Cologne has now been occupied by Herr Schieder.126 Having satisfied myself on the spot as to how productive and beneficial a teaching post at a West German university might and I dare say would be, I believe it was a fundamental mistake to turn down the offer made last winter. I already indicated to you that family considerations played a decisive role in this. I do not believe I would say no again in future, should another opportunity arise at a good German university. Thank you very much for the fine gift of your “Ranke und Burckhardt”.127 Once again I am amazed by your tremendous capacity, both in the details and on a broad scale, to make old issues and problems interesting and productive in a quite new and exciting way. I shall take the liberty of sending you by regular mail a lengthy review of mine recently published in the American Historical Review.128 It is nothing of great significance, but will, I think, be of some interest to you. During my stay in Germany everyone was talking about currency reform. I committed some thoughts on this to paper, first and foremost for my own use.129 I also collected a great deal of material. I may make an essay out of it. I hope to spend the entire summer semester of 1949 in Germany and, should circumstances allow, to go to Berlin. Please accept my warmest wishes for your approaching birthday. The very best wishes from my family to yours. In grateful respect, Your Hans Rosenberg

126 Theodor Schieder (1908–1984), later a highly influential German historian of modern history. Became chief editor of the Historische Zeitschrift in 1957 and was president of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences from 1964. 127 See above, p. 401. 128 Presumably a reference to Rosenberg’s sharply critical review of a book by Ferdinand Schevill, The Great Elector, Chicago 1947, in: AHR 53 (1948), pp. 815–817. 129 See above, p. 400.


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41. 17 November 1948: Antonie Meinecke (Berlin) to Hans und Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 33 Dear Frau Rosenberg and Herr Professor, Once again you have blessed us with your kind gifts. We were thrilled to open your lovely parcel—a marvellous source of comfort and solace for the hard times that may lie ahead of us. But you’ve sent us provisions so faithfully and frequently that you must please stop now. You have relatives to think about and we’re over the worst. Please forgive my husband for not writing to you himself—the dark days, the long blackouts and the increasing problems with his vision exhaust his eyes so utterly. He is also faced with new tasks that will amaze you. He was delighted with your letter. The old ties with his students and friends in America mean so much to him. He immediately passed on your wish to hold guest lectures here to Prof. Redslob130 in the most approving terms possible. We very much hope that you obtain a position once things are running more smoothly at this newly founded “Free University”. In any case we shall keep on pestering them and reminding them about it. We see a lot of Herr Redslob. He is devotedly building up the Free University, where my husband has taken up an “honorary appointment”. It was a momentous decision, but when the new faculty of education approached him with some very Eastern demands my husband declared that he was ending his association with Humboldt University. You can imagine all the agitation this caused, but he pursued his chosen course very firmly and without doubts—I’m proud of his strength and understanding of the overall situation, old man that he is. Now the city administration, which is behind the new university, and the students have strongly implored him to take on the vice-chancellorship—just to give the whole thing a baptismal blessing. Pro-vicechancellor Redslob will take care of the business side of things—but of course he has to have a general idea of what’s going

130 Professor Dr. Edwin Redslob (1884–1973), art historian. As pro-vicechancellor, he took care of the routine business of the vice-chancellor’s office at the Free University, before formally succeeding Meinecke as vice-chancellor in 1949.

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on and think about new statutes and the opening ceremonies he will have to speak at.131 It’s all too much for an eighty-six-year-old really, but even the old and especially the brave are needed in our burnt-out Germany. They all come and see the old scholar with such implicit faith, though he has no yearning for such honour and acclamation and just wants to get on with working on his colloquy in peace. It will be starting on Saturday, in our house—most of the students have seceded from Humboldt University. The Free University is now accommodated in the rooms of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and neighbouring villas, and cinemas and auditoriums are being rented as well—the students are devotedly building up this, their creation—but there is still a long way to go until it becomes a “university”. I mention this as it may be of interest to you. We have dangerous times ahead of us. I wonder how the elections will turn out.132 The results will of course be anti-Eastern. What will the response be? Let’s hope the Allied forces and the airlift continue to protect us. People are living in dread of the winter. They’re chopping down the trees on the street and you can’t get coal at any price. Luckily I bought some last spring, so my husband always has a warm room, but the house is cold. No-one has central heating with the exception of those with special connections. But we want to make it through in upright and respectable fashion. This is our hope. My husband’s decision may have consequences, but he has “stuck to his guns”, which is what he truly wished to do. All is well at home. Everyone has tonnes of work and gets on with his tasks. We’re all united in deep gratitude that we still have our household “head”. His birthday was so splendid and there were wonderful flowers—as thanks for joining the university. When you look at the writing desk a box of tobacco that you sent us can always be seen in the background, an unfailing source of pleasure and solace. How often he has expressed such thoughts.

131 Because of illness, Meinecke’s address had to be transmitted to the auditorium by broadcaster RIAS at the university’s inaugural ceremony on 4 December 1948. It appears in: Meinecke Werke: vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, p. 490f. 132 Reference to elections to the Berlin city council of 5 December 1948 in West Berlin. The SPD received 64.5% of the votes, while the CDU and LDP took 19.4% and 16.1% respectively. Of a total of 98 seats, the SPD gained 60, the CDU 21 and the LDP 17. See Gerhard A. Ritter/Merith Niehuss, Wahlen in Deutschland 1946–1991. Ein Handbuch, Munich 1991, p. 150. No candidates were fielded by the SED.


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Our best wishes to you both. I wonder how you are doing healthwise. How absolutely wonderful it would be if you were to show up here! Thank you so much to both of you for your kind help. Your Antonie Meinecke 42. 15 January 1949: Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 221 Dear Herr Geheimrat and Frau Meinecke, Thank you so much for your letter of 17 November,133 which we received fourteen days ago and still feel very moved by. Indeed, all of us here who feel a close bond with you are deeply impressed by the brave, direct and upright way in which you and your family, and so many others that labour and are heavy laden in Berlin, are resisting the Eastern demands. The fact that you, my dear Herr Geheimrat, have made up your mind to place every last ounce of your strength at the service of the “Free University” is a source of moral support and guidance to your students and admirers in America. It may interest you to know that people talked a great deal about you just recently at the annual conference of the American Historical Association in Washington, which revolved around the revolution of 1848. It is, I think, quite impossible to foresee what kind of short-term “solution” the Berlin crisis is heading towards. There are probably just two possibilities over the long term: either Berlin will absorb the Eastern Zone or the Eastern Zone will absorb Berlin. I’m afraid I won’t be able to go through with my plan to teach at the University of Cologne with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation during the coming summer semester. Henceforth, the Foundation will no longer contribute to the funding of visiting professorships, as the War Department has now made funds available to

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this end. Of course only those German universities in the American zone will benefit from these funds.134 Decisions on the selection and appointment of visiting professorships are made not in Washington but by the American central office in Germany. As far as the chain of authority and recruitment preferences are concerned, the initiative lies with the administrative sections of the German universities. Should it suit the “Free University” for me to teach in Berlin during the coming summer semester, then the university administration would have to file an application to that effect with the Chief, Education Branch, Education and Cultural Relations Division, US Army, APO 696–A. How wonderful it would be if I could see you again and talk to you after sixteen long and fateful years! I hope the winter was and is just about bearable. We are all fine. My wife has regained her old vitality and happily I am now over the worst of a flu that was a great hindrance in October and November. In old affection and loyal remembrance I remain, With best wishes from my family to yours, Your grateful Hans Rosenberg 43. 9 April 1949: Hans Rosenberg (Brooklyn) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 39 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I just wanted to dash off a few lines to tell you how much I am looking forward to seeing you and yours again in about four weeks. We

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Cologne was in the British occupation zone.


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shall make the crossing on a British ship and are expected to arrive in Cherbourg on 1 May. From there we shall immediately go via Paris to Cologne, where I am thinking of staying with my brother-in-law (his address is overleaf ) for one or two days. As I informed Pro-vicechancellor Redslob yesterday, I would ask that instructions for the journey from Frankfurt to Berlin, planned for the 4 May, be sent to my brother-in-law’s address. My wife will initially stay with her family for one month. Although there’s no time left to clarify the practical details by letter, we expect that the relevant Berlin authorities will permit her to join me in Berlin from early June. Thank you so much for all your efforts. I look forward to seeing you soon. Best wishes from my family to yours, Your faithfully, Hans Rosenberg 44. 11 November 1950: Hans Rosenberg to the Department of State, Division of Exchange of Persons (Washington, D.C.) NL Rosenberg 42, typewritten copy in English featuring handwritten corrections by Rosenberg Gentlemen, After having conferred with members of your Department in Washington on September 21 and September 22, immediately after my return to the United States, I take pleasure in sending you herewith my written report with respect to my mission to Germany.135 On

135 In what was obviously a draft of the report, also of 11 November 1950, Rosenberg writes with regard to the character of his “mission”: My “mission” was never officially defined. Furthermore, I never received any “instructions” from HICOG [Allied High Commission for Germany], as implied in your “Authorization of official Travel” which, incidentally, did not reach me before the end of July, i.e. almost six weeks after my arrival in Berlin. As early as last February, I was informed by Mr. Howard Johnston, Higher Education Adviser, Berlin, that his headquarters in Bad Nauheim had transmitted to you a request for a travel grant which was to enable me to teach in the Free University Berlin from the middle of May until the end of the Summer Semester. Since the processing of this request took more time than expected and since this delay, in my considered opinion, tended to jeopardize the very purpose of my

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account of various other commitments I have not been able to submit this report to you at an earlier date. Please accept my apologies for this delay. Before I set out to describe my activities and to record some of the impressions which I gained during the summer it must be said, for the sake of perspective, that this was my third trip to Germany since the end of the war. In June and July, 1948, after an intermission of fifteen years, I revisited Western Germany in response to an invitation from the University of Cologne. Aside from gaining on this occasion some insight into the problems of the German postwar university, I had the unexpected opportunity of observing on the spot the electrifying impact of currency reform just after its introduction. In 1949, I went over for a period of four months. For three consecutive months I served as Visiting Professor of Modern History at the newly established Free University. When I returned this year I had, therefore, not only a basis of comparison. I also had a practically tested and, consequently, a more definitive conception as to how to go about “re-education” and “reorientation”. Sustained reflection about these matters conditioned, first of all, the choice of my teaching program and the particular method which I employed to reach my limited objectives. From June 16 to August 16, I gave a lecture course (4 hours a week plus several hours of discussion each week) on the history of Europe and the United States from 1918 to 1939. In addition, I conducted a research seminar which was made up mostly of Ph.D. candidates. German students who, like their teachers, have been shut off from the outside world for such a long time obviously must acquire, critically ascertained knowledge and understanding of the immediate historic framework of the complex and dislocated society in which they live. How are they to overcome their emotional ressentiments, their spiritual solitude, moral confusion and often muddled thinking, how are they to face the facts unless they learn to comprehend, in rigorously realistic terms, what has happened to them, to their nation and to mankind at large, how it happened, and why it happened?

“mission” I finally decided to proceed on my own initiative. Hence I left for Berlin by June 14, arrived there on the 15th, and assumed my self-imposed duties immediately thereafter. I mention these facts merely in order to explain a somewhat anomalous situation which impelled me to map out in my own way a string of activities whereby a “Specialist in History” might hope to help to implement the foreign policy objectives of the US Government in Germany.


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The professional historians of western Germany today, except for a bare handful of men, do not think it proper to pay serious attention to the scientific study and teaching of contemporary history, broadly conceived. This negative attitude which in its practical consequences entails a rather irresponsible and complacent escape from the present is, no doubt, in line with the allegedly “non-political” traditions of the German university as they crystallized in the days after Schmoller, Wagner, Brentano, and Treitschke.136 This aversion to take stock of the disagreeable recent past has been strongly reinforced by the revulsion against the Nazi regime which had bent its efforts though, on the university level, only with limited success, to convert the writing and teaching of history into the obedient political handmaiden of the Ministry of Propaganda. Any attempt at appraising developments since 1918, if not 1890, the year of Bismarck’s dismissal from office, is regarded by the average German historian as being necessarily distorted by “subjectivity” and “politics”, ruling out the very possibility of a scholarly inquiry. Moreover, there is nowadays among German professors a widespread propensity to avoid “touchy” issues and thereby the danger of possibly getting again into personal trouble. Last, but not least, formidable and not easily surmountable intellectual obstacles account for this unwillingness to turn to a methodical study of the history of the 20th century. Having been wrapped up in recent decades, whether by personal inclination or by force of circumstances, in the more or less isolated investigation of phases of their own national past, German historians and the almost non-existing German political scientists today simply do not know enough the development of the contemporaneous outside world in order to be qualified to offer a comprehensive and, as to factual knowledge, tools of analysis, interpretative approach, and unity of thought, up-to-date course in 20th century history. Few in Germany are aware of the considerable amount of highcaliber work which in this field has been accomplished by American, British, and French political scientists, economists, sociologists, and historians. And these few who are aware of it do not have as yet access

136 Reference to political economists Lujo Brentano (1844–1931), Gustav von Schmoller (1836–1917), and political economist and public finance specialist Adolph Wagner (1835–1917), who played a leading role in the Society for Social Policy (Verein für Sozialpolitik), founded in 1872, the most important organization concerned with bourgeois social reform in the German Empire, as so-called “lecture theatre socialists” (“Kathedersozialisten”). Heinrich von Treitschke (see above, p. 132) was an emphatically nationalist political historian and Reichstag deputy who made a strong public impact.

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to most of the foreign publications which they need as a prerequisite to trying to catch up with the progress of scholarship in the West. It is commonplace knowledge that particularly in the social sciences the Germans have fallen far behind since the close of World War I. In this crucial area the need for “reorientation” is most urgent. By and large, in my considered opinion, “re-education” will no longer be served by applying external pressure to German thought and behaviour. It is too late for that. Moreover, anything that has the odor of imported “propaganda” or “indoctrination”, anything that is accompanied by the blowing of trumpets and the beating of drums almost invariably meets with suspicion and resentment, hurts the resurgent sensibilities of national vanity and thus makes it more difficult even for the open-minded to see the light on their own accord. I did not, therefore, consider it my task to plead, in general terms, for “reform” and “rethinking”. I did not attempt to give guidance and communicate ideas by telling my audience “I am better than you; I have studied this as you have not”. Knowing a bit about the bewildered, embittered and disillusioned state of mind of German youth and the inner reservations of the rather selfsatisfied bulk of German university teachers, I am indeed convinced that a visiting professor from abroad, bent on challenging the deeply ingrained misconceptions and prejudices of the politically ill-informed or uninformed, of the emotionally unbalanced and socially uprooted, is confronted with an exacting job. If he happens to be a social scientist and well-meaning ambassador of international understanding he may, in the given circumstances, do more harm than good unless he makes a sustained, carefully prepared effort to demonstrate, on the basis of a specific “case study”, what exactly it means to have lived so long in an intellectual ghetto and political prison. Proceeding on this assumption, I have tried in all sincerity and with all the energy at my command to convert my main teaching subject last summer into such a case study. Incidentally, it formed a natural sequel of the lecture course on “Strukturwandlungen der europäischen Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 1850–1914” which I gave in Berlin last year. In dealing with the European-American world after 1918 I made an effort to acquaint my students with the diverse lines of approach, the most fruitful methods and the basic findings of western research in this particular field of study, hitherto a terra incognita to them. I used every conceivable opportunity to show in applied form how useful and indispensable the services are which the social sciences can render to a scholarly appraisal of the major social, economic, and political problems of the more recent past.


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This year I had the good fortune of starting out at once with a core of students who had become attached to me the year before. I am happy to report that more than just a few among the more than 150 students who worked with me during the summer seem to have drawn right conclusions from what I tried to convey to them by implication rather than prescription. To a larger or lesser extent these responsive, alert, impressionable, and earnest young people are beginning to see more clearly that some of the most glaring shortcomings of present day German historiography and university teaching in history must be attributed to a type of training which, if not outright obsolete, at least is no longer adequate. And indeed, the plain fact that in recent decades most German history professors and university students of history have received little or no instruction in the social sciences is, in no small measure, responsible for the mental isolation and impasse into which most of them have drifted. Hence the widespread narrowness of outlook, the prevalence of immaturity of political judgement and of a harmful spirit of political parochialism, the lack of insight into the complexities of social processes, the often amazing ignorance and naiveté with reference to matters economic and technological, the staleness and inflexible conventionalism in the choice of research topics, the clinging to the “old stuff ” in teaching. Obviously, it will take several decades to break this vicious circle. Most German students as I got to know them in Berlin are still highly mouldable. Their loyalties are not yet definitely fixed. Potentially, there is a good chance of winning over, under proper guidance, the majority to a genuinely democratic way of life and to constructive activities which are serviceable to voluntary international cooperation. Especially the more enterprising and sober-minded among the war veterans are quite eager to seek and to test new and better ways than those which their elders have passed on or are passing on to them. It is a relatively easy task to stir up a desire for “reorientation”, to help to fortify an inner urge in this direction where it already exists and to define and outline the specific objectives to be attained. Unhappily enough, however, a guest professor from abroad, just because he is only a passing visitor, can offer little enduring aid in making good intentions and wishful thinking effectively translate themselves into sustained action and practical deeds. Take for instance the situation of those thoughtful students majoring or minoring in history who have come to realize the pressing need for acquiring some up-to-date training in the social sciences for the sake of bringing a new élan and some vitality into their professional work, present and future, of learning to

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critically analyze significant political and economic problems and of developing a higher capacity for qualified civic leadership and improved community service. Unless promising students of this kind enjoy the privilege of being sent to America or Great Britain for a year or two there is mighty little they can actually do within the traditionalist German university system, as it stands today. A number of formidable obstacles beyond the control of the individual impose serious checks upon the most earnest effort. Most German university students and particularly those at the Free University are a poverty-stricken lot who can devote little or no time to intellectual “luxuries”. Many who as soldiers and prisoners of war have lost many precious years of their lives are impelled or, at any rate, feel obligated to “streamline” their studies. Competition happens to be extraordinarily intense, and the fear of arriving too late on the labor market interferes with the maturing of thought and of convictions which are more than loose opinions, superficially scraped together. Most of the history majors and minors are prospective high school teachers. The high school teaching license calls for a combination of history and language or history and geography training. There is hardly any room for economics, sociology, political science, and social psychology in their curriculum. Even if adequate offerings in the social sciences are available, which is neither the case in the Free University nor in most west German universities, history students, under present conditions, simply do not have the time to avail themselves of these opportunities. Their own history professors are, with few exceptions, not “social science minded”. More or less set in their old ways, either too old or intellectually too phlegmatic and self-satisfied or too overworked with day to day tasks, they are not particularly over-zealous to turn over a new leaf and to encourage nonconformist tendencies among their students. And since these gentlemen are used to replenish their ranks by cooptation down to the point of designating, not infrequently, their own successors their grip will not easily be broken. The inclination of the vast majority of German history professors to look backward rather than forward is typical of the prevalent way of thinking in the German academic world today. Everything which is not in accord with pre-1933, if not pre1914, university traditions is looked upon with misgivings or even meets with open hostility. Significantly enough the very moderate proposals for university reform which the mixed English-German commission under the chairmanship of Lord Lindsay worked out, in


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1948,137 have been quietly buried in the files. There is, no doubt, in all west German universities a small, vigil, courageous but isolated and hard-pressed group of professors who know that the world shaking events of the past few decades call for a readjustment of the social functions of the German university, particularly with regard to its public responsibilities and place in the community at large, its administrative organization, its curriculum, teaching methods and network of professor-student relationships. Compared to institutions such as Göttingen, Heidelberg, Bonn, Marburg, there is in the Free University a larger percentage of self-critical teachers and scholars who clearly realize that many features of the German university which, no doubt, were admirable in the days of Wilhelm von Humboldt and, perhaps, may have been good and adequate twenty or thirty years ago have become deficient, outmoded or outright harmful at present. Yet, the disconcerting fact remains that the influence of these men is weaker now than it was a year ago. In the largest Berlin faculty, the Philosophical Faculty, which I happen to know best the “reformers” are already fighting with their back against the wall. After having “arrived”, the great majority of the teaching staff seeks to enhance its reputation by trying to cover up the stigma of belonging to an unconventional parvenu university which, moreover, as many fear, in the end may turn out to be just a stopgap university. Engaged in the struggle for the speedy attainment of settled living and working conditions and very much concerned about gaining recognition on the footing of equality, most Free University professors, highly conscious of their precarious position, do not cherish the idea, that professional colleagues in

137 Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, first Baron Lindsay of Birker (1879–1952), philosopher and leading expert on the education system. Master of Balliol College, Oxford, 1924–1949, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, 1935–1938. Advocated the admission of émigré German scholars to his college. Adviser on educational issues to the Labour Party and the Labour government, which awarded him a peerage after the Second World War. In 1948 he became the most influential member of a commission on the reform of the German university system made up mainly of Germans, whose far-reaching proposals were not implemented. The commission’s conclusions, the so-called “Blaue Gutachten”, often wrongly described as the “Lindsay Report”, was published by the British government: University Reform in Germany. Report by a German Commission, London 1949. On the German response to the report, see Harold Husemann, “Anglo-German Relations in Higher Education”, in: Arthur Hearnden (ed.), The British in Germany. Educational Construction after 1945, London 1978, p. 158–173, esp. pp. 169–171.

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Western Germany might look upon them as eccentrics. Hence the drift into voluntary Gleichschaltung, generated by the great “ambition” to transform the Free University into an ordinary west German university. Though only two years old and by virtue of its unique local setting and its fresh start potentially qualified to play the role of a pioneer in German higher education, the Free University, it seems to me, is on the verge of loosing its original identity and purpose of existence, for the initial élan has largely petered out. If “free university” merely means to be free from Russian domination and communist party control, the so-called Free University is not more free than any other west German university. However, the German and American founders of the Free University envisaged an institution which indeed should share this precious freedom with its west German sister institutions but at the same time should be distinct from them by being more free than they are from the dead weight of old-style German university tradition. Of this spirit of liberty there is very little left in Berlin. And this applies not merely to the majority of the professors but, unfortunately enough, also to the bulk of the newly matriculated students, especially in so far as the latter are recent graduates of the west Berlin high schools. As life in general has outwardly become more normal again in the western sectors of Berlin since the lifting of the blockade, and, as for material comforts and political mentality, somewhat more “west Germanized”, so the Free University, at an even more breathtaking pace, has “normalized” its mode of existence. It is good to know that the Free University has come of age. At the same time, however, it is, perhaps, a bit alarming to note that the attenuation of external pressures and material difficulties and the resulting acquisition of a modest amount of security and stability threaten to nip in the bud the, at the point of origin, strong possibility of making the Free University function as a particularly noteworthy center of “reorientation” in the realm of higher learning. The transition from hasty improvisations to the working out of necessary routines of regular work has been accompanied by premature eagerness to mould the Free University in the image of the timehonored German university pattern which, as a matter of the historic record, has failed to meet the pragmatic test in an age of political turmoil, social fermentation, and moral confusion. Clearly, in the course of the twentieth century the German universities have on the whole retired more and more from any responsibility towards what has happened.


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While in Berlin, I did not confine my activities to teaching in the formal sense. Aside from having many conferences with individual students and small groups of students who worked under my guidance I had innumerable conversations with various members of the Free University community. I was in particularly close contact with two groups: with those vigorous and often outstanding students who play an active role in student self-government; and with those colleagues who seek encouragement and inner support because they are swimming against the current stream. These intimate and mutually candid discussions served the good purpose of airing an intertwined combination of personal, intellectual, professional, educational, and political problems, linked to the fundamental objective of “reorientation” and of making clear, in specific terms, what American policy stands for. Whenever I associated with German people, whether elderly, middle-aged or young, I made it my business to approach them patiently, unassumingly, naturally, avoiding argumentation in the abstract but not avoiding the manly expression of clear conclusions. Finally, I tried to reach a wider audience by lecturing, under the auspices of RIAS, over the “university of the air”.138 Since I had the opportunity of watching with a critical eye the cross-currents of development in the Free University from the inside I informally reported from time to time to E & CR BR [Education and Cultural Relation Branch] officials in Berlin. I also conferred with Dr. John Riedl in Bad Nauheim. People of good will at the Free University have often complained to me that, aside from the Higher Education Adviser, they hardly ever get a chance of meeting American officials, of exchanging ideas with them, of learning from them what exactly, in their considered opinion, “democratisation” would mean in its application to the structure and daily life of the Free University. Unquestionably, the strengthening of American influence upon the Free University is largely a matter of human relations and of personnel. Government acts through human beings, and its quality is largely judged by the caliber of its representatives. In a crucial and vulnerable outpost such as Berlin it is, in the interest of the good cause, absolutely essential that all those Americans who, as a matter of professional

138 Reference to the lectures “Limits of historical understanding” (“Grenzen der historischen Erkenntnis”) and “The changing nature of Marxism” (“Wandlungen des Marxismus”) broadcast by RIAS. The manuscripts are to be found in Rosenberg’s papers, vols. 108 and 106.

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duty, have to deal with the subtleties of educational and cultural affairs are top-level performers and impressive personalities. The US Government has been fortunate in having had in Mr. Johnston139 a young official whose sincerity and humanity, simplicity and modesty, selfless devotion and enthusiasm have earned him the admiration and affection of the grateful bulk of the student body and the respect of the “reformers” among the Free University professors. However, it is not to be forgotten that the triangle of heavily inflated personal self-esteem, social group vanity and national pride which in the case of the average German university professor has made for a peculiar sense of “belonging” to an aristocratic intellectual and social elite does not help to make this species of man inclined to accept “advice” from an “ordinary” outsider. If the US Government wishes to increase its influence upon Free University developments it would, for the sake of assuring the maximum effect, seem advisable to entrust the office of Higher Education Adviser to an exceptionally outstanding scholar, preferably to an American-born social scientist or philosopher who should have an assistant concentrating on the petty administrative detail. Your higher education representative should be a person who really knows Germany and the Germans, past and present, who combines strong convictions with common sense, sound judgement, imagination and tact, who by the sheer force of his personality and his superior attainments would be bound to make a strong impression. This would enable him to foster, though mainly by means of informal contacts, the growth of the wholesome things he stands for. If such a “miracle man” cannot be found or if it is thought unnecessary to look for such a person, there are other ways and means to enhance American influence. After all, the Free University depends for its further consolidation and expansion on the continued financial support of the American Government. The bankrupt City Government of Berlin cannot be expected to finance all the vital needs of the Free University. Should the Federal Government in Bonn provide substantial subsidies the drift into “west Germanization” at the Free University would receive an additional impetus. Beyond doubt, the Free University needs more money because it needs more buildings, lecture rooms,

139 Howard W. Johnston, higher education adviser to the US mission in Berlin. Advocated the foundation of the Free University.


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offices, laboratories, equipment and books if it is to do its job well and to remain a place of refuge for students coming from the Russian Zone. I wonder whether the time may not have come to discontinue the practice of furnishing American financial support through payment of an annual or quarterly lump sum to be spent at the discretion of the German university authorities. Even with limited funds more might be accomplished by earmarking American subsidies, by setting them aside for specific purposes which, from the American point of view, appear to be particularly worthy and necessary and, therefore, hold out the prospect of yielding a handsome dividend. The recently established Institute of Political Science140 is, in my humble opinion, a step in the right direction, for it is not only designed to develop an important field of learning which to the German university virtually is a virgin field. Potentially, this Institute makes possible the re-training of some re-trainable faculty members, especially if they work together with a distinguished foreign scholar, brought over not just for a few weeks or a few months but for a whole year or even two years. Above all, reasonably well-endowed and well managed institutes of this kind provide an excellent opportunity for the most gifted, the most enterprising and, as to character and political reliability, most trustworthy young scholars to mature and to work in peace and security. Thus they could prepare themselves for the hard task of effectively contributing to the “reorientation” of the German university, by making it less isolated from a great part of the population and public opinion and by making it assume duties which go beyond the pursuit of pure knowledge. Viewed in the long term perspective, this reorientation stands and falls with the influence which younger men of the described type will manage to gain in German institutions of higher learning. Under the impact of the unforgettable lesson in international politics, which the people of Berlin have been taught Berlin has become a sort of international city. Why not, I venture to ask, use this novel and challenging social situation as a springboard for attempting to develop, under clearly directed American auspices, the Free University into an international, that is, into a western rather than a distinctively west

140 The Institut für Politische Wissenschaft, for which Karl Dietrich Bracher was working when he composed and published Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie, Villingen 1955, held in very high regard by Rosenberg, as part of the Institute’s own series of publications.

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German institution? I just wonder. Why start form scratch in Brussels, as is now being done, if the institutional basis and the proper local milieu for such an experiment already exist in Berlin? A word remains to be said about my activities from the middle of August to September 20, when I returned to the States. During that period I followed up more fully a little research project which I had begun to tackle before, namely, to look into the rather elusive present state of mind of the German professional historians, as such. In recent years, and at first just as a matter of personal curiosity, I have been keeping track of the major German publications in medieval and modern history. In the early part of the summer I filled in certain gaps in my knowledge, and in the later part I methodically ploughed through all German historical journals, put out since 1945. I was primarily interested in finding out to what extent and in what specific forms new ways of thinking, new standards of values, new habits of doing things have crystallized among German historians since 1945. During the first half of September, in order to complement the published record of “reorientation from within” with more direct human evidence, I visited the Universities of Freiburg, Tübingen, and Bonn where I interviewed a number of professional colleagues, especially those who published little or nothing since the end of the war. Lack of time prevented a comprehensive and thorough check. Naturally, the spotty picture which I have gained is a divided one. It goes beyond the scope of this report to illustrate here the issues which are involved or even to state the conclusions which I have reached. However, it may interest you to know that in the immediate future my findings, though somewhat provisional and tentative in character, will be summed up in a report which, in the form of a straightforward essay, is scheduled to appear in Der Monat, published by the Information Service Division, HICOG.141 Respectfully yours Hans Rosenberg

141 There is no evidence of an article by Rosenberg on “history in Germany”. In the first edition of his book Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, Autocracy (see above, p. 71), published after much delay in 1958, Rosenberg subjected the development of the discipline of history in Germany to critical examination in a “postscript” (pp. 229–238). This was omitted in the 1966 paperback edition.


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45. [after 1948] Hans Rosenberg’s notes on Friedrich Meinecke NL Rosenberg 105, handwritten in English Meinecke the man; his moral stature as a human being; a humanist liberal. the teacher, tolerant, no spoon-feeder, though conventional in his lectures the historian—with Hintze the leading G. [German] historian the political activist—Notabelnpolitik [politics of notables] born 1862 when the Prussian Const. Conflict began died in 1954 pupil of Droysen, Moritz Ritter, R. Koser,142 Dilthey Straßburg, Freiburg, Bln, editor of HZ Long a believer in & defender of B’s [Bismarck’s] empire, ended as a sharp critic of Pruss. militarism Always a stubborn upholder of freedom of conscience His pol. loyalties & preferences shifted a lot in the course of his life After the 1870’s, German historiography without a fresh élan, except the historical school of economics, a pioneering trail blazer, and the drift into the history of ideas, initiated by R. Haym & W. Dilthey. ignorant in matters of econ. history started out as an archivist which gave him time to think, to meditate & mature. Boyen (1896–98) ZA [Zeitalter] der deutschen Erhebung 1795–1815 (1906),143 with emphasis on the ideas which the Reformers sought to project into the outer world; still believes then in the alliance between spirit & power, ethics & politics Weltbürgertum [Cosmopolitanism] (1908), still marked by state-adulation, at least an idealisation of the state in general & the German national state in particular.—Hegel, Ranke, Bism. [Bismarck]— growth of national consciousness—the transition from the

142 Moriz Ritter (1840–1923). Meinecke attended lectures by Ritter during his two semesters in Bonn. Reinhold Koser (1852–1914), historian and archivist. Professor extraordinarius for modern general history and the history of Brandenburg-Prussia in Berlin from 1884. Director of the State Archives in Prussia and of the Secret State Archive from 1896. Wrote mainly on Frederick the Great. 143 Published in English as The Age of German Liberation, Berkeley/London 1977.

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Germans as a “cultural nation” to a “pol. nation”—Kulturnation & Staatsnation—moves on mountain peaks;144 something esoteric about it—interested in the leading pol. thinkers. “Radowitz” (1913), the advisor of FW IV. [Friedrich Wilhelm IV] with emphasis on 1848–50145 Staatsräson [Machiavellism] (1924)—no longer reveals the harmonizing optimism & lofty idealism of the past.—W.W. I [World War I] caused the break; stresses the conflict between might & ethics; raison d’état vs. [versus] morality & justice—history was to him now an unfolding of tragedy, a perpetual dualism from Machiavelli to the present; now deals with Europ. rather than with German history—the widening of horizon. “Gesch. des dtsch-engl. Bündnisproblems 1890–1901” [“History of the Anglo-German alliance problem, 1897–1901”] (1927) Entstehung des Historismus [Historism. The Rise of a New Historical Outlook] (1936), reveals M. as the last of the great romantic historians—treats not the history of the historical theories but rather the history of historical consciousness & relativism as a Weltanschauung, “understanding” everyth. & “forgiving” & “justifying” everything.— as against the normative rational thinking of the Enlightenment an epigone of German classical idealism from Herder to Ranke. The German Catastrophe, preceded by long period of silence, an agonizing book as a “politician”—a “conservative reformer” trying to integrate the working class into the nation & the national state a “Vernunftrepublikaner” [republican by reason] after 1918, joined the Democratic Party Horrified by the emergence of the Nazi regime 1948 F.U. [Free University] underrated & failed to understand really the social and espec. [ially] the econ. preconditions & foundations of ideas as well as of historical action—compare with his contemporaries (as Srbik) suggests with Pirenne or (my idea) with Marc Bloch!146 144 In his writings on intellectual history, Meinecke focussed consciously on the “peaks” of the great thinkers while neglecting the lowly spheres of political thought. 145 Friedrich Meinecke, Radowitz und die deutsche Revolution, Berlin 1913. 146 Henry Pirenne (1862–1935) was a leading Belgian historian, Marc Bloch (1886– 1945), who was murdered as a resistance fighter and Jew in 1944, a great French one.


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the danger in Meinecke: he tends to treat the history of ideas in a social & econ.—& sometimes even pol. vacuum takes aesthetic pleasures in the unfolding of these ideas espec. if they are “beautiful” & “lofty” ideas in themselves; a more pragmatist approach with emphasis on functional analysis in the serviceability & social career of ideas rather alien to him. the “Meinecke school”: Rothfels, Kaehler, Holborn, Baron, Gerhard, Gilbert, Masur, & the “heretics”: Kehr & myself. [another sheet of notes:] tried to tie up the study of history with both politics & philosophy was always intellectually & emotionally involved Weltbürgertum—expressed a philosophy of harmony & contentment a history of historical thinking shows the historical origins of the historical sense in France, England, Germany of the changing conception of history the concept of development and of individuality development not = progressive perfection doctrine of relativity [another sheet:] M. combined enormous learning with great modesty extremely subtle in his analysis of ideas His style often cryptic after Dilthey, no other German historian (except Troeltsch)147 more given to philosophical speculation history of ideas to M. meant mainly history of pol. thought & history of historical thought & of speculation about the meaning of history M. as an intellectual personality completely absorbed in his work & dedicated to it

147 Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), leading Protestant theologian and philosopher. Held a chair in “philosophy of culture, history, society and religion and history of Christianity” at the faculty of philosophy in Berlin from 1915. Friend of Meinecke.

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46. [1953/1954]: Hans Rosenberg’s outline of a project on the history of the German bureaucracy since 1815 NL Rosenberg 1, copy, typewritten in English Statement of Proposed Activity A Study of the German Bureaucracy Since 1815.148 The research project which I offer for consideration is closely related to my long-range professional interests. It is the “natural” sequel to my recently completed book entitled: “Bureaucracy and Aristocracy in Absolutist Prussia, 1660–1815. A Study of the Origins of the Modern Public Service and of the Regrouping of a Governing Class.”149 The manuscript of this study is in process of acceptance by the Harvard University Press. For exact information I refer your Committee to Professor Oscar Handlin,150 Chairman of the Committees on Publication of the Harvard University History Department. It is my intention to carry out a comprehensive investigation, predominantly based on original research, of some major aspects of the transformation of the civil government bureaucracy in Germany since 1815. The proposed inquiry is not concerned with the minutia of administrative organization. Nor does it entail a legalistic treatment or a detailed account of the day-to-day activities of the Civil Service (Berufsbeamtentum) as a technical instrument of public administration. My interest rather is focused on the development of the bureaucracy as a peculiar social status group, per se (Beamtenstand), and as a distinct political interest-, mentality- and action-group, cher-

148 Copy of remarks made within the context of an application, on the basis of which Rosenberg was apparently granted funds for a Fulbright professorship in Marburg and at the Free University of Berlin in 1954/1955. See the letter to Rosenberg from the Department of State of 28 May 1954 (NL Rosenberg, vol. 42), in which the approval of government aid within the framework of the educational exchange programme is confirmed in accordance with the Fulbright Act. The application is undated, but was probably written in 1953 or early 1954. 149 Published after long delay, Cambridge/Mass. 1958, under the title: Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy. The Prussian Experience 1660–1815. 150 Oscar Handlin (b. 1915), leading American historian with a focus on issues in social history and especially immigration to the United States and its influence on American culture. Professor at Harvard from 1939, made full professor in 1954. Became director of the Center for the Study of the History of Liberty in America in 1958 and of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History in 1968. Head of the Harvard university library from 1979 to 1983. Won Pulitzer Prize for his book The Uprooted (1951).


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ishing the traditions of the authoritarian Beamtenstaat. Because of the delimitation of subject matter and because of the frame of reference, as here defined, primary emphasis will be placed on the factual clarification and interpretive appraisal of the following, intimately interlocked phases of development: (1) The changes that took place in the composition of the professional public service hierarchy and in the standards and methods of both personnel selection and of advancement to positions of responsibility and special trust. (2) The basic alterations undergone in the function and authority of the bureaucracy; in its public influence and prestige; in its actual social status attributes and group cohesion; in its attitudes, loyalties and ways of living. Special consideration will be paid: a) to contacts, both friendly and hostile, with the politically most significant competing elites of German society; b) to the checkered process of adjustment to the rise of constitutionally limited government, to the growth of parliamentary institutions, and to the emergence of a modern political party system. I do not pretend to solve all these knotty problems. Nevertheless, I expect to bring into bold relief both the typical and the peculiar features in the “case history” of the German bureaucracy as a social and political force. This, I hope, will make for a significant contribution to the appreciation of a generally important problem. Because of its deep-seated aristocratic-oligarchic traditions and of its formidable vested interests, it has nowhere been an easy undertaking to convert, in recent generations, the bureaucratic manager class of the modern state, upon whom society has become largely dependent, into public servants, representative of, and subservient to, the political will of a democratic community. My purpose is to explain, in considerable detail and with analytical precision, why it has proved particularly difficult in Germany to transform the bureaucratic corps of administrative specialists and professional “technicians”, headed, in fact, by “permanent politicians”, into sincere cobuilders of a democratic society. It should be obvious, then, that my proposed inquiry, in view of its subject matter, its lines of approach and its ultimate aims, is especially relevant to the country applied for. Whatever its imperfections, my

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study is designed to serve the needs of the historian, the political scientist and the sociologist. For the purpose in hand I have already collected a substantial body of pertinent data in American libraries. I also have done some preliminary writing on the post-1815 period. A vast amount of labor, however, still needs to be done; it must be done in Germany for only there are many of the most important primary sources accessible. Under present conditions it would be most advantageous to establish my “headquarters” in Marburg, which, in the Westdeutsche Bibliothek, the west German successor of the former Preussische Staatsbibliothek, offers the best library facilities of all the German universities. As for the use of unpublished materials, I would have to rely mainly on the resources of the Hauptarchiv in Berlin Dahlem, on the newly established Bundesarchiv in Koblenz and, perhaps, on some of the Länderarchive. I am prepared to give occasional lectures in Germany. It goes without saying that I am eager to do this empirical study not to satisfy my personal curiosity alone. I also want to demonstrate the abiding usefulness of the historical method in the social sciences. Eventually I plan to present my findings in published form to fellow workers and to other members of the international fraternity of men of good will who are seriously interested in a searching examination of some crucial aspects of the impeded historic growth of professional public service, strictly speaking.151

151 The project did not produce a publication. In Rosenberg’s papers there is a 57page handwritten manuscript on the topic “Elites in Germany, 1807–1918” (vol. 138), a typewritten manuscript of 64 pages with a summary, also typewritten, of 12 pages on “Occupation, Social Status and the German Governing Elite, 1807–1918” (vol. 139) and another manuscript on “Occupation, Status and German Governing Elites 1807– 1918”, together with a German translation by H. J. Ginsburg entitled “Macht, Beruf, Status und herrschende Elite in Deutschland 1807–1918” (vol. 142). This manuscript features the following remark by Rosenberg: “Unpublished book fragment on the history of German elite groups in the 19th century”. All the manuscripts are undated. It is likely that these manuscripts were further developments of the research project on the history of the German bureaucracy outlined by Rosenberg.


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47. [1957]: Hans Rosenberg’s statement concerning his claim for restitution152 NL Rosenberg 1, copy I begin the following remarks and explanations with a brief summary of the external course of my academic career since my doctoral examination at the University of Berlin in summer 1927. I 1927: Dr. phil. dissertation: “eximium” (summa cum laude); oral examination: “magna cum laude”. Subjects examined: medieval and modern history, philosophy and political economy. (See appendix 2). 1927–28: 1. 11. 1927–31. 10. 1928: researcher for the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and research scholar for the Emergency Committee on German Scholarship (Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft). 1928–34: 1. 10. 1928 to late 1934: researcher at the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission). 1932–33: December 1932 to September 1933: lecturer (Privatdozent) in medieval and modern history at the University of Cologne. 1934–35: 1. 6. 1934–31. 7. 1935: research scholar at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. 1935–36: 1. 8. 1935–31. 5. 1936: “unemployed.” 23. 9. 1935 until early September 1936 resident in New York City. 1936: summer semester (June to August): lecturer in history, City College of New York. 1936–38: 1936–37: instructor, 1937–38: assistant professor in history and political science at Illinois College. 1939–47: assistant professor, 1948–51: associate professor, 1952–: professor in history at Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1943–44: research scholar at the Social Science Research Council.

152 Unsigned and undated copy, presumably from late 1957. This date is suggested by the reference to the imminent publication of his book Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy, which appeared in 1958, as well as Rosenberg’s letter to Dr. A. Guttmann of the United Restitution Organization of 13 September 1957 (Rosenberg papers, vol. 42), who advised Rosenberg to persist with his claims in a letter of 6 June 1957. Rosenberg forewent his claims to restitution for damages of 10–12,000 marks arising from travel costs and material damage as a result of his migration to the United States, but claimed for damage to his professional advancement.

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1945–47: 1. 7. 1945–31. 1. 1947: Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1949–50: summer semester 1949 and 1950: visiting professor of modern history at the Free University of Berlin; function, rank and remuneration as professor ordinarius. 1954–55: Fulbright Professor at Philippsuniversitaet Marburg (winter semester 1954/55) and the Free University of Berlin (summer semester 1955). 1956–57: 1. 9. 1956–31. 6. 1957: visiting professor at Princeton University. I am a member of the American Association of University Professors, American Historical Association, Modern History Association, Economic History Association (USA), Economic History Society (Great Britain), and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The Modern History Association made me co-editor of the Journal of Modern History, the leading American journal in the field of non-American modern history, in December 1952. II It is part of the venerable tradition and true character of the German universities that they serve both research and teaching. In line with this, lecturing is preceded by a lengthy period of research and the fulltime career as university teacher is determined first and foremost by the individual’s reputation as scholar, especially the quality and quantity of academic publications. My “official” practical training for the position of university teacher began a few months after passing the doctoral exam with a research assignment from the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (appendices 3 and 4). More crucial to my academic career was the contract of employment from the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission),153 initially for three years, which came into effect on 1 October 1928 (appendix 5). After its expiry this contract was extended by tacit agreement. I was dismissed by the Imperial Historical Commission only at the end of 1934, that

153 The Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), a public corporation founded to study the history of the German Empire in 1928, was a department of the Imperial ministry of the interior in budgetary terms. Administratively, that is, above all with respect to its financial administration, it was affiliated with the Imperial Archive in Potsdam.


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is, two years after habilitating in medieval and modern history at the University of Cologne (appendix 6). III The damage to my career began in spring 1933 as a result of § 3 of the law on the restoration of the civil service of 7 April 1933. As early as 28 April 1933, with reference to the decree issued by the minister for science, art and national education of 26 April 1933 U.I. no. 840.1, the governing board of the University of Cologne requested that I desist from holding the lectures and classes announced by me, “as otherwise they would have to respond to this threat to public order and security at the university that would damage the standing of the lecturers and of the university.” (Appendix 7). My authority to teach at the University of Cologne was finally rescinded by the ministerial decree of 2 September 1933. The document concerning the withdrawal of the venia legendi [granting authority to teach] is no longer in my possession. For the sake of completeness I should also mention that I was expelled from the dependents’ relief fund of the Imperial Association of German Universities (Reichsverband der Deutschen Hochschulen) with effect from 1 October 1935. (Appendices 8 and 9). As a result of a decree from the Imperial ministry of the interior of 31 July 1933, communicated to the chair of the Imperial Historical Commission (Geh. Rat Prof. Dr. Friedrich Meinecke), “staff member Dr. Rosenberg” was requested to “expedite completion” of his research on national political journalism in Germany; “he is not to be called on to work for the Imperial Historical Commission in future.” (Appendices 10 and 11). It was thus clear that as long as the National Socialist regime was in place it would be impossible for me to work as university teacher and researcher within the public sector in Germany. In search of new options in life and in order to avoid further steps being taken against me, but also in order to stay true to my convictions, I felt compelled to emigrate in early October 1933. My stay in England (from 7 October 1933 to 14 September 1935) was an essential preliminary to emigrating to the USA. As a consequence of the general economic situation, still extremely parlous at the time, the financial plight of the universities and the high percentage of jobless university teachers in the USA, competition within academia was exceptionally tough. Given this state of affairs, a young German immigrant lecturer without complete mastery of the English language and radical retraining adapted to the needs

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and realities of American universities would have been condemned to hopeless failure in his academic career. Hence my “detour” via England. IV Despite preparing carefully for my “American adventure”; despite the academic reputation that I was on the point of acquiring beyond the Atlantic Ocean;154, 155 despite the fact that the sponsors going out of their way to help me reintegrate professionally included three former presidents of the American Historical Association, namely Sidney B. Fay (Harvard), Carl Becker (Cornell)156 and Guy Stanton Ford (Minnesota),157 my start in the USA was far from easy. It began with eight months of “unemployment”. Only after that did I manage to find my feet. My teaching experience and teaching successes in the summer of 1936 at City College, N.Y., and during both academic years from 1936 to 1938 in Illinois (appendices 12 and 13) led to my appointment as assistant professor of history at Brooklyn College in New York in autumn 1938. Though still officially classified as an enemy alien at the time, my position as full-time university professor on a fixedterm contract was replaced with a lifetime position as civil servant in 1941. To use the American term, I received “permanent tenure”. (Appendix 14). With effect from 1 January 1948 I was promoted to associate professor of history. On the basis of the application filed by

154 Footnote of Rosenberg with additions of the editor in square brackets: I am referring here in particular to the reviews of my then published books that appeared in American journals in 1934 and 1935. See The American Historical Review, XL, 374, 559 [reviews of the books on the world economic crisis and Haym]; XLI, 541–542 [review of “National political journalism” (Nationalpolitische Publizistik)]; The Journal of Modern History, VI, 235 [review of the book on Haym]; VIII, 113–114 [review of “National political journalism” (Nationalpolitische Publizistik)]; The Journal of Political Economy, XLII, 841–842 [review of “World economic crisis” (Weltwirtschaftskrisis)]; Social Research, II, 124–125 [review of “World economic crisis” (Weltwirtschaftskrisis)]. 155 Further reviews in English-language academic journals of the book on Haym and of “World economic crisis” (Weltwirtschaftskrisis) appeared respectively in the EHR 50 (1935), p. 189f. and in EconHR 5 (1935), p. 149f. 156 Carl Lotus Becker (1873–1945), leading American historian. Taught at Cornell University from 1917 to 1945. Carried out in-depth research on the development of ideas. His writings defended the tradition of Western civilization against antidemocratic tendencies. 157 Guy Stanton Ford (1873–1962), historian. Studied at the University of Berlin from 1899 to 1900. President of the American Historical Association in 1937/38. Held the full-time position of executive secretary of the AHA, a highly influential role given that a new president was elected every year, from 1941 to 1953, and was at the same time managing editor of the American Historical Review.


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my faculty senate in autumn 1950, I was appointed professor of history by the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York on 18 June 1951. (Appendices 15–17). Hence, after being put to the test for a lengthy period, I have, as it were, “made it” in the United States. My academic career would no doubt have led far more rapidly and smoothly to the status of professor ordinarius in my native country, had there been no “1933”. V In light of those of my publications that had appeared in Germany by 1935 (appendix 18) and with respect to my aptitude for the position of full-time university teacher, tested out in practice abroad in the years immediately following, it may in fact be assumed that without the intermezzo of National Socialism I would in all probability have become professor ordinarius at a German university before 1940. This is all the more likely given that, under normal circumstances, my writings published by 1935 would have been rapidly followed by others that would have established my reputation as researcher even more firmly. Because I was forcibly uprooted in 1933–34, because of the long-term and difficult process of adjustment to the New World and the exceptionally high demands in terms of time and energy made of university teachers in this country, my academic career and academic production were inevitably retarded after 1935. Nevertheless, I can point with some satisfaction to the fact that the final manuscript of the most fully developed and best of all my academic studies, the fruit of more than ten years of extensive research, is now ready and will appear in book form over the course of this year as volume 67 of the Harvard Historical Studies, published since 1900.158 (See number 17 in appendix 18). The great upheaval of 1933 meant that for the most part my writings had an appreciable impact on German scholarship only after 1945. However, until the mid-1930s, though mostly beyond the borders of the Empire, the odd scholar in the German-speaking world did quite openly give my academic output its due. I would point in particular (in addition to appendix 19) to the evaluation of my “National political journalism” (Nationalpolitische Publizistik) by the most prominent Austrian historian of the 20th century, Heinrich Ritter von Srbik,159

158 159

The volume appeared only in 1958 as a result of a delay. See above, p. 388.

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former Austrian minister of education and cultural affairs and president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. (Appendix 20). How leading representatives of history in Germany assessed my academic qualifications shortly after my habilitation is apparent in the testimonials by Friedrich Meinecke and Johannes Ziekursch (appendices 21 and 22). It is indicative that in 1947 the philosophy faculty of the University of Cologne put me forward as preferred successor to Ziekursch for the chair in medieval and modern history made vacant by his death (appendix 23). A similar situation arose eighteen months later, when I took up the still unoccupied chair in modern history at the Free University of Berlin in spring 1949 (appendices 24–29). I came to Berlin as visiting professor, while the blockade was still in place, and was both delighted and taken aback when my old teacher Meinecke, vice-chancellor of the Free University, Herr Prof. Edwin Redslob, the pro-vicechancellor, Herr Prof. Friedrich Goethert, dean of the philosophy faculty,160 and numerous colleagues from all the faculties in Berlin suggested that I make this temporary arrangement a permanent one during the summer of 1949. This is not the place to explain why I have been and still am unable to make up my mind to burn my bridges with the USA in order, as it were, “to start again from scratch” in the Federal Republic. It will have to suffice to underline that the recognition I have achieved in German universities following the collapse of National socialism would have made itself felt all the more and at a significantly earlier stage of my academic career, through appointment to a chair, had the Nazi regime not prevented this from 1933 to 1945. (See the views set out by a colleague in appendix 30.) VI The information provided in this statement is correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.161

160 Friedrich Goethert (1907–1978), professor ordinarius in classical archaeology at the Free University of Berlin. 161 The above-mentioned letter from Dr. Guttmann of 13 September 1957 shows that, as a result of a decision by the minister for education and culture of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia of 2 October 1956, Rosenberg was appointed professor ordinarius [salary grade H1b] with effect from 1 April 1940 and was awarded emeritus status [salary grade H1b final stage] with effect from 1 January 1954. His regular remuneration as emeritus amounted to 1,796 DM a month by late 1957. Rosenberg


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48. 12 August 1964: Hans Rosenberg’s outline of a project on “Inequality in German Society, 1348–1525”162 NL Rosenberg 65, copy in English After having read, with great interest and some awe, the Research Proposal of the Institute of International Relations,163 it is apparent that my present research study does not really “fit” any of the

received this compensation on the basis of the federal law on restitution in the civil service as amended on 23 December 1955, in which paragraph 21b states: “If the damaged party would in all probability have . . . become professor ordinarius [over the course of his academic career], he is to be granted the legal status and salary commensurate with . . . a position in salary grade H1b.” An application to convert the professorship, which Rosenberg had not availed himself of, into emeritus status could be made at any time. Rosenberg presumably reached the final stage of salary grade H1b in late 1953. As notified by the United Restitution Organization on 16 September 1960, in response to his application, of which the explanation reproduced here formed part, Rosenberg received restitution for damages to professional advancement for the period from 1 October 1933 to 31 July 1947 to the amount of 9382.77 DM from the restitution authorities of the chief executive of Cologne (Rosenberg papers, vol. 1) on the basis of the federal law on restitution (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz or BEG). The payments he had missed out were calculated at 46,913.84 M, converted into DM in accordance with paragraph 11 (1) of the BEG at a ratio of 10 to 2. Of the sum granted, 842 DM was deducted for contribution and costs, so that he received a total of 8.540.77. DM. Restitution for the period from 1 August 1947 to 30 June 1948 was rejected as Rosenberg had turned down the appointment at the University of Cologne. The editor thanks Hans Günter Hockerts for information on the law on restitution. 162 Copy with typewritten signature. On this research programme, see also Rosenberg’s letter to his colleague, historian of Eastern Europe N. V. Riasanovsky, from 5 December 1963 (NL Rosenberg, vol. 65), in which he mentions that he had collected and examined a large amount of material, though not yet enough, particularly in the libraries of Berlin, Hamburg, Göttingen, Vienna, Zurich and Munich, and had written a very rough draft of the first two chapters on the monarchs and other aristocratic classes and their transformation “as social, economic, occupational and political status group”. “I also made a sketch of the differentiated collective group career of the upper clergy and of the patrician urban strata during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.” He hoped to be granted leave for the academic year 1966/1967: “I am reasonably confident that I shall manage to complete my book in publishable form during that year. However, please bear in mind that nothing is certain until it has happened.” He also wrote: “My present inquiry into the evolution of social classes and groupings during the twilight age that sometimes is called the Later Middles Ages, i.e., put differently, my study of the formation of the early modern class and group structure in Germanic Central Europe constitutes, it seems to me, a difficult, novel, and major effort. Even more so than my last book, my present project, I venture to claim, has implications that concern specialists in central European history as well as historians and social scientists preoccupied with other periods and geographic areas”. There is no publication by Rosenberg relating to this project. However, there are notes and manuscripts, particularly on the so-called Peasants’ War, among his unpublished works (vols. 148–156). 163 Institute of the University of California, Berkeley.

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established projects or centers of the Institute. Moreover, this study which, in my own humble opinion, is intricate, comprehensive, novel and, perhaps, overambitious in character and scope, may be too parochial, too empirical and, chronologically, too remote to live up to the lofty, presentminded and rather grandiose objectives of the Institute, as stated in the Research Proposal. In any event, if at all of interest to the Institute, my investigation might best be classified as “a special scholars program” concerned with “exploratory research”. I am in the midst of, and for a number of years to come expect to be preoccupied with, an exploration in late medieval and early modern social history, the theme, foci, and unifying principle of which are perhaps best indicated by the prospective title of this study: Inequality in German Society, 1348–1525 An Historical Study of Social, Political, and Economic Stratification (and, I might add, of the problems of what sociologists nowadays call “status discrepancy”). In essence, I am concerned with a concrete historical case study of the formation of the early modern class and group structure in a traditionally aristocratic and, hence, rigorously hierarchical preindustrial society the fundamentals of which remained intact until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that is, until the more revolutionary “take-off ” into modernization and development, conventionally so-called. I am interested in the exploration of the initial phase of the “early modern modernization” of the inherited medieval social class and group structure. This process of change, though it continued to be dominated by a highly differentiated social, political and economic status system defined largely in juridical terms, in fact, and contrary to widespread misconceptions, had room for a rather astounding degree of vertical and horizontal mobility and for historically as well as sociologically significant shifts in the character and relative weight of the status determinants and channels of mobility. This at least is one of my chief preliminary findings with regard to the personal composition and recruitment of the various hierarchical social orders during the particular period which I am studying. This is the fascinating period that stretched from the great demographic crisis of the Black Death to the violent and, both in the short and in the long run, extremely important social upheaval of 1525, the rather misnamed German Peasants’ War, when the lower ranks of society were


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pushed by their “betters” into the ditch where the former remained until the breakthrough of modern industrialism. “German Society”, as defined in geographic terms for the purposes of my descriptive as well as analytic historical inquiry, refers to a comparative study of the “real” rather than the ideological stratification patterns in the differential social regions of German Central Europe. Under the conditions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, German Central Europe as a meaningful unit of social history includes all those areas which at present constitute, in terms of political geography, the two German republics, the states of Austria and Czechoslovakia, and those pre-1918 east German provinces which since 1945 have been de facto parts of Poland and of the Soviet Union. An empirical inquiry into the nature and historical significance of “Inequality in German Society, 1348–1525” obviously calls for the Collection and focalized interrogation of a huge body of diverse source materials which are often difficult to read and to translate, difficult to interpret, and sometimes difficult to find. If successfully carried out in due course, my study, as I conceive of it, may prove useful and suggestive not merely to a handful of area specialists but also to a much larger group of historians and social scientists preoccupied with different periods, geographic regions, social structures, conceptual frameworks, methodological considerations, and scholarly aspirations. Hans Rosenberg 49. 25 April 1965: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 4 My darling, [. . .] When I set seriously to work on typing my “essay” for Wehler164 immediately after your departure and sorted out my loose folios and

164 Hans-Ulrich Wehler, b. 1931, German historian. Friend of Hans Rosenberg. Wehler wished to include Rosenberg’s essay “Political and Social Consequences of the Great Depression of 1873–1896”, in: Economic History Review 13 (1943), pp. 58– 73, in German translation in the anthology Moderne deutsche Sozialgeschichte edited by him within the framework of the “Neue Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek” series. As

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notes, etc., I realized that, without meaning to and without even noticing, since August of last year I have in fact written a book rather than an essay. It is a small and, it seems to me, good book of around 200 typewritten pages, 100 of which I have already typed up. I’ll be doing the rest, with all the trimmings, over the next two weeks, using my last reserves of strength to keep going. I have cancelled my seminars over the last week and will do so again this coming week. I will of course have to catch up on everything later, which means that throughout May I shall have four seminars per week alongside the committee work, which will be continuing anyway. I’m exhausted of course, but it is a source of satisfaction to me that at my advanced age I have managed to get something like this up and running so quickly despite a difficult academic year. After sending my manuscript to Wehler and negotiating with him, I shall offer my manuscript for publication to the Berlin Historical Commission, whose publications appear in superbly designed volumes printed by a very respectable publisher. It fits very well into the great industrialization project and would, I believe, make a very good first volume. The title is “Wirtschaftskonjunktur, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa 1873–1896” (“Economic trends, society and politics in Central Europe, 1873–1896”).165 I had a letter from Wehler yesterday with a lot of enclosures. I can’t reply to the letter at the moment and can’t even read the enclosures for lack of time. He’s expecting my manuscript by the end of April and of course has no idea that it is a book, albeit a small one. It has its weaknesses of course, as I hadn’t enough time, but all in all I think it works well.

Rosenberg was dissatisfied with the attempts at translation with which he was presented, he wished to translate the essay himself. 165 The title finally chosen by Rosenberg was Große Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (“The Great Depression and the Bismarck era. Economic developments, society and politics in Central Europe”), Berlin 1967, Walther de Gruyter & Co. and it ran to IX and 301 pages. As he had planned, the book did in fact appear in the series Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission zu Berlin beim Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut der Freien Universität, vol. 24 and as vol. 2 of the Publikationen zur Geschichte der Industrialisierung. Rosenberg was involved in the conception and carrying out of the “history of industrialization” project. In a letter to Gerhard A. Ritter of 21 March 1970, in light of the critique of the term “Great Depression”, made by the editor of this volume among others, Rosenberg remarked that he wanted to replace it with the phrase “Great Deflation”, which he considered “more precise and less easy to misunderstand”. He also refers to the “Great Deflation” of 1873–1896 in the “preliminary report” to the 1974 2nd edition of his book on the world economic crisis of 1857–1859 (p. XXV).


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Please do me a favour and call him. Explain the situation to him so that he isn’t too flabbergasted. He can of course include just one or two chapters of my study in his volume.166 Above all, please tell him that the manuscript will arrive in Cologne only around mid-May. You will no doubt be as flabbergasted by this as I was. [. . .] Very best wishes to everyone and an especially tender kiss to you Your Hans 50. 21 December 1967: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Gerhard A. Ritter Ritter: private papers Dear Ritter, [. . .] I am very grateful to you for taking the time to give your views on my book in such detail. It is no more than a long essay, though of course it makes no claim to any greater status. I am well aware of numerous imperfections, both large and small. I’m genuinely delighted that your overall impression is nonetheless a highly positive one. All of your critical remarks are justified. My errors in this regard are due partly to ignorance, partly to a lack of preparatory work and partly to the insufficient time available to me for this project. Particularly embarrassing is the “statistical mishap” in my treatment of the SPD, which had a fateful impact on my interpretation.167

166 Wehler ultimately included a preprint of parts of the book entitled: “Wirtschaftkonjunktur, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa, 1873–1896”, (pp. 225–253) in Moderne deutsche Sozialgeschichte, Cologne/Berlin 1966. 167 Rosenberg had (p. 143) claimed that the Social Democrats enjoyed a declining share of the vote during the period of the anti-socialists’ law, from 1878 to 1890, drawing on erroneous information in: Ernst Rudolf Huber, Dokumente zur Deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol. 2: Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 1871–1918, Stuttgart 1964, p. 537, in which the Social Democrats’ share of the votes in the Reichstag elections of 1887 was given as 7.1% (rather than the correct figure of 10.1%). In fact, the Social Democrats’ vote share, which was 9.1% in 1877 and 7.6% in 1878, shortly before the law was passed, increased again from 1884: 1881: 6.1%, 1884: 9.7%, 1887: 10.1%, 1890: 19.7%. See Gerhard A. Ritter, Wahlgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch. Materialien zur Statistik des Kaiserreichs 1871–1918, Munich 1980, pp. 38–40.

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The American edition should be significantly better. I will be able to deal with factual errors and unclear concepts and terms. Not only that, but I plan to deepen and expand the study in a broad range of ways. So I won’t be done with it so quickly after all, though there’s not the slightest prospect of getting started on the revision before next spring. The impetus to do so comes from the miserable attempt at a translation with which my American publisher presented me. It is utterly dreadful, and I essentially have to rewrite the whole thing. The time and energy involved can be justified only if the content is thoroughly revised at the same time.168 [. . .] I’m very pleased to hear that you and your family are well over there in Münster, despite the fact that you yourself are suffering from an excessive workload and distracting busy-work. But that’s a nearuniversal evil in the contemporary universities, by which I too have been plagued for many years, especially given that I’m no longer as strong as I used to be. I am therefore very much looking forward to my retirement, which becomes due in three years’ time. If I stay reasonably healthy, I shall at last have the opportunity to read for pleasure from time to time, to work seriously on my general education and to pursue my academic studies in peace and quiet. I would also like to travel more than I have done over the last ten years, and visit parts of the world such as East Asia and South America, with which I am as yet quite unfamiliar. By the way, in the summer of 1970 I want to use the international historical conference in Moscow as an opportunity to make a trip to Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. As you can see, I’m becoming rather adventurous in my old age, while my wife, who has had the “travel bug” all her life, is now beginning to tire of travel. I look forward to seeing you, your good wife and your children again. In the meantime, best wishes for Christmas and the New Year from my family to yours. Your Hans Rosenberg

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The planned American edition was never to appear, as Rosenberg also rejected all other sample translations with which he was presented as unsatisfactory and, partly because of changed research interests, never found the time and energy to rewrite the book himself in English.


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51. 8 March 1969: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Gerhard A. Ritter Ritter: private papers Dear Ritter, This is the first chance I’ve had to express my sincere thanks to you and your wife for your congratulations on my sixty-fifth birthday. Of the many such messages which I received this time around, yours were among the nicest and kindest. Your faithful remembrance and generous words did me a great deal of good, though they also put me somewhat to shame. But however self-critical I may be I’m enough of a realist to realize, looking back, that my decades of efforts as researcher and teacher have not fizzled out without effect, but have left behind visible traces in both the United States and West Germany. That’s a good feeling, for which one is all the more grateful if, as is the case with me, one’s strength is gradually declining. The almost completed Festschrift in my honour is naturally a source of great happiness to me and, with respect to the contributors, a great surprise that fills me with gratitude.169 [. . .] A slim volume I wrote entitled “Problems in German social history” (Probleme der deutschen Sozialgeschichte) will appear in Edition Suhrkamp in August.170 Half of it consists of older studies, but the other half is new and is being published for the first time and may perhaps be of some interest to you. I shall have a copy sent to you in any case. Incidentally, I’m astonished that such a conservative historian as Conze recently responded (in EHR) to my “Great Depression” (Grosse Depression) in an unusually positive way.171 As you will probably know from the newspapers, there has again been open conflict in Berkeley, and this time it led to bloody clashes, numerous acts of violence and vandalous demonstrations. This time it is the racial problem that stands centre stage, which of course plays no

169 Entstehung und Wandel der modernen Gesellschaft. Festschrift für Hans Rosenberg zum 65. Geburtstag. Ed. by Gerhard A. Ritter, Berlin 1970. 170 Hans Rosenberg, Probleme der deutschen Sozialgeschichte, Frankfurt a. M. 1969. 171 Review of the book by Werner Conze, in: EconHR 21 (1968), p. 653f. Werner Conze (1910–1986) was one of the leading German social historians.

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“real” role in Germany. Ernst Nolte172 was here last week and provided us with a chronicle of the events in Marburg. Wolfgang Mommsen will be coming next week, and may also have something to say about common threats. Thank you so much for your good wishes and all the trouble you have gone to on my behalf. Very best wishes to you and your dear wife. Your old friend, Hans Rosenberg 52. 30 September 1969: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Gerhard A. Ritter Ritter: private papers Dear Ritter, It’s about time that I expressed my sincere thanks for your friendly letter of 9 September and you literary enclosures. I’m glad Probleme173 went down well with you. Though it appeared only recently, I have in fact received a whole number of letters—all very positive, some even enthusiastic. Admittedly they are from people, young and old, both here and over there, all of whom are more or less close to me intellectually and/or personally. I understand only too well the “mild sense of despair” that you sometimes feel (I feel the same way), when you come to realize how little we all know about what is actually going on in the humanities and social sciences internationally. It is in fact becoming ever more difficult and in some respects impossible to protect oneself against intellectual “parochialization”. You are wrong, incidentally, if you think that I have been stimulated in this regard to any appreciable extent by conversations with American colleagues. This is not the case, apart from anything else because I have always been something of a one-horse carriage and began, even before emigrating, to inform myself a little about trends in history and social science across the world off

172 Ernst Nolte, b. 1923, German historian. Made professor in Marburg in 1965 and professor at the Free University of Berlin from 1973. 173 Hans Rosenberg, Probleme der deutschen Sozialgeschichte, Frankfurt a. M. 1969.


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my own bat. In teaching, I was subsequently aided by my avoidance of excessive specialization, underpinned by systematic efforts to keep up with a number of informative academic journals. However, to the extent that I have expanded my horizons over the decades—as modest as my achievements in this regard seem in retrospect, with the end approaching sooner or later—I have done so through my own efforts. And in as much as I have others to thank, it is my students rather than my colleagues. I read your documentary volume on the Revolution of 1918 in Switzerland this summer.174 I found it highly instructive to be able to read this widely scattered and sometimes even formerly unknown material in context. Purely in human terms, what I found particularly impressive as I read was how decently and reasonably the Social Democrats’ thinking and actions were in this complex situation. [. . .] You again emphasize the 1890s as a key turning point, while, as you know, I tend to emphasize the 1870s as crucial juncture. At bottom this is an old dispute relating to attempts at periodization, as also found, for example, in the case of the Renaissance. Is the key period that during which the trends in question become clearly visible or that during which they become more dominant? [. . .] Very best wishes to you and your family Your Hans Rosenberg 53. 6 July 1970: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Rudolf Braun Braun: papers Dear Braun, Thank you very much for your kind letter and your confidence. It is surely in the objective long-term interests of everyone involved that you hold off making the big decision until autumn. Though we would

174 Gerhard A. Ritter and Susanne Miller (eds.), Die deutsche Revolution 1918/1919, Dokumente. 1st edn., Frankfurt a. M./Hamburg 1968. A substantially expanded and revised 2nd edition was published in Hamburg, 1975.

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consider ourselves lucky to be able to count you as one of us, the last thing we want to do is put you under any kind of pressure.175 I am pleased and honoured that you like my Bureaucracy, Aristocracy176 so much. In Germany (West and East) with a few exceptions, it has been “boycotted” so far. In America, meanwhile, it had a strong impact, and not only on historians, but also sociologists and political scientists. In purely material terms, this impact is reflected in the fact that Harvard Press has brought out three editions since 1958. In addition, Beacon Press in Boston is still issuing the paperback edition. [. . .] Best regards from my family to yours. I look forward to seeing you soon. Fond wishes, Hans Rosenberg 54. 10 November 1970: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Rudolf Braun Braun papers Dear Braun, You will be in Zurich now, and the great decision with which you are faced moves ever closer. As the situation at Berlin University has become utterly chaotic, it seems obvious that you will opt either for Zurich or Berkeley.177 As I wrote recently to Gerhard Schulz,178 I believe it will take ten to fifteen, if not fifteen to twenty years to resolve

175 Rudolf Braun (b. 1930 in Basle), Swiss social and economic historian. After carrying out research at the universities of Münster and Chicago and a lectureship in Berlin, he became professor ordinarius at the Free University of Berlin in 1968. Professor ordinarius at the University of Zurich from 1971 until his retirement. Close friend of Rosenberg. Rudolf Braun was offered an appointment as professor at Berkeley as successor to Hans Rosenberg, but he ultimately turned it down. He had also been offered an appointment at the University of Zurich, which he accepted. 176 See above, p 71. 177 See above, p. 440, footnote 175. 178 Gerhard Schulz (1924–2004), modern historian. Obtained his doctorate at the Free University of Berlin in 1952 and habilitated in 1960. Professor in contemporary history in Tübingen from 1962. One of Rosenberg’s students at the Free University of Berlin in 1949/1950.


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the great structural crisis that has hit the German university. In the interim the pendulum will probably swing back and forth dramatically. There will be no lack of experiments, loss of substance and shattered nerves, and things will most likely get back on track only very slowly, on quite different foundations. That, in any case, is my pessimistic prognosis. The Swiss universities will also struggle to avoid the great upheaval, though it will be less profound than in West Germany. I view the future development of the American universities in a far more positive light, because here, as far as the objective requirements are concerned, there is significantly less to reform and highly effective bulwarks have been erected to counter the danger of politicization in light of the experiences of the last few years. As I already wrote to you, having gone through the broadest range of possibilities, academic life in Berkeley has again become entirely peaceful. In both teaching and research, people are working diligently, more intensively and devotedly than ever. What is more—despite a number of blemishes—at national level and particularly in the state of California the result of the American elections was unexpectedly positive overall. True, the election campaign was more spiteful, lowbrow, unscrupulous and demagogic than any I’ve experienced over the last thirty-five years. But Nixon-Agnew-Reagan and associates got almost nowhere with that. It is encouraging to see that the great majority of the American people were not duped and that reason has triumphed over emotions and moral nihilism. True, Reagan was re-elected in California, though with substantially fewer votes than four years ago. But his wings have been clipped. As you’ve probably read, he has lost the majority in both houses of the state legislature, and for the first time in half a century, California is now represented by two Democratic and furthermore very liberal senators in the US Senate. A negro has replaced the reactionary Rafferty as Californian education minister, and with a large majority of the votes no less.179

179 Rosenberg is referring to the elections to the US Congress of 3 November 1970 and concurrent elections in California. In the congressional elections, the Republicans, who had held the presidency since January 1969 in the shape of Richard Nixon with his vice-president Spiro Agnew, suffered a heavy defeat. With 55 seats in the Senate as against 45 for the Republicans and 255 seats in the House of Representatives as opposed to a Republican tally of 180, the Democrats retained control of Congress and won a number of key governorships. In California, Governor Ronald Reagan managed to prevail against his Democrat opponent Jess Unruh by a clear margin, though it was halved compared with 1966. Also in California, Republican senator George L.

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The election results should also have a very positive impact on the University of California. Some of the most “dreadful” members of our board of regents are now being replaced by progressively minded individuals who understand the needs of a leading university. The “punitive measures” taken against the university will now become a thing of the past. In terms of the budget too, the sudden, heartening change of political scene and climate should have a very favourable impact. I believe for example that the pay rise of 11 1/2% for 1971–1972 proposed for the faculty will be accepted in full or almost in full by the state legislature. The wind has changed, and that’s something you must take into account in making your decision. [. . .] Very best wishes from my family to yours, Yours always, Hans Rosenberg 55. 8 May 1974: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Leni Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 4 My darling, [. . .] The first copy of the new edition of my “World economic crisis” (Weltwirtschaftskrise)180 arrived by airmail two days ago. It’s very nicely printed and has an unusually sturdy cover for a paperback. You will see it in Rupp[ichteroth], as the publisher has already sent a copy to Fritz,181 who, by the way, sent me a card from Israel. I can’t deny

Murphy was defeated by the young Democrat John Varick Tunney, a friend of Edward Kennedy. The other senator for California, Alan Cranston, was also a Democrat. The Democrats also gained a majority in the California state legislature. Particularly distressing to Reagan was the surprising victory of African-American Wilson Riles in the election for State Superintendent of Public Instruction—Rosenberg’s “education minister”—over the markedly “right-wing” incumbent Max Rafferty, who played a significant role in the harsh disciplinary measures taken against the Californian state universities. 180 Hans Rosenberg, Die Weltwirtschaftskrise 1857–1859. 2nd edn. With a preliminary report, Göttingen 1974. 181 Fritz was the son of Frau Rosenberg from her first marriage. He was the owner of a middle-sized enterprise who lived with his family in Ruppichteroth.


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that I’m delighted to see new life being breathed into my forty-yearold early work. Despite the tremendous historical changes that have occurred, it still has a certain freshness and topicality, and as I am now a so-called “famous historian”, it will have a far greater impact than it did nearly half a century ago. [. . .] I am saddened by Brandt’s unexpected resignation,182 for he is undoubtedly the most decent and principled Western statesman of the last decade. You have no idea what an appalling moral quagmire has come to light in the White House since your departure. More than ever before, Nixon has gone off the rails. With a complete lack of scruples, he is prepared to risk the most serious of conflicts. The crucial material evidence against him has obviously been destroyed, and his old chums are sticking together and swear one false oath after another. Even if it ultimately comes to impeachment,183 as is probable, it is still very doubtful whether it will be possible to obtain the necessary twothirds majority in the Senate that would condemn him and drive him from office. But enough of this! The preparations for the lecture184 are going a bit better now. I still have a good deal of work ahead of me, but after lots of to-ing and

182 Willy Brandt (1913–1992), German federal chancellor from 1969 until his resignation on 6 May 1974. 183 Impeachment is the procedure for removing an American president from office. As Art. 2, Section 4 of the US constitution states: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” When a president is impeached, the charge is brought by the House of Representatives. According to Art. 1, Section 3, the Senate “shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present”. Richard Nixon (1913–1994), president of the United States from 1969–1974. Resigned when it became apparent that two-thirds of the Senate would support his conviction in an impeachment trial. The reason was the so-called Watergate scandal, centred on a Nixon-approved raid on the campaign headquarters of the Democratic Party during the presidential elections of 1972 in order to obtain information about the campaign being run by his opponent George McGovern, and attempts to obstruct the prosecution of these criminal acts. 184 With reference to this lecture, Rosenberg wrote to Gerhard A. Ritter on 10 September 1973: “As you probably know, I have accepted the surprising invitation to deliver the final address at the Braunschweig congress of German historians, albeit with some hesitation. That they invited me of all people, must, I assume, be due to the initiative of members of the younger generation. I will be speaking on ‘Ruling elites and social system conflict in the German civil war of 1525.’ ” Rosenberg consciously chose the term “civil war” rather than “Peasants’ War”. He ultimately called

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froing the basic ideas have clarified and I’m now inwardly sure that the thing holds water and won’t end in disaster. I sincerely hope that you have a few more really good weeks ahead of you. I think about you a great deal. All my love and a tender kiss from Your Hans 56. 12 December 1975: Hans Rosenberg (Berkeley) to Rudolf Braun Braun papers Dear Rudi, We haven’t heard from each other in a long time, and it’s about time that we renewed the old ties. I hope you’ve been reasonably well and that your health, especially the high blood pressure, which is unfortunately a chronic phenomenon, has improved. I myself am not doing too brilliantly in this regard, though it could be worse. All in all, this year was better than last, though by no means satisfactory. It was certainly a mistake not to leave Berkeley for a single day for rather more than a whole year. I should have come to Europe in summer rather than autumn and spent a few weeks in the mountains. I refrained from doing so because the last two years my sojourn in the mountains gave me a serious cold, which ruined the holiday. Despite this, I managed to suffer a similar setback this year as well. The summer months were

off the address, which had cost him many sleepless nights. Another of Meinecke’s students, Gerhard Masur, stepped in and delivered a speech on “National character as a problem of German history” (“Der Nationale Charakter als Problem der deutschen Geschichte”), published in: HZ 221 (1975), pp. 603–622. Rosenberg’s papers (vol. 149) include manuscripts by Rosenberg entitled “The Peasants’ War in historical and social scientific perspective” (30 p.) and “The Peasants’ war as social system conflict” (12 p.), as well as the typewritten manuscript of a lecture at the University of Freiburg entitled “The Peasants’ War in social historical perspective” with corrections by Rosenberg. On 23 November 1978, Rosenberg wrote to his colleague at Berkeley, Gerald D. Feldman, concerning this lecture: “I had worked on it very hard and prepared a manuscript of what I could use only half though I spoke for 70 minutes.” The manuscript, he explained, formed the basis of a small book which he hoped to complete during the next spring or summer (Rosenberg papers, vol. 49). Rosenberg did not publish an essay or book on this subject.


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exceptionally cool, foggy and uncomfortable here this year, while the autumn months were utterly delightful. We had an uninterruptedly warm and sunny Indian Summer. Nevertheless I picked up an infection about six weeks ago, which quickly developed into a bad cold that weakened me greatly and crippled me mentally and which I still haven’t managed to shake off. However, I hope to change this through a radical change of climate. One week from today I set off on a onemonth roundtrip through Central America, beginning in Panama and ending in Yucatan, Mexico. I’m greatly looking forward to it, assuming that I hold up physically, for this journey will undoubtedly be strenuous and not without risk to the gastric organs. I’m especially interested in the great Mayan civilizations of Honduras, Guatemala and Yucatan, whose brilliant feats of creativity far surpass those of the Incas in Peru. We are about to go through another fundamental change in our lives and, you will be amazed to hear, our days in the USA are numbered. Two months ago our family suffered a heavy blow, which greatly affected my wife in particular. Her only son suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of just fifty-three. Our six grandchildren, who live scattered throughout the Federal Republic of Germany and who lost their mother five years ago, have now become orphans. They are between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six and, we believe, are now very much dependent on our advice and support. My wife, who has gradually become very isolated here since my retirement, has been toying for years with the idea of “remigration,” despite the significant risks involved. It is now set to become a reality over the course of the coming year. After careful consideration, for a whole number of reasons we have decided to settle in Freiburg im Breisgau, if we can find somewhat suitable accommodation there. If that works out, we would, as it were, be neighbours. And as you often come over to Basle from Zurich and Basle is just one hour away from Freiburg, we can look forward to the highly pleasing prospect of being able to meet up and talk now and then. If it doesn’t work out in Freiburg, we want to try our luck in Munich, though we are a bit afraid of that big, if highly interesting city. Immediately after my return from Central America my wife will go to Germany, first to see the grandchildren and discuss their new situation with them, and then, around the beginning of February, to look for somewhere to live in Freiburg. Should the outcome be positive, I myself shall come over for a short visit, probably in late February or early March, to sort out business matters. What we would like is our

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own large flat with a nice view right on the edge of the Black Forest, if possible a flat still under construction so that our personal wishes and needs can be taken into account. These are our current plans, whose realization would bring the two of us closer again. And as we are good friends and will surely remain so till the end of our lives, this letter will be welcome news for you as well. Happily, Freiburg has a good university, where I have appealing personal contacts. I hope you are in good shape health-wise and had a satisfactory semester in professional terms. The very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you and your ladies from my wife and I, Yours always, Hans 57. 9 November 1977: Hans Rosenberg (Freiburg) to Rudolf Braun Braun papers Dear Rudi, First of all let me say how sorry I am for being such an old devil and taking so long to get in touch, though I have been living in Freiburg since the end of June and have often thought of you. But so much has happened over the last few months that I have had to put my letter writing and much else to one side. In a few days’ time I shall be returning to Berkeley for seven weeks to make a start on the final preparations for the big move and get our affairs in the USA in order. I’ll just give you my most important personal news for now. Despite initial doubts and reservations, we have settled down surprisingly quickly in Freiburg, though we are still living in hotels. We feel at home in this lovely city with its many historical faces. We’re very taken with the area and people and love the Black Forest. The university has been remarkably welcoming to me and despite a great lack of space has provided me with my own study, though I am of course no more than an honorary professor here, with no official duties. We’ve also been lucky in our search for accommodation. Months ago we bought a lovely and very spacious flat in Kirchzarten, 10km south of Freiburg, in scenic surroundings and with plenty of fresh air, as we get the refreshing wind from the Höllental. The flat is still under construction, but will be ready to move into in two months’ time. And I’ve really hit the


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jackpot, as I’ll be getting a nicer and bigger study (48 square metres) than I’ve ever had before. With any luck I’ll have the pleasure of it for some time to come and manage to produce something of significance in it, though very soon I’ll be seventy-four. As you may know the University of Bielefeld awarded me its first honorary doctorate a few days ago. It all passed off in a very pleasant and dignified manner, and the day will stay with me as a particularly cherished memory. And the same goes for my wife too of course. Wehler presented a very generous laudatio, and I myself had to give a long speech, prepared of course. It will appear this coming year in my essay collection to be published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht under the title “Elite change, economic trends and social historiography” (“Elitenwandel, Wirtschaftskonjunktur und Sozialhistoriographie”).185 All in all, then, our new beginning in the old homeland has been highly auspicious, and we’re thankful for that, for it’s quite an adventure to start a new life from scratch in one’s later years. As soon as we’re properly established in Kirchzarten we really must arrange a get-together. Should Freiburg be too far away for you, we can meet half-way in Basle, since you go there anyway from time to time. Apart from that we shall no doubt be seeing each other next June at the conference in Bielefeld, where you’ll be making an appearance as one of the big guns. I hope you’re enjoying much better health than has been the case over the last few years, which have been a great strain on you. We ourselves can’t really complain on that front given our age. I see from your essay in GG,186 which has just appeared, that your creative powers are on the rise again. I shall take it with me to Berkeley and give it a thorough read. Very best wishes from my wife and I. Yours always, Hans

185 Hans Rosenberg, “Rückblick auf ein Historikerleben zwischen zwei Kulturen”, in: Rosenberg, Machteliten und Wirtschaftskonjunkturen, pp. 11–23. 186 Rudolf Braun, “Historische Demographie im Rahmen einer integrierten Geschichtsbetrachtung: Jüngere Forschungsansätze und ihre Verwendung”, in: GG 31 (1977), pp. 525–536.

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documents IX. Hedwig Hintze

1. 7 February 1920: Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 213 Dearest Frau Meinecke, How lovely of you to kindly remember the sixth of February1 and send me such a delightful historical card, which suits me so splendidly and which must have been very difficult to part with, as it appears to be a cherished souvenir from a journey. Thank you so much! I get a childlike enjoyment out of such historical pictures, cards, sayings, etc. I keep such things safely among my excerpts and notes; I pick them up again, often years later, and they trigger whole series of memories! I am writing surrounded by the smell of hyacinths; my dear husband gave me the loveliest budding pink bouquet he could get hold of—and we had a lovely time yesterday altogether, despite not being able to have our friends round because of the domestic situation. But with any luck we shall be able to make up for it in the near future. How wonderful it was at your house the other day! My dear husband’s rather strained leg is back to normal thank goodness now that the swelling has gone down, and it did him so much good mentally and emotionally. All the very best from us to you. Your HH 2. 30 August 1921: Hedwig Hintze (Schönau bei Berchtesgaden) to Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 213 Dear Frau Meinecke, The birthday wishes from you and your dear husband were the loveliest—the warmest and most full of sincere understanding—which my dear husband was fortunate enough to receive on 27 August.2 By rights 1 2

Hedwig Hintze was born on 6 February 1884. 60th birthday of Otto Hintze.

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you should both be receiving a very special and absolutely personal thanks from him—but as you know, he has particular difficulties with writing, particularly in this countryside resort, where all the tables are too low for someone of his size. So I’m sure you won’t be put out by the division of labour we’ve agreed on: that I shall reply to all your kind and sympathetic questions in some detail while my husband inserts a few lines in his own hand3 to the two of you! It took us a couple of weeks to get acclimatized and for my dear husband to recover from the journey, which was quite a strain. But then we had a good time. We went for a lot of delightful walks on the flat together; though I’m “mountain mad” as soon as I come into contact with this native soil4 and have abandoned my poor husband particularly often this year. I did the easier mountain hikes all by myself, preferring to set off while the stars are still out. It’s different here than close to the city—it’s quite safe to go on such solitary hikes; but many of the tourists stare at you in amazement, as if you were from another planet or some kind of heroine. I do the more difficult and longer tours in suitable company and I found an “authorized” mountain guide for my greatest achievement so far, the Hoher Göll. All of which hasn’t exactly made me “fatter”, I think, but I was already tanned like a mulatto, and a thin figure is better suited to the beloved traditional hiking clothes, the longed-for “trousers” and the leather hat; people say I look like a wild Savoyard boy. It’s a shame that I couldn’t go hiking with Sabine.5 I haven’t made it up the Watzmann yet in any case; so far this mountain has been so dreadfully overrun, it is said, that hundreds of people stayed in the lodge every night. With any luck the flood will subside a little once the Bavarian school holidays are over (1 September). On the whole, we’ve pretty much abandoned scholarship here, despite many heroic resolutions. However, together we conquered the three hefty volumes of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky; and to be honest, it was more work than pleasure—insights into a quite alien world, yet so alien, so “incommensurable” I would almost say, that it left us with an agonizing feeling we were unable to shake off. Now we’re reading

3 4 5

The letter contains no additions by Otto Hintze. Hedwig Hintze was born in Munich. Daughter of Meinecke.

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Merezhkovsky’s work on Leonardo da Vinci.6 As the 27 August was also mentioned in the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten this year, the very kind manageress of this pension surprised us with a quite wonderful tart, which I have tucked into with even more gusto than the birthday boy. “Scent for the deity alone, yet food for the priests”, one might almost say, to borrow from Lichtenberg’s epigram,7 which my husband sometimes quotes. I was also able to put a bunch of cyclamen on his breakfast table this year—they tend to grow very well in pots back home. They were small ones that I’d picked myself, and they smelt wonderful. The locals say they are a rarity at this time of year. I’m afraid that the tie [which I always give him] (cornflower blue this year) is only half-finished! Our best wishes to you. We hope for a happy reunion in September. Your always, Hedwig Hintze 3. 10 December 1923: Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to the dean of the philosophy faculty, Berlin University8 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty doctoral records 627 To the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Berlin. I hereby submit to you my study on “The problem of federalism in the early stages of the French Revolution” (“Das Problem des Föderalismus in der Frühzeit der Französischen Revolution”) and my personal

6 Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky (1865–1941), Russian author. Published a famous book on Leonardo da Vinci in 1903. 7 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), physicist and author. His notes, not always correctly described as “aphorisms”, were published thirty-five years after his death. 8 For the period to 1914, divergent and supplementary wording in the CV submitted for habilitation are indicated in the footnotes. For the subsequent period, despite some overlap with the CV submitted with a view to gaining a doctorate, the CV submitted for habilitation (see below, pp. 458–462) is shown in full.

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papers with the request that you kindly accept my registration for the doctoral examination. Further, I would request that you regard the tenth chapter, “The Constituante’s legislation on the departement” (“Die Departementsgesetzgebung der Constituante”)9 (pp. 246–298, together with the notes on pp. 123–140 of the supplementary volume), as the actual dissertation to be used for the typewritten or printed deposit copies to be submitted later.

9 The final version was: “Die Municipalgesetzgebung der Constituante”. It later formed chapter 11 of her book on Staatseinheit und Föderalismus im alten Frankreich und der Revolution, Berlin/Leipzig 1928, pp. 207–234.

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I wish to be examined in the following subjects: Main subject: history Subsidiary subjects: state sciences (Staatswissenschaften), philosophy. Hedwig Hintze née Guggenheimer a. 10 December 1923: Hedwig Hintze’s CV/appendix to doctoral application Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty doctoral records 627 CV I was born on 6 February 1884 in Munich, daughter of deceased banker Moritz Guggenheimer and his wife Helene, née Wolff. I was raised as a Protestant. My education initially consisted partly in private lessons, partly— from 1895—in attendance at a girls’ high school (Höhere Mädchenschule der Damen Neumeyer) in Munich. The courses in the later years of the school led by the university teachers Professor Dr. Roman Woerner and Professor Dr. Franz Muncker first introduced me to the academic study of the history of states, art and literature—subjects that already greatly appealed to me. In addition I engaged in intensive study of modern languages, primarily French, and passed the Bavarian state exam for women teachers of French language in Munich in April 1901. My schooling in Munich was interrupted by trips abroad on several occasions; during these months I frequently attended French girls’ schools in Nice. From autumn 1901 I spent roughly one year in a boarding school for girls in Brussels. The mechanical way in which it was run and perfunctory atmosphere of this establishment were so repellent to me that I subjected the whole system of such education for girls to thorough and severe criticism, published in a supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung entitled “The question of education” in December 1903.10

10 Hedwig Guggenheimer, “Zur Erziehungsfrage”, in: supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 December 1903, p. 438f. The CV submitted as part of the habilitation pro-

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From 1902 to 1904, I attended both lectures at the Berlin Victorialyzeum and similar courses for women that had been initiated in Munich. In autumn of 1904 I was granted permission to attend lectures at Munich University. My studies focussed mainly on German language and literature and history of literature. Above all I attended the lectures and classes of professors Hermann Paul11 and Franz Muncker while attempting to familiarize myself with the intellectual problems at hand through my own efforts. I had the opportunity to present my findings in the seminars on several occasions, and sometimes in a special association as well. My main focus at the time being on the work of Richard Wagner as a whole, I published an essay on “Novalis’ Hymns to the Night and Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde” (“Novalis’ Hymnen an die Nacht und Richard Wagners Tristan und Isolde”) in the Leipzig Neue Musikzeitung in July 1905 and a treatise on “E. T. A. Hoffmann and Richard Wagner” (“E. T. A. Hoffmann und Richard Wagner”) running to more than two folios in the second volume of the Richard Wagner Yearbook published in Berlin by Hermann Paetel in 1907.12 In addition, Professor Muncker tasked me with compilation of a detailed name and subject index for his revised version of the Lachmann edition of Lessing.13 This work prompted me to take a closer look at Lessing’s work and the intellectual history of the 18th century

cess adds: “What mattered to me above all, however, was to go beyond merely criticizing the girls’ education of the time and acquire for myself a more thorough education and take up an occupation that matched my inclinations and abilities. Unfortunately, I did not immediately take the approach, which was still somewhat complicated for women at the time, of preparing for the grammar school leaving exam (Abiturium), but rather, on the advice of Professor Muncker, applied for permission to attend lectures at the University of Munich. On the basis of my teaching certificate and a number of other references concerning my private studies, I was admitted to the university as Hörerin [attending courses but not working towards a degree] in winter 1904.” 11 Hermann Paul (1846–1921), Germanist. Obtained his doctorate in 1870 and habilitated in 1874. Initially made professor extraordinarius at Freiburg in 1874, then professor ordinarius from 1877. Taught as ordinarius at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich from 1893 until his retirement in 1916. 12 See above, p. 81. 13 In the CV submitted for habilitation she added that the index of names “appeared only in 1924 after the late completion of the ‘new edition’, as its 23rd volume, revised by Franz Steinleitner and Franz Muncker.” Franz Steinleitner, librarian at the Prussian

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in general, but in time proved excessively time-consuming and overly one-sided. In particular, I now felt more keenly my lack of knowledge of the ancient languages.14 In spring of 1908, I thus decided to break off all my current assignments and university studies for the time being in order to devote myself exclusively to preparing to pass the final exam at a grammar school with a focus on the classics. I carried out these preparatory studies in Berlin; they were supervised by professors, particularly those of the Joachimsthal Gymnasium, who aided my progress in the relevant subjects to such an extent that I was able to pass the final exam before an official commission in the classics department of the Hohenzollernschule in Schöneberg in Easter of 1910. I enrolled at Berlin University in the summer semester of 1910 and, as well as resuming my studies of German language and literature, now turned, with growing interest, to the study of history. I participated in the preparatory classes of Struck and Krabbo15 with papers and oral presentations; in the summer semester of 1910, the classes of Herr Professor Struck introduced me to the sources on the historical background to the French Revolution and recent controversies relating to the Revolution; in the winter semester of 1910/11,

State Library in Berlin; Franz Muncker (1855–1926), literary historian. Habilitated in Munich in 1879, he was made professor extraordinarius in modern German literature in 1890 and professor ordinarius in 1896. 14 Addition to the CV submitted for habilitation: “while working on this index I satisfied myself that without knowledge of the ancient languages I would be unable to continue my studies successfully. I moved to Berlin in spring 1908 to prepare for the school-leaving exam at a classically oriented grammar school. Instruction from such an outstanding philologist as Professor Paul Stengel of the Joachimthal grammar school, in whose house I lived like a member of the family for several years, the tremendously stimulating history lectures by his colleague, Professor Paul Schlesinger, now sadly deceased, and other private lessons by excellent teachers led to the desired result.” Professor Stengel was a grammar school teacher related to Hedwig Hintze. 15 Dr. Herbert Krabbo taught beginners’ classes introducing students to the study of medieval history and on the auxiliary sciences of history (historische Hilfswissenschaften) at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Dr. Walter Struck taught French history and early modern German history at the university and taught a class introducing modern history, taking the origins of the French Revolution as an example, during the summer semester of 1910. Struck was later professor extraordinarius in history at the University of Breslau. Following his death in 1923, his widow edited his unpublished work Montesquieu als Politiker, no. 228 of Historische Studien, Vaduz 1933. Reprinted Berlin 1965.

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Professor Krabbo familiarized us primarily with the rudiments of the auxiliary sciences of history (historische Hilfswissenschaften), particularly diplomatics and chronology. I passed the exam concluding his class in Easter 1911. Thus prepared, I was admitted to the seminar of Herr Professor Otto Hintze in the summer semester of 1911, whose lecture course on general constitutional history I had attended the previous winter. I was soon captivated by the studies pursued in this seminar. The productive fusion which Professor Hintze sought to achieve, of true history with political science [Staatslehre] and Staatenkunde [the study of the state], while taking full account of the institutional factor opened up the prospect of a rewarding field of study of my own. Such prospects were also inspired by the great lecture course on “General theories of state and society on a historical basis (politics)” delivered by Professor Hintze in the summer semester of 1911, while his lectures on political theory since Machiavelli, which complemented the history of institutions, introduced me to the history of political ideas. Alongside the ongoing seminar, which at the time covered the period roughly from the 13th to 18th century (inclusive) and in which I played a lively part, at the suggestion of Professor Hintze I began a major study of my own on the development of the unified French state, which I was able to further during the holidays through trips to France and studies carried out at the National Library in Paris.16 When Professor Hintze broke off his lectures and classes in the winter semester of 1911/12, I began to attend the seminars of Professor Tangl and Professor Erich Schmidt.17 In the seminar of Professor Erich Schmidt, I submitted a study on the various versions of Goethe’s Iphigenia running to about 32 pages, while in Professor Tangl’s18 seminar, alongside ongoing studies common to all, I produced two short pieces concerned with issues specific to the field of documentary research and medieval chronology.

16 The CV submitted as part of the habilitation process adds: “The work on the formation of the French state suggested by Professor Hintze then became crucial to the progress of my studies and my scholarly activities as a whole”. 17 Erich Schmidt (1853–1913), Germanist. Taught in Berlin from 1887. Became president of the Goethe Society in 1906. 18 Michael Tangl (1861–1921), Austrian historian. Occupied the chair in medieval history and the auxiliary sciences of history (historische Hilfswissenschaften) at the University of Berlin from 1897.

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During the winter semester of 1911/12 I also expanded my studies to include state sciences (Staatswissenschaften), beginning with attendance at a lecture on practical political economy by Professor von Schmoller. I returned to Professor Hintze’s seminar in the summer semester of 1912, to whom I was married in December of that year. I took my name off the university register in autumn 1912 in order to contribute to my husband’s work as his assistant for the time being.19 However, I soon resumed my own studies alongside this. As Gasthörerin [attending lectures and seminars without working towards a degree], I attended the lectures of Professor Troeltsch from summer 1915, joining his seminar in winter semester 1916/17, of which I was a lively member for a number of years. Professor Troeltsch pursued with us the preparatory studies for his great work on “Historism and its problems” (Historismus und seine Probleme).20 I gave two detailed presentations in his seminar, on “The relationship between Karl Marx and P. J. Proudhon”, which required tackling the problems of historical materialism and on “Wilhelm Wundt’s theory of history” in the winter semesters of 1917/18 and 1918/19 respectively. These studies enabled me, in an essay published in Hilfe on the “Decline of the West”21 in January 1920, to present my views on the book of the same name by Oswald Spengler, that is, the first volume of his work, and to place this latest “philosophy of history” in the context of, or demarcate it from, other modern theories of history. At the same time I had resumed my studies in political economy under the guidance of Professor Herkner. My own studies were increasingly focussed on exploring the genesis of the French state, very much in light of the Great Revolution; and I was able to use my 1911 seminar paper as a starting point. I was constantly stimulated and aided by my husband, who now steered my studies towards the federalistic undercurrent that was a constant accompaniment to the unification of France and which made itself felt with particular force in the modern “regionalism”.

19 In the CV submitted as part of the habilitation process she adds that “the state of [Hintze’s] health necessitated such assistance”. 20 Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme. Book 1: Das logische Problem der Geschichtsphilosophie, Tübingen 1922. Reprinted Aalen 1961. 21 Hedwig Hintze, review of Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), in: Die Hilfe 26 (1920), pp. 44–47.

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Greatly attracted by these problems of modern France, I published a lengthy essay on “Modern French regionalism and its roots” (“Der moderne französische Regionalismus und seine Wurzeln”) in the Preußische Jahrbücher in September 1920, followed by a shorter article taking into account the latest developments, “French regionalism” (“Der französische Regionalismus”)22 in der Deutsche Nation in April 1921. In addition I continuously published book reviews and essays in Hilfe, one of which (March 1919) dealt with “The question of female suffrage in the French Revolution” (Die Frage des Frauenwahlrechts in der Französischen Revolution).23 My studies dedicated to this period were then greatly stimulated by a lecture course by Professor Meinecke on “The era of the French Revolution and the wars of liberation” (“Das Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution und der Befreiungskriege”), which I attended in the summer semester of 1919. In the meantime, my plan for a book on “The problem of federalism in the early stages of the French Revolution” was gradually taking shape. I spent the next few years working on it. At the same time the most recent problems of France were a constant preoccupation. As part of the lecture course established by the Board on Studies of Foreign Countries (Beirat für Auslandsstudien) at the University of Berlin in November/December 1921, “Problems of the Central European state and economy”, I gave a talk on the subject “Capital city and province in France” in November 1921. After publishing an essay on “German intellectuality in relation to France” (“Deutsche Geistigkeit im Verhältnis zu Frankreich”) in Neues Deutschland in January 1923,24 I was asked by the editor of the Rheinischer Beobachter newspaper to examine the French daily press, with the inclusion of certain specialist political and political economy journals, in a regular weekly chronicle concerned mainly with the Rhine and Ruhr issue. This job, which I took on in Easter 1923, again brought me into very close contact with the various political currents

22

See above, p. 83. Hedwig Hintze, “Die Frage des Frauenstimmrechts in der Französischen Revolution”, in: Die Hilfe 11 (1919), pp. 132–134. 24 Hedwig Hintze, “Deutsche Geistigkeit im Verhältnis zu Frankreich. Mit einem Nachwort der Redaktion”, in: Das neue Deutschland 11 (1923), pp. 20–23. 23

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of contemporary France;25 I gave it up after a few months, however, because the material made available to me had become increasingly incidental and sporadic in nature, so that it was no longer possible to obtain a reliable overview. I enrolled again at the University of Berlin in the summer semester of 1923, where I took part in a colloquium of Professor Meinecke on “The study of sources and historiography in modern history” and resumed my medieval studies under Professor Brackmann. But my main focus was on completing my book on “The problem of federalism in the early stages of the French Revolution” (Das Problem des Föderalismus in der Frühzeit der Französischen Revolution), which I was able to finish at the start of the winter semester of 1923/24. I wish to use the tenth chapter on “The Constituante’s legislation on the departement” as my inaugural dissertation to obtain my doctorate. Hedwig Hintze née Guggenheimer b. 11 April 1928: Hedwig Hintze’s CV (excerpt)/appendix to application for habilitation Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records 1243 [. . .] When the war broke out, I volunteered for the Prussian national association of the Red Cross and supervised a course in voluntary nursing in autumn 1914, after which I myself passed the theoretical exam for Red Cross assistants. Subsequently, on the one hand, the increasingly difficult economic situation laid claim to much of my energy, which I would otherwise have been able to devote to academic work, while on the other hand prompting me to face up more seriously to the issue of an occupation once again. Since the summer of 1915, on my husband’s advice, I had resumed my university studies—initially as a student attending lectures only (Hörerin); the thrust of my studies of constitutional history, prompted by my husband, made it necessary to explore eco-

25

See Kaudelka, Rezeption, pp. 254–256.

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nomics in greater depth, and the lectures of Herr Professor Herkner26 provided me with the stimulation and instruction I was looking for in abundance. My preparations for the doctoral examination required a more in-depth study of philosophy. The lectures and classes of Herr Professor Troeltsch provided a truly plentiful source of stimulation and prompted me to produce my own studies in the history of philosophy, very much in keeping with my studies in constitutional history and political economy. My work on the formation of the French state, suggested by my husband, contained the seeds of a major academic work requiring in-depth study of the French sources, whose quantity—especially for the period of the Revolution—represents a serious problem in its own right; the well-known restrictions during the war and the first few years after it were additional burdens. Furthermore, my husband’s bouts of serious illness once again caused me to interrupt my studies at length. However, when the Weimar constitution opened up new professional opportunities to German women in August 1919,27 I gave more serious consideration to an old ambition, cherished from a young age, to become a civil servant. It was very difficult to mark off a section of my extensive studies, carried out with a major book in mind, for a dissertation; these studies then dragged on for a few more years before I made up my mind to interrupt them and prepare for the viva. I had published several essays on modern French history and political science (Staatskunde)28 since 1919. At the invitation of the “Board on Studies of Foreign Countries” (“Beirat für Auslandsstudien”), I gave a lecture on the “Capital city and province in France” at the university in November 1921, whose success gave fresh impetus to my desire for regular work of this kind.

26 The CV was submitted by H. Hintze, together with other documents, when she applied to the philosophy faculty of Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin for habilitation in “modern history”. The date appears at the end of the CV. 27 Art. 109 of the Weimar constitution stated: All Germans are equal before the law. Men and women have in principle the same civil rights and obligations; Art. 128: In accordance with the law and in line with their abilities and achievements, all citizens without distinction must be admitted to public office. All exception clauses relating to female civil servants are removed. 28 See above, p. 83, and the bibliography of the writings of H. Hintze in Kaudelka’s Rezeption, pp. 500–507.

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In order to complete my university studies, I enrolled again at Berlin University in the summer of 1923; to prepare for the doctoral examination I attended the lectures of Meinecke and Brackmann. At the same time I was doing work as a political journalist, which I felt I had to take on at the time of the struggle over the Ruhr. For several weeks in the spring of 1923 I wrote a regular chronicle of French press commentary on the political situation for the Rheinischer Beobachter newspaper.29 I passed the doctoral examination on 26 June 1924. My dissertation, “The municipal legislation of the Constituante” (“Die Munizipalgesetzgebung der Konstituente”), is one of the eighteen chapters of my book “The unity of the state and federalism in old France and in the Revolution” (Staatseinheit und Föderalismus im alten Frankreich und in der Revolution),30 recently published, in April 1928, by the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt in Stuttgart, which I would now like to submit as my habilitation thesis. When I passed the doctoral examination, the first twelve chapters of this book had already been completed in more or less their current form; it took longer to finish the book than I originally expected, as the complex problems presented by the six outstanding chapters could be resolved only through further extensive studies of the sources and because a number of honourable requests were made of me over the last few years that I felt unable to refuse. In June 1924, at the suggestion of Herr Professor Meinecke, the publisher Duncker & Humblot approached me with a request to write an introduction to a German translation of Aulard’s substantial work The French Revolution. A Political History, 1789–1804 (Politische Geschichte der französischen Revolution).31 While this was a very interesting and relatively easy task given the overall thrust of my studies, another request from the publishers proved an unexpectedly heavy burden on my time and energy: I was asked to help correct the proofs of the German translation. But I soon realized that this was not a simple case of “proofreading”: the translation, produced without knowledge of the historical and constitutional foundations of the 800-page work, had to

29 30 31

See Kaudelka, Rezeption, pp. 254–256. Chapter 11, pp. 207–234. Published: Munich 1925, pp. IX–XV; English edition: London 1913.

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be completely revised—a very difficult task given the haste necessitated by the process of printing. Six months after publication of the German edition, in the summer of 1925, I was approached by Herr Professor Wechssler32 on behalf of the “Board on Studies of Foreign Countries” at the University of Berlin with a request to deliver a weekly two-hour lecture at the university on “State and society in France since the Great Revolution” (within the framework of the “language and culture” courses) in the winter semester of 1925/26. I was working on the second half of my book at the time and would certainly not have interrupted this work on my own initiative; but given my aspirations to a lecturing career, I felt that I had to take up an appointment such as this, offered by the university, and wanted to make myself immediately available when needed. The subject of the lecture, which was very much in keeping with the studies of the state for which my husband had been preparing the ground for some years, was particularly appealing. I completed the course of lectures with a great sense of satisfaction and with success. I am still in touch with some of the attendees. In the summer of 1926, Carl Heymann publishers in Berlin approached me with a request to edit an unpublished work by Hugo Preuss together with Herr Professor Gerhard Anschütz. As Professor Anschütz was heavily burdened by other work, he initially asked me to take on the bulk of the editorial work, retaining responsibility merely for the composition of a general introduction; but once I had completed my task, he asked me to write the introduction as well and appear as sole editor. This posthumous work appeared at Christmas of 1926 under the title “Constitutional developments in Germany and Western Europe. Laying the historical foundations for constitutional law in the German Republic” (Verfassungspolitische Entwicklungen in Deutschland und Westeuropa. Historische Grundlegung zu einem Staatsrecht der Deutschen Republik).33 Only after this could I focus all my energy on completing my book; the year 1927, in which a few lengthy essays34 and shorter reviews of 32 Eduard Wechssler (1869–1949), Romanist. Habilitated in Halle in 1895, he became professor extraordinarius of Romance philology at Marburg in 1904 and ordinarius in 1909. Took up a chair at the University of Berlin in 1920. 33 Introduction to this volume (Berlin 1927), edited by Hedwig Hintze, pp. V–XX. See also above, p. 85f. 34 Hedwig Hintze, “Hugo Preuß. Eine historisch-politische Gesamtcharakteristik”, in: Die Justiz. Monatsschrift für Erneuerung des deutschen Rechtswesens, zugleich Organ

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mine appeared, was otherwise filled almost entirely with the difficult job of correction, which went on until February 1928. Since the summer of 1926 I have regularly produced the “notes and news” [Notizen und Nachrichten] section on the era of the French Revolution in the Historische Zeitschrift.35 Dr. Hedwig Hintze 4. 6 July 1924: Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Albert Brackmann NL Brackmann 12 Dear Herr Professor, The whole time I’ve been here I’ve been contemplating the best way to gain your attention, that is, to be more accurate, how best to thank you once again for so much stimulation and support and, finally, for the examination, which will always be one of the finest memories of my student days, a time so rich in powerful impressions. I heard yesterday from Prof. Hampe36 that you are sick again, and that really affects me deeply. I hope that it will soon pass, but these increasingly frequent bouts of illness are so dreadful and too much of a strain on you. I yearn on your behalf for the end of the semester, which you really ought to have brought about yourself somewhat earlier. I’m really keen to organize a modest dinner to celebrate my doctorate and am wondering how I might get all the various professors together under one roof. The death affecting the house of our friend Meinecke and my own need for rest, intensified by all kinds of little

des Republikanischen Richterbundes 2 (1927), pp. 223–237; Hintze, “Staatseinheit und Regionalismus in Frankreich”, in: Sozialistische Monatshefte 64 (1927), pp. 364–371; Hintze, “Staat und Gesellschaft der französischen Renaissance unter Franz I.”, in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 5 (1927), pp. 485–520. 35 The “notes and news” section provides an overview of articles in academic journals and brief reviews of books on specific eras of history. 36 Karl Hampe (1869–1936), medievalist. After obtaining his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1893, he worked as researcher for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and was a member of its central committee from 1917. Habilitated in Bonn in 1898, he was professor ordinarius at the University of Heidelberg from 1903 until his death.

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disturbances, have delayed the matter in any case. I have just been contemplating Tuesday 15 July at eight in the evening, and thought I might speak to Meinecke about it tomorrow. My dear Herr Professor—can I entertain the hope that, restored to health, I might be able to welcome you then as well as one of my guests? It’s no good without you. If I understood you correctly, your dear wife is no longer in Berlin; it’s already a painful enough loss to have to do without her at the little meal. I shall probably be in the city a great deal next week for reasons both scholarly and economic. Is there anything I can get you—particularly as the lady of the house isn’t there to look after you at the moment? I hope to receive reassuring news from you soon. My husband adds his very best wishes. Yours ever gratefully and faithfully, Hedwig Hintze 5. 9 October 1924: Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 15 Dear Herr Geheimrat, Further to the explanations I gave you in person on Tuesday I am taking the liberty of sending you the excerpt from the paper with two addressed envelopes. Once again I would request that you be so kind as to send it on to Geheimrat Marcks, whom I have contacted by telephone and asked for the necessary signature. Please find enclosed also the letter from Baroness v. Buschoeveden— thank you so much from both of us. I shall write directly to her as soon 37 as Aulard and the dentist allow me to draw breath.

37 Alphonse Aulard (1849–1928), famous French historian. First holder of the chair in the history of the Revolution established at the Sorbonne in Paris. His most important work, Histoire politique de la Révolution francaise (1st edn. Paris 1901) was published in German under the title Politische Geschichte der französischen Revolution. Entstehung und Entwicklung der Demokratie und der Republik 1789–1804, Munich, 1924, with an introduction by Hedwig Hintze, who also revised the translation. English edition: The French Revolution. A Political History, London 1910.

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For many reasons—scholarly and practical (such as the shortness of the days, lighting conditions)—Otto [Hintze] doesn’t want to leave the house this October and November; we hope to be able to explain this to you soon in person in more detail. However, it would be wonderful if there was room for us in Assenheim, in May or June for instance, when the teaching professors are unable to go away, and I would like to write to the Baroness as soon as possible in this regard. Thank you once again for everything; we do not yet dare congratulate the happy couple38 properly, as the good news was told to me as a secret, but we are with you and your family in spirit, joyfully sharing in the forthcoming happy event. Yours ever gratefully and faithfully, Hedwig Hintze 6. 7 April 1927: Hedwig Hintze (Berlin) to Albert Brackmann NL Brackmann 12 Dear Herr Professor, Many thanks indeed for your kind card of the fifth of this month and your interest. I have referred to your friendly interest in my new submission to the Emergency Committee, which was just sent off, also on the fifth: the book39 is now estimated to run to forty folios. Almost twenty-nine or more—the actual text—are already set and I am unable to shorten the eight outstanding folios of critical apparatus (notes and excursuses), or the book will be worthless as rigorous scholarship. Two folios are earmarked for the introduction and conclusion. I’m delighted that you got something out of my husband’s essay;40 it is very close to my own views, far closer than the ideas of Troeltsch

38 Reference to the marriage of Meinecke’s daughter Sabine to Carl Rabl, which took place in 1925. 39 Hedwig Hintze, Staatseinheit und Föderalismus im alten Frankreich und in der Revolution, Berlin 1928. 40 Presumably a reference to Otto Hintze’s essay “Troeltsch und die Probleme des Historismus. Kritische Studien”, in: HZ 135 (1927), pp. 188–239.

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himself, whom I consider unforgettable and irreplaceable as a friend and teacher. I hope you have fine weather and a really good rest. Perhaps I shall manage to escape from the mountain of work, from which I’ve had no release since 1 August, and head for the Riesengebirge around the end of April for fourteen days; the rest and relaxation would then have to do me until the end of July. Best wishes from both of us and thank you so much once again. Yours sincerely, Hedwig Hintze 7. 20 May 1933: Friedrich Meinecke and Albert Brackmann to Hedwig Hintze41 NL Meinecke 231, draft Dear colleague, It is with great sadness that we are compelled to inform you that certain indications, that cannot be taken lightly, have forced us to conclude that the Historische Zeitschrift is now under threat. We shall assert the journal’s scholarly character under all circumstances, but have to be more restrictive in the selection of contributors from now on in order to guard against these threats. You are simply seen as a particularly tainted figure politically. We will still be able to publish your contribution to the new issue, while deleting the names of the regular contributors,42 but will unfortunately then have to let you go as a regular contributor. We would also like to express our warmest thanks for your many years of dedicated and expert service. M. Br. [Meinecke. Brackmann]

41

Handwritten draft by Meinecke featuring the note: To Frau Hintze 20.5.33. In contrast to earlier issues, the names of the regular contributors are not in fact mentioned in part two of volume 148 (1933) of the Historische Zeitschrift in the “notes and news” column, which features reports on publications on specific periods. The names are mentioned again in the next issue. 42

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8. 21 May 1933: Otto Hintze (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 231 Dear friend, After your verbal disclosure about the situation at the H.Z. on Thursday of last week I was prepared for the turn that has now occurred. I understand and appreciate the motives underlying your editorial policy, but I for my part cannot of course approve of or put my name to it. I assume, therefore, that you will consider it a matter of course if I hereby formally request that my name be removed from the title page of the H.Z. from the next issue on.43 I also want to avoid appearing to make concessions to a trend in cultural policy whose professed goal, among other things, is to ensure that the year 1789 is wiped from world history and that in fifty years’ time no-one in Germany will know what the word Marxism means. Your old friend nonetheless, Otto Hintze 9. 18 November 1933: Otto Hintze (Berlin) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 231 Dear Meinecke, It’s part of the tragic nature of our times that old friendships become shaky. But I think it’s better to let the string that once produced a full note fade and die away quietly than to tear it apart with a shrill note of discord. In this spirit I remain Your Otto Hintze

43 From part two of volume 148 (1933) of the HZ, Otto Hintze’s name is no longer among those historians listed as members of the HZ editorial team alongside the two main editors.

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10. 8 May 1942: Konrad Hintze (Pyritz) to Friedrich Meinecke44 NL Meinecke 15 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I would like to ask your esteemed advice following an enquiry from the Prussian Secret State Archive (Preußisches Geheimes Staatsarchiv). To enable you to assess the matter more easily, I must tell you the following in the strictest confidence. You will no doubt already have heard that my deceased brother Otto decreed in his will that “My personal manuscripts are to be destroyed” during your meeting with Herr Professor Hartung and the two gentlemen from Koehler and Amelang publishers in May 40. His wife, who had emigrated to Holland, was unwilling to recognize my brother’s last will and testament and did everything she could to come into possession of the manuscripts on constitutional history,45 claiming in particular that she had a right to them as his wife and student.

44

Dr. med. Konrad Hintze was a brother of Otto Hintze. He and his wife committed suicide upon the arrival of the Red Army. Meinecke noted on the letter: Advised deposit in the G. St. A. (Secret State Archive or Geheimes Staatsarchiv) with the agreement of Hartung, 11/5. 45 Of the manuscript, substantial fragments were published under the titles “The constitutional history of Poland from the 16th to the 18th century” (“Verfassungsgeschichte Polens vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert”) and “The breakthrough of the democratic nation state in the American and French Revolutions” (“Der Durchbruch des demokratischen Nationalstaates in der amerikanischen und französischen Revolution”) by Gerhard Oestreich (in: Hintze, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. 1: Staat und Verfassung, 2nd expanded edn, Göttingen 1962, pp. 511–562 and pp. 503–510). Other parts, on medieval Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden in the early modern period, Poland in the Middle Ages, Hungary and the Netherlands were published by Guiseppe Di Costanzo, Michael Erbe and Wolfgang Neugebauer, under the title Allgemeine Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der neueren Staaten. Fragmente, vol. 1, Calvizzano-Naples 1998. The second volume will relate to Switzerland, Austria, the Italian states and Spain, drawing on manuscripts listed in Hintze’s papers in the Secret State Archive (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz), VI HA N1, nos. 1–10. The chapters on France, Great Britain, the United States and Russia have not survived. Wolfgang Neugebauer believes that these gaps can be bridged by a four-hundred page written record of a lecture by Hintze on the “General constitutional history of the new states” (“Allgemeine Verfassungsgeschichte der neueren Staaten”) dating from the winter semester 1910/11 and a shorter one from the winter semester of 1913/14. These documents contain extensive observations on France up to the Revolution, the early constitutional history of the United States and the political constitution of Britain. See Neugebauer: “Otto Hintze und seine Konzeption der ‘Allgemeinen Verfassungsgeschichte der neueren Staaten’ ”, in: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 20 (1993), pp. 65–96, supplemented by Neugebauer: “Zur Quellenlage der

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We, his siblings, however, decided not to surrender the manuscripts, particularly in light of the fact that my brother Otto declined his wife’s request “to leave her the manuscripts” when she emigrated. Furthermore, his wife had then mentioned to us that she wished to make use of the manuscripts for possible publication in the USA, where, she stated, there was much interest in my brother’s work. At any rate, according to letters we have now found dating from 1938, Professor Stier did in fact submit the first two sections of the manuscript “The rise of the modern state among the leading peoples of Europe” for inclusion in his journal Welt als Geschichte.46 Hintze-Forschung”, in: Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 45 (1999), pp. 323–338. According to Neugebauer, Hintze’s work is not a systematic comparative structural history of constitutional institutions, but rather an account of the development of the constitution and administration specific to a given state, with the concept of state formation being viewed as the central process of early modern history in Europe and the USA. Here, Hintze focussed on features specific to particular states rather than the comparative elaboration of universal historical developments and historical types—as in his great essays published later on: “The nature and spread of feudalism” (“Wesen und Verbreitung des Feudalismus”) (1929), “Typology of the corporative constitutions of the West” (“Typologie der ständischen Verfassungen des Abendlandes”) (1930), “World historical preconditions for the representative constitution” (“Weltgeschichtliche Bedingungen der Repräsentativverfassung”) (1931), “The nature and transformation of the modern state” (“Wesen und Wandlung des modernen Staates”) (1931) and “The rise of the modern state system” (“Die Entstehung des modernen Staatslebens”) (1932) (in: Hintze, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. 1, pp. 84–185, 470–496). Apart from the essay entitled “The breakthrough of the democratic nation state” (“Der Durchbruch des demokratischen Nationalstaates”), probably written around 1930, those of Hintze’s manuscripts published posthumously are based on his research from the period prior to the First World War and are also rooted in the ideas of the time. As revealing as these publications are as a contribution to the development of Hintze’s work and ideas, it seems likely to me that his work—probably influenced in part by conversations with his wife, who possessed an outstanding knowledge of French constitutional history—would have changed at a basic conceptual level in subsequent decades, above all by paying greater heed to the comparative issues so central to his later essays. It is possible that Hintze refrained from publishing his original manuscript not only because the publisher requested that he abridge the manuscript, which had been largely completed by around 1930, and later because of his uncompromising rejection of the Nazi regime, but also because his basic views had changed. My thanks to Frau Brigitta Oestreich for drawing my attention to a number of key facts. 46 No publication appeared in the journal Die Welt als Geschichte or elsewhere. A manuscript entitled “The rise of the modern state among the leading peoples of Europe” is listed in Hintze’s papers, no. 11, and includes six volumes, but was no longer extant in the German Central Archive (Deutsches Zentralarchiv) in Merseburg, Rep. 92, no. 11, where Hintze’s papers were housed from the end of the war until the early 1990s, when the holdings were inspected in 1962, apart from the essay on the “Breakthrough of the democratic nation state”, listed as vol. 6 and published by

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In 1939, my brother once stated to me that publication of his work would be inadvisable at the present time. All these above-mentioned points make one wonder whether it is best to send the manuscripts to be stored in the archive, where they might be made available for examination and use. At best, they could be deposited with the reservation that other individuals cannot use the papers without permission. Incidentally, a far more [word illegible] of his manuscript has subsequently come to light among his papers than the one indicated in May 1940. This last forms the general part of the “Constitutional history of the modern Western states” (“Verfassungsgeschichte der neueren abendländischen Staatenwelt”), while the former more substantial one is the “Constitutional history of the leading Western states” (“Verfassungsgeschichte der wichtigsten abendländischen Staaten”). I would be very grateful for a kind response to my request. I enclose the request from the Secret State Archive together with the form and letters from Professor Stier, which I would ask you to please return to me, plus a return envelope. Our best wishes to you and your wife, Yours faithfully, Dr. Hintze

Oestreich. The five missing volumes are listed with the following titles. Vol. 1: Western Christianity and the European state system; vol. 2: State consolidation in England, France, Spain; vol. 3: The Spanish-Habsburg monarchy; vol. 4: The confessional crisis and the absolute monarchy in France and Germany; vol. 5: The confessional crisis and parliamentary government in England. The missing parts probably never made it into the archive, and this was merely the manuscript’s table of contents. According to Brigitta Oestreich, Otto Hintze and Hedwig Hintze (p. 35), part of the manuscript was kept in the safe of the district savings bank (Kreissparkasse) in Pyritz, where Otto’s brother Konrad Hintze lived, and probably went missing once the war was over. Of Hintze’s work, the journal Die Welt als Geschichte, vol. 4, 1938, pp. 157–190, merely contains a slightly revised reprint of the essay on the “Nature and spread of feudalism”, first published in 1929.

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1. 28 February 1929: Eckart Kehr (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 31 Dear Dr. Rosenberg, Please find your essay on rationalism1 enclosed. As you will see—with some anxiety I fear—I have written a great deal in the margins and take a quite different view with regard to many specific points. But this will also demonstrate to you that I have gone to some lengths to delve into your speculations. I can only hope you will not conclude that I came to a standstill at the very start of this thorny path and merely looked at the mystery of the newly built temple of the collective history of ideas from way off in the distance. Perhaps you will consider me among those “with that sober, if limited clarity and—supposedly!—such great certainty about reality, who have no understanding for the irrationality of life”, though I’m not sure whether spinning out thoughts is a particularly good way to develop one’s sense for the irrational or whether a scepticism about “ideas” does not endow one with a far stronger awareness of the fact that there is no certainty and no rationality in life. But—be that as it may—you are always welcome to subject my essays to criticism as well: I’m glad of any improvement I can make to my work, with the help of others, whenever my own brains are insufficient. Indeed, you have seen this in the case of the introduction to my review of Meinecke’s book on the alliance problem,2 the one you and

1

Draft of an essay by Hans Rosenberg, later published under the title “Theologischer Rationalismus und vormärzlicher Vulgärliberalismus”, in: HZ 141 (1930), pp. 497–541. Reprinted in: Rosenberg, Politische Denkströmungen, pp. 18–50, 129–132. 2 Eckart Kehr, “Deutsch-englisches Bündnisproblem der Jahrhundertwende”, in: Die Gesellschaft 5 (1928/II), pp. 24–31. Reprinted in Kehr, Primat der Innenpolitik, pp. 176–183. In this article Kehr discussed Meinecke’s book: Geschichte des deutschenglischen Bündnisproblems 1890–1901, Munich/Berlin 1927.

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Gilbert pulled to pieces, while Salomon3 made plenty of corrections to my essay on the reserve officers.4 Fundamentally, I would like to add that it seems dangerous to me to generalize to such an extent from the individual problems, firstly because, as you have structured the essay, sections I–III give the impression of being a history-of-ideas-based introduction to IV and this gives rise to an obviously disproportionate accentuation of the different parts, and secondly because much is already known about this subject on a general level, so the essay would have a greater impact if it was half or a third as long; and thirdly because I know from myself and other historians of ideas just how disastrously those who abandon themselves to such speculations get bogged down in them. But that takes me beyond my legitimate right to factual critique. Salomon asked me to pass on his invitation to both of us to visit him next week for tea. I suggest Wednesday at five thirty; but another day would be fine as well. My best regards to you and your dear fiancée. Your fierce critic, Kehr who’s not as nasty as he might appear. 2. Expert opinions on the manuscript by Eckart Kehr: “War losses, reparations and re-ascendance in the politics of Freiherr vom Stein” (Kriegsverluste, Kriegsentschädigung und Wiederaufstieg in der Politik des Freiherrn vom Stein)

3 Albert Salomon (1891–1966), sociologist, lecturer from 1926 to 1931, later professor at the German College for the Study of Politics (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in Berlin. Concurrently, from 1928 to 1931, editor of the theoretical journal of the SPD Die Gesellschaft, in which Kehr published most of his essays from 1928 to 1932. Salomon emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 and from there to the United States in 1935, where he taught at the New School for Social Research in New York. 4 Essay by Kehr: “Zur Genesis des Königlich Preußischen Reserveoffiziers”, in: Die Gesellschaft 5 (1928/II), pp. 492–502. Reprinted in: Kehr, Primat der Innenpolitik, pp. 53–63.

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a. 13 August 1931: expert opinion by Richard Thoma (Bonn) NL Ritter 309, copy Dear Herr Ministerialrat, Of the prize entry on Freiherr vom Stein sent to me, only some of which I have so far been able to examine, I am returning to you the most extensive, namely the three-volume study by E. Kehr, with a request that it be presented to one of the historians or economic historians on the adjudication committee for assessment. By way of explanation I respectfully refer to my enclosed vote. I hope to be able to send you the other papers, the majority of which appear to be of inferior quality, around 20 September, perhaps a few days later, with my evaluation. Yours faithfully, sgd Thoma II Subject: “War losses, reparations and re-ascendance in the politics of Freiherr vom Stein” (Kriegsverluste, Kriegsentschädigung und Wiederaufstieg in der Politik des Frhrn. vom Stein). 1) Eckart Kehr: 485 pages! Vol. I 209 typewritten pages; Vol. II 180 pages Vol. III notes: on vol. I: 41 pages, on vol. II: 55 pages. (Table of contents at the beginning of vol. III). The author also regards the work as a treatment of “The relationship between economy and state in the politics of Freiherr vom Stein” and expresses this in the title of his study. In the foreword, he states that this study represents the first volume of a longer work to be entitled: “Economy and politics in Prussia during the reform era” (“Wirtschaft und Politik in Preußen während der Reformzeit”). This is clearly a study composed by a scholar trained in history, as well as political economy and sociology, on the basis of years of

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research. Just to read it requires a high degree of economic knowledge, especially of the techniques of banking and currency. As a valid assessment of the value of this comprehensive and richly documented study can be provided only by an expert in history with a thorough knowledge of the general political, economic policy and biographical literature on Prussia in the era of the defeat and the wars of liberation, I have limited my reading to specific chapters and spot checks. I would describe the impression I have gained in the following way: it would not surprise me if an expert critique characterized the study as a seminal, first-rate piece of work. It is quite another thing whether this study is a possible candidate for the prize awarded by the Ministry in the first place. Several factors suggest that this question, which the author himself poses and answers in the affirmative in a rather unconvincing way in a “foreword”, must in fact be answered in the negative. 1) The study, part of a larger work, which, I presume, is intended to serve as a habilitation thesis,5 was to all appearances largely complete when the competition was announced and was not, therefore, inspired by it. 2) In no way does the work bear the character [of a] study and account specifically dedicated to honouring the character, views and impact of Freiherr vom Stein. 3) If the competition is intended to inspire accounts which—though historically reliable—are to some extent also meant to be popular and to educate a wide readership, then the present study, written by a learned scholar for other learned scholars, fails to meet this expectation. Nevertheless, it seems to me that should the assessment of the work by a qualified party be as favourable as seems probable to me, one ought to overlook these reservations. It is better to award a prize or even two prizes (as two topics are in fact tackled) to an academically adequate study than to exclude it from the competition on the rather formalistic grounds above in favour of less valuable contributions.

5 Kehr’s attempt to habilitate in Königsberg failed. His habilitation thesis is thought to be lost. See Wehler’s introduction to Kehr, Primat, p. 12.

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b. 24 September 1931: expert opinion by Gerhard Ritter (Freiburg im Breisgau) NL Ritter 309, copy To the Prussian Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Education Berlin In response to the letter from Herr Ministerialrat Dr. von Rottenburg of the 17th of this month, which I received only yesterday, I am happy to provide the following expert opinion on Eckart Kehr’s prize entry “War losses, reparations and re-ascendance in the politics of Freiherr vom Stein in light of the restructuring of the relationship between economy and state in the reform era” (“Kriegsverluste, Kriegsentschädigung und Wiederaufstieg in der Politik des Frh. v. Stein auf der Grundlage der Neuordnung des Verhältnisses von Wirtschaft und Staat in der Reformzeit”). As the first referee, Prof. Thoma, has already underlined, this study is certainly not a “prize entry” in the sense that the author has worked under the same conditions as the other applicants, but rather the habilitation thesis of a young historian who has obtained his material through years of study and has in reality been working towards very different goals than those indicated by his two submitted topics. All the sophistry of the long foreword does nothing to obscure the fact that within the framework of this book Frh. vom Stein plays only a minor part, and indeed—I won’t beat about the bush—an utterly pitiful one. It must be acknowledged that on a superficial level the author has very cleverly concealed this fact by putting various chapters of a longer work together in such a way that that one gains the impression that this is a combination of two prize-related topics within the framework of a cohesive study. In terms of content, only the first volume is a possible candidate for assessment in the first place, as only it has anything to say about Stein. The author’s goal is to provide an account and assessment of Prussian economic policy in the broadest sense during the reform era or, more accurately, during the era of transition from the closed economy of the 18th century to modern capitalism. He describes historiography hitherto as “the history of formal politics”, which has “no clue about or

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feeling for socio-economic factors”, and is a mere “history of records” unable to reach independent conclusions. Above all, he states that it lacks any real knowledge of the processes of economic change and their natural character. And he reproaches this historiography for completely misunderstanding Prussian economic policies of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Initially this verdict takes aim at the tradition of Prussian economic and social history by the Acta Borussica school (Schmoller, Hintze, etc.),6 but at the same time also at the bourgeois “ideologues” of the political history fraternity, including Lehmann,7 every one of whom must have been blind to the true essence of things according to Kehr. Kehr seeks to make up for these shortcomings through sociological and economic investigations, whose concepts are borrowed chiefly from the social economist Max Weber,8 and draw in specific cases on recent monographs in economic and administrative history by Ziekursch, Mauer, Weyermann, Zimmermann and many others, as well as on his own—often detailed—knowledge of the records of the Secret State Archive. He undeniably shows great intellectual vivacity, originality and knowledge, unusual for a historian, in the fields of sociology and theoretical political economy, particularly the science of finance. The work undoubtedly draws attention to serious gaps in the existing research and brings to light a number of areas in which the older specialism of political history was rather naive with its all too limited knowledge of economics.

6 The great source book series Acta Borussica, Denkmäler der preußischen Staatsverwaltung im 18. Jahrhundert was initiated by the political economist, social policy specialist and historian Gustav Schmoller, produced under his direction until his death in 1917 and published by the Royal Academy of the Sciences (Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften) in Berlin. Within the framework of this series, the historian Otto Hintze (1861–1940) produced two major source books in collaboration with Schmoller: Die preußische Seidenindustrie im 18. Jahrhundert und ihre Begründung durch Friedrich den Großen, 3 vols, Berlin 1892 and Die Behördenorganisation und die allgemeine Staatsverwaltung Preußens im 18. Jahrhundert, vols 6–10 on the period 1740–1756, Berlin 1901–1910. The two interpretive works, vol. 3 of the work on the silk industry and vol. 6, 1 “Einleitende Darstellung der Behördenorganisation und allgemeinen Verwaltung in Preußen beim Regierungsantritt Friedrichs II.” (1901) were produced by O. Hintze. See also Wolfgang Neugebauer, “Gustav Schmoller, Otto Hintze und die Arbeit an der Acta Borussica”, in: Jahrbuch für die Brandenburgische Landesgeschichte 48 (1997), pp. 152–202. 7 Max Lehmann (1845–1929), historian. Wrote the Biographie des Freiherrn vom Stein, 3 vols, Leipzig 1902–1905, long considered an essential work. 8 Max Weber (1864–1920), leading sociologist, political economist and historian and shrewd observer of contemporary politics.

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Yet there can be no doubt that he has failed to achieve his goal. Every history, whether economic or political history in the narrower sense, must be concerned chiefly with achieving understanding if it wishes to serve its purpose. There is absolutely no sign of understanding in this book, but merely a know-it-all attitude. Whatever Prussian economic and social policy of the 18th and early 19th centuries attempted to do, the author always knows better. Nothing finds favour with him, neither Frederick the Great’s industrial and agricultural policies nor the decades of effort by the reformist circle to overcome the Frederician system of economic and social policy. He sees nothing but out-and-out dilettantism at play everywhere. In fact it is worse than that: nothing but the lowest form of egotism, the “avarice” of a corrupt bureaucracy and a “ruling class” shamelessly lining its pockets. Modern capitalism arrives in Prussia in the repulsive form of the Junkers’ agricultural capitalism on the one hand, and the “pariah capitalism” of the royal Münzjuden [Jews in the employ of princes who delivered coinage metal and provided other financial services] on the other. The bureaucracy, incompetent and utterly corrupt, rather than directing this development into tolerable channels, thinks of nothing but extending its control over the state (which appears in Kehr’s work as a mere power structure for the maintenance of the ruling classes). The driving forces of events are exclusively the meanest of material motives, and everything else, especially all forms of patriotism, is nothing but a more or less absurd “ideology”, which the bourgeois discipline of history has of course regularly been taken in by hitherto, thanks to its “lack of socio-economic instincts”. Political events too must of course be explained essentially in terms of such economic processes; in the sphere of domestic politics all that ever occurs is the adjustment of laws, again and again, to the wishes and needs of the ruling classes. If we go along with this author, the essence of Prussia’s internal history from Frederick the Great until Hardenberg was nothing but a process in which corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats, Jewish moneymen and usurious agrarian capitalist “profiteers” (represented by the aristocratic “Landschaften” [credit institutes supported by regional nobles] and their hangers-on) haggled incessantly over power. Within this overall framework, Freiherr vom Stein plays, as I have said, a quite pitiful role. He was an advocate of “unimaginative, hollow fiscalism” like everyone around him prior to 1806, just a little more industrious and at least personally free of corruption, in contrast to his

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predecessor Struensee,9 but blinkered and behind the times, a shallow man of programmes, incapable of recognizing the limits of the real, full of both the prejudices of a Knight of the old German Empire [the Holy Roman Empire] and blind Anglomania. A total failure as a reformer who completely ruins the Prussian finances with a truly unrestrained amateurism, dependent on such an unclear thinker as Niebuhr10 for monetary policy. His municipal reform was an arbitrary act, senseless in socio-economic terms, which tried to anticipate a much later capitalist development and thus brought about the dreary domination of the petty bourgeoisie in the cities; his agricultural policy was merely a further means of securing and expanding a fraudulent agrarian capitalism, his contributions policy a series of failures, his veering into the camp of radical soldiers in the summer of 1808 nothing but a psychological reaction by the weak, inwardly insecure character of this political amateur, best compared with the way in which Rathenau “submitted to Stinnes” following his foreign policy defeats or Schacht joined the nationalists out of wounded vanity in a similar situation.11 His stubborn optimism in desperate situations is presented as “fraudulent pseudo-patriotism”, his willingness to accommodate Daru12 as pitiful “caving in”, his efforts to muster the financial contributions with every available means in order to liberate the country from occupation as soon as possible as an “irresponsible waste” of remaining

9 Karl Gustav Struensee von Karlsbad (1735–1804), official. Became Geheimer Finanzrat and director of the Preußische Seehandlung (state bank) in 1782. From 1791 he was minister for excise, customs, commerce and manufacturing in the Generaldirektorium, the leading institution of the Prussian state. 10 Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831), Danish-born statesman and historian. At the prompting of Freiherr vom Stein he entered the Prussian civil service in 1806 and became director of the Seehandlung. Prussian envoy in Rome from 1816 to 1833. 11 Walther Rathenau (1867–1922), industrialist, author and politician from a Jewish family. Member of the DDP. Became minister of reconstruction in the Wirth cabinet in May 1921. Appointed foreign minister on 31 January 1922, he was murdered by members of the far-right “Organisation Consul” on 24 June 1922 because of his policy of understanding; Hugo Stinnes (1870–1924), politically active industrialist; Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970), banker and politician. President of the Reichsbank from 1923 to 1930, when he resigned in protest at the Young Plan. Championed the Nazi Party in industrial circles. Re-appointed president of the Reichsbank by Hitler in 1933, he was also made minister for economic affairs in 1934 and plenipotentiary for the war economy (Wehrwirtschaft) from 1935 to 1937. As he pushed for consolidation of the finances he was dismissed as minister for economic affairs in 1937, and as president of the Reichsbank in 1939, but remained minister without portfolio until 1943. 12 Pierre Antoine Daru (1767–1829), French financier, poet and writer of history. Close associate of Napoleon I.

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private assets, of productive capital. According to K’s account, the real blame for the financial disaster of 1807/8 lies with the Prussian administration under Stein’s incompetent leadership, while the French occupation is praised in every detail: on account of its technical perfection, its progressive capitalist methods, its near-incomprehensible mildness and leniency despite all the provocations by foolish Prussians. And the only positive to counter all these negatives is the hesitant recognition of an honourable, though narrow-minded personal stance, combined with a great deal of criticism of his limited horizons and a pitying smile, bordering on derision, for the “individualism of a Knight of the old German Empire”. I share the view that one should by no means overstate the originality of Stein’s economic and social policies and in my biography I repeatedly underlined how deeply he was entangled in, and dependent on, the traditions of administrative practice of the 18th century.13 Perhaps the topic chosen by K. was not very well-suited to bringing out the positive value of Stein’s deeds. But I would have to write a whole treatise rather than an expert opinion to show in detail the questionable, indeed irresponsible methods K. has deployed to disparage Stein’s memory and that great era in general: grotesque exaggerations, frivolous misrepresentations and distortions of both motives and facts, highlighting specific passages in the sources to back up his own views, the absolutely extraordinary ease with which he combines and deploys figures and hypothetical assertions in a way that borders on sophistry while not shrinking from presenting a whole mass of contradictions on the same three pages. This book was not written by the understanding love of the historian, but by hatred, combined with a craving for originality that comes very close to pretentiousness. I am not familiar with the motives or goals that induced the Minister to launch this competition, of which I was informed only at a very late date. But I cannot imagine that it is the task of a state prize commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Stein’s death to have this statesman’s memory publically disparaged in a way that no-one has dared do in a century. If published, this work will be quite unable to attain popularity; it is far too badly written for that (one need look no further than the first page of text: a single sentence fills the entire page,

13

Gerhard Ritter, Stein. Eine politische Biographie, 2 vols., Stuttgart/Berlin 1931.

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and on top of that the predicate has been forgotten!). But despite this inadequacy, if it is awarded a state prize there will surely be a huge public backlash, directed not least at the adjudication committee. In light of all of this I am in no way able to concur with the positive assessment by my colleague Thoma, in as much as it seriously contemplates awarding this work a prize. Kehr’s work will poison people’s minds rather than having the positive, constructive effect of reconciling past and present, as a celebration of Stein should aim to do. sgd Gerhard Ritter. c. 15 October 1931: expert opinion by Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) NL Ritter 309, copy Professor Dr. Friedrich M e i n e c k e’s vote. Supplementary remarks on the study by Eckart K e h r . I must unfortunately concur in the main with the vote of my colleague Ritter.13 I say unfortunately because we are dealing here with a very gifted author, who was one of my students, and from whom I expected a great deal, and this is a far-reaching achievement based on extensive study of the sources that breaks some new ground, a piece of work that the research community will have to grapple with in future. In all probability, while acknowledging some persuasive individual results, this research community will reject the author’s methods and criteria of evaluation and accuse him of having overstepped the boundaries of historical research and judgement. He has, to put it bluntly, lapsed into the fanatical shrewdness of a detective who, by pursuing certain tracks in a one-sided way, loses his objective understanding of the totality of conditions and personalities and by accumulating isolated pieces of evidence, often interpreted in a drastic manner, ultimately gains a distorted view of them. The economic view of history, which places emphasis on class struggle and class egotism and which has greatly influenced the author, is undoubtedly of great heuristic value. But applied in the unbridled and overbearing way it is here, it destroys living historical phenomena and makes of them a web of ignorance, narrowness of outlook and wickedness. All one sees is the partie honteuse [shameful role] of the Prussian state. While that state

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may have played such a role, while its financial and economic policies may have been truly backward, inept and determined by class interests, one can evaluate this state justly only if one also thinks deeply at all times about the extremely difficult problems inherent in its overall international and domestic political situation and the great battle of minds fought over the soul of the state. But this is entirely lacking here. In the satyr play that the Prussian financial and economic history of both ossifying absolutism and the incipient reform era represents here, S t e i n himself appears not as a morally bad statesman but as an ignorant and narrow-minded one, and the author builds no bridge to his great historical achievements. What we are seeing here is unrestrained iconoclasm. I too am prompted by these deficiencies to advise firmly against awarding the author a prize. I would have been willing to overlook the fact that the study, whose goals are in fact quite different, has been adjusted to the prize topics only in a very superficial and forced manner, if the large amount of work done were in harmony with its inner values. I also take objection to the often poor state of the language used in the work. All in all, as this is an unusual case, it would be a welcome development if other members of the adjudication committee would take a look at the work. sgd M e i n e c k e d. 11 November 1931: expert opinion by Heinrich Herkner NL Ritter 309, copy Vote by Professor Dr. Herkner on the study by E. Kehr. My assessment may be read in light of the remarks made by the author himself in vol. I, p. IV: “In conclusion I would like to underline that the uneven areas, gaps and repetitions in my account and the lack of transitions are due to the fact that the manuscript cannot be presented in the final planned version of the book as a result of the extreme shortage of time, as well as the fact that it has not yet been possible to evaluate all of the relevant published and unpublished material.”

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In my opinion it is impossible to consider awarding a prize to a study still in such an unfinished and immature state in terms of both form and content. The adjudicator must stick with what is; what the author will or might make of the work under favourable circumstances cannot be reliably assessed. I also believe that the improvements and modifications with respect to both language and material would have to be far more extensive than the author appears to assume. It would be worth considering changing his entire methodology, of which he is particularly proud, as well. He prides himself on his “socio-economic instinct” in contrast to Lehmann, who he says has none. I think that this instinct has led the author alarmingly astray. He projects the most modern sociological terminology, a whole torrent of words, onto the realities of the 18th century. In conjunction with drastic comparisons backed up by references to modern processes and individuals, the effect of this procedure is often confusing rather than clarifying. The language, often bordering on the incomprehensible, seems to me merely to reflect the major obscurities and contradictions still present in the author’s mind. I also have the impression that he has yet to master economic theory, particularly the monetary system and lending business, to the point of being able to provide an account satisfactory to the reader with an interest in political economy. Kehr is drunk on the fire-water of Max Weber’s sociology, but ruins any clear understanding of economic processes through all kinds of “isms” and abstractions. I recognize that the author has produced a very substantial piece of work and has obtained some new and fruitful insights which, if carefully elaborated with intellectual composure, level-headedness and impartiality, could provide valuable results. This would require the author to study analogous conditions in other German states. He views many aspects as peculiar to Prussia that can in reality be found in other places as well throughout this era. I would be very pleased, should his financial situation require it, if he were to be awarded a state grant in order to complete his studies. sgd Herkner 11 November 1931.

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3. 18 January 1932: Adolf Grimme,14 Prussian minister for science, art and education (Berlin), to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 177 Dear Herr Geheimrat, In line with your suggestion on allocation of the state prize marking the Freiherr vom Stein jubilee, I have awarded first prize to Studienrätin Dr. Lotte Sommer in Hirschberg, Studienrat Dr. Hans Haussherr in Berlin and Studienrat Dr. Karl Watz in Kassel. The work of the following are honoured with plaques: Professor Dr. Jumpertz in Berlin, the student Fritz Erler in Berlin and the teacher Kurt Buttler in Turawa. I would like to express my most heartfelt thanks to you, esteemed Herr Geheimrat, for your efforts and trouble in examining and assessing the studies submitted to you and for the self-sacrificing conscientiousness with which you reached the decision as chair of the adjudication committee. The result of the competition will not entirely have met your expectations, which makes me all the more grateful for your selfless work. The work of Professor Koch, which could not be taken into consideration in reaching the decision, will be honoured outside of the prize-giving through the award of 500RM; we shall also provide Herr Dr. Kehr with a grant to help him complete the submitted study. I shall present you with a copy of the plaque created by the sculptor A. Oppler. In special respect, Yours faithfully, Grimme

14 Adolf Grimme (1889–1963), politician and educationalist. Prussian Social Democratic minister of education and cultural affairs from 1930 to 1932. Sentenced to three years in a house of correction in 1942. Minister of education and cultural affairs in Lower Saxony from 1946 to 1948. Subsequently director general of the North German broadcasting company (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) until 1956.

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4. 13 November 1932: Eckart Kehr (Berlin) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 31 Dear Dr. Rosenberg. Thank you so much for your kind letter. It’s splendid that things are going so well with the habilitation. I’m sure you’ll knock out Spahn15 if he gets in your way. He should face disciplinary action for landing you with the fourth lecture.16 Dehio asked after you the other day, dignified as ever and trying to maintain his usual elevated posture even while standing. Given his physical smallness it was quite comical. He sends his best regards. Z.[iekursch] can only have tried to get out of Holborn when his work will be finished if he doesn’t know him at all. I met H.[olborn] a few days ago on the occasion of an exam at the university and had great fun trying to get something out of him. He admitted that his work is advancing well, but, just as I thought, it was impossible to get anything more definite out of him. I wanted to know whether his historical work would appear before the subject itself had turned from a political into a historical one, but he stated that this was a difficult question to answer and asked me what I thought of the exam. I doubt that Z.[iekursch] is very pleased with this result, but if he wants to know more he’ll have to vivisect H’s brain. We are fine, my wife is always cheerful, and I’m finding work less of a strain than I did before. But I’m glad I can take a holiday again soon. Since Easter I have had no more than a couple of days off at Whitsun. The printing of vol. I of the publication will begin in December.17

15 Martin Spahn (1875–1945), modern historian and politician. Ordinarius in Cologne from 1920. Reichstag deputy for the Centre Party from 1910 to 1912. Joined the far-right DNVP in 1921 and represented it in the German Reichstag from 1924 to 1933. Towards the end of the Weimar Republic he was viewed as a representative of Young Conservatism (Jungkonservativismus) and joined the NSDAP in 1933. 16 The habilitation process requires the candidate to put forward three topics for the trial lecture and subsequent seminar, from which the faculty selects one. Spahn obviously insisted that Rosenberg suggest a fourth topic for his inaugural lecture and could not use one of the topics rejected for the trial lecture. 17 Obviously reference to the source book prepared by Kehr on Prussian financial policy from 1806 to 1814, which he never managed to publish. See above, p. 96.

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My history of Social Democracy is also making progress.18 Something happened in this connection that I would never have thought possible and that seems like a dream come true—I send around half of the manuscript to Zurich and request an advance on the fee. And they sent me twice the amount requested! That’s certainly not what one’s used to from the State Archive. But—bureaucracy! You too had some nice stories to tell from Vienna of course. I’ve even learned to love our police force. I had to wait ten minutes for my certificate of good conduct (Führungszeugnis) for the American visa and it was in my hands, despite the fact that when it comes to the population of Berlin the letters Ka—Ker alone require three police clerks to process them. In the American consulate general I waited a) two hours before being told what papers are required, b) three-and-a-half hours for the visa to be issued. Three to four visas were issued that morning. Personnel: one information clerk (everything he said was only half-true), two secretaries, one cashier, one male doctor, one female doctor, the consul, the vice-consul and a kind of consular assistant. The latter three sat a three-part writing desk, the consul in the middle at a table leaf extending out by 1m. If the consul wanted to know something about me, he asked his deputy, who asked the assistant. The assistant did the work while the consul and his deputy were disturbed by the constant questions that got in the way of their newspaper reading and smoking. The deputy’s shoulders were so padded that they extended 20cm out over the hips. A picture for the gods. But as I wanted a visa and immigration authorities are a serious obstacle to entry to the USA, I couldn’t even laugh. But at least all the people I tell have a laugh. The main thing though, is that I have the visa. But first I’ll be off to Hamburg in early December to go over the armaments industry with a fine tooth comb examining the material in the World Economic Archive (Weltwirtschaftsarchiv). This will enable me to kill several birds with one stone, as the Encyclop. for the Social Sciences has asked me for an essay on the history of the armaments

18 On the instructions of Friedrich Adler, who wished to publish an international handbook of socialism and the labour movement, Kehr was working on a history of German social democracy in 1932. The manuscript, which was obviously never completed, is considered lost. See the introduction by Wehler to Kehr, Primat, p. 16f.

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industry.19 I’m enthusiastic about this assignment. One can really make something of it, say something new and bring together new material. I’m also really enjoying the work on Social Democracy—it’s far more productive than I thought. And the publication, whose profusion of new material and new problems even my Cerberus, Herr Winter,20 had to concede, will give me the welcome opportunity to really annoy those rogues Ritter and Oncken21 and to bury them, not in a literal sense but morally and academically, as they deserve. It’s a shame that Cologne isn’t a sea port or that the train to the port doesn’t go via Cologne. But of course I won’t stay over there for ever. The Meineckes invited us round recently. Why I am being favoured again in this way after two years I don’t know. When Utermann22 saw me take Frau Meinecke to the table, he said to my wife that this was intended as reparation. As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to repair. Meinecke was painfully embarrassed to hear that I was going to document my heretical views with two volumes of records—he broached the subject, I had actually planned to say nothing—and simply refused to be persuaded otherwise, saying that he doubted he would find the time to read them and then expatiated on the pointlessness of all publications. It’s terrific when one only ever republishes the same old topics. But there are even more empty patches on the historical map than in Africa before Livingstone.23 What peculiar spectacles our professors have on that they can’t see these vast areas of white yet can still discover white patches of one to one-and-a-half square

19 Kehr was preparing a comprehensive study on the armaments industry, which was never completed. The above-mentioned essay on the armaments industry was published in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. XI, pp. 128–134. Appears in German translation in: Kehr, Primat, pp. 184–197. 20 Georg Winter (1895–1961). Winter was archivist at the Prussian Secret State Archive (Preußisches Geheimes Staatsarchiv) in 1932. 21 On Gerhard Ritter, see his uncompromising rejection of Kehr’s prize entry, above, pp. 474–479. Oncken had been against awarding the Rockefeller scholarship to Kehr, see above, p. 96. 22 K. Utermann was a member of academic staff at the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), who was to collect newspapers in parallel to Rosenberg’s critical bibliography on national political journalism from 1858 to 1866, which considered only journal articles and pamphlets. Utermann’s project was never completed. 23 David Livingstone (1813–1873), famous British explorer in Africa.

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millimetres on the map of their idealist history of concepts, a map already available to a scale of 1:100,000. How can this methodological anastigmatism be cured? I hope things continue to go well for you. Our best wishes to you and your wife. Your Kehr and Hanna Kehr

Eckart Kehr

5. 11 August 1933: Hanna Kehr (Brandenburg) to Hans Rosenberg NL Rosenberg 31 Dear Herr Dr. Rosenberg, Please forgive me for taking so long to get in touch and write to you in detail about my dear Ecke’s death.24 It still takes a real effort of 24

Eckhart Kehr, who died in Washington on 29 May 1933.

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will to tell all our dear friends the detail of what happened. When I write, it brings back all those things one would like to undo. It’s so terribly difficult to go on with life without one’s most beloved person. Again and again one asks oneself: “Why have things turned out this way?” But my dear Ecke had reached the end of his life. His heart was completely worn out and had lost all its vitality. I knew that my husband had a heart defect, but neither of us, thank God, had any idea that it would have such grave consequences so soon, for otherwise my dear Ecke, who was far too conscientious and cautious, would never have married. He had suffered heart attacks now and then since 1929, which lasted for about ten minutes and rather longer in winter or when a cold, strong wind was blowing. There were just a few isolated occurrences in the summer of 1932, but they became far more severe in November and lasted for around half an hour. My husband was always very optimistic and put it down to overwork. I let my husband travel to the U.S.A. with much anxiety, but felt calmer when he wrote that the attacks had ceased entirely during the journey and occurred again, rarely, only in mid-February, when it was very cold over there. My husband gave a lecture in Chicago in mid-April,25 which he had to break off for five minutes because he was getting short of breath. He wrote to me with deep resignation that it was probably the last time he would speak in public and that he would have to restrict himself to writing in future. My husband only rarely wrote about his health because he didn’t want to worry me. While making his way from Chicago to Washington, my husband visited Prof. Dorn in Columbus for four days, where he arrived in a bad way, as Prof. Dorn has told me in a letter. My husband then wrote to me from Wash.[ington] that he had survived the journey from Chic. to Wash. with no trouble at all. On 12 May he finally found a small flat and moved in. On our wedding anniversary, 14 May, he sent me a blissfully happy telegram saying that he was looking forward immensely to our impending reunion.

25 Lecture on “Modern German historiography” in the seminar of Bernadotte Schmitt. German translation in: Kehr, Primat, pp. 254–268.

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From that point on I waited every day for the telegram instructing me to set off. And then I received this terrible news! I was completely stunned. As I then learned from the detailed medical report, my husband had already gone to see a doctor on 15 May because he had gall bladder and stomach troubles. He was admitted to hospital on the seventeenth, where he is said to have gone down hill rapidly. The doctors did all they could to keep him alive but it was hopeless. He was very listless over the last few days, and lost consciousness six hours before his death. Hopefully my dear Ecke was quite unaware of it all when he passed away. As the doctors were not entirely sure about the cause of death, they carried out a post-mortem. It emerged that my dear Ecke had a congenital heart defect. A thin barrier had formed in his aorta that constantly caused the blood to flow backwards so that his poor heart had to work twice as hard and as a result it did the work of a sixty-year-old. As a consequence of the strain on the heart, the pericardium became dilated. And if the heart is unable to function properly, it takes its toll on the other organs as well. My dear Ecke was cremated on 1 June in Washington and his urn was transported to Germany and buried on 24 June in my home town of Glückstadt/Elbe. The Rockefeller Foundation took care of everything with great magnanimity, just as one would have wished, and bore all the costs, even that of transportation. It is some consolation to me that my dear Ecke won the total recognition over in America which he was denied here. It’s clear from many of the letters how much they all valued him over there. Dr. Beard,26 Dr. Correll,27 Prof. Dorn and Dr. Vagts28 have got together and want to publish a commemorative volume in honour of 26

Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948), famous American historian. Dr. Correll probably worked for the Rockefeller Foundation. 28 Alfred Hermann Friedrich Vagts (1892–1986), German historian and political scientist. Obtained his doctorate in Hamburg in 1927. Assistant at the Institute for Foreign Policy at the University of Hamburg from 1923 to 1932. Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1927 to 1930. Emigrated to Great Britain in 1932 and to the USA in 1933. Visiting professor at Harvard University in 1938/39. Taught at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1939 to 1942 and was subsequently involved in the Board of Economic Welfare during the war. He never took up a per27

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my husband, which would include all his writings not yet published in book form.29 I don’t yet know what I’m going to do with my life. I still find it very hard to make any firm decisions. I have the advice and support of my family and my husband’s family. But when all is said and done I have to face the inner struggle that lies ahead all on my own. I am with my mother-in-law in Brandenburg at the moment waiting for the box containing my husband’s unpublished papers to arrive so that I can return to Berlin and sort things out on the spot with the State Archive, who are causing all kinds of problems.30 I have taken the liberty of sending you the enclosed photograph to remind you of my dear Ecke. My very best wishes to you and your wife my dear Dr. Rosenberg, Your Hanna Kehr

manent teaching position, but was a private scholar. Published a number of books on international relations and military history, including the two-volume work Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten in der Weltpolitik, London 1935. 29 The planned edition of Kehr’s unpublished works was never to materialize. 30 Kehr’s archival assignment, to edit the records on Prussian financial policies from 1806 to 1815, had been terminated in a letter from Albert Brackmann, director of the Prussian State Archive, of 2 May 1933 (see Wehler’s introduction to Kehr, Primat, p. 20).

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documents XI. Hanns Günther Reissner

1. 18 July 1947: Hanns Günther Reissner (Bombay) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 37 Dear Herr Geheimrat, I happened to come across the title of your book The German Catastrophe in a list of new books. I was so delighted to know that you are alive and felt the urge to send you my greetings as one of your former students through the publisher. Is your villa in Dahlem still standing? I imagine that you hardly remember me: I gained my doctorate in spring of 1926 with a study of “Mirabeau and his ‘Monarchie Prussienne’ ”,1 but I went into business rather than pursuing an academic career. As a Jew I left Germany in mid-August 1939 and have been living since then with my immediate family (wife and three children) in Bombay. I’m also involved in industry here (as a member of the executive staff of the Indian subsidiary of the American Firestone tyre factory); but when I have the time I still try to read, write and give little lectures on history and politics. The director of programmes of All India Radio for one seems to think I am a “specialist” in continental history and politics and humanities. This, of course, is correct only in the sense that there is no-one here that is truly qualified. In any event, this is how fate has decreed it, and it gives me all kinds of opportunities to clarify my thoughts. The spatial and temporal distance has really brought home to me how much I owe to the education I received from figures such as you and Geheimrat Sering,2 and, more distantly, the influence of teachers

1 Hanns Günther Reissner, Mirabeau und seine Monarchie Prussienne, Berlin/ Leipzig 1926. 2 Max Sering (1857–1939), political economist. Occupied the chair in state sciences (Staatswissenschaften) at the Agricultural University (Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule) in Berlin from 1897 to 1925.

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such as Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 3 and Troeltsch and the writings of Max Weber and others. The memory of men such as you helped me overcome my shock at the Hitler nightmare and to detach my image of Germany from the impressions left by the experiences of the 1930s. Nonetheless, you may have some understanding for the fact that I have no intention of returning. Where there is a rupture, there can be no return. I cannot and do not wish to encounter people who may have been the murderers of my parents and relatives. It would take too long to list the sources of intellectual compensation offered by the East. The historical, religious and political background is so utterly different and fascinating to anyone educated in Europe. In this way one must try to cope with the “rupture”. Yours faithfully, Hanns Reissner

3 Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931), leading classical philologist. Taught at the University of Berlin from 1897.

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documents XII. Gustav Mayer

1. 28 December 1910: Gustav Mayer (Berne) to Friedrich Meinecke1 NL Meinecke 26 Dear Herr Geheimrat, We would like to wish you and your wife all the very best for the New Year. I’ve been in old Berne for the last month to undergo a thorough course of treatment from Prof. Dubois to tackle my sleeping troubles; my wife and eldest son have also come to Switzerland for Christmas. They are staying in Grindelwald and I visit them there for two days at the end of every week. My doctor has permitted me to work as much as I wish. That was my conditio sine qua non, and I’m busy with a fairly substantial essay on the split between proletarian and bourgeois democracy in Germany, which is to appear in the third issue of the Grünbergsches Archiv.2 Today I learned from Dr. Veit Valentin,3 whom I got to know while passing through Freiburg, that my book on Schweitzer will be reviewed in the Histor. Zeitschrift by Prof. Harms4 (Kiel), who is currently on a trip around the world. This is unfortunate for three reasons: 1) I feel that Prof. Harms is ignorant of the field of modern German history in general and party history in particular*, 2) I wrote a highly critical review of his pamphlet on Lassalle because of its unpsychological and anti-historical content and I don’t know whether he is objective 1 Meinecke’s notes on the letter: “To Marcks. Request return; thanks for Lassalleana.” The names of Oncken and Wahl are mentioned on the second page, followed by question marks, as possible reviewers. Lassalleana is a reference to Mayer, “Lassalleana. Unbekannte Briefe Lassalles”, in: Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung 1 (1911), pp. 176–197. 2 Gustav Mayer, “Die Trennung der proletarischen von der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Deutschland 1863–1870”, in: Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung 2 (1912), pp. 1–67. The journal was generally referred to as the Grünbergsches Archiv after its editor, the jurist and political economist Carl Grünberg (1861–1940). Mayer’s essay also appeared as a publication in its own right, Leipzig 1911. Reprinted in: Gustav Mayer, Radikalismus, Sozialismus, bürgerliche Demokratie, ed. by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, 2nd edn, Frankfurt a. M. 1969, pp. 108–178. 3 On Veit Valentin, see above, p. 150. 4 Bernhard Harms (1876–1939), professor in Kiel, director of the Institute for World Economy and Sea Transport (Institut für Weltwirtschaft und Seeverkehr) 1914–1933.

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enough not to make me pay for it. 3) I had expected that after the many favourable but skewed and, I’m afraid, factually unstimulating reviews by political economists, a historian would at last have his say on my historical book, at least in the Histor. Zeitschr. Dr. V. Valentin would have been the right man for the job, but when he put himself forward the book had already been allocated to Harms.5 This is all the more annoying because, particularly from that quarter, I had been hoping for an expert critique that I might learn something from. When one works in the isolated way I do one is doubly grateful for any kind of stimulation!! I’m already looking forward to “Bismarck as a party man”,6 a description that only really applied to him in the early days, wouldn’t you say? He was more of a party founder and destroyer later on, wasn’t he? Unfortunately he didn’t succeed in the case of the Centre Party or the Social Democrats. Had he done so we’d have no need to worry about being choked by the red fire and the black smoke! Many thanks for referring me to the memoirs of the clever Balt. I shall get hold of a copy! With my sincere respect, my dear Herr Geheimrat, I remain Yours ever faithfully, Gustav Mayer * As shown by his book on Lassalle, cobbled together out of bits of Oncken but with added factual errors.7

5

In fact, Mayer’s book, Johann Baptist von Schweitzer und die Sozialdemokratie. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, Jena 1910, reprinted Glashütten im Taunus 1970, was reviewed in great detail and given a very positive assessment by Veit Valentin in the HZ 110 (1913), pp. 137–146, as a book “that will endure as a work of scholarship”. 6 No essay by Meinecke on “Bismarck as a party man” is mentioned in the highly detailed bibliography of Friedrich Meinecke’s writings by Monika Fettke, “Friedrich Meinecke-Bibliographie bis 1979”, in Erbe, Meinecke Heute, pp. 199–258. 7 Bernhard Harms, Ferdinand Lassalle und seine Bedeutung für die deutsche Sozialdemokratie, Jena 1909; Hermann Oncken, Lassalle. Zwischen Marx und Bismarck, Stuttgart 1904, 4th edn. entitled: Lassalle. Eine politische Biographie, Stuttgart/Berlin 1923.

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2. 10 January 1918: Gustav Mayer (Berlin) to the philosophy faculty of the University of Berlin8 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, philosophy faculty habilitation records 1235 To the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Berlin. Since the Faculty Commission concluded that I am unqualified to give lectures at the university at the colloquium on the third of this month, I feel it is important to submit to the Faculty the following statements of a factual nature. Should tradition permit it, I request most respectfully that my exposition be added to your records. Towards the end of 1916, without mentioning my own wishes, I approached the Faculty to enquire whether it would in principle regard as permissible a habilitation in the science of the state and political parties (Staaten- und Parteienkunde).9 Some time later, the then Dean of the Faculty sent me a card requesting that I come and see him as he wished to answer my query in person. He explained that, after the most thorough process of deliberation, the Faculty had come to the conclusion that while lectures on the above-mentioned field would be highly desirable, there were reservations about allowing a habilitation in this subject as long as there was no corresponding professorship. At the same meeting, however, my status as a scholar had been discussed in depth and it had been decided to suggest to me that I apply for habilitation in history, and indeed in the subject of history per se, because, according to the regulations, a habilitation would not be permissible in specific subdomains of this field. In this connection, he explained, the Faculty took the view that it would clearly be desirable for me to be able to work as an academic teacher in my original field, in which there is a gap that must be filled. Should I prove a successful teacher of the science of the state (Staatenkunde), the possibility of appointing me to a teaching post in this field would be considered. It was only in response to this invitation that I decided to submit an application to habilitate in history. I had presented my educational history, which undoubtedly diverges from the conventional pattern, in

8 9

The letter features the note: Received 12.1.18, daybook no. 161. See above, p. 100.

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the CV attached to this application,10 as well as enclosing my university attendance records, which made it clear that when I was a student, more than twenty-five years ago, I had attended only very few courses in history. I could therefore only assume that my achievements as a historian seemed sufficient to the Faculty to make up for gaps in my general historical knowledge, and hence that you were very much minded to take account of the singularity of my case. I was quite convinced that I would not be judged by criteria that might be appropriate to a young person, recently exposed to historical knowledge in seminars and lectures, but not to a man who finished his studies a quarter of a century ago and has followed his own path. I submitted my application to habilitate to the then Dean in January of 1917. On this occasion I brought up the subject of the colloquium and made no secret of the reservations I had about it. Yet I was fully reassured when told in reply that all the problems, of which there had been no lack, were all behind me now and that it would be beneath the dignity of a scholar with an established reputation, which is what the Faculty regarded me as, to have to swot up for an exam. At around the same time I was greeted at a lecture by Professor von Schmoller, who has now sadly passed away, to whom I had not spoken for eighteen years. He not only made a number of statements of a highly flattering nature about the above-mentioned meeting of the Faculty, but even formally congratulated me on my habilitation, dismissing my objection that we weren’t quite there yet. In selecting the topic for the colloquium, I took heed of a request not to draw on the history of the nineteenth century. In light of all that had happened, I could never have imagined that this colloquium, which was delayed for more than six months as a result of my being unable to attend while completing a mission in the interest of the Fatherland,11 would take the form of a proper exam in the nature of a doctoral examination or even a school-leaving exam (Abiturium). When this nonetheless occurred, to my great surprise, on 3 January, I still initially took it to be a formality and, even when the questions touched on my own special areas, I responded in the brief and concise

10 See Mayer’s CV of 22 January 1917 in the philosophy faculty habilitation records, vol. 1235. 11 Gustav Meyer was sent to Stockholm on an unofficial mission in 1917 by the foreign ministry to observe and send reports on the planned international socialist conference and developments in Russia. See above, p. 100.

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fashion that seemed appropriate given my understanding that the colloquium would take the form of a “conversation”. I cannot deny, in light of my age and position in the academic world, that I would never have agreed to a full-blown examination that might determine the decision on my admission without consideration of my scholarly output or, so it seems to me, my lecture. Yours faithfully, Dr. Gustav Mayer 3. Dismissal and retirement of Gustav Mayer a. 21 May 1933: note by Gustav Mayer on his situation according to the “law on the restoration of the civil service”12 of 7 April 193313 NL Meinecke 15 In view of the possible consequences of the civil servants’ law on my position in relation to the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), it is perhaps appropriate for me to point to a number of facts that may make it easier for the Imperial Historical Commission to gain a more complete picture of my background and character: 1) Forebears My family has been resident in the Mark of Brandenburg since the 1570s, initially in Stendal, later in Oderberg, and from 1677 to 1933 in Prenzlau. The records of the Secret State Archive (Geheimes Staatsarchiv) reveal that one of my forebears “performed obedient and useful services to the Electoral House of Brandenburg” in the Thirty Years’ War, that another was hit by a bullet in 1677 while supplying grain to the Great Elector during the siege of Stettin, and that a

12 Among other things, according to this law all civil servants of “non-Aryan descent” were to be immediately pensioned off unless they had been front-line soldiers in the First World War or their sons or fathers had fallen in the war. 13 At the top of the document, Mayer has added the hand-written note: “Copy to the president of the Imperial Historical Commission [Historische Reichskommission], Herr Prof. Meinecke”.

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third was charged by the Great Elector with procuring “rare books and manuscripts” for his library. I still have in my possession a certificate of safe conduct, issued to his son by Elector Frederick III in 1689. When the Prussian army, defeated at Jena, had to surrender at Prenzlau in 1806, my great grandfather was one of the burghers who offered the Prussian troops refreshments as they were led away. A Frenchman punished him by striking him with the butt of his rifle, robbing him of his eyesight, and he was blind for the remaining forty-five years of his life. In the records of the Prussian State Archive, my family is referred to several times as one of the oldest Jewish families resident in the hereditary states of the Hohenzollern. 2) My own activities As I was found to be unfit for military service, I offered my services to the policy department of the general government in Belgium in autumn 1914 in light of my longstanding familiarity with the situation in that country. I worked for the department until late 1915. In 1917, I was sent to Stockholm for several months by the foreign ministry to file secret reports on the socialist peace conference that was to take place there, and on the events in the offing in Russia, on the basis of my expert academic knowledge. It is surely unnecessary to note that I have never been a member of any kind of socialist party. Following the collapse, I was asked by the then heads of the foreign ministry to edit the source publication on the antecedents of the world war, but only decided to do this when the late Professor Hans Delbrück and Professor Meinecke had presented it to me as a duty to the Fatherland, as the assignment might otherwise have ended up in the hands of an amateur; the two gentlemen persuaded me to take on the assignment of inspecting the management of the Secret State Archive and the civil cabinet with these same arguments. I rejected a proposal from the then Prussian minister of the interior to take over the position of director general of the State Archives. In preparing the edition of documents, following a tough battle with the socialist authorities, I saw to it that they did not begin only with the assassination in Sarajevo, but at least with a document that laid bare just how much the ground had already been laid for the war diplomatically. As far as my personal situation is concerned, I would like to make the point that I have two grown sons to look after, one of whom is in a permanent state of poor health and requires my life-long support,

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while the other, having completed his training by passing the examination as Referendar, no longer has any way of making a living in his Fatherland as a consequence of recent legislation. Berlin-Lankwitz, 21 May 1933 Gustav Mayer b. 7 June 1933: circular from Friedrich Meinecke (Berlin) to members of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) NL Meinecke 15 The enclosed letter to the minister of education and cultural affairs re our colleague G. Mayer was approved at the meeting of those members of the H.R.K. [Imperial Historical Commission or Historische Reichskommission] resident in Berlin, which took place at my house on the third of this month, and is now being circulated to all the members that live here with the request to sign it and send it on as quickly as possible. It is advisable, before sending it on to the next address, to telephone and enquire at so whether the individual in question is away, and if necessary to send it on immediately to the next contactable address on the list. If necessary I would request that any impediments to its circulation be reported to me by telephone. I enclose a copy of the note written by Mayer himself. Please send it on and then back to me. I suggest that the submission be circulated in the following order: [The following names are then listed, together with addresses and notes on where to send the submission next: Oncken, Hoetzsch, Dehio, Brackmann, Marcks, Hartung, Schumacher, Triepel, Haeften and the undersigned] Faithfully, Meinecke

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c. 23 June 1933: submission from members of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) to Bernhard Rust, Prussian minister for science, art and education14 NL Meinecke 15, copy Honoured Herr Minister, The undersigned members of the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) resident in Berlin and the surrounding area dare approach you on behalf of former member of the Commission and former professor extraordinarius at Berlin University, Dr. Gustav Mayer. He is of non-Aryan descent, sixty-one years old and particularly badly hit by the repercussions of the civil servants’ law of 7 April of this year, partly because he has been working as a university teacher for a relatively short period of twelve to thirteen years and partly because he has onerous familial obligations. However, his enclosed submission to us demonstrates that he served the Empire politically during the war and furthered the long-term interests of the state during the revolutionary period. Determined to ensure his academic independence, he maintained no ties with any political party. Having researched and become an expert on socialism and the social movements of the 19th century, he enjoys an excellent reputation, both generally and in particular among the opponents of Marxism, on account

14

Dr. Bernhard Rust (1883–1945), high school teacher (Studienrat) and Nazi politician, Prussian minister for science, art and education in 1933/34, Imperial minister for science, art and national education from 1934 1945. Meinecke has added the following remarks on the first page of the copy: Circulated for signatures 7.6.33; sent with 10 signatures 23.6. This is followed by the near-illegible names: M.(einecke), Oncken, Schumacher, Brackmann, Dehio, Hartung, Hoetzsch, Marcks, Triepel, Haeften. Hermannn Schumacher (1868–1952), political economist, was professor ordinarius in state sciences (Staatswissenschaften) at the University of Berlin from 1917 to 1935. Otto Hoetzsch (1876–1946), historian and politician. Deputy in the German Reichstag for the DNVP from 1920 to 1930. Member of the Popular Conservatives (Volkskonservativen) from 1929. Professor extraordinarius at the University of Berlin from 1913. Received a personal chair there in 1920. Held the chair in Eastern European history in Berlin from 1928 until being forced into retirement in 1935. Heinrich Triepel (1868–1946), jurist, founded the Association of Teachers of Constitutional Law (Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer) in 1922. Professor ordinarius in constitutional, administrative, canon and international law at the University of Berlin from 1913 to 1935. Hans von Haeften (1870–1937), Prussian officer and military historian. The chief of staff ’s liaison officer to the Imperial chancellor in 1918. Subsequently head of the military history department of the general staff until its disbandment in 1931. President of the Imperial Archive in Potsdam from 1931 to 1933.

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of his honest efforts to achieve historical objectivity. Having collaborated with him over the years at the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission), we have come to appreciate not only his academic qualities, but also his truly upright character, his earnest attitude, his constant willingness to help and warmly national persuasion. In addition to the Imperial Historical Commission, he is also a member of the Historical Commission of the Imperial Archive (Historische Kommission beim Reichsarchiv) and to our knowledge has gained widespread respect there as well as a result of his attitude. We would therefore like to request that in calculating the amount of his pension, § 9, no. 4 of the civil servants’ law (re compensation for hardship) be interpreted as generously as possible. d. 25 January 1934: submission from members of Berlin University to Bernhard Rust, Prussian minister for science, art and education15 Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin, personal files on G. Mayer 109 The undersigned, former colleagues at Berlin University of Professor Dr. Gustav Mayer, retired on the basis of the law of 7 April of last year, would like to request that his pension settlement be reconsidered in a favourable light on the basis of the hardship clause (§ 9 no. 4). His academic studies on the history of socialism and social movements enjoy high standing on account of their critical thoroughness and determined objectivity. He has always steered clear of party political ties and is known to us as a man of unblemished character and a national persuasion. His activities during the world war, first in the service of the general government in Brussels, then as representative of the foreign ministry in Stockholm in 1917, demonstrate his trustworthiness in national affairs. Ambassador von der Lancken,16 forcibly pensioned off in 1918, is happy to provide full confirmation of

15 Note on an undated copy in Meinecke papers, no. 15 in Meinecke’s handwriting: Sent 25.1.34. Copy for Popitz sent to Penck on 3.2. Johannes Popitz (1884–1945), Prussian finance minister from 1933 to 1944. Arrested during the night following the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944 and executed on 2 February 1945. A draft of the petition, clearly initiated by Meinecke, featuring Meinecke’s detailed handwritten corrections, can be found in his papers, no. 15. It was rejected by Rust, see above, p. 104. 16 Oskar Freiherr von der Lancken Wakenitz (1867–1939), diplomat from 24 August 1914 to 13 November 1918. Head of the policy division of the general government in

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this. Mayer’s recent pension settlement has hit him particularly hard. He has a wife of delicate health and has to provide for two adult sons, of whom one is emotionally disturbed and permanently unable to work. If he is to have any prospect of a secure future, the remainder of his modest assets must be preserved. The interest on these assets, together with his pension, amount to an income that would barely allow Herr Mayer and his family to survive. This would make it impossible for him to continue with his academic research activities and paralyze his inner life. sgd Hartung Marcks Meinecke Oncken Penck Schumacher Sering Sombart Stählin17 4. 3 January 1946: Gustav Mayer (Oxford) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, Rumour has it that you are living in Göttingen, and I have therefore asked Georg Misch18 to let me know when he might be in a position to give you a sign of life from me. I’ve just been informed that he would have such an opportunity tomorrow morning; but as he is staying in the north of England and I am in Oxford, it is very doubtful that these lines will reach him in time, even if, of necessity, I keep it brief and write in haste, both of which I hate to do. So all I can do today is sincerely convey to you how deeply moved I was by what I learned first from the radio and then your article in

Belgium, occupied by Germany in the First World War. Mayer worked there in the press division. Forcibly pensioned off in 1919. 17 Werner Sombart (1863–1941), political economist and sociologist. Made professor extraordinarius at the University of Breslau in 1890. Professor at the Commercial College (Handelshochschule) in Berlin from 1906, he was appointed professor ordinarius in state sciences (Staatswissenschaften) at the University of Berlin in 1917. Karl Stählin (1865–1939), historian. Habilitated in Heidelberg in 1905, appointed professor extraordinarius in medieval and modern history there in 1910. After participating in the First World War from 1914 to 1917, briefly professor ordinarius in Strasbourg from 1917 until the end of the war. Subsequently honorary professor, first in Leipzig and from 1920 in Berlin, made emeritus in 1922. Considered a leading expert on Russian history. Albrecht Penck (1858–1945), geographer at Berlin University. 18 Georg Misch (1878–1965), philosopher. Student of Dilthey. Professor of philosophy at the University of Göttingen from 1919 to 1935. Forced into retirement in 1935 and expelled from the Göttingen Academy of Sciences in 1938. Emigrated to Great Britain in 1939. Returned to his chair in Göttingen in 1946.

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the Münchner Zeitung,19 namely that it is still possible to communicate with you. We know what a heavy toll this apocalyptic time has taken on you, if only in fragmentary form, from my sister in Heidelberg.20 We hope that your dear wife, who, like you, we have always thought about with unfailing loyalty, is still alive. And I hope the same goes for your daughters as well. Our eldest son passed away in 1941 of his own free will: his delicate soul had had enough of this cruel world. He lives on in us as long as we’re still breathing. Our younger son lives in London and visits us often. He obtained his PhD in Oxford and is currently working at the Colonial Office as research assistant in the agrarian sociology of primitive peoples. I would love to read your autobiography,21 which, as a letter from Portugal informed me, you published several years ago. The only part I know is the one on Salzwedel.22 I myself have just sent off the manuscript of my own memoirs to Switzerland, during the writing of which I often held dialogues with you as virtually the only intellectual German I still feel close to. Should it be published, I would like to call the book: “The Drawbridge”,23 in light of the drawbridge which has always shot up at the last moment whenever the German Jew wished to regard himself as fully German. Now there is a wide river of blood there, which I can no more cross over again than visitors to Hades could cross the Styx, which banished them irretrievably from their world. That said, I share with you a deep sense of the tragic nature of Germany’s fate. A warm handshake from us to you and your wife. Your old friend, Gustav Mayer

19 Meinecke, “Zur Selbstbesinnung”, in: Münchner Zeitung, 16 June 1945. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 2: Politische Schriften und Reden, pp. 484–486. 20 Gustav Mayer’s sister Gertrud had been married to the famous philosopher Karl Jaspers since 1910. 21 Friedrich Meinecke, Erlebtes 1862–1901, Leipzig 1941. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 1–134. 22 Meinecke’s youthful memories of Salzwedel had already been published, together with his father’s memoirs, as early as 1933, in the Festschrift marking the 700th anniversary of the town of Salzwedel. See Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 13. 23 The book was published as: Erinnerungen. Vom Journalisten zum Historiker der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, Zurich/Vienna 1949. German licensed edition Munich 1949.

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Gustav Mayer

5. 30 March 1946: Gustav Mayer (Oxford) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, How good it felt, after these endless years of agonizing silence, to see your handwriting once again, and to have confirmation from you that while you certainly received a good splattering, you were spared by the Flood that swept away so many precious lives. And not just physically. Despite your age and the threats to your wellbeing, it even left you with the strength to tell your fellow men and future generations how you feel and what you think. That is brave!

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I cannot match your bravery. The tragedy that robbed us of our noble-minded eldest five years ago24 has left wounds in my soul that can no longer be healed, and though nothing bad happened to us personally at the hands of this people, so sure of its instincts, during the war, it was nonetheless very stressful to live through all these terrible years here as an enemy alien. That my heart took a bad knock as a result is perhaps less surprising than the fact that I am keeping tolerably well so far with the help of the treatment imposed by my doctor. However, I can only visit the library in summer now at best. I have made a virtue of necessity by writing my memoirs, the great majority of the material for which I had brought with me from back home and had in a cupboard here. With regard to your eyesight, my dear friend, we found your handwriting just as easy to read as ever, and it may therefore be overly cautious of me to dictate this letter to my wife, who will type it up, rather than writing it myself as I would have preferred. In addition to her other “burdens”—maid of all work, cleaning lady, washerwoman—she now has to operate my typewriter as well. We had the opportunity to observe what the art of medicine can do for cataracts25 a few months ago, in the case of our eighty-four-year-old landlord. He was sprightly and full of life even before the operation, but in the end he could hardly read and, especially painful for him, he could no longer keep his large garden in good order by himself. But now he’s reading his newspapers again, and planting his flowers and tomatoes. I hope, mutatis mutandis, that it goes the same way for you, should things have got to that stage. Even if I wanted to I could never be disloyal to the “good German spirit”, which shaped my own.26 But alas, alas, Germany is home to more than just spirit, and more than just good spirit; if only there had been, and could be, far more of the latter! Then I’m sure none of these ghastly things would have happened to the land of Goethe and Schiller, and the Marienkirche in Prenzlau,27 and St. Martin and St. Gereon 24 The eldest son, Peter Mayer, committed suicide in 1941. See Mayer’s letter to Meinecke of 3 January 1946, above, p. 502. 25 In a letter of 22 March 1946, Meinecke told Mayer that he was suffering “from worsening cataracts”. Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 247. 26 In a letter of 22 March 1946, picking up on the term “drawbridge” (see above, p. 502), Meinecke wrote to Mayer: “Yes, the ‘drawbridge’! I understand only too well your thoughts in this regard, but can one ever be unfaithful to the good German spirit once it has hold of one?” (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 248). 27 Prenzlau was Mayer’s native town.

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would still be standing. Should my memoirs be published—I have no definite contract as yet—I shall get a copy to you as quickly as possible, my dear friend, and you will see how much I have suffered in my life for the sake of the German spirit. My memoirs have as little affinity with Weisbach’s insipid confessions as I do with Weisbach.28 As it happens I have lost contact with Weisbach since we have been abroad, but heard from Basle that he is living at 10 Bernoullistraße. I have had renewed contact with Basle University circles as the University restored my doctorate (Doktordiplom) in 1944, after fifty years, as the only citizen of the German Empire during the Hitler period: “Qui cum in Universitate Berolinensi Professoris munere fungeretur de Republica ita semper disputavit ut civium Libertatem aequabilemque omnium rerum distributionem commendaret et sincerum se verae Humanitatis defensorem praestaret.”29 The humanists were always great ones for talking big! For someone like me who had withdrawn so much from the world, it was astonishing to discover that anyone in the world still remembered my work. And I was also pleasantly surprised to find out recently that my two-volume biography of Engels, which was only just saved in 1934 before publication and taken by Ullstein from Berlin to Martinus Nyhoff in the Hague,30 is now suddenly rising from the dead and is selling well not only in America but on the continent of Europe as well. Perhaps I shall even live to see it reviewed in Germany. The translations31 that have appeared so far in England, the United States and South America were all castrated—stripped off all their chapters on intellectual history—and are thus of no interest to me. A copy of the latest Göttingen University magazine recently fell into my hands and included the words spoken by you at Oncken’s grave.32 Could you please pass on my condolences to Frau Oncken? Is she

28 Meinecke had referred Mayer to the memoirs of art historian Werner Weisbach: Und alles ist zerstoben. Erinnerungen aus der Jahrhundertwende, Vienna/Zurich 1937. 29 “When he was made professor at the University of Berlin, he always advocated the freedom of the citizens and a fair distribution of all goods in his comments on the state and showed himself to be a sincere champion of true humanity.” 30 Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels. Eine Biographie. vol. 1: Friedrich Engels in seiner Frühzeit, 2nd edn; vol. 2: Friedrich Engels und der Aufstieg der Arbeiterbewegung in Europa, The Hague 1934. Reprinted Cologne 1972. 31 Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels. A Biography, London 1936. The abridged version in English translation was edited by the Labour politician R. H. S. Crossman. 32 Meinecke’s address, delivered at Oncken’s funeral in Göttingen on 2 January 1946, printed in: Göttinger Universitätszeitung, 25 January 1946, p. 13. Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, p. 491.

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aware of the highly appreciative and quite detailed obituary published by The Times? I think it was the first obituary of a German scholar published here after the war. We gathered from the same issue of the magazine that our dear Ludwig Dehio survived all the perils which he too will no doubt have faced. I pray that the same applies to his wife and sons! Should she get the chance, would your dear wife please be so kind as to let the Dehios know our address or vice versa? Of your former students, Felix Gilbert visited us before heading for Germany. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t been to see you. We often reminisced about you and Frau Meinecke with Hansi Philippson,33 who lives in London. I rarely get together with the many former German professors who stay in Oxford; there’s not one among them I feel particularly drawn to. My wife and I lead a very reclusive life anyway. My greatest fear for Germany is that the young people, whom noone has ever urged to take a critical look at themselves, might once again be led astray by corrupt instincts. If rump Germany was to seesaw politically between great powers in the manner of the Great Elector it would be the road to ruin. I hope with all my heart that you will soon be able to return to your old airy rooms and your garden and can enjoy the sun with no-one to bother you. I shall conclude here in the hope that the old thread shall never again be broken until one of us has to depart this world. All the best to your wife. Your old friend, Gustav Mayer

33 Johanna Philippson, historian, student of Meinecke in Freiburg, where she obtained her doctorate with a study entitled “On the origins and introduction of universal equal suffrage in Germany with a focus on the elections to the Frankfurt parliament in the Grand Duchy of Baden” (“Über den Ursprung und die Einführung des allgemeinen gleichen Wahlrechts in Deutschland mit bes. Berücksichtung der Wahlen zum Frankfurter Parlament im Großherzogtum Baden”). Published in Abhandlungen zur Mittleren und Neueren Geschichte, no. 52, Berlin/Leipzig 1913. Before the table of contents she thanks her “revered teacher” Meinecke, who “prompted me to write the present work”. Emigrated to England in the 1930s.

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6. 12 May 1946: Gustav Mayer (Oxford) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, The main aim of this letter, I believe, must be to secure the line of communication between us. We must find out whether you managed to overcome the difficulties which, according to the letter from your dear wife of 5 April, were still hindering your return to Hirschsprung,34 and we must inform you of our impending move to London. (I shall write the new address at the top of this page). This change, which is not something I wanted, has become necessary because Ulrich35 is to begin a two-year research assignment for the Colonial Office in Kenya. Up until now he has been living in the bomb-damaged little house in which he had safely stored our furnishings and the greater part of my library. Now, to save money, we shall have to move there, though I am very reluctant to leave the lovely garden that we have use of here. As Ulrich will most likely be disappearing into the distance only in the middle of summer, we shall initially be living with him and his English fiancée, whom he will marry before his departure and who will be going with him as his assistant. Her father, Sir Leon Simon,36 has just moved to Jerusalem as curator of the university, having previously been a top English official for a number of decades. He is also a recognized authority on Hebrew and Greek and has, among other things, translated the most important Platonic dialogues from the original into modern Hebrew. My wife and I never miss an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the mentality of contemporary Germans in their various groups,

34 Meinecke and his wife were able to return to their house in Berlin-Dahlem, Am Hirschsprung, from Göttingen just under two months later, on 9 July 1946, through the initiative of the American historian Koppel S. Pinson (see above, p. 221). 35 Son of Gustav Mayer. 36 Sir Leon Simon (1881–1965), British civil servant and Zionist. Studied classics at Oxford and became a civil servant in 1904 following completion of his studies. Eventually became Director of Savings at the General Post Office, a post from which he retired in 1944. Member of the Zionist Commission sent to Palestine in 1918. Took a special interest in Jewish cultural nationalism and the revival of the Hebrew language. Became chair of the executive council of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and member of the university’s board of governors.

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as defined by geography, age, class and destiny. Gegenwart37 and Funkbriefkasten [“radio letter box”] are our main sources, in addition to what we hear from people returning from Germany. The overwhelming impression, especially of the English among this last group, is that of excessive “self-pity”, which takes too little account of the indescribable misery that the Nazis have brought not only to the neighbouring peoples, but to much—let us say—of Europe alone, by unleashing this unnecessary war. The Germans are having a hard time of it, no doubt, and sadly there is still a risk that the shortage of food will turn into an outright famine. And the whole problem of Germany’s future is still quite unresolved and may, I fear, remain so for a long time to come. All of which is terrible, and as former Germans this pains us greatly too. If I remember correctly, Ranke had some doubts as to whether Europe would be willing to tolerate a strong and unified Germany in its midst over the long term. (Or is my memory letting me down?) I have never actually taken this view, but I have always believed that a policy of conquest at the expense of the neighbouring nationalities would unite them into a ring of iron by which Germany would be crushed. And that’s just what has happened. We cannot gauge as yet what horror may lie in store for the continent of Europe (and not just for Germany), unless all the other countries of the world cooperate and manage to produce and deliver the supplies needed to prevent a disaster, one that would put at risk the remaining influence exercised on the continent by religion and the humanist and humanitarian tradition. The signatura temporis is poorly understood by anyone in Germany who, as a result of mental laziness, wishes to wrap himself in the toga of his resentment. The “finger of God” demands unification and a willingness to help one another. May your wish for a “cultural nation (Kulturnation) that keeps its spirit pure”38 be fulfilled by the future despite such apocalyptic dangers! I’m already eagerly awaiting your pamphlet, particularly since reading the preprint in Die Sammlung.39 I can’t help thinking that the Nazi witches’ Sabbath in Germany started at a time when, in view of the

37

Die Gegenwart, a journal published in Freiburg from 1945. Meinecke’s phrase in his letter to Mayer of 22 March 1946, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 248. 39 Friedrich Meinecke, “Militarismus und Hitlerismus”, in: Die Sammlung, no. 6 (1946). The journal was published in Göttingen. 38

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economic situation in the most highly developed states, it should have burnt itself out. Certainly, a “completely blinded youth movement” brought it to power. But where was the older, more mature generation, that might have imperiously called out “quis ego!” to this youth? I often put my head in my hands and would like to believe it was no more than an awful nightmare that “the people of poets and thinkers” has now become the people of the “gas chambers” in the eyes of the world. One comes up against nothing but disbelief if one expresses the view that millions of Germans knew nothing about what was taking place in Auschwitz, etc.—or if one excuses them in light of their “powerlessness”. As I mentioned above, no-one believes the first claim, and they are unwilling to accept the second, stating that far more people should have risen up in protest! That’s what would have happened in England, they say. And English soldiers wouldn’t have been willing to go along with so many things that German soldiers were expected to do against their conscience! The morally elevated Englishmen in particular, of whom there are so many in this fortunate nation, cannot come to terms with how easily satisfied Germans are by their talk of “conscience”. But that is a “wide field”, as Effi Briest’s father40 tends to say, and I don’t want to torment you with it! We ourselves have little to report. We are living very modestly from a small grant from the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning until Ulrich earns enough to support us. For we have no expectation of ever receiving our pension. My memoirs will be published by Dr. Oprecht publishers in Zurich.41 But it may be quite some time before the printing can begin. Incidentally, I too mention conversations with Haeften und Groener.42 I wonder whether Frau von Haeften survived the eradication of her family.43

40

Allusion to Theodor Fontane’s famous novel Effi Briest, published in 1896. In fact, Mayer’s Erinnerungen were published by Georg Olms Verlag Zurich/ Vienna. 42 Wilhelm Groener (1867–1939), Imperial defence minister from 1928 to 1932, as well as Imperial minister of the interior in 1931/32. One of the few convinced democrats among the high-ranking military officers. Groener and Hans von Haeften took part in Meinecke’s famous Sunday walks in the Grunewald. Meinecke wrote a brief foreword to Dorothea Groener-Geyer’s biography of her father, dated January 1953, which was not included in the Friedrich Meinecke bibliography: General Groener. Soldat und Staatsmann, Frankfurt a. M. 1955. 43 The sons of Hans von Haeften, the diplomat Hans-Bernd von Haeften (1905– 1944) and the officer Werner von Haeften (1908–1944) were closely associated with 41

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My wife, who is even busier than usual as she prepares for our move, asks me to tell your dear wife that Frau Lennox, whom she had asked about, is teaching in London and renting out rooms. I hope these lines find you both well and that you have either survived the move to Dahlem or will do so. In the old spirit of friendship, Your Mayers 7. 13 July 1946: Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, I must have known that your letter of 25 June44 was on its way. For as if in anticipation of it, I had looked at pictures of Salzstrasse and Schmiedestrasse, the Steintor and Karlturm and the interesting Renaissance relief on Joachim Beneke’s house the evening before, in the book Aus stillen Stätten der Mark Brandenburg, and asked myself where in Salzwedel the house you were born in might have stood. As you can tell, the old Prenzlauer seeks “the land of the Greeks with his soul”45 despite knowing in advance that the Germany he catches himself in search of has gone to rack and ruin. I just read a letter to my sister from an old art teacher from Prenzlau. He describes how the whole of the old town centre lies in ruins, while the gable of the Marienkirche that towered above the market, described so vividly by Dehio,46 is likely to succumb to the first storm that shakes it. My thoughts cling to the buildings because they outlive the generations and represent a continuum. But then they turn to the few people

the resistance movement against Hitler and were executed or shot following the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944. 44 Reprinted in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 253f. 45 “My soul seeking the land of the Greeks”. Quote from Iphigenia in Goethe’s Iphigenia in Tauris, Act 1, Scene 1. 46 Georg Dehio (1850–1932), famous art historian. Mayer is referring to Dehio’s book Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, 5 vols, 1899–1912.

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dear to me whom I still know in my erstwhile Fatherland, prominent among whom, my dear friend, are you and your wife. I recently had a visit from Grimme, the former minister of education, as the first German from Germany I have met since 1939, and he told me things about you that your letter, unfortunately, has shown to be mere myth. He claimed that you were already back in Dahlem and that prior to that Prime Minister Attlee47 had contacted the English authorities in Göttingen in person by telephone and arranged for you to be given better accommodation. So I then assumed that Gooch was misinformed when he wrote me shortly afterwards that you were still in Göttingen.48 I have no way of knowing over here whether the delay in granting you a permit is a consequence of a failure to reach agreement about the zones. I tend towards your view, that this is not the case, and put it down instead to an unholy bureaucracy. Clearly, given that, as your wife wrote, the English want to give you the use of a car, all it will take to get things moving in the right direction is a nod from Berlin. Could one of your daughters there give Schiffer a call? If he’s young enough to be a minister he must be young enough to come to the aid of a friend. And if not him, you must get hold of younger friends in Berlin who should help you or at least try to untie these knots. We can well understand your dear wife’s impatience. It’s hard for the older housewives these days: over here our young couple are on a short honeymoon and in the weeks before they leave for Kenya they will stay in two of the rooms here, which we shall have to rent out afterwards. Again and again we’ve looked around in vain for a cleaning lady and a man to help move the heaviest pieces of furniture. Finally, on Sunday, like deae ex machina, our daughter-in-law’s sister, who works in a ministry during the week, came with a [female] friend, and they managed to do the heaviest work with their strong young arms. I’m already looking forward to your book49 and when I have it I shall do what I can to publicize it in England. In America that would be Holborn’s task. He’s not a good letter-writer, so we have very little contact. But once you’re in Dahlem, it would be a task for him, and

47 Clement Richard Attlee (1883–1967), British politician. Leader of the Labour Party, 1935–1955. British Prime Minister, 1945–1951. 48 In fact, the Meineckes returned to their house in Dahlem on 9 July 1946. 49 Reference to Meinecke’s Die deutsche Katastrophe (The German Catastrophe), published in 1946.

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perhaps for Pinson (has he visited you?) and Gilbert as well, to see to it that you receive regular food packages from the USA (from Harvard perhaps?). While it has been possible to send “individual” packages to Germany from there for a short while, though only to the American zone, it is forbidden from here, as we too have very little to spare. By the way, don’t you have friends in Sweden who could help you out? But whatever you do make sure the packages are sent by registered mail. One intended for my sister in Heidelberg, which friends there had sent her, went missing. I can agree with what you wrote about the question of guilt.50 But of course that would merely be the beginning of any discussion of the problem, one whose limits have yet to be clearly delineated. [. . .] When you last visited me in Lankwitz, you were inclined to hold historism or at least Hegel responsible for the failing strength of absolute values among the German people (or at least the intellectuals). I believe you will now put the “process of degeneration affecting broad swathes of the German people” of which you wrote, down to a more varied range of causes, and in any case not primarily the intellectuals. And especially Hegel! Is there anything that isn’t down to him?! I just read in the last volumes of Varnhagen’s diary51 that if a truly liberal spirit (in the shape of the later Frederick III and Victoria)* had taken power in Prussia when the so-called “New Era”52 set in, one can perhaps imagine a scenario in which the bourgeoisie, before it became rich,

50 In his letter of 25 June 1946, Meinecke had written to Mayer: “Far too often people abroad fail to appreciate the terrible pressure all of us lived with during those twelve years, how completely hopeless it was to resist. We were bound hand and foot. Certainly, the individual ought to have nonetheless found the courage for martyrdom, but every individual would have taken his family down with him. Let every foreigner who now declares the German people guilty in its entirety probe his conscience and ask whether he would have found the courage to become a martyr and destroy his family in such circumstances! However, I do agree entirely that a dreadful process of degeneration had set in, affecting broad swathes of the German people, and, I’m afraid, particularly the bourgeois strata at the forefront of society. I deal with this in detail in my book, which I expect to be published any day now” (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 253f.). 51 Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (1775–1858), diplomat and journalist. The diaries of K. A. Varnhagen von Ense were published in 14 volumes. His wife Rahel Varnhagen von Ense (1771–1833) ran a famous salon in Berlin. 52 The New Era in Prussia refers to the period from the assumption of the regency by the later Wilhelm I in 1858 until the beginning of the constitutional conflict in 1862.

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might still have been healthy enough to awaken a self-evident seeming self-awareness—but then I think of how Bismarck drove the liberals before him. Incidentally, a German antiquarian bookseller here told me that he had recently published a catalogue of works on German history, which was selling well; but he had been unable to sell anything to do with Bismarck and his era. The same man told me that all of Goethe’s works were unsalable, because people were afraid to have piles of books in their homes in light of the housing shortage. Despite us only having two rooms, I have got myself the definitive edition (Ausgabe letzter Hand), the anniversary edition and all the important collections of letters and dialogues, and Schiller, his letters, Hölderlin and—Hegel. Which of Goethe’s poems have you been meditating on? If you wouldn’t mind telling me.53 I would have dictated this letter, which has once again turned out too long, to my wife, if she hadn’t had to queue up for meat and cherries. I ask your dear wife’s forgiveness in case she has to read out this long letter to you. Our warm wishes to both of you. Your Gustav Mayer * Addition by Mayer: it wasn’t just Westphalen54 and his lot that hated the Princess Royal55—later on, the Empress was also hated, as one who wished to smuggle liberalism into Prussia, by Treitschke and the many mock Treitschkes such as Rothfels and his lot.

53 Reference to the poem “On the Divine” (“Das Göttliche”) and “Dedication” (“Zueignung”). See Meinecke, “Lebenströster. Betrachtungen über zwei Goethesche Gedichte”, published in: Goethe, N. F. des Jahrbuchs der Goethe-Gesellschaft 16, 1954, pp. 198–212. Reprinted in Meinecke Werke, vol. 8: Autobiographische Schriften, pp. 492–508. 54 Ferdinand Otto Wilhelm von Westphalen (1799–1876), politician and civil servant. Minister of the interior and agriculture in Prussia from 1849. Advocated reactionary policies. He was overthrown in 1858, coinciding with the beginning of the New Era in Prussia, which liberals associated with great hopes of political reform. Westphalen’s half-sister Jenny was the wife of Karl Marx. 55 Princess Victoria, wife of crown prince and later Emperor Frederick III.

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8. 3 October 1946: Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, My wife and would like to say how delighted we are to be able to picture you both back in the surroundings with which we too were once so familiar; and we take the content of your kind letter of 1 September as a whole,56 the vigour of the style and the clarity of the handwriting, as evidence that you have survived the trials and tribulations of the final stretch of your odyssey with mind and body undamaged. Gooch visited us a few days ago and told us that through the mediation of the socialist professor Harold Laski,57 a great admirer of your work, he managed to get Prime Minister Attlee to intervene personally on your behalf. Gooch was in the middle of reading your book, which August Weber58 had sent him. He proposed that I write five to six hundred words—the standard unit of length here—about it for the Contemporary Review, but I can do so only when the copy from Brockhaus has arrived, for which I have been waiting in vain every day. No doubt the publisher has had no “opportunity” to send it yet. It is quite something that you wish to hold classes, and on the fateful year of 1866 no less, and I was delighted to hear that my book on Schweitzer59 and my contribution to the Lexis Festschrift60 are of use to you in that context. The most consistent opposition to [Bismarck’s] “Blood and Iron policy” was probably expressed in Liebknecht’s61 articles in the Freiburg Oberrheinischer Kurier. I have just received

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The letter does not appear in Meinecke’s Ausgewählter Briefwechsel. Harold Joseph Laski (1893–1950), famous British socialist political scientist and politician. Member of the national executive of the Labour Party from 1936 to 1949 and advisor to Prime Minister Attlee. 58 August Weber (1871–1957), banker and politician. Reichstag deputy for the National Liberal Party (Nationalliberale Partei) from 1907 to 1912, and for the German State Party (Deutsche Staatspartei) from 1930 to 1932, whose parliamentary leader he became. Emigrated to England in 1938. 59 On Mayer’s book on Schweitzer, see above, p. 492f. 60 Gustav Mayer, “Die Lösung der deutschen Frage im Jahre 1866 und die Arbeiterbewegung”, in: Festgabe für Wilhelm Lexis. Zur siebzigsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages presented by G. Adler et al., Jena 1907, pp. 221–268. Reprinted in: Mayer, Arbeiterbewegung und Obrigkeitsstaat, ed. by Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bonn/Bad Godesberg 1972, pp. 125–158. 61 Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900), important workers’ leader and journalist. Together with August Bebel, he founded the Saxony People’s Party (Sächsiche 57

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Lassalle’s biography, the first one in English as far as I can tell,62 which essentially cannibalizes the six posthumous volumes which I edited63 and which the publisher Springer itself destroyed. For the honest historian, there can be no question of “incende quod adorasti, adora quod incendisti”.64 But we can keep our judgments in motion to the very end under the influence of the transformations that we consciously live through. From this point of view I’m very curious about your little book. It was only by writing my memoirs (which have yet to be printed) that I became fully aware how strongly first Schmoller, and then my six years in Western Europe (Holland, Belgium, France), essentially “between twenty and thirty”,65 had influenced my political views. I saw myself as a German primarily because it was through classical German idealism that I became myself. I represented the “German spirit” out in the world because I identified it with the spirit of Kant, Goethe and Schiller. It is a shame that the Humboldts were such rarae aves [rare birds] among the Prussian nobility and that too many of their class justified Marx in gleefully referring to the “Borussians” of his time as anterior-Russians [Vorderrussen]. My dear father, who knew the Uckermark Junker, once told me with reference to a descendent of Achim of Arnim:66 “If he ever opens a book it would be a timetable”. And with regard to the upper middle classes, I suspect that I will read some “strong words” about them in your book. I’d rather say nothing about contemporary politics. Just as there was once an aspiration for a “Third Germany” between Prussia and

Volkspartei) in 1866 and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei) in 1869. Vigorous opponent of Bismarck’s policies. 62 Presumably a reference to: David J. Footman, Ferdinand Lassalle. Romantic Revolutionary, New Haven 1947. 63 Ferdinand Lassalle, Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften, ed. by Gustav Mayer, 6 vols, Stuttgart/Berlin 1921–1925. 64 “Worship that which you have destroyed, destroy that which you have worshipped”. Quotation from the Historiarum libri decem by Gregory of Tours, according to which Bishop Remigius of Reims is supposed to have uttered this sentence to the Merovingian king Clovis during his baptism at Christmas 498. Mayer, however, has reversed the order of the clauses. Gregory of Tours wrote: “adora quod incendisti, incende quod adorasti”. 65 Mayer worked for the Frankfurter Zeitung in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris as foreign correspondent from 1896 to 1904. 66 Achim von Arnim (1781–1831), writer and journalist. Achieved fame by collecting old German songs, which, together with Clemens Brentano, he published under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 3 vols, 1805–1808.

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Austria, the question now for the rest of the “good Europeans” is: Will the real Europe be able to assert itself between the American and Russian giants as a third power complex, particularly in an intellectual sense? You can be sure that I’m delighted to read every word you write to me. But if it’s a strain on you, please don’t force yourself to do so! We have received the first letters from Kenya (for my 75th birthday tomorrow) from our son and his dear young English wife. They were wearing their winter coats at the Equator. You are no doubt aware that we are unable to send food to the continent from England. But one can do so from America. I have asked Holborn whether packages are being sent to the Hirschsprung regularly from a reliable source there. Who is teaching history at the University of Berlin? Of those I can remember I can think of no-one that would still be suitable. But “death and rebirth” (“Stirb und Werde”) applies to history too of course. My thoughts are with you as always. Your Gustav Mayer Addition by Frau Mayer: Dear Frau Meinecke. You asked about Frau Lennox. I haven’t seen her for years, but recently heard that she is well; she teaches and rents out part of her flat, so she has no financial worries. We often think of you and it is sad that we shall never see each other again. Regards, Flora Mayer Addition by Mayer: Professor Koebner67 (now in Jerusalem, formerly of Breslau) enquired as to your wellbeing and asked me to pass on his regards.

67 Richard Koebner (1885–1958). Professor of medieval and modern history in Breslau from 1924 to 1933. Dismissed in 1933. Emigrated to Palestine in 1934. Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1934 to 1955.

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9. 9 November 1946: Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, My warm thanks for your little book, which has arrived at last. Its vigorous style belies your years. I’m just about to send a review to Gooch, which I squeezed only with great reluctance into the five hundred words or so he allowed me.68 How much I could say about your “observations and memories”,69 and how little one can write. There’s no need for me to assure you that we agree on a great number of important matters, and I almost think you may prefer it if I refer to specific passages to which I added a question mark, rather timidly on many occasions, on the first reading. I myself knew Naumann70 very well, swore allegiance to him as a student and later published a number of articles in his Hilfe and in the Zeit.71 However, if I were to ask who in Germany first tried to call into being a social and at the same time national movement, I would say Lassalle,72 not only because he came first but also because he did more to break up the soil with his plough. Naumann’s impact, which I am happy to join you in emphasizing, was limited to a bourgeois elite, while Lassalle, not so much during his lifetime but in the decade after his death, had an influence on the workers and also, along with Rodbertus,73 on the bourgeois minority, no longer ossified along Manchesterian lines, which first came together in the Association for

68 Review of Meinecke’s Die deutsche Katastrophe in: Contemporary Review 171 (1947), p. 59f. 69 Subtitle of Die Deutsche Katastrophe. 70 Friedrich Naumann (1860–1919). Politician who championed a national socialism and worked for the integration of the workers and the labour movement into the state and society of the Empire. 71 For these articles, see the list of Gustav Mayer’s writings, in: Mayer, Erinnerungen, 1993 edn, pp. 395–405. 72 Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864). Founded the German General Workers’ Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein or ADAV) in Leipzig in 1863. Lassalle was one of Mayer’s key research interests. 73 Johann Karl Rodbertus (1805–1875), political economist, economic historian and politician. Saw the solution to social problems in “state socialism”, state regulation of wages and social relations and the establishment of state monopolies to run such things as the postal service and the railways.

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Social Policy74 from 1872 onwards. It was unfortunate for Germany that, when it became a mass party, social democracy had its feel for the national dimension drummed out of it by the anti-socialists’ law.75 The impact of this became particularly clear to me when the great Otto Hue76 took me along for a Sunday morning drink with his chums in Essen in 1915. I knew him well and had looked him up at the prompting of Lancken, to foster a rapprochement between the Emperor and the “national” wing of the party. When I leaf through Waldersee’s memoirs77 now, it is particularly clear to me, if it wasn’t already, how narrow-minded the Prussian general staff was in terms of its political tradition. Here in England, Montgomery78 gets on very well with the social democratic ministers. A Swiss publisher has asked me whether I would edit the correspondence between Engels and Bebel.79 I feel too old for it. What would interest me would be to write an introduction showing that the responsibility for the fact that the German labour movement, in contrast to the English, could be targeted as ‘internationalist’—which in fact it really wasn’t—lies largely at the door of Prussian militarism. (I refer the students in your seminar in particular to the sections “Fatherland, borders and languages” (“Vaterland, Grenzen und Sprachen”) and “The soldiery” (“Das Soldatenwesen”)

74 The origins of the “Association for Social Policy” (“Verein für Sozialpolitik”), established in 1873, lay in a meeting “to discuss the social question” held in Eisenach on 6–7 October 1872. The association became the most important organization for middle-class social reformers in the Empire. It was supported primarily by the socalled “lecture theatre socialists” (“Kathedersozialisten”), including Schmoller, the key figure behind its foundation. 75 Through the “law against Social Democratic activities inimical to public safety” (Gesetz gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie), in force from 1878 to 1890, Bismarck tried in vain to eliminate Social Democracy and the socialist free trade unions. 76 Otto Hue (1868–1922), important miners’ leader. Member of the Reichstag or National Assembly from 1903 to 1911 and 1919 to 1922 respectively, and of the Prussian parliament from 1913 to 1918 and 1921 to 1922. 77 Alfred Graf von Waldersee (1832–1904), succeeded Moltke as chief of the Prussian general staff in 1888. Die Denkwürdigkeiten des General-Feldmarschalls Alfred Graf von Waldersee, 3 vols, Stuttgart/Berlin, 1922/23, was published posthumously by H. O. Meissner. 78 Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887–1976), British field marshal. Supreme commander of the British occupying forces in Germany in 1945. 79 August Bebels Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Engels was later published by Werner Blumenberg, London/The Hague/Paris 1965.

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in Weitling’s 1842 magnum opus: “The guarantees of harmony and freedom” [Die Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit]).80 I have thought a lot about your hypothesis that Germany would never have suffered the mildew of Nazism if Brüning and Groener had retained power.81 I too see the field marshal’s82 election as president as a great misfortune and assume that the intrigues swirling around the old man—the Neudeck estate83 and associated issues—alienated Hindenburg so greatly from his official advisers that he eventually dismissed them. But if I transport myself back to the early 1930s, and think of the profound, fateful split in the labour movement, the degeneration of the bourgeoisie, which you portray so superbly, and of the general despondency that increasingly prevailed, I am doubtful not only as to whether Brüning would ever have wrung the signal to strike from the president, whether he possessed the requisite degree of decisiveness, but also whether things wouldn’t have gone in much the same way as they did after Rathenau’s assassination, with the law on the protection of the Republic, even if the Reichswehr had attacked. Perhaps Hitler would have spent a few more months confined in a fortress, as he did after the Bürgerbräukeller, before the “public uproar” forced open the door for him.84 But who would risk stating with certainty how things might have gone, when they have sadly turned out so differently? And I do not

80 Wilhelm Weitling, Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit, 1842. This work by Weitling (1808–1871), a leading early German socialist theorist, was republished with an introduction and annotations by Bernhard Kaufhold, Berlin 1955. 81 Imperial Chancellor Heinrich Brüning (1885–1970) was toppled on 30 May 1932 by Imperial President Hindenburg. Wilhelm Groener had already resigned as Imperial defence minister on 12 May 1932, and with the dismissal of the Brüning government he also lost his position as Imperial minister of the interior. 82 Field marshal Paul Hindenburg (1847–1934) was elected Imperial president on 24 April 1925 and was re-elected after defeating Hitler in the second round of voting on 10 April 1932. 83 The East Prussian estate of Neudeck belonged to Hindenburg. Many of the East Prussian landowners in the vicinity of Neudeck, where Hindenburg stayed from 12– 28 May 1932, rejected the government’s settlement programme as it threatened their heavily indebted estates; they obviously contributed significantly to Hindenburg’s abandonment of Brüning. See Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik, 2nd edn, Stuttgart/ Düsseldorf 1957, pp. 511–517. 84 Following the Hitler putsch on 8/9 November 1923, which began with Hitler’s proclamation of the overthrow of the governments of Bavaria and the Empire at a gathering in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, Hitler was sentenced to five years confinement in a fortress in April 1924, but was released early from Landsberg fortress on 20 December 1924.

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deny that the future historian will have to give careful consideration to your hypothesis. If only Brüning had been a more charismatic “Führer”, he might have stopped the seducer in his tracks. And the same goes for our dear Groener!85 My wife and I were there at the Hirschsprung as invisible guests, faithfully bearing greetings for your birthday. We remembered your seventieth, when we were still coming to you from Lankwitz and still had no idea that we would be exiled from our homeland! I very often read Fontane’s “Travels through the Mark” before going to sleep.86 I hope you are sitting in front of a warm oven this winter and— hopefully with help from America—have enough to eat. What was once a self-evident prerequisite now becomes a cherished wish when one writes to Germany. We shall be getting a visit from Frl. Philippson87 this evening. She said on the telephone that she had just borrowed your book for 48 hours. If by any chance you would like an English translation, I shall be happy to keep my ears open.88 If only a peace treaty had been concluded! Our thoughts are with you and your dear wife. Your old friend, Gustav Mayer

85 Having taken part in Meinecke’s famous Sunday walks, Groener was well acquainted with Meinecke and Mayer. 86 Theodor Fontane, Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg, 5 vols, 1862–1889. Many new editions have appeared since then. 87 On 24 March 1947, Meinecke asked Mayer whether his student J. Philippson would really return to Germany: “If so, please let me know. There would be no lack of things to do, at the Academy for instance.” (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 275f.). 88 The translation of Meinecke’s Die Deutsche Katastrophe by Meinecke’s friend, American historian Sydney B. Fay, appeared under the title: The German Catastrophe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/Massachusetts 1950.

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10. 23 January 1947: Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, We were particularly delighted to learn from your letter89 and from the card sent by your dear wife that you are at least not going hungry and that your eyesight has got better rather than worse. A letter from Dehio told of your “incredible intellectual vigour”. Of course, we had no need of his reassurance: your book and letters were sufficient evidence. Gooch was planning to send you my review of your book—I had to stick to the prescribed length—in the Contemporary Review.90 We were also pleased to hear that the Christmas gift which we asked Sepp Laufer91 to give you came at an opportune moment. Only since very recently have we been able to send small packages from here to Germany, which must be saved from one’s own rations. But it entails a lot of trouble for us, as my wife never has anyone to help her. One has to make a special trip to the Food Office and confirm that one is sending only rationed items, that is, for example, just tea and no coffee. And then lots of packages seem to end up in hands other than the ones they were intended for in Germany. We have had no confirmation of receipt from anyone as yet. We have enough to eat here in England but even here many things are in short supply, such as lard, meat and eggs. I have replied as well as I could to your question regarding source materials on the history of German democracy and social democracy on the enclosed sheets.92 I was more than a little surprised by 89

Meinecke’s letter to Mayer of 29 December 1946, printed in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 265f. 90 See above, p. 517. 91 Reference to Josef Laufer. Meinecke thanked Mayer for the gifts in a letter of 29 December 1946 (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 265f.). 92 The sheets mentioned by Mayer are not among Meinecke’s papers. In his letter of 29 December 1946, Meinecke had pointed out to Mayer that the Berlin Academy had been promised major funding “to produce publications. So we’ve put together a working programme for important publications on 19th- and 20th-Century Germany. Casting light on the democratic and socialist movements of this period would be a key concern. Picking up on the plans once made by the Imperial Historical Commission (Historische Reichskommission) in other words! What would you suggest as necessary as well as feasible topics?” Among other things, Meinecke was thinking of correspondence drawn from the socialist and democratic milieu, based on specific unpublished

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the reason for this request. For I had a hard time imagining, should the currency reform be implemented at some point, where the funds for such extensive research might come from. But your question also got me thinking about the fate of modern German historiography in the period since I left the country. I saw the Historische Zeitschrift in Oxford until 1940. Has it continued to be published or is it being published again?93 Have any significant works appeared since 1933? And the historians? I know that Marcks and Oncken, Stählin and Hoetzsch, Brandi and Rohden are no longer alive and that Gerhard Ritter, Kaehler and Schnabel are still active. But are Goetz and Brandenburg and Hansen still with us?94 And did the younger generation of professors, which no doubt includes students of yours, withstand the temptation of Nazism? Does Hartung still work in Berlin and if so who else? Brackmann? Holborn, Koebner and Rothfels e tutti quanti are lost to Germany. Valentin died a few days ago, having just recently sent me a marriage announcement. An obituary penned by Gooch appeared in today’s Times. I heard that Andreas was spat out by the University of Heidelberg for coming to an opportunistic arrangement with Nazism. Frank has no doubt disappeared.95 But who was left and which new figures have emerged? That there is a lack of new blood, as you lament, comes as no surprise to me. But are there at least some teachers left who can train the new academics? Who holds the chairs formerly occupied by you and Oncken?96

papers (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 266). On the Imperial Commission’s plans, see above, p. 26. 93 The HZ was published again only from 1949, though the “foreword” is dated July 1947. The first volume, 169, was edited by Dehio alone. For volumes 170 to 182 (up to 1956) Dehio and Kienast are listed as editors, and from vol. 183 (1957) Theodor Schieder and Kienast appear on the title page as editors. 94 Erich Marks (1861–1938), Hermann Oncken (1869–1945), Karl Stählin (1865– 1939), Otto Hoetzsch (1876–1946), Karl Brandi (1868–1946), Peter Richard Rohden (1891–1942), Gerhard Ritter (1888–1967), Siegfried August Kaehler (1885–1963), Franz Schnabel (1888–1966), Walter Goetz (1867–1958), Erich Brandenburg (1868– 1946), Joseph Hansen (1862–1943). 95 As president of the “Imperial Institute for the History of the New Germany” (“Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschland”), which he founded, Walter Frank (1905–1945) was the most exposed advocate of an emphatically National Socialist historiography. He committed suicide the day after Germany surrendered. 96 Some of Mayer’s questions about the fate of German historians are answered by Meinecke in his letter to Mayer of 24 March 1947 (Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 275f.).

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I recently read an obituary of Levison in The Times. He enjoyed the hospitality of the University of Durham. I fear that Frau Hintze, whom I never heard anything about, met her end in Auschwitz,97 like my wife’s only brother, [. . .] who was a staunch Protestant. I lost two close friends over the last few months: Prof. Jonas Cohn (formerly of Freiburg), who often attended the conferences of university teachers loyal to the constitution. He spent his exile among the Quakers in Birmingham. And Prof. Groethuysen,98 the editor of Dilthey, whom you met at our place in Lankwitz. He lived in Paris. The more time that passes since the war, the clearer the difference becomes between the English and the inhabitants of those countries occupied for a time by the Nazis, as expressed in the public mood with respect to the Germans. Here there is an ever increasing awareness that it will be possible to resuscitate Europe only if Germany plays its part. In as much as it was necessary in this field at all, it has been in the sphere of music that contacts have been most obviously and successfully re-established. Brahms is still all the rage, and Bach the undisputed king. Wagner is ignored as much as possible and Mendelssohn is rated very poorly. Mozart and Beethoven remain as they were, and one can listen to “songs” in German, especially by Schubert and Schumann, almost every evening on the radio. There is no contemporary visual art from Germany at all, but Dürer, for example, is still revered. Through his sister, who is a friend of ours, Sir Thomas Barlow99 invited me to view his famous collection of Dürer’s etchings and woodcuts. Not content with any of the existing works on Dürer, this great industrialist is in the process of writing a book on Dürer’s graphic art himself. Of living German historians, the only one that counts here is Friedrich Meinecke, and of the novelists and essayists only Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig. A translation of Hölderlin (selected texts) was published recently, with accompanying German text. The visit from Schumacher,100 who is said to have made a very favourable impression, was a political success for Germany.

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See above, p. 91. Bernhard Groethuysen (1880–1946), philosopher. 99 Sir Thomas Barlow (1883–1964), British industrialist. This important collection of Dürer’s graphic art was sold to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 1956. 100 Reference to SPD leader Kurt Schumacher (1895–1952), whose appearance in England Meinecke followed with interest. “I almost see him as a continuation 98

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You are no doubt aware that the English and Americans are jointly working on a major academic publication of German war documents. The American team is headed by a Professor Raymond Sontag,101 the English one by John W. Wheeler-Bennett.102 They have a number of assistant editors in Berlin. I wonder whether they are in contact with German historians. That’s all for now. For some time I’ve been very busy reading books on the religion of the century before and after the appearance of Christ. I write very little myself these days. What language would I use? My memoirs will be published in German in Switzerland. [. . .] The severe cold is back, putting our coal supplies to the test. We hope you can get your room reasonably warm with the Russians’ help. All the best to you and your dear wife! In old loyalty Your Gustav Mayer 11. 17 July 1947: Gustav Mayer (London) to Friedrich Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 My dear friend, I wouldn’t have taken so long to answer your vibrant and cheerful letter of 24 March103 had I felt more communicative. But I’ve been sitting in my little flat all the time, with a view of nothing but the red omnibuses rushing past and the petty bourgeois and proletarians living across the street. We’ve had few visitors, and going out oneself is a pretty rare event—so one begins to mope and feel cut off and there is nowhere one truly feels at home. In June my wife’s only surviving sister came with her husband, the former Heidelberg Prof. of Roman of Naumann.” (Letter to Mayer of 10 December 1946, in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, p. 264). 101 Raymond James Sontag (1897–1972), diplomatic historian. Chief American editor of the Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945 from 1946 to 1949. After seventeen years at Princeton University, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1941. 102 Sir John Wheeler-Bennett (1902–1975), historian. Chief British editor of the documents of the German foreign ministry, 1946–1948. 103 Printed in: Meinecke Werke, vol. 6: Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, pp. 274–276.

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law Ernst Levy,104 who has to spout 20th-century history to the students in Seattle on the Pacific, but has now been granted a year’s leave to finish a two-volume work in Basle, which is to deal with the history of Roman law as it came into contact with the young Germanic states on the soil of the Empire.105 And then Gilbert paid us a visit, though only briefly, and we asked him to pass on our warmest regards to you and Frau Meinecke, and finally Koebner (formerly in Breslau—now Jerusalem) came; he wants to work on the history of the term “imperialism” in the British Museum and sends you his regards. These visits, which were not the only ones, and the prospect of others—from my sister and the Holborns for example—had an invigorating effect, and in a quite different way so has this summer holiday that we have quite unexpectedly been able to take. We are friends with an English lady who is the daughter of the private physician of Queen Victoria, who died a few years ago at the age of almost 100. She has allowed us to use her old cottage, with a domestic servant to reduce the strain on my wife, who otherwise works so hard, in a quiet village in Berkshire—its large garden yields enough to feed us. And while my wife picks roses and early fruit, some of which she has preserved, I am sitting in a deckchair reading Schnabel’s history of Germany,106 only the first volume of which, unfortunately, I took with me when I left Germany. As my wife is also reading me Der Stechlin107 in the evenings, I am once again living in the Germany with which I too was familiar and which I considered my home. Schnabel’s book came as a very pleasant surprise to me—both as an accomplishment and in terms of its opinions and sentiments. It really is a timely replacement for Treitschke’s antiquated five-volume pamphlet;108 it may not be able to match the latter

104 Professor Dr. Ernst Levy (1881–1968). Leading historian of law. Married to Marie Wolff, sister of Frau Mayer. He was professor of Roman law and civil law in Heidelberg from 1928 to 1935. Dismissed in 1935, he emigrated to the United States, where he worked as professor of law, history and political science at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1937 until his retirement in 1952. Taught in Basle from 1952 onwards. 105 Ernst Levy, West Roman Vulgar Law. The Law of Property, Philadelphia 1951. The book is dedicated to his wife. 106 Franz Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, 4 vols, Freiburg 1929– 1937. 107 Theodor Fontane’s (1819–1898) late work Der Stechlin, which first appeared in book form after his death in 1898. 108 Heinrich von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, 5 vols, Leipzig 1876–1894. Deals only with the period up to 1847.

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in terms of brio, but it compares favourably in light of its determination to be objective—and European. A German historian of Schnabel’s generation, who is immune to the absolutist nature of both nationalism and the intoxication with power, which led to the collapse of the lesser German empire, that’s already quite something in itself; I hope that he keeps up this approach in the following volumes, which he must have written during the years of his own disgrace. I would like to read them.109 Yes, my dear friend, you are right: things are looking dark on this Earth, almost as if the increasingly sharp dividing line between the two huge powers is set to become a limes. I don’t believe there’ll be another war in our lifetime. “Me and Metternich you will still have to — bear” said Francis II110 in his Viennese accent but he was wrong. But our children? I often think that my son, the only one remaining to me, may be better off in Kenya. But he and his wife, who live between negroes and missionaries, often wonder whether the negroes might be Europeanized or Americanized in such a way that they might gain an understanding of the splitting of the atom and its applications sooner than an understanding of humanitarian values, which take generations to grow and are not simply imparted through baptism. I would be pleased if the Historische Zeitschrift were to be revived, with Dehio as your not entirely unworthy successor. In the AngloSaxon world they are busily engaged in the ex post restauration of German history; as imperative as I consider that to be, I do not believe that the German historians—in as much as they can avoid succumbing to resentment—should allow themselves to be excluded from this undertaking, which will take time. A great English industrialist (the brother of the owner of “our” cottage) recently showed me his col-

109 The first four volumes of Schnabel’s Deutscher Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert only cover the period up to around 1840. There existed parts or variants, in some cases extensive, of a fifth volume, which was announced in the weekly magazine of the German book trade under the title Das Erwachen des deutschen Volkstums in November 1940 and which, again, did not tackle the revolution of 1848/49. As the printing and distribution of the fifth volume was prohibited, Schnabel, to some extent adapting to the Nazi regime, decided to rework the manuscript completely. However, Schnabel abandoned the project in the summer of 1943. Neither a fifth nor any further volumes appeared after the war. See Thomas Hertfelder, Franz Schnabel und die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft. Geschichtsschreibung zwischen Historismus und Kulturkritik (1910–1945), 2 vols, Göttingen 1998, pp. 690–729. 110 Francis II (1768–1835), governed from 1792. Laid down the crown of Holy Roman Emperor in 1806 and became Francis I, Emperor of Austria.

xii. gustav mayer

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lection of Dürer’s woodcuts and etchings, which is unique in being complete (!) and which he has built up111 over decades, stating sadly: “I don’t want to see the German culture that I loved go to rack and ruin”. More than a few people here share this view. But only the Germans themselves can prevent that! Our very best wishes to you and your dear wife. Yours ever loyal, Gustav Mayer 12. 21 March 1948: Flora Mayer (London) to Friedrich and Antonie Meinecke NL Meinecke 26 Dear Herr Geheimrat and my dear Frau Meinecke, Your kind words of sympathy arrived yesterday. Please accept my heartfelt thanks. My husband and I thought about you a lot and often spoke of you. He always greatly missed his conversations with you, Herr Geheimrat. He had no opportunity for the exchange of ideas over the last few years. We were too old and under too much inner strain to learn a foreign language properly, so it was hard for him to express himself freely. I only had him here with me in our house for the last few weeks; before that he lay in hospital for weeks, for our living conditions are very primitive. A couple of days before he passed away, he said goodbye to me and our son in deeply moving terms. Ulrich managed to fly back from Kenya in time with his wife and my husband was heartened to see him again, as he had so dearly wished to do. The next day he was already very weak; but he had the urgent need to get up and go to you, Herr Geheimrat. I could do nothing to talk him out of it and was quite at a loss. My husband said that he still had so many things to discuss with you. At last I took a number of your books from the shelf and laid them on his bed. We had pasted in the wonderful pictures of your 70th birthday at the front. My husband looked at them for a long time and was visibly happy. Then he said:

111

See above, p. 523.

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“This is a very great scholar, very different from me.” He passed away on 21 February peacefully and without pain. I shall be very lonely; we very much kept ourselves to ourselves over the last few years and have had very few visitors. But I keep within me the great treasure of the memories of our life together and this—I hope—will give me the strength to build a new life under such difficult circumstances. Please excuse me for talking so much about myself. It feels so good to do so with good old friends. Please get in touch soon and let me know how things are with you. You never say anything about your health, my dear Frau Meinecke; I know that you were never very strong or robust. I greet you in loyal remembrance, Your Flora Mayer

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY List of abbreviations ADAV AfS AHR Ct. EconHR EHR GG GWU Ed. HZ IWK JMH Mass. Mo. NL Nr. Va. VfZ VSWG Vt.

Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (German General Workers’ Association) Archiv für Sozialgeschichte American Historical Review Connecticut Economic History Review English Historical Review Geschichte und Gesellschaft Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht Editor, edited by Historische Zeitschrift Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung Journal of Modern History Massachusetts Missouri Nachlass (papers) Nummer Virginia Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte Vierteljahresschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Vermont Sources

Archive of Humboldt University, Berlin – Philosophy faculty doctoral records and habilitation records – Personal files Archive of the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Archiv der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften) Bavarian Economic Archive (Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv), Munich – F 5 Verlag R. Oldenbourg Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) Koblenz – Hans Rosenberg papers, N 1376 – Hans Rothfels papers, N 1213 – Walter Goetz papers, N 1215 – Gerhard Ritter papers, N 1166 – Eckhard Kehr papers, small acquisitions 508 Federal Archive Berlin. Holdings of the Historical Commission for the Imperial Archive (Bundesarchiv Berlin. Bestand Historische Kommission für das Reichsarchiv) R 1506/349 Gerhard A. Ritter private papers – Letters from Hans Rosenberg Göttingen State and University Library (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen) – Cod. Ms. S. A. Kaehler 1 (Kaehler papers)

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INDEX OF NAMES Adenauer, Konrad 2 Adler, Georg 99 Agnew, Spiro 441 Anderson, Eugene 69f., 94, 160, 342–350, 353–356, 380 Anderson, Pauline 347 Andreas, Willy 162, 238–240, 242–245, 290, 522 Anschütz, Gerhard 238, 461 Ansprenger, Franz 77 Anthon, Carl G. 235 Arnim, Achim v. 515 Attlee, Clement Richard 511, 514 Aubin, Hermann 70 Aulard, Alphonse 84, 87, 460, 463 Bach, Johann Sebastian 523 Bachhofer, Ludwig 159 Baethgen, Ludwig 242 Bamberger, Ludwig 61, 325 Barlow, Sir Thomas 523 Baron, Hans 20–22, 56–61, 97, 107, 109f., 286–319, 380, 421 Baron, Renate 309, 319 Beard, Charles Austin 97, 160, 488f. Beard, Mary 89 Bebel, August 518 Becker, Carl Lotus 428 Beethoven, Ludwig van 523 Below, Georg von 57 Beneke, Joachim 510 Bergsträsser, Arnold 159 Berlin, Isaiah 6 Berve Helmut 15 Besson, Waldemar 31 Bezold, Friedrich von 325 Bismarck, Oto Fürst von 12, 23–26, 29–31, 41–43, 48, 72, 74, 101–103, 166, 176, 218, 238f., 359, 388, 409, 419, 493, 513f. Bloch, Marc 420 Bodin, Jean 341 Bolivar, Simon 38, 214, 216, 219–221, 224 Bonjour, Edgar 79, 90 Boyen, Hermann von 4, 175 Brackmann, Albert 15, 29, 86, 88, 146, 147f., 181, 251, 295, 320, 322–324, 352, 458f., 460f., 462–465, 498, 522

Brahms, Johannes 523 Brandenburg, Erich 522 Brandi, Karl 294f., 522 Brandt, Willy 443 Braun, Rudolf 439–442, 444–447 Brentano, Lujo 409 Breysig, Kurt 17 Brüning, Heinrich 519f. Bruni, Leonardo 58–60, 292, 295, 314 Bücher, Karl 300 Bülow, Bernhard Fürst von 328 Büsch, Otto 77 Buoninsegna, Duccio di 290 Burckhardt, Jacob 17, 39, 47, 53, 67, 73, 130, 167, 191, 194, 220f., 268, 277, 280, 304, 314, 329, 390f., 397, 402 Buttler, Kurt 482 Calvin, Johannes 56, 61, 287 Carlyle, Thomas 341 Caspar, Erich 262 Charlemagne 63 Chigi, Agostino 55 Christern, Hermann 242 Cicero, Marcus Tulius 302, 305, 312 Clausewitz, Carl von 23, 136 Classen, Peter 236 Clay, Lucius D. 89 Cohn, John 336, 523 Conant, James 111 Conze, Werner 25, 78, 437 Correll 488 Craig, Gordon A. 45, 54, 283 Curtius, Ernst Robert 216 Dante, Aligheri 64, 303, 326 Daru, Pierre Antoine 477 Dehio, Georg 510 Dehio, Ludwig 110, 166, 204, 343, 483, 498, 506, 521, 526 Delbrück, Hans 497 Dilthey, Wilhelm 66f., 74, 219, 288, 330–332, 334, 340, 419, 421, 523 Dorn, Walter J. 89, 171, 264, 487f. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich 449 Droysen, Johann Gustav 51, 218, 272–276, 419

550

index of names

Dürer, Albrecht 523, 527 Duggan, Stephen Pierce 257f. Dulles, Allan Welsh 277 Earle, Edward Mead 54 Ebert, Friedrich 11, 250 Eltze, Brigitte geb. Stieve 220 Engel-Janosi, Fiedrich 325f. Engels, Friedrich 98–103, 147, 218, 505, 518 Epstein, Fritz T. 166, 194, 197, 282 “Epsteins” 22, 207, 225, 394 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Desiderius 58, 247, 317 Erler, Fritz 482 Ernst, Fritz 282 Erzberger, Matthias 250 Fay, Sidney B. 267, 376, 378, 428 Fehling, August Wilhelm 212–214, 255 Fenske, Walter 275 Ferguson, Wallace K. 317 Fiano, Francesco de 297 Finke, Heinrich 321 Floßmann 342 Fontane, Theodor 378, 389, 520, 525 Ford, Franklin J. 45, 277, 284 Ford, Guy Stanton 398, 428 Fraenkel, Ernst 39, 232 Frank, Walter 14f. Franz II, Emperor of Austria 526 Frederic II, the Great, King of Prussia 476 Frederic III, Emperor of Germany 214, 497, 512 Frederic Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia 420 Friedlaender, Ernst 393, 398 Friis, Aage 179, 204 Gans, Eduard 98 Gentz, Friedrich 359 Gerhard, Adele 32, 186, 256 Gerhard, Dietrich 7, 15, 19–21, 32–36, 39, 43, 74, 109f., 173–207, 236, 237, 253–258, 271, 294, 380, 421 Gerhard, Grete 207 Gervinus, Georg Gottfried 218, 272 Gideonse, Harry D. 382–387 Gilbert, Felix 7, 19, 21, 44, 51–56, 60, 73f., 107–110, 265, 272–285, 376, 380, 421, 471, 506, 512, 525 Gisevius, Bernd 278

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 8, 16, 64, 73, 206, 326, 328, 455, 504, 513, 515 Goethert, Friedrich 430 Goetz, Walter 56, 58–61, 109, 148, 288, 289–319, 522 Gooch, George Peabody 371, 511, 514, 517, 521f. Gordon Jr., Harold Jackson 50 Grebing, Helga 77 Grimme, Adolf 482 Groener, Wilhelm 509, 519f. Groethuysen, Bernhard 523 Groppler, Martin 396 Grundmann, Herbert 307, 309 Guggenheimer, Helene 452 Guggenheimer, Moritz 81, 452 Guicciardini, Francesco 55, 278–280 Haeften, Hans von 151, 498, 509 Haeften, Hans-Bernd von 509 Haeften, Werner von 509 Hamerow, Theodore S. 50 Handlin, Oskar 422 Hanfstaengel, Ernst 111 Hampe, Karl 462 Hansen, Joseph 321, 522 Hardenberg, August Fürst von 476 Harms, Bernhard 492f. Harnack, Adolf von 6f., 251 Hartshorne, Edward Yanell 263 Hartung, Fritz 86, 93, 96, 104, 147, 161, 187, 196, 295, 467, 498, 501, 522 Hartwig, Hans 228 Hassel, Ulrich von 278 Haussherr, Hans 482 Hayes, Carlton J. H. 158 Haym, Rudolf 67f., 70, 74, 331–334, 338, 346, 349–353, 357, 359, 361f., 368, 419 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 132, 335, 359, 368, 419, 512f. Hensel, Albert 154 Herder, Johann Gottfried 74, 359, 420 Herkner, Heinrich 26, 82, 101, 141f., 145f., 456, 459, 480f. Herz, John 44 Herzfeld, Hans 8, 40, 199, 225, 227f., 231, 235 Heuss, Theodor 169, 248f., 310 Hildebrand, Ruth 352 Hilldring, John H. 44 Hindenburg, Paul 27, 519

index of names Hintze, Hedwig 14f., 19, 22, 79–91, 94, 448–469, 523 Hintze, Konrad 90, 467–469 Hintze, Otto 7, 14, 22, 34, 55, 71, 74, 78, 79, 82f., 86, 89f., 110, 188, 285, 419, 455, 464, 466, 475 Hitler, Adolf 14, 27, 30, 43, 54, 98, 168, 192, 276, 283, 375, 491, 505, 519 Hobohm, Martin 27, 151 Hölderlin, Friedrich 513 Hoetzsch, Otto 86, 498, 522 Hoffmann, Frau 231f. Holl, Karl 41, 159, 251 Holborn, Annemarie 40, 271 Holborn, Friedrich 261, 264 Holborn, Hajo 19, 21, 40–50, 51f., 74, 94, 107–110, 113, 192, 207, 219, 236, 237–271, 282f., 294, 363, 380, 393, 395, 421, 483, 511, 516, 522, 525 Holborn, Hanna 261, 264 Holborn, Ludwig 40, 251 Holtzmann, Walter 291 Hue, Otto 518 Hughes, H. Stuart 45 Humboldt, Wilhelm v. 139, 175f., 186, 359, 394, 397, 413, 515 Hunt, Richard N. 50 Hus, Johannes 90 Husserl, Edmund 335 Jaeger, Werner 308, 310 Jaspers, Karl 334 Jaurès, Jean 87f. Jefferson, Thomas 222 Joël, Curt 247 Johnston, Howard W. 416 Julius II., pope 55 Kaehler, Siegfried A. 19, 25–27, 74, 134, 140–149, 152–156, 161, 217, 224, 421, 522 Kahl, Wilhelm 341 Kalkhoff, Paul 247 Kantorowicz, Ernst 107 Kant, Immanuel 515 Kaufmann, Erich 216, 220, 226–228 Kehr, Eckart 19, 21, 68, 74, 87, 91–97, 272, 297, 351, 421, 470–489 Kehr, Hanna 353, 486–489 Kehr, Paul Fridolin 96, 291, 296f., 322f., 347 Kirchheimer, Otto 44 Kluck, Colonel general Alexander 133

551

Koebner, Richard 516, 522, 525 Kondratieff, Nikolai Dimitriyevich 72 Koser, Reinhold 419 Krabbo, Herbert 454f. Krauske, Otto Karl 164 Krautheimer, Richard 44 Krieger, Leonhard 45, 284 Kristeller, Paul Oskar 60, 107, 317 Krushchev, Nikita 234 Kuhn, Helmut u. Käthe 185 Kuttner, Stephan 107 Kühlmann, Richard von 138, 306 Lamprecht, Karl 4, 287 Lancken Wakenitz, Oskar Freiherr von der 500, 518 Landes, David 71 Langer, William 44, 371–372 Laski, Harold Joseph 514 Lassalle, Ferdinand 99, 103, 106, 146, 492f., 515, 517 Laue, Theodor von 200, 277 Laufer, Joseph 521 Lebovics, Hermann 50 Lehmann, Max 475 Lenel, Edith 157 Lenel, Walter 238, 311 Lenz, Georg 352 Lennox, Fran 356, 510, 516 Leonardo da Vinci 450 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 81, 338, 453f. Levy, Ernst 525 Levison, Wilhelm 62, 321–323, 328, 523 Lewald, Theodor 27, 150–152 Lexis, Wilhelm 514 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 450 Lieber, Ernst 93 Liebknecht, Wilhelm 514 Lindsay, Alexander Dunlop 412–413 Livingstone, David 485 Lorenz, Ottokar 292 Louis XIV, King of France 285 Louis XVI, King of France 86 Lovejoy, Arthur Onken 108 Luther, Martin 41, 43, 85, 209, 241 MacArthur, Douglas 283 Machiavelli, Niccolò 54f., 62, 278, 281, 284, 455 Marcks, Erich 86, 102f., 144f., 162, 241, 300, 336f., 463, 499, 501, 522

552

index of names

Marcuse, Herbert 44 Martin, Alfred von 300 Marx, Karl 97, 100, 104, 171, 456, 515 Masur, Gerhard 15, 19–21, 32f., 36–40, 64, 73f., 110, 182f., 197–199, 202, 207, 208–236, 264f., 271, 294, 328, 380, 387, 421 Mathiez, Albert 87 Mayer, Arno J. 50 Mayer, Flora 107, 516, 527f. Mayer, Gustav 18, 21, 26, 98–107, 141f., 145f., 148, 492–528 Mayer, Lina 157, 161, 164, 171 Mayer, Ulrich 507, 509 Mayer-Kuhlenkampff, Ilse 169 Maximilian I., German Emporer 58 McClelland, Charles E. 50 Meinecke, Sabine 83, 182 Mendelssohn, Alfred 523 Mendelssohn, Moses 51 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Albrecht 96 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix 51 Merezhkovsky, Dimitry Sergeyevich 450 Mertz von Quirnheim, Colonel Hermann Ritter 143, 248 Mestwerdt, Paul 241 Metternich-Winneburg, Clemens Fürst von 170, 526 Meyer, Arnold Oskar 388 Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand 90 Meyer, Henry Cord 50 Michelet, Jules 159–160 Middeldorf, Ulrich 159 Miller, Perry 109 Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de 97, 490 Misch, Georg 501 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondant, Baron de 149 Montgomery, Bernhard Law 518 Mommsen, Hans 31 Mommsen, Theodor E. 107 Mommsen, Wilhelm 204, 249, 294 Mommsen, Wolfgang J. 204, 438 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 423 Müller, Adam 130 Müller, Hermann 247 Müller, Karl Alexander von 16 Muncker, Franz 81, 452–454 Muncy, Lisbeth Walker 232 Murrow, Edward R. 257f. Naumann, Friedrich 9, 106, 248, 517 Neumann, Franz 44

Niebuhr, Barthold Georg 32f., 185f., 194f., 477 Niemöller, Martin 164 Nietzsche, Friedrich 335 Nixon, Richard 443 Noack, Ulrich 220 Nolte, Ernst 438 Norvin, William 32, 179, 195 Novalis (Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg) 453 Oldenbourg, Wilhelm 135, 139, 351f., 364f., 370 Olschki, Leonardo 313 Oncken, Hermann 15, 23, 96, 146f., 159, 217, 262, 325, 369, 485, 493, 498, 501, 505, 522 Oppler, A. 482 Papen, Franz von 14 Pauck, Wilhelm 159 Paul, Hermann 453 Payer, Friedrich von 248f. Penck, Albrecht 501 Peter I, the Great, Czar of Russia 285 Petrarca, Francesco 299 Pflanze, Otto 50 Philipp IV, “the fair”, King of France 63 Philippson, Johanna 506, 520 Pinson, Koppel S. 22, 157–158, 394, 512 Pirenne, Henry 420 Posner, Ernst 235 Preuß, Hugo 12, 84, 461 Prokesch von Osten, Graf 325 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph 456 Puttkamer, Robert von 94 Rachfahl, Felix 337 Radbruch, Gustav 247 Radowitz, Joseph Maria von 41, 175, 238, 274, 420 Rafferty, Max 441–442 Ranke, Leopold von 5, 17, 36, 39, 47f., 53, 73f., 94, 159–160, 187, 194, 210, 215, 220f., 228, 268, 272, 277, 280, 284, 288, 329, 338, 340, 390, 397, 402, 419f., 508 Rath, Erich von 321 Rathenau, Walther 477 Reagan, Ronald 441–442 Redlich, Josef 69, 348, 371 Redslob, Erwin 113, 403, 407, 430

index of names Reissner, Hans Günther 21, 97f., 490f. Reitzenstein, Richard 326 Reuter, Ernst 117 Richter, Werner 293 Riedl, John 415 Riezler, Kurt 249f. Ritter, Gerhard 95, 193, 474–479, 522 Ritter, Gerhard A. 77, 435–439 Ritter, Moriz 419 Rößler, Constantin 333 Rockefeller, John Davison 349f. Rodbertus, John Karl 343, 517f. Rohden, Peter Richard 247, 522 Roloff, Gustav 140, 143f., 294 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 44, 54, 112, 269, 282f. Rosenberg, Hans 7, 19, 21, 63f., 65–78, 87, 94, 107, 109f., 112, 272f., 282, 284f., 324f., 328, 330–447, 470f., 483–489 Rosenberg, Leni 22, 342–345, 353–357, 376f., 393–395, 399f., 403–405, 433–435, 442–444 Rosenberg, Thea 399 Rosenberg, Walter 339 Rothacker, Erich 237 Rothfels, Hans 19–21, 23–32, 36, 38f., 73f., 92, 96, 109f., 128–172, 180, 192, 198, 220, 227f., 229–233, 235, 380, 397, 421, 513, 522 Rottenburg, von 474 Ruppert, Karl 143 Rust, Bernhard 104, 499–501 Salomon, Albert 94, 471 Salutati, Coluccio 297 Sauer, Wolfgang 77 Schalk, F. 319 Scheler, Max 208, 330 Schieder, Theodor 25, 75, 402 Schiffer, Eugen 138 Schiller, Friedrich 504, 513, 515 Schlabrendorff, Fabian von 278 Schlieffen, Alfred Graf von 137 Schmidt, Erich 455 Schmidt-Ott, Friedrich 96, 252 Schmitt, Bernadotte E. 97, 160 Schmoller, Gustav von 71, 99, 409, 456, 495, 515 Schnabel, Franz 6, 522, 525f. Schneider, Fedor 312 Schneider, Oswald 164, 192 Schopenhauer, Arthur 36, 359 Schorske, Carl 45 Schramm, Percy Ernst 237

553

Schreiber, Georg 144, 243 Schubert, Franz 523 Schulte, Aloys 144 Schulz, Gerhard 77, 440 Schulze-Gävernitz, Gerhard von 9 Schumacher, Hermann 96, 144, 501 Schumacher, Kurt 523 Schumann, Robert 523 Schweitzer, Johann Baptist von 99, 492, 514 Seidlmayer, M. 319 Sering, Max 98f., 490 Simon, Sir Leon 507 Solf, Wilhelm Heinrich 249f. Solmi, Arrigio 311f. Sombart, Werner 501 Sommer, Lotte 482 Sontag, Raymond James 524 Spahn, Martin 483 Spengler, Oswald 160, 456 Spranger, Eduard 330, 336, 340 Spritzer, Ralph 381, 388, 392 Srbik, Heinrich Ritter von 16, 85, 388, 420, 429 Stadelmann, Rudolf 312, 352 Stahl, Friedrich Julius 37, 209f., 228 Stählin, Karl 86, 501, 522 Stein, Freiherr vom 85, 94f., 471–479, 482 Steinmetz, General Karl Friedrich 134 Stier, Hans Erich 468f. Stresemann, Gustav 36 Stroux, Johannes 162 Struensee von Karlsbad, Karl Gustav 477 Struck, Walter 454 Tangl, Michael 455 Tawney, Richard Henry 73 Thimme, Hans 162 Thoma, Richard 95, 238, 243, 472f., 479 Thorndike, Lynn 314 Tillich, Paul 261 Tirpitz, Alfred Freiherr von 93 Tocqueville, Alexis de 35, 191 Toynbee, Arnold Joseph 160 Treitschke, Heinrich von 132, 334, 409, 513, 525 Triepel, Heinrich 498–499 Troeltsch, Ernst 36, 56f., 82, 98, 110, 286, 288f., 421, 456, 459, 464, 491 Truman, Harry S. 54 Turner, Frederick Jackson 35

554

index of names

Utermann, K. 485 Vagts, Alfred 160, 488 Valentin, Veit 27, 150, 492f., 522 Valeri, Nino 318 Varnhagen van Ense, Karl August 512 Victoria, Queen of England 525 Viktoria (wife of Frederic III.) 512 Vigener, Fritz 181 Wachsmuth, Andreas Bruno 206 Wagner, Adolf 99, 409 Wagner, Richard 453, 523 Wahl, Adalbert 158 Waldersee, Alfred Graf von 518 Ware, Caroline Farrar 374 Washington, George 55 Wattenbach, Wilhelm 292 Watz, Karl 482 Weber, August 514 Weber, Max 72, 97f., 475, 481, 491 Webster, Sir Charles Kingsley 371 Wechssler, Eduard 461 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich 94, 433f. Weisbach, Werner 505

Weitling, Wilhelm 519 Westphal, Otto 145 Westphalen, Ferdinand Otto Wilhelm von 513 Wheeler-Bennett, Sir John 524 Wieruszowski, Helene 21, 61–65, 107, 109f., 320–329, 379f., 389, 401 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von 98, 491 Wilhelm II, German Emperor 318 Wilson, Woodrow 250 Winkler, Heinrich August 31 Winter, Georg 485 Woerner, Roman 452 Wolfers, Arnold Oskar 261, 265 Wolfson, Philipp J. 166 Wundt, Wilhelm 456 Ziebura, Gilbert 77 Ziekursch, Johannes 67, 75, 208, 212, 356, 371, 430, 475 Zinzendorf und Pottendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von 259 Zunkel, Friedrich 77 Zweig, Stefan 523

Letters and documents from the emigre historians, as well as letters to these historians and references to them in the introduction, are indicated in italics. Passages that contain biographical information about these and other persons are likewise italicized. The names of Friedrich Meinecke and his wife, Antonie Meinecke, have not been indexed.

German Refugee Historians and Friedrich Meinecke: Letters and Documents, 1910–1977 (Studies in Central European Histories)

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Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics (Cambridge Studies in German)

Religion and the Secular in Eastern Germany 1945 to the present (Studies in Central European Histories)

Jews, Judaism, And the Reformation in Sixteenth-century Germany (Studies in Central European Histories)

Friedrich Hölderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory

Hyphenated Histories: Articulations of Central European Bildung and Slavic Studies in the Contemporary Academy

Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche

Opportunities and Risks in Central European Finances (European Union Accession)

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Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911-1951

The Reformation of Charity: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief (Studies in Central European Histories)

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German Postwar Films: Life and Love in the Ruins (Studies in European Culture and History)

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German Refugee Historians and Friedrich Meinecke: Letters and Documents, 1910–1977 (Studies in Central European Histories)

Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Modern German Culture (Studies in Central European Histories)

Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics (Cambridge Studies in German)

Religion and the Secular in Eastern Germany 1945 to the present (Studies in Central European Histories)

Jews, Judaism, And the Reformation in Sixteenth-century Germany (Studies in Central European Histories)

Friedrich Hölderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory

Hyphenated Histories: Articulations of Central European Bildung and Slavic Studies in the Contemporary Academy

Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche

Opportunities and Risks in Central European Finances (European Union Accession)

Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche

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The Central and Eastern European Countries and the European Union

Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911-1951

The Reformation of Charity: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief (Studies in Central European Histories)

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