May 13, 2011

THE INTELLECTUAL MIGRATION: A TYPOLOGY (October 20, 2008)

I also believe that more and more of

the better "Europe" will be moving here.

T.Mann, Jamestown, Rhode Island, 1938

The flow of immigrants entering the United States at any given period

is called wave. The oceanic metaphor is relevant if we think in the

different sizes of the waves, the predominance of Atlantic maritime

transportation up to the 1950s, and also in the fact that the waves

arrive recurrently at American shores. However, at this time we want

to look at an immigration wave which has rarely been recognized as

such, a wave that extended over twelve years spanning from 1933 to

1945. This wave brought to America several generations of Europeans

fleeing racial and political persecution. It was called by some

scholars the intellectual migration because "in this relatively small

group [of refugees] the level of education and the quality of

professional skills were remarkable." (1) In America, their arrival

was not seen as a separate immigration wave at all. The reasons for

this misperception are that the migrs came not at once but over a

number of years, not regularly but intermittently, and they were an

small percentage 19,418 (7.3%) within the group of refugees from

Central Europe (266,000). Besides, there were other events that

dominated the headlines those years such as American isolationism,

1
restricted immigration, economic depression, other political and

social upheavals, and a world war. Finally, there is also a more

permanent and inherent reason related to the popularity of immigrants

in the United States in general, and specifically these refugees.

Immigrants are mainly ignored by a culture whose members do not want

to be reminded that either them or their ancestors sometime in the

past where immigrants too. (2)

In 1929, the Immigration Restriction Act went finally into effect and

from then on visas became scarce and very difficult to get. Americans

did not want to hear about either new immigrants or refugees,

moreover, there was no legal category for refugees. The Americans had

had enough already, first, with the Depression, and then with their

two-front world war. Nonetheless, somehow this migration came within

the limits of the quotas, on special visas, or even as temporary

visitors and the majority stayed in America for good.

The intellectual migration brought over an extraordinary assortment

of immigrant-refugees, the best and the brightest of the European

intellectual, scientific, and artistic establishment. They were the

migrs from European Fascism who began arriving from the time of the

Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933. Individuals from many countries

engrossed this migration: the largest contingent was made up of

Germans, and Austrians, but the political and racial persecution sent

away also Czechs, Italians, Spaniards, Hungarians, French, Romanians,

Bulgarians, Greeks, Polish, and some Russians too. Most of them were
2
persecuted out of the continent (exile-by-force), a minority left

freely out of political, or moral conviction (exile-by-choice), some

tried to come but failed, while others reluctantly succeed. Many were

already in America and stayed out when the upheaval broke up. The

lives of all of them make up the story of the intellectual migration.

In 1968 this group of migrs was referred to by Laura Fermi, wife of

the physicist-refugee Enrico Fermi, as the intellectual migration,

because of the high level of education and intellectual achievement

of its core elite. (3) In 1969, Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn

used the same designation in their own compilation of articles on the

migrs. The designation has been used again and again, and, though

elitist, it seems fit as shorthand to designate these exiles. No

other group with similar characteristics has ever come to America.

Their intellectual achievements were and still are astonishing (4)

and the study of this peoples ordeal constitutes a very significant

chapter not only of the American immigration experience but also of

American Intellectual, Artistic, and Scientific history.

Chronologically, this wave came after the decline of American

immigration in the 1920s and the restrictionist period, but before

the post World War II displaced persons wave. Their story is part

and parcel of American Immigration History, and it is from this point

of view that we will look at it. A scholar of the migration

maintained that the history of exile literature [intellectual

migration] would not be terminated until its last representative in

3
exile had died or has returned to his native country. By the same

token we would like to say that the history of this group will not be

over until the last of its members passed from the scene. They are

the witnesses and the last representatives of the migration's

extraordinary American legacy. (5)

The political turn-moil of those years dispersed thousands of

refugees all over the world, and the majority migrated to the United

States. The best estimate indicates that the refugees entering

America between 1933 and 1944 were about 266,000 among them 19,418

were intellectuals, professionals, or artists (6). These numbers are

small if compared with the masses going through Ellis Island at the

dawn of the century, and, because of that, its study requires

slightly different parameters. We need to look at them almost

individually and thus the topic becomes very vast. A sociological,

impersonal or statistical view would not reveal their experiences,

their contributions, their endeavors, their failures, and their final

destiny after the migration. They should be looked at from a

historical view point without disregarding the context provided by

sociology or the other auxiliary sciences.(7)

The analysis of this migration requires a basic typology to

facilitate its contextual and chronological placement, and also

because it "provide[s a] theoretical structure for a broad range of

scholarship." As William Petersen indicated long ago, what is

required is a theoretical framework into which the data may be fitted.

4
He emphasized also two general points, first, that it is useful to

make explicit the logical structure of a typology; and second that

the criteria by which types are to be distinguished must be selected

with care. (8) This paper will try to follow these guidelines

establishing three basic parameters to classify the refugees. The

first criteria to be developed will be generational, the second will

be occupational, and the last one will distinguish them by country of

birth.

Generational Approach

In the last two decades there has been an increasing use of the

generational concept in the sociological and historical discourse.

All attempts to build grand theory based on it including a historical

theory of cyclical reproduction have failed as they should. However,

it seems to this writer that the concept has great explanatory power

in both history and sociology. My proposal is simple: to use the

concept of generation as a classificatory device. Almost twenty years

ago, Hans Jaeger highlighted what he called a "promising approach" in

generation theory, saying that "[T]he study of concrete groups,

organizations, schools, and movements constitutes the most promising

approach to the research about historical generations. An examination

which starts with the vast historical reality of a group and then

investigates the age structure uses an approach opposite to that

which starts with the age structure of a group and only then look for

factual connections or correspondences." (9) To be sure, here we will

5
refer to historical generations without adopting any general theory,

however, we will incorporate when proper the conceptual insights

develop by the generational theory masters. Establishing to what

generation these individuals belong explains not only their place in

the subsequent history of the group but also the background they

brought to America, their limitations, and frequently even the nature

of the influence they exerted here.

The concept of generation has been the subject not only of a large

bibliography in sociological studies, but also of many enlightening

historical writings. Here well limit the generational concept to the

age group impacted by specific historical events during their

members' main formative years. Following Karl Mannheim we placed the

formative years as those spanning from the 17th birthday up to the

25th's. (10) I say "main" formative years because historical events

influence people all the time and at every age, but it seems that the

psychological impact received during those years leave a permanent

imprint, a distinguishing mark. However, it would be disingenuous to

concentrate exclusively on the years between the 17th and the 25th

birthdays as the only life phase where personality formation takes

place. Obviously, the "primary stratum of experiences" (infant years)

plays a major role in the subsequent phase of "personal

experimentation with life." (11) The early adolescent years are also

crucial. However, during the formative years the person is the most

impressionable, the "imprint" that their psyche suffered defines

6
their way of thinking, their basic attitudes, and his or her patterns

of experience and expression most radically. In other words, the

experiential imprint one receives during his/her formative years

stays with the individual the rest of his or her life. Thus,

according to Karl Mannheim, in this way they forge a generational

style. Another generationalist put it in this way: "older members of

society also experience the same events, yet they interpret them

according to perspectives they developed during their formative years.

Since each generation has its own Weltanschauung, the experiencing of

these events becomes 'stratified' by a multitude of generational

perspectives."

It has always been my understanding that historically, age matters

the most. Here we have the intellectual migration, this large and

diverse group. How to study its American reception, their own

American experience, their achievements and failures, their

adaptation or revolt, and their cultural legacy? It seems that

without a basic generational typology it will be very confusing to

talk about this people experiences and achievements. For instance,

looking at the migr musicians, we find these two age extremes, on

the one side Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), and on the other Andre

Previn (1929- ). They both are members of the intellectual

migration despite the 58 years span between their births. They cannot

be considered as part of the group without highlighting the many

profound differences between them and what they mean in terms of

7
immigration.

The older members of the group immigrated in their sixties and

seventies like Maurice Maeterlinck a writer from Belgium born in 1862,

Jacques Hadamard a mathematician from France born in 1865, Richard

Beer-Hoffmann, a poet and dramatist from Austria born in 1866, and

Arturo Toscanini, the conductor from Italy born in 1867. But these

are rather exceptions because the bulk of the oldest migration is

from the 1870s. On the other end, the very youngest may be

represented by people born even in the 1930s who came here as

children with their parents absorbing through them a cultural mixture

from the European home and the American surroundings. As an example,

I would like to mention Werner Gundersheimer born in 1937, scholar,

historian and ex director of the Folger library. As to age, these are

the outer-limits of the intellectual migration.

Some students of the migration may object to the inclusion of the

younger generations within the group. Some say that only those who

brought their education from Europe belong to the migration, because

the younger ones studied or developed their skills in America. This

view cannot be favored because the younger refugees brought with them

European experiences along with the basic emigration experience plus

their personal qualities, besides most of the time they came with

their family group who prolonged in America the influence of their

foreign culture. All these factors marked them out as members of this

8
migration.

As to the time of the migration itself we will include those coming

to America from 1933 up to the end of the war in 1945. However, I

make an exception for people that were already here in 1933 (a short

stay) and decided not to return to Europe during the mentioned period.

We would like to repeat here Robert Boyers's preface words from his

compilation of articles on the intellectual migration. He said that

he included "figures who never even emigrated, for one reason or

another, but who are nonetheless significantly a part of the migr

generation ... [like] ... Walter Benjamin and Karl Kraus." Kraus is

undoubtdly and exaggeration but as to Benjamin you may say that his

writings migrated to America with the Frankfurt School. Thus, this

paper will include individuals who are not part of the group but

should be included because of their cultural significance and

influence on the migration. (12)

Without going deeper into generational theory what is significant for

our classificatory purpose is the general outlook, attitudes, habits

and style provided by the generational imprint. Thus, Thomas Mann's

Weltschauung is markedly different from that of, for instance, Erich

M. Remarque, Hannah Arendt, or Peter Gay.

It has been a regular and in some way justified objection to

generational theory that it is imprecise because there is no

9
agreement as to the boundaries between the generations and their

lengths. Here we preferred to design the generational categories

within precise dates even though we realized that valid differences

may be pointed out. Our view is specific to the period, the place,

and the individuals and it is unconcerned with establishing a full-

strength theory. It must be understood that there are exceptions

which hopefully will confirm the rule. Moreover, each individual case

must be looked at to determine whether his or her place within a

specific zone of dates coincides with his or her formative

experiences.

A generation is said to be a group of like-aged individuals who are

commonly imprinted by socio-historical events because they

experienced those events at a similar age. Thus, men who are born

into the same social environment about the same time necessarily come

under analogous influences, particularly in their formative years.

Mere common location in a generation is of only potential

significance. Contemporaries have to participate in the same ideas

and concepts. Ortega y Gasset says that a generation is a zone of 15

years during which a certain form of life (vital sensitivity, climate

of opinion) was predominant. "Practically every society recognizes a

discrete coming-of-age moment (or 'rite of passage') separating the

dependence of youth from the independence of adulthood. This moment

is critical in creating generations; any sharp contrast between the

experiences of youths and rising adults may fix important differences

10
in peer personality that last a lifetime."

Eckstein and Barberia pointed out that cohorts that differ in their

pre-immigration backgrounds can be expected to differ, in certain

respects, in their post-immigration experience. (13) Hazlett also

remarks that the generational imprint is part of the culturally

imposed identity (like that pertaining to women or minorities). (13)

Pilcher has stated that the notion of generations provides a way to

understanding differences between age-groups, and it constitutes also

a means of locating individuals and groups within historical time.

These ideas have been emphasized by previous theorists, and evidence

of its reliability has been established. (14)

The sociologists who studied the intellectual migration have

delineated various groups following three statistical categories: the

elder group, an intermediate group, and a younger group of refugees.

Those who in 1933 were older than 45 integrated the elder group (born

before 1888). The intermediate group was formed by those which in

1933 were between 44 and 16 years of age (born between 1889 and 1917).

Finally, those 16 years of age and younger at the time of emigration

were within the younger group (born after 1917). (15) These groupings

may satisfy the sociologists perspective, but fall short of the

actual historical generations represented within the migration. The

intermediate group is too large and includes individuals pertaining

to at least two different generations. These refugees were born after

1888 but before 1917, a span of 29 years including individuals as

11
diverse as Werner Jaeger, the Classic German Philologist born in 1888,

and Peter Drucker, the Austrian management consultant and educator

born in 1908. Jaeger passed away in 1961, and Drucker in 2005. It is

obvious that these two individuals European experiences made them

members of different generations. The intermediate group then

includes two different generations, one is the very-much-analyzed war

generation and the other may be designated as the Weimar generation.

This last designation has the disadvantage of making sense only for

the Germans, but not for the other European countries. However, I'll

use it because the Central European culture at that time was defined

mainly by German culture which was in many ways hegemonic. Besides,

most of the migrs were from Germany and Austria. Another example of

the distinction may be found in Joseph Wechsberg when he describes

the 1914 family's farewell to his father going to war. Wechsberg was

born in 1907 and belongs to the Weimar generation and his father

instead died in WWI. (16)

These generations are to be defined by historical events of the

period spanning from the 1870s to the 1930s. This sixty-year period

begins with the Franco-Prussian war and ends with World War II, and

the main historical event of the period is World War I. The members

of the intellectual migration whose formative years coincided World

War I are said to belong to the War generation which is by itself a

well-established concept. (17) All European countries, except Britain,

required compulsory military service for its young men. In Germany,

12
all able bodied men between the ages of 17 and 45, were liable for

military service (18).

Therefore, for the purposes of this typology, the war generation

would be integrated by those born from 1889 to 1900. A Central

European born in 1889 would have been 25 in 1914 and then liable for

military service within his formative years, and, by the same token,

an individual born in 1897 would have been 17 in 1914 and thus

subject to the rigors of the war during his formative years. It

should be noted that Central Europeans who were older than 25 during

the war also experienced it because they were drafted anyway, but

most of them served in non-combat positions. Thus, their experiences

have a different relevance because they were already passed their

formative years. Nonetheless, every personal history must be

considered because the war experience was not the same for everybody,

and even the war generation may be subdivided depending on the year

the person began his military service. (19)

Thus, being the war generation a well-established concept, the other

generations may be defined preceding or following it. People born

before 1888 should necessarily belong to a previous generation even

though they may have served in the Great War. They were formed in the

19th century and did not possess the mind set, expectations and goals

of the war generation.

By the same token, people who were too young to serve in the war had

13
formative experiences acquired in the post-war social and political

upheavals, a very different existential environment. The mental

imprint of this group must necessarily be markedly diverse from the

war generation. Finally, a different generation develops in a Europe

at the mercy of the Nazi dictatorship, and, those who got the

imprinting at that time must be grouped in a separate generation. It

has been called the younger generation by several scholars. (20)

Two well-respected scholars distinguished between pre-war generations.

Thus, Detlev J.K. Peukert founded two generations previous to the war

generation. They are the Wilhelmine generation, contemporaries of

Wilhelm II born between 1847 and 1869, and the Grunderzeit generation

of those born in the decade of the establishment of the Reich,

between 1870 and 1879. Then, Peukert lists the Wartime generation of

those born in the 1880s and 1890s who experienced military service

during the Great War. (21) The other scholar is Wolfgang Schivelbusch

who analyzed the Wilhelmine generation, those born between 1853 and

1865, and said that they experienced the founding of the German

empire and were a classic "post-heroic" generation of inheritors

(victors' sons, "epigones" and "literati"). (22) Even though these

two elaborations are well-thought and compelling they were built for

different purposes and do not consider the intellectual migration. I

will use the designation "Wilhelmine generation" to include all the

refugees born before 1888, leaving those born between 1888 and 1900

within the War generation. The migration includes only a few members

14
born in the 1860s minimizing in this way the need to halve this group,

however, when necessary, I will take into account the distinctions

pointed out by Peukert and Schivelbusch between the generations of

those borne before or after 1865. Additionally, in the case of the

war generation, some scholars distinguish between sub-generations

because the German draft covered men within 17 and 45. Thus, some

distinguish between "two groups: those who were mature men in 1914

and who experienced the war as an interruption of their peacetime

activities; and those born between 1885 and 1900, for whom the war

was an introduction to life and adventure.(23) This is a distinction

which can be clearly identified in the case of Ludwig Bendix who

served in his late 30s and even Paul Tillich serving during his late

20s. Additionally, the refugees themselves distinguished between

those drafted at the beginning of the war in 1914 or those

incorporated later; a case in point is Zuckmayer who placed Remarque

and his age group in a generation separate from his. Again, I will

keep in mind these distinctions whenever appropriate. (24)

Walter Laqueur, a refugee scholar himself, has recently published

"Generation Exodus" an account of the so-called younger generation of

emigrants. He said in the preface that his is a first attempt to

sketch the portrait of a generation, the young people from Germany

and Austria who were forced to emigrate after the Nazis went into

power, and that this was the cohort of those born, roughly speaking,

between 1914 and 1928. Laqueur (1921- ) himself belongs to this

15
generation which will be called the "younger generation" to followed

the terminology used by other scholars. (25)

Now, in between the "War generation" and the "Younger generation" we

have those born between 1901 and 1916 which constitute a separate and

definite generation, the "Weimar generation" imprinted in their

adolescence by the chaos created after Germany's defeat (revolution

of 1919), death caused by the Pandemic Influenza of 1918-1919,

economic distress caused by the German hyper-inflation of 1921-1923,

and in general the cultural turmoil of post-war Central Europe.

It seems possible to add another generation after Laqueur's

generation exodus or Fermi's young generation, because some members

of the migration born after 1928 were imprinted by the migration

itself, and, of course, by the American culture. However, similarly

to the Wilhelmine generation including individuals born in the 1860s,

we are including in the younger generation figures like Andre Previn

(1929- ), Leo Spitzer (1939- ), etc. who were born after 1928.

Therefore, in summary, the lineup of generations goes like this:

Wilhelmine Generation (born before 1888)

War Generation (born from 1889 to 1900)

Weimar Generation (born from 1901 to 1917)

Younger Generation (born after 1918)

16
Examples fitting each category are Thomas Mann born in 1875 for the

older group; Carl Zuckmayer born in 1897 for the war generation;

Hannah Arendt born in 1906 for the Weimar generation; and Peter Gay

born in 1923 for the younger refugees. This classification of the

intellectual migration in four groupings will allow us to draw

conclusions and establish connections among them illuminating thus

many aspects of their migration experience.

Wilhelmine Generation

You [Erich Kahler] have given an example of fortitude that

honorably differs from the complete incompetence of most refugee

intellectuals faced with their new situation. None of them, I have

the impression, is prepared to learn anything new; rather they all

want to go on as they did in times now buried, and expect roasted

squabs to fly into their mouths. T.Mann to E. Kahler, 05/25/1941

This generation was formed during the Wilhelmian Empire and before,

including then those emigrants born up to 1888. They are those too

old to fight in the First World War, even though they might have

served anyway in a non-combatant capacity. Hans Jaeger, a scholar of

generations, provides an example of generational phenomena found in

Wilhelmine Germany between 1914 and 1918 saying that "in 1914, we

find in Germany a society which bears the imprint of the Wilhelmine

Empire ... among older people. A widespread economic and social

expansion, an authoritarian state and the education of subjects, a

17
display of power with respect to foreign policy... The Wilhelmine

lifestyle had left such a deep imprint on the German people because

of its long duration." (26)

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) in his 1950 article entitled The Years of My

Life called this generation the Old Timers, and spoke of a cultural

advantage which the man born in 1875 possessed over those born

straight into the post-bourgeois world. He said that the old timers

still witnessed a form of opposition to liberalism and rationalism

that itself abided by the loftiest tenets of culture, a darkling

variety of humanism, as it were, a pessimism that wrote the language

of our great humanistic epoch, its proud misanthropy never denying

respect for ideas, for the higher vocation, for the dignity of man.

Peter Gay illustrates the theme of the Gospel of Work with Thomas

Manns fathers example extolling in his will the virtues of work.

These observations confirm Manns generational outlook. (27)

Zweig in his homage to Ludwig for his 50th birthday said that for

that whole generation, for all of us who began our lives before the

War in the old forms that had once been appropriate, the world

upheaval also signified an inner upheaval. He recognized that even

though they belonged to the Wilhelmine generation, WWI shook them up

and made them understand the teaching of events. (28)

Another example of this generation is Bruno Walter (1876-1962) the

notable conductor whose autobiography describes the spiritual

18
attitude of those times. Mann was 39 at the time of WWI, and Walter

38, and the war did not alter the basic outlook and habits of these

men. Neither one of them, of course, served in the war even though

the German draft extended to age 45. (29)

H. Stuart Hughes, the historian of the migration, places the German

intellectual of the Wilhelminian era in a peculiarly ambiguous

relationship to his own political and social milieu. He said that the

polarity between the attractions of Berlin and those of the southwest

was paralleled by a tension between political acceptance and

opposition. (30) They were too old to fight in WWI. However, some of

them like Ludwig Bendix (1877-1954), Reinhards father, served as a

soldier in the home guard continuing nonetheless his legal practice

and his writings. Men of this generation who were born before 1888

stood outside the 20th centurys zone of influence.

Gay in Weimar Culture says that Gropius (1883-1969) developed his

ideas during the Empire, the war gave them political direction, and

his ideas found open expression in the revolution.(31)

Some of the migrs may seem to belong chronologically to one

generation but their crucial experiences placed them in another. H.

Stuart Hughes gives the example of Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) saying

that he was eleven years younger that Cesare Borgese (1882-1952), but,

Mannheim, in terms of historical experience was a member of the same

generation than Borgese. Both had come to intellectual maturity

19
before WWI; both had their base point in the prewar sense of economic

security and social deference that the cultivated had enjoyed. Hughes

also contrasted the smaller age gap that separated Mannheim from

Erich Fromm, and assert that it marked a real psychological watershed.

(32) Born in 1900, Fromm belonged to the generation that went through

the war as adolescents and whose decisive intellectual encounters

were to occur in the tormented early years of the 1920s. (33)

Heinrich Mann brings up the images of his youth in Bismarckian

Germany [indicating that they] reflect not merely nostalgia, but

rather present an ideal period of individual development, a time

whose stability was inextricably linked to the policies of Bismarck:

he not only maintained peace from 1875-1890, but he strengthened it.

Thanks to the peace Bismarck was able to continue another twenty-five

years in spite of arrogance and ill will. Reflecting upon his youth,

Mann perceives in this enduring peace the basis for the continuity of

individual development: In order for a young person to develop in a

coherent fashion, to develop, to use an expression of the 19th century,

historically, he has to believe that the course of his life is

anchored in a logical scheme of things, which ceases if there is war.

Wars are the violent rupture in a life which had otherwise been

connected. (34) Perhaps an even sharper description of that era is

found in Stefan Zweigs autobiography (1881-1942). (35)

Another revealing case is that of Paul Tillich, the theologian and

philosopher born in 1886 who actually belongs to this generation.

20
However, he was 28 at the time of WWI and served the four years of

the war as a chaplain. It may be said that his war experience was

very intense and prolonged enough to leave him shaken and stricken,

but he was already formed as an individual and as a member of the

Wilhelminian generation. His personality was formed in the 1890s and

he is clearly a man of the 19th century. Tillich himself expounded

frequently on the idea of his existence being on a boundary, perhaps

he was also in a boundary as to pertaining to two generations the

Whilhelminian and also the war generation. "In a sermon delivered in

1955, Tillich confessed to a recognition that the refugees and the

tradition they represented constituted 'a generation of the end.' He

and his compatriots had lost, by virtue of their attachment to a

culture that bred mass destruction and death, the ability to survive

spiritually in the atmosphere of hope that he had identified as

uniquely American. ... He and his generation could only be 'symbols

of death,' participants in an ending." (36)

The notion that this generation had reached the end of its road at

the time of WWII was repeatedly communicated by Stefan Zweig to his

friends. In New York, when Zuckmayer told him that they should live

to be 90 or 100 to see decent times again, Zweig answered that "those

will never come again to us .. we shall be homeless ... What is the

sense of living on as one's own shadow? We are ghosts or memories ...

However the war may turn out a world is coming in which we don't

belong." (37)

21
This generation passed away in the forties, fifties and sixties, and

it made up about 20% of the entire IM (38). The oldest member of the

cohort would be Maeterlinck born in 1861 and the youngest

born in 1888. The median age is represented by those born in 1875

like Thomas Mann. Taking him as an example the formative years span

from 1892 (17 years old) and 1900 (25 years old).

War Generation (1889 to 1900)

A thorough description and analysis of this conspicuous European

generation was made by Robert Wohl in his definitive The Generation

of 1914 (1979). The members of this generation are those born between

1889 and 1900 whether or not they served in the war. (39) Some of

them reached influential positions before the war. Wohl says that to

understand this generation, chronological limits have to be abandoned,

and the zone of dates replaced by a magnetic field (experiential

field as a common frame of reference) at the center of which lies an

experience or a series of experiences. The war is undoubtedly the

defining experience. The distinction between the war generation and

the preceding Wilhelmine generation is given by "different structures

of sensibility, different conceptions about the relation between self

and culture that had developed during the First World War." (40)

They viewed themselves as a distinct generation whose youth coincided

with the opening of the twentieth century and their lives were then

bifurcated. The experiences of this generation were not only the

22
experiences during the war but also those acquired growing up and

formulating their first ideas in a world framed by two dates 1900 and

1914, their vital horizon. (41) It may be said that this generation

coalesced around the cultural atmosphere created by the decadence of

the old world, the world of their parents, the world of the 19th

century that reached its imperial pinnacle "between the 1850s and

1911 [when] the Europeans carved up into colonies almost the entire

underdeveloped world. According to this view Europe began cultural

disintegration by 1900; and reached its paroxistic culmination with

the war experience." (42)

The image devised by this generation before the war was a reversal

of the qualities that they disliked or feared in the generation of

their parents. They considered themselves as doers while saw their

fathers as thinkers; they sought assurance in a calm faith while

their elders floundered in moral relativism; and they felt strong and

vital while there parents had been weak and indecisive. (43) Laura

Fermi put this generation between 1890 and 1910.(44)

To this cohort belongs Karl Wittfogel, the sinologist, born in 1896,

a member of the German Youth movement before the war, and politically

active during the Weimar period. Others members are Leo Lowenthal,

the sociologist, born in 1900, Kurt Lewin, the psychologist, born in

1890, Hans Kohn, the historian, born in 1891, and Herbert Marcuse,

the philosopher, born in 1898, all of them served in WWI. Wohl says

that those who belonged to the war generation are the young who
23
went to war, or managed to avoid it, and afterwards found themselves

confronted with and spurred into action by the various forms of

debris that the war left behind. Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) and Karl

Mannheim (1893-1947) are also members of this age group.

Also called Front Generation, it is described as integrated by

those born between 1892-1897 (others said, those born between 1890-

1900). They are those who had borne WWIs brunt in the trenches. In

general, men born before 1888 stood outside the twentieth centurys

zone of influence. (45)

Zuckmayer in his autobiography lists the influences that affected his

generation, and also distinguishes between the generations of

volunteers who went to war in August 1914 from the next generation

one year and a half or two younger who went to war the next year or

so. He said that Remarque belonged to that generation and that they

did not share the excitement and the enthusiasm of the volunteer

generation. He also discusses the exhilaration felt by most of the

Germans in 1914.(46)

Another landmark experience for this generation and the next must

have been the influenza epidemic of 1918 which at the end of the

Great War inaugurated for many their formative period. It has been

said that this epidemic "affected the course of history and was a

terrifying presence at the end of [the war]. ... Children were

orphaned, families destroyed. Some who lived through it said it was

24
 so horrible that they would not even talk about it. Others tried to

put it behind them as another wartime nightmare, somehow conflating

it with the horrors of trench warfare and mustard gas. ... It swept

the globe in months, ending when the war did." (47)

An Austrian member of this generation is Joseph Roth (1894-1939) who

was 18 at the outset of the war. He wrote: "My strongest experience

was the war and the fall of my fatherland, the only one I ever had:

the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy." (48) The name of this generation with

the addition of the word "empire" has been used to define the

following generation. (49)

Weimar Generation (1901-1917)

They were those too young to fight in the First World War who came of

age during the tumultuous years caused by war and defeat maturing

during the post-war crisis and witnessing the Weimar instability and

the inflation. Historian George L. Mosse, himself a German refugee, in

a review of Henry Pachter's Weimar Etudes, analyzed and discussed the

intellectual assumptions and roots of the Weimar generation. Mosse

pertains to the younger generations those who were formed by the

triumph of fascism unlike Pachter whose formative years took place

during the Weimar period. So, Mosse said that "the Weimar generation

was essentially anti-historical and optimistic about man, while that

which grew to maturity in the 1930s was deeply conscious of historical

connections, crushed by the weight of history gone wrong."(50)

25
Kay Schiller says that Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905-1999) belonged to

the generation of Germans between 1900 and 1910, wich was marked by

its generally low chances on the oversubscribed German academic market

of the mid 1920s. (51) Most of the members of this generation have

already passed away. (52) It was a truly post-war generation. As Peter

Gay says, the Republic was born in defeat, lived in turmoil, and died

in disaster. (53) Mommsen said that the dominant generational

experience of this group was the collapse of the prewar bourgeois

social order, and also that, for this generation, war, revolution, and

inflation were traumatic experiences. Reulecke says that "many young

people from the generation born after 1901 (i.e. the cohort not sent

to the front, conscription extending only as far as the birth-year

1901) reacted with bitterness to the hardships they were suffering and

condensed their frustration into the phrase 'the war is our parents.'"

One of the main representatives of this generation is Hannah Arendt

born in 1906. Whitfield says that "Arendt was supremely a product of

Weimar culture."(54)

It includes those born between 1901 and 1917. In this group we find T.

Adorno and B. Bettelheim both born in 1903. It is symptomatic that

during the 1960s Bettelheim and Arendt both participated in the

Eichmann controversy.(55). Additionally, in his Foreword to Krohns

book, Vidich says that, in the 1960s, Arendt collated and synthesized

the work done by the original generation in the New School. He

implicitly defined the original generation as that composed by the

26
two categories here designated as Wilhelmine and the War generation

(56). It was also called War Youth Generation (born between 1900

and 1910, those who were too young to be called to serve in WWI but

old enough to respond consciously to those events. Perhaps the Weimar

generation may be subdivided in two sub-generations, one covering

those born between 1900-1910 and one covering 1910-1920, pushing then

the younger generation three years ahead. Franz Neumann born in 1900

did military service at the end of WWI receiving his first

ideological education in the Soldiers councils which sprang up in

the wake of the armistice of 1918. Then he became a labor lawyer (57).

Claudia Althaus, elaborating on the trajectory of Arendts thought,

characterizes her generation as that of the inter-war Prussian Jews,

and indicated that the formative experience that informs Arendts

work bound the consciousness of this generation- is that of a break

in tradition expressed by the sense of wordlessness and wandering

imposed on Jews; the horror of the Holocaust; and the loss of any

reliability of either tradition or metaphysics as standards of

judgment (58).

Wohl talks about the class of 1902, as a transitional generation,

followed in turn by those born after 1910, who are perceived to be

essentially different from that transitional generation. This split

would also recognize a distinction within the Weimar generation.

Moreover, even Laqueur says that there was a tremendous difference

between even the youngest of the older refugees, say those born
27
around 1910 and those ten years younger. "The older generation [and I

think he includes here the Wilhelmine, the War, and the Weimar

generations] suffered because America was not Europe, but the younger

refugees were less deeply rooted in Europe and more adaptable. (59).

A witness of the Weimar years in his autobiographical recollections

indicates that "Hitler appealed to the two great experiences that had

marked the younger generation": the "great war game" of 1914-18 and

the "triumphal anarchic looting" of the 1923 inflation. In this twin

appeal laid, in essence, the Nazis' foreign and domestic policies.

(60) Hitler may very well considered the Weimar generation as "his

younger generation", because he himself was a member of the war

generation, having been born in 1889 he belonged to the early

veterans of the war generation.

Younger generation

It is called generation exodus by Lacqueur, and includes those who

emigrated, and got their training in America. They were born between

1917 and 1928 and did not embraced the nationwide mobilization of

1933 because mainly they belonged to the victimized group (Jews) or,

if they didn't, because they abhorred of the nature of the new regime

(61).

L. Fermi says that the youngest among those who left Europe in 1940

or 1941 were born close to the opening of the twenties. Herbert

Strauss was born in 1918, and Walter Laqueur in 1921. Reinhard Bendix
28
(1916-1991) distinguishes between the older and the younger

generation including in the former the Wilhelmine, the War, and the

Weimar generations. The significance he assigns to the distinction is

that the older generation never fully immigrated, in other words,

they did not assimilated or acculturated. In Bendixs autobiography

From Berlin to Berkeley, it can be found the drama of his fathers

(Ludwig, 1877-1954) naivet, hardheadness, suffering and

fastidiousness concerning his emigration. Even though Bendix was born

in 1916, as a result of his own self-conscious immigrating identity,

he may be included within the younger category (62).

All the members of the intellectual migration had two strains in

their personality, one was the cultural imprint of their foreign

birth and the other, as part of the latter, was the generational

imprint of his or her European time. It goes without saying that the

former which is not the base of this classification is found in all

the cohorts while the latter adds a slighter strain for the younger

generations. ( )

In his Foreword to Krohns book, Vidich describes this generation as

the youthful generation of migrs such as Lewis Coser (1913-2003)

and Herbert Gans (1927- ) who arrived in the United States in the

late thirties or immediately after the war tended with few exceptions

to cut themselves off from their German origins and sought to

Americanize themselves. Apart from a few young migrs such as Werner

Marx (1910-1994), Peter Berger (1929- ), Brigitte Berger , Beate

29
Salz, and Thomas Luckmann (1927- ) who, by studying at the Graduate

Faculty immediately after the war, were exposed to the older

tradition of thought, the new generation of German students

confronted a fractured intellectual culture. For them, studying

American sources was difficult to resist. (64)

Fritz Stern (1926- ) an historian, identifies himself as belonging

to the postwar generation.(65) Laqueur says that even though he

treated this younger generation as a whole, it is necessary to trace

a fundamental dividing line between those born between 1914 and 1922,

and those born between 1923 and 1928. The reason for this is that the

latter came to America to incorporate themselves to the education

system which was the law of the land unlike the former that came to

work and help their families.(66) Some of the refugees felt that

clinging to the German language was an existential necessity because

it preserved their identity; however, the great majority of the

refugees did not share this attitude. For them the German language

was neither home nor emotional pillar.(67)

Laqueur says that he belongs to the last generation of Jews with

conscious memories of growing up in Weimar Germany and under the

Nazis. And he adds that a great many of the generation before them

have put their recollections on paper, but very few of his generation

had done so. And he believes that the reason for that discrepancy is

obvious: his generation did not root deeply in their country of

origin, as they grew they tended to look forward rather than backward.
30
Their interest in Germany faded, they used their native language

infrequently, they became absorbed in the society and culture of

their new homes (68).

One of the very young members of this group is Andre Previn born in

1929 who came to America and got established in L.A. in 1938. He came

as an eleven-year-old youngster. His father was a German lawyer who

did not know English and was unable to take the California bar.

Another is Mike Nichols born in 1931. We should also mention Werner

Gundersheimer born in 1937.

My aim in proposing this classification is to make more intelligible

and therefore easier the handling of the large mass of emigres. We

know that most of them were Jews, and came from Germany and Austria.

We will also try to classify them by profession or scholarly

specialty, however, the generational criteria seems to us to be no

only essential but also very telling at the time of evaluating their

views of America.

Occupational Approach

The percentage of intellectual professional and artists within the

intellectual migration has been calculated in about 8.5% of the total

number of migrs clever enough, or lucky enough to have reached

America during the 1930s and early 1940s. The professional pursuits,

intellectual endeavors, and/or artistic merits of these people were

31
as diverse as their experiences. The following is an alphabetical

non-exhaustive listing of their occupations with references to

literary works focused on that specific occupation. These references

are given as bibliographical examples.

Agriculturalists

Rhonda F. Levine, Class, Networks, and Identity. Replanting

Jewish Lives from Nazi Germany to Rural New York, Lanham, Maryland:

Rowman & Littlefield,

2001

Architects

Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to our House, New York: Bantam Books,

1981.

Peter Hahn, "Bauhaus in Exile," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of

European Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997,

pgs. 210-223

Franz Schulze, "The Bauhaus Architects and the Rise of Modernism

in the United States," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists

from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 224-234

Kathleen James, "Changing the Agenda: from German Bauhaus

modernism to U.S. internationalism," (Van der Rohe, Gropius, and

Breuer) Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists from Hitler,

Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 235-252

32
Art historians

Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Phoenix: University

of Chicago Press, 1982

Karen Michels, "Transfer and Transformation: the German periodo

in American art history," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European

Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs.

304-316

Kevin Parker, "Art history and exile: Richard Krautheimer and

Erwin Panofsky," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists from

Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 317-325

Artists

Stephanie Barron & Sabine Eckmenn, ed., Los Angeles County Museum

of Art, Exile & Emigres: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler,

1997

Booksellers

Bernard M. Rosenthal, The Gentle Invasion: Continental migr

Booksellers of the Thirties and Forties and their Impact on the

Antiquarian Book Trade in the United States, Conference given by

Bernard M. Rosenthal at the Columbia University, School of Library

Science, Rate Book School, 1986.

Chemists

Ute Deichmann, "The Expulsion of Jewish Chemists & Biochemists

33
from Academia In Nazi Germany", Perspectives on Science, 7.1 (1999)

1-86.

Cinematographers

Gene D. Phillips, Exiles in Hollywood: major European film

directors in America, Danvers, Mass. Associated University Presses,

1998

John Baxter, The Hollywood Exiles

David Wallace, Exiles in Hollywood

Classicists

William M. Calder, III, "The Refugee Classical Scholars in the

USA: An Evaluation of their Contribution," Illinois Classical Studies,

vol. 17.1 (Spring 1992): 153-173.

Communication Researchers

Stefanie Averbeck, The Post-1933 Emigration of Communication

Researchers from Germany, European Journal of Communication, vol. 16

(4): 451-475.

Comparative Politics

Gerhard Loewenberg, The Influence of European migr Scholars on

Comparative Politics, 1925-1965, American Political Science

Review, vol. 100, No. 4 (November 2006).597-604.

34
Composers

Michael H. Kater, "Composers of the Nazi Era," N.Y.: Oxford UP

2000.

Economists

Keith Tribe, "German migr Economists and the

Internationalisation of Economics," The Economic Journal, 111

(November 2001): 740-746.

F. M. Scherer, The Emigration of German-Speaking Economists

after 1933, Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 38, No. 3 (Sept

2000), 614-626.

Engineers

D.S. Halacy, Jr., Father of Supersonic Flight. Theodor von Karman,

N.Y.: Messnar, 1965.

Film Producers

Jan-Christopher Horak, "German Exile Cinema, 1933-1950," Film

History, 8 (4) 1996, 373-389.

Germanists

Mark M. Anderson, "The Silent Generation? Jewish Refugee Students,

Germanistik,and Columbia University," The Germanic Review, Win

2003, 78, No. 1, pg. 20-38

Guy Stern, "The Way we were: Reminiscences of Columbia's German

35
Department," The Germanic Review, Win 2003, 78, No. 1, pg. 13-19

Jeffrey M. Peck, "Postcript: dedication to an influential

generation of Germanists: the transfer of knowledge from German to

Jews in American German Studies," German Politics and Society, 23.1

(Spring 2005) pg. 189

Historians

Hartmut Lehmann and James J. Sheehan, An Interrupted Past.

German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933,

GHI, Cambridge UP, 1991

Catherine Epstein, A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-Speaking

Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933, German Historical

Institute: Cambridge UP 1993

Journalists

Michael Groth, "The Road to New York: The Emigration of Berlin

Journalists, 1933-1945 (Germany, United States)," Diss. Univ. of Iowa,

1984, AAT8407746.

Lawyers (include hear comments by Davies and Kent on the

americanization of lawyers.

Ugo Mattei, Review of The Reception of Continental Ideas in the

Common Law World, 1820-1920 by Mathias Reimann, and Der Einfluss

deutscher Emigranten auf die Rechtsentwicklung in den USA und in

36
 Deutschland by Marcus Lutter, Ernst C. Stiefel, and Michael H.

Hoeflich; The American Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 42, No. 1,

(Winter, 1994), pp. 195-218.

John H. Langbein, The Influence of Comparative Procedure in the

U.S., The American Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 43, No. 4

(Autumm 1995): 545-554.

Librarians

Hildegard Muller, "German Librarians in Exile in Turkey, 1933-

1945," Libraries and Culture, vol. 33, No. 3, Summer 1998, 294-305.

Mathematicians

Nathan Reingold, (Refugee Mathematicians in the United States of

America, 1933-1941: Reception and Reaction,( Annals of Science, 38

(1981): 313-338.

Musicians

Musical World (performing arts)

Joseph Horowitz, Artists in Exile, New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ed., Driven into Paradise.

The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States, U. of

Chicago P., 1999

37
Conductors

Paul Jackson, "Maestros of the Storm. How European Conductors

Found Refuge at the Met," Opera News, July 1995, 36.

Painters

Barbara Copeland Buenger, "Antifascism or Autonomous Art? Max

Beckmann, Wassily Kandisnsky, John Heartfield, and Kurt Schwitters,"

Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists from Hitler, Los

Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 57-85

Keith Holz, "Antifascism or Autonomous Art? Oskar Kokoschka,"

Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists from Hitler, Los

Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 86-95

Photographers

Deborah Irmas, "Experiencing the New World: Andreas Feininger,

Andre Kertesz," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European Artists from

Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997, pgs. 195-209

Psiquiatrists

Sanford Gifford, "Emigre Analysts in Boston, 1930-1940," Int

Forum Psychoanalisis 12:164-172 (2003).

Physicians

Alfred E. Cohn, "Exiled Physicians in the United States", The

38
American Scholar, Summ 1943, 352.

Dermatologists

S. Eppinger, et al., The Emigration of Germanys Jewish

Dermatologists in the Period of National Socialism,"Journal of the

European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (2003)17, 525-530.

Publishers and editors

Leon Sokoloff, "Refugees from Nazism and he biomedical publishing

industry," Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and

Biomedical Sciences, 33 (2002)315-324.

Sculptors

Matthew Affron, "Construing a New Jewish Identity. Jacques

Lipchitz in New York,1941-45," Exiles+Emigres. The Flight of European

Artists from Hitler, Los Angeles Public Museum of Art, 1997pgs. 120-

125.

Sinologists

Martin Kern, The Emigration of German Sinologists 1933-1945:

Notes on the History and Historiography of Chinese Studies, The

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 10/1/1998.

Social Scientists

Irving Louis Horowitz, "Between the Charybdis of Capitalism and

39
 he Scylla of Communism: The Emigration of German Social Scientists,

1933-1945," 11 Social Science History No. 2 (Summer 1987), 113-138.

Social Activists

Edith Simon Coliver, The Life of a Social Activist: Germany, San

Francisco, the Philippines, and Twain, Berkeley: University of California,
2004.
[1922-2001] [She was born in Karlsruhe, Germany and died in San Francisco, CA.
Emigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and became a U.S. citizen in 1944. There is no
drama in her emigration because his father was a banker of means and the
whole family left Germany without mayor problems. Expend sometime in England
before coming to the U.S. directly to San Francisco where her mother had
family. Her dad had family in New York. She described in some detail her
Jewish family and their Jewish practices including the animosities between
the Eastern Jews and the Western German Jews. She also spent some time
helping at the Nuremberg trials in 1946]. [This memoir can be read
online].[She wrote a number of books, fiction and non-fiction. In her The
Anglo-Saxon Manner: the English Contribution to Civilization, London: Cassell,
1972, on pag. 8, she describes human bias and its unavoidable presence
everywhere using the expression a flesh and blood bundle of sentiments to
describe a computer programmer programming a dispassionate computer.]

Social Workers

Carel Sternberg, IRC Obituary, Jan 17, 2003

Writers

Dagmar C.G. Lorenz, "Jewish Women Authors and the Exile

Experience: Claire Goll, Veza Canetti, Else Lasker-Schuler, Nelly

Sachs, Cordelia Edvardson," German Life and Letters 51:2, April 1998.

Egbert Krispyn, Anti-Nazi Writers in Exile, Athens: U. of Georgia

P., 1978.

Wolfgang Elfe, James Hardin, and Gunther Holst, ed., The Fortunes

of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception,

40
 Columbia: U. of South Carolina P., 1992.

National Approach

This approach seems to lose significance because most of the refugees

were from Germany and those from Austria may even be included in the

majority group because of the similarity of cultural influences.

However, distinctions should be made due to the intermittent nature

of the migration and the country conditions overtime from 1933 to

1945. It is also true that the overwhelming majority of the migrants

got their basic imprint from the Central European culture.

Nonetheless, distinctions should be made for each nationality, the

Spaniards, the French, the Italians, the Polish, the Russians, the

Hungarians, the Bulgarians, the Romanians, the Checks, the Hollanders,

the Belgium, the Finns, the Norwegians, and the Danes. Laura Fermi,

one of the earliest students of the migration, dedicated chapter five

of her book to analyze the refugees national origins. Some book-

length studies are dedicated to specific nationalities.

Once you go to each nationality it is not just the figure of the

individual exile that counts, on the contrary your are opening a new

world and end up deepening your research into the specific countrys

recent history, its relationship with the U.S., etc.

FRANCE

The characteristics of the French migration are: (1)

41
relatively few number of refugees compared with other

nationalities; (2) most of the refugees returned to France at

the end of the war; and (3) they were not enemy aliens but

citizens of an allied country.

Edouard Roditi (1910-1992) was a surrealist author and poet. He

published the first Surrealist manifesto in English, The new

reality, in the Oxford outlook (1929). While continuing his

literary interests, he worked for the U.S. government during

World War II for the

Office of War Information and also served as an interpreter for

the State Department during the San Francisco conference which

established

the United Nations. His published books include Poems for F

(1934), Oscar Wilde: a critical study (1947), Dialogues on art

(1960), De

l'homosexualit (1962), In a lost world (1978), and Thrice

chosen (1981). Roditi also held teaching positions at various

colleges and

universities. The collection consists of material related to

Roditi's life and career. Includes correspondence, original and

photocopied

manuscripts by Roditi and others, books, periodicals and other

printed items by or about Roditi, documents, awards,

42
photographs,

memorabilia, and letters regarding family history and

biographical information, and books from his library, including

many inscribed by artists

and writers. was an American poet, short-story writer and

translator. He was born in Paris and subsequently studied in

France, England, Germany and the USA. He published several

volumes of poetry, short stories, and art criticism. He was

also well-regarded as a translator, and translated into English

original works from French, German, Spanish, Danish and Turkish.

In 1961, Roditi translated Yashar Kemal's epic novel Ince Memed

(1955) under the English title Memed, My Hawk. This book was

instrumental in introducing the famed Turkish writer to the

English-speaking world. Memed, My Hawk is still in print.

In addition to his poetry and translations, Roditi is perhaps

best remembered for the numerous interviews he conducted with

modernist artists, including Marc Chagall, Joan Mir, Oskar

Kokoschka Philippe Derome and Hannah Hch. Several of these

have been assembled in the collection Dialogues on Art.

Colin W Nettelbeck, Forever French, New York: Berg, 1991.

43
 Jeffrey Mehlman, migr New York, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,

2000

Patrick Wilcken, Claude Levi-Strauss. The Poet in the Laboratory,

New York: Penguin Press, 2010. [Chapter 4: Exile, pg. 115].

Richard Preston Unsworth, A French Connection, in Peter I. Rose

ed., The Dispossessed, Amherst: U. of Massachusetts P., 2005, pg. 157.

Christopher Benfey & Karen Remmler, ed., Artists, Intellectualas,

and World War II. The Pontigny Encounters at Mount Holyoke College,

1942-1944, Boston: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2006.

ITALY

Charles Killinger, Fighting Fascism from the Valley: Italian

Intellectuals in the United States, in Peter I. Rose ed., The

Dispossessed, Amherst: U. of Massachusetts P., 2005, pg. 133.

Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, Chicago: U. of Chicago P.,

1968, pg. 33-34.

Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Volume 15, Issue 5, 2010

Special Issue: Mussolini's Gifts. Exiles from Fascist Italy Articles

A forgotten generation: Italian cultural migration to the Americas

(193045) Renato Camurri, pages 639-643

Max Ascoli and Italian intellectuals in exile in the United States

before the Second World War, Renato Camurri pages 644-656

Gaetano Salvemini: antifascism in thought and action Charles Killinger,

pages 657-677

Sforza in America: the dilemmas of exile politics, 194045 James

44
Edward Miller, pages 678-692

The antifascist climate and the Italian intellectual exile in interwar

Argentina Ricardo Pasolini, pages 693-714

HUNGARY

Kati Marton, The Great Escape, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006

Tibor Frank, Double Exile: Migrations of Jewish-Hungarian

Professionals through Germany, Bern: Peter Lang, 2009.

Tibor Frank, Budapest-Berlin-New York Stepmigration from Hungary

to the United States, 1919-1945, pgs. 197 to 221 at Richard Bodek et

al, ed., The Fruits of Exile - Central European Intellectual

Immigration to America in the Age of Fascism, Columbia: Univ of South

Carolina Press, 2010.

SPAIN

Roberta Johnson, Spanish Emigres of 1939 as Professors and

Scholars in the U.S., Hispania, v. 80, No. 2 (May 1997): 265-267

Samuel G. Armistead, Americo Castro in the United States (1937-

1969), Hispania, v. 80, No. 2 (May 1997)L 271-274.

Germany

Austria

Poland

Czechoslovakia
45
Soviet Russia

Greece

Yugoeslavia

Netherlands

Romania

Norway

Belgium

Lithuania

Finland

Denmark

Latvia

Bulgaria

Estonia

Others

ENDNOTES

1. Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants. The Intellectual Migration

from Europe 1930-41, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968.

Donald Fleming & Bernard Bailyn, ed., The Intellectual Migration,

Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1969. For a recent use of the

label intellectual migration, see Joseph Horowitz, Artists in

Exile, New York: Harper, 2008, pgs. xvi, 1, 9.

It has never been recognized as a single, cohesive wave. (unlike

the or , it appears never to have been identified by any

46
 historian, of immigration, intellectual or otherwise, for what it

was. For specialist and general writers alike, the tremendous

struggles of that winter of have been a series of separate

engagements, only tenuously linked. They have failed to see that

not only was the most important of the , but that it was the

key of the entire

2. The irrelevancy of the migrs in America is symbolically

revealed in this anecdote: During the late 1950s Mrs. Arnold
Schoenberg, the widow of the composer, used to entertain visitors on
the front lawn of their home on Rockingham, just off Sunset, in the
Brentwood section of West Los Angeles. Every half hour or so, a huge
tour bus would wheel round, all of its passengers craning their necks
the other way, gazing out across the street. The metallic voice of the
tour guide would squawk, And on the left you can see the house where
Shirley Temple lived in the days when she was filming And then
theyd be gone. Mrs. Schoenberg would smile indulgently, whimsy (or so
I inferred at the time) masking pain. Lawrence Weschler, Paradise:
the Southern California idyll of Hitlers Cultural Exiles, pg. 341, in
Stephanie Barron ed., Exiles + migrs, Los Angeles: LCMA, 1997. As to
the timing of the migration, see, Fermi, Illustrious, 93-95
(Distribution in Time). McClay, an acute observer of the migration,
believed (in 1994) that the notion of the intellectual migration as a
singular episode in American intellectual history with its own
character, its own specific gravity, its own physiognomy, its own
internal consistency and unity, has not quite precipitated. Wilfred M.
McClay, Historical Research on the Refugee Intellectuals: Problemas
and Prospects, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society,
vol. 7, No. 3, pg. 513, 1994. Strictly speaking, Diggins is an
exception, see, John Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades. America in
War & in Peace. 1941-1960, NY: Norton, 1988 [Ch. 7: High Culture: the

47
life of the mind in a Placid Age. The Refugee Intellectual and the
Issue of Modernism, pag. 220/231].

3. The Bildung concept is not exclusively a German-Jewish value but

is historically linked to the urban/urbane cosmopolitan high

culture which developed among post-Emancipation Central European

Jewry. Its principal nexus was in the remarkable cultural axis

anchored in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest. The United States

certainly had greater impact on us than we had on it. And in various

ways it altered not only our perceptions of ourselves as Germans, but

also as Jews. Thus clearly our German-Jewisness was transformed.

Manfred Jonas, A German-Jewish Legacy, in Abraham J. Peck, ed., The

German-Jewish Legacy in America 1938-1988 From Bildung to the Bill of

Rights, Wayne State UP, Detroit 1989, pg. 54.

4. The range of their accomplishments is staggering. From the arts

to the social and natural sciences, from the chairs we sit on to the

movies we watch, to the nuclear weapons that trouble our nights

results of their work are all around us. Anthony Heilbut, Exiled in

Paradise, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997, see pg. xi. Two

examples to back up Heilbuts claim: Ralph Baer (video games), and

Victor Gruen (shopping malls). As to the elitism of this

designation, George M. Frederickson said in a somewhat similar

context that [his book The Inner Civil War] has survived, [he] would

think, because even the most zealous proponents of the New Social

48
History would be hard put to deny that there is some value in knowing

about elites, if only because their thought and behavior has

important consequences for the lives of plain folk. If social history

is regarded as the history of social classes or status groups, [his

book] has implication for this field of study. It focuses on what in

sociological terminology might be described as an upper=class

intelligentsia and describes how it was transformed, partly as the

result of its war experience, George M. Frederickson, The Inner

Civil War, pg. vii.

5. Sidney Rosenfeld, "German Exiles Literature after 1945: The

Younger Generation," in John M. Spalek et al., Exile: The Writer's

Experience, Chapel Hill: Univ. of N.C. Press, 1982, 333.

6. Maurice R. Davie, Refugees in America, New York: Harper, 1947;

and Donald P. Kent, The Refugee Intellectual, New York: Columbia Univ.

Press, 1953.

7. Fernand Braudel, On History, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,

1980, 64-82; Roberto Franziosi, "A Sociologist Meets History:

Critical Reflections upon Practice," Journal of Historical Sociology,

1996, vol. 9, No. 3, 354-392.

8. William Petersen, "A General Typology of Migration," American

Sociological Review, vol. 23, Issue 3 (Jun. 1958): 256-266.

9. Hans Jaeger, "Generations in History: Reflections on a

49
Controversial Concept," History and Theory, vol. 24, Issue 3 (Oct.

1985): 273-292 [288]. The use of the generation concept is free from

ambiguity when the migration is restricted to a brief period. See,

David I. Kertzer, "Generation as a Sociological Problem," Annual

Review of Sociology, vol. 9 (1983) 125-149, 141.

10. Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, New York:

Oxford Univ. Press, 1952, 276-322; William Strauss & Neil Howe,

Generations, New York: W. Morrow, 1991, 61; Marc Bloch, The

Historian's Craft, New York: Vintage, 1953, 185-187; Michael Corsten,

"The Time of Generations," Time & Society, 1999, vol. 8 (2): 249-272;

Malcolm Cowley, And I worked at the Writer's Trade, New York: Viking

Press, 1963. William Strauss & Neil Howe, Generations, New York: W.

Morrow, 1991, pag. 61. Jean M. Twenge, Generation Me, New York: Free

Press, 2006 [The society that molds you when you are young stays

with you the rest of your life, pg. 2].

11. John Bowlby, Charles Darwin A New Life, New York: Norton, 1990,

pg. 430 [according to Darwin, the first three years of a childs life

were the most subject to incubative impressions. The brain at that

period is entirely formed it is a virgin brain adapted to receive

impressions, and although unable to formulate or memorize these, they

none the less remain and can affect the whole future life of the

child recipient.]

12. Robert Boyers, ed., The Legacy of the German Refugee

50
Intellectuals, New York: Shocken Books, 1972 (1969). Boyers tried to

clarify the relationship between the emigre generation that left

Germany in the thirties and the broader culture of the West that

nurtured, appropriated, or rejected them. He also hoped that the

breath of another age, another generation, do more than simple touch

us, that it move us and quicken us, and make us better men.

13. Susan Eckestein & Lorena Barberia, "Grounding Immigrant

Generations in History," International Migration Review, 36 (3) Fall

2002, 799; Anthony Esler, "Review Essay: Social Generations and

Political Power," Journal of Social History, 17 (4) Summer 1984, 695-

704; Mary Gluck, "Toward a Historical Definition of Modernism: George

Lukacs and the Avant-Garde," Journal of Modern History, vol. 58 (4)

Dec 1986, 845-882.

14. John D. Hazlett, "Generational Theory and Collective

Autobiography," American Literary History, vol. 4, issue 1 (Spring

1992): 77-96.

15. Jane Pilcher, "Mannheim's Sociology of Generations: An

Undervalued Legacy," The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 45, issue

3 (Sept. 1994):481-495.

16. Davie, 39.

17. Joseph Wechsberg, Homecoming, New York: Knopf, 1946, 26.

51
18. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914, Cambridge: Harvard Univ.

Press, 1979.

19. German Army Handbook, April 1918, Arms and Armor Press, London,

1977.

20. Carl Zuckmayer, A Part of Myself, New York: Harcourt, Brace,

Jovanovich, 1966. For the distinctions within the war generation, see

pg. 154. For the non-belic part of the war generation's formative

experience, see pg. 127-128.

21. Fermi, Illustrious, 365; Davie, Refugees, 204; Laqueur,

Generations, xi-xv.

22. Detlev J.K. Peukert, The Weimar Republic, New York: Hill and Wang,

1989, pg. 14.

23. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat, New York: Henry

Holt, 2003, pg. 194.

24. Wohl, idem. 68, 80; and Zuckmayer, supra, 16.

25. Zuckmayer, supra 16.

26. See, Fermi, supra, 20.

27. See, Jaeger, supra, 6.

28. Peter Gay, Schnitzlers Century. The Making of Middle-Class

52
Culture, 1815-1914, N.Y.: Norton, 2002, pg. 194, ch. 7 theme The

Problematic Gospel of Work.

29. Zweig, Stefan, Ludwig at Fifty, The Living Age, Ap. 1931, 340.

30. On Thomas Mann pertaining to the Wilhelmian generation, see his

praise of the Wilhelmian societys achievements bis a bis the British

and French systems in his Gedanken im Kriege (1914). Georg Lukacs

also thought Mann to be the ultimate bourgeois writer.

30. H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society, N.Y. 1958, 49).

31. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, pg. 9. Gropius' war experience: he is

another veteran conscripted for the war at age 31 who was fully

formed but were deeply influence by the war experience, like Tillich.

32. See, Stuart Hughes (Consciousness, 337/338) distinction between

the generation of those born in the 1870s and of those born in 1880s.

The former reached maturity in the 1890s and the crucial event for

them was of course the WWI experience BHSH calls them the generation

of 1905.

33. H. Stuart Hughes, Sea Change, 90.

34. Heinrich Mann, Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt (1945) Berlin:

Classen, 1974) cited in (Richard D. Critchfield, When Lucifer Cometh.

The Autobiographical Discourse of Writers and Intellectuals Exiled

During the Third Reich, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1994; pgs. 45-46).

53
35. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday,

36. Cited by Karen J. Greenberg, "The Refugee Scholar in America:

The Case of Paul Tillich," in Mitchell G. Ash and Alfons Sollner, ed.

Forced Migration and Scientific Change, Washington D.C. Cambridge

Univ. Press, 1996, pg. 273, 288.)

37. Donald Prater, European of Yesterday, Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1972, 300.

38. For Kent it was 19% as a gross percentage, and for Davie

reached 20.7%.

39. If the boundaries of the war generation are to be those

determined by spending the formative years during the Great War, and

being the German draft ages between 17 and 45, then, all those who

were 17 on 1914 (born in 1897), those who were 25 on 1914 (born in

1889). However this latter limit must be extended to 1900 because a

german born in 1900 reached 17 the year before the end of the war and

he could have been drafted. Then, those born in between 1889 and 1900,

experienced the war during their formative years. It is irrelevant

whether they served in the army or not, or whether they experienced

the war in the front or on safer duties, because the war affected

everybody whatever there activites or location.

40. Mary Gluck, "Toward a Historical Definition of Modernism: Georg

Lukacs and the Avant-Garde," The Journal of Modern History, vol. 58,

54
issue 4 (Dec. 1986), 845-882.

41. See Wohl, pag. 210.

42. Robert O. Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century, New York,

Harcort, 1975, pg. 6.

43. Wohl, 215.

44. Laura Fermi, supra, footnote 1, pg. 36. She does not contemplate

the generation concept, instead she said that by the end of the war

all those born in between 1890 and 1910 felt its impact.

45. See Wohl, Generation of 1914, 65, 210.

46. Zuckmayer, 137, 154. For a distinction between those who served

in WWI but do not belong to the War generation and those who served

and were included in this group, see, E.M.Remarque, All Quiet in the

Western Front, pg. 174, reference taken from Koonz, Nazi Conscience,

pg. 290, n. 9.

47. Gina Kolata, Flu The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of

1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused it, New York: Farrar,

Straus and Giroux, 1999.

48. Curt Sanger, "The Experience of Exile in Joseph Roth's Novels,"

in John M. Spalek et al., ed., Exile: The Writer's Experience, Chapel

Hill: Univ. of N.C., 1982, pg. 259.

55
49. I think the terminology used by Norpoth is equivocal because he

eliminated the war generation. See, Helmut Norpoth, "The Making of a

More Partisan Electorate in West Germany," British Journal of

Political Science, vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan. 1984), pp. 53-71, 62. The

author indicates that his definition of "generations" follows a

scheme commonly used in studies of German politics citing Baker,

Dalton & Hildebrandt ("Germany Transformed").

50. George L. Mosse, "Henry Pachter and Weimar," Salmagundi, 60

(Spring-Summer 1983): 170-175, 173. See also, David Kettler and

Gerhard Lauer, ed., Exile, Science, and Bildung. The Contested

Legacies of German migr Intellectuals, New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2005, pg. 6 (the individuals chosen for study here are members, of

what may be called the Weimar Generation, whose formative

experiences came after World War I.)

51. Kay Schiller, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Ernst Cassirer, and the

Humanistic Turn in the American Emigration, David Kettler et al.

ed., Exile, Science, and Bildung. The Contested Legacies of German

migr Intellectuals, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pg. 128.

52. Extreme examples of the span of their passing are Hannah Arendt

born in 1906 who died in 1975; and Peter Drucker born in

who passed away in 2005.

53. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, pg. 2.

56
54. Stephen J. Withfield, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) Women in America,

NY: Routledge, 1997.

55. Nina Sutton, Bettelheim: a life and a Legacy, NY: Harper, 1996,

pgs. 347-48.

56. Claus-Dieter Krohn, Intellectuals in Exile, Amherst: U. of Mass.

P., 1993, pg.xi.

57. H. Stuart Hughes, The Sea Change, NY: Harper, 1975, pg. 102.

58. Dean Hammer, Hannah Arendt in Germany, Bulletin of the German

Historical Institute London, vol. XXIV; No. 2, Nov. 2002, pg. 40.

59. Walter Laqueur, Generation Exodus, Hanover: Brandeis UP, 2001,

pgs. 158, 289. See also Koonz, Nazi Conscience, 106 and 302, n. 103

on the characterization of the members of this generation who

followed the Nazi lead.

60. See review of Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner,

Farrar, Straus & Giroux by Daniel Johnson, "History of a German,"

Commentary, 09/01/2002.

61. Koonz, Nazi Conscience, 68; Laqueur, Generation Exodus, xi.

62. Reinhard Bendix, From Berlin to Berkeley. German-Jewish

Identities, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1986.

63. Laqueur, Generation, 9

57
64. Krohn, Intellectuals, 213, note 2.

65. Fritz Stern, A German History in America, 1884-1984, AHR (1984):

131, 132.

66. Generation Exodus, 140.

67. I think here Laqueur refers to the younger generation, because

within the undifferentiated mass of refugees, perhaps the majority

share the contrary attitude. Generation Exodus, 290.

68. Laqueur, Thursdays Child has far to go. A Memoir of the

Journeying Years, 1992.

Author: Jorge M. Robert (legalusa.jorge@gmail.com)

Argentine-American attorney practicing Immigration Law in the state

of Florida since 1997. Amateur historian since 1969. Previous

publication: James Monroe and the Three-To-Five Clause of the

Northwest Ordinance, The Early American Review, vol. Summer/Fall

2001.

58