11 - German Émigré Historians in America: The Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies

Summary

During the Christmas holidays of 1960, I returned to my home in Brooklyn from Brown University, where I had just begun my graduate training in German history with Klaus Epstein. It happened that the American Historical Association's annual convention was being held in New York that year, and, as a fledgling historian, I decided to take the subway to Manhattan to get a better sense of the profession that I hoped to enter. I was especially interested because my thesis director was serving on a panel at the conference, and I wanted to see him in action. The main paper at the session concerned German academia in the 1920s and its role in the demise of the Weimar republic. Fritz Ringer, a young Harvard historian, delivered a stinging indictment of the politics of German scholars; this address later appeared in book form as The Decline of the German Mandarins. Epstein was critical of Ringer's conclusions, but what engraved that session deeply in my memory was the participation of the audience during the discussion. One after another, scholars with thick German accents arose to attack Ringer for his condemnation of their own Doktorvater or an Ordinarius whom they had known. Ringer had not, after all, attended lectures in the twenties or conversed with these Ordinarien during their Sprechstunden. Pandemonium ensued as arguments arose among shouting members of the audience, with each other and with members of the panel.