15 - Refugee Historians and the German Historical Profession between 1950 and 1970

Summary

In Munich, on September 14, 1949, nearly two hundred German historians from east and west met for the first time since World War II to discuss officially the state of German historical scholarship. All participants were delighted to hear the keynote speaker at the meeting. He was Hans Rothfels, a converted Jew and one of the leading historians of Weimar Germany, who had not left Germany until 1939. He had returned for the first time in 1949 and enjoyed a very successful semester at the university in Göttingen, and now he was delivering a lecture entitled “Bismarck and the Nineteenth Century.” His prominence on the program seemed to represent some compensation, in the eyes of his fellow historians and in his own, for the man who had last addressed the profession on the topic “Bismarck and the East” in 1932, when German historians had met in Göttingen for the last time before the Nazi seizure of power. Both times, Rothfels gave a very sympathetic evaluation of Bismarck's policy. Most importantly, in 1949 he denied all connection between Bismarck and the Third Reich; in his view, Bismarck's Second Empire stood in sharp contrast and opposition to all that the Third Reich had propagated and done. It was no wonder that the audience felt strong relief when the formerly persecuted emigrant who had returned finished his speech. He brought down the house.