THE INTELLECTUAL MIGRATION: A TYPOLOGY

By Jorge M. Robert

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, it extended over

twelve years spanning from 1933 to 1945. This wave brought to

America several generations of Europeans fleeing racial and

political persecution. Some scholars called it 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, its arrival was not seen as a

separate immigration wave and the reasons for the misperception

are that the émigrés came not at once but over a number of

years, and not regularly but intermittently. Besides, there were

1

other events dominating the headlines during that period such as

American isolationism, restricted immigration, economic

depression, other political and social upheavals, and a world

war. It also there seems to be working a deeper notion having to

do with 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. To this general attitude it could be added the

anti-semitism common at the time and the prevalent anti-

intelectualism of the American people. (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

staying in America for good.

The intellectual migration brought over an extraordinary

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

2

the European intellectual, scientific, and artistic world. They

were the émigrés 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

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. Some were already in America and stayed out when the

upheaval began. The lives of all of them make up the story of

the intellectual migration.

In 1968 this group of émigrés 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. In 1969, Donald

Fleming and Bernard Bailyn used the same designation in their

compilation of articles on the émigrés. The designation has been

used again and again, and, though elitist, it seems fit as

shorthand to designate these exiles. (3) No other group with

3

similar characteristics has ever come to America. Their

intellectual achievements were and still are astonishing and the

study of this people’s migration constitutes a very significant

chapter not only of American immigration history but also of

American Intellectual, Artistic, and Scientific history.(4)

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.” A scholar

of the migration asserted that the history of exile literature

[intellectual migration] would not be terminated until its last

representative in 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 (there are no more returns). They are the

witnesses and the last representatives of the migration's

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 22,842 were intellectuals, professionals, or artists (6).

These numbers are small if compared with the masses going

4

through Ellis Island at the dawn of the century, and, because of

that, its study requires 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 such a typology would "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. 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

occupational, and the last one will distinguish them by country

5

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 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

6

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 we’ll 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 their way of

7

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 émigré 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

8

the group without highlighting the many profound differences

between them and what they mean in terms of immigration

experience.

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 are 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. It has been said 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

9

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

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 émigré generation ...

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

an 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

10

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

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

11

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 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). (14) For Pilcher 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. (15)

The sociologists who studied the intellectual migration have

12

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). (16) 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 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, but 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

13

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 émigrés 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.

(17)

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 with World War I are said to belong to the War

generation which is by itself a well-established concept. (18)

All European countries, except Britain, required compulsory

military service for its young men. In Germany, all able bodied

men between the ages of 17 and 45, were liable for military

service (19).

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

14

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. (20)

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 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

15

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. (21)

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.

(22) 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"). (23) 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

16

between 1888 and 1900 within the War generation. The migration

includes only a few members 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.(24) 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 from 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. (25)

Walter Laqueur, a refugee scholar himself, has recently

published "Generation Exodus" an account of the so-called

17

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 generation which will

be called the "younger generation" to followed the terminology

used by other scholars. (26)

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

18

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)

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

19

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 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." (27)

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

20

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 Mann’s father’s

example extolling in his will the virtues of work. These

observations confirm Mann’s generational outlook. (28)

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.” (29)

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

the notable conductor whose autobiography describes the

spiritual 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. (30)

H. Stuart Hughes, one of the historians of the migration, places

21

the German intellectual of the Wilhelminian era in a peculiarly

ambiguous relationship to his own political and social milieu.

For him the polarity between the attractions of Berlin and those

of the southwest was paralleled by a tension between political

acceptance and opposition. (31) They were too old to fight in

WWI. However, some of them like Ludwig Bendix (1877-1954),

Reinhard’s 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 century’s 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 they found open expression in the revolution.(32)

Some of the émigrés 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 before WWI; and both had their base

point in the prewar sense of economic security and social

deference that the cultivated had enjoyed. Hughes also

22

contrasted the smaller age gap that separated Mannheim from

Erich Fromm, and assert that however, it marked a real

psychological watershed. 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 Zweig’s autobiography (1881-1942). (35)

23

Another revealing case is that of Paul Tillich, the theologian

and philosopher born in 1886 who actually belongs to this

generation. However, he was 28 at the time of WWI and served the

four years of the war as a chaplain. 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

24

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)

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

25

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 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

has been 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

26

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 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 WWI’s brunt in the

27

trenches. In general, men born before 1888 stood outside the

twentieth century’s 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 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)

28

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)

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

29

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 Krohn’s book, Vidich says that, in the 1960s,

30

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 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 Soldier’s

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 Arendt’s

thought, characterizes her generation as that of the inter-war

Prussian Jews, and indicated that the formative experience that

informs Arendt’s 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).

31

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 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.

32

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 (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 Bendix’s autobiography “From Berlin to

Berkeley,” it can be found the drama of his father’s (Ludwig,

1877-1954) naiveté, 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).

33

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. (63)

In his Foreword to Krohn’s book, Vidich describes this

generation as “the youthful generation of émigrés 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 émigrés such as Werner Marx (1910-1994), Peter

Berger (1929- ), Brigitte Berger , Beate 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

34

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, adding 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. 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

35

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 émigrés 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 as diverse as their experiences. The

following is an alphabetical non-exhaustive listing of their

36

occupations with references to literary works focused on that

specific occupation. These references are given as

bibliographical examples.

Actors and actresses (performing arts)

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

2008.

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

37

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

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

Kathleen James-Chakraborty, ed., Bauhaus Culture From Weimar

to the Cold War, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

2006.

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

Chemists

38

Ute Deichmann, "The Expulsion of Jewish Chemists &

Biochemists from Academia In Nazi Germany", Perspectives on

Science, 7.1 (1999) 1-86.

P. Thomas Carroll, “Immigrants in American Chemistry,”

Jarrell Jackman & Carla M. Borden, ed., The Muses Flee Hitler

Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, 1930-2945, Washington D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983, pgs. 189-203.

Cinematographers

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

directors in America, Danvers, Mass. Associated University

Presses, 1998

John Baxter, The Hollywood Exiles, New York: Taplinger

Publisher, 1976.

David Wallace, Exiles in Hollywood, Pompton Plains, New

Jersey: Limelight Editions, 2006.

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

39

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 Émigré

Scholars on Comparative Politics, 1925-1965,” American Political

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

Composers

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

UP 2000.

Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ed., Driven into

Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United

States, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Conductors

Paul Jackson, "Maestros of the Storm. How European

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

Dermatologists

S. Eppinger, et al., ”The Emigration of Germany’s Jewish

Dermatologists in the Period of National Socialism,"Journal of

40

the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (2003)17,

525-530.

Economists

Keith Tribe, "German Émigré 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

41

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

German 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

Ugo Mattei, Review of The Reception of Continental Ideas in

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

42

Einfluss deutscher Emigranten auf die Rechtsentwicklung in

den USA und in 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

Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ed., Driven into

Paradise. The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United

43

States, U. of Chicago P., 1999

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",

44

The American Scholar, Summ 1943, 352.

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.

Richard Abel & Gordon Graham, ed., Immigrant Publishers The

Impact of Expatriates in Britain and America, New Brunswick, New

Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2009.

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

45

Irving Louis Horowitz, "Between the Charybdis of Capitalism

and he Scylla of Communism: The Emigration of German Social

Scientists, 1933-1945," 11 Social Science History No. 2 (Summer

1987), 113-138.

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, 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

46

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

country’s 20th century history, its relationship with the U.S.,

etc.

FRANCE

The characteristics of the French migration are: (1)

relatively few number of refugees compared with other

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

47

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

citizens of an allied country.

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

Jeffrey Mehlman, Émigré 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.

HUNGARY

48

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.

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.

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.

2. 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

49

specific gravity, its own physiognomy, its own internal consistency

and unity, ha[d] 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. Among the exceptions is John Patrick

Diggins, The Proud Decades. America in War & in Peace. 1941-1960, NY:

Norton, 1988 [Ch. 7: High Culture: the life of the mind in a Placid

Age. The Refugee Intellectual and the Issue of Modernism, pag.

220/231], and Chuck Wills, Destination America, New York: DK, 2005,

234-277. The irrelevancy of the émigrés 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

they’d 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 Hitler’s Cultural Exiles, pg. 341, in

Stephanie Barron ed., Exiles + Émigrés, Los Angeles: LCMA, 1997.

3. 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

50

proponents of the New Social 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.

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 Heilbut’s claim are Ralph Baer (video games), and

Victor Gruen (shopping malls).

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,

51

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

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. 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 child’s life

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

52

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.] Morton Hunt, The Story of Psychology, New York: Doubleday,

1993, 368.

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

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

53

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.

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.

54

25. Zuckmayer, supra 16.

26. See, Fermi, supra, 20.

27. See, Jaeger, supra, 6.

28. Peter Gay, Schnitzler’s Century. The Making of Middle-Class

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 society’s 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.

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

32. 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 was deeply influence by the war experience, like Tillich.

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

55

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).

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, pertain to this

generation all those who were from 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

56

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,

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

57

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.

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 Émigré 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

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

58

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

born in 1906 who died in 1975; and Peter Drucker born in 1909

who passed away in 2005.

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

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.

59

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

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, Thursday’s Child has far to go. A Memoir of the

Journeying Years, 1992.

60

Author: Jorge M. Robert (legalusa@bellsouth.net)

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.

61