Deutsche Altertumswissenschaftler Im Amerikanischen Exil: Eine Rekonstruktion By HansPeter Obermayer. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014. Pp. xxvi + 750; illustrations. $210.00.
2016; Wiley; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/rsr.12283
ISSN1748-0922
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Historical Studies
ResumoThe contributions of German refugee scholars exiled by the Nazis to the intellectual life of American universities in Biblical Studies, Theology, Art History, Sociology, Psychology, and Politics, not to speak of the sciences, have been well documented. In tandem with a growing interest in the history of scholarship, work (one thinks especially of the pioneering research of William Calder III) has also been undertaken on the transformative influence of refugee scholars on the field of Greco-Roman antiquity in America. The present volume meticulously sorts through letters and other archival materials to present the trajectory of four archaeologists (Margarete Bieber, Karl Lehmann, Elizabeth Jastrow, and Otto Brendel) in Part 1; Kurt von Fritz and Ernst Kapp in Part 2; Paul Kristeller, Ernst Abramsohn, and Ernst Manesse (Part 3); and Paul Friedländer in Part 4 (many others are mentioned in passing). Obermeyer's focus is more concerned with these scholars' biographies, in each case their careers before and especially after emigration, rather than their intellectual impact on the field. Each story is different (von Fritz was not Jewish, but could not stomach the Nazis; Manesse ended up in a historically black college; Friedländer was interned at Sachsenhausen before emigrating), but there are certain common threads: the crucial roles of organizations like the Emergency Committee, the American Friends Service Committee, the University in Exile; of the extraordinary help (and occasional hindrances) of individual American academics in creating positions and sponsorships; and the sometimes desperate financial and practical circumstances these scholars found themselves in. The author's many quotations from letters, both official and personal, movingly attest to their struggles and successes in a new environment they had not chosen, but on which they had a lasting influence.
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