An Interrupted Past: German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States after 1933 (Publications of the German Historical Institute)

The essays in An Interrupted Past describe the fate of those German-speaking historians who fled from Nazi Europe to the United States. Their story is set into several contexts: the traditional relationship between German and American historiography, the evolution of the German historical profession in the twentieth century, the onset of Nazi persecution after 1933, the special situation in Austria, and the difficulty of settling the refugees in their new homeland. In addition to articles on prominent scholars, there are accounts of the group as a whole, including information on more than ninety individuals, and of their family lives. An Interrupted Past is set in one of the darkest periods in human history, a time of political catastrophe and personal suffering. Yet the lives recorded here also illustrate people's capacity to survive, adjust, and create under difficult circumstances. The essays in this book describe the fate of those German-speaking historians who fled from Nazi Europe to the United States. Their story is set into several contexts: the traditional relationship between German and American historiography, the evolution of the German historical profession in the twentieth century, the onset of Nazi persecution after 1933, the special situation in Austria, and the difficulty of settling the refugees in their new homeland. In addition to articles by prominent scholars, there are accounts of the group as a whole, including information on more than ninety individuals, and of their family lives. For example, F. Gilbert recalls what it was like to study history in Berlin during the twenties, while C. Schorske gives his reflections on the relationship between the refugees and their colleagues in the wartime Office of Strategic Services. The volume concludes with analyses of the refugee scholars' impact on postwar American and German historiography, with special emphasis on four key individuals - the modern historians H. Holborn and H. Rosenberg and the medievalists E. Kantorowicz and T. Mommsen When the International Historical Congress met in Bucharest in 1980, acting president Karl Dietrich Erdmann called that organization the Okumene der Historiker.