Peter Paret

An Interrupted past : German-speaking refugee historians in the United States after 1933

Preface Hartmut Lehmann Introduction James J. Sheehan Part I: 1. German and American historiography in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Ernst Schulin 2. German historiography during the Weimar Republic and the Emigre historians Wolfgang J. Mommsen 3. The historical seminar of the University of Berlin in the 1920s Felix Gilbert Part II: 4. Refugee historians in America: pre-emigration Germany to 1939 Michael H. Kater 5. The German refugee historians and American institutions of higher learning Karen J. Greenberg 6. Everyday life and emigration: the role of women Sibylle Quack 7. The special case of Austrian refugee historians M. Fellner 8. Refugee historians in the United States Catherine Epstein 9. German historians in the Office of Strategic Services Barry Katz 10. The refugee scholar as intellectual educator: a students recollections Carl E. Schorske Part III: 11. German emigre historians in America: the fifties, sixties, and seventies Kenneth Barkin 12. The Americanisation of Hajo Holborn Otto Pflanze 13. Explaining history: Hans Rosenberg Hanna Schissler 14. Ernst Kantorowicz and Theodor E. Mommsen Ralph E. Lerner 15. Refugee historians and the German historical profession between 1950 and 1970 Winfried Schulze.

Clausewitz: A Bibliographical Survey

The vitality of the social sciences in the United States has not prevented some of its most influential pioneers from becoming unread classics. A widespread preference for textbook treatment and up-to-theminute analysis plays its part; but if the reader does want to turn to the originals, he often finds that they are not readily available. Complete and scholarly editions of writers who pursued new directions of inquiry are rarer than might be supposed—even in their native language. The situation is particularly bad when it comes to foreign authors. A writers theories and insights may be transmitted through one or two major works, while the rest of his output is ignored, so that his thoughts are analyzed in isolation, without benefit of the preliminary sketches, correspondence, and marginal studies that would give depth and suppleness to the interpretation. Until recently Rousseau and Tocqueville have been in this position; another case in point is Max Weber, ignorance of whose fertile theorizing has misled more than one commentator. Still another, and extreme, example of intellectual discontinuity is provided by Clausewitz. Much of his work has never been published; even in German most of it is out of print; little of it has ever been translated. The result has been the partial loss of a remarkable historical and theoretical achievement. To the American reader, in particular, Clausewitz rarely means more than the “philosopher of war,” a famous name associated with one or two cliches backed up by little of substance. Repeated attempts to outline Clausewitzs thought, or to present the “essential Clausewitz” in the form of excerpts, have never been of more than doubtful value, if only because his methodology and dialectic are scarcely less interesting than the conclusions they reach. It would be pointless to attempt the impossible once again. On the other hand, a brief survey of Clausewitzs writings and of the literature concerning him may provide a useful introduction to his theories and to the manner in which for the past 150 years they have influenced the study and the waging of war.

History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History, Volume 1, Antiquity

Two thirds of a century after it first appeared, this last volume of Delbrucks fundamental work on military history has been translated into English. The work remains essential for the history of European warfare. Choice

The German Revolution of 1848 and Rethel's Dance of Death

an indicator of conditions beyond it, the artists inner life may even seem, or in fact be, a distorting element. His psychological constellation and the aesthetic expression it finds in images or structures are always shaped to some extent by forces independent of the outside world. Even when the artist is encapsulated in a firm tradition, meets the specific demands of a patron, or in other ways functions according to external constraints, traces of individuality remain in his work. On the one hand, historians seeking evidence on social or political developments, or on changes in ideas and attitudes, may be deceived by this residue. On the other hand, recognizing the nature of the residue enables us to analyze links between particular and general elements, and makes possible an interpretation more accurately attuned to the special character of the material than one that categorizes the work of art simply as yet another document that mirrors its times. We may believe that a landscape by Camille Pissarro or an abstraction by Piet Mondrian can help us explain the social and political world in which they were created, even if the artists consciously or unconsciously meant to paint merely a farm house and a meadow shaded by a few poplars, or an arrangement of lines and rectangles. Inevitably the application of such art to political or social analysis is marked by a high degree of subjectivity. Art that openly addresses contemporary developments, especially if it does so in a figurative manner-a lithograph by

Art and the National Image: The Conflict over Germany's Participation in the St. Louis Exposition

IN 1902 Germany agreed to take part in the international exposition to be held in St. Louis two years later. She accepted the invitation without much enthusiasm. Her finances were strained, and there had been far too many international fairs, congresses, and trade shows recently; industrialists and government officials spoke ofa general Ausstellungsmudigkeit in the country.1 Nevertheless, like most powers Ger? many eventually gave in to the apparent requirements of international competition and to persistent American pressure. Ofthe many parts of the German exhibition, the art sector proved the most troublesome to organize. German artists, unlike manufacturers or academics, belonged to competing associations, whose differences had become nearly irreconcilable because the emperor favored one side over the other. Wil? liam II had originally proposed that to save money German representa? tion in St. Louis be limited to a show of painting and sculpture instead ofa general exhibition of cultural and material achievement. Even after it was decided to expand the Reichs participation to keep pace with that of the other major powers, the emperor continued to be particu-

Gerhard Ritter, 1888–1967

ON July 1, 1967, after a brief illness, Gerhard Ritter died in Freiburg. He had continued to work with his accustomed energy until shortly before his death; the completion in manuscript of the fourth volume of Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk, which carried his interpretation of German poUcy to 1918, was the final achievement of a rich and vigorous career. Ritter was born on April 6,1888, in Bad Sooden in Hesse, the son of a Lutheran minister. He studied at the Universities of Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, and under Hermann Oncken at Heidelberg, where in 1911 he was awarded his degree for a dissertation on the Prussian Conservative Party in 1866. For some years he taught in secondary schools in Kassel and Magdeburg; in 1915 he volunteered for military service, fought in France and Poland, and was severely wounded. After the war he returned to Heidelberg as Privatdozent\ in 1924 he was called to Hamburg, and in the following year he accepted the Chair of Modern European History at Freiburg which he was to occupy for the next three decades. From the first his belief that historians bear a political responsibility towards their own generation penetrated his scholarship to give his writings their characteristic note of immediacy and combativeness. He was an early opponent of National Socialism. Two books published after 1933?Friedrich der Grosse and Machtstaat und Utopie?were stimulated by the German crisis and covertly attacked the regime. During the latter years of the Third Reich he was associated with the conservative opposition that coalesced around the person of Carl Goerdeler, whom he later chose as the subject of his most impressive excursion into contemporary history. From November 1944 to the end of the war he was imprisoned by the Gestapo. After 1945 he contributed significantly to the re-establishment of responsible historical scholarship in Germany, and his retirement in 1956 seemed only to spur him on to new activity. Although Ritters first book was about the Bismarckian Era, much of his early research dealt with the Renaissance and the Reformation. In

Frederick the Great: A Singular Life, Variably Reflected

than temporary and regional significance. He matters to the history of the 18th century, influenced events beyond it, and may be said to remain relevant to our concerns today in the way earlier responses to such social and political issues as the relations between government and subject—now citizen—have meaning for later generations. That a kind of mythology soon developed around Frederick—further setting him apart from other rulers of the time, his uncle George II, for instance, or Louis XV—confirms the more than ordinary interest he evoked in his contemporaries. The legends celebrate and mask a man who applied his unusual intelligence and energy to two principal pursuits. One was to rule his state, which he did with a rare attention to detail while seeking major ends. He was fascinated by the cogs in the state’s administrative and institutional machinery, and what they made possible. As he declared in his poem “The Art of War”: “Love the details, they are not without glory” (Aimez donc ces détails, ils ne sont pas sans gloire).1 To gain glory by enlarging and strengthening the state was an early, consuming ambition. When not yet twenty he declared that once king he would join the separate dynastic possessions out of which, under his grandfather, the Prussian monarchy had been formed.2 After his accession he at once began the process of consolidation and expansion by invading Silesia, part of the Habsburg empire, and with this acquisition expelled Austrian power from northern Germany, which set his state on a broad, complex path toward our own day. But even apart from the immediate and eventual consequences of his reign, Frederick continues to hold our attention with his second occupation: his writings on the conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, on war, on history, his poetry, his many musical compositions, and a vast correspondence, all of which changed him from a fervent but passive admirer of Enlightenment ideas and attitudes in his youth to their energetic if selective and often challenging exponent as king. Frederick’s life and reign have been extensively studied. In the past two centuries his writings and thousands of documents on his administration and wars have been published or become available in archives, making truly comprehensive biographies possible. But the facts now accessible to all are interpreted differently. Compare, for example, two se-

Two Historians on Defeat in War and Its Causes

other, serve in wars in which their armies are defeated, and the states for which they fight collapse. They begin immediately to write accounts of the campaigns that have just ended in disaster. That both fought in previous wars and in their writings addressed major historical issues gives them the tools they need. The similarities in their conditions and reactions are remarkable, as are the differences. The earlier historian is twenty-six years old when the war soon to be his subject breaks out in 1806. The other is fifty-three when his country is overrun in 1940. The younger man’s analytic gifts are already evident in his first essays; the older has long been an original and influential historian. As they start to record the recent past, the younger man allows himself few emotional responses to the events he describes; the older gives a fuller, more intimate personal account. He begins and ends his manuscript between July and September 1940, shortly after the surrender of the armed forces in which he served; but his book does not appear until after his death. The younger historian is captured, writes a compressed study of the campaign within two months of its major battles, and sends it to a journal, which publishes it in three articles. After being released, his duties and other literary work prevent him from returning to the subject for seventeen years, at which time he intends to write a longer history, then changes his mind and limits his manuscript to a study of the campaign of 1806, based on his articles. Because he is highly critical of the men in charge, his manuscript is not published until fifty-six years after his death. The other historian, demobilized in July 1940, joins the resistance, is eventually taken prisoner, and then tortured and shot by the descendants of the soldiers with whom the first historian served six generations earlier. We can read and learn from these double histories of defeat, without taking the measure of the dramatic and tragic parallels and differences in their genesis. But once recognized, the affinities of the two accounts are not easily forgotten. The two books respond to each other, pose questions, and point to answers. The contrasts between them define each more clearly, emphasize the unique characteristics of its author, and underline his social and intellectual circumstances. That one of the books— although not published for some years—is an immediate reaction, the other a long-delayed response, may skew our appraisals. The balance is restored if we include the younger man’s articles—sources for his later work—when we think of the two books together. By birth, both authors belonged to privileged segments of society, yet each faced social handicaps. In accord with family tradition, the earlier historian, Carl von Clausewitz, claimed noble descent.1 His father, son of a professor of theology at the University of Halle, served as lieutenant in a Prussian infantry regiment during the Seven Years’ War. After demobilization he was retired for being unable to document his title of nobility, and transferred to the customs and excise administration. The family’s ambiguous situation was resolved by two events: the early death of the former lieutenant’s father and the remarriage of his mother. Her second husband, a Prussian colonel, came from a well-known noble family. His influence could not salvage the lieutenant’s military career, but enabled three of his sons, among them Carl von Clausewitz, to enter the army as officer cadets. The Clausewitz family’s noble status was at last officially accepted in 1827, not on the basis of documentation, but in acknowledgment of the brothers’ successful military careers. Two became generals, the third received the title of majorgeneral on retirement. At the time, the change from undocumented assumption of a title to its recognition occurred more than once in the Prussian service-elite, which expanded in step with the expansion of the state. In Clausewitz’s generation middle-class officers were promoted to the most senior positions in the army, and ennobled in the process. The other historian, Marc Bloch, descended on both sides of his family from Alsatian Jews.2 In 1793 a paternal ancestor founded the family’s tradition of patriotic French citizenship by fighting in the forces that defended the French occupation of Mainz against a Prussian army in which Clausewitz served as a newly promoted ensign. Bloch’s father, who left Alsace after the Franco-Prussian War to avoid becoming a German subject, taught Greek and Roman antiquities at the University of Lyon, and rose to be a professor of ancient history at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Marc Bloch’s encounter with French anti-Semitism and Carl von Clausewitz’s awareness of his family’s dubious hold on privilege seem above all to have sharpened the two men’s observations of their societies, which ranged from skeptical analysis to outright condemnation—harsh judgments in which the recognition of human weakness is intensified by disappointment and disillusion. In their two works Clausewitz and Bloch repeatedly introduce these social and psychological observations with references to themselves and their backgrounds. The authors’ engagement drives their interpretations forward and gives them their peculiar edgy knowledge. Early in his work Bloch turns to his family and childhood to explain his perception of an element that is—or should have been— central to the events he recounts: “I was brought CONTENTS

Beyond Music: Hindemith's Opera Mathis der Maler as Political Document

greatworks of 1 9th-centuryAmerican historicalwriting, John Lothrop Modeys The Rise of the Dutch Republic. Modeys grand narrative concludes with the relief of the Spanish siege of Leiden, die triumphal founding of its university with its motto Praesidium Libertatis (Bastion of Liberty) in 1575, and the establishment of the United Netherlands. It takes a moment for an Anglocentric historian to realize that these events predated the English defeat of the Spanish armada bymore than a dozen years and the founding of the Jamestown colony in America by a generation. The Dutch achievement, Modey asserts, was the seminal event in a long historical process that led to parliamentary government in England, to the American Revolution, and to other triumphs of liberty in the Western world. If Modey were writing today, he doubdess would call the rise of the Dutch republic the first great victory of modern Western liberalism.

Comment on Gray

12 1 am hardly in a position to criticize this phenomenon, given that I have added to it with Another Bloody Century. For some examples, see: Mark Cerasini, The Future ofWar: The Face of Ust-Century Warfare (Alpha, 2003); Christopher Coker, The Future of War: The Re-Enchantment of War in the 21st Century (Blackwell, 2004); Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jan Angstrom, eds., Rethinking the Nature ofWar (Frank Cass, 2005); and Herfried Münkler, The New Wars (Polity, 2005).