Forced Migration and Scientific Change
Emigré German-Speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933

Examines the impact on the scienctific world of the forced exodus of Jewish intellectuals from Nazi Germany.

Mitchell G. Ash (Edited by), Alfons Söllner (Edited by)

9780521522786, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 June 2002

320 pages, 3 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

The dismissal of civil servants on racist or political grounds in April 1933 marked the beginning of a massive, forced exodus of mainly Jewish scholars and scientists from Nazi Germany - a phenomenon unprecedented in the modern history of academic life. The essays in this volume examine whether that 'exodus of reason' lead to significant scientific change, and if so, how that change should be characterised. The volume challenges the focus of earlier work on the 'intellectual migration' on losses (for German science) and gains (for British and American science). Instead, the authors proceed from the assumption that the sciences are open, dynamic, and historically contingent systems, and explore the multiple, complex interactions of biographical, social, and cultural circumstances with changes - or lack of change - in the émigrés' scientific thinking and research.

Introduction: forced migrations and scientific change after 1933 Mitchell G. Ash and Alfons Söllner
Part I. Physical and Medical Sciences: 1. Identification of emigration-induced scientific change Klaus Fischer
2. Physics, life, and contingency: Born, Schrödinger, and Weyl in exile Skuli Sigurdsson
3. Emigration from country and discipline: the journey of a German physicist into American photosynthesis research Alan D. Beyerchen
4. The impact of German medical scientists on British medicine: a case study of Oxford, 1933–45 Paul Weindling
Part II. Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Pedagogy: 5. Emigré psychologists after 1933: the cultural coding of scientific and professional practices Mitchell G. Ash
6. Psychoanalytic science: from Oedipus to culture Edith Kurzweil
7. The impact of emigration on German pedagogy Heinz-Elmar Tenorth and Klaus Horn
Part III. Social Sciences: 8. Dismissal and emigration of German-speaking economists after 1933 Claus-Dieter Krohn
9. Emigration of social scientists' schools from Austria Christian Fleck
10. The Vienna Circle in the United States and empirical research methods in sociology Jennifer Platt and Paul K. Hoch
11. From public law to political science? The emigration of German scholars after 1933 and their influence on the transformation of a discipline Alfons Söllner
Epilogue: the refugee scholar in America: the case of Paul Tillich Karen J. Greenberg.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]