The Expulsion of the Professors from the Universities in Nazi Germany, 1933-1941
The expulsion of scholars from the countries of their birth has occurred repeatedly in the course of human civilization.
Notable examples are the migration of the Greek scholars from Constantinople to Italy both before and after the capture of that city by the Turks in 1453, the expulsion of the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and their subsequent influence on the culture of the court at Brandenburg, Prussia.
Another example is the expulsion and migration of the Russian scholars from the universities of that country during the Stalinist purges of the Academy of Sciences in 1937 when that institution was “...remodeled on Communist lines.”
These examples indicate that revolutionary movements frequently promote the flight of academicians. This occurs because such movements threaten the future of learning and scholarship according to the traditions of the affected civilization, or because the new masters of the subject civilization view intellectuals with suspicion and hostility and as possible centers of resistance.
Scholars are often identified with religious or political beliefs not acceptable to the conquerors, in which event these scholars leave or flee because of their religious, rather than their scholarly functions. The latter was undoubtedly the case with the Byzantine scholars who left Constantinople just before and after 1453 when the Moslems conquered that outpost of Christianity.
There were, of course, a number of Christian German professors who left their teaching posts for similar reasons after the Nazi assumption of power in 1933.
Thus, a celebrated mathematician, said to be one of the few who at that time was able to keep pace with Albert Einstein, resigned his univer*sity post as protest against the removal of Jewish faculty members from all German universities.
Another prominent member of the philosophic faculty of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin gave up his career as a protest against the practice of Hitlerian authorities of removing professors for any but scholastic reasons.
Another professor at the University of Rostock demanded from the German government, which controlled all univer*sities, that he be given a clear guarantee that an oath requiring all faculty to support the principles of the National Socialist government leave unimpaired his freedom to seek and teach the truth. Despite his prominence in his field, he was ousted from his position.
Still others left because they would not subject their conscience to the dictates of the National Socialist ideologies as preached by the govern*ment.
continued
http://www.jbuff.com/c013102.htm
Since all German professors were public employees, responsible to the Minister of Science, Art and Public Education at Berlin, the following letter of resignation is a good example of the motivation of those who left voluntarily.
The expulsion of scholars from the countries of their birth has occurred repeatedly in the course of human civilization.
Notable examples are the migration of the Greek scholars from Constantinople to Italy both before and after the capture of that city by the Turks in 1453, the expulsion of the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and their subsequent influence on the culture of the court at Brandenburg, Prussia.
Another example is the expulsion and migration of the Russian scholars from the universities of that country during the Stalinist purges of the Academy of Sciences in 1937 when that institution was “...remodeled on Communist lines.”
These examples indicate that revolutionary movements frequently promote the flight of academicians. This occurs because such movements threaten the future of learning and scholarship according to the traditions of the affected civilization, or because the new masters of the subject civilization view intellectuals with suspicion and hostility and as possible centers of resistance.
Scholars are often identified with religious or political beliefs not acceptable to the conquerors, in which event these scholars leave or flee because of their religious, rather than their scholarly functions. The latter was undoubtedly the case with the Byzantine scholars who left Constantinople just before and after 1453 when the Moslems conquered that outpost of Christianity.
There were, of course, a number of Christian German professors who left their teaching posts for similar reasons after the Nazi assumption of power in 1933.
Thus, a celebrated mathematician, said to be one of the few who at that time was able to keep pace with Albert Einstein, resigned his univer*sity post as protest against the removal of Jewish faculty members from all German universities.
Another prominent member of the philosophic faculty of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin gave up his career as a protest against the practice of Hitlerian authorities of removing professors for any but scholastic reasons.
Another professor at the University of Rostock demanded from the German government, which controlled all univer*sities, that he be given a clear guarantee that an oath requiring all faculty to support the principles of the National Socialist government leave unimpaired his freedom to seek and teach the truth. Despite his prominence in his field, he was ousted from his position.
Still others left because they would not subject their conscience to the dictates of the National Socialist ideologies as preached by the govern*ment.
continued
http://www.jbuff.com/c013102.htm
Since all German professors were public employees, responsible to the Minister of Science, Art and Public Education at Berlin, the following letter of resignation is a good example of the motivation of those who left voluntarily.
