Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact
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Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact
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Overview
The emigration of mathematicians from Europe during the Nazi era signaled an irrevocable and important historical shift for the international mathematics world. Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany is the first thoroughly documented account of this exodus. In this greatly expanded translation of the 1998 German edition, Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze describes the flight of more than 140 mathematicians, their reasons for leaving, the political and economic issues involved, the reception of these emigrants by various countries, and the emigrants' continuing contributions to mathematics. The influx of these brilliant thinkers to other nations profoundly reconfigured the mathematics world and vaulted the United States into a new leadership role in mathematics research.
Based on archival sources that have never been examined before, the book discusses the preeminent emigrant mathematicians of the period, including Emmy Noether, John von Neumann, Hermann Weyl, and many others. The author explores the mechanisms of the expulsion of mathematicians from Germany, the emigrants' acculturation to their new host countries, and the fates of those mathematicians forced to stay behind. The book reveals the alienation and solidarity of the emigrants, and investigates the global development of mathematics as a consequence of their radical migration.
An in-depth yet accessible look at mathematics both as a scientific enterprise and human endeavor, Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany provides a vivid picture of a critical chapter in the history of international science.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781400831401 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/06/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 504 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany
Individual Fates and Global ImpactBy Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2009 Princeton University PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-14041-4
Chapter One
The Terms "German-Speaking Mathematician," "Forced," and "Voluntary Emigration"
This chapter tries to settle some fundamental concepts to be used in the book concerning the overall process of expulsion of scientists by the Nazi regime and which are not specific to "mathematics," although the concrete examples are from that particular field. In addition, this chapter outlines the structure of argumentation and the mode of presentation used in the book.
The expulsion of many European mathematicians from their jobs and from their home countries between 1933 and the early 1940s forced upon them by Hitler's regime is undoubtedly the central event of the social history of mathematics between the two world wars.
That momentous event has to be put, on the one hand, into a broader historical perspective and to be treated with some claim of historical completeness. On the other hand, however, the discussion has to be appropriately restricted to exemplary case studies that can be dealt with in a limited volume.
The restrictions concern basically an emphasis on the special process of "emigration" within the overall "expulsion," a focus on German-speaking émigrés, and an appropriate delimitation of the notion of a "mathematician." The demand for completeness and broader perspective implies a concern for as detailed data as possible with respect to the group of mathematicians in mind (as mainly reflected in the appendices). It also implies an embodiment of Nazi-enforced emigration into broader processes of cultural and scientific "emigration," regarding both the change in historical conditions and the motives.
These restrictions enable a consistency of historical method, since the persons described were united by common traits of scientific education and socialization and by a common language, even if they in many cases had their origins in peripheral countries and entered the German-Austrian system in order to undertake their university education or to work as mathematicians there. Thus "German-speaking" as used in this book means more than just fluency in the German language. It is related to the process of socialization of the respective mathematicians. Publications in German alone are definitely not the decisive criterion for calling a mathematician "German-speaking," as German was still the leading language in mathematics at that time. There are borderline cases of mathematicians such as Zygmunt Wilhelm Birnbaum (1903-2000), whom I decided not to include, since Polish seems to have been the main language during his mathematical training although his written German was excellent.
Even though similar conditions of training made for certain shared mathematical traditions among "German-speaking" emigrants, one has to account for differences as well, particularly between Germany and Austria.
Although systematic historical investigations are still lacking, it seems indisputable to me that the political and philosophical environment in Vienna supported a specific kind of mathematical research already in the 1920s differing markedly from the dominating mathematical trends in the Weimar Republic. Here shall be mentioned but two directions in which such research, yet to be conducted, would have to proceed:
Firstly, there is no doubt that the systematic claim of Hilbert's program of research in the foundations of mathematics, eventually refuted by Kurt Gödel's first "incompleteness theorem" of 1931, can only be understood against a philosophical background much more neo-Kantian (retaining certain absolutes or a priori in its epistemology) than the philosophy of the Vienna Circle.
Secondly, the deficiencies in Germany in several newer mathematical subdisciplines, such as topology, functional analysis, and some parts of mathematical logic, seem to have been conditioned by a certain self-sufficiency and by social hierarchies in Germany and, in particular, by a politically motivated sealing off from Polish mathematics, which was much less typical of mathematicians in Vienna (D). The close contacts that Wilhelm Blaschke (who was in Hamburg and had come from Austrian Graz) and his geometric school kept with the topologists in Vienna could apparently not make up for the partial international isolation of mathematics in Germany. Also, the Austrian emigrant Olga Taussky-Todd (1988a) reports on partially differing German and Austrian traditions even in core subjects of research such as algebra. For the impact of emigration one has also to consider the longer-lasting contacts of the Austrian and Prague mathematicians with mathematicians abroad, contacts that were restricted for German mathematicians after 1933. For this reason it is necessary to differentiate between the various streams of German-speaking emigration. The existence of differences between two geographically and linguistically close mathematical cultures such as the German and Austrian ones may also explain the differing in which the emigrants adjusted to the American mathematical culture. In this latter respect one could imagine a triangle of different German, Austrian, and American epistemic traditions or "working units of scientific knowledge production" as recently investigated for topological research in Austria and the United States in the 1920s.
Although, as indicated above, the cognitive dissimilarities among the German-speaking regions were partly related to differing political conditions, there were also "political" experiences the German-speaking émigrés had in common, and their political socialization was undoubtedly at variance with that of mathematicians in other countries such as Poland and France. The latter fell under German rule between 1939 and 1940, and French mathematicians suffered various forms of expulsion. The chances of emigration worsened considerably at that time, mainly due to the current prevailing conditions of war. Although in Germany and Austria the expulsions had not been restricted to anti-Semitic purges either, in occupied countries such as Poland the Nazi policies of racial cleansing extended in many cases to whole social groups, in particular intellectuals. In fact, in occupied Poland the expulsions had the most deadly consequences for the victims. For reasons mentioned these mathematicians are not primary subjects of this book. The task of describing their fates will be left to their compatriots who are better qualified to study the purges in detail. One might say that the fates of these mathematicians were in total even more tragic than those of German-speaking refugees. They shall therefore always be kept in mind in the following discussion as a comparative example and a background for this investigation.
Further restrictions and focus of this investigation have to be mentioned: Since the United States became the final host country for more than half of the mathematician-emigrants-which was a natural consequence of the course of the war but had additional historical reasons-this book will be focusing on immigration to the United States.
Some authors distinguish between "emigration" and "exile." Historical research on "exile" concerns refugees "who went into exile in order to work politically, culturally or scientifically for a democratic future of Germany." Unlike many artists, the great majority of German academics forced to flee after 1933 did not belong to the exile in this sense but rather to the more general emigration, which is also attested by the fact that only a few of them returned to Europe after the war.
Furthermore, a distinction has to be made between forced emigration and voluntary emigration, depending on whether the lure of the host country or the pressure from the home country ("pull" or "push") were predominant. Both in pre-1933 emigration and in the employing of German and other European specialists in the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II, voluntary emigration was certainly dominant, although political pressures and economic hardships influenced the decisions as well. This kind of academic migration or brain drain, has continued until today, with a peak in the 1960s.
Research on "academic emigration" includes the movement of persons and ideas and is not at all restricted to the investigation of individual biographies of academics. It has developed in Germany since the second part of the 1980s and has been particularly supported by a program of selected measures issued by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Stimuli for that program not only came from research on the history of science during the "Third Reich," it was also stimulated by more general, partly epistemologically inspired, investigations into the acculturation of scientific styles, into the gains (for the host countries) and losses (for the countries of origin) due to academic emigration. This discussion developed in a context of controversial debates on the cultural and political consequences of emigration. Papcke (1988) referred to political tendencies in the United States that stressed the ambivalence of the impact of immigration and the possible loss of "original" American values. Yet in Europe then and today one finds the articulation of a certain resentment against an exaggerated Americanization of the various national European cultures. Although Papcke does not share either kind of resentment (which in his opinion expresses either isolationist or nationalist thinking), he also stresses that "culture cannot be internationalized in a simple way" (p. 24 [T]). This statement may sound irrelevant to mathematics at first sight. The investigation will, however, show that, even in mathematics, traditional judgments on success or failure of academic emigration have to be carefully evaluated, and the broader cultural and political context has to be considered.
As to academic emigration in the sciences, Papcke finds the following distinction: "Everywhere in the sciences there was a considerable transfer of knowledge. But a noticeable cultural impact can only be found in the USA" (p. 19 [T]). Coser, in the introduction to his book dealing with the impact and the experiences of émigrés in the United States, emphasizes that the transfer of knowledge requires direct and personal contacts: "The experience of being taught by a great scientist or a great humanist scholar cannot be duplicated by even the most diligent perusal of published works or by listening to even a major paper at an occasional international meeting." In fact, the importance of this "oral communication" in the sciences was already apparent in the 1920s, and foremost U.S.-American foundations took account of that by granting stipends on an international basis. The foundation policies of the 1920s had a strong pro-American bias. However, the foundations also tried to promote American science indirectly, not just by supporting immigration but also through the support of European science on its home ground. This attracted American students in large numbers. Contemporary witnesses before and after 1933, in particular some representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation, saw the drawbacks-due to emigration-of a loss of cultural diversity in world science, something that hitherto had stimulated science at large. This policy, of course, had to be changed after Hitler came to power, but slowly, as argued by some concerned politicians and scientists. Some of them insisted that the United States should only temporarily host European scholars who later on intended reviving science in their countries of origin. The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, supported for a long time the sojourn of European mathematicians in their first host countries, before global political developments made this less and less possible.
Evaluating gains and losses during emigration one has to be careful not to fall into the post hoc, ergo propter hoc trap, that is, to claim that developments in the host countries (the gain) would not have taken place without immigration. The opposite assumption-that these developments would have taken place in the country of origin as well (the loss)-is equally illegitimate. This also shows that research on emigration cannot evade the dilemmas of "counterfactual" historical claims, which can only be handled with extreme care in a historical investigation.
In this investigation I will mostly discuss forced emigration after 1933, when the great majority of mathematicians emigrated for strictly political reasons, due to either racist policies (the dominating reason) or political dissent with the resulting pressure on them. However, in many cases the dividing lines between forced and voluntary emigration are blurred, and for historical reasons emigration has to be put into a broader perspective. It is necessary to include some mathematicians who had emigrated before 1933 but who could also be considered forced emigrants, as they continued work in and for German mathematics after emigration, which was finally interrupted by the Nazi seizure of power.
A clear differentiation between forced and voluntary emigration is for instance not possible for Theodor von Kármán (1881-1963) and John von Neumann. The important International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés, 1933-1945 (henceforth IBD), edited by W. Röder and H. A. Strauss in 1983, does not mention von Neumann and von Kármán. The latter had gone to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena by 1929, mainly because he felt that anti-Semitism was impeding his career in Germany. Both men maintained contact with Germany until it was broken off in 1933; the much younger von Neumann, who at the time had a partial appointment in Princeton, even canceled his preannounced lectures in Berlin. In the case of von Kármán there is the additional problem of whether he can be justifiedly included among "mathematicians" (see chapter 2). It appears to me, therefore, that for a sensible definition of the (forced) "emigrant" to be used in this book, the dividing line should be drawn exactly between von Neumann and von Kármán, including the former and excluding the latter from the focus of the discussion. There is, however, agreement between the IBD and the present book in treating the statistician and pacifist Emil Julius Gumbel as a (forced) emigrant, since he was a German-speaking mathematician who emigrated from Nazi-occupied territory (or Nazi-threatened in the case of southern France where Gumbel was in 1940).
There is no way of considering refugees such as Richard von Mises as "voluntary" emigrants, even if, to the outsider, they were the ones who abandoned their appointments in 1933 or later. They were clearly under threat; they left in awareness of the impending developments and would have been dismissed later on anyway. As in the case of von Mises, they often had to leave their work and projects in shambles and unfinished.
There were, though, early emigrants in mathematics such as Theodor Estermann (1902-1991), Hans Freudenthal (1905-1990), Eberhard Hopf (1902-1983), Heinz Hopf (1894-1971), Chaim (Hermann) Müntz (1884-1956), Wilhelm Maier (1896-1990), and Abraham Plessner (1900-1961), who left for predominantly economic reasons and out of concern for their scientific careers. Some of them are-partly without their approval-treated as refugees from the Nazi regime in other historical accounts. This happened, for instance, with Estermann, Freudenthal, and Müntz (Pinl/Furtmüller 1973), although Estermann had left for London in 1926, Müntz for Leningrad in 1929, and Freudenthal for Amsterdam in 1930. Of course arguments pointing to academic anti-Semitism in pre-1933 Germany, which without any doubt hampered the careers of Müntz and Plessner, and diminished their chances of return after 1933, could also be cited. The argument to count early Jewish emigrants as refugees from the Nazis is supported by the fact that non-Jewish early emigrants, such as Eberhard Hopf and Wilhelm Maier, returned to Hitler's Germany after 1933 and profited partly from the dismissals of their Jewish colleagues. Nevertheless, in accordance with this book's main restriction and for reasons of historical systematics, Estermann, Freudenthal, and Müntz do not appear in the list of emigrants (Appendix 1 [1.1]). The Nazi seizure of power did not deprive them of an existing, immediate chance of returning to Germany or of a very important professional position, as it did for von Neumann. Freudenthal, who supported many a refugee from Germany before 1940, shared the fate of other non-German emigrants in other occupied countries. After the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940 he had to go into hiding. Müntz, however, was expelled without the right to a pension from his professorship in Leningrad in 1937 (a professorship once occupied by P. L. Chebyshev), because he had retained his German citizenship and because tension between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was growing. As both Freudenthal and Müntz were German-speaking and because Müntz was potentially threatened in Sweden and therefore tried to get to the United States, both of them are included as borderline cases in the list of persecuted German-speaking mathematicians (Appendix 1 [1.3]). Other borderline cases are Robert Frucht and Karl Menger. Frucht left Berlin in 1930 for economic reasons and became an actuary in Italian Trieste. He can be considered an "early emigrant," but also a part of the forced German-speaking emigration after 1933, since he had to leave Italy in 1938 when the racial laws were passed. Also Menger can be categorized both as an early and a forced emigrant, as the discussion in chapter 3 will show. I decided, however, not to include Henri A. Jordan (1902-?) among the forced emigrants, because he went from Germany to Italy in 1930, where he was dismissed in Rome for reasons of restriction of staff at the International Institute for Educational Cinematography (League of Nations) in December 1933.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables xiiiPreface xvii
Chapter 1: The Terms "German-Speaking Mathematician," "Forced," and "Voluntary Emigration" 1
Chapter 2: The Notion of "Mathematician" Plus Quantitative Figures on Persecution 13
Chapter 3: Early Emigration 30
3.1. The Push-Factor 32
3.2. The Pull-Factor 36
3.D. Documents 40
3.D.1. The Economic Troubles in German Science as a Stimulus to Emigration 40
3.D.2. National Isolation, Xenophobia, and Anti-Semitism as European Phenomena 42
3.D.3. Personal Risks with Early Emigration 45
3.D.4. The Ambiguous Interconnection between Social Hierarchies, Traditions at Home, and Internationalization in Mathematics 46
3.D.5. The American Interest in Immigration (Pull-Factor) 47
3.D.6. The Start of Economic Problems in America around 1930 Foreshadowing Later Problems Incurred during Forced Emigration 51
3.S. Case Studies 52
3.S.1. The Failed Appointments of C. Carathéodory and S. Bochner at Harvard 52
3.S.2. Early Emigration from Austria as Exemplified by Karl Menger 53
3.S.3. The Problems of Early Emigration as Exemplified by Hermann Weyl 56
Chapter 4: Pretexts, Forms, and the Extent of Emigration and Persecution 59
4.1. The Nazi Policy of Expulsion 60
4.2. The Political Position of Mathematicians, Affected and Unaffected by Persecution 66
4.D. Documents 72
4.D.1. The Pseudo-Legalism of the Methods of Expulsion 72
4.D.2. Student Boycotts as a Means of Expelling Unwanted Docents 72
4.D.3. The Racist "German Mathematics" (Deutsche Mathematik) of Ludwig Bieberbach as an Ideology Supportive of the Expulsions 73
4.D.4. Personal Denunciations as Instruments of Expulsion 73
4.D.5. Political Reasons for Emigration beyond Anti-Semitism 77
4.D.6. Cheating Emigrants out of Their Pensions 79
4.D.7. Increasing Restrictions Imposed upon "Non-Aryan" Students 80
4.D.8. Political Position of Emigrants before 1933: German Nationalism, Illusions, and General Lack of Prescience 80
4.D.9. First Reactions by the Victims: Readiness to Compromise and to Justify, Adoption of the Martyr's Role 83
4.D.10. The Partial Identity of Interests between the Regime and the "Unaffected" German Mathematicians 86
4.D.11. Reactions to the Expulsions from Abroad 88
Chapter 5: Obstacles to Emigration out of Germany after 1933, Failed Escape, and Death 90
5.D. Documents 92
5.D.1. Obstacles to Emigration from Germany 92
5.D.2. Unsuccessful Attempts at Emigration, Mathematicians Murdered 94
Chapter 6: Alternative (Non-American) Host Countries 102
6.D. Documents and Problems Pertaining to the Various--Often Temporary--Host Countries outside of the United States 104
Chapter 7: Diminishing Ties with Germany and Self-Image of the Refugees 149
7.D. Documents 152
7.D.1. Concern for the Fate of Relatives Left Behind 152
7.D.2. The Emotional Ties to Germany and to German Mathematics on the Part of the Emigrants 153
7.D.3. Maintenance and Gradual Restriction of the Emigrants' Personal and Scientific Relations to Germany 156
7.D.4. Conflicting Opinions on Mathematicians Remaining in Germany and on Those Who Returned in Spite of Chances Abroad 157
7.D.5. Political Information, Caution, and Self-Censorship in the Contact between Emigrants and Mathematicians Remaining in Germany 160
7.D.6. Condemnation of Former Colleagues' Commitment to the Nazis by Emigrants 162
7.D.7. Self-Selection by Emigrants 165
7.S. Case Studies 167
7.S.1. Richard Courant's Gradual Estrangement from Germany 167
7.S.2. Concern for the Future of German Applied Mathematics and the Young Generation: Richard von Mises and Theodor von Kármán Supporting Walter Tollmien's Return to Germany 171
7.S.3. Controversial Judgments about the Return of an Established Mathematician to Germany: Eberhard Hopf 175
7.S.4. The Lack of Demarcation toward Mathematicians Remaining in Germany: The Example of Gumbel's Only Partially Successful Book Free Science (1938) 176
7.S.5. The Aftereffects of Previous Political Conflicts in Emigration: The Case Rudolf Lüneburg 180
Chapter 8: The American Reaction to Immigration: Help and Xenophobia 186
8.1. General Trends in American Immigration Policies 186
8.2. Consequences for the Immigration of Scholars 189
8.3. The Relief Organizations, Particularly in the United States 192
8.D. Documents 204
8.D.1. Competition on the American Job Market and Attempts to Keep the Immigrants away from America 204
8.D.2. "Selection" of Immigrants to Be Promoted and Bureaucratic Obstacles on the Part of the Americans 205
8.D.3. Special Problems for Female Immigrants 207
8.D.4. Political Mistrust on the American Side 207
8.D.5. The Priority of Private Foundations and Pure Research Institutions in Helping the Immigrants 208
8.D.6. The Restricted Scope and Possibilities Available to the German Mathematicians' Relief Fund 209
8.D.7. Further Motives for Xenophobia: Mental Borders, Anti-Semitism, Differences in the Science Systems, Professional Jealousy 210
8.D.8. Decline of Xenophobia in Connection with Political Events on the Eve of World War II 213
8.S. Case Studies 214
8.S.1. The Case of the Female Emigrant Emmy Noether 214
8.S.2. A Case of the Exploitation of Immigrants by an Engineer at Cornell (M. G. Malti) 217
8.S.3 Five Case Studies about Academic Anti-Semitism in the USA 218
8.S.3.1. Consideration of anti-Semitism in the policies of the relief organizations 218
8.S.3.2. Examples of American nationalist and racist propaganda aimed at immigrants 219
8.S.3.3. Problems in relationships between assimilated (in particular baptized) and Orthodox Jews in America 219
8.S.3.4. The anti-Semitism of George David Birkhoff 223
8.S.3.5. Declining academic anti-Semitism in the USA after 1945 228
Chapter 9: Acculturation, Political Adaptation, and the American Entrance into the War 230
9.1. General Problems of Acculturation 231
9.2. Political Adaptation 233
9.3. Problems of Adaptation in Teaching and Research 235
9.4. Age-Related Problems and Pensions 236
9.5. The Influence of War Conditions 236
9.D. Documents 237
9.D.1. The General Requirement of "Adaptability" 237
9.D.2. Problems Arising from the Loss of Status Due to Emigration and from the Widespread Principle of Seniority in Academic Promotions 240
9.D.3. Different Traditions in Teaching and Unfamiliar Teaching Loads 242
9.D.4. Extraordinary Solutions for Outstanding Immigrants 243
9.D.5. Individualistic European versus Cooperative American Working Style 245
9.D.6. Problems of Moral Prudishness in the United States: The Extreme Case of Carl Ludwig Siegel 247
9.D.7. Language Problems 248
9.D.8. The Need for Publications in the Language of the Host Country 248
9.D.9. Support by Immigrants for Economic and Social Reform, in Particular for New Deal Positions 249
9.D.10. Pressure to Adapt Politically and Political Mistrust against Immigrants on the Part of the Americans 250
9.D.11. Waning Political Restraint on Immigrants after Obtaining American Citizenship and the Impact of the American Entrance into the War 252
9.D.12. Personal Failure of Immigrants in the United States, Due to Age- and Pension-Related Problems 257
9.S. Case Studies 259
9.S.1. The Tragic Fate of a Political Emigrant: Emil Julius Gumbel 259
9.S.2. A Case of Failed Accommodation by an Older Immigrant: Felix Bernstein 262
Chapter 10: The Impact of Immigration on American Mathematics 267
10.1. The "Impact of Immigration" Viewed from Various Global, Biographical, National, or Nonmathematical Perspectives 270
10.2. The Institutional and Organizational Impact 276
10.3. The Impact of German-Speaking Immigration in Applied Mathematics 278
10.4. The Inner-Mathematical Impact of German-Speaking Immigration on the United States 284
10.5. The Impact of the "Noether School" and of German Algebra in General 285
10.6. Differences in Mentality, the History and Foundations of Mathematics 294
10.D. Documents 296
10.D.1. The Heterogeneity of the "German-Speaking" Emigration, in Particular Differences between German and Austrian Traditions in Mathematics 296
10.D.2. Losses for Germany 297
10.D.3. The Profits of Emigration for International Communication 297
10.D.4. Impact of the Institutional Side of German Mathematics (Educational System, Libraries) 298
10.D.5. The Development of New Mathematical Centers in the United States 298
10.D.6. Inner-Mathematical Impact on Individual Disciplines 300
10.S. Case Studies 310
10.S.1. The Failure of Richard Brauer's Book on Algebra in 1935, or the Paradoxical Victory of "Talmudic Mathematics" Due to Nazi Rule 310
10.S.2. Late American Criticism of "German Algebra," a Controversy between Garrett Birkhoff and B. L. van der Waerden in the 1970s and Commentary by G.-C. Rota in 1989 315
Chapter 11: Epilogue: The Postwar Relationship of German and American Mathematicians 319
11.D. Documents 327
11.D.1. The New Wave of Emigration after the War 327
11.D.2. Remigration and Obstacles to It 327
11.D.3. Resumption of Scientific Communication 328
11.D.4. Compensation for the Emigrants 329
11.D.5. Political "Coping with the Past" ("Vergangenheitsbewältigung") 331
11.S. Case Study 337
11.S.1. A Case of Failed Compensation: Max Dehn 337
Appendix 1: Lists of Emigrated (after 1933), Murdered, and Otherwise Persecuted German-Speaking Mathematicians
(as of 2008) 341
1.1. List of German-Speaking Mathematicians Who
Emigrated during the Nazi Period (First Generation) 343
1.2. List of German-Speaking Mathematicians Who Were Murdered or Driven to Suicide by the Nazis 358
1.3. List of German-Speaking Mathematicians Persecuted in Other Manners (Includes Teachers of Mathematics and Is Probably Incomplete) 360
Appendix 2: Excerpt from a Letter by George David Birkhoff rom Paris (1928) to His Colleague-Mathematicians at Harvard Concerning the Possibility of or Desirability to Hire Foreigners 366
Appendix 3.1: Report Compiled by Harald Bohr "Together with Different German Friends" in May 1933 Concerning the Present Conditions in German Universities, in Particular with Regard to Mathematics and Theoretical Physics 368
Appendix 3.2: Translation of a Letter from Professor Karl Lowner of the University of Prague to Professor Louis L. Silverman (Dartmouth College) Dated August 2, 1933 372
Appendix 3.3: Richard von Mises's "Position toward the Events of Our Time" in November 1933 374
Appendix 3.4: Report by Artur Rosenthal (Heidelberg) from June 1935 on the Boycott of His and Heinrich Liebmann's Mathematical Courses 376
Appendix 3.5: Max Pinl--Later the Author of Pioneering Reports (1969-72) on Mathematical Refugees--in a Letter to Hermann Weyl on the Situation in Czechoslovakia Immediately after the Munich Dictate of September 29, 1938 378
Appendix 4.1: A Letter by Emmy Noether of January 1935 to the Emergency Committee in New York Regarding Her Scientific and Political Interests during Emigration 380
Appendix 4.2: Richard Courant's Resignation from the German Mathematicians'Association DMV in 1935 381
Appendix 4.3: Von Mises in His Diary about His Second Emigration, from Turkey to the USA, in 1939 383
Appendix 4.4: Hermann Weyl to Harlow Shapley on June 5, 1943, Concerning the Problems of the Immigrant from Gottingen, Felix Bernstein 388
Appendix 5.1: Richard Courant in October 1945 to the American Authorities Who Were Responsible for German Scientific Reparation 390
Appendix 5.2: Max Dehn's Refusal to Rejoin the German Mathematicians' Association DMV in 1948 393
Appendix 6: Memoirs for My Children (1933/1988) by Peter Thullen 394
Archives, Unprinted Sources, and Their Abbreviations 415
References 421
Photographs Index and Credits 445
Subject Index 449
Name Index 461
What People are Saying About This
This is an excellent book.
— Karen Parshall, University of Virginia
"The book is heavily based on primary archival sources that have not been analyzed before. Many people will profit from its illuminating discussions of the material."—Leo Corry, Tel Aviv University"This is an excellent book."—Karen Parshall, University of Virginia
The book is heavily based on primary archival sources that have not been analyzed before. Many people will profit from its illuminating discussions of the material.
— Leo Corry, Tel Aviv University