Drawing on family papers, wide-ranging interviews, FBI files, American and German newspapers, a wide array of published sources, and her own memories, the author traces Harry Marks’s German American heritage, his education both formal and informal, his marriage to a fellow Communist from a poor Russian family, his rocky start as an academic, his anguish when con-fronted by his Communist past, and his ultimate creation of a satisfying career.
“Rude Awakenings is a must read for students of 20th-century political and intellectual history. It tells the story of Harry J. Marks, who, after witnessing the tragic rise of Nazism in Hitler's Germany, embraced Communism because he saw the USSR as the leading anti-fascist force in the world. Equally gripping is the story of Marks’s disillusionment with Communism and his decision to “name names” when, as a history professor in the McCarthy era, he was summoned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify about his radical past.”–Robert Cohen, Professor of History and Social Studies Education,New York University.
“Based on a unique treasure trove of family letters and diaries, this biography interweaves the intellectual trajectory of a well-connected American academic with his observations and ideological responses to a most dramatic period of German history and European-American relations from the early 1930s to the 1960s. This book will be read and pondered with much profit not only by scholars and college students, but also by those who continue to find the insights to be gained in retrospect from the tragedies of the 20th century indispensable for an understanding of our contemporary predicament.”–Volker R. Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University.
“Of particular interest is Carol Sicherman’s carefully researched description of the anti-Semitic atmosphere that Jewish students encountered at Harvard in the twenties and thirties, as well as the experience of a young American thrown into the turmoil accompanying the collapse of Germany’s democracy and the appeal of Communism as an alternative to Nazism.”–Curt F. Beck, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Connecticut.
Carol Sicherman taught in the English Departments of Cornell University and Lehman College of the City University of New York. Her publications include: Thomas Traherne’s Christian Ethicks, ed.; Becoming an African University: Makerere 1922-2000. The reference works Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: The Making of a Rebel and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources won the Conover-Porter Award of the African Studies Association in 1992. She has published many articles on Renaissance and African literatures and on higher education in East Africa. She lives in Oakland, California.
Rude Awakenings
An American Historian’s Encounters with Nazism, Communism, and McCarthyism
Carol Sicherman
Washington, DC
Copyright © 2011 by Carol Sicherman
New Academia Publishing, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.
Published in eBook format by New Academia Publishing
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9855-6988-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011939247
ISBN 978-0-9836899-8-0 paperback (alk. paper)
New Academia Publishing
PO Box 27420, Washington, DC 20038-7420
[email protected] www.newacademia.com
For Harry’s further descendants
Miriam Sicherman
Noemi Sicherman
Una Yoorim Sicherman Rose
Acknowledgments
A number of people have been vital to my work on this book, which originates in the papers of Harry J. Marks, my father. The family of Ernest Engelberg, an age-mate and friend in Harry’s Berlin days, has been generous with hospitality and information. A visit in 2005 to Engelberg, then ninety-six years old, his son (Achim), and wife (Waltraut) gave powerful impetus to the research. Achim later made a gift of his book about German refugee intellectuals who returned to Germany. Engelberg’s biographer, Mario Kessler, also provided useful information. Relatives and friends of other people whom Harry knew in Berlin have also been generous with their knowledge. Dorothee Gottschalk–the widow of Lutz (Ludwig) Gottschalk, whom Harry had known in Berlin–contributed her knowledge of the Gottschalk family and some of their friends. Michael Freyhan contributed knowledge of the Freyhan family. David Sanford and Irene Hirschbach gave information on the Hirschbach family, and Irene sent two unpublished biographical essays by her late husband, Ernest Hirschbach. As time went on, I came to know (electronically) Peter-Thomas Walther of Humboldt University, Gottfried Niedhart of Mannheim University, and Daniel Becker, all of whom have shared their learning.
Other people have been generous in giving me information. Harry’s late cousins, Margaret Marks and Hannah Bildersee, sent me family history twenty-five years before I dreamed of this project. Cousins of my generation, Mary Misrahi Rancatore and Julienne Misrahi Barnett, supplied additional information. When I interviewed my mother’s oldest surviving sibling, Vida Castaline, in the mid-1970s, I had no idea that I would later rely on her remarkably detailed recall of life in Russia and, later, in Boston. Sidney Lipshires, who had been a Communist official in Massachusetts and, later, Harry’s doctoral student, knew valuable details about Harry’s Communist past. Curt Beck, whose long career at the University of Connecticut (UConn) overlapped Harry’s, offered additional information about the 1950s. Emanuel Margolis, a victim of McCarthyism at UConn, was kind enough to recall those painful days with a frankness that took my breath away. Bruce Stave, also of UConn, had just finished his excellent history of the university when I began my work and helpfully answered questions. Ellen Schrecker sent the spare but illuminating notes that she made when she interviewed Harry in 1979 for No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. Miriam Schneir gave invaluable advice at the end of the process and suggested the title. Lily Munford, Peter Schaefer, and Waltraut Engelberg helped transliterate the old German script in which most of Grete Meyer’s letters and some of the other Berlin letters were written, as well as short notes written in German by my maternal grandmother’s family. Lily, in addition to doing the lion’s share of transliteration, undertook the considerable task of translating the Meyer letters. At the very beginning, Ingrid Finnan translated three of Engelberg’s letters and insisted that I could do the other three, thus giving me an incentive to revive my college German; at the very end, she provided essential expertise in preparing the photographs for publication. Except for the Meyer letters and those that Ingrid translated, translations of letters from the Berlin friends are my own, as are any otherwise unascribed translations. Michiel Nijhoff helped with Dutch. Members of H-German, the HNet discussion group on German history, advised a trespasser in their realm.
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