in a European spirit. While few American historians believed in a straight line from Luther or Frederick the Great to Hitler, most were indeed convinced that their German colleagues had to reconsider the course of modern German history. In addition, quite a few thought that a broader European instead of a strictly national perspective was now the order of the day. By the late 1950s the Institut fu¨r Europa¨ische Geschichte had become an institution where American scholars saw these needs fulfilled.3
American historians of modern Germany played an important role in the reconstitution of the German historical profession during the immediate postwar years, either as active participants or as attentive observers. In some cases, Americans had come into contact with Germany through their military service; in other instances émigré historians took a lively interest in the postwar development of West Germany as well as of the German historical profession.4 In addition, some German scholars approached their American colleagues, either reestablishing older ties or reorienting themselves under drastically altered circumstances.
These postwar tendencies illustrate that German history no longer “belonged” to German historians alone. German scholars began to realize that they could not ignore American—as well as other foreign—views on their past. By no means did these academics immediately shed their defensive and nationalist attitudes. Accordingly, well into the early 1960s some maintained that a foreign historian was unable to properly interpret German history. But even the most conservative West Germans realized that their American colleagues were not a quantité negligeable anymore, and that it was preferable to engage in a dialogue with them.
This chapter first explores the West German historical profession’s institutional and personal development between 1945 and the early 1960s. It then traces the ways in which German historians tackled topics related to the rise of National Socialism and how their American colleagues perceived and responded to these efforts. Yet before one can assess the consequences of the postwar changes and the significance of the transatlantic contacts for the West German historical profession, it is necessary to briefly consider the discipline’s trajectory during the Nazi years. For 1945 did not mark a Stunde Null (“zero hour” or tabula rasa) for German society, and the same was true for the historical profession. Only then is it possible to evaluate the reconstitution of the profession immediately after World War II.
The Nazi Years
Following the establishment of the Nazi regime, few university historians joined the Nazi Party, which for some of them later served as proof of the profession’s intellectual independence from the regime. Yet as was the case in German society at large, many historians shared at least some National Socialist values and goals without being completely—and formally—committed to the regime.5 Gerhard Ritter provides an excellent case in point: at the end of World War II, Ritter was imprisoned by the Gestapo because of his contacts with a resistance circle. At the same time, Ritter’s biography of Frederick the Great, published in 1936, contained passages with only thinly veiled approval of Nazi foreign policies.6 Even Friedrich Meinecke’s record is somewhat mixed: in 1935, he was removed from the editorship of Historische Zeitschrift because of his distance from the Nazi regime. Yet he welcomed the Anschluss of Austria in 1938 and when he celebrated the German victory over France in 1940 as vindication for the harsh Treaty of Versailles, he also seemed to have reconsidered his general attitude toward the Nazis.7 While most German historians, like their academic colleagues in other fields, objected to the primitive style of National Socialism, they still agreed with considerable parts of the Nazi Party’s political platform, which illustrates the overlap of various forms of conservatism and neoconservatism with National Socialism.8
Even during the Weimar Republic, as Wolfgang J. Mommsen has emphasized, historians had “a strong tendency to denounce the Weimar system as alien to the German historical tradition and imposed by the victorious Western powers against the wishes of the majority of Germans.”9 In addition, while generally not militantly anti-Semitic, the historical discipline had traditionally been unwilling to grant Jewish scholars access to professorships. During the 1920s, conditions for them had improved slightly, but Meinecke, who supported a significant number of Jewish students, was still exceptional.10 The case of Meinecke’s student Gerhard Masur reveals the difficulties that scholars of Jewish origins were facing: Masur had been born to parents of Jewish background who had converted to Protestantism. After World War I, Masur joined the antirepublican and antidemocratic Freikorps, and in 1920 he participated in the Kapp Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the parliamentary Weimar democracy. Thus Masur fit well into the interwar historical profession politically (as he did methodologically). Nevertheless, in 1927 the University of Frankfurt am Main rejected his Habilitation, blocking his path to a professorship, on anti-Semitic grounds (it was ultimately accepted at the University of Berlin in 1930).11
Compared to other academic disciplines, because of the small number of Jewish scholars the historical profession’s “Aryanization” had limited personal consequences. The Nazi regime had to dismiss only three professors of medieval and modern history—Ernst Kantorowicz, Hans Rothfels, and Richard Salomon. The numbers in ancient and legal history were slightly higher, as the less politicized nature of these subfields had allowed more Jewish scholars to receive professorships.12 While the number of them remained negligible, the purge ensuing after 1933 affected not only historians already holding professorships but also, and mostly, those in the advanced stages of their academic training and those who were teaching as Privatdozenten (post-Habilitation adjunct lecturers). Fritz T. Epstein, a specialist in Russian history, was forced to emigrate just after completing his Habilitation, which he could no longer submit after the establishment of the Nazi regime. To name but a few, Hans Baron and Dietrich Gerhard taught as Privatdozenten; Felix Gilbert, Edgar Rosen, and George W. F. Hallgarten had received their PhDs but not yet finished their second book.
Notable changes after 1933 also included the editorships of some scholarly journals. Karl Alexander von Müller, a committed National Socialist, who proclaimed in his first editorial note that “the historical profession does not come empty-handed to the new German state and its youth,” replaced Friedrich Meinecke as editor of Historische Zeitschrift.13 His role in the Gleichschaltung (coordination) of the profession’s leading journal did not keep Müller from being honored by one of his students in the same journal after 1945.14 Like Meinecke, Wilhelm Mommsen, the father of the historian twins Hans and Wolfgang J. Mommsen, lost his position as editor of Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, as he was deemed politically unreliable.15
Despite these changes, the Nazi regime did not completely succeed in its attempted Gleichschaltung of the German historical profession, and this failure resulted from differences in style and content alike. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of historians found themselves in at least partial agreement with Nazi policies, and the failure to bring them in line did not have profoundly negative consequences for the regime. This ambivalence created a complicated legacy for the profession in the Federal Republic, because it seemed not to require as drastic a restructuring as other areas.
With few exceptions, the profession survived denazification relatively unscathed. Twenty-four academics temporarily lost their positions, but, as Winfried Schulze has argued, this was less surprising than the swift reintegration of many of them.16 The return of compromised colleagues often depended more on sheer luck or political and professional connections than the degree of complicity. Wilhelm Mommsen lost his chair at the University of Marburg, while Percy Ernst Schramm and Egmont Zechlin soon resumed their positions. Politically “clean” historians were often more than happy to vouch for their “tainted” colleagues. Fritz Wagner, who like Theodor Schieder had received his PhD under Karl Alexander von Müller, and whose distance from the Nazi regime prevented him from obtaining a chair during World War II, provided a Persilschein (an unofficial yet often decisive statement) for Schieder.17 For most German historians a shared sense of belonging to an academic community outweighed political differences.
