Synopses & Reviews
The history of American universities is punctuated by shifts in the terms on which the mission of higher education is defined and debated. A dramatic moment with lasting effects came with the introduction of German-speaking exile intellectuals in the Hitler era. In Germany, the academic culture of the early twentieth century was torn by the struggle between Wissenschaft and Bildung, two symbolic German terms, whose lack of precise English equivalents is a sign of the different configuration in America. The studies in this book examine the achievements of numerous influential émigré intellectuals against the background of their mediation between the two cultural traditions in science and liberal studies. In showing the richness of reciprocal influences, the book challenges claims about the disruptive influence of exile culture on the American mind.
Synopsis
In a series of studies,
Exile, Science, and Bildung examines the effects on American academic culture of the German conflict between disciplinary rigor and humanistic cultivation, as this is mediated through the remarkably influential exile intellectuals of the 1930s.
About the Author
David Kettler is Scholar in Residence, Bard College, and Professor Emeritus, Trent University.
Gerhard Lauer is Professor, University of Goettingen.
Table of Contents
The Other Germany and the Question of Bildung: Weimar To Bonn--David Kettler and Gerhard Lauer * The Legacy of the George Circle--Ernst Osterkamp * Walter Benjamin's "Secret Germany"--Irving Wohlfarth * Unattached Intellectuals with Hidden Ties: The Surrealists and the Institut für Sozialforschung In Exile in the United States--Laurent Jeanpierre * A Humanist Program in Exile: Thomas Mann in Philosophical Correspondence with His Contemporaries--Reinhard Mehring * Watermarks of the Reich: Erich Kahler in Exile--Gerhard Lauer * Bildung as Reproblematization or Deproblematization: Max Weber, Erich von Kahler, and Helmuth Plessner--Reinhard Laube * Science and Cultural Interpretation: A Post-Exilic Retrospective of Cassirer and Heidegger at Davos--Gregory B. Moynahan * Paul Oskar Kristeller, Ernst Cassirer, and the "Humanistic Turn" in American Emigration--Kay Schiller * The Reparation of Dead Souls-Siegfried Kracauer's Archimedean Exile-The Prophetic Journey from Death to Bildung--Jerry Zaslove * An Exile's Career from Budapest through Weimar to Chicago: László Moholy-Nagy--Anna Wessely * From Bildung to Planning: Karl Mannheim in Exile--Colin Loader * "Political Culturalism"?: Adornos "Entrance" in the Cultural Concert of the Westgerman Postwar History--Alfons Söllner * Horkheimer, Adorno, and the Significance of Antisemitism: The Exile Years--Jack Jacobs * Not-Such-Odd Couples: Paul Lazarsfeld and the Horkheimer Circle on Morningside Heights--Thomas Wheatland * Negotiating Exile: Franz L. Neumann and Political Bildung--David Kettler