European and Latin American Social Scientists: As Refugees

European and
Latin American
Social Scientists
as Refugees,
Émigrés and
Return-Migrants
EDITED BY LUDGER PRIES

AND PABLO YANKELEVICH
European and Latin American Social Scientists
as Refugees, Émigrés and Return‐Migrants
Ludger Pries · Pablo Yankelevich
Editors
European and
Latin American
Social Scientists as
Refugees, Émigrés and
Return‐Migrants
Editors
Ludger Pries Pablo Yankelevich
Ruhr-Universität Bochum El Colegio de México
Bochum, Germany Mexico City, Mexico
ISBN 978-3-319-99264-8 ISBN 978-3-319-99265-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5
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Contents
1 Exile Dynamics and Impacts of European Social

Scientists Since the 1930s: Transnational Lives and
Travelling Theories at El Colegio de México and the
New School for Social Research in New York 1
Ludger Pries
2 Crossroads: US and Mexican Reactions to Repression

in Europe 1930–1939 23
Katrin Möbius and Sascha Möbius
3 Reflections on the New School’s Founding Moments,

1919 and 1933 69
Ira Katznelson
4 Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social

Research in New York After 1933: Intellectual Transfer
and Impact 83
Claus-Dieter Krohn
5 “Agents” of “Westernization”?: The Impact of German

Refugees of the Nazi Regime 111
Alfons Söllner
v
vi Contents
6 The Holocaust and German-Jewish Culture in Exile 131

Enzo Traverso
7 Waves of Exile: The Reception of Émigrés in Mexico,

1920–1980 151
Pablo Yankelevich
8 International Rescue of Academics, Intellectuals and

Artists from Nazism During the Second World War:
The Experience of Mexico 181
Daniela Gleizer
9 The Institutional Reception of Spanish Émigré

Intellectuals in Mexico: The Pioneering Role
of La Casa de España, 1938–1940 205
Clara E. Lida
10 Two Aspects of Exile 221

Martí Soler
11 José Gaos and José Medina Echavarría: The Intellectual

Vocation 235
Andrés Lira
12 The Constitution of Sociology at El Colegio de México:

Two Key Intellectual Cohorts of Refugees and the
Legacies They Left for Mexico and Latin America 261
Arturo Alvarado
13 Comparing Contexts, Institutions and Periods of the

Émigrés’ Arrival and Possible Return 285
Ludger Pries and Pablo Yankelevich
Index 297
Contributors
Arturo Alvarado, El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico

Daniela Gleizer, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
City, Mexico
Ira Katznelson, Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA
Claus-Dieter Krohn, Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany
Clara E. Lida, El Colegio de México, Mexico, Mexico
Andrés Lira, El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico
Katrin Möbius, Chihuahua, Mexico
Sascha Möbius, Chihuahua, Mexico
Ludger Pries, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Martí Soler, Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico City,
Mexico
Alfons Söllner,
Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz,
Germany
Enzo Traverso, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Pablo Yankelevich, El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 The New School for Social Research Building in New York 84
Fig. 4.2 Fresco in the New School by the Mexican painter José
Clemente Orosco 85
Fig. 4.3 Clipping from The New York Times on The University in Exile 87
Fig. 4.4 Alvin Johnson 89
Fig. 4.5 Emil Lederer 1937 92
Fig. 4.6 Gerhard Colm 1960’s 93
Fig. 4.7 Jacob Marschak 1970 95
Fig. 4.8 Hans Staudinger 96
Fig. 4.9 Arnold Brecht 1973 with German chancellor Willy Brandt 97
Fig. 4.10 The state department of social welfare’s translation
of Emil Lederer’s earlier studies 99
Fig. 4.11 Program of a symposium organized at the New School by
the University of Exile 102
ix
List of Tables
Table 1.1 Four ideal-types of international migrants 9

Table 13.1 Institutional aspects of founding the New School
and Colmex 287
Table 13.2 Intertwining institutional and individual aspects 291
xi
CHAPTER 1
Exile Dynamics and Impacts of European

Social Scientists Since the 1930s:
Transnational Lives and Travelling Theories
at El Colegio de México and the New
School for Social Research in New York
Ludger Pries
Recent refugee movements not only from the Near and Middle East
towards Europe, but also from Central America to Mexico and the
USA shed a light on the topic of people, who have to flee their coun-
try of residence because they are victims of political, ethnic, religious or
gender persecution and organised violence. Since the beginning of the
twenty-first century, global numbers of refugees and displaced persons
increased by fifty percent, from 40 to more than 60 million. In Syria and
Iraq, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Somalia and Eritrea, and also in
El Salvador and Guatemala, not only people from the poorer or lower
classes are affected, but also academics, politicians and intellectuals.
L. Pries (*) 
Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
e-mail: ludger.pries@rub.de
© The Author(s) 2019 1

L. Pries and P. Yankelevich (eds.), European and Latin American
Social Scientists as Refugees, Émigrés and Return‐Migrants,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_1
2 L. PRIES
Given the dramatic situation of forced migration, relatively little atten-

tion is given to this issue in public opinion and politics. There often
prevails a general consternation, but when it comes to considering the
need to act, the NIMBY-principle—Not In My Back Yard—is widely
predominant. In academia, the topic is handled quite marginally as well.
Some solidarity initiatives to safeguard and receive scientists and scholars
are running, but only few general initiatives and little specific research
is done. Especially for the field of scientists, intellectuals, writers, artists
and other persons engaged in the cultural or political sector, the absence
of scientific and moral engagement is disconcerting. This reveals a short
or even lack of memory, because some eighty years ago, scholars and
intellectuals—besides others—had to flee Germany, Austria and other
European countries due to political, religious, gender and racial persecu-
tion carried out by the Nazi-regime, especially the extermination of the
Jews. Likewise, since the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936,
politicians, unionists, scientists and others were forced to go into exile
from Spain.1
Since the 1930s, there were considerable activities to rescue exiled
scholars and intellectuals, not only in the United Kingdom and the
USA, but also in Mexico, Turkey and other countries.2 Scientific founda-
tions offered special programs for exiled scientists, Academic Assistance
Councils were organised and universities and other scientific institutions
opened specific programs to receive and integrate exiled scientists in their
faculties. By these means, thousands of intellectuals could survive physi-
cally, economically and socio-psychologically. A lot of research has been
done on these historical cases of refuge and exile of these groups of per-
sons, especially related to the case of those fleeing the Nazi regime in
Germany or the Franco regime in Spain.3
Two highly prestigious places of academic research and teaching
in social sciences and humanities in general, nowadays, are The New
School for Social Research in New York City and El Colegio de México
(Colmex) in Mexico City. There already exists a lot of literature on
the history of each of these institutions and the role of exiled scholars
in their evolution. But no systematic comparison of these cases of the
New School and the Colmex from a perspective of more recent histor-
ical and social science approaches, namely, that of transnationalism and
of travelling theories, has been done. This book compares the develop-
ment of both institutions in light of the impact of refugee scholars, and
the impact that forced migration had on the academic work of renowned
1 EXILE DYNAMICS AND IMPACTS OF EUROPEAN SOCIAL SCIENTISTS … 3
scholars. Two approaches help to shed new light on the topic: transna-
tionalism and travelling theories.
The approach of transnationalism and transnationalisation is based on
a critical reflection on the so-called methodological nationalism. It could
be defined as “the assumption that the nation/the state/the society is
the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer
and Glick Schiller 2002, p. 302). In line with this assumption, national
societies have boundaries that are naturally defined by geographic-ter-
ritorial boundaries and which are controlled by nation-states. This con-
cept of methodological nationalism forged the analysis and understanding
of social structures and classes, of social action and identities, of inter-
national migration and of social integration. The national society in its
nation state-defined territory was considered the prominent unit of anal-
ysis in social sciences which could be taken for granted. There was lit-
tle conceptual margin for social spaces beyond the national societies or
for identities and belongings spanning several nation states or specific
socio-ethno-cultural spaces.4
In line with this conceptual frame, migration in general and exile
migration in particular were predominantly analysed and explained in
terms of either emigration and the process of establishing in a new coun-
try of arrival or Diaspora-suffering and return migration to the country
of departure. As will be shown in the following section, the transnation-
alism approach leaves room for a more differentiated analysis and under-
standing of migration and integration of refugees and exiled persons. It
allows to distinguish more types of forced migrants, e.g. by asking, How
do they manage their exile and their plans for future living and activities
between or beyond the options of decisive emigration or scheduled return
migration? Could they develop a transnational professional life of ‘cos-
mopolitans’ or transnational scholars without taking a clear decision for
either the country of departure or the country of arrival?
The second innovative perspective for the topic to deal with is trav-
elling theories. Mainly focusing on social and cultural sciences, it argues
that the topics and tools of scientific analysis and reflection are always
intertwined with the social, cultural, political and economic context they
are developed and working in. If theories—such as those dealing with
economic competition, state regimes or social inequality—which origi-
nated in one specific societal context, by means of textbooks or inter-
national scientific journals, ‘travel’ to another societal context, they will
necessarily be changed, adapted and assimilated. And the other way
4 L. PRIES
around: If the scientists who produce those theories shift from one
socio-cultural space to another, this will probably alter their theory pro-
duction. Whereas in natural science the societal context may not impact
as much on scientific activities (although sponsoring structures, societal
interests or socially perceived major societal problems will always exert
influence), in the areas of social or cultural sciences and the humanities
the specific themes to investigate, the theoretical framing and the meth-
ods are strongly determined by societal contexts.
Although this insight is not completely new, the approach of travel-
ling theories makes explicit the problem how theories and theorists are
affected by moving from one socio-geographic space to another. When
referring to the situation of exiled scientists, specific questions arise:
How are social theories of e.g. exiled German economists influenced and
changed when these persons have to flee from Germany to the United
Kingdom or the USA? How do these theories and theorists, when arriv-
ing in their new academic environment, influence on the new colleagues
and their corresponding theoretical concepts? For instance, how did the
Frankfurt School of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and others influence
the social science approaches and thinking in the USA and how did the
Frankfurt School itself change by the new setting’s influence? When the
Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School travelled back to Germany after
some twenty years of exile, mainly at the Columbia University in New
York, was it substantially the same as it was in 1933? How was it affected
by having travelled from Germany to the USA and back?
The approaches of transnationalism and travelling theories could
shed some new light on the already rich literature on German speaking
and Spanish scientists in exile in the USA and Mexico. In this broader
context, the New School and the Colmex are at the very centre of the
following chapters. This allows for a comparison of similarities and dif-
ferences between the two cases. The New School as well as the Colmex
were built up substantially by academic émigrés from Germany, Austria
and Spain. In both situations, social sciences and history were the main
founding disciplines. Both institutions nevertheless differ in many
aspects. Whereas the majority of Spanish academics at the Colmex had to
leave Spain due to their political orientations and engagement, almost all
German and Austrian academics arriving at the New School had to flee
their country because they were Jews (and in a second aspect that not
applied for all of them, because they were socialists or social democrats).5
Based on these general remarks, the guiding questions of this chap-

ter are threefold. First, how did European scientists manage their forced
migration and exile between the poles of, on the one hand, arriving,
assimilating and integrating into the new society and institutions and,
on the other hand, the orientation towards returning as soon as possible
to their countries of departure and their ‘lost home’? Second, what was
the impact of emigration on their theories and of their academic work on
the intellectual live in their regions of arrival and perhaps later in their
countries of departure? While the exodus of academics and intellectuals
during the 1930s and 1940s was, in the first place, a challenge and/or
drama for the individual forced migrants, it sometimes was considered an
opportunity and a benefit for the academia and sciences of the receiving
societies. Therefore, a third question refers to the ambiguities of academ-
ics’ exile between (individual) bane and (institutional) boon. These three
topics will be developed in the following sections.
Refugees Between Assimilation, Return Migration

and Transnational Lives
On the 7th of April of 1933, that is, just two month after the Nazi
regime had overtaken power in Germany, the “Law for the Restoration
of the Professional Civil Service” was published. It established “that all
members of the Jewish race (without regard to denominated affiliation)
in the civil service, in community corporate activities, other lawful public
bodies, as well as those employed on teaching staffs of private schools,
are to be discharged from duty until further notice” (cited according to
Rutkoff and Scott 1986, p. 91). In 1933 alone, “about 1200 academics
lost their jobs in Germany […]. This number was to grow by the end of
the 1930s to about 1700, to which another 400 university faculty were
added after the annexation of Austria” (Krohn 1993, p. 11). Including
artists and other professionals and not counting their family members
“about 12,000 intellectuals lost their jobs and were eliminated from
Germany’s social and cultural life” (ibid.). In total, since 1933, around
half a million persons had to flee the Nazi regime (Krohn 2011). In the
case of Spanish refugees fleeing the Franco troops during the Civil War,
some 440,000 were estimated at the end of 1939 in France with a total
number of 465,000 exiled persons.6
6 L. PRIES
By no means could these thousands of ‘forced migrants’ be consid-

ered as homogeneous group. As the reasons of their expulsion varied
from simply being Jews, over being politically ‘suspicious or danger-
ous’ to having a sexual orientation not allowed, their destinies and life
strategies abroad were quite diverse as well. In scientific literature, dif-
ferent terms and (stereo) types are used to characterise the identity and
self-concepts as well as destinies and life courses of these forced migrants.
As a general pattern, émigrés as forced migrants are described as feeling
the ambiguities and contradictions of their situation. On the one side,
they feel rescued and saved, on the other side they feel as strangers and
transient guests in their new environment. In her famous essay “We refu-
gees,” Hannah Arendt (1994, p. 110) wrote what could be thought as a
common denominator of exile:
We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our
occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this
world. We lost our language which means the naturalness of reactions, the
simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings.
Meanwhile, this might characterise the feelings and experiences of most

exiled persons, both from Germany and Spain, the exceptional situation
of the Jews as victims of what has to be considered the unique barba-
rism and the “banality of the evil” of the Nazi regime is reflected in the
sentence which Arendt adds to the foregoing: “We left our relatives in
the Polish ghettos and our best friends have been killed in concentra-
tion camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives.” The expe-
rience of the Jewish genocide causes Hannah Arendt to reject the term
refugee for her situation: “A refugee used to be a person driven to seek
refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held.
Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts and
most of us never dreamt of having any radical opinion” (Arendt 1994, p.
110). Whereas, on one side, Arendt (describes the common denominator
of the Jewish refugee experience, and on the other side, she mentions
the self-distinction and discrimination of subtypes of Jewish refugees
according to their countries of departure like France (Jaeckes) or eastern
Europe (Polakes).7
In the same way as Hanna Arendt was critical with the term refugee,
many of the forced migrants from Europe during the 1930s were not
happy with defining themselves as emigrants. The German poet and
writer Berthold Brecht, who had to flee from Germany in February 1933
because of his critical political work, questions the term “emigrant” in a
poem called “Concerning the Label Emigrant”. He argues that he never
emigrated voluntarily: “Merely, we fled. We were driven out, banned.
Not a home, but an exile, shall the land be that took us in” (Brecht
1987, p. 701). He claims that he, as a refugee, goes on to be interested
in the fate of friends and fellow campaigner. And he underlines that refu-
gees differ from emigrants by the wish of returning: “But none of us will
stay here. The final Word Is yet unspoken” (ibid.).
In this text, Brecht clearly defines himself as a refugee and exiled
person who by no means thinks of staying, but only of returning to his
country of departure and his former life as soon as possible. In his sem-
inal work on the German exile at the New School, Krohn distinguishes
three types of exiled intellectuals, mainly economists at the New School
that had to leave Germany and arrived in the USA, according to their
success or problems in integrating in the country of arrival. The first
type is described as “dynamic and creative individual who was able to
adjust to the new circumstances without apparent difficulty and to amal-
gamate the perspectives developed in Germany with the new experi-
ences encountered in America” (Krohn 1993, p. 181). The second type
includes all those individuals who were not able or willing to adapt,
assimilate or integrate into their new social and societal environment,
“who refused to make any concession to the new world in which they
found themselves” (Krohn 1993, p. 182). Meanwhile, the refugees of
the second type “always remained immune to new influences” (Krohn
1993, p. 182), while those of the third type did not integrate into the
US-American society and academy but got “increasingly disconnected
from concrete reality” (Krohn 1993, p. 182), turned more and more
from specific empirical and theoretical work to philosophical specula-
tions, became uprooted, alien to America and were in constant search
for identity (that those of the second type simply maintained from their
German experience). Although Krohn finds the three types of exiled per-
sons sketched out above, the main conceptual focus is on how the per-
sons manage to successfully adapt to the new circumstances:
It should be stressed here once more that these various problems repre-
sent exceptions in the adjustment process and occurred only in some indi-
viduals. The majority of the faculty did not experience such difficulties of
transition and readjustment. The common work of building up the faculty,
8 L. PRIES
obtaining a secure livelihood, and becoming integrated into American aca-

demic life required all available intellectual and emotional energies.8
This perspective on how refugees were able to adapt and integrate into
the new (national) society is predominant in classic studies. In an exten-
sive analysis on Austrian exiled intellectuals in the USA after 1933, the
guiding question is: “How did the expelled establish abroad? The first
and then repeated gaining ground is not a singular act, but a process,
that sometimes occurred fast, but often was time-consuming” (Fleck
2015, p. 16; see also pp. 401 ff.). The author tries to determine “the
explanandum ‘success abroad’” (Fleck 2015, p. 401). In light of the
referred dominant perspective of refugee and exile literature, the transna-
tionalism perspective could extend the conceptual framework.
Transnationalism research has increased since the 1990s and focuses
on the transnational social relations, networks and spaces spanning across
the borders of national ‘container societies’ and overcoming methodologi-
cal nationalism in a durable way (Khagram and Levitt 2007; Pries 2001;
Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). In this narrow sense, ‘transnational-
isation’ is used to refer to a specific form, or ideal type, of increasingly
international socialization processes; that is, processes which result in a
system of increasingly dense and relatively long-lasting social relation-
ships, social networks and social spaces that are rooted locally in differ-
ent national societies and have no common organising centre that would
provide for a common identity or common resources. During the last
twenty years, transnationalisation was studied in many fields, especially in
migration processes. Although mainly related to voluntary migration, the
approach could also be applied to forced migration and refuge.
In studies of international migration, typologies of migrants are
developed according to a great variety of criteria (such as reasons for
changing, personal characteristics of those who migrate, state poli-
cies etc.). Concerning the time horizon and the relation to the regions
of departure and arrival, three ideal-types of migrants are generally dis-
tinguished (even if other words are coined to identify them, see e.g.
Portes 1995; Massey et al. 1998): emigrants/immigrants (those who
move permanently from one place/national society/nation state to
another), return-migrants (those who go back permanently after a cer-
tain time spent abroad) and Diaspora-migrants (those who move mainly
for political, religious or organizational reasons and maintain loyalty
with their Diaspora group). Mainly in the context of globalization and
new communication technologies, a fourth ideal-type, the transmi-

grant or transnational migrant, gains conceptual and empirical weight.
Consequently, four ideal-types of international migrants could be distin-
guished through their specific relation to their region of departure and
the region of arrival, through their motivation for moving and the time
horizon of their migration decisions (Table 1.1).
An example that comes close to the ideal-type of emigrant/immi-
grant are the millions of Europeans who left their countries during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century heading towards the USA. In
search for better economic and socio-cultural conditions, they integrated
to the USA as their new homeland in a long term and unlimited per-
spective; they maintained manifold ties to their regions of departure as
the social and geographic space of their roots and ancestry—being aware
that these ties were increasingly linkages of historical reminiscence and
everyday farewell. In contrast, an ideal-typical return-migrant was the
European ‘guest worker’ of the 1960s and 1970s; his time horizon was
short term, limited to a period of some years in which he tried to earn
sufficient money, e.g. in order to be able to commence his own business
in the region of his departure; therefore, for him, the region of arrival
was just a host country to which he maintained social differences.
Table 1.1 Four ideal-types of international migrants
Relation Relation to Main impulse Time horizon of

to region of region of arrival for moving migration
departure
Emigrant/ Roots, ancestry, Integration, Economic Long term

Immigrant departure, New homeland Socio-cultural Unlimited
farewell
Return-migrant Continuous Keeping dif- Economic Short term
point of life ference, “host Political Limited
reference country”
Diaspora- (symbolic) Keeping Religious Medium term
migrant Reference to difference, Political Limited
an imagined space of Organizational
“motherland” suffering or of
mission
Transmigrant Ambiguous Ambiguous Economic Not determined
Mixture Mixture Organizational Sequential
10 L. PRIES
The ideal-type of a Diaspora-migrant could be exemplified by Jewish

people and communities distributed all over the world. Often driven by
religious, political or other motives of a dominating organization (such
as a nation state in relation to his diplomatic corps abroad or a business
organization with its subsidiaries), Diaspora-migrants maintain strong
symbolic ties to their region of departure as the ‘motherland’, and expe-
rience the region of arrival as a space either of suffering (e.g. in the case
of refugees) or mission. The transmigrants typically do not distinguish
between region of departure and of arrival in this manner, but develop
an ambiguous mixture of inclusion and maintaining differences as well;
transmigrants keep moving physically or at least symbolically between
places and countries, and their decisions are not taken in a short or long
term, but in a mid-term and sequential manner (see e.g. Pries 2001,
2004, 2009, 2013).
Concerning the scientists arriving at the New School, Krohn charac-
terises the majority of them as successful immigrants and holds “that the
New School scholars, with a few exceptions, came to regard themselves
quite quickly as immigrants rather than exiles waiting to return to their
home country” (Krohn 1993, p. 199). A smaller part of scholars arriv-
ing at the New School come near to the ideal type of Diaspora-migrants.
According to Krohn (1993, pp. 190 ff.), great part of the exiled mem-
bers of the Frankfurt School did not focus on integration and Krohn
(1993, p. 192; see also Jay 1998; Schmid Noerr 1988) identified “a
lack of interest on the part of the Institute’s core group in becoming
integrated. Adorno’s description of himself as ‘European through and
through’ also suggests that he made no great effort to deprovincialize
himself.” Therefore, many of the Frankfurt Institute in New York could
be considered Diaspora-migrants yearning for their return home to
Germany.
For the case of Spanish forced migrants and exiled persons fleeing the
Franco regime, Clara Lida described the dominant stereotype of their
identity as “neither from here, nor from there” (Lida 2009, p. 15). The
author attributes this ambiguity not only to the ambivalent willingness of
the Mexican society to receive and accept the Spanish exiled persons, but
also to the opposite case: “To which point the refugees were willing to
integrate in Mexico” (Lida 2009, p. 16). A lot of Spanish refugees could
thus be characterised as Diaspora-migrants refusing to fully integrate in
Mexico and unable to return to Spain anytime soon. But there were also
cases that come near to the ideal type of transnational migrant. José Gaos
was one of the most influential Spanish philosophers, who had studied
and worked in Madrid and was an expert in German philosophy, mainly
Husserl’s phenomenology. He had to leave Spain in 1938 fleeing to
Mexico where he then worked at the National Autonomous University
of Mexico. According to Gaos, the exile is not just an uprooting but a
transrooting: “For Gaos, this transplantation to the new country allowed
the emigrants to be Mexicans and Spaniards at the same time; to be at
the same time ‘from here and from there’. This idea […] artificially goes
round to define the own characteristic trait” (Lida 2009, p. 16). Whereas
Lida remains critical to such a transnational concept of life and identity,
the more recent transnationalism research opens new ways for theoretical
and empirical analysis.
Based on the transnationalism approach and the four ideal types men-
tioned before, terms and typologies of refugees and exiled persons could
be reconsidered and some new questions arise: Could certain transna-
tional life strategies and transnational scientific engagement be identified
as an enduring option beyond the dichotomy of either final emigration
or ultimate return migration? How did those refugees who stayed in
Mexico or the USA, and those who returned to Europe after World War
II, define their identity? Did they simply assimilate to the ideal type of
emigrants/immigrants or return-migrants? Or did at least some of them
live and identify as transmigrants?
There are many empirical elements suggesting that the four ideal
types presented before could help to better organise the variety of refu-
gee destinies and life courses by extending the classic types of immigrant,
return migrant and Diaspora-migrant. Applying this scheme, exiled per-
sons are not analysed as either being established in the new country of
arrival or wanting to return to their country of departure or as suffering
in-between as ‘not established’. As it will be shown at the end of the
next section, there are many examples of academics and intellectuals who
could be considered transnational migrants because they were neither
assimilating themselves into the country of arrival, reducing their social
relations with the country of departure (like Adolph Lowe or Alfred
Schütz), nor yearned for a return to their country of departure (like
Berthold Brecht or Max Horkheimer).
One can assume that the type of (forced) migrant—being it immi-
grant, return migrant, Diaspora migrant or transnational migrant—
is closely related to the scientific, theoretical and empirical work and
endeavour of the corresponding persons: the immigrant will probably
12 L. PRIES
adapt to the scientific norms and approaches of the country of arrival;

the return migrant will maintain most of his academic concepts of the
country of departure; the Diaspora-migrant will perhaps be confused in
his new context as exiled academic and feel as partisan of the scientific
reasoning of his country of departure; the transnational migrant possibly
seeks to combine academic traditions and approaches of both (and per-
haps third) contexts and to operate and interact with both countries of
departure and arrival. As persons travel with theories, theories travel with
persons.
Travelling Theories and Transnational Theorists

The concept of travelling theories (Said 1983, 2000; Perry 1995) focuses
on the societal embedding of production of social theories and on the
changes by which these theories are normally affected when shifting from
one societal context to another. Transferring social scientific theories and
concepts from one place to another leads to the ambiguity and tension of
either adapting (and thereby changing) such theory to local conditions
or merely applying it (and try to change local conditions accordingly).
This constitutes a difference to natural sciences. While Pythagoras’ theo-
rem or Ohm’s law are understood and work at all places over the world
(at least: over this world), social and theoretical concepts like social class
and social order, family and honour, individualism and collectivism, pro-
fessionalism and job orientation, security and uncertainty or seniority
and performance are embedded specifically and have different meanings
according to their societal context.
Edward Said, a US-American philologist and literary critic with
Palestinian roots, who had lived a long time in Egypt, analysed the
(Western) concept of orientalism as a specific approach to legitimize
colonial dominance and control. This concept integrates political inter-
ests with a specific way of organising ‘scientific’ (Western) knowledge on
geographic and cultural regions. Based on Foucault’s discourse analy-
sis, Said criticises the dichotomy of ‘the Occident’ and ‘the Orient’ as a
cognitive mapping of social reality based on vested (colonial) interests.
Although many critiques arose from the methods and data used by Said,
his work is considered the starting point of the so called post-colonial
studies. In an article published in 1982 and republished in the book
“The World, the Text, and the Critic,” Said developed the idea of trav-
elling theories: “ideas and theories travel—from person to person, from
situation to situation, from one period to another though the ‘circulation

of ideas’ takes different forms, including ‘acknowledged or unconscious
influence, creative borrowing, or wholesale appropriation’” (Said 1983,
p. 226).
The basic idea of Said’s travelling theory sounds convincing: “Theory
always comes from a somewhere, a somewhere understood not as an
actual place but as a complexly mediated social location and an enabling
discursive positioning. Theory which presents itself as if coming from
nowhere/anywhere is not so much concerned to escape its origin as
it is at pains to essentialize it, and thereby to defend and disguise itself
against what is understood as the threat of dispersal, fragmentation and
plurality” (Perry 1995, p. 38). This allows a critical reflection on the
context and process of theory production and thereby a favouring of
theorizing over theory: “This provides the conditions for theorizing as a
process that is both mindful of its own contingency yet responsive to its
own provisional possibilities; a privileging of theorizing (now elevated to
strategy) over theory (now understood as tactic), a practice thus attuned
to and critical of attempts to naturalize the arbitrariness of concepts”
(Perry 1995, p. 39).
The concept of travelling theory was discussed and criticised, and the
basic idea is not completely new.9 Social theory was always developed in
certain places and times, and it travelled—by oral or written transfer or
by persons—in time and in space and was consequently assimilated or
adopted to changing circumstances. Moreover, the production of theory
itself is often an outcome of the travelling of its producers. This holds
for ancient Christian philosophers and social theorists like Augustine
of Hippo (who travelled from Northern Africa towards Northern Italy
and back) as well as for itinerant scholars of Islam or Alexander von
Humboldt.10 In general, however, there is much empirical evidence that
theories, paradigms and concepts in social and cultural sciences change
their contents when being received or recovered in different time peri-
ods or socio-geographical places. This holds for specific and selective
reception of Marxism, structuralism, regulation theory or pragmatism in
different countries like Germany, France, the USA, or elsewhere.11 It is
also well known that management theories and concepts vary and change
substantially when travelling from one country to another (Boyer et al.
1998; Hofstede et al. 2010; Perry 1995).
Taking the idea of travelling theories, a lot of questions arise con-
cerning the context of exiled scholars and intellectuals in the USA and
14 L. PRIES
Mexico of the 1930s. How did schools of theoretical thinking change

when some or many of their representatives had to flee Europe? Is
Critical Theory the same in Frankfurt as in New York? (How) Was the
scientific work of José Medina Echavarría influenced and changed by
his stays in Mexico and the USA (and by his former visits to Germany
and other countries)? (How) Did theories change when arriving from
Austria, Germany or Spain to the Colmex and the New School? (How)
Did theoretical approaches of academics change in exile and/or when
returning back to their countries of departure? Taking into account the
transnationalism approach, a set of other questions arise: (How) Were
transnational academics able to interconnect and integrate theoreti-
cal and academic traditions of both, their countries of departure and of
arrival, and perhaps third countries where they had stayed for a longer
period? Could transnational theories or approaches be identified as out-
comes of transnational migration processes?
There are many arguments that hint at the possibility of achieving an
enrichment of the study of theories and theorists that had to flee Europe
during the 1930s and 1940s by the means of integrating the ideas of
transnational migration and of travelling theories. In classic studies of
identities and life projects of exiled and emigrated scholars, there is often
an ‘either successfully establishing in the new country or suffering and
pining for returning to the old life’. But the transnationalism approach
widens this perspective. In transnational migrants’ life, there are always
aspects of confusion and suffering as well as of enrichment and new ori-
entations. Transnational migrants normally don’t feel as ‘unrooted cos-
mopolitans in the orbit’ but as ambiguously embedded in social memory
and life of different places.12 Hannah Arendt—who by the way wrote her
PhD thesis on the concept of love in the work of the travelling theorist
Augustine of Hippo—stated on the specific situation of refugees:
Man is a social animal and life is not easy for him when social ties are cut
off. Moral standards are much easier kept in the texture of a society. Very
few individuals have the strength to conserve their own integrity if their
social, political and legal status is completely confused. Lacking the cour-
age to fight for a change of our social and legal status, we have decided
instead, so many of us, to try a change of identity. And this curious behav-
ior makes matters much worse. The confusion in which we live is partly
our own work.13
Educated in the German tradition of philosophy and political science,

Arendt later developed her own and genuine transnational identity and
theory. Her seminal work on “The banality of Evil” (1963) was based
on her (physical) travelling to Jerusalem to attend all the court hearings
of the Eichmann process. Most of her theoretical efforts were focused
on how to explain the unique, but ‘banal’ barbarism of industrialised
extinction of entire social groups (Jews, homosexuals, persons with dis-
abilities and other capabilities) by the Nazi regime, supported, accepted
or at least passively tolerated by great part of German society. Much of
her genuine way of integrating transnational personal experiences and life
trajectory with her transnational theorising appears in the following part
of her lectures on ethics (Arendt 2003, p. 100):
The concern with the self as the ultimate standard of moral conduct exists
of course only in solitude. Its demonstrable validity is found in the general
formula “It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong,” which, as we saw,
rests on the insight that it is better to be at odds with the whole world
than, being one, to be at odds with myself. This validity can therefore be
maintained only for man insofar as he is a thinking being, needing himself
for company for the sake of the thought process. Nothing of what we said
is valid for loneliness and isolation.
Thinking and remembering, we said, is the human way of striking roots,

of taking one’s place in the world into which we all arrive as strangers.
What we usually call a person or a personality, as distinguished from a
mere human being or nobody, actually grows out of this root-striking
process of thinking.
Concerning transnational life orientations, there are many other exiled
scholars and intellectuals besides Hannah Arendt who don’t fit in the
‘either-or’ scheme of integration in country of departure or arrival but
represent to a great extent an ‘as well as’ approach. The academic and
social climate at the New School itself was a melange between immigra-
tion and exile: “Although the members of the Graduate Faculty defined
themselves from the beginning as immigrants and remained aloof from
all exile groups, from their politics, and from the bickering among them
[…] the rooms at the New School became the most important meeting
place of various political exile organisations as well as a cultural center”
(Krohn 1993, p. 79). Krohn describes this transnational climate at the
16 L. PRIES
New School by citing Thomas Mann who characterised the University in

Exile as “university of both hemispheres” (Krohn 1993, p. 161).
A good example for a transnational migrant and scholar, as well as for
the travelling character of his theoretical work is Fritz Stern. He had to
flee the Nazi regime with all members of his Jewish family in 1938 and
successfully established himself as a scholar, first at Columbia University,
later as a member of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. At
the same time, he held strong ties to German academia after World War
II and was Visiting Professor in Berlin and Konstanz. He got multiple
awards and was invited to master talks in Germany and in the USA.
His theoretical oeuvre reflects his theorising by travelling and spanning
between and above different intellectual regions. He was always sensitive
for undemocratic tendencies in Germany and developed the perspective
of a modern democratic open society—against nationalism (“National
socialism is a burden for all of us. He does not disappear, and in some
dark corners you see, that the temptation of the pure national commu-
nity still is seducing today”) but also against a fashioned discourse of
postcolonial studies (“Today it seems that rejection of the West is revi-
talising and perhaps even intensifying given the pressure of multicultur-
alism […] The West is often described as old, addled and degenerated,
doomed to disappear. I do not share this pessimism (and sometimes
wishful thinking)”) (cited according to Hübinger, pp. 236 and 239,
translation LP).
A final example of a transnational migrant and theorist to cite here is
Franz L. Neumann, a German born Jewish socialist and Marxist thinker
and lawyer. Due to his political activities and Jewish roots, Neumann
had to flee Germany in 1933 and studied at the London School of
Economics. He then was employed by the Frankfurt Institute of Social
Research, which by that point had moved from Frankfurt over Geneva
and Paris to the Columbia University in New York. He also cooperated
with the New School, but “his relatively late arrival in New York in 1936
made it harder for him to stake out his own area of work and exper-
tise, and that may have been the reason for his perceiving the Graduate
Faculty as threatening competition” (Krohn 1993, p. 194). After World
War II, Neumann commuted between the USA and Germany in a trans-
national life and became one of the most important founders of mod-
ern political science in the Federal Republic of Germany. Concerning this
transnational life project, Neumann stated in 1952:
The exiled scientist perhaps gives up his former intellectual position and
overtakes the new orientation unconditionally. This in fact he did in some
occasions. Perhaps he maintains his old thought pattern and finds a new
mission in trying to forge completely the American way of thinking or he
withdraws with depreciation and contempt on an island; both happened.
But perhaps he tries, just to mention of third option, to combine his new
experiences with the old tradition. This I think is the most difficult, but
also the most meaningful solution.14
Given the tensions between the strategies of either assimilation, return

migration or transnational life and the many variations of coping with the
situation of forced migration, the following chapters of this volume offer
a deep insight into the institutional contexts and individual strategies of
involuntary travellers between worlds and theories.
Notes
1. This chapter, just like this volume in general concentrates on scientists and
scholars; but as boundaries between academics and artists are permeable
and sometimes blurred, it also treats some cases of artists, writers, public
intellectuals and politicians. I thank Johanna Malcher for editorial work
and language check.
2. For the United Kingdom and Karl Mannheim, see Ziffus (1988); for
Turkey, see Kubaseck and Seufert (2008); for Spaniards in Mexico, see
Hoyos Puente (2012) and Lida (2009); for European intellectuals in the
USA, see Coser (1984), Heilbut (1984), Lyman (1994); for the complex
situation in general of Germans in Mexico, see Inclán Fuentes (2013); for
a broad thematic and historical kaleidoscope of intellectuals in exile, see
Burschel et al. (2011).
3. See e.g. for German and Austrian exile Fleck (2015) and Löhr (2013),
Srubar (1988), Krohn (2012), Kubaseck and Seufert (2008); for Spanish
exile, see Hoyos Puente (2012), Lida et al. (2000), Soler Vinyes (1999).
4. Concerning the concept of socio-ethno-cultural spaces, see e.g. Mecheril
(2003).
5. For the interesting case of founding the new University of Istanbul with a
huge amount of foreign, mainly German exiled professors in November
1933, see e.g. Hirsch and Hirsch (2008) and Strohmeier (2008); due to
the specific situation of Turkey—a Kemal Atatürk government open for
Western modernization nut also sympathizing with the Nazi regime—the
Turkish exile was characterised as the “emigration into silence” Caglar
(2008, p. 273).
18 L. PRIES
6. See https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exilio_republicano_español.
7. Cited according to Robinson (ed.), p. 116.
8. Krohn (1993, p. 188); see also Luckmann (1988).
9. For discussion see e.g. no. 3/Winter 1987 of the journal new forma-
tions (http://www.newformations.co.uk/abstracts/nf3abstracts.html);
Burawoy (2015), Clifford (1989), Lloyd (2015).
10. See e.g. for the impact of travelling on the ideas of Augustine of Hippo
and of those traveling to e.g. Martin Heidegger, see De Paulo (2006); for
Islam scholars, see Reichmuth (2009); for Alexander von Humboldt, see
Ette (2009, p. 19).
11. See the seminal work on social theory of Joas and Knöbl (2009); for
reception of Marxism in Mexico during the 1930s, see e.g. Estrella
González (2013).
12. Such an extreme uprooted cosmopolitan approach was expressed by Louis
Wirth, a US-American sociologist of German-Jewish roots, who came to
the USA at the age of 14 in 1911, when he “declared the concept of
‘intellectual emigrants’ a contradiction in terms because, he said, intel-
lectuals are always nomads in the universe of the mind and should feel at
home anywhere” Krohn (1993, p. 179).
13. Cited according to Robinson (ed.), p. 116.
14. Cited according to Söllner (2011, p. 204), translation LP; for other cases
and patterns of integration between Europe and America see for the case
of Austrian social scientist Paul F. Lazarsfeld, e.g. Neurath (1988), Fleck
(2015, pp. 333 ff.).
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CHAPTER 2
Crossroads: US and Mexican Reactions

to Repression in Europe 1930–1939
Katrin Möbius and Sascha Möbius
With the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, the world was
plunged into a hitherto unknown abyss of war and genocide. The middle
of the century became its midnight.1 The war left more than 60 million
dead and many more wounded, maimed and displaced. The numbers
of those who fell victim to political violence in Europe or by European
states2 in the decade before the outbreak of the war were lower than
during the war. But they were still shocking and the perpetrators were
responsible for some of the worst crimes in the history of mankind. And
their crimes were neither necessary or unavoidable, nor were they unop-
posed. The 1930s were a time of open political situations, enormous
challenges and burdensome decisions. The world was at a crossroads
both in Europe and in the Americas (Serge 2012, p. 226). Every country
and its interest groups like governments, the public, churches and parties
found themselves at crossroads. They all had to decide which way their
country should walk. Some countries decided to walk the path of repres-
sion and persecution and some of them decided to walk the bright path
into humanity and a better future.
K. Möbius · S. Möbius (*) 
Chihuahua, Mexico

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_2
24 K. MÖBIUS AND S. MÖBIUS
For the people fleeing from death and persecution during this time,
the character of the crimes and their perception in the potential coun-
tries of refuge were of crucial importance. But there were various inter-
ests blocking potential refugees from security and shelter and in all cases,
there were manifold mechanisms to suppress the truth, mental maps and
cultural imprints to debase and slander the victims and diminish the scale
of the crimes.
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of politically moti-
vated repression in Europe—in Italy, the USSR, Germany and Spain
and the reactions to the crimes and to refugees in the USA and Mexico.
Thus, we want to present the context for the following studies and give
background information on the situation in Europe and the reasons why
intellectuals fled to Mexico and the USA. We also include chapters on
the repression in the USSR and Italy because the reactions to the emi-
grants from Germany, Austria (after the “Anschluss”) and Spain cannot
be fully understood without analysing the prior reactions to terror and
repression in the states ruled by Stalin and Mussolini. Here, mental
frameworks were established or became efficacious for the perception
of political violence, its victims and refugees from Germany and Spain.
Besides presenting the most recent research, we want to ask for the men-
tal frameworks which were used to justify the crimes in the countries
where they happened and how these justifications changed—or not—
when they were perceived in other countries. Given the vast amount
of research, which would be necessary to give profound answers to the
latter question, we want to point out that we would like to propose a
framework based on historical research and encourage further discussion
via this chapter. Above all, we want to provide the historical background
for the following chapters dealing with refugees from Germany, Austria
and Spain to Mexico and the USA. We chose the USSR, Italy, Germany
and Spain because these were the countries where those politically moti-
vated crimes happened, which were either most important for the subject
of this anthology or crucial to the understanding of the 1930s in Europe.
We want to stress that this is neither meant to diminish other crimes by
other perpetrators in Europe or other parts of the world or that we want
to put all these different crimes on an equal footing.
Firstly, we will give an overview of the roots and the extent of polit-
ically motivated crimes and above all the numbers of fatalities according
to the most recent research and the justifications brought forth by the
perpetrators. Although most statistics on the dead caused by politically
2 CROSSROADS: US AND MEXICAN REACTIONS TO REPRESSION … 25
motivated violence in the 1930s are still incomplete, the fatalities are
better documented than e.g. people wounded or imprisoned3 and in all
cases, the international public only tended to react when people were
killed or threatened to be killed in large numbers. Secondly, we will deal
with the reactions of the governments and the public in the USA and
Mexico. We ask for the transnational4 mutation of the perception of
political violence. What were the justifications towards the international
public? How were the crimes perceived in other countries?
In order to structure this analysis, we developed a mental map of the
1930s concerning the perception and justification/condemnation of
politically motivated violence. Here, the following categories were prom-
inent: racial categories, national categories, gender, anti-communism
(anti-socialism/anarchism), anti-fascism, and categories of social classes.
We will end with a summary.
Soviet Union: Terror by Starvation and the Great

Terror
Terror by Famine
After the First World War, the “seminal catastrophe” (Urkatastrophe)5 of
the twentieth century, and the short revolutionary phase following the
October Revolution, most of Europe witnessed a period of relative peace
and stability. The most important exception was the former Russian
empire. The Civil War and the Soviet–Polish War of 1920 had cost at
least 2 million lives and the famine of 1921–1922 another several million
deaths.6 After the Civil War, the Soviet Leadership had introduced the
“New Economic Policy” (NEP). The country lay in ruins and millions
were dying of hunger which was due not only to the devastations of the
war but also to a failed policy of brutal requisitions and terror against the
“Kulaks”. These were more or less well-off peasants according to Russian
standards; compared to well-off Western farmers, they were poor,
owning some livestock and still cultivating the land themselves. They had
profited from the distribution of noble estates amongst the toiling pop-
ulation of the countryside. Confronted with starvation, the Communist
Party allowed a substantially higher degree of private business, which led
to a recovery of the economy. During the 1920s, the number of victims
of organized terror declined. At the same time, Stalin and his followers
from the party apparatus were able to tighten their control of the party
and to oust potential rivals. Starting with the first five-year plan in 1928
(Baberowski 2012, Pos. 1544–1550), the government started a radical
turn towards forced collectivization and industrialization (Snyder 2010,
Pos. 617), while it had blocked attempts to industrialize the country
carefully, as it had been proposed by the opposition around Trotsky,
Zinoviev and Kamenev (Baberowski 2012, Pos. 1531–1537) in the pre-
vious years (Daniels 1991, pp. 277–285). This was mainly due to the
fact that the communist leadership started to fear the social influence of
“capitalist” forces raised by the NEP, the alienation of the peasantry, and
the need to modernize the country in order to be able to build up a
modern army able to either withstand an attack by an enemy state or to
defeat neighbouring states the USSR wanted to conquer (Davis 1994,
pp. 8–23). The violent nature of the policy was mainly motivated by
Stalin’s personality, combining a lack of political understanding with a
desire to use violence and to kill. The idea that industrialization was a
prerequisite for a bright communist future played a role for some mem-
bers of the Political Bureau. But communist ideology was remarkably
meaningless for Stalin when it came to installing his own violent dictator-
ship.7 He had by now constructed a leadership team, which was mainly
composed of similar minds.8
The path Russia decided to walk was a forced march towards
Stalinism. This path meant terror of hitherto unknown dimensions.
The leadership of the Bolshevik party decided to “liquidate the kulaks
as a class” (Hildermeier 1998, p. 392) in December 1929 and in January
1930, all peasants in the USSR were labelled by the police and local
party authorities, thus producing “kulaks” who could be exiled or killed
at will (Snyder 2010, Pos. 637). The following disruption of agriculture
hit the Ukraine especially hard and of the 1.7 million “kulaks” who were
deported, there were about 300,000 Ukrainians (Snyder 2010, Pos. 656).
The resulting Ukrainian resistance to forced collectivization was at least
partially motivated by the century-old struggle of Ukrainian peasants
and Cossacks for their own piece of land (Snyder 2010, Pos. 690). Not
only large-scale resistance but also a refugee movement to Poland were
the consequences, although the regime tried to prevent its people from
fleeing from the famine areas (Snyder 2010, Pos. 1020–1027)—most
embarrassing consequences for the Stalinist leadership as the peasants fled
to the capitalist arch-enemy and told their stories of misery and hunger
to the Polish border guards. From there, they went to the Polish and
international press (Snyder 2010, Pos. 728). Forced collectivization had

disrupted the rural economy and together with climatic problems caused
bad harvests. But the main cause for hunger and starvation between 1930
and 1933/34 was Stalin’s ruthless policy of hunger-terror.9 With every
bad harvest, the state strived to extract more grain from the peasants,
accusing them of sabotage. The regions hit by the famine were closed off,
thus depriving the peasants of any possibility to leave the area and migrate
to places where there was work and bread (Baberowski 2012, Pos. 3581).
Additionally, the armed forces of the regime led a virtual war against the
peasants, shutting off villages and even bombarding them, while about
100,000 were directly killed in the dungeons of the Secret Police, often
after having been tortured. More than 280,000 perished during the
deportations between 1932 and 1934 (Baberowski 2012, Pos. 3428)
and the Stalinist famine of the years 1931–1933 in Ukraine, Northern
Caucasus, Volga Region, Kazakhstan, South Urals and West Siberia was to
cost the lives of 5.5–6.5 million people (Hildermeier 1998, pp. 398–399;
Davies and Wheatcroft 2004, p. 401).
The Great Terror

Following the abyss of the forced collectivization, there was some rel-
ative stabilization of the economy. While agriculture was still in a bad
state (Wheatcroft and Davies 1994, p. 120), Soviet industry had indeed
developed, although at a horrible cost and not as fast as the leader-
ship had wished. In spite of some remarkable advances, alphabetiza-
tion and changes of culture were mainly superficial (Baberowski 2012,
Pos. 1770–1776).
On 1 December 1934, a certain Leonid Nikolajev went into the
Soviet government building of the Smolny Institute and shot the
Leningrad chairman of the Bolshevik party, Sergei Kirov. Whether or
not the murder had been organized by Stalin,10 it was the starting point
of the Great Terror. Most visibly, a substantial part of the old Bolshevik
elite was killed after three show trials in 1936 (Zinoviev and Kamenev),
1937 (Radek and Pjatakov) and 1938 (Bukharin and Rykov). Most
defendants were tortured before and shot after the trials. The accusations
were absurd to the extreme. Nearly all members of the Politburo that
had led the October Revolution had been and were, according to the
prosecution, fascist agents and agents of imperialism led by the exiled
former leader of the October Revolution, Leon Trotsky.11 There has
been a long debate over the reasons for these absurd accusations. Did
Stalin believe in them? Surely, he did not.12 But, above all, Stalin knew
that lies were one of the ultimate symbols of power, especially when
everybody knew that they were lies. And using overt lies fit the establish-
ment of a bureaucracy absolutely loyal to Stalin. Showing the party and
state apparatus that only those who were to believe any lie coming from
the centre of power were to survive and to advance was a decisive prereq-
uisite for establishing the Stalinist variant of bureaucratic rule.
But the former communist leaders were only a tiny proportion of
the victims of the Great Terror. Most of the latter perished unnoticed
by the international public (Snyder 2010, Pos. 2165). Most people who
were killed came from ethnic minorities like Poles, Germans, Finns,
Latvians, Estonians, Iranians or Koreans (Baberowski 2012, Pos. 6073)
or had been labelled as Kulaks. “Of the 681,692 executions carried out
for political crimes in 1937 and 1938, the kulak and national orders
accounted for 625,483” (Snyder 2010, Pos. 2165). To take up a favour-
ite Stalinist argument, they were definitely not the future supporters of
an invading foreign enemy. Those people were used by the Stalinists to
give horrible examples for their power and to show how far they were
willing to go. In the end, the persecuted were from groups of the pop-
ulation, who could be killed without much opposition by people who
indulged in the power to inflict pain and death upon their fellow human
beings.
Justifications of Violence
The explanations for the different forms of terror accompanying the
forced collectivization and the Holodomor given inside the USSR were
mainly class-oriented and nationalist. The deportations and shootings
of “kulaks” were justified by depicting these peasants as “class enemies”
exploiting the poorer peasants13 who had already been deprived of civil
rights (Baberowski 2012, Pos. 1695) and were now to be torn out of
the rural society and killed by the hundreds of thousands (Shabad 2005).
Yet, these justifications might have been effective amongst parts of the
urban population and die-hard Stalinists. In the countryside, they were
not believed. The “Committees of poor Peasants”, established to organ-
ize the allegedly exploited peasants against the Kulaks had to be filled
up with townspeople or rural workers not rooted in peasant society
(Baberowski 2012, Pos. 1254).
Internationally, Stalin presented collectivization and forced industrial-

ization as unprecedented successes of Soviet progress. When executions,
arrests and deportations were admitted, the victims were brandished as
“saboteurs”, “imperialists” or “fascist agents”.
The “anti-fascist” justifications for the Moscow Trials on the inter-
national stage were the same as at home. Trotsky14 and the soon to be
shot defendants were fascist and imperialist agents (Klehr et al. 1998,
pp. 272–305). For the Great Terror, Stalin and his helpers used differ-
ent strategies. Inside the USSR, racial and national categories played an
important role, even mixed with badly camouflaged anti-Semitism. The
Communists put on trial were presented as thugs and saboteurs being
part of a grand conspiracy headed by Leon Trotsky. That Trotsky was
always called by his Jewish father’s name, Bronstein, was a deliber-
ate attempt to use anti-Semitic feelings and draw on widespread rac-
ist assumptions of an international Jewish conspiracy (Trotsky 1970,
pp. 22–29; Goldhagen 1960, p. 39). The national minorities were slan-
dered as agents of foreign powers and accused of nationalism. People
inside the USSR knew that Poles were deported and shot because they
were Poles. For a Soviet leadership which had clear-cut conceptions of
the different nationalities, their character and their place in the Soviet
hierarchy, it was clear that it was using nationalism and chauvinism to
repress the minorities (Baberowski 2012, Pos. 6076–6108). For the
international public, Stalin had an easy solution of how to deal with the
hundreds of thousands of killings—they were simply denied.
Reactions in the USA

The USA was still suffering from the Great Depression at the beginning
of the 1930s. The hitherto unshakeable belief in the free market econ-
omy had begun to waver and Americans from all political currents were
looking for alternatives. With the First (1933–1934) and Second (1935–
1938) New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced a mixture
of regulations of the financial system and markets, state-run make-work
projects for the environment and infrastructure, social reforms and pro-
tection of labour organizations. The New Deal was accompanied by an
upsurge not only of trade unions (Gordon 1994, p. 225) and left-wing/
liberal ideas and parties but also of right-wing movements and currents,
and thus an upsurge of political controversies and clashes (Patel 2016,
pp. 45–46).
At the same time, the American public and large parts of the politi-
cal and economic establishment were still traumatized by the experience
of the First World War and tried to keep the USA out of foreign, and
especially European troubles. Many Americans felt that they had been
tricked into supporting the war by false propaganda against the “Huns”
and had thus become the dupes of shrewd British diplomats and sinis-
ter “munition makers” (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 25). While European,
Latin American and Asian markets were struck by the Depression, the
USSR was building up its heavy industry longing for US investment
and transfer of know-how. And US businessmen were eager to exploit
these chances in spite of their deep rooted anti-communist political sen-
timents (Nolan 2012, p. 132). It was thus welcome to many Americans
outside the tiny and discredited Communist Party that the Chief of the
Moscow Bureau of the New York Times, Walter Duranty, systematically
downplayed the terror by famine and even denied a famine at all. For his
reports, he received a Pulitzer Prize and his pro-Stalin reports paved the
way for the official recognition of the USSR by the USA (Commission
on the Ukraine Famine 1988, p. 182; Taylor 1990, pp. 184, 258). Louis
Fischer did the same propaganda work in The Nation (Commission on
the Ukraine Famine 1988, p. 169). Part of Duranty’s explanation of
forced collectivization and later the Great Terror was openly national-
ist. The Russian mind was coined by “Asiatic thought” (Taylor 1990,
p. 183) and the culture of the USSR and its population called for tough
measures to be taken. “And so, what may seem to an American to be a
state of abject slavery, is to the Russian a wonderfully new freedom.”15
The American authorities were well informed about the dimensions
and causes of the “famine” in Ukraine (Commission on the Ukraine
Famine 1988, p. viii). The US legation in Riga (Latvia) had provided
the US government with substantial information since 1922 and had
reported about grain seizures and Ukrainian refugees coming into
Poland as early as 1931 (Commission on the Ukraine Famine 1988,
pp. 151–152). Foreign policy officials and expert scientist regularly
informed the US government of the catastrophe (Commission on the
Ukraine Famine 1988, pp. 155–158).
But those in the West who had direct links to Ukraine reacted to the
crimes. While there had been some communist and socialist sympathies
amongst emigrated Ukrainians in Canada, where a large Ukrainian com-
munity lived (Commission on the Ukraine Famine 1988, p. 164), these
diminished from 1933 on.16 Ukrainian Mennonites who had fled during
the Civil War after having supported the Germans and white move-
ments in the Ukraine, informed the US government and called for relief
(Commission on the Ukraine Famine 1988, pp. 161–162). Russian and
Jewish organizations also approached the government and “were treated
with courteous indifference” (Commission on the Ukraine Famine 1988,
p. 183). The expectation of favourable economic relations with Stalin’s
USSR and ideological blindness towards the “progressive” government
of Stalin prevented any kind of help for the victims of the manmade
famine.
The Moscow trials were by no means kept secret. Stalin wanted the
world to know that he was drawing a line of blood between his regime
and the old Bolsheviks and the accusations of the Moscow Trials were
internationally published and repeated in the widely publicized “History
of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course”17 and in
the press of the Communist International. Yet, the wider purges and the
extent of the killings were hidden and there was an actual lack of infor-
mation in the West.18 The regime longed for international recognition
and economic aid after the failure of the ultra-leftist policy of the “Third
Period” and its attempt to precipitate revolutions in other countries.19
Together with the USSR’s policy of containing the Spanish revolution,20
the general secretary made it clear that world revolution was definitely
not his aim21 and that he was a reliable ally for the capitalist democra-
cies. Even if most people in the West detested Stalin’s methods, most
governments understood the message and preferred a bloody but stable
and predictable dictatorship to any revolutionary experiment,22 includ-
ing that of a “white”23 counter-revolution.24 This is part of the con-
text of the statements of the US ambassador in Moscow who informed
the President that there was no reason not to believe the charges of the
Moscow Trials. Although his staff repeatedly criticized his statements, he
stuck to his unbelievable statements, which can only be explained by the
economic policy of the USA at that time, when the USA provided tech-
nological knowledge on a broad basis to the USSR (Hildermeier 1998,
p. 505) and expected large-scale economic cooperation.
The USA chose the path of looking away and justifying the crimes
in order to gain economic influence and profit
Most newspapers and political currents in the USA saw the Moscow
Trials as an ugly frame-up. Important exceptions were the liberal papers
New Republic and the Nation (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 88). These only
turned away from Stalin’s Soviet Union (the Nation more than the New
Republic) after the Hitler–Stalin pact in August 1939. The influential
liberal-socialist writer H. N. Brailsford wrote in the New Republic that
the pact “was a violation of public morality for which nothing in the
record of the Soviet Union had prepared us”.25 The citation is typical for
a significant spectrum of liberal, social-democratic and socialist individu-
als and currents, like the Webbs, who did not pursue communist politics
in their own countries but supported Stalin and ignored all crimes by his
regime. And, again, it was Walter Duranty, now a central correspondent
of the New York Times in Moscow, who fervently supported the trials.
He accused the victims and those killed during the Great Terror of hav-
ing been the potential fifth column for any foreign aggressor, a thesis he
upheld and renewed in 1941. The absurd confessions were explained by
Duranty with the “propensity of the Russian to paint a grey complicity
in the blackest of terms” (Taylor 1990, p. 270). He put the number of
people killed at roughly the same level as the official Soviet propaganda:
30,000–40,000 (Taylor 1990, p. 271).
On the one hand, this kind of support by left-leaning liberals was
more than welcome to the Stalinist Communist Party of the USA
(CPUSA). On the other hand, the Stalinist papers like the “Daily
Worker” furiously attacked any criticism of the trials and physical attacks
against Trotskyists were carried out by members of the CPUSA.
Against this terror, the American Trotskyists set up the so-called
Dewey commission or the “Commission of Inquiry into the Charges
Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials”, which worked from
March to September 1937. Its aim was to expose Stalin’s crimes and—
above all—to clear the names of the accused of the absurd charges lev-
elled against them. Dewey, also one of the co-founders of the New
School for Social Research, was a well-known American philosopher and
educator and well respected for his integrity by friend and foe. Together
with Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge, the Commissions mem-
bers were amongst the most successful denouncers of Stalin’s crimes in
the 1930s.
Trotsky was interviewed by the Commission in the house of the paint-
ers Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo from 10 to 17 April 1937 in his exile
home in Mexico City. He had taken refuge in Mexico in December
1936. This shall be highlighted in the next paragraph.
Yet, for those who viewed the Trials and persecution in Soviet
Russia as a crime, the question remained what they could do about it.
Intervention against the Stalinist regime implied a major war, a new

world war. And intervention had already failed in the end and after-
math of the First World War26 against a communist regime that had
been much weaker. Thus, it was more advisable to ignore the crimes of
the Stalinist regime than denounce them and thus create a moral need
for a renewed intervention. This was also true for the Polish govern-
ment, which knew best about the disastrous famine and remained silent
(Snyder 2010, Pos. 883). National and ethnic prejudices also played a
significant role. Most victims of the Holodomor and the Great Terror
belonged to nations and nationalities, which were targeted by racism in
most Western countries. Stalin’s apologist Duranty openly used the argu-
ment that Russians were “Asiatics” and needed a firm hand to govern
them. Widespread anti-Semitic currents saw the killing of communist vic-
tims of Jewish origin like Trotsky, Zinoviev or Kamenev as a just pun-
ishment for the overthrow of the old order in Russia. Ethnic Ukrainians
and Russians had been the targets of nativist and nordicist currents and
movements in the USA, too.27
Native Ukrainians and dissident Communists, at that time thought
to be the main victims of the famine and the purges, had publicly
denounced Stalin’s crimes and had been heard by the American public.
Political decision-makers were well informed about the terror. The US
ambassador’s false reports about the Moscow Trials were a mere excuse
for not being forced to open new fronts which could harm America’s
foreign policy (confronted with Japanese expansion in the Far East) or
the Second New Deal (confronted with conservative accusations of the
New Deal being “communist”).
National and racial categories played a most prominent role in
the USA. Most people saw it as their national interest to keep out of
European affairs and especially anything that could trigger a new war.
Many perceived the victims as racially or culturally inferior (Ukrainians,
Russians) or dangerous (Jews). On the other hand, the national and
(according to the mental framings of the time) racial ties to the victims
were the one which caused parts of US society to come to their aid. We
know that anti-communism and anti-fascism also played a role in con-
demning or suppressing the crimes, but here, further research has to be
conducted.
Reactions in Mexico
Mexico was also hit by the Depression, but first and foremost, the coun-
try was still suffering from the effects of the Mexican Revolution. While
the revolutionary process had been on the verge of suffocation several
times, the 1930s saw the establishment of a remarkable left-wing gov-
ernment profiting from the crisis of the USA and the problems an inter-
vention would have posed for the Roosevelt administration. Mexican
politics of the 1930s are tightly linked to Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio,
who was President from December 1934 to November 1940. Cárdenas
nationalized the railways and petroleum industry, carried out a sub-
stantial land reform, encouraged the activity of workers and peasants
and started to reform the educational system. The country had been
the target of several foreign interventions and especially the USA was
always an important—and often brutal—player in Mexican politics28
whose influence the Mexican government wanted to diminish and pre-
vent further interventions (Barrera Aguilera 2011, p. 184). Thus, after
the country had settled at the beginning of the 1930s, it adopted the
Estrada Doctrine and defended the Pact of the League of Nations and
international law.29 According to it, the country would always support
legitimate governments even refusing to acknowledge foreign govern-
ments as Mexico saw this as an intervention into the internal affairs of
the country. Mexico also opposed the democratic legitimization of
redrawing borders like the plebiscites in the Saar or in Austria legiti-
mizing the incorporation of them into the Reich. It also stuck to these
principles during conflicts in Latin America like the Chaco War or the
Leticia conflict (Barrera Aguilera 2011, p. 198). Thus, Mexico’s acces-
sion to the League of Nations in September 1931 was an important step
forward for the shaken country and its strict adherence to the Pact and
international law was based on not only moral deliberations but also
realpolitik and self-defence (Herrera León 2014, p. 110). “Now, this
corresponded to the [Mexican] authorities’ and their representatives’
longing for respectability and security for the post-revolutionary regime,
as many of them were builders of modern Mexico” (Herrera León 2014,
p. 388). Mexico had been denied membership in the League in 1919,
but a first step to the country’s incorporation was the incorporation of
the famous Mexican writer a diplomat—and later head of the Casa de
España and Colegio de México—Alfonso Reyes into the International
Institute for Intellectual Cooperation in 1926 (Herrera León 2014,
pp. 94, 114 (fn. 10), 387). It is obvious that the country used the stern
defence of the Estrada Doctrine to defend itself against any foreign inter-
vention, as parts of the US establishment longed for the overthrow of
the allegedly “communist” Cárdenas regime. In spite of these accusa-
tions, Cárdenas was no communist or Stalinist. In fact, one of his sym-
bolically most important steps was the granting of asylum to Stalin’s
arch enemy and soviet bogeyman Leon Trotsky, thus paving the way for
one of the most important international campaigns against the Stalinist
purges. This move was facilitated by the break-up of diplomatic relations
between Mexico and the USSR in 1930. This had been due to clumsy
Soviet interventions into Mexican politics in the late 1920s, the Soviet
ambassador’s inability and a Mexican desire to prove to the USA that
the country was not under “communist” influence (Álvarez 2010–2011,
p. 115). Cárdenas motivation is difficult to discern. His vision of a sover-
eign Mexico adhering to principles and not to self-interest did play a role
(Gall 1991, p. 20). But it was also a sign to the USA that despite its rev-
olutionary politics, Mexico was not an ally of the USSR. And it was also
a threat to his opponents that he could go even further.
Mexico took the path towards humanity in the face of many obstacles
Trotsky, the remnants of his family and a few followers had arrived in
Mexico on 9 January 1937. Cárdenas had granted asylum to Trotsky
in spite of a fierce campaign waged first and foremost by the Stalinist
Mexican union leader Vincente Lombardo Toledano.30 It was more
than courtesy that the Mexican President had sent his presidential train
to bring them from Tampico to Mexico City (García Higueras 2017,
p. 119). It was a clear stance against Stalin’s regime in the USSR and above
all in support of the victims of the Moscow Trials. Stalin’s anger multi-
plied with the establishment of the Dewey Commission, which publicly
denounced the accusations of the Moscow Trials as fraud (Novack 1968,
p. xi). Every single accusation was refuted and even those former members
of the “American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky” who left
the Committee and the Commission did not refute any of the claims of the
commission, but criticized the “Trotskyist” character of the Committee or
put forth some general thoughts. Even taking into account that Cárdenas
used Trotsky to show that he was independent of the Soviet Union and
that he could also swing to more radical politics if threatened, it was the
Mexican government that presented the stage for this accusation of the
Moscow Trials and Great Purges.
The stand of Cardenas and the Mexican critics of Stalin was national-
ist in the sense that they wanted to influence national politics in the first
place, but it was also class based as it took a stand against Stalin’s mass
murder of workers and peasants. Although categories of race were also
well established in Mexico, racist prejudices against the victims were only
brought forth by parts of the Mexican right but were not shared by the
government. This stand seems to be typical for the Cárdenas administra-
tion and also logical for a president who based himself on the support of
the Indian and indigenous peasants and workers whose place in the racial
hierarchy of the world of the 1930s was far from the top.
Fascist Italy and the Abyssinian War
The War Against Abyssinia

The rise of the fascist party and Mussolini and the corresponding inter-
nal repression have to be excluded due to the guiding questions of this
essay. Mussolini had already waged colonial wars in Libya, the con-
quest of Cyrenaica between 1923 and 1932 being a “very nasty colonial
war” resulting in the incarceration of about 100,000 people in Italian
concentration camps, many of whom perished there (Morgan 2004,
p. 189). About 100,000 people were killed during this war, which
Mattioli described as a “school of violence” for Italian soldiers (Mattioli
2005, p. 41). In 1935, Mussolini felt strong enough (Morgan 2004, pp.
167, 169–170) to invade Abyssinia and thus enlarge the Italian Empire
and at the same time erase the memory of the shameful defeat of Adwa,
where the Italians had been beaten by Abyssinian forces in 1896 (Brogini
Künzi 2006, p. 340). Mussolini was to put his policy of preparing the
Italian people for war to a decisive test (Morgan 2004, p. 169). The War
saw one of the largest colonial armies ever take the field.31 “The mas-
sive mobilisation leading to war was an end in itself for the regime. The
winning of an empire was the opportunity to demonstrate and enhance
‘totalitarian’ mobilisation and control, to rally and unify the nation
around the regime and a Fascist war” (Morgan 2004, p. 174).
With the extensive use of airpower, armoured vehicles and toxic gas
(Brogini Künzi 2006, p. 240)—against military personnel and civil-
ians alike—the Abyssinian War stood between the earlier colonial wars
of the 1920s and the war of annihilation Hitler was to lead in Poland
and the USSR.32 It was clearly a war of aggression justified by a racist

ideology and the deaths of 55,000 (the minimum number of Abyssinian
soldiers killed on both fronts of the war)—760,300 (the maximum num-
ber of all Ethiopians killed during the war) Abyssinians (Brogini Künzi
2006, p. 27) were a major crime in the history of mankind and warfare.
Especially in the South, livestock was killed in order to deprive the resist-
ing Abyssinians of their livelihood and whole villages were erased by the
Italian Airforce, killing thousands and leaving tens of thousands homeless
and starving (Brogini Künzi 2006, p. 287). Racist atrocities and feelings
of superiority on the Italian side increased during the war (Brogini Künzi
2006, p. 291). At the same time, Mussolini and his followers had to take
into account Italian and—above all—international public opinion and
their aim to establish a stable Italian rule over Abyssinia. This explains
the attempts to limit the worst atrocities33 and to win over parts of the
Abyssinian population (Brogini Künzi 2006, p. 283). Mussolini and the
Italian leadership tried to hide the atrocities and especially the use of
poison gas (Brogini Künzi 2006, p. 288). The war was presented as a
crusade for “civilizing” the Abyssinians and against a backward regime
where people were still enslaved. In spite of courageous resistance, the
Abyssinian army had no chance against the more modern Italian army
and, on 5 May 1936, the invading army entered Addis Abeba. A bloody
campaign of “pacification” followed, which probably cost more lives than
the war itself.
First of all, the Mussolini regime simply tried to hide the atrocities com-
mitted against Ethiopian civilians and disarmed soldiers as well as the
violations of the Geneva Convention. Secondly, the Duce tried to use
progressive propaganda (and some actual action) to present his war
being a “civilizing mission” (Williams 2006, p. 183) as also benefitting
the Abyssinians by freeing them from a dictatorial regime. Thirdly, the
enemy was presented as barbaric, using racial and national prejudices.34
Both previous approaches were part of the propaganda for roman-
itá, presenting Mussolini and the fascists as heirs to the ancient Roman
Empire. While romanitá was presented as equity, peace and justice for
all people and ethnicities in 1933, it was a mere synonym for (violent)
imperialist expansion on the eve of the Abyssinian War (Scholz 2001,
p. 310). Inside Italy, Mussolini used more racist arguments.
Reactions in the USA

Italian Fascism was able to present itself as dynamic, modern and techni-
cally advanced to the international public35 and until the Abyssinian War,
this strategy was rather successful.
Especially after the Great Depression, many people in the USA,
mainly from the conservative camp, saw a fascist-style dictatorship
as an alternative to the old system or President Roosevelt’s New Deal
(Rosenbaum 2010, p. 59). Many businessmen admired Italian fascism
for its dynamism and its alleged prevention of communism. Thus, the
magazine Fortune gave a favourable survey of Fascism in July 1934
(Rosenbaum 2010, p. 58). The idea of a businessmen’s dictatorship
headed by a Mussolini-style leader was quite common in the USA of
the 1930s. Even a leading liberal like the journalist Lincoln Steffens
opted for this kind of system and admired “the strong men of his time,
Lenin, Mussolini and Henry Ford” (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 58). Mussolini
appeared as the modernizer of Italy and admiration of him was wide-
spread. Given the allegedly small number of victims of Italian Fascism,
he was seen as a positive alternative to rulers like Hitler or Stalin (Nolan
2012, p. 140).
The Abyssinian War and Italian atrocities were well known to
the international public and decision-makers. It was debated by the
League of Nations. Even if the Abyssinian Emperor exaggerated when he
accused Mussolini of planning a genocide (Brogini Künzi 2006, p. 290),
it was clear that Italy waged an illegal war of conquest and would not
refrain from using brutal means to assure its victory. The League of
Nations imposed some mild sanctions while the governments of Great
Britain and France de facto gave carte blanche to Mussolini (Morgan
2004, pp. 171–173; Brogini Künzi 2006, p. 340; Jorge 2016, p. 70).
For the British government, the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company, providing Mussolini with a good share of his much-needed
gasoline, counted more than the lives of Abyssinian soldiers and civilians
(Jorge 2016, pp. 74–75). Even the pro-Abyssinian stance of substantial
sectors of the British and French public could not prevent this. It was in
fact Nazi Germany that provided some military aid to Abyssinia in order
to keep Mussolini busy so that he could not interfere with Hitler’s pol-
icy of interference in Austria’s internal affairs and German rearmament
(Funke 1970, pp. 118–145).
The USA chose the path of neutrality

The government stayed neutral while many Italian Americans and
conservatives admired Mussolini and supported his war. On the other
side, many organizations and individuals from the US black commu-
nity vigorously supported Abyssinia and even tried to volunteer for
the Ethiopian army. But this effort was obstructed by the US govern-
ment and only two volunteers reached the frontline in Africa (Scott
1978, pp. 118–134). Racial perceptions and isolationist currents played
a major role in US decisions not to intervene on behalf of Abyssinia
(Rosenbaum 2010, p. 138). For the critics of Mussolini’s policy,
anti-fascism seems to have played a major role but also—in the case
of black people from the USA—“racial” solidarity with the victims in
Ethiopia (Scott 1978, p. 118).
Reactions in Mexico
Mexico saw a short-lived attempt to establish a fascist party on the
Italian model between 1922 and 1924. The “party” was so ridiculous
that it did not play any role in Mexican politics and its Italian role model
felt obliged to distance itself from its disciple. Yet, fascism found many
serious followers in Latin America (Finchelstein 2014, p. 65; 2016,
pp. 223–224) and parts of the Mexican upper and middle classes saw
a Mussolini-style dictatorship as a welcome way out of the revolution-
ary troubles and an alternative to the left-wing presidency of Lázaro
Cárdenas during the 1930s. Amongst these were the National Union
of Veterans of the Revolution, the Middle Class Confederation, the vio-
lent anti-Semitic Mexicanist Revolutionary Action, which had its own
detachments for the execution of political violence, the “Golden Shirts”.
The most important of these movements was the Unión Nacional
Sinarquista, which followed the Spanish Falange and had more than half
a million members in 1941 (Blamires 2006, pp. 417–418; Buchenau
2007, p. 175). Fascism also influenced Plutarco Elías Calles, who as
Mexican President from 1924 to 1928 and one of the main rivals of
Lazaro Cárdenas.36 Yet, in spite of some economic deals, the Cárdenas
government was not inclined to ally with Italy or Germany during the
1930s.
Mexico took the path of International Law

Mexico was one of the few countries that did not recognize the Italian
conquest. It worked for boycotting Italy when it chaired the League of
Nations’ Committee of Oil (Herrera León 2014, pp. 261–262). But it
did not play any significant role during the negotiations and “defended”
Ethiopia only after its defeat (Herrera León 2015, pp. 49, 56–57). This
policy was, again, motivated by the national interest of Mexico, which
tried to prevent any kind of intervention into its territory.
Germany 1933–1939: Terror and the Creation of the

“Volksgemeinschaft” and Preparation for War
The Nazi Terror 1933–1938
Political violence during the later phase of the Weimar Republic was
first and foremost a matter of the KPD and the NSDAP. Modern
German research has shown that most violent provocations were car-
ried out by the KPD/Roter Frontkämpferbund (RFB) [Communist
Party of Germany/Alliance of Red Front-Fighters] with the NSDAP/
Sturmabteilungen (SA) [National Socialist Workers’ Party/Storm
Detachment] only committing more violent assaults during the last
months of the Republic. The Communists were leading when it came to
disturbing other parties’ assemblies while the Nazis were more inclined
to provoke violence when they were demonstrating in the streets, often
using trucks to enhance their mobility. It is also remarkable that the
KPD almost exclusively aimed at the NSDAP while the Nazis also staged
a large number of attacks against the social-democratic Reichsbanner,
which in its turn was more or less pacifist compared to the RFB and the
SA (Reichardt 2009, pp. 64–69). Neither the KPD’s nor the NSDAP’s
terror was simply reactions to the terror of the other side.
It is still difficult to find exact numbers of the people killed, tortured
and incarcerated by the Nazi regime before the Second World War.
There can be no doubt that the months after 30 January 1933 were
characterized by intense terror against political opponents and Jews.
The Nazis aimed at destroying the workers’ movement and intimidat-
ing any potential opposition. About 80,000–100,000 people were taken
into custody in prisons or the newly established concentration camps and
often subjected to abuse, beatings and torture, and about 500–600 were
killed (Bracher et al. 1962, p. 871). In mid-1933, about 45,000 peo-

ple were confined to concentration camps. The effect on the opposition
was devastating. The NSDAP had shown its ability to brutally crush any
opposition and was now able to contain its terror. Some of the worst SA
torturers were “put to trial and given lengthy sentences” (Evans 2006,
Pos. 1599). A third of the inmates of concentration camps were released
on 31 July 1933 and by May 1934, the number of political prisoners had
dropped to about 11,000–12,000 (Evans 2006, Pos. 1605). But on the
eve of the Second World War, the concentration camps alone held again
about 27,000 prisoners, most of them political prisoners.37
After the destruction of the workers’ movement, the terror of the Nazi
regime between 1933 and 1938 focused on terrorizing, excluding and
forcing out of the country the German Jews by violently threatening them,
humiliating Jews in public, enacting discriminating and de-humanizing
laws and unleashing a storm of propaganda. Secondly, the regime started a
policy of social cleansing against those groups, which were not compatible
with the “Volksgemeinschaft”. Homosexuals (Wachsmann 2008, p. 136),
so-called Berufsverbrecher (Wagner 1996, p. 146) (habitual/professional
criminals), Asoziale (Ayaß 1995, pp. 138–165) (anti-socials), Zigeuner
(Bastian 2001, pp. 42–46) (gypsies, Sinti and Roma) were sent into prison
and concentration camps. Disabled people were forcibly sterilized and
with the start of the war, tens of thousands of them were murdered by the
Nazis and a host of helpers.
A special case were the extra-legal killings connected to the Rhöm-
affair (Rhöm-Putsch) (30 June–1 July 1934). Uneasy with the growing
dissatisfaction amongst the SA, Hitler used the SS in a carefully orches-
trated “night of the long knives” to kill real or potential rivals amongst
the SA leadership, oppositional National Socialists and conservative
rivals. About 90 victims can be named, but estimates go as far as 150–
200 deaths (Kershaw 1998, p. 650).
Besides the so-called protective custody (Schutzhaft), which was in fact
a juridical tool to imprison any kind of alleged or real opponents and
people who did not fit into the Nazis’ Volksgemeinschaft, the People’s
Court (Volksgerichtshof) was the central means for punishing and kill-
ing opponents. “In 1934 the Court passed 4 death sentences; in 1935
the figure rose to 9; in 1936, to 10; all but one of these sentences were
carried out. Once Thierack [a NSDAP jurist, K. and S.M.] had taken
over in 1936, however, the People’s Court became much harsher in
its approach, condemning 37 defendants to death in 1937, with 28
executions, and 17 in 1938, all but one of whom were executed. From
1934 to 1939, roughly 3400 people were tried by the People’s Court;
nearly all of them were Communists or Social Democrats, and those who
were not executed received sentences averaging six years’ penitentiary
each” (Evans 2006, Pos. 1385). Other courts were also part of the sys-
tem of political oppression. The death penalty was used on another scale
than during the Weimar Republic. “Capital punishment, effectively abro-
gated in 1928 then reintroduced, though only on a small scale, in 1930,
was now applied not only to criminal murders but even more to political
offences of various kinds. There were 64 executions in 1933, 79 in 1934,
94 in 1935, 68 in 1936, 106 in 1937 and 117 in 1938, the great major-
ity of them widely publicized by garish scarlet posters that Goebbels
ordered to be put up around the town where they took place” (Evans
2006, Pos. 1399). Altogether, according to official statistics, 664 peo-
ple were sentenced to death between 30 January 1933 and 1 September
1939. During the war, this number rose to 15,896.
This figure underlines that the scope and character of politically moti-
vated violence changed over the years and especially since the beginning
of the war. A German scholar gives a good example for this change: “The
first defendant before the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), Johannes
Brinkheger, had been convicted of distributing communist publications
amongst police officers and condemned to two years, including the time
spent in a prison on remand.” Ten years later, in 1944, the owner of a
brewery was sentenced to death for uttering once that “the Nazis had
started the war” (Steur 2004).
The first weeks of Hitler’s chancellorship—30 January 1933 to 1 April
1933—were characterized by “wild” terror of the SA and SS and the
passing of laws legalizing the terror against political opponents and trans-
ferring powers to the cabinet and Hitler. 38
Between April and November 1933, the regime finished the destruc-
tion of real and potential oppositionists and at the same time went on
constructing the foundations of the dictatorship, banning the trade
unions, all parties except the ruling and massively growing NSDAP and
passing anti-Semitic and “eugenic” laws (Grüttner 2015, Pos. 528–804).
The dictatorship is established and supported by a majority of
Germans. Leaving the League of Nations is a first step towards war, a
war, which Hitler had already declared to be his aim on 3 February 1933
in front of high-ranking officers of the Reichswehr.39
After a first phase of “wild” terror in the immediate aftermath of the

transfer of power, the regime mainly resorted to more organized forms
of intimidation and exclusion and expropriation of Jews, the main excep-
tion being acts of violence carried out by NSDAP members against Jews
like the “Kurfürstendamm Riots” in July 1935 (Evans 2006, Pos. 9880).
The “Nuremberg Laws” of 1935 legalized the racist exclusion of people
defined as Jews by the regime. Ex post, these laws were one of the cor-
nerstones of the attempt to extinct the Jews. The restoration of the Saar
to Germany (1935) and its remilitarization (1936) as well as the reintro-
duction of universal conscription (1935) were successes of Hitler’s for-
eign policy which were crowned by the Olympic Games of 1936. The
level of terror was comparatively low because the regime did not need
exaggerated forms of repression and did not want to provoke resistance
by resorting to them.
The Nazi Terror 1938–1939

Coupled with the economic recovery based on armaments production
and the easy annihilation of political opposition, it led to near-univer-
sal acceptance of the regime and paved the way for further expansion.
In 1936, Germany entered the Spanish Civil War together with Italy,
its “Legion Condor” supporting the insurgent Generals and making a
substantial contribution to the defeat of the Republic. In March 1938,
the “Anschluss” of Austria followed which was accompanied by open
and violent terror exceeding the repressive measures in the “Reich”.
About 70,000 people were arrested in the days after the “Anschluss”
and—again—Jews were attacked, beaten, brutally killed and publicly
humiliated and lost their civic rights. Hitler had wished for war in con-
nection with the annexation of the Sudentenland from the Czechoslovak
Republic and thus already switched to qualitatively more oppressive tac-
tics. Although the Sudetenland had been annexed (1–10 October 1939)
without causing a major war after the Munich Agreement (30 September
1938) between Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain, the Nazis were
preparing for the ultimate aim of their policy, the war of conquest and
annihilation in the East. The last step before the outbreak of the war was
the occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939,40 which showed to
foreign powers and spectators that the regime had reached a new qual-
ity of aggression and major parts of the German population were also
critical and lacked the enthusiasm so typical for Hitler’s earlier successes
which they—and important parts of the international public—had

viewed as legitimate actions for German self-determination (Grüttner
2015, Pos. 9137–9145).
The last years before the war were also years of stepped up repression.
In April and June 1938, the regime carried out two large-scale opera-
tions against “anti-socials” arresting about 14,000 people and sending
them to concentrations camps (Schmid 2009b, pp. 31–42; Faludi 2013,
pp. 34, 64). During the action of June 1938, about 2300 Jewish men
were also deported into the camps (Schmid 2009b, p. 37). Most of them
had been convicted of minor offences and were now punished like dan-
gerous criminals. The Nazis’ aim was to put pressure on the remain-
ing German Jews to emigrate (Faludi 2013, pp. 35–36). The first mass
detentions of Jews were accompanied by massive anti-Semitic riots,
which were to appear as “spontaneous expressions of the people’s anger”
but were in fact carefully orchestrated by the Nazi leadership (Faludi
2013, pp. 9, 64–70). This was also true for the massive pogroms of
9–10 November 1938,41 which were intended to expropriate and expel
the remaining German Jews, on the one hand, and marked the transi-
tion from exclusion and persecution to extinction, on the other hand.
More than 1300 people were killed or driven into suicide, half of all
Synagogues and prayer-houses in the Reich were destroyed and thou-
sands of Jewish shops and homes devastated.42 About 30,000 Jewish
men were deported into concentration camps. Although a majority of
the German population seemed to have been disgusted by the violent
nature of the pogroms, they had shown the Nazi leadership that it could
go to war and step up its persecution of the Jews. Inside the leading cir-
cles of the Reich, there had been no resistance to violent anti-Semitic
actions. Even those who detested the Nazis’ policy had not dared to
resist. The following robbery of the Jews in Germany had been success-
ful, bringing much-needed extra money into the Führer’s war-chest and
into the pockets of many ordinary Germans.
At the core of Nazi terror was the idea that the “Aryan race” was supe-
rior to all other races and had to be kept pure forming the genetic core
of a German Volksgemeinschaft. The latter was too based on racial purity
and the Führerprinzip. Its ultimate goal was to conquer Lebensraum in
the East by a genocidal war of extinction and enslavement against the
Jewish and Slavic races (Grüttner 2015, Pos. 285–354). At the core of
Hitler’s and the NSDAP’s thinking was the idea of an age-old Jewish
conspiracy which was also behind the “plutocracies” (liberal capitalism,
democracies) and “bolshevism” (workers’ movement) (Wippermann
2007, pp. 78–80; Grüttner 2015, Pos. 326; Meyer zu Uptrup 2003,
pp. 208, 293, 300, 310; Evans 2006, Pos. 9803, 9931, 10161). There
were other social and economic factors like the desire of an important
part of the factory owners to get rid of organized labour and profit from
rearmament or the hatred of the left’s egalitarianism on large parts of
the middle classes or the material desire to rob the German Jews of their
(supposed or real) wealth and positions. But we would like to stress that
the Nazis’ repression was based on the subjective conviction of the per-
petrators that the Jews were a subhuman race which had to be eliminated
from the German Volksgemeinschaft and/or the face of the earth. There
was nothing tactical behind this ideology and it was not made up to
“distract” from social problems43 but was deeply rooted in German and
European thinking (Grüttner 2015, Pos. 354). In an age dominated by
racial and national thinking, the idea of the “eternal Jew” was the product
of diverse material and mental trends, an idea that was transferred into
a lethal material force of the most powerful kind (Traverso 2003, p. 2).
Concerning the public, the Nazis followed a double strategy of open ter-
ror, exclusion and intimidation inside the country while denying most
crimes in front of the international public while at the same time con-
ducting massive anti-Semitic propaganda.
The USA and the Nazi Dictatorship

There can be no doubt that after a short phase of underestimation, the
American public knew that Germany was a “fascist” dictatorship and that
it was a terrorist and racist regime. It was also known that a majority
of Germans fervently supported Hitler and his “Third Reich”. In spite
of strong anti-Semitic tendencies and sympathies for the Nazis in cer-
tain sectors of the American population, “American public opinion was
hostile to Hitler and became even more so as the decade advanced”
(Rosenbaum 2010, p. 122).
Thus, Nazi oppression of the 1930s was well known nationally and
internationally. And there were many factors which led to their accept-
ance by broad sectors of the American public. The NS dictatorship was
perceived as anti-Semitic and repression as being mainly directed against
German Jews. Yet, for many Americans, that was no problem at all.
As in many countries, racist discourses had been dominant in most intel-

lectual and public debates concerning ethnicities, immigration and war.44
Jews were subject to restrictions and prejudices. Thus, the basic doctrines
of the NSDAP related to ideological trends, which were deeply rooted
in the mental map of the Western (and not only that) hemisphere. For
example, the brutal oppression, forced sterilization and later extermina-
tion of disabled people were criticized during the war, but went with-
out much notice between 1933 and 1939 as Americans were familiar
with forced sterilizations and many supported them. Indiana introduced
a eugenically motivated law on sterilizations in 1907 and California fol-
lowed in 1909. Oregon passed a law in 1923 which formed the basis for
the forced sterilization of mentally disabled people, prisoners, homosexu-
als and female inmates of reform schools (Ernst 2009, p. 254).
The economic reactions to the establishment of the Nazi dictator-
ship were mixed. On the one hand, the state reacted promptly when the
German government started its policy of autarky and tried to get rid of
American imports and to get a hold on American companies’ profits of
their German branches. This led to a fundamental change in German–
US economic relations. The USA had been one of the most important
trading partners of Germany in 1933. “Germany was then the fourth
largest importer of American goods, and the United States was the larg-
est supplier of German imports (Germany took 8% of all U.S. exports)”
(Rosenbaum 2010, p. 116). In spite of intensive economic collabora-
tion by some US companies like Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil,
International Harvester, General Electric, International Telephone and
Telegraph and American Radiator, which built branches in Germany in
the 1920s and 1930s (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 118), US–German trade
relations deteriorated. By 1939, US–German trade had shrunk to half
the volume of 1929 (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 116). This was due to the
German attempt to put its foreign trade on a “war basis”, tightly con-
trolling all imports and expanding Germany’s exports by any means
necessary and the reaction of the US government (Rosenbaum 2010,
pp. 116–117).
The USA took the path of appalled isolation

The reactions of the US government were mainly dominated by what it
saw as national interest, defending the US economy while keeping the
USA out of major international troubles. Criticism of Hitler’s regime was
mainly rooted in anti-fascism and less in anti-racism. On the contrary,
anti-Semitic currents seem to have played a major role in the refusal to

support the persecuted Jews.
Mexico and the Nazi Dictatorship

Mexico was the only country to oppose the “Anschluss” of Austria
(Herrera León 2014, pp. 364–368) and to take a clear stand against the
fascist/national socialist intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Sánchez
Andrés and Herrera León 2011). This was not only due to the leftist
character of the Cardenas presidency but also due to Mexican realpoli-
tik concerning its foreign policy as mentioned above. On the economic
level, Mexican–German relations shifted due to the Mexican nationali-
zation of the Petroleum industry in 1938. After the US withdrawal from
the oil trade with Mexico, which followed the nationalization of the
oil industry, Mexico was forced to find new buyers for its oil. Germany
replaced the UK (but not the USA) as an economic partner of Germany
and 2/3 of Mexican oil was sold to Germany until 1943,45 even after
Mexico’s entry into World War II in May 1942 (Adam 2005, p. 744).
Yet, this cannot be interpreted as a fundamental shift in Mexican for-
eign policy towards an alliance with the Axis powers. In spite of serious
internal problems and objections, Mexico gave official visa to at least
20,000 Spanish, Polish and Jewish refugees between 1933 and 194546
and supported the Spanish Republic during the Civil War and Spanish
Republican refugees even after 1945.
Mexican government politics followed what Cardenas perceived as the
national interest, ranging from strengthening the principle of non-inter-
vention to saving the Mexican economy by selling oil to Germany.
The Spanish Civil War
Nationalist Terror
The Spanish Civil war was triggered by the uprising of mutinous
Generals around Francisco Franco, Emilio Mola and Gonzalo Queipo
de Llano against the Republican Government on 17 July 1936. The
Generals were supported by the Moroccan troops of the regular army,
parts of the regular army on the mainland, the vast majority of the catho-
lic clergy, landowners, industrialists and parts of the peasantry. The dif-
ferent parties supporting the coup were right-wing catholic CEDA,
Basque country-based authoritarian monarchist (Carlists), fascists of the

Falange and monarchists. They were forced together into the F.E.T.
y de las JONS in 1937 highlighting the centralized nature of the
“nationalist” government. The aim of the insurgents was the suppression
of everyone they deemed “anti-Spanish”, “bolshevist”, “Jewish47”, espe-
cially the left and the establishment of an authoritarian, catholic regime.
On the other side was the democratically elected government of the
Popular Front, an alliance of left liberals (Republican Left, Republican
Union), Social Democrats (PSOE/UGT), Communists (PCE) and left
communists (POUM), supported by Catalan autonomists and anar-
chists (CNT/FAI). The parties of the Popular Front held various views
on the development of Spanish society. While the liberals and the com-
munists defended the bourgeois republic and private property, the Social
Democrats and the POUM wanted radical social reforms (Tosstorff
2016, p. 81) and the anarchists struggled initially for an anarchist rev-
olution. Later on, their majority—together with the PSOE/UGT—
supported the liberal/communist line, while a minority, the “Friends of
Durruti”, stuck to the notion of an anarchist revolution, allying them-
selves with the POUM. In May 1937, the communists and liberals
staged a coup against the anarchists in Barcelona, a traditional strong-
hold of the CNT/FAI and POUM. After several days of fierce fighting,
the building of the telephone central was taken away from the anarchists
and the “Friends of Durruti” and the POUM fell victim to a fierce cam-
paign of terror orchestrated by Stalin’s secret police. The generals were
supported by Germany and Italy, both countries sending large bodies
of troops (CTV from Italy48 and the “Legion Condor” from Germany)
equipped with the latest technology. The Republic was supported by
the USSR with arms and equipment and the Comintern by sending the
International Brigades. Volunteers from other countries fought for both
sides, Irish Catholics supporting the insurgents and left-wing workers
and intellectuals—like George Orwell—fighting in the “columns” of the
CNT/FAI or the POUM. Initially, the coup met with massive resistance
by the ordinary workers, farm labourers and parts of the peasantry and
could have crushed the rebellion, had it not been for the German air-
lift provided for the Moroccan troops and the hesitation of the Popular
Front government to react to the rebellion. After nearly three years of
fighting, Madrid fell to the nationalists on 27 March 1939 and Franco
declared the end of the Civil War on 1 April 1939. Franco had a clear-cut
political aim, stronger international support while the Republic suffered
from internal quarrels and the problem that especially the Communists
blocked any substantial social changes, thus discouraging the ordinary
soldiers in the Republican army and alienating major parts of the work-
ing class which had been crucial to the initial defeats of the insurgents in
July 1936 and April 1937.49
The terror of the nationalists was carried out systematically and
reached degrees of violence that resembled the worst massacres of the
Russian civil war like the white massacres of Ukrainian Jews in 191950
or the red purges of the Crimea in 1920.51 In fact, the mentality of
nationalist terror in Spain combined ideological, classist, sexist and
racial foundations for the effusion of blood. At its core was the idea of
cleansing (“limpiar”) the country from reds and atheists, which has to
be understood literally. Thus, active members of the opposing parties
and movements, especially anarchists and communists should be killed.
A substantial proportion of the leading nationalists saw the workers’
movement—and the lower classes in general—as second-class humans
and even allowed “medical” experiments in the concentration camps to
establish the alleged physical and psychological roots of Communism
(Preston 2006, p. 310). The war was more than other contemporary
conflicts: a war between rich and poor and a war between social classes
(Collado Seidel 2006, p. 11). The campaign of cleansing resulted in the
killing of known republicans by “taking them for a walk” (“paseos”),
summary executions of prisoners and even the “preemptive” execution
of workers in order “to show who’s the boss” (Preston 2012, p. 3).
Republican women were a target of killings, abuse and organized cam-
paigns of rape during the war. After Franco’s victory, they were made
second-class citizens and even their children were punished—either by
being taken away from their mothers and given to fascist families or by
being declared illegitimate on the basis of a law declaring all civilian mar-
riages null and void. As research on the actual numbers of people killed
is far from finished, the numbers given in the latest scholarly publication
by Paul Preston are 150,000 killed during the war and about 20,000
executed after the war (Preston 2012, p. xi), although other historians
give higher figures for the killings after the war ranging from 50,000
(Beevor 2006, p. 405) to 200,000 (including those who died in over-
crowded prisons or due to forced labour under inhuman conditions)
(Jackson 1967, p. 539). Even if we take as a basis the lower numbers
given by modern research, the numbers are frightening and show the
extent of the carnage and highlighting the fact that the rebels’ terror was
planned and coordinated and aiming at the extermination of any kind of

opposition.52
About 500,000 people fled Spain or tried to flee. Many were caught
in the last stage of the war, many fled to France, only to be captured by
the victorious Germans in 1940.
Nationalist terror combined anti-communist with class-based concep-
tions and added a ruthless gender dimension by organized mass raping.
Spain chose the path of violence and unbridled right-wing terror.
Republican Terror
Most historians agree that the terror in the republican areas was mainly
a phenomenon of the first weeks and months as far as numbers are con-
cerned. It cost the lives of 30,000–50,000 (Graham et al. 2014; Preston
2012, p. 141) people. The killings in the first phase of the war resem-
bled those on the nationalist side. Real or alleged enemies were seized
and shot or taken on “paseos”. A main target consisted priests and cler-
gymen, of whom about 7000 were shot during the course of the war.
In the later phases, the Republican government tried to restrain these
unlawful killings (Cruz 2006, p. 328), but at the same time, the Soviet
Secret Service was able to operate in Spain and kill left-wing oppo-
nents of the Communist Party and Stalinism such as the leader of the
P.O.U.M., Andres Nin. Although there was no full-fledged theory of
violence against the class enemy like the “limpieza” ideology on the
nationalist side, there had been precedents and theories of terror on
the side of the republic and the workers’ movement. For the anarchist
CNT/FAI, terror had always been a legitimate tool of politics and the
Communist Party adhering to the Stalinist Comintern was aggressively
propagating terror against anarchists and P.O.U.M. members criticiz-
ing the Popular Front calling them the “fifth column” of fascism. Part
and parcel of Stalinist theory was that terror was legitimate and desirable
when used against the enemies of the party.53
US Reactions to the Civil War

Public opinion in the USA was more or less sympathetic to the Republic,
but any kind of intervention was out of the question, as even most sup-
porters of the Republic were not willing to risk drawing the USA into a
war (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 86). The main exception was the Communist
Party, which actively joined the drive to recruit volunteers for the
International Brigades who formed the Abraham Lincoln Battalion (and
for a short time the George Washington Battalion, which was later on
merged with the Lincolns) that was part of the XV International Brigade
(Eby 2007, p. xii). The government did not actively prevent them from
going to Spain, but withheld all aid normally given to US citizens with
the argument that they were illegally serving a foreign power (Eby
2007, pp. 2–3). The other exception, but this time on the right, was
the catholic hierarchy, which sided with the Nationalists. But the main
official reaction was Congress’ resolution to put an embargo on both
sides of the conflict in 1937 (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 86). Formally dis-
tancing themselves from both sides, the Congress had de facto stabbed
the Republic in the back, as its support from the USSR and Mexico was
by no means as efficient as that given to Franco by Germany and Italy
(Buchanan 1997).
The USA chose the path of condemning the violence without supporting
any party
Yet, 2/3 of the Americans had no opinion whatsoever on the Spanish
Civil War in 1937 (Rosenbaum 2010, p. 86), an attitude initially shared
with many British citizens, but whose position changed during the
course of the war in favour of the Republic (Buchanan 1997, pp. 1–2),
this change of mind being in sharp contrast to the government’s atti-
tude which was reflected by its recognition of Franco’s government even
before the fall of Madrid in February 1939 (Buchanan 1997, p. 20).
The American way of viewing the conflict seems to have oscillated
between two poles. On the one hand, there was large-scale abstention
and a lack of interest both fuelled by the unwillingness to get into the
European quagmire. Ironically, it seems that the (correct) impression of
the slaughter of the first months had led to a nationalist (isolationist)
reaction letting the blood-thirsty Spanish do their own ugly business.54
For those taking sides, the fascist/anti-fascist pattern played the main
role and helped to do away with the atrocities committed by the side the
foreigner sympathized with. The main exceptions being those who were
sympathetic to the anarchist or left-socialist (P.O.U.M.) currents, which
were persecuted in both camps like C.L.R. James (Høgsbjerg 2016,
pp. 161–177) or George Orwell (2000 [1938], pp. 7–9).
Mexican Reactions to the Civil War

Mexico was the only country to help the Spanish Republic without
conditions and on a large scale. Unlike the USSR, which wanted to be
paid in gold, it only demanded payments according to the internation-
ally fixed rate (Revah 2015, p. 5). The country supplied about 20,000
rifles and 20 million rounds of shot, its complete arms reserve, to the
Spanish Republic for Pesetas of the Republic at an exchange rate favour-
able to the Spanish government. Less well known are the shipments of
US American planes,55 much-needed food (Beevor 2006, p. 226) or
the multi-level support of Mexican citizens for the Republic. One of the
most outstanding results of Mexico’s stand was the acceptance of about
20,00056 republican refugees into Mexico, amongst them about 500
children who had already been evacuated in 1937 (Enríquez Perea 1990,
pp. 33–40).
The country was split over the intervention on behalf of the Republic.
The upper and middle classes favoured the Nationalists (Revah 2015,
p. 5). Only the far right groups harboured real sympathies for a fascist
dictatorship and for most critics of the President’s policy, it was an anti-
left impulse. The question remains why Cardenas put such effort into a
struggle so far away, supporting a Republic that could easily turn into
a socialist or anarchist experiment and thus not only alienating gov-
ernments like those of the USA and Great Britain but also that of the
USSR, which wanted to monopolize foreign aid to the Republic. The
first answer is, because he was able to. It was the President’s prerequisite
to formulate and carry out the country’s foreign policy (Enríquez Perea
1990, p. 11). Nearly all important political camps in Mexico viewed
the Civil War as a struggle between fascism and anti-fascism, where evil
and good were fighting over Spain. Cardenas was probably subjectively
motivated by the idea that Mexicans and Spanish belonged to the same
“race” and that the Republic stood for the emancipation and progress of
all Spanish peoples (Revah 2015, p. 6). Most recent research has shown
that Cardenas was neither acting as a well-meaning idealist nor a sinister
materialist longing for treasures of the Republic like that carried on the
yacht El Vita in 1939 (Revah 2015, p. 6; Beevor 2006, p. 413). Rather,
he was afraid of a rising right and far right being encouraged by a suc-
cessful coup in Spain and attempting the same against his own govern-
ment in Mexico. Thus, a Republican (or even more left-wing) victory
in Spain with Mexico’s help would have provided him with substantial
backing at home (Revah 2015, pp. 6–8).
Mexico took the path of supporting the legal government

Cardenas’ stand for the less repressive side was based on nationalist and
class ideas. Mexican national politics were (to be) influenced by the
Spanish events and a victory of the conservative upper classes in Spain
would have encouraged their Mexican counterparts (Revah 2015,
pp. 214–215). The Mexican right followed the racist and anti-commu-
nist idea of a “Jewish-Masonic-Communist conspiracy” also advocated
by the nationalist perpetrators in Spain (Revah 2015, p. 6).
Conclusion
We called this essay crossroads and as we showed, the countries of the
world had the choice to walk a lot of different political roads. Their
choice was determined by a common mental framework that transcended
the frames of nations and political currents when it came to justifying
or condemning political violence. Regimes justifying their repression
dealt with it relatively openly and blamed the victims as long as the
number of victims killed was between the hundreds and lower tens of
thousands, depending on the country and the “value” attributed to
the victims according to their place in the racial and political hierarchy
in the thinking of the Western world in the 1930s. When the numbers
went into the hundreds of thousands or reached the millions, the perpe-
trators tried everything to hide them from the public—even if they did
everything to put even more people to death. The pattern of reaction of
most governments was shaped by their perception of national interest.
As long as repression in another state did not interfere with your own
interests, or you were appalled but unable to do anything, they down-
played it, ignored it or blamed it on the victims. This was also true for
the cases where tight collaboration with an obviously repressive regime
was considered to be in the interest of the nation. But, mainly in the
case of Mexico, national conceptions could also turn out in favour of the
victims, when the government saw internal repression in other countries
or their external conquests as contrary to Mexico’s national interest and
human rights.
Racial conceptions played a major role in hiding, diminishing and
justifying the crimes mentioned above and choosing the way to react.
One major finding is that this was true not only for racially motivated
crimes like Italy’s Abyssinian War or the German persecution of the Jews
but also for the US reception of Stalin’s crimes in the 1930s. Here, the
border-crossing of the crime’s roots and justifications changed to a large

extent. When, for example, parts of the US public and the government
remained silent about the death of millions of Ukrainian peasants, they
would not follow Stalin’s internal propaganda of extinguishing the class
of the “kulaks” but their perception of Slavs as inferior.
Anti-communism and anti-fascism were the main ideological justifica-
tions for the different political camps and currents. Here, we obviously
encounter significant changes of perceptions, when, for example, racial
justifications for the conquest of Abyssinia in Italy clash with anti-fascist
conceptions of the US left. The perception of class-based crimes in Spain
or the USSR also changed when they crossed borders and could be
viewed through a racial or national or anti-fascist/anti-communist lens.
The gender-motivated crimes of the Nationalists in Spain did not receive
much attention at the time, as gender issues were massively underrepre-
sented in international political discourses. This overview shows that the
world was several times at a dark crossroads in the 1930 and that it was
the weak, threatened and underdeveloped Mexican state which showed
that there always was a path out of darkness.
Notes
1. The expression seems to stem from the independent socialist/anarchist
writer Victor Serge. Although his corresponding novel was published
before the war and dealt with Stalin’s crimes in the Soviet Union, the
phrase was often used to characterize the horror of the war, the Shoah
and political crimes in the middle of the twentieth century. It was first
used by independent, left Socialists for the triumph of Fascism and
Stalinism and the Hitler–Stalin Pact. See Serge (2003).
2. This article focuses on the 1930s in Europe, because the subject of the
anthology are the emigrants from Germany, Austria and Spain who went
to Mexico and the USA. Actually, the Second World War started in China
and the devastations by the Japanese invasion of China, the Chinese
Civil War and the following Korean War and “Great Leap” were disas-
trous and traumatic for Asia. An overview of the historiography on the
Sino-Japanese War up to 2005: Gordon (2006); Meaning of the war for
China and Japan: Vogel (2007, pp. XI–XIII). Japanese war crimes: Harris
(2002); see also Peattie et al. (2011); Culture of remembrance: Twomey
and Koh (2015); the Korean War: Matray and Boose (2014); the “Great
Leap”: Yang (2012).
3. See Reichardt (2009, pp. 93–94). We would like to thank Prof. Reichardt
and his chair for providing the book.
4. The perpetrators of political violence were the product of national socie-
ties and mind-maps but were at the same time forced to transcend these
national boundaries as their deeds had immediate international reper-
cussions and were part of their foreign policy on an international (influ-
encing the governments of other states) and transnational (influencing
the public and NGOs of the other states) coupled with the emergence
of an internationally accepted transnational code of conduct of govern-
ments partially embodied in supranational institutions like the League of
Nations and of the development of a transnational mode of communicat-
ing government repression. “Transnationalization […] is a process of the
development of relatively lasting, dense and pluri-local relationships of
social practices, symbolic systems and artifacts which transcend national
borders.” Pries (2008, pp. 44–45).
5. Kennan (1979, p. 3). Kennan coined the phrase, which was taken up by
many historians.
6. In both cases, numbers are difficult to establish. What seems to be certain
is that more than a million soldiers died, about 80% of them members
of the Red Workers’ and Peasants’ Army and that Reds and Whites alike
killed each more than 200,000 people during their respective reigns of
terror.
7. This is highlighted by the turn towards the “Popular Front”, which meant
the subordination of the Communist Parties to social-democratic or lib-
eral currents while these had been deemed “fascist” a short time before.
Another example is the alliance with Nazi-Germany after the period of
“Popular Fronts” against the fascists. Bernhard H. Bayerlein: Deutscher
Kommunismus und Transnationaler Stalinismus. Komintern, KPD und
Sowjetunion 1929–1943, in: Weber et al. (2014, pp. 314–395).
8. This description of Stalin’s state of mind is not new. Close collaborators
of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev and also his rival Trotsky had described
him as somebody who did not care for the political positions of an oppo-
nent but who simply wanted to destroy and kill him as early as 1924.
Given Stalin’s brutal role during the Civil War, it might have come up
even earlier (Pages from Trotsky’s Journal, in: Fourth International, 5
(1941), issue No. 5, pp. 151–154 (written between Dec. 1936 and
Jan. 1937)). Stalin’s desire to kill people has lately been emphasized
by Jörg Baberowski, causing a lively debate. Without following all of
Baberowski’s theses, it should not be dismissed as personalizing psy-
cho-history. There are other examples of countries that underwent
a belated industrialization process, which was not accompanied by a
bloodbath or ended in a near collapse of the economy. Although the
industrialization of Japan before the First World War had also been
very rapid (and started from a much lower level than in Russia in the
late 1920s) and accompanied by two costly wars of expansion (50,000
dead during the First Sino-Japanese War 1894–1895, see Saya (2011),
160,000 dead during the Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905, see Kowner
2007) and a limited civil war (less than 10,000 killed during the Boshin
War 1864–1865 and probably no more than 20,000 killed during the
Satsuma Rebellion 1877), it was by no means as bloody as the Soviet
experience.
9. In 1924, there was already a bad harvest, which did not lead to starva-
tion and millions of death because the party had reacted differently.
Baberowski (2012, Pos. 1525).
10. Robert Conquest is one of the most ardent defenders of the thesis that
Stalin was directly involved in the murder of Kirov. Conquest (1989).
More recent research sees Nikolajev as an individual perpetrator. Lenoe
(2010).
11. https://libcom.org/history/social-origin-educational-level-chief-bolshe-
vik-leaders-1917.
12. Baberowski (2012, Pos. 4560). If he had, he would have complied with
Trotsky’s (!) demand “that the Soviet government ask for his extradition,
which would have automatically brought him before either a Norwegian
or a Mexican court”.
13. https://sovietpropagandawordpressco.wordpress.com/rural-farmers/
anti-kulak-posters/.
14. The Case of Leon Trotsky, New York 1968 (Rafael Galvan Library in the
Museo Casa Leon Trotsky), p. 550 (Agent of Britain, France and USA),
pp. 52–54 (Germany), p. 406 (Japan), p. 294 (Poland).
15. Duranty in an interview with the respected magazine Editor & Publisher
in 1932. Quoted after Taylor (1990, p. 184).
16. Trotsky (1949, pp. 346–350). The article originally appeared in
September 1939. Trotsky bases himself on the testimonial of a Ukrainian
socialist in Canada. The article comes out in Defence of Ukrainian inde-
pendence. Even Trotsky, who normally defended the integrity of the
Soviet state, in this case saw no other solution than to separate Ukraine
from the USSR because of the monstrosity of Stalinist crimes there.
17. Cf. Geschichte der KPdSU (B) – Kurzer Lehrgang, Chapter XII, http://
www.stalinwerke.de/geschichte/geschichte-069.html.
18. Werth (2003, p. 219), Harris (2016, p. 2).
19. The “Third Period” policy was announced at the sixth world congress of
the Communist International (1928). It stated that post-WWI, capitalism
had entered its “third period” after the revolutionary period immediately
following the war, a second period of relative stabilization during the
main part of the 1920s. The “third period” was characterized by a deep
crisis of capitalism and the Third International was ordered to follow a
policy of direct assault on the capitalist system. Its main features were
the theory of “social fascism”, brandishing Social Democracy as the main
(and last) bulwark of capitalism, which had to be treated like the fascist
parties and the “red trade union opposition”, the establishment of inde-
pendent communist trade unions outside the larger (“reformist”) trade
union federations. This policy was paralleled by forced collectivization
and massive terror in the USSR. The “third period” culminated in the
takeover of power by the Nazi movement in Germany and the collapse
of agriculture in the Ukraine and other regions. Jakov Drabkin: Die Idee
der Weltrevolution und ihre Transformation in der Kominterngeschichte,
in: Weber et al. (2014, pp. 187–193).
20. Polzharskaya (2003, pp. 48–49). Polzharskaya also shows that in spite of
Stalin’s efforts to contain the revolution in Spain and to promote the alli-
ance with “bourgeois” forces, important people in the West (like Winston
Churchill) still believed that the revolutionary situation after Franco’s
revolt and the resulting counterstrike by the workers’ movement was due
to Russian communist agitation. It should be noted that the first of the
Moscow Trials started on 19 August 1936, just two months after the out-
break of the war. It was no coincidence that (next to Trotsky, who was in
exile) Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Communist International from its
founding to 1926, was the most prominent victim of this trial.
21. On the concept of “socialism in one country”: van Ree (2010, pp. 143–
159); see also Mandel (1978).
22. Even the isolated Trotsky and his small “Fourth International” still caused
fear amongst democratic as well as fascist politicians. See Trotsky (2006,
p. 36). Trotsky cites a French newspaper in which the French ambassador
to Berlin and Adolf Hitler speak about their mutual fears of Trotsky and
his eventual takeover in the course of a European war. Winston Churchill
remarked in 1938 that he hated Trotsky and that he was in favour of
Stalin’s terror against the former revolutionary leader and his followers.
Reiner Tosstorff: “Es gibt noch Leben in dem alten Kerl Trotzki”. Zur
Trotzki Biographie von Robert Service (https://www.rosalux.de/filead-
min/rls_uploads/pdfs/Themen/GK_Geschichte/service_trotzki_rezen-
sion.pdf), p. 8. The intensity of hatred harboured by British conservatives
against the Communists in Russia is confirmed by Kershaw. Kershaw
(2016, pp. 409–434).
23. The most detailed account on the “white” movements: Katzer (1999).
24. On the white émigré communities: Schlögel (1994).
25. Brailsford (1939, p. 148). Quoted after: Rosenbaum (2010, p. 88,
fn. 23). Rosenbaum’s text cites the Nation as the publishing paper.
Brailsford was a former Liberal, then member of the Independent Labour

Party and well acquainted with Russian and Soviet politics and an influen-
tial writer who published in leading liberal, social-democratic and socialist
papers in the USA and Great Britain. Leventhal (1973, p. 81).
26. Foglesong (1995). Fogelsong shows the different levels of US interven-
tion from secret aid to anti-Bolshevik forces and food to direct military
intervention.
27. The Immigration Act of 1924 was introduced to limit amongst oth-
ers the influx of Jewish, Italian, Asian and “Slavic” immigrants into the
USA on the basis of eugenics. Paul Lombardo: Eugenics Laws Restricting
Immigration, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay-
9text.html.
28. One example is the support of Carranzas’s terrorist campaign against
Zapata in 1916, where mass executions and torture were systematically
used against real or alleged peasant rebels, http://cultura.elpais.com/cul-
tura/2016/12/20/actualidad/1482199810_385787.html, date accessed
9 March 2017.
29. Herrera León (2014, pp. 84–85, 388). We would like to thank
Dr. Herrera León for providing this and his other texts.
30. García Higueras (2017, pp. 110, 117). We would like to thank the Museo
León Trotsky for its hospitality and for supplying manifold sources on the
Dewey Commission.
31. Brogini Künzi (2006, pp. 29–30, 216). The first wave alone consisted
of about 90,000 men and the total numbers were more than 420,000
(Morgan 2004, pp. 173–174).
32. For example, the Italians lacked a coherent racist ideology aiming at the
extinction of entire peoples. Their racism was not substantially different
from that of other colonial powers. Its consequences were deadly for
hundreds of thousands of Abyssinians, yet distinct from a war of annihila-
tion and enslavement as the one waged by the German “Reich” in Poland
and the USSR (Brogini Künzi 2006, p. 289).
33. Blackshirts (who formed about half of the Italian force), askaris (soldiers
of African origin in the Italian army), Ethiopian collaborating volunteers
and also regular troops committed various crimes. In spite of several writ-
ten orders by Mussolini and some of his generals, there were few real
attempts to discipline the Italian soldiery and stop the atrocities (Brogini
Künzi 2006, pp. 284–285).
34. Mussolini used racial arguments earlier, especially after the conquest of
Cyrenaica in 1932, but from 1935 on, they served as justification for
large-scale violence. See Robertson (1988, p. 40).
35. Mussolini was eager to present the Italian aviation industry at interna-
tional contests and the successes of Italian pilots and planes in the end
even deceived Mussolini himself in regard to the effectiveness of his Air

Force. See Sadkovich (1987, pp. 128–136).
36. Buchenau (2007, p. 193) (fascist sympathies).
37. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007656.
38. 4 February 1933: Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the
German People curtailing substantial political freedoms; 27 February
1933: Reichstag Fire followed by stepped up terror, imprisonment, tor-
ture and murder of political opponents and the introduction of the
28 February 1933: Reichstag Fire Decree (official name: Decree of the
Reich President for the Protection of People and State) de facto abolish-
ing political freedoms and transferring substantial powers to the gov-
ernment including the right to take people into “protective custody”
(“Schutzhaft”) the Nazis’ form of administrative custody widely used to
imprison Jews and political opponents without a proper warrant or sen-
tence (Benjamin Carter Hett: Burning the Reichstag. An Investigation
into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery, Oxford 2014). 23 March 1933:
Enabling Act (official name: Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and
the State). Two-thirds of the newly elected (5 March 1933) Reichstag
vote for this act, which transfers power from the Reichstag to the
government.
39. http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/1933/03-02-1933.php.
40. Collection of sources: http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/1938/tschecho-
slowakei/index.php.
41. Literature up to 2009: Schmid (2009a); See Nachama et al. (2013).
42. Cf. https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/ns-regime/ausgrenzung/
kristallnacht/;http://www.zukunft-braucht-erinnerung.de/die-kristallnacht-
luege/.
43. A theory that was above all popular amongst left forces. See the KPD’s
condemnation of the pogrom of 9 November 1938: https://web.
archive.org/web/20110728034500/http://www.dkp-giessen.de/
echo/2004/extra3.html.
44. The Mexican–American War of 1846–1848 had been justified by rac-
ist ideas. Foos (2002, Pos. 64, 108, 2259–2274). Both the Emergency
Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 as well as their
forerunners were justified by racial arguments, some of them stem-
ming from the Mental Age Tests conducted during the First World War
amongst 1.7 million draftees of the US forces. Racist riots were frequent
and 383 people had been lynched between 1920 and 1933. Miller (2003,
pp. 36–37, 50–51). http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/
shipp/lynchingyear.html.
45. h ttp://www.enlacejudio.com/2013/06/20/los-nazis-en-mexico-el-
gobierno-de-lazaro-cardenas-vendio-petroleo-hitler/.
46. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007824. A
critical assessment of the admission of a relatively low number of Jewish
refugees is provided by Gleizer (2011).
47. Preston (2012, p. xi). Preston gives a detailed account of the anti-Semitic
beliefs of the leaders of the rebellion.
48. The CTV served the nationalists well, but was mainly remembered for its
embarrassing defeat at Guadalajara in 1937. One of the resulting songs
mocked the Italian’s haughty remarks about the Nationalist’s shortage of
trucks to transport their troops: Guadalajara is not Abyssinia/Spaniards,
even the Red ones, are brave/Less trucks and more balls! (Beevor 2006,
p. 246; Colodny 2009, p. 141). Colodny was a volunteer in the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade and a historian.
49. Casanova (2013), Pagès i Blanch (2013), Sennett (2014), Preston (2014)
(Review by Reiner Tosstorff of the former four books: http://www.
sehepunkte.de/2015/10/25640.html).
50. The worst pogroms were carried out by the gangs of “hetman” Petljura
in Ukraine in 1919, when between 40,000 and 100,000 Jews were bru-
tally killed and many more raped, injured and driven away. Altogether,
between 50,000 and 200,000 Jews were killed during the Russian civil
war due to deep-rooted anti-Semitic prejudices and the lie that the Jews
were allies of the Bolshevics. Nearly all white armies committed pogroms
(in spite of well-sounding declarations of their leaders) (Benz 2011,
pp. 296–298; Heifetz 1921, p. 18 [Jewish socialists against Bolshevism],
p. 85 [very low percentage of pogroms committed by “red” gangs and
Pogroms by Machno’s anarchists], p. 180 [about 120,000 killed during
the pogroms]).
51. For the following, we want to thank Prof. Manfred Hildermeier and
PD. Dr. Reiner Tosstorff for the debate of the figures on the massacre
in the Crimea. Most modern publications mentioning the slaughter in
the Crimea in 1920 are based on the publication by Melgunov (1924,
pp. 65–69). Melgunov cites an official communist investigation which
put the figure of surrendered White army soldiers and civilians at 56,000
(p. 66, fn. 59) and cites an eyewitness who testified that about 120,000
had been massacred. Victor Serge gives a lower figure, but only for the
White officers killed after their surrender (13,000, which he still calls into
question as exaggerated). At the same time, he points out the disastrous
effects of Bela Kun’s broken promises towards allied anarchists and sur-
rendering whites. Serge (2012 [1951], p. 164).
52. Preston (2012, pp. 34–35). On the debate about Preston’s book: Graham
et al. (2014), Preston (2012, pp. 139–168).
53. Without necessarily following Payne’s thesis that the Republic could only
have ended in a Stalinist dictatorship, see Payne (2004, p. 6).
54. The same was true for Britain: Buchanan (1997, p. 1).

55. Ojeda Revah (2015, pp. 116–119). These were unarmed planes for trans-
port provided by private US companies. Beevor (2006, p. 132).
56. Cf. http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/09/03/inenglish/1441275302_
272830.html.
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CHAPTER 3
Reflections on the New School’s Founding

Moments, 1919 and 1933
Ira Katznelson
From its very beginning, the New School has wrestled with the
consequences of unfreedom, fear, and insecurity, working to advance

John Milton’s ringing affirmation of 1643: “Give me liberty to know, to
utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” It
has tried to emulate Thomas Huxley’s call, when he was installed as rec-
tor of Aberdeen University in 1874, that “universities should be places in
which thought is free from all fetters, and in which all sources of knowl-
edge and all aids of learning should be accessible to all comers, without
distinction of creed or country, riches or poverty.”
This singular university has touched many lives through its active
values. It certainly has touched mine, offering the special privilege
of serving as dean of the Graduate Faculty at a moment of transition,
This article was first published as: Katznelson, Ira. “Reflections on the New
School’s Founding Moments, 1919 and 1933.” Social Research 76:2 (2009),
395–410. © The New School. Reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins
University Press.
I. Katznelson (*) 
Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA
e-mail: iik1@columbia.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_3
70 I. KATZNELSON
opportunity, and growth. I arrived in the 1983–1984 academic year.

The distance of a half century from the founding made it impossible for
me to know the earliest members of the faculty, with one exception: the
sociologist Hans Speier, the youngest and last surviving founder of the
University in Exile, who had been a member of the Graduate Faculty
from 1933 to 1942 before serving in the Office of War Information and
the State Department’s Occupied Areas Division. Professor Speier kindly
conveyed a sense of what the first decade had been like. I also bene-
fited from conversations with members of the second and third waves
of émigré faculty and students, who shared their histories and expertise
with warmth and generosity. These colleagues included the Austrian
jurist and political scientist Erich Hula, who arrived soon after the 1938
Anschluss, and the Stuttgart-born Adolph Lowe, a veteran of the First
World War who joined the Graduate Faculty as professor of economics
and as the director of a new Institute for World Affairs in 1940, having
come from the University of Manchester, where he first had found ref-
uge. I also enjoyed conversations with the Italian New School student
Franco Modigliani, who completed his Ph.D. under Jacob Marschak’s
supervision in 1944 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in
1985, and with Hans Jonas, who served as Alvin Johnson Professor of
Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty from 1955 to 1976 and who first
had met Hannah Arendt when they both were graduate students of
Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in Marburg in the mid-1920s,
before Heidegger reminded the world in 1933 that even the greatest of
minds were susceptible to the blandishments of National Socialism.
One of the grand opportunities I experienced as dean was the
chance to address the two fiftieth-anniversary celebrations that marked
the 1933–1934 founding of the University in Exile. These gather-
ings were convened by Jonathan Fanton in April and December 1984
at the First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, and in Berlin’s strik-
ing Staatsbibliothek, in the large hall named for Otto Braun, the Social
Democrat who served as prime minister of Prussia from 1920 to 1932
and who himself emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 when Hitler came to
power. The New York gathering awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters
degree to Hans Speier and to six exceptional contributors to human
rights, including South Africa’s Helen Suzman; the Maryknoll Sisters, for
their courageous work in Central America; and Poland’s Adam Michnik.
Erich Hula and Adolph Lowe served as honorary marshals. The Berlin
ceremony and commemorative seminar included a memorable talk by
3 REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW SCHOOL’S FOUNDING MOMENTS, 1919 AND 1933 71
Jürgen Habermas on German academic culture and the impact of the

absence of a once-vibrant Jewish intellectual and cultural presence, and a
moving account of personal and scholarly duress and renewal by Aristide
Zolberg, the first holder of the New School’s University in Exile Chair,
awarded by the city of Berlin.
The commemoration’s highlight was an address by Richard von
Weizsäcker, who received an honorary degree for his commitment, as
the citation said, “to the ideals exemplified by the University in Exile:
the freedom of intellectual inquiry, the defense of human rights, and
the pursuit of international understanding as an avenue toward peace.”
His diplomat father, Ernst, had been a member of the Nazi Party, had
held honorary rank in the SS, had been a key figure in the 1938 negoti-
ations at Munich, and had served as German ambassador to the Vatican
just as Rome’s Jews were being deported. In 1947, he was sentenced
to seven years for war crimes associated with the deportation of French
Jews. So, it was particularly moving to hear his son, the new president
of the Federal Republic, pay homage to the New School’s legacy of
courage and resistance. That talk, and Berlin’s gift of the University
in Exile chair, signaled a salute—sadly, a belated one—“To the Living
Spirit,” the inscription the Nazis had removed from the great lecture
hall at Heidelberg University and which Thomas Mann, who had come
to New York in 1937 to celebrate the start of the Graduate Faculty’s
fifth year, suggested should become the institution’s motto “to indicate
that the living spirit, driven from Germany, has found a home in this
country.”
And so it did. This essay recalls and honors that stirring history, as do
others in this special issue of Social Research, the journal whose found-
ing was announced in the very first public document proclaiming “the
establishment of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science in
the New School [that] has arisen out of the reorganization of German
university life under the National Socialist Revolution,” in circumstances
where “scores of professors of international reputation have been dis-
missed or given indefinitely prolonged furloughs from their teaching
duties.” That statement talked of the obligation the New School had
seized “to offer temporary or permanent hospitality to scholars who have
been deprived of the opportunity of functioning by the political require-
ments, real or imaginary, of any country,” and it spoke of the scale of
that task at a time, at the start of the Third Reich, when “the hundreds
of able scholars who have been displaced from the German universities
72 I. KATZNELSON
represent a priceless resource of all civilization.” This indeed was a rare

act, unique at the time, when the expulsion and repression of scholars
from German universities was greeted with indifference by university fac-
ulties, boards, and administrators in the United States.
In his memoirs, Hans Jonas described the graduate faculty as a “tre-
mendously interesting and turbulent institution,” an apt reminder that
it never has been a dull or tranquil seat of learning, in part because its
intellectual ambitions always have outreached its financial means, but not
least because, from the start, it hated despotism, distrusted ideological
zeal, and promoted the powers of reason.
It has carried three names. In 1933, it was designated the University
in Exile. Two years later, it was chartered as the Graduate Faculty of
Political and Social Science, having become an established American
doctoral institution. Today, it is proudly and honorably called The New
School for Social Research.
Names beckon understanding. Designations matter as signals of
identity, as markers of ambition, as projections of activity and reputa-
tion. This history of naming and renaming thus invites us to consider
the founding of 1933 in tandem with the New School’s first beginning.
For today’s “new” name for what, during most of its existence, was the
Graduate Faculty at the New School for Social Research, takes us back to
that moment in 1919, when the original New School for Social Research
was brought into being by luminous progressive intellectuals. Fourteen
years before Hitler launched a new Reich by burning books and purging
universities, those initiators were distraught at limited wartime freedom
in the United States, and deeply concerned about administrative bar-
riers to free inquiry in the academy. From early 1917, they dreamt of
and planned for a “new school,” a far-reaching alternative to mainstream
higher education, a place where a more free, more egalitarian, more tol-
erant, and more rational society could be imagined and furthered by dis-
ciplined critical inquiry.
In this essay, I should like to offer a perspective that intersects the
familiar narrative that we, the members of the extended family of the
New School, tell about how the opening of the University in Exile in
October 1933, in the language of Alvin Johnson, “gave striking evi-
dence of [the New School’s] fundamental belief in the great tradition
that thought and scholarship must be free.” In drawing parallels between
1919 and 1933, Johnson declared that like the original New School, the
new Graduate Faculty was “founded on a faith and a judgment: the faith
in liberal democracy as the only political system adequate to the needs of

an advancing civilization [and] confident that in the end, reason, and its
political expression, liberal democracy, will prevail.”
Not surprisingly, this narrative of continuity, a story of how, in the
words of Claus Dieter-Krohn, “the rescue action the New School
undertook in 1933 was fully in keeping with the institution’s origins,”
dominated the fiftieth-anniversary commemorations. All of us can take
justifiable pride in the history of how Johnson directed an idiosyncratic
center of adult learning to promote its first and highest value of intellec-
tual freedom by fashioning a faculty for scholars who found refuge from
an antiliberal and physically threatening totalitarianism. But that magnif-
icent legacy, I believe, gains more intellectual strength and more ethical
power not just from a closer investigation of the continuities and elective
affinities that connect the two moments of origin, but from an examina-
tion that also identifies the internal, indeed inherent, tensions that some-
times proved synergistic and creative, but sometimes did not.
For the familiar history of consistency is too seamless. Separated by a
tumultuous decade and a half, the fears, the insecurities, and the orien-
tations to liberty in 1919 and 1933 were not identical. Though joined
by many shared commitments, each founding was dedicated to goals
and nourished by explicit and tacit understandings that diverged, some-
times sharply, with respect to the standing of democracy and the status
of intellectual authority, and with regard to how free scholarship should
responsibly conquer fear and advance liberty. Those differences were not
superficial. They were grounded in sometimes divergent and sometimes
competing understandings about the university’s, and liberal democra-
cy’s, character, requirements, and prospects.
Memory, of course, can play tricks, but I believe the original New
School for Social Research became a source of engagement and curiosity
for me in the spring of 1966. I was finishing a senior-year undergradu-
ate essay at Columbia University on the race riots of 1919. My supervi-
sor, the historian Richard Hofstadter, urged me to think more broadly
about the frictions and fissures that characterized American society just
after the conclusion of the First World War. Those divisions included
the questions of citizenship and race about which I was writing, but also
matters that concerned immigration, ethnicity, and assimilation as well as
the scope of legitimate dissent and the nature of academic freedom. The
latter was a subject about which Hofstadter had brilliantly written with
his colleague Walter Metzger. More than a half-century later, their 1955
74 I. KATZNELSON
book, The Development of Academic Freedom in America, remains the

best historical work on the subject.
When I studied with Professor Hofstadter during that 1965–1966
academic year, he was finishing The Progressive Historians, a beautifully
realized intellectual history about the leading figures in the generation
of his teachers. The book focused on Frederick Jackson Turner, famous
for his thesis about the role of the frontier in shaping American democ-
racy; Vernon Parrington, renowned for his history of American political
thought as a conflict between elites and the people; and Charles Beard,
America’s best-known and best-selling historian, president both of the
American Historical Association and the American Political Science
Association, and the author, in 1913, of a deeply contentious assess-
ment of the American founding, An Economic Interpretation of the
Constitution of the United States. Hofstadter sought to understand
how these historians had sought to give analytical and moral meaning
to America’s past. He explained how the group’s “critical, democratic,
[and] progressive” impulses had taken “the writing of American history
out of the hands of the Brahmins and the satisfied classes, where it had
too exclusively rested, and made it responsive to the intellectual needs of
new types of Americans who were beginning to constitute a productive,
insurgent intelligentsia.”
It was in one of my weekly hours with Hofstadter that I learned
how it had been Beard, together with yet another progressive histo-
rian at Columbia, James Harvey Robinson—later the New School’s
first director, before the task passed to Alvin Johnson—who persuaded
Herbert Croly, the first editor of the New Republic, to convene a plan-
ning group for an independent social science institute. The precipitating
events were the October 1917 resignation by Beard from his posi-
tion at Columbia, followed by Robinson in December, after President
Nicholas Murray Butler had guided the board of trustees to dismiss
Henry Dana, an assistant professor of comparative literature and a
socialist, and James McKeen Cattell, a distinguished tenured profes-
sor of psychology and a pacifist, for their outspoken opposition to the
war in 1917 and 1918, their campaigning against the draft, and their
advocacy of conscientious objection. Cattell was a particularly visi-
ble scholar. He had served as president of the American Psychological
Association in 1895. He founded the Psychological Review and owned
and edited Science, the magazine that became the official publication
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Coming
from the upper reaches of American society, he was an academic pioneer.

He did doctoral work at Leipzig and Johns Hopkins; his book
Psychometric Investigation was the first doctoral dissertation in psychol-
ogy to be published in the United States; and he became the country’s
first professor of psychology, in 1888, at the University of Pennsylvania
before moving to Columbia in 1891.
The Columbia University firings and the resignations followed on
the heels of the founding declaration of principles of the American
Association of University Professors in 1915, when John Dewey was
elected its first president, affirming that it is “inadmissible that the power
of determining when departures from the requirements of the scien-
tific spirit and method have occurred should be vested in bodies not
composed of members of the academic profession.” The firings and
resignations also ensued after President Butler’s pronouncement at com-
mencement, after the entry of the United States into the war, that no
faculty member would be tolerated who “opposes or counsels opposition
to the effective enforcement of the laws of the United States or who acts
or speaks or writes treason.”
The New School founders persisted in an environment that was not
particularly hospitable. Their project was especially audacious because
the repression of dissent at Columbia was not exceptional. The wartime
quest for security had generated fear, and fear had justified authoritarian
violations. In 1917, Congress passed an Espionage Act that mandated
sentences of up to 20 years for individuals who encouraged “disloyalty”
in wartime. The year 1918 witnessed the passage of an Alien Act that
authorized Washington to deport members of anarchist organizations.
The same year, a Sedition Act made it illegal to use “disloyal, profane,
scurrilous, or abusive language” about the flag, the armed forces, and
the country during the war. And 1919, of course, was the very year
Attorney-General Alexander Mitchell Palmer initiated widespread raids
on some 10,000 suspected radicals, and infamously deported 249 indi-
viduals to the Soviet Union on the SS Buford, where they did not meet a
happy fate.
When the New School opened its doors, in what its announcement
called “exigent circumstances,” it had two purposes, each bound to the
other. Created to oppose outrages against intellectual liberty, the insti-
tution sought to promote the study of human affairs in order to ren-
ovate democracy. The founders largely shared President Woodrow
Wilson’s optimism that a new era of democracy and peace might result
76 I. KATZNELSON
from how the war—at a terrible cost, to be sure—had defeated mil-

itarism, defended liberty, ended archaic empires, liberated nations, and
created new prospects for international law based on progressive prin-
ciples. Having been spared the demographic catastrophes that beset the
European combatants and having experienced no devastation on its own
soil, the United States, these progressive scholars believed, was ready for,
and open to, an intellectual environment where social studies could seek
what the first announcement of the New School in 1919 called “an unbi-
ased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth and present
working” that could advance domestic social reform and help produce
what it called “a searching readjustment of the established order of
things.”
The early New School’s assertive modernism and muckraking spirit
represented the most attractive pole of American culture, one at odds
with the era’s most ugly and violent features, signified by lynching and
a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, the closing of the immigration gate, quotas
on university admissions, and smug celebrations of speculative wealth.
Not surprisingly, the institution was immediately controversial. From
the moment it beckoned adult noncredit students to a row of six brown-
stones on 23rd Street in Chelsea during the second term of Wilson’s
presidency, it was attacked for advancing radical and subversive ideas.
It was Hofstadter who first showed me how the New School, fash-
ioned as an outlier in the institutional field of American higher edu-
cation, nonetheless was located at the very core of the country’s most
important political and intellectual currents. Its first faculty—which
included, in addition to Beard and Robinson, the heretical economist
Thorstein Veblen, the pioneering student of business cycles Wesley Clair
Mitchell, the historian and leader in women’s education Emily James
Putnam, and the great philosopher of democracy and reform John
Dewey—sought, like many fellow progressives, to explain, as Hoftstadter
put it, “the American liberal mind to itself.” In the period between
the founding of 1919 and the second founding in 1933, this estimable
group, together with Horace Kallen, the important student of ethnicity
and cultural pluralism; Harold Laski, the British Labor Party intellectual;
and other innovative scholars, combined progressive history with philo-
sophical pragmatism and critical economics. Soon, under Alvin Johnson’s
leadership, the content of their modernism extended beyond the social
sciences into dance, music, photography, and art, extensions signified by
the stunning murals painted by José Clemente Orozco and Thomas Hart
Benton and marked by the company of such figures as Martha Graham,

Aaron Copeland, Charles Seeger, Peggy Bacon, and Berenice Abbott.
Speakers in this first period included Albert Einstein and T. S. Eliot,
William Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes, Lewis Mumford and
W. E. B. Du Bois, Roscoe Pound and Edwin Seligman, Julien Benda and
Fernand Léger, Clarence Darrow and Bertrand Russell.
Though the 1919 founding was first motivated by a defense of the
right of this and any other faculty to speak out, the central impulses
behind it were far broader. When Hofstadter wrote about how pragma-
tism “provided American liberalism with its philosophical nerve,” how
“progressive historiography gave it memory and myth,” and how such
powerful intellectual currents “naturalized” American liberalism and
democracy “within the whole framework of American historical expe-
rience,” he could just as well have been writing about this first New
School for Social Research as the era’s great emblem of ideas and crea-
tivity, one marked by a confident, optimistic, future-oriented intellectual
program that shared what Hofstadter called a “simple faith […] in the
sufficiency of American liberalism.”
The university in exile was grafted onto the initial New School in
1933. The arrival of the agricultural economist Karl Brandt; the public
finance specialist Gerhard Colm; the economist and assessor of Weimar’s
Cartel Court Arthur Feiler; the economic theorist Eduard Heimann; the
professor of jurisprudence and legal sociology Hermann Kantorowicz;
the economist and sociologist and first dean, Emil Lederer; the sociol-
ogist Hans Speier; the ethnologist and musicologist E. von Hornbostel;
the Czech-born founder of Gestalt psychology, Max Wertheimer; and
the specialist in social policy Frieda Wunderlich, as well as colleagues who
soon followed before and just after the Second World War, inserted a
powerful new set of voices that were far more closely attuned to total war
and totalitarianism than their American colleagues and were a good deal
more alert to the threats these developments posed less to the quality
than to the very persistence of liberal democracy.
This implant created an institution that resembled the two-headed
Roman god Janus. After 1933, the German émigré sociologist Reinhard
Bendix observed how “two elements [had] converged that had had
no prior contact.” One institutional face projected “an American […]
reform of higher education through emphasis on adult education, arts
and social science.” It was grounded not only in progressivism and prag-
matism but also in the reform impulses of Protestantism represented
78 I. KATZNELSON
by such liberal theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.

Committed to social criticism and improvement within American society,
the members of this extended faculty had joined the New School vol-
untarily while, almost to a person, they maintained “day jobs” at other
institutions of higher education. The second institutional face was con-
stituted primarily by a German and Jewish cohort of social scientists with
very different biographies and life circumstances. Their lives had rup-
tured. Their commitment to democracy was marked less by an amelio-
rative instinct—though they did have strong views about how to make
liberal democracy and modern capitalism work better—but above all, by
resistance to all forms of totalitarianism. They, too, were left of center,
but with more of a difference than most of us, and most histories, tend
to remember.
Of course, both faces of the New School shared broad commitments
to free inquiry. Both were composed of scholars and intellectuals not
recruited to more conventional institutions despite their brilliance, who
stood just to the side of mainstream American higher education. Yet, the
group of 1919 and the group of 1933 were highly distinctive, both in
fact and in mutual recognition. From the perspective of the newcomers
fleeing fascism, the faith of the progressives was too simple, rather credu-
lous, even provincial. From the vantage of the American progressives, in
turn, the refugee scholars were too much the global realists, too cynical,
too motivated by fear—even, for some, too foreign.
With the creation of the University in Exile, and thus with the return
of the social sciences to a status of primacy, the struggle for democracy
at the New School was reinvigorated, but in a radically new way. For the
battle now was profoundly extended as the newcomers called into ques-
tion what they perceived to be the innocence of American liberalism as it
then existed, even in its most progressive form. With the spectacular col-
lapse of Weimar democracy and a good many liberal regimes in Europe,
Asia, and Latin America; with the growth of militant and violent anti-
liberal Bolshevik, Fascist, and Nazi ideologies; and with misery spread
by the failures of financial and industrial capitalism; in short, with the
intensification of what President Franklin Roosevelt so evocatively called
“fear itself,” the combination of hopefulness and enclosure that had
characterized the thought, teaching, and expectations of the New School
progressives seemed, as Hofstadter put the point, “too insular and too
nostalgic” for “a more complex and terrifying world.”
The University in Exile gave expression to this intellectual and polit-

ical division inside the New School. In the early years, the University
in Exile/Graduate Faculty scholars largely took the United States as it
was—as a given. They did not treat it as an object of critique. Rather,
the issues they took up in their most important faculty institution,
which they called the General Seminar, concerned the roots of fascism,
the vulnerability and excesses of democracy, the dangerous borderlands
dividing freedom from unfreedom, the sources of mass irrationality, the
deformations of public opinion. Empirically, they drew overwhelmingly
on European, primarily central European and especially German, history
and experience. At their best, they compelled attention to what, argu-
ably, were the most vital challenges of their time. They defended the
tradition of Enlightenment in an open, rich, and cosmopolitan way, all
the while running the risk, as a fellow refugee intellectual, Lewis Coser,
put the point, of inhabiting “a kind of protective counterculture that
shielded them to a lesser or greater degree from the majority culture that
surrounded them.” They also were prone to internal scuffles, administra-
tive skirmishes, and, at times, to excessive self-congratulation.
But these limits and pitfalls were trivial as compared to their accom-
plishments. In many more ways than I can enumerate here, American
scholarship was broadened and deepened by the quality, rigor, ethical
sensibilities, and deep learning that characterized the great scholars and
scholarship at the Graduate Faculty, then and since. I can think of no
equivalent-sized unit that ever has accomplished so much. The newcom-
ers also established productive terms of trade with the wider society that
included active participation in Second World War government institu-
tions and in postwar policymaking. In becoming American, they broad-
ened what it meant to be American.
Concurrently, though, they risked being thought worse than
marginal—as subversive, as individuals seen to be pushing the United
States toward yet another global war. Charles Beard, arguably the most
important moving force behind the original New School, took just this
view. During the 1930s, indeed from 1934 to Pearl Harbor, he was one
of the country’s most visible and influential isolationist intellectuals, hav-
ing come to believe that he had been gullible in 1917 when he had sup-
ported American participation in the First World War. Hofstadter has
noted how Beard thought that “nothing [was] at stake in the impend-
ing conflict; and such moral difference as he could find between the
80 I. KATZNELSON
contending powers was not enough to warrant American partisan-

ship. He could see only a battle between the ruthless old imperialisms
of Britain and France and the new ugly aggression of the fascist pow-
ers.” Even in the face of the Italian attack on Ethiopia, the Nuremberg
Laws and Kristallnacht, and notwithstanding Guernica, the conquest
of Poland, and the fall of France, Beard continued to resist American
engagement. “The clearer the lineaments of the Nazi state became,”
Hofstadter continued, “the less Beard seemed to be concerned with what
was happening outside the United States.” “I think,” Beard wrote, “we
should concentrate our attention on tilling our own garden.”
How different, of course, were the views of the Graduate Faculty.
Ever since the publication, in 1915, of Emil Lederer’s “On the Sociology
of World War,” key members of the group that joined the New School
in the 1930s were concerned with understanding the implications of
their era’s new kind of warfare for the character and power of the mod-
ern state, the nature of citizenship, the qualities of the modern economy,
the features of foreign relations, the mobilizing qualities of ideology,
the shifts to mass politics, the dangers for democracy. Lederer’s brilliant
essay and Hans Speier’s innovative 1939 account of “Class Structure and
‘Total War’” pioneered analyses of the kind soon made famous in 1941
by Harold Lasswell’s essay on the garrison state, a state dominated by
specialists in violence. Further, the émigré faculty concerned themselves
with a deeper understanding of the antiliberal, antidemocratic thrust
of their time, offering as the first book on fascism to come from the
Graduate Faculty Max Ascoli and Arthur Feiler’s excellent comparative
study of Italy and Germany, Fascism for Whom?, published in 1938.
Beard was appalled. In 1939, he “attributed much of the pressure for
collective security to ‘resident foreigners’ who were treating the United
States as a boardinghouse.” If resistance to entanglement “in the mazes
and passions of European conflicts. .. be immorality,” he wrote, “the for-
eigners now boarding here. … can make the most of it.” Beard never
regretted his militant isolation. Unrepentant, he wrote in 1948, referring
to Roosevelt, “We were secretly governed by our own Fuehrer!”
I know, of course, that Beard was not representative of the members
of the original New School during the 1930s. Most of its affiliated schol-
ars were deeply affronted by fascist excesses and anti-Semitic barbarism.
Most had views rather more like those of Max Lerner, who regularly lec-
tured on 12th Street, who had worked with Alvin Johnson as managing
editor of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and who coedited The
Nation. Concerned about fascism, Lerner published It Is Later Than You

Think in 1938. But its call for what his subtitle identified as The Need
for Militant Democracy was a plea, written in Popular Front prose, for
democratic collectivism, offering the claim that “the central tragedy of
our age […] is not alone in fascism; it lies even more in the liberalism
which has thus far proved feckless to cope with social collapse and the
fascism that follows it.”
It is the “even more” that would have raised the hackles of the
Graduate Faculty. The span from Lerner’s formulations, which were
close in some respects to the émigré economists’ interest in planning,
to Beard’s inward-looking xenophobia, which they would have sim-
ply found abhorrent, underscores both the weak and strong differences
that distinguished the two foundings of 1919 and 1933. The first saw
liberal democracy, and American liberal democracy in particular, as a
secure given that could be improved through progressive critique. The
Graduate Faculty founders, by contrast, viewed liberal democracy as even
more fragile, and the United States as the globe’s last best hope. The
original New School was born in flight from war and in search of free
speech. The Graduate Faculty was born in flight from illiberalism and,
with the end of Weimar fresh in mind, with an anguished concern for the
limits of liberal democracy and the fate of free expression.
Throughout the history of the New School, from then to now, aspects
of these differences have appeared and reappeared. Indeed, such tensions
are endemic and inevitable between a perspective that is more local and
one that is more global; between a view that sees repression as the excep-
tion and another that knows it can be the rule; between a confidence
that knowledge can bring a better day and the experience that knowl-
edge can fuse with evil, even radical evil.
But what is so striking about the history of the New School is that
many of its best moments, most inventive scholarship, most powerful
teaching, and most effective worldly influence have come when scholars
like Horace Kallen, who was a force at the institution both before and
after the founding of 1933, and outstanding administrative leaders like
Alvin Johnson resourcefully did more than refuse to choose. Such cre-
ative figures fused the best impulses of the two foundings, all the while
managing to moderate their inherent tensions and productively combine
their competing sensibilities. Working with both, they advanced ethically
responsible programs that could deepen American democracy, defend
a liberal vision of learning and teaching, and engage the largest public
82 I. KATZNELSON
issues of their time. Navigating fear and insecurity, they understood that
academic freedom is most needed when scholars are at risk and that uni-
versities are most vibrant when they encompass diverse commitments in
a spirit that is simultaneously combative and forbearing, agonistic and
tolerant.
The history this essay commemorate thus has broad and signif-
icant implications. The range of relations between fear and liberty and
the span of ideas about academic freedom that were expressed inside
the New School’s beginnings of 1919 and 1933 press us to think
more intensively about how democracies should confront fear-generat-
ing emergencies without losing their soul. More than any other higher
education institution in the United States, the New School has had
to meet such challenges head-on, for they constitute the very motives
for its existence, and justify its special place in the spectrum of higher
education.
For all these reasons, I am delighted to have this chance to salute the
older and younger New School for Social Research. May their note-
worthy ambitions, significant achievements, and creative rapport long
endure! May their passions and purposes also prod our successors to
deepen their commitments to learning and liberty!
CHAPTER 4
Refugee Scholars and the New School

for Social Research in New York After 1933:
Intellectual Transfer and Impact
Claus-Dieter Krohn
The University in Exile: German Scholars and the New

Deal
With the University in Exile, founded under its roof in 1933, the New
School for Social Research in New York (Fig. 4.1) reaffirmed its image
as a unique institution within the American community of science. The
New School became the focal point of trends that ought to be remem-
bered in the present times of flight and enforced migration. In this, the
New School continued its political and intellectual progressive approach
from its beginning in 1919 which was precipitated by a controversy at
Columbia University during World War I. Following America’s entry
into the war in 1917, President Nicholas Murray Butler fired two fac-
ulty members, who had opposed to it. As a reaction to this attack on
academic freedom, historian Charles A. Beard resigned in protest and set
C.-D. Krohn (*) 
Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany
e-mail: cdkrohn@web.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_4
84 C.-D. KROHN
Fig. 4.1 The New School for Social Research Building in New York
4 REFUGEE SCHOLARS AND THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL … 85
about founding a new academic institution which would guarantee that

freedom. He was joined by prominent colleagues such as philosopher
John Dewey, sociologist Thorstein Veblen, anthropologist Franz Boas,
and the economists Alvin Johnson and Wesley C. Mitchell. This circle
already had started publishing the New Republic in 1914 as a forum for
the many scattered progressive groups in America.
At a time of isolationism and red-baiting following World War I, inter-
national understanding and a critical analysis of society were to be the
guiding principles of the New School as small evening school for adults,
which in this way hardly existed in the US, modeled after the German
institution of Volkshochschule. The curriculum broadens to all fields of
the humanities and the arts. Thus, the New School became the paceset-
ter for similar institutions, such as the Rand School and others, estab-
lished in the 1920s in New York City. And the School was leftist as can
be seen at the political mural in its first building, a huge fresco by the
Mexican painter José Clemente Orosco (Fig. 4.2). In order to remain
Fig. 4.2 Fresco in the New School by the Mexican painter José Clemente
Orosco
86 C.-D. KROHN
free and independent, the New School did not accept money from inter-
ested institutions, but financed its operations solely with student fees.
Contributions from the founders made up for any shortfalls at the end of
the year.
Liberal minded and committed to the fight against intellectual repres-
sion, to social reform, and to cosmopolitan internationalism, the New
School occupied a unique place in the academic culture of New York
City and in higher learning in the U.S. This became true again in 1933
after the expulsion of thousands of scholars from Nazi Germany. With
unparalleled personal dedication, Alvin Johnson, New School direc-
tor since 1922 and its guiding spirit until the 1960s, campaigned for a
prompt American response. He himself set into work the University in
Exile after he got a substantial founding grant from an oil businessman.
During the 1920s, he already had made a lasting contribution to
American scholarship through his editorship of the Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, which had been published since 1930. From this job, he
knew personally most of the German scholars affected by the dismiss-
als, for the Encyclopedia had not only been conceived on the model of
the German Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. A large part of
its contributions had actually been written by German authors whom
Johnson had recruited on his many journeys through Europe during
the 1920s and whom he then, not by coincidence, took on at the New
School in 1933 and after.
The University in Exile had started its work with 14 emigrants in fall
1933 (Fig. 4.3). That group was only a minority; yet, it represented the
almost 2000 scholars who had been expelled from Germany—a num-
ber that amounted to about 20% of the entire German university staff,
of which about 1200 individuals had fled to the US. During the next
decade, that émigré university rescued over 170 scholars—initially
from Germany and Italy, then, as fascism swept across Europe, from
Austria, Spain, Hungary, Belgium, and France. In 1934, the University
in Exile became the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science
with a Charter to award Master’s and doctoral degrees from the Board
of Regents of the State of New York. At the same time, it also started
publishing its own journal, Social Research, which—with its co-editor,
its authors and the topics chosen—developed more or less into a sequel
to the important German Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft (Archive of Social
Sciences), which had been prohibited by the Nazis in 1933 (Krohn 1986,
pp. 274–281).
Fig. 4.3 Clipping from The New York Times on The University in Exile
In the process of expulsion from National Socialist Germany, the New

School represented a central point of a refugee academic elite whose
intellectual transfer to the US occurred at the right place, at the right
time and with the right messages—above all, in support of the New
Deal, the gigantic social and economic reform program of the new
American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had come into office
that same year, in early 1933. Due to their socio-political qualifica-
tions and their European-based scholarly approach, these scholars fea-
tured an extraordinary profile1 that fitted well and led to their speedy
88 C.-D. KROHN
acculturation in the United States. The following factors are of impor-

tance in this context:
1. The worldwide unresolved economic and social effects of World

War I that culminated in the Great Depression after 1929 and in
the modernization experiment of the Soviet Union. The emerging
fascist movements in Central Europe also brought a new perspec-
tive on society in Western industrial countries.
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal had promoted an increase in
the demand for specialists who would be able to give contours to
this approach to state-interventionist social and economic politics
as yet unknown in the United States. Both the New Deal and the
work of the British economist J.M. Keynes initiated a fundamental
paradigm shift in the theoretical discussion of the 1930s which led
to a new understanding of the state as a regulative factor in social
dynamics (Hall 1989; Spulber 1989). This discussion was given
important analytical impulses by the expelled German scholars, in
particular, who had been shaped by the tradition of the regulative
role of the public administration in their home country.
3. It was not only due to philanthropism or pronounced protest
against National Socialism that far-sighted Americans—like Alvin
Johnson (Fig. 4.4)—committed themselves to saving the refugees
in the academic field, despite the economic crisis with its high rate
of unemployment in their own country. A more decisive factor was
the national interest in bringing over to the country an extraordi-
nary and lasting intellectual potential for the country’s own scien-
tific culture without any additional costs. This is substantiated by
the often-quoted remark made by the director of the New York
Institute of Fine Art in 1933: “Hitler is my best friend. He shakes
the tree, and I collect the apples” (Fermi 1968, p. 78; Krohn
1993). Another important aspect was that, during the 1930s, the
newcomers could contribute to breaking up the widespread iso-
lationism prevailing in the American public. We have to keep in
mind that the United States had withdrawn from Europe and from
world politics after the First World War without having signed the
Versailles Peace Treaty.
4. Most of the refugee intellectuals were from the younger genera-
tion which had promoted the new natural and social sciences
in Germany during the 1920s. In the socio-political field, they
Fig. 4.4 Alvin Johnson
searched for new theoretical and political instruments in the new

republic after the shock of the World War I and the related break-
down of the old imperial order. Simultaneously, they were con-
tributing to the stabilization of the first German democracy, which
was constantly threatened by crises, from an action-oriented polit-
ical perspective. Therefore, they can be labeled as true “political
scholars.”
It is remarkable that many of these young scholars came from
assimilated Jewish families. Against the background of the tradi-
tional marginalization and the subsequent fragile emancipation and
assimilation of the nineteenth century, they, in particular, seemed to
have developed the sociological eye par excellence (König 1987, pp.
329 ff.). The intellectual commitment of these scholars showed the
shift away from until then widespread extensive closed theoretical
90 C.-D. KROHN
constructs. This mainstream approach was hardly apt to analytically

grasp the dynamic growing complexity of modern industrial mass
societies or to provide solutions for its conflicts. Much more in
demand were real partial analyses that could be handled politically
and that was determined by the interdisciplinary view of society’s
totality.
5. It was this pragmatism which allowed those active younger schol-
ars—most of whom had to leave Germany in and after 1933—to
link up with the scientific community in the United States. This
is exemplified, for example, by their business cycle research and
growth analyses which parted from the prevailing static concep-
tions of balance in market economies and which included the tech-
nological structure in the analysis of industrial dynamics of growth.
In that, it is going far beyond the approach of the British econo-
mist John Maynard Keynes, who argued merely cyclically.
6. All these scholars represented that specific “Weimar culture” which
was to be identified in the U.S. with innovative critical culture and
social analysis open to modernism (Gay 1969, pp. 11 ff.). The way
they combined research on modern industrial growth, on mod-
ern mass society and its culture with both the sociological analy-
sis of its risks and their personal socio-political position linked to
democracy was original and interdisciplinary. The interpretative
power of their research, however, could only fully develop in the
pragmatic and empirical American science culture. The “Roosevelt
revolution” of the New Deal played a highly important role in
their reception (Hughes 1975). On the other hand, the New Deal
promoted a change in awareness and a learning process among
the émigré scholars of left-wing liberal and social democratic lean-
ings, in particular, who had been shocked by the downfall of the
Weimar Republic. The New Deal demonstrated that the worldwide
economic crisis did not necessarily have to lead to an authoritarian
regime, as it had done in Germany, but that the capitalist system
could also be reformed along the principles of the welfare-state.
7. Without organized financial support in gigantic dimensions, the
speedy integration and further career of the refugees in the US
would not have been possible. In this process, the many philan-
thropic foundations so typical of American civil society played a
leading role. Its distinguishing mark was the close combination
of charity and pragmatically oriented personal interest. The high
esteem for German science was openly linked with the admission
that the support for the German scholars was meant to promote
their own, the American, culture. Many American universities had
been founded in the nineteenth century on the German model
and quite a few of the American scholars had studied in Germany,
which before 1933 had been a leading country in science.
In this context, the Rockefeller Foundation is to be mentioned; it had

already developed its own rescue program as early as the spring of 1933,
in addition to several spontaneously founded rescue committees. With
its direct support, its extensive staff of experts, also in Europe, and its
extraordinary financial possibilities, this foundation became one of the
most important agencies working in refugee relief. Without its support—
especially its funding of salaries for the scholars to be placed in order
not to burden the universities’ own budgets for some years—this cul-
tural transfer could not have been carried out so easily. The Rockefeller
Foundation provided about two-thirds of the total funds that were
needed for refugees to the United States at the time. The New School,
too, has profited continuously from that commitment (cf. Krohn 2000,
pp. 35–50).
As had been expected by the New Dealer Johnson, economics and
sociology became the key areas in both teaching and research at the
University in Exile (Krohn 1993, pp. 93 ff.; Mongiovi 1997, pp. 383–
404). Here, Emil Lederer (Fig. 4.5) from Heidelberg and others contin-
ued their research on theories of growth and business cycles based—as
pointed out above—on the structure-analytical observations surpassing
Keynes. They were supplemented by the financial analyses of Gerhard
Colm, who in his important studies had proven the balancing and
thus stabilizing function of public budgets as the third column besides
producers and consumers. Since there had as yet never been a well-
grounded financial debate in the US without the tradition of state inter-
vention in economics, the groundbreaking significance of Colm’s studies
was soon to be acknowledged, so that, immediately after his naturali-
zation in 1938, he was appointed to the budget office in Washington.
From there, he started a flash career which led him to the staff of per-
sonal consultants directly to Roosevelt and in this function, he played an
important role in the new analyses of national accounts starting during
the war (Fig. 4.6). As well, he was instrumental for the Full Employment
Act of 1946, the Magna Charta and simultaneously the concluding
92 C.-D. KROHN
Fig. 4.5 Emil Lederer 1937

Fig. 4.6 Gerhard Colm 1960’s

94 C.-D. KROHN
document of the New Deal era. The Full Employment Act aimed at a
noiseless management of the transition from wartime to peacetime econ-
omy; it included, for example, the G.I. Bill which offered soldiers return-
ing home a place at universities to prevent tensions on the labor market
(Colm 1945, pp. 350–369; Galbraith 1965, p. 11).
A similar career was achieved by Jacob Marschak (Fig. 4.7). The for-
mer engineer, who had been born in Kiev and in his adolescent years
already had been minister in the short-lived republic of Terek—today’s
Chechenia—in 1917/1918, after the October Revolution, had to flee to
Germany during the Russian civil war. There, he had become a student
of Lederer’s and had qualified as a professor of economics at Heidelberg
in 1931. Following his second emigration in 1933, he initially founded
the Institute of Statistics at Oxford before joining the New School in
1938. There, his seminars on econometrics soon caused such a sensa-
tion that even prominent colleagues from neighboring universities were
drawn to them. In 1943, Marschak was made director of the so-called
Cowles Commission for Research in Economics at the University of
Chicago. At this top-class think tank, numerous younger scientists—by
now also from other European countries that had been occupied by the
German Wehrmacht—were working at the mathematical formalization
of complex economic correlations. From today’s standpoint, the signif-
icance of this group may be seen that quite a few of its members were
later awarded the Nobel Prize, which has also been granted to econo-
mists since 1968. Because of his important role as a mathematical econo-
mist, Marschak in 1976 was elected president of the American Economic
Association (AEA), but his sudden death prevented this job.
In last years, this approach of mathematical economics as tool-
box-economy did become rather obsolete. It belonged to the spirit of
the postwar decades during the 1950s and 1960s where, also kybernet-
ics, rational choice and other methods reflected the optimism of planning
and steering also of the free societies, but where men were reduced sim-
ply to the homo economicus.
Colm’s research work was accompanied by the studies of Hans
Staudinger (Fig. 4.8), which were carried out complementary to the
foundation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), that gigantic state
enterprise which tried to stop soil erosion in the agricultural regions
of the American Midwest. As former state secretary with the Prussian
Ministry of Trade—Prussia had been the largest and the biggest state
in the federalist German Reich resp. the Weimar Republic—Staudinger
Fig. 4.7 Jacob Marschak 1970

96 C.-D. KROHN
Fig. 4.8 Hans Staudinger

did create the integration of all Prussian public utilities with great suc-
cess. Therefore, he had been called to the New School to inform the
American public about the macroeconomic function of public enter-
prises, in particular.
Staudinger’s former colleague Arnold Brecht (Fig. 4.9), once top offi-
cial of the German Reich and of Prussia, on the other hand, worked only
randomly in his original field, the borderline area between finance and
law, once he had joined the New School, although he had been the crea-
tor of one of the three major laws of finance formulated since the days of
Adolph Wagner (Law of the progressive parallelism of public expenditure
and population concentration, 1932). He became much more famous
for his lectures given in New York and his studies on the theory of
democracy, on the development of a qualified performance management
for the operationalization of the New Deal and, after the beginning of
World War II, on the reconstruction of Germany and a unified European
postwar order on a federal basis. Countless research on the latter topic,
Fig. 4.9 Arnold Brecht 1973 with German chancellor Willy Brandt

98 C.-D. KROHN
for instance, anticipated with remarkable clairvoyance what was gradu-

ally becoming a reality with the introduction of the European Coal and
Steel Community of 1951, the Treaties of Rome 1957, the European
Community in 1965 and the European Union of 1992 (Brecht 1942,
pp. 561–594).
How fluid the professional borderlines of this group of emigrants
were is also shown by the works of Emil Lederer, who was received not
only as an economist of industrial dynamics, but also as a true sociol-
ogist. The State Department of Social Welfare, for example, one of
the new authorities of the New Deal, had drawn on his earlier studies
(Fig. 4.10) when, due to a lack of American research, it published trans-
lations of major European, above all German, analyses on the devel-
opment and structure of modern labor markets in order to provide a
theoretical basis for its own actions.2
Together with his former student Hans Speier, Lederer also pre-
pared the ground for modern totalitarian theory. This originally empir-
ical approach by German-speaking émigré scholars was discussed on
numerous conferences of the New School and finally found expression
in Lederer’s great study State of the Masses, published posthumously in
1940, after his sudden death. The subtitle The Threat of the Classless
Society gets to the core of this approach and simultaneously reveals the
learning process undergone by this German who used to have strong
socialist preferences and who now had to adapt to a completely new liv-
ing environment in the USA (Lederer 1940; cf. Ascoli and Feiler 1938;
Ascoli and Lehmann 1937; Speier and Kähler, New York 1939).
Numerous other names could be mentioned that gave the Graduate
Faculty of the New School its profile after 1933. After only a few years,
it had become a major outpost of the New Deal “brain trust.” After the
United States’ entry into the war in 1941, its many German experts
became important contact persons for the Washington Administration
with regard to both the war effort and, later, peace research. But the
New School not only was an extraordinary center for German refugee
scholars; from 1940 onwards, it also became a place of refuge for criti-
cal social scientists expelled from other European countries. As already
mentioned, by 1945, it housed more than 170 emigrants from Germany
and, starting in 1938, from other European countries, either as an inter-
mediary solution or on a long-term basis. Among these scholars were
more than 25 Frenchmen, who, in turn, also founded a separate uni-
versity in exile, the École Libre des Hautes Études, which became the
Fig. 4.10 The state department of social welfare’s translation of Emil Lederer’s

earlier studies
100 C.-D. KROHN
intellectual outpost of the movement France Libre initiated by General

de Gaulle and which included, for example, such prominent scholars of
postwar France as the ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss or the philosopher
Alexandre Koyré. Of the German refugees, on the other hand, nobody
returned to their home country after the end of the National Socialist
regime.
Debates on Self-Perception Among the Refugee

Intellectuals
In addition to bundling the extraordinary impulses of the transatlantic
intellectual transfer provided by the refugee scholars, the New School
also constituted a habitat for émigrés that became a place of constant
self-reflection and the eagerness of its participants to discuss their role as
intellectuals. In this context, the focus was on their newly found identity,
and on the topic of foreignness and acculturation, i.e., topics that antici-
pated what was to become the focus of today’s concept of hybridity. This
analytic approach formulated with the postcolonial turn of the Third
World-intellectuals aimed at the mixing ratios in the exchange of diverse
ways of living and cultural patterns. It is conceived as a counter-model to
homogeneous or national patterns of social conduct, the place of which
is taken by the assumption of antagonistic conflicts and differences in
the social dynamics. In a constant process of unfinished “negotiation,”
social and intellectual contrasts between classes, ethnicities, genders, and
other social groups are meant to be overcome. The hybridity theorem,
thus, does not aim at mixing or leveling heterogeneous qualifications of
those participating in the process, but rather at highlighting them and at
political awakenings leading to discourses as well as multiple layers within
cultures in neutral “third places” as areas of the synchronicity of asyn-
chronicity.3 It seems evident that these hybridity discourses are typical of
times of social disorganization, upheaval, and orientation crises.
It is remarkable that the émigré intellectuals at the New School con-
tinued in this context a debate on self-conception that had begun during
the years following the World War I—an example would be the dis-
pute on the sociology of knowledge conceived by Karl Mannheim. This
debate now was intensified, and further charged by the existential shift
caused by the scholars’ exile in the new living environment of the United
States. This groundbreaking process of self-understanding was to have
a strong additional impact on the debate led in the US as immigration

country—a debate that was crucial to the new discipline of sociology
which was in its phase of professionalization at the time.
This is illustrated by a symposium organized at the New School by
the University in Exile in 1937 (Fig. 4.11), four years after its founda-
tion, which examined carefully the experiences of the refugees in the
new world of America, using keywords such as “Intellectual freedom and
responsibility” or “The interrelations of culture.” As is documented by
these titles of the conference, and even more so by the discussions, the
focus was not only on the self-positioning of the expatriates but also on
the understanding of the role of the intellectual as such. In this context,
the contours of an analytical model became visible which can be traced
with remarkable congruence in today’s debates.4
The discussion was above all led by Alvin Johnson, director of the
New School, the former Heidelberg economist Emil Lederer, also Hans
Speier, former Mannheim’s assistant and lecturer at the Berlin School
of Politics, the former Frankfurt theologian Paul Tillich, who had come
from the neighboring Union Theological Seminary, as well as by the
writer Thomas Mann, who was staying at Princeton at the time. Among
the speakers were furthermore the American anthropologist Franz Boas
and the sociologist Louis Wirth from Chicago, both of German descent,
in addition to other American colleagues. The faculty members Frieda
Wunderlich, Eduard Heimann, Gerhard Colm, as well as their former
colleague, the economist Adolf Löwe, who used to teach at Kiel and
was then with the University of Manchester, and the pedagogue Robert
Ulich, who had found refuge at Harvard University, were among the
audience. They, too, however, belonged to those organizing other con-
ference sections, not of interest in this context, e.g., on the deformation
of education in the European countries that had turned into totalitarian
states.5
The discussants agreed unanimously that their categorization as “refu-
gee intellectuals” as well as their affiliation with the “University in Exile”
represented tautologies or even contradictions because universities same
as intellectuals could not be exiled, rather, they embodied per se the uni-
versality of culture (263). Paul Tillich with his catchy phrases provided
the necessary attunement: “Mind in its very nature is migratory” and
the “cross-fertilization of cultures” was the principle of this process and
the “basic identity” of these intellectuals. With the deduction of these
assumptions from the biblical expulsion from paradise after having tasted
102 C.-D. KROHN
Fig. 4.11 Program of a symposium organized at the New School by the

University of Exile
the fruit of the tree of knowledge, human alienation as well as the quest
for truth and identity were, so to speak, declared anthropological con-
stants. Without self-alienation, be it material, spatial, or intellectual,
there would be no self-knowledge, no progress, and thus no culture.
From this perspective, the most recent experiences were considered
an opportunity to get rid oneself of one’s own provincial attitudes in
thought and behavior.6 Disputes such as these about personal traditions,
about their impact on the new life in the country of refuge and on the
necessary transformation regarding language, concepts, and behavior
characterized the intellectual: He would not be frightened by the exist-
ence as a “permanent émigré in the world” (305). He was the creative
humanist whose antitype was the intellectual and social nomad. These
“futurists by definition,” as they were labeled by Tillich, would not
account for their past and thus would not experience their present. They
were to be found in the big cities, where they frequented the cafés and
lobbies of ever the same hotels (298)—today, they would be called repre-
sentatives of globalization.
For Speier, who was still young, such elementary learning processes
revealed the reality of the exile as a new fountain of youth. Not only
did the refugees gain new experiences, in many areas, they had to start
all over again, so that every emigrant “in a sense […] passes through a
second period of youth” with all its misconceptions, but also with all its
stimulating aspirations (326). There was, of course, also the Mannheim
student speaking, whose teacher considered the generational question as
a question of social dynamics (Mannheim 1970, pp. 509 ff., esp. 540
f.). Likewise, Speier defined exile as an opportunity to regain lost intel-
lectual’s universality. The migrant discovered the co-intellectual in his
new colleague and not the member of another nation, class, or party.
In a way, exile forced the sustained debate comprising the accompany-
ing social and communicative processes. The result is the world citizen
whose identity and stability “follows from the ubiquitous character of the
relationship which dominates his life” (321).
The few contributions presented here may suffice to identify the char-
acteristics that were constitutive for the self-positioning of the exiles.
They had been given the chance to partake in new learning processes
that allowed broadening old world views and overcoming provincial-
ization. They considered themselves mobile, but also privileged intel-
lectuals, and not so much strangers in a new environment, who, in fact
104 C.-D. KROHN
because of their distanced perspective, were able to find their bearings

quite fast wherever they were.
Their vocabulary of self-assurance became an important part of the
American debate on integration mediated by Boas and Wirth during the
1930s, which was no longer defined by the original, simple concept of
the melting pot of the early years. Wirth had studied and was teaching at
the world’s first Institute of Sociology in Chicago, an institution that was
to play a leading role in research on the American immigration society.
Its members were not only familiar with the German sociological debate,
they had also been more or less determined by it because most of them
had studied in Germany and had written their doctoral theses there, as
well. In the course of a study trip to Germany during the 1920s, Wirth
had come under the strong influence of Georg Simmel, co-founder and
super-star of the early German sociology with long-lasting influence
in different areas who, however, had already died in 1917, and of Karl
Mannheim. After his return to the States, he had translated Mannheim’s
Ideologie und Utopie (Ideology and Utopia) into the English language
in cooperation with a colleague of his (Mannheim 1936). This close link
is even more evident in the case of Wirth’s Chicago friend and mentor
Robert Ezra Park, who had actually studied with Simmel and who had
written his dissertation at Heidelberg in 1903 on the topic of Crowd and
Public (Park 1904).
Thus, the critical self-reflection, begun for personal reasons by the
emigrants at the New School for Social Research, was soon given a
broader epistemological touch by being, on the one hand, re-related
to the relevant early German sociology and by being extended by the
American colleagues, and on the other hand, by giving contours to the
young, still hardly established American research orientation. This dis-
cussion, however, was not only a paradigm for researching strangeness
and migration. It also provided insights into the broader context of
modernism, i.e., of the civil society, insights that are still important today.
Wirth’s concept of the intellectual immigrant as “curtain raiser” (328)
who reveals the hidden links between cultures was also a direct reference
to Simmel’s crucial thought patterns. Wirth defined cultures as highly
naïve, self-centered, and thus provincial; both the intellectual and the
immigrant appeared in these cultures on the international level in the
sense of Mannheim’s freely floating intelligence as the detached mediator
between differences and opposites.
Historically, he had already deduced these transaction references in his

sociological study The Ghetto, published in 1928, which, from a gene-
alogical point of view, also draws on Simmel’s figure of the “stranger.”
There, the Jew is considered the prototype of the social hybrid. What
was once the “segregated areas” of the ghetto—and in later decades had
become the “China Towns” and the “Little Italies” of modern cities, in
which traditions and cultures were protected against the leveling effect
of technical-industrial dynamism—had been overcome by the Jews them-
selves, a process that formed them as pioneers of social linkage and thus
made them the first representatives of cosmopolitanism—a cultural pecu-
liarity which, as was emphasized by Wirth, “does not so much disappear
as become invisible” (Wirth 1928, p. 282). This role was now taken on
by the intellectual. Distance and detachment, in particular, were part of
the signature of the intellectual, because these features turned him, just
like the immigrant, into the typical “marginal man,” who was able to get
his bearings wherever he was, but who never really belonged (331).
Wirth had adopted this term from his mentor Robert Park, one of
the most frequently quoted American sociologists of the years 1920–
1940 (Cahnmann 1980, p. 328). Park, in turn, had used this concept
as a further development of Simmel’s term of the “stranger” who was
crafted on the figure of the merchant from Jewish social history and
paradigmatically represented the universal type of the modern era. His
characteristics of aloofness, ratio, and objectivity made him the proto-
type of someone questioning the established order. Thus, he was the
bearer of liberty and social progress as well as the mediator of its con-
tradictions. The Janus-faced nature of progress with socialization, on
the one hand, and individuation, on the other, had simultaneously been
described by Simmel as the characteristics of the modern era in his essay
“Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben” (The cities and intellectual life),
which is still counted among the canonical literature. In this modern era,
only those would prevail who mastered the “culture of indifference” and
who were able to mentally deal with the social dynamics cut loose by the
anonymizing monetary economy with its quickly changing impressions
and behavioral demands.
In Park’s urban- and cultural–sociological adaptation of Simmel’s
approach, the stranger is “a new type of personality, a cultural hybrid,
a man … on the margin of two cultures and two societies” and the
emancipated Jew is both historically and typologically the prototype
of modern society. The “marginal man,” on the other side, “is the first
106 C.-D. KROHN
cosmopolite and citizen of the world,” as he wrote in 1928, parallel to

Wirth (Park 1928, pp. 881 ff., quote p. 892). This shows that the term
“hybrid” was used long before the postcolonial studies approach and
was employed as a synonym for the stranger/migrant and the “marginal
man.”
This discourse at the New School was continued in Alfred Schütz’s
study The Stranger, published in 1944, which was also directly based on
Simmel’s social type. The author, an emigrant who had arrived at the
New School as late as 1938, in the wake of the “Anschluss” of Austria,
did go beyond the debate insofar as he did not focus any longer on typo-
logical questions, semantic definitions, or sociological identity aspects.
Rather, he was interested in the psychological process of the separation
and deconstruction of old, familiar patterns of thought among migrants
and other comparable people in complex, socially differentiated socie-
ties and their acculturation to new environments and the accompanying
problems of “translation.”
The adoption of this perspective led to a shift in the meaning of these
concepts, as is shown by Schütz’ use of Park’s term “marginal man.” He
does not see him as the cosmopolite who mediates culture, but rather
depicts him from the one-sided perspective of the receiving group as the
countertype. In Schütz’ work, the “marginal man” or “cultural hybrid”
is the cultural bastard who does not acculturate and who remains out-
side; at least as long as he does not integrate the patterns of his sur-
rounding group as a “protective shelter,” but rather a labyrinth in which
he cannot yet find his way (Schuetz 1944, pp. 499 ff., esp. 507). On the
other hand, Schütz has already defined the field of negotiation that is
labeled “third space” in more recent research on hybridity, as a place of
intellectual topography in which the stranger step by step examines and
overcomes his traditional, usual way of thinking by comparing it to the
newly acquired hoard of experience.
It is not hard to see that the analyses undertaken by the social sci-
entists expelled from Germany and by their American colleagues on the
role of the migrant and the intellectual anticipated, both from the termi-
nological and from the theoretical point of view, what is being presented
by hybrid theory today. Yet, the representatives of this line of research
today do not seem to be aware of their predecessors. Today, the intellec-
tual is considered also a hybrid who acts in between cultural differences
as the type of the modern era. Different to the postcolonial hybrids, he
is not only motivated by otherness or difference to engage in processes

of negotiation or acculturation, but also he is caused and driven by dis-
tance and objectivity, in short by the sovereign look at differences and
contradictions.
Although these analytical approaches are important to the under-
standing of the modern era up to globalization with its ideal types of
patchwork existence, one still has to ask whether they can actually con-
tribute to other processes of migration or even to the solution of today’s
mass migration caused by poverty and the search for employment. This
is not part of the topic discussed here, but it points to the originality
and the scope of the former debate initiated by the New School, which
focused on the intellectual self-conception in a new world of experience.
With the scientific messages they had transferred from Germany, the ref-
ugee scholars did contribute—just like other emigrants in other areas of
culture—to the United States’ rise to an intellectual superpower during
the 1930s.
But sometime former co-emigrants, among others, for example, emi-
nent sociologist Lewis Coser, born in Berlin as Ludwig Cohn, believed
the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science not an equal part
among the American science community but as “a kind of gilded ghetto”
treasuring the European traditions in the social sciences (Coser 1984,
pp. 87–88). That may be so, but it is evident that with its interdiscipli-
nary and transnational approach, the Graduate Faculty’s style of research
and its Erkenntnisinteresse got an important impact in the U.S. not only
in economics, econometrics, public finance but also in the fields of phe-
nomenology, Gestalt psychology, and the discussion in general on intel-
lectual transfer and hybrid societies.
Other emigre scholars, some of whom came to the Graduate Faculty
after the war from other countries of exile, continued and enriched
these traditions. Political philosophers Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas,
and Leo Strauss, among others, broadened their discipline and deep-
ened its integration with the social sciences. In recent decades, the New
School has expanded into a university with different academic divi-
sions. The Graduate Faculty as one of the key divisions continues that
émigré legacy. In memory of that legacy and to promote further trans-
atlantic bridge building, two professorships sponsored by the German
Government were established since 1959 to bring over for one year dis-
tinguished social scientists from Europe to the New School.
108 C.-D. KROHN
Notes
1. Krohn et al. (1998, esp. section IV: “Wissenschaftsemigration”, pp. 681 ff.).
2. Cf. The Problem of the Modern Salaried Employee, an extract from
Ledere’s study on private sector employees of 1912, On the Socio-Psychic
Constitution of the Present Time, his essay on the socio-psychological
habitus of the present times of 1918/1919, as well as The New Middle
Class, a translation of an essay of 1926 that he had written in unison with
Jacob Marschak on the new middle class, published in the Grundriß der
Sozialökonomik in 1937, in a hectographed series edited by the WPA.
3. Bachmann-Medick (2006, pp. 184 ff.): “Postcolonial Turn”.
4. With regard to this aspect and to the following comments cf. Social
Research, 4:3, September 1937, pp. 263–337. The page references refer to
this issue. Cf. also my contribution Krohn (2009, pp. 20–39).
5. The presentations and discussions from this section are printed in the same
issue (1937, pp. 338–416).
6. Using his own theological thinking as an example, Paul Tillich later
explained this process in more depth in Tillich (1953, pp. 138 ff.).
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of Knowledge, trans. and with a preface by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils.
London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Mannheim, K. (1970 [1928]). Das Problem der Generationen. In K. Mannheim
(Ed.), Wissenssoziologie. Auswahl aus dem Werk, Introduced and ed. by Kurt
H. Wolff. Neuwied: Luchterhand.
Mongiovi, G. (1997). Émigré Economists at the New School, 1933–1945. In
H. Hagemann (Ed.), Zur deutschsprachigen wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen
Emigration nach 1933. Marburg: Metropolis.
Park, R. E. (1904). Masse und Publikum. Eine methodologische und soziologische
Untersuchung. Bern: Lack & Grunau.
Park, R. E. (1928). Human Migration and the Marginal Man. The American
Journal of Sociology, 33(6), 881–893.
Schuetz, A. (1944). The Stranger. An Essay in Social Psychology. The American
Journal of Sociology, 49(6), 499–507.
Speier, H., & Kähler, A. (1939). War in Our Time. New York: W. W. Norton.
Spulber, N. (1989). Managing the American Economy, From Roosevelt to Reagan.
Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Tillich, P. (1953). The Conquest of Theological Provincialism. In W. R.
Crawford (Ed.), The Cultural Migration. The European Scholar in America.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Wirth, L. (1928). The Ghetto. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
CHAPTER 5
“Agents” of “Westernization”?: The Impact

of German Refugees of the Nazi Regime
Alfons Söllner
When a lecture on the topic of emigration in the 1930s is announced

under this somewhat sensational title, some opening comments may be
needed to avoid any kind of misunderstandings and false expectations.
In fact, I have put both of the central concepts in quotation marks to
indicate that they are to be understood not only literally, but also meta-
phorically. A certain ambiguity is therefore intended when talking about
“agents” and “Westernization.” After all, the long-term impact of ref-
ugees who fled Hitler’s regime constitutes a rather uneven area of con-
temporary political history, just as, in recent times, the so-called postwar
history is generally experiencing an intensive process of reinterpretation,
First Published in German as Söllner A. (2011). ‘“Agenten” der

“Verwestlichung”? Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Deutscher Hitler-Flüchtlinge’ in
P. Burschel, A. Gallus, and M. Völkel (Eds.), Intellektuelle Im Exil, Göttingen:
Wallstein, pp. 199–218.
A. Söllner (*) 
Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany
e-mail: alfons.soellner@phil.tu-chemnitz.de

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_5
112 A. SÖLLNER
for which imagination and altered interests play just as important a role
as objective methods or new source findings. As this article points out,
political exile is certainly a universal historical phenomenon. The history
of the Hitler émigrés, however, opens up a very special and complex
field, as the intellectuals among them were not only numerous, but also
prominent. They are probably the best documented and most studied
example for the politically forced “exodus of the mind” in the modern
world. The literature about these politicians, writers, and scientists—to
identify only the three most prominent groups expelled from Germany—
fills up today’s libraries. What’s interesting about it is that, over the last
30 years, its topics have moved away from the country of origin and have
focused increasingly more on the host countries, especially on the long-
term effects or longue durée of emigration.1
In the article that follows, I will only extract one thread from this
complex history of effects, namely the one that centers on the long-
term effects of emigration and analyzes them according to two different
aspects: the emigrants’ retroactive effect upon their return to Germany,
on one hand, and, on the other hand, the direction or panorama on
which they based their work. I would like to claim that, following the
collapse of National Socialism, the emigrants played a decisive role in
the reconstruction of political culture in Germany and actually helped
to determine the direction of its long-term development. This primar-
ily concerns the early history of the Federal Republic of Germany, which
must, nevertheless, be encircled on this occasion to not lose sight of the
beginning and end of this historical subject (Krohn and zur Mühlen
1997).
This, by the way, is what I understand by the history of politi-
cal ideas. It is an undertaking that tries to record the key data of long-
term changes in political consciousness and, at the same time, seeks to
link all the events happening in between to certain—in our case intel-
lectual—actors who seem to be responsible for these changes.2 This is
also the point at which the first of my central concepts comes into play:
the “agent.” This term does, indeed, have a double meaning, and in the
following paragraphs, we will discuss certain officials of a secret service
who, in reality, “only” worked as scientists, albeit in an exposed situa-
tion, so that they were forced to pursue their political goals, but without
being entitled to certain means.
But what does “Westernization” mean in this context? As is well
known, this term has experienced an astonishing boom in recent times:
5 “AGENTS” OF “WESTERNIZATION”?: THE IMPACT … 113
Berlin historian Heinrich August Winkler, for example, has recon-

structed German history since the early nineteenth century, analyzing
it from the perspective of a “long road to the West.” Moreover, the
same concept was used in the study of West German postwar history
to characterize the modernization process that led West German society
out of its restorative beginnings (Winkler 2000; Schildt and Sywottek
1998; Doering-Manteuffel 1999). I would like to narrow the concept
down to the transformation of political culture toward Western norms
and values, such as individualism, human and civil rights, and parliamen-
tary democracy. This, however, is as clear or—more accurately—unclear
as the concept of political culture in general, which, as we know, was
invented in the postwar period. Consequently, we need to be more
specific. Germany may have already been on the “long road to the
West” before the rise of Hitler, but the actual leap of political cultural
development cannot be observed until the second third of the twenti-
eth century. That is, it was only after the defeat of Hitler’s regime, the
“unconditional surrender” that ended World War II, and then the rein-
tegration into the international community, which was directly linked
to the division of Germany, as it is generally known, that an accelera-
tion and deepening of a mental and collective process took place in West
Germany, the core of which may be defined as the “Westernization of
political thinking.” In any case, this is the moment when the expulsion
of representative parts of the German intelligentsia became a historical
factor. If the Hitler regime was the violent expression of an extreme
nationalism and chauvinism, the not-so-small group of emigrants,
including return migrants, stands for an equally strong counter-reaction.
However, I will not examine the so-triggered processes from a practical
or institutional point of view, but will pay more attention to the changes
concerning ideology and political theory or, in other words, the his-
tory of ideas. To this end, I will examine three different stages and, by
referencing a few somewhat prominent figures, I will explain how the
intellectual history and the late consequences of exile in each case have
contributed to the decisions that ultimately led to the “Westernization
of political thinking” in Germany. In this process, we will be confronted
primarily with ambiguities and ambivalences, with contradictory ten-
dencies that are always and inevitably inherent in a process of cultural
change of any significance.
114 A. SÖLLNER
First Stop: The Neumann Group as “Agents” of the

American Secret Service (1942–1947)
In 1942, the same year the U.S. actively entered World War II, the
newly founded Secret Service or, strictly speaking, the Research &
Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), hired a group
of German émigrés, namely three employees of the Institute for Social
Research who had emigrated from Frankfurt: the trade union lawyer
Franz L. Neumann, who had just published his voluminous account of
national socialism, Behemoth, the constitutional lawyer Otto Kirchheimer,
and the philosopher Herbert Marcuse. In addition, there was the lawyer
and later internationalist Hans Herz, the philosopher Hans Meyerhoff,
the historian Felix Gilbert, the former Prussian government official
Oskar Weigert, Robert Eisenberg, the Austrians Robert Neumann and
Henry Kellermann, as well as several other contract workers.3
The purpose of the American tactics of placing these “enemy
aliens”—which they still were at the time—in a place that was delicate
for security matters, was clear: the American government needed experts
with a vast knowledge of the German context to assess the enemy’s situ-
ation and resources, and it was precisely to this end that they recruited a
group of men who combined a clear position against National Socialism
with a high level of expertise about the circumstances surrounding the
Weimar Republic and the Hitler regime (Marquardt-Bigman 1995).
Significant for our context, however, is the fact that the emigrants pur-
sued their own goals in their research and advisory activities. They
were certainly aware of the manifold factors conditioning these goals—
after all, they depended on their employers and had to report to them.
However, it is obvious that they wanted to influence American pol-
icy once the military goal, that is, the defeat of the Hitler troops, was
achieved. They did so by constructing and scientifically substantiating a
very specific image of Germany.
What develops from this delicate configuration cannot be presented in
detail (cf. Söllner 1986). We shall only outline American policies during
the 1940s, each of whose steps corresponded to a functional change in
the research and counselling tasks of the emigrant group. When America
entered the war, secret service tasks were initially more classical and con-
centrated on spying on and evaluating the social and political forces and
resources in Hitler’s Germany. Once the end of the fighting was fore-
seeable, questions about the (negative) occupation and disciplinary
process came to the fore, that is, the planning of the occupation.
The research group had been relocated to the Department of State at
the end of 1945. In the end, it was their task to offer their partly con-
structive, partly critical support in the (positive) reconstruction process,
which from the very beginning, but most clearly since 1947, aimed to
restore a capitalist democracy in West Germany and tolerated the division
of Germany.4
I will interrupt this account here to give the floor to two prominent
contemporary witnesses who attributed a remarkable side effect and
aftermath to this strange episode of German exile in the U.S. The first
is the U.S.’ leader of our group of emigrants, the later historian Stuart
Hughes, who decidedly did not settle the importance of the interaction
of Americans and German emigrants on the military or political level,
but rather in the informal—but denser—exchange of intellectual and sci-
entific processes:
The subculture of the OSS’s Research and Analysis Branch took the form
of an ongoing if ever-interrupted seminar […] Thus on the one hand, the
Research and Analysis Branch provided free of charge a second graduate
education to young political scientists, historians, sociologists who were to
go on to become professors at major universities. On the other hand, the
émigrés who worked with them enjoyed a rare opportunity to familiarize
themselves with American manners and values under conditions that min-
imized occasions for wounded sensibilities or hurt pride. The interchange
succeeded for the very reason that it was unintended: neither side needed
to be self-conscious about a process that occurred so naturally that only
long after the fact did its importance become manifest.5
It is interesting to note that Franz L. Neumann pronounced very similar

views. When, in 1952, he was asked to outline the influence of German
social scientist émigrés on American scientific culture, he not only sum-
marized his own intellectual biography, but also shaped a topos that can
now be regarded as a sort of formula for all research concerning the
political emigration of scientists. Neumann distinguishes three ways
of dealing with the differences existing between the German and the
American tradition:
The exiled scientist may give up his previous intellectual position and take
up the new orientation without restriction; this has sometimes been the
case de facto. He may stick to old patterns of thought, and he either sees
116 A. SÖLLNER
his mission as completely transforming the American way of thinking or,

with a feeling of contempt and disdain, withdraws to an island. Both have
occurred. However, to name a third possibility, he may try to combine the
new experiences with the old tradition. This, I believe, is the most difficult
but also the most appropriate solution. (Neumann 1952, p. 412)
Anyone who takes stock of the German emigrants’ activities in the U.S.
Secret Service—which some of them actually continued on to serve in
the U.S. State Department—is forced to confront their short-term fail-
ure with a long-term success. This, however, leads to a different terrain:
While they failed in their attempt to directly influence American occupa-
tion policy in Germany—which was particularly frustrated by the U.S.’
gradual withdrawal from denazification and further prosecution of Nazi
criminals—the experience and contacts gained in American government
institutions were evidently benefiting them in their integration into
American universities. Quite a few of them became highly respected and
influential lecturers and researchers in the 1950s and 1960s.
Second Stop: “Westernization” of German Political

Thinking? Emigrants/Re-migrants and the Foundation
of Political Science
The founding history of political science in Germany has been described

many times and has been judged quite controversially; for example, in
the older works of Hans-Joachim Arndt and Arno Mohr or the more
recent work of Wilhelm Bleek (Arndt 1978; Mohr 1988; Bleek 2001). It
is a complicated story, and while it may be overly simplifying it, I would
like to claim that the following points were particularly crucial: There
were many similarities among the initiatives to introduce political science
in the Federal Republic of Germany. In some cases, there were even con-
crete interdependencies among the occupying forces’ goals and meas-
ures, of which denazification and re-education may have been the most
spectacular. Most importantly, however, everyone involved was guided
by the common will to reintroduce and stabilize political democracy in
Germany. Therefore, it was not exactly wrong to label early political sci-
ence as “Demokratiewissenschaft”, regardless of whether it was meant
critically or affirmatively.
Decisive, both for the foundation impulse itself and for its objective
orientation, was the early and energetic commitment of certain émigrés
who revived their old contacts with Germany, arranged financial support,
and, above all, provided ideational and ideological support. This may
be studied by analyzing what are known as the “founding conferences,”
which took place between 1949 and 1952; they debated the existence
or non-existence of political science and ultimately reached a positive
conclusion, enabling the establishment of political science as a discipline.
The main spokesmen were emigrants. In 1949, Karl Loewenstein gave
the decisive lecture in Waldleinigen, and Franz Neumann, Ferdinand
Hermens, Alexander Rüstow, and again Karl Loewenstein were the main
speakers at the subsequent conferences in Königstein and Frankfurt.
Both practically and ideologically, they and several others helped to give
birth to West German political science.6
When looking at the early interventions of emigrants from a program-
matic and conceptual point of view, there is a common and particularly
energetic argument. The insistence on the autonomy against adjacent
subjects such as history, jurisprudence, and philosophy was probably
the most important prerequisite for the successful establishment of the
discipline; that is, the establishment of political science as an independ-
ent university subject, which set high standards for the discipline’s sci-
entific foundation. In this article, I can only list the most obvious and
prominent examples of this kind of subtle scientific policy, which can
be found in almost all the founding manifestos that emigrants drafted.
Franz Neumann’s 1950 Berlin speech, for example, has the program-
matic title Die Wissenschaft der Politik in der Demokratie [The Science
of Politics in Democracy]. In his previously mentioned lecture, Karl
Loewenstein used “the state of political sciences in the United States”
as a benchmark, and in 1953, Carl Joachim Friedrich gave a lecture on
the “Fundamentals of the History of Political Science” [Grundsätzliches
zur Geschichte der Wissenschaft von der Politik], causing a small scan-
dal since his lecture could be understood as (and was probably meant
to be) a scientific-historical reprimand against the statements of Federal
President Theodor Heuss, who sought, all too much, to continue with
past dynamics (Neumann 1952; Loewenstein 1950; Friedrich 1954).
The demand for autonomy touches a certain nerve in young political sci-
ence, which is the direct link between the question of its existence, or
the discipline’s future form, and the influence of emigrants. By insisting
on the factual and methodological delimitation of this field of knowl-
edge and immediately deriving the necessity of institutional independ-
ence as an academic discipline from it, emigrants were able to secure a
118 A. SÖLLNER
good place in the re-established educational hierarchy and, consequently,

resisted the considerable restorative tendencies that had settled in the
universities. They were able to play and impose this exposed role in spite
of the material, corporate, and scientific resistance they encountered, and
this was not so much because they asserted the authority of the American
occupying power, but rather because they had themselves become
“established” representatives of political science over the course of emi-
gration. In person and in their work, they represented an alternative
scientific tradition and knew how to defend their professional authority
with self-confidence, sensitivity, and skill before their German colleagues.
This development culminated in the decision of a whole series of
other emigrants to return to Germany. This actual re-migration may
have been either permanent or long-term,7 but, in any case, it led to the
quite particular situation that the development of West German politi-
cal science was—to a considerable extent—in the hands of re-migrants.
The corresponding figures who are related to the manageable dimen-
sions of this young discipline are impressive. In the 1950s and 1960s, no
fewer than 16 re-migrants worked for a shorter or longer period as full-
time professors in West German political science. Four of them estab-
lished themselves in West Berlin, which was dominated by the Social
Democrats (Ernst Fraenkel, Ossip K. Flechtheim, Arcadius Gurland, and
Richard Löwenthal), whereas the more liberal-conservative represent-
atives could be found in southern and western Germany. In addition,
many of them were either appointed directly as founding professors or
quickly assumed leading positions: Arnold Bergstraesser in Freiburg,
Heinrich Brüning and Ferdinand A. Hermens in Cologne, Fraenkel and
Gurland in Berlin, Siegfried Landshut in Hamburg, Fritz Morstein Marx
in Speyer, and Eric Voegelin in Munich.8
This is possibly the moment in which a first and central point became
apparent to concretize the question of “Westernization”—the model
that emigrants and re-migrants brought to Germany was obviously that
of American political science, including its impressive modern form
as well as its historical continuity. Of particular interest is the form in
which this import was explained: rather than a simple propagation of the
American model being directly transferred to German conditions, there
was a skillful recourse to traditions and models from the older German
and European history of science, which were revitalized and merged with
American ideas of political science. The goal was a new organic combi-
nation of the various national cultural elements—a fusion of the current
state of American development with German traditions, which had been

interrupted even before the rise of National Socialism.9
In order to grasp the question of the “Westernization” of political
thought even more concretely, one must understand each of the most
prominent founding figures both individually and in their plurality, dif-
ferentiate their political goals and their scientific resources, and con-
sider overall development until around 1965, without ignoring the local
characteristics in the process. I will only mention the two best known
examples that have shaped the early phase of political science: the role of
Ernst Fraenkel for the integration of the “Hochschule für Politik” into
the Free University of Berlin and Arnold Bergstraesser’s founding of the
Freiburg School. The work of both of these “portal figures” of Federal
German political science—as I would like to call them—has been so well
known and so well confirmed by recent research that their contribution
to the Westernization of political thinking can be described as evident, in
terms of both the course and the result.
In the case of Fraenkel, one must embark on his main field of work,
the field of American Studies, in order to see that he not only wanted
to analyze the American government system in its institutional form,
but primarily aimed to study its ideological foundations. These, in
turn, were set normatively, and not without a certain idealization, to
confront the authoritarian traditions of German constitutional law
(Buchstein 1998). In the well-known anthology Deutschland und die
westlichen Demokratien [Germany and Western Democracies], the ideo-
logical and institutional foundations of modern democracy were recon-
structed on a national and cultural level and analyzed in a comparative
manner, particularly emphasizing the unifying and common character-
istics of “Western democracy.” As a consequence, Fraenkel developed
his Neopluralism theory, which was a typological consolidation of these
common characteristics and, at the same time, was marked by a sharp
delimitation from both the “Volksdemokratien” of the Soviet Empire
and the conservative political thought of the Weimar Republic. This way,
it would become a kind of state ideology of the early Federal Republic of
Germany (Söllner 2006a).
A similar process can be observed in the case of Arnold Bergstraesser,
whose work in Freiburg did not begin until 1954, but then it quickly
created a new school of thought, which then became formative for the
second generation of political scientists. In the beginning, as a contin-
uing gesture of the salvation experienced in the years of emigration,
120 A. SÖLLNER
there was a neo-humanist recourse to the spiritual traditions of the

“Occident,” which were presented with a strong rhetorical and declam-
atory tendency. They included the institutional forms of parliamentary
democracies and the rule of law, which were developed rather implic-
itly, but marked a clear contrast to the Eastern “Volksdemokratien” (and
were somewhat clearer than Bergstraesser’s own authoritarian tendencies
from the days of crisis of the Weimar Republic). This finally resulted in a
highly peculiar program of political science, which merged cultural and
power-realistic elements—which are actually contradictory—thus creat-
ing an ideopolitical synthesis of European traditions with the U.S.’ new
hegemonic position in world politics and, simultaneously, turning against
“totalitarian communism.”10
Bergstraesser presents the typical definition of this form of
Westernization, which “sunbathed” in the splendor of Western tradition
and at the same time hid behind it:
The oscillating relationship between Germany and the U.S. […] has taken
a clear turn to convergence. The awareness of the critical state of Western
existence has now reached America. Western natural law and the German
idea of humanity are now focusing more on their common aspects than on
the divisive ones, which were still emphasized as decisive just three decades
ago. Their shared origins in Occidental tradition become more and more
visible, both historically and philosophically. (Bergstraesser 1953, p. 247)
Third Stop: The “Westernization” of Marxism (Herbert

Marcuse) and the Late Triumphal March of “Civil
Society” (Hannah Arendt)
The following attempt to define the late consequences of German emi-
gration emphasizes the role of two intellectuals who, in the 1960s and
1970s, were equally prominent and, above all, internationally influen-
tial, but who were actually opponents when seen from an ideopolitical
perspective. This is why it is all the more interesting to analyze them
according to the same ideohistorical scheme. Indeed, we could ask our-
selves: Of all people, why should Herbert Marcuse—the author of One-
Dimensional Man who was such an avowed and radical critic of Western
societies, an attitude that led him to become a pioneer and eloquent
interpreter of the youth protests of the late 1960s—have contributed to
the “Westernization” of political thinking?
The idea only seems to make sense in the broader context of the his-
tory of Marxism in the twentieth century and when considering the the-
sis that American Historian Parry Anderson formulated 30 years ago. For
him, “Western Marxism” (Anderson 1976) was the epochal derivation
of a non-orthodox Marxism and could thus be defined as marking the
decisive distinction from “Eastern Marxism,” which was represented
primarily by what is known as Marxism-Leninism. And the latter, as it
was known, was deformed by rigid ideological dogmatization and the-
oretically disavowed by submission to the need for justification of state
socialism.
The decisive stations on this path of the early Westernization of
Marxism were the Hegel-Marxism of the 1920s, the return to the phil-
osophical foundations as formulated by Lukács (especially in his 1923
collection of essays titled “History and Class Consciousness”), and the
intensive reception of the newly published early writings of Marx, espe-
cially those known as “The Paris Manuscripts.” The most consistent con-
tinuation of this process, however, is reflected by the Critical Theory of
the Frankfurt School, which caused a real sensation, especially in terms of
scientific theory and organization. This included the constructive incor-
poration of Freudian psychoanalysis, the elaboration of a social psychol-
ogy, and a highly ambitious and comprehensive cultural theory, which
was most visible in the works of Theodor W. Adorno. That is, there was
a massive overall strengthening of the “subjective factor” in economic
social theory that even led to the substitution of economic analysis with
a cultural and socio-psychological analysis of what has been labeled “late
capitalism.”11
In order to further explore the perspective of a Westernization of
the Marxist tradition of thought, as a second step, we will have to con-
sider the division that resulted when the Institute for Social Research
returned to Frankfurt and promoted a development of thought that was
“different” from what former institute employees who remained in the
U.S. had experienced. The work Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of
Enlightenment] by Horkheimer and Adorno, with all its political and
cultural ambivalences, is likely of key importance for this alternative.
While the cultural turn of Marxism during the time of the early Federal
Republic was not only linked to a rejection of the traditional demand
to put it into practice, but also to an almost programmatic pessimism,
Marcuse developed in a completely different, if not opposite direction.
After a whole decade in the U.S. Civil Service, he left at the beginning
122 A. SÖLLNER
of the 1950s and immediately showed a strong and thoroughly positive

dynamic in his intellectual work, which already showed signs of his later
political “breakthrough.”12
The great 1955 essay “Eros and Civilization” was based on Freudian
cultural theory and developed a positive doctrine of freedom that claims
to discover a potential for development that is ontologically given and
unlimited in principle within the impulse-driven human nature as well
as an equally infinite goal of action within the idea of emancipation.
The book One-Dimensional Man, published 10 years later, did design a
radical counter-image when presenting the apparently inescapable inte-
gration mechanisms of the capitalist consumerist society that seemingly
silenced any form of opposition. In the same analysis, Marcuse neverthe-
less identified the new subjects of a possible system transformation (even
though he thought they no longer showed the strategy and strength of
the classical workers movement): the Civil Rights Movement, sensitized
marginal groups of society such as hippies and subcultural dropouts, and
ultimately radicalized young students who had had a strong presence in
the U.S. since 1965.13
Accepting both the political goals of the student protests and its forms
of manifestation—demonstrations, teach-ins, sit-ins, and an overall offen-
sive use of public arenas, including the media—Herbert Marcuse proved
to not only be a supporter of the student movement, but also the most
effective international communicator of the youth protests, transferring
the latest “inventions” from the western United States to Paris, London,
Berlin, and Frankfurt. Consequently, it must be noted that it was a
youthful veteran of the first generation of emigrants—in 1968, Herbert
Marcuse was 70 years old—who contributed to the temporary triumphal
march of a (thoroughly changed) Marxism everywhere in the Western
world.
Whether or not this unexpected but spectacular strand of influence
should be called the “Westernization” of political thought—or, in this
case, Marxism—certainly depends on the ambiguous and subcutaneous
associations without which the great resonance of Marcuse’s philosophy
of freedom, especially in the U.S., cannot be explained.
His Essay on Liberation (1968), which was captivating mainly because
of the language he used to present a new utopia of freedom, must also
rightly be read as a document of the libertarian and permissive ideas
of the American West and, consequently, as a living monument for the
long-term transformation of American liberalism. In this sense, “1968”
was not just an isolated event, but rather it served as a worldwide c atalyst
for a highly consequential revaluation of values that, in the long run,
formed the basis for a sort of new and individual political style, which
entered the consciousness of contemporary history following the idea of
a change to “post-materialistic consciousness.”14
Herbert Marcuse’s role in the 1960s and 1970s was taken over by
Hannah Arendt in the 1980s and 1990s. She became the incarnation of
a political–cultural awakening and, at the same time, the manifestation
of an astonishing distant effect of German emigration, which in her case
continues until the immediate present. Based on both the daily experi-
ences of university teaching and a never-ending stream of publications,
it is no exaggeration to say that Hannah Arendt has a kind of hegemonic
position in the present-day political–philosophical discourse, which has
become almost overwhelming because it is equally accepted by the left
and the right. If there has been an all-pervasive and always summona-
ble authority figure in political theory over the past 20 years, it has been
Hannah Arendt: she has become the grande dame of political philosophy
in the Western world.15
How did it come to this? The answer to this question is a puzzle, and
we may try to solve it by reconstructing Hannah Arendt’s three major
philosophical works, which can perhaps be summarized as her trilogy
on political science. With this, I refer to the book on totalitarianism of
1951, Vita activa of 1958 and On Revolution of 1963. This is our link
to our guiding question: May the development of thinking that Hannah
Arendt has undergone since the 1940s and her emigration to the U.S.
plausibly be connected to the perspective of “Westernization”? Just like
in Marcuse’s case, the term must evidently be extended and heavily mod-
ified, meaning it must be adapted to a highly unconventional thinker. It
is equally evident that it will be a long and extensive journey, as this is
what constitutes Hannah Arendt’s political thinking: it is the re-meas-
urement of the entire horizon of the history of ideas, which in the end
establishes a new law of gravity, its center is America, which emerges as
the “new Jerusalem.”
I will not be able to substantiate this thesis in detail, but I would like to
highlight the hinges of thought that connect these three voluminous books.
As we know, Hannah Arendt’s starting point was an existential confronta-
tion of the experience of expulsion and the Holocaust, which she dealt with
so forcefully in the last part of her book on totalitarianism. As early as 1951,
this experience led her to engage in an interested and negative fallback to
124 A. SÖLLNER
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, which she expanded

on—in Vita activa—as a monumental arch of thought that went back to
classical antiquity. Ultimately, she set a decisive keystone in her book on rev-
olutions, which represented a commitment to America and a melancholic
agreement with modernity (Söllner 2008).
The dynamics of thought that were set in motion by these works can
be examined in the context of human rights, amongst other things. The
fact that, in her book on totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt tries to show
that the ideals associated with human rights are impossible to redeem
in European modernity is basically equal to a desperate and decisive
effort to break out of the dilemma and find support in Greek antiquity
by attempting a kind of “tiger’s leap” (Walter Benjamin) in the history
of ideas. As tentative as this backward movement may turn out to be—
especially in the normative position of the Greek polis and the matching
exaggeration of a heroic concept of action—the preliminary result of this
reconstruction is not only a return to themes and interests from Hannah
Arendt’s early studies, but also a philosophy of history with negative
signs, a history of decay of modern society.16
It is interesting, and informative, to ask how and where this negative
philosophy of history comes to a standstill and, finally, even takes a pos-
itive turn. This seems to be exactly what happened in On Revolution.
It is with this keystone of the trilogy, as we may call it, where the con-
flict between origin and arrival that marks Hannah Arendt’s intellectual
development enters into a decision-making stage: Europe or America—
where is the decisive fixed star for this journey through the history of
ideas? The first step in the process of answering this question is a change
of the historical scene. While Vita activa had bustled around on the
“wide field” of Western intellectual history to find romantic support in
the Greek polis, Hannah Arendt now returns to the world of moder-
nity and sharpens her perspective to a harsh alternative in which Europe,
more precisely France, and the U.S. are juxtaposed as two competing
models of “right politics.”17
In this context, we may only refer to the result and not to the thor-
oughly demanding explanatory context that Hannah Arendt never failed
to include. As firmly dichotomous as the presentation of this scenario of
the history of ideas is, Hannah Arendt is also firmly positioned within
it along with the corresponding evaluation of the said alternative: With
great clarity, it amounts to “accepting the tender” of U.S. political tra-
dition and thus devaluing the European tradition of thought. Although
this is certainly not a concise political commitment, the whole book

takes an unambiguous stance that makes the French model of mod-
ern society—the combination of a strong central state and democratic
nation-building—seem fatal, whereas the American model with its tradi-
tional structures of federalism and liberalism is strengthened.
This was not Hannah Arendt’s last word on modern political the-
ory; however, it was later developed into a Republican concept of poli-
tics, which emerged from a clear distinction from the European model of
democracy and seems to have helped to prepare the grounds for which an
unspecific and highly normative idea of “civil society” has now become
a kind of general-purpose weapon for criticism. Since this concept
played an apparent key role in the upheavals of 1989, “civil society”—
whatever is meant by this—has celebrated a triumphal march in political
discourse. Hannah Arendt’s exact role in this theoretically ambiguous
event is still unexplored, but it is certain that she would not have
accepted the amalgamation of her emphatic concept of freedom with
economic neoliberalism without raising any objections.
Conclusion
I would like to end this chapter with a strict warning: Intellectuals
in political exile are always in an exposed situation as people with
a fate of dissidence, they are political intellectuals par excellence.
Yet, they are neither the course-setters of political history nor the
Demiurges of world-historical upheavals. Changes in reach and depth,
but also in ambiguity, as those we have summarized under the term
“Westernization,” can never be primarily attributed to individuals and
their intellectual interventions, even if they may have been as headstrong
and rigid as Franz L. Neumann, Ernst Fraenkel, Herbert Marcuse, or
Hannah Arendt. They are always the product of many different factors,
of economic and political structures. Ultimately, any cultural transforma-
tion corresponds to the change of societies as a whole.
Can we imagine a collapse of the communist empire and the subse-
quent transformations in Eastern Europe without Václav Havel and the
organizers of the “Charta 77” in Prague, without writers like György
Konrád in Budapest, and without Solidarność pioneers like Leszek
Kolakowski and Adam Michnik in Warsaw? We cannot, even when it is
obvious that the decision was ultimately determined by the economic
and political collapse of the Soviet system as a whole.
126 A. SÖLLNER
Notes
1. Reference shall be made only to the Jahrbuch für Exilforschung [Yearbook
for Research in Exile], which has been documenting the current research
on the topic since 1983; also cf. Krohn (1998).
2. For more details on the methodical alternatives in the history of political
ideas, cf. Bluhm and Gebhard (2006).
3. The OSS and especially the R&A branch are surprisingly well researched:
cf. e.g., Katz (1989), Mauch (1999).
4. A good overall presentation is still Gimbel (1971, p. 13).
5. Hughes (1983, p. 118); he also gave a brief but instructive account of
German emigration: Hughes (1975).
6. For more detailed information, please cf. Chapter 5 of my book: Söllner
(1996, pp. 250–288). The most balanced representation of this topic,
written by Bleek, comes to the same conclusion: cf. Bleek (2001,
Chapter 8, pp. 265–307).
7. Cf. Hans Georg Lehmann’a attempt on a historical typology of remigra-
tion after 1945: Lehmann (1997, pp. 39 ff.).
8. It is no coincidence that in the biographies now available, the path into
exile and the return from emigration are at the center, for example, in
Nicolaysen (1997), Ladwig-Winters (2009).
9. This construction of continuity was considerably more demanding than,
for example, the case of the reopening of the German University of
Politics [Deutsche Hochschule für Politik], which simply attempted to
reconnect to Weimar conditions. For more detailed information on this
topic, cf. Göhler and Zeuner (1991).
10. For more detailed information on this topic, cf. Söllner (2006b).
11. Literature on the Frankfurt School is very vast. However, the following
works remain fundamental: Jay (1987), Wiggershaus (1997).
12. A completely new representation of Marcuse’s postwar development with
detailed information drawn from US archives can now be found in Müller
(2010).
13. The best-documented newer accounts of the events from “1968” are Frei
(2008), and Kraushaar (2008).
14. For English historian Eric Hobsbawm, amongst others, the “Cultural
Revolution” forms part of the history of the twentieth century:
Hobsbawm (1994, pp. 402–431).
15. I would like to mention just a few historical assessments of her impact:
Heuer and Wild (2005), Fritze (2008).
16. With this statement, I partially disagree with Seyla Benhabib’s thesis,
exposed in Benhabib (1998). For more information on Arendt’s book on
totalitarianism, cf. Grunenberg (2003).
17. As far as I can see, the course taken and its theoretical-political conse-
quences for Hannah Arendt’s development of thought have not yet been
sufficiently worked out.
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CHAPTER 6
The Holocaust and German-Jewish

Culture in Exile
Enzo Traverso
Reflections on the Holocaust

On January 1945, Hannah Arendt published in the American review
Jewish Frontier an article on the ‘managerial massacres’ perpetrated by
Nazism in the name of racial biology. In her eyes, such events challenged
not only the ‘human imagination’ but also ‘our categories of thought
and political action’ (Arendt 1945). One year later, in another essay
entitled ‘The Image of Hell,’ published in Commentary, she argued that
the ‘death factories’ created by Nazism were ‘the central experience of
our time’ (Arendt 1946). Writing the history of the extermination camps
was an essential and inescapable task in order to apprehend an experi-
ence that had ‘changed and poisoned’ the world we live in. The key to
understanding this completely new event, she explained, was the alliance
between racial ideology—the rejection of the Enlightenment’s legacy
reformulated into the language of science—and ‘the efficiency of modern
industry.’ As a forerunner of modern historiography, in her writings of
E. Traverso (*) 
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
e-mail: vt225@cornell.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_6
132 E. TRAVERSO
the years 1944–1946, Arendt brought into relief different elements of

the Holocaust: the industrial character of the extermination, its bureau-
cratic organization, its ‘non-utilitarian function,’ the ‘normality’ of those
who carried it out, the ideological determination of the global process.
The purpose of Nazism, she indicated in a letter to Karl Jaspers written
in December 1946, was ‘to eradicate the concept of human being’ (den
Begriff des Menschen auszurotten) (Arendt and Jaspers 1985, p. 106).
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, her masterwork written just after the
war, Arendt presented the Jewish genocide as ‘an almost complete break
in the continuous flow of Western history as we had known it for more
than two thousand years’ (Arendt 1976, p. 123). Her book immediately
compelled recognition as a major contribution to political theory, but its
success was largely based on a misunderstanding. Published at the time
of McCarthyism, it was often wrongly interpreted as ‘a bible of the Cold
War’ and its author simply identified with anticommunism and conserva-
tive thought (Bloom 1986, p. 219). In several European countries dom-
inated by anti-fascist culture, it was not translated for more than two
decades.
In their introduction to Dialectic of Enlightenment, dated May 1944,
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer had already used the word
Auschwitz in a metaphorical sense to refer to the genocide of European
Jews as a whole. Auschwitz was the culmination of a long road of
Western civilization, dialectically transforming Reason from an eman-
cipatory force into an instrument of domination and terror. In short,
Auschwitz expressed the ‘self-destruction of Reason’ (Selbstzerstörung
der Vernunft) (Horkheimer and Adorno 1998, p. 3). Despite its pres-
ent status as a classic of twentieth-century philosophy, Dialectic of
Enlightenment was largely ignored in 1947 when it was published in
Amsterdam by a little publishing house run by German émigrés.
Of course, German exile culture as a whole was confronted with
National Socialism. In a more or less explicit way, its shadow haunts
many of the great books produced by German refugees, from Thomas
Mann to Karl Löwith, from Herbert Marcuse to Leo Strauss, from Karl
Popper to Ernst Cassirer. But while nobody could escape this confronta-
tion with the catastrophe, rare were the refugees who themselves asked
questions about the extermination of the Jews.
In order to explore German-Jewish reactions to Auschwitz, we need
to recall the particular historical context of the war and postwar years.
During and immediately after the war, the Holocaust did not exist as
6 THE HOLOCAUST AND GERMAN-JEWISH CULTURE IN EXILE 133
historical problem. At that time, it was seen simply as one tragic event
among many others that had occurred during the war, and conse-
quently played a marginal role in intellectual discussions. For 30 years,
the dominant attitude was indifference and silence. During the 1940s
and 1950s, intellectuals writing about the Jewish genocide were excep-
tions, not the rule, and these exceptions were essentially German-Jewish
refugees. Retracing their path implicitly poses some questions. Why did
they escape the dominant tendency? What allowed them to see and think
about something that was almost invisible to their contemporaries? How
were they able to act as pathfinders for our later historical conscious-
ness? To answer such questions means, in Benjamin’s style, ‘to brush
history against the grain,’ studying in its context a fragment of culture
that was ignored by almost everybody when it was produced. Auschwitz
was not one of the great historical events that led Western intellectuals
to react and face their own responsibility. During the Dreyfus Affair, the
Spanish Civil War, the Algerian or the Vietnam War, they acted as rep-
resentatives of their societies’ critical consciousness—as ‘legislators,’ in
Zygmunt Bauman’s words (Bauman 1987)—whose political and ethical
protest was shared by large sections of the Western world. In the case of
the Holocaust, nobody played such a role; one can only pay attention to
those personalities who broke the silence and, completely isolated, tried
to think through a major break in the history of modern times. Mostly
in exile, both cut off from their countries of origin and foreigners in
the societies where they lived as refugees, they could not act as repre-
sentatives of the majority or of a stable sector of public opinion. Their
clairvoyance and the originality of their thought can be detected only
retrospectively, through a historical reconstruction. We could call them,
borrowing Benjamin’s words once again, the ‘fire alarm’ (Feuermelder)
(Benjamin 1978, p. 84); they felt the catastrophe was coming, they
named and analyzed it, but unfortunately nobody listened to them.
In some respects, the position of exiled intellectuals was similar to that
of the survivors who, just after the war, wrote personal accounts describ-
ing their experience in the death camps. Both groups were marginal to
the cultural and political discussions of their time. Witnesses were dis-
turbing figures in a world preoccupied with rebuilding and looking for-
ward, not backward. All the more astonishing and paradoxical is the fact
that the silence surrounding the Holocaust corresponded with a moment
of extraordinary political involvement by intellectuals around the world.
At the time, according to Sartre, they could no longer retire into an
134 E. TRAVERSO
ivory tower of literature and purely abstract values. They were ‘engaged.’
As opinion-makers, they wrote and loudly expressed their thoughts on
everything but the genocide of the Jews. In other words, they were not
silent at all; they were blind intellectuals.
In continental Europe, the scene was dominated by antifascism, a
political and cultural current surrounded by the aura of the Resistance.
Experienced more as a civic ethos than as a political ideology (Rabinbach
1996, p. 7; Traverso 2016, Chapter 8), antifascism expressed itself
through a network of reviews and journals whose cultural influence
reached far beyond the rank-and-file of organized parties. However,
rarely did these reviews devote an article or a section to the destruction
of the European Jews.
Paradoxically, Jewish attitudes did not contribute to a clearer under-
standing of the event. In Central and Eastern Europe, the Jewish intel-
ligentsia was simply destroyed. Very rare were critical spirits who, like
Gershom Scholem, recalled the Jews’ banishment from Spain in 1492
in order to issue a desperate warning against the dangers embodied by
Nazism. As in sixteenth-century Spain, but on a greater scale, Scholem
thought, Nazism meant a Europe without Jews (Benjamin and Scholem
1980, p. 319). A secular memory prepared the Jews to face the Nazi per-
secution, not a total annihilation. In several Western countries, the survi-
vors themselves did not wish to appear as special victims, separated from
other victims. In France, the country in which this tendency reached its
most radical form, the idea of a memorial especially devoted to the Jews,
distinguishing them from other victims of Nazism like fallen patriots and
anti-fascist fighters, struck them as both pointless and outrageous (see
Wieviorka 1992). Jews wanted to return—as respected and equal citi-
zens—to the national communities from which they had been so tragi-
cally uprooted. Claiming a special status as victims could be interpreted
as a way of perpetuating their old status as excluded and persecuted
people.
Most Jewish intellectuals in Western Europe as well as the United
States shared the general silence, blindness and incomprehension. “No,
I could not imagine the gas chambers, the industrial murder of human
beings,” Raymond Aron writes in his Memoirs, “and since I could not
imagine that, I did not see that.” (Aron 1983, p. 242). American culture
did not react any differently. In order to avoid the suspicion that US
intervention in the European war was motivated by the aim of saving
the Jews, Roosevelt decided to consider their persecution as a marginal
aspect of the war (thus he forgot his previous declaration with Churchill
of November 1942 denouncing the mass killing of them) (see Wyman
1984). In the eyes of public opinion, the American war was above all a
war against Japan (see Fussell 1989). The New York intellectuals, mostly
Jewish, did not break the silence surrounding the death camps. Nobody
tried to hide the Holocaust; simply, almost nobody was able to see it.
They were neither ethically insensitive nor politically indifferent; they
were ‘blind’ intellectuals.
Exiles, Marginal People and Outsiders

Thus, these ‘blind’ intellectuals appear as a foil for the refugees men-
tioned above. The postwar intellectual landscape is now clear enough in
order to come back to our initial question. What allowed the latter group
to escape the sightlessness of the former? It is time to formulate some
hypotheses.
All the critical spirits that were able to see Auschwitz in the midst of
a blind world shared a common feature: they were exiles, marginal peo-
ple and outsiders. Of course, they were not completely alone in inter-
preting the horror of their century—among the exceptions, we can recall
Georges Bataille in France and Dwight MacDonald in the United States
(see Traverso 2001, p. 81)—but certainly they acted as its most sensitive
and timely seismograph. One should not consider this characteristic—
exile—anecdotal or accidental; on the contrary, it was probably an
essential precondition for their clear-sightedness and analytical sharp-
ness. In other words, they illustrated the epistemological privilege of
exile (see Adorno 1974, p. 35). Yet, it was not a normative privilege,
because the majority of exiles did not write about Auschwitz; it was
rather a possibility and a chance that could be grasped. In some regards,
one may consider such an epistemological privilege as a kind of intellec-
tual compensation, doubtless at a very high price, for the privations and
uprooted life of exile. Émigré writing bears the marks of a break, of a
split existence, of a deep trauma that quickly deprived the exiles of their
language, their social and cultural background, their readership, their
professional status and consequently of the material basis of their exist-
ence. For most of them, exile meant enormous difficulty in being pub-
lished. But exile also meant something deeper and more fundamental:
the lack of a familiar landscape in which they could fix an ordered world
and an ordered pattern of thinking. Adorno devoted the most tormented
136 E. TRAVERSO
pages of Minima Moralia, a book partially written during the war, to

exile, expressing its significance in the book’s subtitle: ‘Reflections on
wounded life.’ According to Adorno, exile is above all an injury, a cruel
separation from the Heimat. For a writer, exile means the loss of the
soil on which he has lived and the removal of the context in which he
could ‘inhabit’ his language (Adorno 1974, p. 35). Famous writers were
obliged to publish their works with small, poor publishing houses run by
other émigrés; celebrated scholars begged for grants from foreign univer-
sities; former journalists and directors of well-known reviews sporadically
published leaflets with readerships of a few hundred people. In others
words, the clear-sightedness of Arendt, Anders, Adorno and Horkheimer
in the 1940s was inversely proportional to their public invisibility and
almost complete political impotence. Their insight and understanding
came at a very high price, because they were inexorably condemned to
remain unheard. In his memoirs, George L. Mosse highlights this aspect
of his life with the following words.
During the 1930s, one seemed to live at the edge of catastrophe: we
refugees were sure that Hitler wanted war, and we had a much better
insight than contemporary statesmen who comforted each other that
‘the soup is never served as hot as it is cooked.’ But, then, no one lis-
tened to refugees, who were said to have their own prejudices and
agenda—only this time the refugees were correct and the others were
duped (Mosse 2000, p. 100).
While Western democracies celebrated their triumph and antifas-
cist culture announced, after a dark parenthesis, the return of a new era
of Enlightenment, peace and progress, the émigrés like unwelcome
Cassandras theorized a terrible and irreversible civilizational break. In a
continent busy licking its wounds and rebuilding its economy, nobody
wanted to hear that the extermination of the Jews was a mutilation of
Europe. While Western culture seemed to return to an idea of Progress
eclipsed in the cataclysms of the modern Thirty Years’ War, exiles played
the role of killjoys identifying progress with catastrophe. Culturally, ide-
ologically and politically, German-Jewish intellectuals in exile were not
a homogeneous group. They belonged to a constellation that offered
a wide range of political orientations, from neo-Kantian humanism
(Ernst Cassirer) to existentialism (Karl Löwith), from classical liberal-
ism (Hans Kelsen) to conservatism (Leo Strauss), from social democ-
racy (Rudolf Hilferding) to communism (Georg Lukács) and even to
heretical Marxism (Ernst Bloch). Often, they did not know each other
and were unaware of their ‘elective affinities.’ What unified them was
a shared condition as refugees: they paid attention to the cataclysms of
the world they had left behind them, sharing in most cases a very pre-
carious material existence. Curiously, their condition as refugees corre-
sponded perfectly to some epistemological models developed by German
sociology at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their geographical
and intellectual mobility, their lack of organic connection to a territory or
social structure, their social nonconformity, and their open-mindedness
recalled the figure of the ‘stranger’ (Fremde) depicted by Georg Simmel
in his Sociology (Simmel 1964, pp. 402–408). Taken as a whole, Simmel
underlined, these conditions made the stranger a critical observer of
his environment, from which he always maintained a certain ‘distance’
(Entfernheit). It is significant that Scholem used the same concept in
order to define the identity—made of a mixture of Heimatlosigkeit and
Uncanny (das Unheimliche)—of German Jews like Benjamin, Kafka
and Freud: Männer aus der Fremde; that is, strangers (Wohlfart 1997).
Refugees, one may add with Siegfried Kracauer, shared a common status
of geographical, political and cultural ‘extraterritoriality,’ living a fissured
existence between two worlds (Kracauer 1995 [1969], p. 83; Jay 1985).
Finally, they embodied ideal-typically the ‘socially free floating intelli-
gentsia’ (sozial freischwebende Intelligenz) theorized by Karl Mannheim in
Ideology and Utopia (1929) (Mannheim 1992 [1929], p. 106). According
to Mannheim, this particular group could, because of its social instability
and its externality to dominant ideologies, attain a wider ‘field of vision’
(Gesichtsfeld) than other social classes. In Gramscian terms, German-
Jewish refugees were neither ‘traditional’ nor ‘organic’ intellectuals
(Gramsci 1975, vol. III, pp. 1513–1551). They did not share the vision of
the world of the old ruling élites (such as, for example, the ‘mandarins’ of
Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany) (Ringer 1969), nor were they organi-
cally linked to a political party or organizers of the ideological hegemony
of a social class (as were the social democratic German intelligentsia).
As strangers, extraterritorial and ‘free floating,’ refugees were free of
many of the social, cultural, political and also psychological constraints
of the context they lived in. Indeed, they looked at war and Nazism with
different eyes than did Americans or even Europeans. For them, the end
of the war was not the occasion for manifesting their patriotic pride, but
the moment in which they definitively realized, often with a melancholy
resignation, that they no longer possessed a Heimat. Nazism had been
defeated, but Central European Jewry had disappeared too, irreversibly
138 E. TRAVERSO
destroyed. Barbarism was declared defeated, but the victors decided to

celebrate their victory by perpetrating a crime—the atomic destruction
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—that seemed like an attempt to reduce the
moral distance separating them from their enemies. Refugees could not
read such events with the eyes of the victors, and their views bore the
stamp of nonconformity. Objectively forced to see the world with crit-
ical eyes, refugees adopted the position of the outsider, the heretic, the
destroyer of orthodoxy and accepted norms. Borrowing the concept
from the language of music, Edward Said considers this critical approach
a kind of contrappunto: the intellectual in exile, he concludes, “is nec-
essarily ironical, skeptical and sharp, but never cynical.” Unsurprisingly,
Said gives Adorno as a typical example of the exiled intellectual (Said
1994).
In many respects, refugees embodied the features that Hannah Arendt
attributed to the ‘hidden tradition’ of ‘conscious pariahs’: humanity,
humor, disinterested intelligence, natural freedom, cheerful insouciance,
refusal to become cynical or bitter, lack of prejudice, and a great sensi-
tivity to injustice (Arendt 1978). Opposed to the parvenu, the refugee
desperately trying to appear as a ‘national,’ rooted and respectable gen-
tleman, a pariah accepted his condition as an outcast. Stateless, the ref-
ugees escaped from national stereotypes and did not react to war events
as Americans or Germans; nor could they see Nazism simply through
the eyes of persecuted Jews. In short, they faced the darkest moments
of their time as citizens of the world (Weltbürger), perceiving the death
camps not only as a Jewish tragedy but also, more deeply and univer-
sally, as a wound changing our image of humanity and our interpretation
of history. But their cosmopolitanism was the prisoner of a tragic para-
dox, insofar as they were at the same time Weltbürger and Weltlos. While
cosmopolitan and emancipated from narrow points of view and national
prejudices, Jewish exiles remained stateless people, condemned to live a
suffocating life of ‘world-alienation’ (Weltlosigkeit). As pariahs they suf-
fered, according to Arendt, from a ‘terrifying atrophy’ of all means of
communicating with the surrounding world (Arendt 1968; Arendt
1958). Political powerlessness was the other side of the coin of their
epistemological privileges and human qualities. The authorities regarded
them suspiciously, often perceiving them as enemy aliens—in many
countries they had been interned in camps at the beginning of war—
rather than as allies or advisers. Some refugee writers have given their
condition a literary characterization: Leon Feuchtwanger considered
internationalism the Jewish form of nationalism, whereas Joseph Roth

defined himself as a ‘hotel citizen’ (Hotelbürger) and even a Hotelpatriot.
The passport became the focal point of exile existence, as a celebrated
painting by Felix Nussbaum called Selbstbildnis mit Judenpass (‘Self-
Portrait with a Jewish Identity Card’, 1943) powerfully illustrates. In his
memoirs, historian George L. Mosse observes that anxieties about pass-
ports had never left him. Until the day of his death, he refused to hand
his American passport over to hotels for overnight registration.
Uprooted, the exiled scholars were received by the American universi-
ties mostly as individual, very rarely as a group. From this point of view,
the only significant exception was the New School for Social Research,
which in 1933 his director, Alvin Johnson, transformed into a sort of
German university in exile. In six years, between the rise to power of
Hitler and the outbreak of the Second World War, the NSSR received
180 German refugee scholars, most of them Jewish. There, Arendt
taught her first seminars on totalitarianism. Anti-Semitism, nevertheless,
was not a privileged field of teaching and investigation within this vener-
able institution, whose aim was primarily the integration of a European
scholarly tradition into the American culture. The Frankfurt School,
which remained an isolated German intellectual current in spite of its
appointment to Columbia University, paid more attention to the Nazi
war against the Jews. Deeply related to the political experience of the
New Deal, the NSSR remained attached to the idea of progress, which
its scholars strongly defended against Nazi barbarism. The Frankfurt
School, on the contrary, analyzed National Socialism and the Holocaust
as a dialectical outcome of Western rationalism that radically put into
question the concept of progress itself (Krohn 1993; Jacobs 2016;
Wheatland 2009).
A Critique of Domination
For many refugees, politics was the answer to their condition of alien-
ation from the world. Inspired by Bernard Lazare, Hannah Arendt
defined ‘conscious’ pariahs as representatives of a mass of stateless peo-
ple claiming civic rights and political visibility. As the first victims of
totalitarianism—the modern attempt to destroy politics—pariahs were
forced to rethink politics as a public sphere of interaction that recog-
nized them (including their otherness) and gave them rights. Excluded
from and ‘deprived’ of the world, pariahs could transform their natural
140 E. TRAVERSO
cosmopolitanism into political action. These stateless ‘citizens of the

world’ tried to act as citizens for the world, confronting the reality of
a world denying them first the right to live as citizens of any state, then
the right to live at all. It is not surprising that Arendt’s politics presup-
posed criticism of the dominant tendencies among Jews. In her eyes,
pariah politics was neither assimilation nor Zionism but republicanism
(see Canovan 1992). On the one hand, the fall of the European liberal
order and the rise of fascist anti-Semitism had put in question the poli-
tics of assimilation, the main attitude among Jews in the nineteenth cen-
tury. On the other hand, Zionism, the Jewish form of nationalism, could
not be a solution at a time of historical crisis for nation-states in general.
Latent before the war, the conflict between Jewish cosmopolitanism and
Zionism inevitably exploded in 1948 with the foundation of the State
of Israel. The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Gershom
Scholem, who in previous years had shared the project of a bi-national
state in Palestine, dramatically reflected these divergent views on Jewish
issues (Bernstein 1996; Raz-Krakotzkin 1999).
Since the 1930s, ‘pariah politics’ had found in Marxism one of its
privileged fields of expression. In those agitated and turbulent years,
intellectual refugees preserved Marxism as a body of critical, open and
creative thought. Anti-Semitism prevented them from joining conserv-
ative, Christian or nationalist movements; Stalinism rejected them as
‘uprooted cosmopolitans’; classical liberalism seemed in eclipse together
with the old European order and did not constitute a clear alternative to
fascism. In short, the whole historical context pushed them toward a rad-
ical criticism of society and toward revolutionary politics. As assimilated,
cosmopolitan and enlightened Jews, most of them could not accept the
narrow boundaries of Zionism. It was both utopian and nonsensical
to pretend to find a solution for the Jews when fascism was threaten-
ing civilization as a whole. Up until the end of the Second World War,
stateless and exiled intellectuals were much more attracted by Marxist
internationalism than by Zionism. Since the Russian and abortive Central
Europe upheavals of 1917–1923, the Jewish intelligentsia strongly ori-
ented toward revolutionary Marxism (see Traverso 1994, Chapter 2). Of
course, from Weimar conservatives to Ernst Nolte the myth of Judeo-
Bolshevism has been a commonplace of right-wing propaganda. With
Nazism, this stereotype was radicalized and codified in a vision of the
Soviet Union as an alliance of Slavic sub-humans directed by a Jewish
brain trust of rootless, cosmopolitan intellectuals (the wurzellose Juden
of Goebbels’s speeches). But one does not need to share the caricatured,
anti-Semitic view of the Soviet Union as a Jewish creation in order to
recognize the ‘elective affinities’ that Jewish intellectuals established with
Marxism in the years between the wars.
Exiles, however, escaped the scholastic and dogmatic petrifaction of
Marxism into Stalinism, which used it as a ruling ideology. At the same
time, they could no longer consider Marxism as an ideology of Progress,
in the sense of the positivist historical materialism of the nineteenth cen-
tury. They renewed Marxism as a critical theory of power and society,
often synthesizing it with Weberian sociology, Freudian psychoanalysis,
Heideggerian existentialism and romantic critiques of civilization. If one
leaves out rare exceptions like Mariategui or Gramsci, Western Marxism
took on a German-Jewish coloration and was essentially developed by
exiled intellectuals. Outside and sometimes against official communism,
the Marxism of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch,
Isaac Deutscher, Georg Lukács, Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse and
Günther Anders was a form of critical thought characteristic of stateless
people, heretics, outsiders, geistige Heimatlose without party and ideo-
logical orthodoxy. All in all, their Marxism was neither a state’s theory
nor a revolutionary strategy; it was a critique of domination.
Critical Thought Amidst the Deluge

Shaped by Nazism, the Second World War and finally the Holocaust,
refugee culture became an important laboratory for creating the con-
cept of totalitarianism. The word was born during the 1920s in Italy,
where it was incorporated into fascist doctrine before being translated in
Germany by theorists of the Conservative Revolution like Carl Schmitt.
Then, beginning in the 1930s, the concept was developed by liberal
thinkers like Elie Halévy and Raymond Aron in order to analyze fascist
and communist dictatorships. But the most important contribution to
the theory of totalitarianism came from exiles. If the presence among
them of Christian philosophers and political thinkers like Luigi Sturzo,
Jacques Maritain, Eric Voegelin, Waldemar Gurian and Paul Tillich was
certainly noteworthy, in most cases they were German-speaking Jews,
exiled in France in 1933 and in the United States by the late 1930s.
The major impact of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism
could not eclipse the writings of Manes Sperber, Rudolf Hilferding,
Hans Kohn, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Ernst Fraenkel, Franz
142 E. TRAVERSO
Borkenau, Friedrich Pollock, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and

others (see Traverso 2017).
Doubtless, Marxist and Catholic interpretations of totalitarianism
are very different. There is no common language between Marcuse and
Voegelin. Whereas Marcuse regarded totalitarian regimes as a synthesis
between political existentialism and monopoly capitalism, Voegelin inter-
preted them as the extreme consequence of secularization. But in the
end, both incorporated an ethical connotation into their criticism that
had been lacking in classical liberalism. Unlike political scientists like
Raymond Aron, Carl Friedrich or Hans Kelsen, for whom totalitarianism
was a form of ‘modern Machiavellianism’ or the simple antithesis of the
liberal state (Rechtsstaat), many refugees refused to reduce it to a state
system. For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism was much more than a new
regime escaping from the classical typologies elaborated in the history
of political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu. It was a completely
new experience, destroying politics as a field of expression for human
pluralism, as a public sphere without which freedom and action would
no longer be conceivable. She interpreted totalitarianism as an anthro-
pological break, produced in the midst of the twentieth century, whose
actual meaning was “the transformation of human nature itself” (Arendt
1976, p. 458).
During the Cold War, Arendt’s writings developed a theory of totali-
tarianism as a critique of Western civilization. Totalitarianism condensed
the results of an historical process marked by different steps. It had been
prepared by the triumph of imperialism as a system of global domination,
theorized by biological and hierarchical racism, and continued with mod-
ern anti-Semitism, which was no longer religious but racial. Then after
the First World War it emerged from the crisis of the nation-state, gen-
erating a mass of stateless people deprived of rights and fated to become
the scapegoat for all social and political convulsions. Finally, after have
being transformed into a regime, it developed further with the concen-
tration and extermination camps. This vision contrasted sharply with the
conservative tendency—dominant at the time of the Cold War—to for-
mulate a new concept of totalitarianism that was no longer critical of but
essentially apologetic for the Western order. According to exiled intel-
lectuals, totalitarianism had its roots in Western history and civilization,
while conservative thinkers simply identified it with the Soviet Union in
order to legitimate the Western order itself. Unlike conservative politi-
cal scientists who exalted the Free World against communism, Marcuse
detected some totalitarian features in the societies of late capitalism, the

birthplace of alienated ‘one-dimensional man,’ and Adorno insisted that
the real danger was not a relapse into fascism but the persistence of total-
itarian elements within Western democracies (Adorno 2005, p. 90).
Exile produced a deep metamorphosis in the German-Jewish culture
transplanted in America. Émigré historian George L. Mosse summed up
this change of paradigm in a brilliant dictum: ‘from Bildung to the Bill
of Rights’ (Mosse 1989). Refugees had been formed intellectually in
Central Europe, especially in Germany and Austria, in a political context
where their exclusion from public careers and the state bureaucracy pushed
them to seek recognition in the cultural field. Although marginal in the
universities—usually a bastion of anti-Semitism—they played a leading
role in journalism, criticism, politics and literature. Their mental habitus
had been shaped by a set of elements usually summed up in German in
the concept of Bildung, meaning at the same time ethics, education, cul-
ture and individual development (Assmann 1993; Koselleck 2002; Mosse
1993). A century after Tocqueville, they discovered in America a dif-
ferent political system based on another set of values. There, they found
the civic virtues of a republican tradition based on respect for the Bill of
Rights. Their ancestors had become citizens thanks to emancipation
granted ‘from above,’ and they had always tended to interpret the rule
of law (Rechtsstaat) as an ethical ideal rather than as a political conquest.
Subsequently, their interpretation of totalitarianism changed, merging with
the ‘Atlantic’ ideas of freedom, law and norms. In other words, the result
of this gigantic transfer of knowledge from one side of the Atlantic to the
other was an acculturation process that modified their original German
culture and, at the same time, created something new in American culture
(Söllner 1988, p. 177; Coser 1984). In a letter to Karl Jaspers in January
1946, Hannah Arendt depicted America as a country of republican free-
dom at the opposite extreme from Europe. Americans defined themselves
as citizens, not as members of an ethnic group or a national state. This lack
of a true national tradition, she emphasized, created an atmosphere of lib-
erty and a form of civic patriotism unknown in Germany and, more gener-
ally, in continental Europe (Arendt and Jaspers 1985, p. 34). It was in the
name of these republican values that Arendt criticized McCarthyism.
America, this republic, the democracy in which we are, is a living
thing which cannot be contemplated or categorized, like the image of
a thing which I can make; it cannot be fabricated. It is not and never
will be perfect because the standard of perfection does not apply here.
144 E. TRAVERSO
Dissent belongs to this living matter as much as consent does. The lim-
itations on dissent are the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and no
one else. If you try to ‘make America more American’ or a model of a
democracy according to any preconceived idea, you can only destroy it
(Arendt 1953; Young-Bruehl 1984, p. 274).
In a similar way, Adorno admitted that in America he had discovered
not only such horrifying things as jazz, popular music and the culture
industry but also “the substance of democratic forms.” There, he added,
“they have penetrated the whole of life, whereas in Germany, at least
they were never more than formal rules of the game.” In America, he
had “become acquainted with a potential for generosity that is seldom
to be found in old Europe.” Therefore, he concluded, in America “the
political form of democracy is infinitely closer to the daily life of the peo-
ple themselves” (Arendt 1953).
Not surprisingly, during the Cold War, the anti-communist wave
substantially influenced the exiled intellectuals. Several of them, espe-
cially ex-communists like Arthur Koestler and Franz Borkenau, were
deeply involved in the activities of the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Nevertheless, many refugees refused to transform anti-totalitarianism
into a new crusade against ‘the God that failed.’ On the one hand, exiles
could not hide their skepticism about the new fighters for the ‘Free
World’ in battle dress, often ex-communists themselves. In the early
1950s, Isaac Deutscher and Hannah Arendt sarcastically depicted them
as messianic, narrow-minded sectarians bringing the ‘truth’ to the world,
and considered them a danger to democracy, because they pretended
to fight against totalitarianism with totalitarian methods (Deutscher
1984). On the other hand, émigrés were also skeptical of antifascist cul-
ture, which was often blind or indulgent with respect to Stalinism and
nourished by a nationalist rhetoric with which they could not identify
themselves. Jewish refugees had no national myths to claim. As recalled
above, many of them kept also a critical distance from Israel. Those
who decided to return to Germany had to face suspicion and mistrust
from the ruling élites in both West and East Germany. In the Federal
Republic, the Frankfurt School remained an isolated institution in the
Adenauer years and had to wait until the late 1960s to obtain recogni-
tion. In the Democratic Republic, Ernst Bloch was regarded as a her-
etic from his arrival until his escape to the West. In the United States,
the concept of totalitarianism was quickly incorporated into the ideolog-
ical arsenal of the Cold War. In the Federal Republic of Germany it was
transformed, as Wolfgang Wippermann wrote perceptively, into the phi-

losophy underlying the constitution (Weltanschauung des Grundgesetzes)
(Wippermann 1997, p. 45). In other words, it became the basis of an
‘anti-anti-fascism’—anti-fascism being the state ideology of the German
Democratic Republic—whose corollary was the almost complete elimi-
nation of the memory of Nazi crimes from public life for 20 years. At
the same time in those years, totalitarianism had become a forbidden
word for official Marxism, which considered it as an ideological weapon
of American imperialism. Escaping such polar oppositions, exiled intel-
lectuals were practically alone in trying to make critical use of the idea
of totalitarianism. That was the isolated but essential task accomplished
by the Frankfurt School, Hannah Arendt and Herbert Marcuse. In his
introduction to Eros and Civilization, a book written in the early 1950s,
Marcuse warned that mass exterminations, total wars and atomic bombs
were not the mark of a ‘relapse into barbarism’ but the ‘return of the
repressed’ in the form of modern conquests in science, technology and
power (Marcuse 1955).
From this point of view, the legacy of German-Jewish culture in
exile was a component of the nascent New Left of the 1960s. Only a
few former refugees became personally involved in that political move-
ment—Marcuse remains the most notable example—but the New Left
frequently used their works, sometimes against their own will. The
1969 correspondence between Adorno and Marcuse, the first strongly
opposing and the second enthusiastically supporting the student move-
ment, paradigmatically reflects the conflicted attitudes of German-Jewish
culture facing a new intellectual generation, both in Germany and in
America (Adorno and Marcuse 1999). In particular, former exiles who
had found a refuge and a new fatherland in the United States could not
easily support the radical criticisms of American imperialism made by the
student movement and the New Left. The former stateless people who
had been accepted and ‘saved’ by the United States felt very uncomfort-
able at demonstrations where young people burned the American flag.
Among the consequences of the transition mentioned above from
the Bildung to the Bill of Rights was the introduction into German-
Jewish culture of elements of classical liberalism. In particular, a book
like Arendt’s On Revolution (1964) reveals this philosophical and polit-
ical change. While in the early 1950s she considered Burke’s critique of
the philosophy of human rights as the starting point for modern racism,
imperialism and finally totalitarianism, she now radically counterpoised
146 E. TRAVERSO
the American to the French Revolution. Unlike the former, whose pur-
pose was the conquest of political freedom, the latter more ambitiously
demanded social emancipation as well: freedom and happiness. In
Burkean style, she now thought that such an aspiration inevitably pro-
duced a new form of tyranny. Like Jacob L. Talmon, she considered
the French Terror of 1793–1795 as the archetypal form of modern
totalitarianism. Did this change reflect a transition from the older out-
siders to the new national opinion-makers? This hypothesis should be
explored.
In recent decades, the European intellectual exile in America has
been analyzed as a gigantic exodus displacing the axis of Western cul-
ture from one coast of the Atlantic to the other. The Sea Change is the
title of a well-known book by H. Stuart Hughes on the exile experience
(Hughes 1975). Many scholars interpret this change as the basis for a
deep transformation of American culture itself, and give the exiles credit
for American pre-eminence in scientific research as well as in other aca-
demic fields. That is true, but it sounds too much like the happy end of
a success story. I would prefer to sum up the meaning of German-Jewish
exile with another image. In two letters to his former wife Dora and his
friend Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin compared his book Deutsche
Menschen (1935) to a biblical ‘ark’ he had built “on a Jewish model”
when “the Deluge began rising” (Schöne 1986, pp. 355, 364). This
definition fits German-Jewish culture in exile very well. It was an ark, we
could say, in which critical thought was saved from the Deluge.
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Traverso, E. (2017). Totalitarianism Between History and Theory. History and
Theory, 55(4), 97–118.
Wheatland, T. (2009). The Frankfurt School in Exile. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Wieviorka, A. (1992). Déportation et genocide: Entre la mémoire et l’oubli. Paris:
Plon.
Wippermann, W. (1997). Totalitarismustheorien. Darmstadt: Primus Verlag.
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CT: Yale University Press.
CHAPTER 7
Waves of Exile: The Reception of Émigrés

in Mexico, 1920–1980
Pablo Yankelevich
Among all nations receiving political refugees, Mexico stands out in a

compelling way. Immigration’s contribution to the country’s demo-
graphic composition has always been low; the volume of foreigners has
never exceeded one percent of the total national population. More than a
country of immigrants, Mexico is a country of migrants. Throughout its
history, the number of people who left Mexico has been higher than the
number of people who have arrived to reside there permanently.
In contrast to this situation, Mexico has been a place of refuge for
politically persecuted people. It is no surprise that nations such as the
United States and Argentina, whose foundation was based on streams
of migration, would take in persecuted people. To a large extent, this
can be explained by the fact that many people in the mare magnum of
immigrants fled political, religious, or ethnic persecution. In Mexico, this
was not the case. Quite the contrary, Mexico has had one of the most
P. Yankelevich (*) 
El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: pabloy@colmex.mx

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_7
152 P. YANKELEVICH
restrictive immigration laws in the continent since the 1930s, and despite
this, these laws have always left the door open for the political refugees.
How can the paradox of a country with strong restrictions on immi-
gration but a generous welcoming policy concerning foreigners who are
fleeing political persecution be explained? Restrictive immigration pol-
icies are justified by arguments concerning the defense of employment
for Mexican workers as well as ethnic selection criteria linked to the con-
viction that immigrants’ likelihood to assimilate was directly associated
with certain national origins. However, these arguments would disappear
if the foreigners were political refugees. The nature of this kind of excep-
tion may be explained by a political will based on historical background
and specific political contexts.
The social transformation that brought about the Revolution of 1910
placed Mexico at the forefront of the thoughts and actions of Latin
American progressivism. The implementation of a program that consid-
ered distributing land to peasants, establishing labor rights for workers,
defending radical secularism, and implementing innovative educational
and cultural policies together with a foreign policy that openly chal-
lenged the centers of international power helped to transform Mexico
into a beacon that fed the hope that it was possible to build a more just
world.
The radicalism of these proposals faded after the Second World War;
however, some principles remained in place, particularly those related to
foreign policy. Throughout the past century, Mexico was a strong advo-
cate of the right of nations to self-determination and a strong opponent
of any form of foreign interventionism. In the Latin American context,
the firmness of these convictions was tied to the country’s openness to
political opponents from nations that were struggling with foreign inva-
sions and dictatorial regimes.
One of the elements of what is often called the ideology of the
Mexican Revolution is a definite Latin Americanism, that is, the con-
viction of a shared historical and cultural world in which the utopia of
a common future was also portrayed. After the Revolution and start-
ing in the 1920s, Mexico was particularly sensitive to the problems of
the subcontinent. The program of cultural and educational renewal led
by José Vasconcelos, who did so first as the president of the National
University and later as Secretary of Public Education, attracted the atten-
tion of the Latin American left. Vasconcelos’ acts of defiance against mil-
itary and clerical authoritarianism and the power of large landowners in
7 WAVES OF EXILE: THE RECEPTION OF ÉMIGRÉS IN MEXICO, 1920–1980 153
Latin America were not mere rhetorical exercises, as they also resulted in
open condemnations of the acts of dictators and in concrete expressions
of solidarity with the persecuted. In the 1920s, Mexico took in a large
amount of exiled Venezuelans who opposed the dictatorship of Juan
Vicente Gómez, and Vasconcelos himself was a convinced sympathizer of
the anti-imperialist struggles in the Caribbean, particularly in Cuba and
Puerto Rico (Fell 1989).
Mexico offered protection to university leaders and activists. One
of the most notable was the Peruvian Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre,
who arrived in 1923 and worked in Vasconcelos’ office. The repres-
sion of the Augusto Leguía’s government in Peru led other activists to
leave for Mexico, such as Jacobo Hurwirtz, Esteban Pavletich, and the
writer Magda Portal. In Mexico, Haya de la Torre founded the APRA
in 1928, an organization that guided the discussion and political action
of broad middle-class sectors in Latin America and whose importance
for Peruvian political life has been undeniable since 1930 (Bergel 2009,
pp. 41–66; Melgar Bao 2004, pp. 65–106; 2013). In 1926, another
prominent university leader, the Cuban José Antonio Mella, took ref-
uge in Mexico to develop political activism in the bosom of com-
munism, until he was assassinated by agents sent by the dictator Gerardo
Machado (Hatzky 2008). This community of exiles was joined by the
Bolivian writer and essayist Tristán Marof (Melgar Bao 2018), a group
of Venezuelan exiles including Salvador de la Plaza (D’Angelo 2016,
pp. 21–55; Arias Riera 2008, pp. 93–109)—founder of the Venezuelan
Revolutionary Party—, and the Nicaraguan Augusto César Sandino—
undoubtedly the most outstanding figure in the anti-imperialist struggles
of those years, to whom the Mexican government granted protection
in 1929, and who created a broad transnational network of solidarity
from Mexico (Villanueva 1988; Dospital 1994, pp. 117–129; Buchenau
1996; Kersffeld 2012).
Although many arrived in Mexico as political exiles, others had expa-
triated voluntarily, attracted by the revolutionary promises that made
room for experiments in the field of politics and in the arts. A large
group of American intellectuals and artists settled in the capital, includ-
ing photographer Edward Weston and his partner Tina Modotti, writer
Carleton Beals, painter Pablo O’Higgins, anthropologist Frances Toor,
social worker Mary Louis Doherty, and communist leader Beltram
Wolfe and his wife Ella (Delpar 1992; Tenorio 2012). They were joined
by Latin American intellectuals, such as the poet Gabriela Mistral, who
154 P. YANKELEVICH
was invited by Vasconcelos to collaborate in the educational renewal

program, and the Nicaraguan poet Salomón de la Selva, who was an
active member of the Sandinistas while living in Mexico. Many others
passed through Mexico as travelers and lecturers. Such was the case
of the Argentinean doctor and sociologist José Ingenieros who visited
the country in 1925 and who—a few years earlier, during a visit from
Vasconcelos to Buenos Aires—did not hesitate to describe Mexico
as “the largest social laboratory in Latin America, where we can take
advantage of many of its teachings for our own future development”
(Ingenieros 1922, pp. 438, 440 y 441).
In the 1920s, encounters between Latin American political exiles,
expatriates from the United States, travelers, and foreign visitors helped
to establish a cosmopolitan network which, among other matters, con-
ceived reflections and political projects that would mark the course of
thought and action of the Latin American left for the decades to follow
(Yankelevich 2001, pp. 25–47; Rivera Mir 2014; Carr 2018). Interaction
among exiles fostered a fluid exchange of ideas. Mexico’s transforma-
tion process served as an example for political practices that, for instance,
restored a socialist program whose fulfillment depended on the peculiar-
ities of the historical development of Latin American nations, and stood
in sharp contrast to those positions which were closer to the orthodoxy
of the Third International communist organization and thus more reluc-
tant to consider national matrices in the definition of revolutionary strat-
egies (Aricó 1982).
In the late 1920s, a conservative shift in Mexican government, moti-
vated by open confrontation with sectors of the communist left, closed
this first cycle of exile in Mexico. A few years later, however, the door
opened again. Those who found refuge were, among others, Argentine
psychologist and essayist Aníbal Ponce, who had been stripped of his
university professorship in Buenos Aires (Pasolini 2013, pp. 83–97;
Terán 1983, pp. 7–49), and the Cuban poet and literary critic Juan
Marinello (Moreno Rodríguez 2016). Undoubtedly, the most promi-
nent case was that of Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, who
were granted asylum by President Lázaro Cárdenas in late 1936. Mexico
was the only country in the world that offered refuge to the veteran
Bolshevik leader. Trotsky arrived in January 1937 and became the center
of bitter disputes. Forces of the Stalinist left fought against his pres-
ence up until playing a part in the attacks that led to his assassination
while the forces of the conservative right continued to attack Cárdenas,
accusing him of turning the country into a refuge for communists (Gall
1990). In fact, these disputes were part of a larger conflict generated by
the rise of fascism in the European world and the fractures that arose
in the communist movement with the consolidation of Stalinism in the
Soviet Union. The persecuted brought these disputes to Mexico, and
Mexican solidarity turned into a sounding board for European political
debates.
Spanish Republicans
Mexico’s solidarity was based on a firm anti-fascist position. The Lázaro
Cárdenas’s government (1934–1940) broadened the course of this soli-
darity so it would be projected in an exemplary nature onto all the expe-
riences of refuge that have taken place in Mexico since then.
In 1936, that government enacted the most restrictive immigration
law that Mexico had ever seen. A nationalism of distinctive xenopho-
bic tones set limitations and prohibitions on the entry of foreigners. In
accordance with an alleged capacity of foreigners to assimilate “racially
and culturally to Mexico,” a system of quotas by nationality of origin was
established that even prohibited practicing certain occupations or profes-
sions. However, Article 58 of this law declared the exception of ordering
that no restrictions shall apply to “foreigners who come from their coun-
try to flee political persecution.”1 Since then, all immigration regulations
in Mexico have included this exception clause.
Until the mid-1930s, exile in Mexico was a personal phenomenon.
Those who arrived were small groups of political leaders and intellectuals
who, individually or as a family, obtained the protection of the Mexican
government. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and solidarity with
its Republican government marked a watershed in the reception of polit-
ical refugees. Firstly, because Mexico had never before orchestrated an
international humanitarian operation that involved foreign service sta-
tioned in major European capitals and that benefited thousands of peo-
ple; and secondly, because the duration of this exile, which lasted four
decades, had a profound impact on Mexico’s social, scientific, and cul-
tural life.
The Spanish Republican Exile marked the beginning of the first expe-
rience of mass exile. Since 1936, Mexican solidarity manifested itself in
the delivery of arms, ammunition, food, and medicine to the Republican
government (Matesanz 1999). Mexico’s sympathies with the cause of
156 P. YANKELEVICH
the Spanish Republic emboldened a series of humanitarian actions. The

ravages of the war and its consequences on the child population led
Republican authorities to request different nations to collaborate in pro-
viding temporary shelter to Spanish children. Starting in March 1937,
groups of infants left for Belgium, France, England, and the Soviet
Union, and in May 1937, the Mexican government evacuated nearly
half a thousand children who were children of Republican fighters or
war orphans. President Lázaro Cárdenas and his wife Amalia Solórzano
showed special interest in this humanitarian action that took place on
June 7, 1937, when the contingent of Spanish children arrived at the
port of Veracruz on board of the steamship Mexique. They were imme-
diately transferred to a boarding school in the city of Morelia, where
they began their life in Mexico. Contrary to predictions, the hosting of
“Niños de Morelia” [Children of Morelia], as they were called, was not
temporary, but definitive. The defeat of the Republicans and the subse-
quent breakdown of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Franco’s
Spain resulted in a period of exile that would last for decades (Plá Brugat
1985).
A second stage of Mexican assistance to Republican Spain was the
undertaking that two central figures of Mexican culture led in late 1936.
They were the historian and essayist Daniel Cosío Villegas and the dip-
lomat and writer Alfonso Reyes. The former was living in Lisbon, where
he held the position of Chargé d’affaires, and the latter in Buenos Aires,
where he served as ambassador of Mexico. Their plan consisted of invit-
ing leading Spanish academics and scientists to continue their work that
had been interrupted or disturbed by the Civil War. Lázaro Cárdenas
supported the idea, and by mid-1937, conversations began that led to
the invitation of the first group of academics to Mexico. Casa de España
was founded in 1938 to host them. Two years later, this institution
became El Colegio de México, whose exile-related origin awarded it with
a distinctive profile within the panorama of institutions specializing in
social sciences and humanities.2
The number of refugees increased as the Spanish Civil War intensi-
fied, and the real crisis occurred when Catalonia, the last bastion of the
Republic, fell in the winter of 1939. It is estimated that around four
hundred thousand Spaniards crossed the border into France in search of
refuge. Most were confined to concentration camps where they lived in
subhuman conditions. From 1940 onwards, this situation was aggravated
by the Nazi army’s occupation of France and the French government’s
collaboration, which was led by Marshal Philippe Pétain. As a conse-

quence of this collaboration, more than one hundred thousand refugees
decided to return to Spain. Many others were deported or lived under
the threat of being handed over to Franco’s authorities.
In the winter of 1939, the Mexican government, with the support of
Republican organizations, began to prepare a mass evacuation operation
for Spanish refugees living in French concentration camps (Velázquez
Hernández 2014). Ships were sent to French ports to take the refu-
gees back to Veracruz. In April of that year, the Sinaia departed with
1600 refugees on board and launched the large-scale evacuation opera-
tion. Shortly afterwards, the Ipanema arrived with nearly one thousand
refugees. It was followed by the Mexique with just over two thousand
Republicans. The situation in Nazi-occupied France called for emergency
measures. On July 1, 1940, President Cárdenas instructed Mexican
Ambassador to France Luis I. Rodríguez to inform the Collaborationist
government of Pétain that Mexico was willing to accept all Spanish refu-
gees residing in France. Luis I. Rodriguez then began a complex negoti-
ation with the French government, which also involved the governments
of Germany and Italy and concluded with the signing of an agreement
between Mexico and France to guarantee the protection of Spanish ref-
ugees (Serrano Migallón 2000, 2002). Luis I. Rodriguez and Gilberto
Bosques (Katz 2000, pp. 1–12), the Mexican Consul General in France,
launched the largest operation in Mexico’s diplomatic history to be
aimed at rescuing and evaluating political refugees. Placing thousands of
refugees under Mexico’s protection made it necessary to create shelters
for the persecuted until all embarkations to Mexico could be completed.
The Mexican government rented two castles in Marseille that served as
temporary refuge. Refugees were accommodated there and inventive
work, study, medical, and leisure experiences were carried out. Until
1941, dozens of ships sailed from the ports of Le Havre, Bordeaux,
Marseille, North Africa, and even from the ports of Portugal, taking
refugees to Mexico. After the Second World War, the rescue operation
continued from Lisbon, where Gilberto Bosques was again in charge of
helping the Spaniards who fled to Portugal. This was how this exemplary
action, which saved the lives of more than 20,000 politically persecuted
individuals, concluded.
The social composition of this exile was as diverse as Spanish society
itself: workers, employees, technicians, traders, professionals, house-
wives, and students. What stood out among them was a significant
158 P. YANKELEVICH
segment of intellectuals and academics. At first, there were no more than

a few dozen. Casa de España did not have the capacity to incorporate
all the newcomers, so the National Autonomous University of Mexico
[Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM], the National
Polytechnic Institute [Instituto Politécnico Nacional, IPN], the National
School of Anthropology and History [Escuela Nacional de Antropología
e Historia, ENAH], and several other universities in the country’s inland
invited the exiles to join their academic staff.
Seen in perspective, the undertaking organized by Daniel Cosío
Villegas and Alfonso Reyes, which expanded with the arrival of new aca-
demics, was not only marked by a profound humanitarian sense, but also
had a significant impact on Mexico in the field of science and culture.
The presence of these exiles enriched institutions and promoted scientific
and humanistic activities. Most of them were able to continue with their
research and teaching and, consequently, trained generations of Mexican
disciples in the most varied branches of knowledge. Their contributions
span a variety of fields, from architecture and medicine to engineer-
ing and philosophy. One of the most transcendent contributions was
the professionalization and broadening of the disciplinary horizons of
social sciences and humanities. Law, anthropology, history, philosophy,
Greek-Latin studies, literary criticism, and sociology were all disciplines
that were strongly influenced by the presence of figures such as histo-
rians Pedro Bosh Gimpera and José Miranda, philosophers José Gaos,
Eduardo Nicol, Joaquín Xirau, and Juan David García Bacca, the anthro-
pologist Juan Comas, the sociologist José Medina Echevarría, the classi-
cist and medievalist Agustín Millares Carlo, the theologian José Manuel
Gallegos Rocafull, and the jurists José Miranda, Manuel Pedroso, and
Niceto Alcalá Zamora, among many others.
This exile impacted several cultural sectors in Mexico. While the figure
of Luis Buñuel is emblematic in the field of cinema, Roberto Fernández
Balbuena, Enrique Climent, and Remedios Varo stood out as visual
artists, among many other painters, drawers, and sculptors. Literature
was home to a whole generation of essayists and poets, including José
Moreno Villa, Juan Rejano, León Felipe, Luis Cernuda, Max Aub, José
Bergamín, Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Enrique Diez-Canedo, Juan
Larrea, and Manuel Altolaguirre. This host of academics greatly influ-
enced the Mexican publishing industry and led to an expansion of publi-
cations in almost all fields of knowledge: economics, history, law, politics,
anthropology, literature, philosophy, and science. New publishing houses
were founded, including Grijalbo and UTHEA, and many exiles joined
the already existing editorial teams. This was the case of the Fondo
de Cultura Económica, which launched new series and collections to
accommodate the vast production of exiles and the translations of clas-
sic works. Research in social sciences and humanities in Mexico and
Latin America benefited from the fact that the works of Karl Marx,
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Tomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, Max
Weber, Leopold von Ranke, Martin Heidegger, Werner Jaeger, Edmund
Husserl, John Dewey, and Wilhelm Dilthey, among many others, were
made available to a Spanish-speaking audience thanks to translations by
exiles such as José Gaos, Josep Carner, Wenceslao Roces, José Medina
Echevarría, Eugenio Ímaz, Vicente Herrero, Manuel Pedroso, Luis
Recaséns Siches, Juan Roura Parella, and Manuel Sanchez Sarto, among
others (Garciadiego 2016).
The exile of Spanish academics was, in short, an extraordinary oppor-
tunity to lay the foundations of a process of institutionalization and pro-
fessionalization of Mexican academic life. The Spanish exile connected
the country to the main currents of social and humanist thought of the
first half of the twentieth century and promoted dialogue between dif-
ferent disciplinary approaches, which led to an authentic renewal of the
forms and contents of university research and teaching.
Antifascist Exiles
In the wake of this operation that was carried out to save victims of
fascism, Mexico also granted protection to persecuted people of other
nationalities. Many were held in concentration camps in France; others
fled their nations since they were persecuted for their links to the anti-
Nazi resistance. French and Italian citizens used Mexican safeguards to
cross Nazi-occupied areas and enlist in resistance forces (Rolland 1990).
A good number of those who escaped to Mexico were Germans and
Austrians, who arrived along with other persecuted people from Central
European nations.3
In the case of Austrian refugees, it is estimated that just over a thou-
sand arrived between 1938 and 1940. Mexico and the Soviet Union
were the only nations to condemn the Anschluss, the annexation of
Austria into Germany, in March 1938. Due to Mexico’s official protest,
the country became an option for persecuted people seeking refuge.
Austria became part of the Third Reich, so Austrian passports were no
160 P. YANKELEVICH
longer issued. For this reason, many Austrians arrived in Mexico with
documents from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania,
Yugoslavia, and even Italy. As a result, a community of German-
speaking people emerged in Mexico whose main concern was fight-
ing Nazi fascism (Von Metz et al. 1984). Many of these refugees had
pursued academic and professional careers, so that their presence—just
like that of the Republican Spaniards—contributed to the expansion
of scientific and artistic knowledge and activities in Mexico. Among
these exiles were pre-Hispanic art specialist Paul Westheim; photogra-
pher Gertrude Duby; writers Bodo Uhse, Anna Seghers, and Ludwig
Renn; journalist Erwin Egon Kisch; architects Hannes Mayer and Max
Cetto; directors and composers Ernest Römer, Carl Alwin, and Marcel
Rubin; physicist Trude Kurz; economist Alfons Goldschmidt; and trans-
lator, writer, and art critic Mariana Frenk (Kiessling 1985; Pohle 1986;
von Hanffstein and Tercero 1995; Pérez Montfort 2002, pp. 49–54;
Kloyber 2002).
The struggle against Nazism gave unity to this group of exiles of dif-
ferent origins and political orientations: liberal Republicans, social dem-
ocrats, and communists. Their concerns were manifested in different
undertakings. One of them, which was of particular importance, was the
publication of the magazine Freies Deutschland [Free Germany] whose
pages were dedicated to denouncing Nazi atrocities. This magazine was
published monthly between 1941 and 1946, first by the Austrian jour-
nalist and essayist Bruno Frei and then by the German journalist and
writer Alexander Abusch. Another effort was the foundation of the
Heinrich Heine Club, a German-speaking association of anti-Nazi intel-
lectuals that was actively promoted by the writer Anna Seghers. This
space represented a venue in which the exiles could organize cultural
activities, lectures, literary readings, plays, and concerts—activities which
helped to bring the concerns that fueled Free Germany to the Mexican
public. Moreover, these exiles published more than 30 works under the
publishing label El Libro Libre, some of which became emblematic titles
of the German Exilliteratur [exile literature] that was written during the
Second World War, for example: Paul Mayer’s Exil as well as The Seventh
Cross and Transit by Anna Seghers (Patka 1999).
One of the outstanding titles in this universe of publications was El
libro negro del terror nazi en Europa [The Black Book of Nazi Terror in
Europe], a collection of texts, engravings, and photographs sponsored by
the President of Mexico, Manuel Avila Camacho, which was published
in 1943 (Lavín Robles 2016). This work—published at a time when the

outcome of the war was still uncertain and the Jewish extermination was
already taking place—is the most noteworthy editorial effort of the anti-
fascist movement in Mexico. Thanks to their intellectual networks, the
German-speaking exiles managed to gather a vast collection of essays by
Mexican authors and European exiles who were mobilized to use words
and images to denounce what Thomas Mann stated in the opening essay
of this book: “everything that National Socialism touches, and it touches
almost everything, turns, irremediably, into filth” (Mann 1943, p. 15).
Unlike the Spanish Republican Exile, the exile experienced by the
Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians, and Yugoslavs was of smaller
dimension and duration. Some estimates indicate that their community
may have reached up to 2500 individuals (Kloyber 2002), and most of
them left Mexico when the end of the war made it possible to return to
Europe.
A significant proportion of this exile was composed of individu-
als of Jewish origins. One of the greatest paradoxes of Mexico’s ref-
ugee policy in those years was the contrast between the reception of
Spanish Republicans and the refusal to accept Jews who were perse-
cuted by Nazism. Many of the German-speaking exiles entered Mexico
as victims of political persecution due to anti-fascist positions, and not
because of their Jewish ancestry. Some arrived together with the Spanish
Republicans, as they had participated in the Civil War as members of the
International Brigades. Others crossed the border from the United States
of America when the U. S. government refused to renew their visas as a
result of their communist background. Moreover, there were many who
fled the advancing German army and were granted Mexican diplomatic
protection in France or Portugal. As Daniela Gleizer has shown, many of
these exiles were supported by political networks. These networks were
linked to communist and, to a lesser extent, socialist parties. Left-wing
Mexican figures and organizations were part of these networks and were
responsible for processing the issuing of visas from Mexican authorities
(Gleizer 2015, pp. 54–76). German-speaking exiles in Mexico had the
material, professional, and symbolic resources that were necessary to join
a network of transnational bonds for solidarity that facilitated the exo-
dus from Europe. To a large extent, the exiles were public figures, aca-
demics, intellectuals, journalists, artists, and professionals whose Jewish
ancestry was not the determining factor for receiving Mexican protec-
tion. Treatment of persecuted Jews was very different. The Mexican
162 P. YANKELEVICH
government did not activate any exception regime for them; on the con-
trary, their visa applications were processed as if they were immigrants.
This meant that they faced laws that enshrined a system of entry quotas
by nationality and ethnic selection in which Judaism was regarded as an
undesirable trait. Persecuted Jews were treated bureaucratically, accord-
ing to rules and regulations, and although many of them were supported
by solidarity networks of Jewish communities, especially those of U.S.
communities, very few—less than two thousand people—were able to
enter Mexico (Gleizer 2011).
The Spanish Civil War and the Second World War led to the expan-
sion of refugee policies in Mexico. Europe contributed the great-
est number of exiles. The massive influx of people was made possible,
thanks to the political will that took advantage of the exception in the
migration rule and, finally, reached an unprecedented volume of exiles.
These exiles had a notable and lasting impact on various academic and
artistic fields and turned Mexico, especially its capital city, into one of
the most active centers of antifascism in the Americas (Reimann 2018,
pp. 199–221).
A Silent Exile
At the beginning of the Cold War, while without the stridency of pre-
vious exiles, Mexico continued to receive political refugees. As a result
of the anti-communist campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s in the United
States, a large number of people fled after being persecuted and in some
cases imprisoned, or they simply left the country when their names
were added to the blacklists drawn up under the Alien Registration Act
(1940), the Internal Security Act (1950), and the Immigration and
Nationality Act (1952) or, above all, as a result of the inquisitorial har-
assment carried out by the House Un-American Activities Committee,
led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Having a leftist affiliation was the common denominator of this
heterogeneous group of exiles made up of people of different origins.
Some were foreign residents in the United States or naturalized U.S.
citizens who were being deported for their links to socialist and com-
munist organizations. Others were accused of conspiracy or espionage
in the service of the Soviet Union. There were authors, screenwriters,
and political activists who had been included on the Hollywood blacklist.
Finally, there were those who sought refuge in Mexico for having joined
the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought on the Republican side in the
Spanish Civil War. Among these members of the International Brigade
were musician and composer Conlon Nancarrow, film producer William
Colfax, nurse Lini Fuhr, and opera singer Bart van der Schelling (Jackson
1994).
The best-known case is what was called the “Hollywood exile,” which
is due to the visibility of the people involved and the media coverage of
the judicial processes in the United States. However, these exiles were
a clear minority of just barely over a dozen people, including screen-
writers Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, Hugo Butler, and Gordon
Kahn (Gordon 2001; Ceplair and Trumbo 2014). The rest of this
group of exiles was made up of middle-class families: teachers, doctors,
housewives, lawyers, nurses, engineers, businessmen, visual artists, musi-
cians, and journalists.
These exiles show characteristic features that distinguish them from
other persecuted people who found refuge in Mexico. Firstly, the group
was not large; it is estimated to have included less than 200 people.
Secondly, it was a silent exile since their preferred travel routes (roads,
most of the time) allowed them to go unnoticed, often being confused
for tourists or immigrants. Thirdly, the social origin of these exiles facili-
tated their installation in urban spaces where the presence of people from
the United States was not exceptional, namely neighborhoods in Mexico
City or cities in the country’s inland such as Cuernavaca, Guadalajara,
and San Miguel Allende that had traditionally been places of residence of
U.S. citizens (Anhalt 2001; Schreiber 2008).
This exile did not show any political activism in the face of Mexican
public opinion, although there was underground activity. Communists
from the United States maintained contacts with their Mexican com-
rades, especially with the leaders of the Communist Party, while, on
more than one occasion, the intellectual sector attended gatherings,
exhibitions, and conferences in the presence of emblematic figures of
the Mexican left, such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and
Francisco Zúñiga.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the political atmosphere in the
United States began to show signs of détente. A series of judicial pro-
ceedings in the Supreme Court of Justice paved the way for these perse-
cuted individuals to recover their passports and thus be able to return to
the United States or move to other countries. As a result, most of these
exiles left Mexico.
164 P. YANKELEVICH
Exiles from Latin American Dictatorships

The Cold War in Latin America marked the rise of dictatorial regimes
that led to the exile of dozens of political leaders, many of whom found
refuge in Mexico. A first wave was of Central American and Antillean
refugees: Guatemalans who fled after the overthrow of President
Jacobo Arbenz, Nicaraguans persecuted by the dictatorship of Anastasio
Somoza, Cubans pursued by the government of Fulgencio Batista,
Haitians threatened by François Duvalier, and Dominicans fleeing the
dictatorship of Leonidas Trujillo or, later on, the U.S. military occupa-
tion (Moreno Rodríguez 2015; Vázquez Medina 2012; Duval 2008,
pp. 117–127; Rodríguez de Ita 2003). These exiles responded to the
old pattern of forming small groups, which mainly included activists and
political leaders, professionals, intellectuals and academics. Among them
were Haitians Gérard Pierre Charles and Suzy Castor, the former an
economist and the latter a historian; the Guatemalan poet, essayist, and
literary critic Luis Cardoza y Aragón; the Guatemalan sociologist Mario
Monteforte Toledo; and another Guatemalan, narrator, and essayist,
Augusto Monterroso.
From the mid-1960s onwards, without this pattern disappearing,
Mexico was once again the territory of mass exiles. In the far south of
Latin America, military dictatorships installed regimes based on ter-
ror, murder, and the “disappearance” of tens of thousands of citizens.
In 1964, the military took power in Brazil, and in 1971 General Hugo
Banzer implemented the same type of regime in Bolivia. In 1973,
Augusto Pinochet overthrew President Salvador Allende, and the mili-
tary in Uruguay laid the foundations of a long dictatorship. Finally, in
1976, there was a coup d’état in Argentina. Due to a regional plan,
named Operation Condor, the persecution of opponents even tran-
scended national borders. It coordinated the repressive forces of the pre-
viously mentioned countries, which were joined by the armies and police
forces of Paraguay and Peru, and formed a political and military alliance
that coordinated the forces of repression to assassinate opponents who
managed to flee across the borders of their home countries.
Tens of thousands of persecuted people were forced to leave their
countries in order to save their lives. Unlike other moments of authori-
tarianism in Latin America, at this juncture, the scale and intensity of the
repressive violence generated a massive exodus of people seeking refuge
in Europe and America, as well as in Africa, the Middle East, and even as
far as Australia.
In the Latin American context, Mexico became the country to receive

most refugees. The conservative turn of Mexican governments, in
accordance with the atmosphere of the Cold War, did not hinder them
from showing their solidarity with the democratic governments of Juan
José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, with respect to for-
eign policy matters, or from allowing the Granma to embark from the
Mexican coast carrying a handful of guerrillas led by Fidel Castro and the
Argentine doctor Ernesto Guevara. The authoritarianism of the Mexican
regime was not an impediment to maintaining diplomatic relations with
Cuba, going against the current of political beliefs in the Americas at
the time, or to condemning U.S. interventionism hiding under the
guise of the Organization of American States when the invasion of the
Dominican Republic took place. Similarly, a decade later, close relations
with President Salvador Allende and the Sandinista guerrillas, who were
at war with the government of Anastasio Somoza, helped to mark a pol-
icy of solidarity with the political refugees of Latin America.
When reflecting on these behavioral patterns, it is also necessary to
explain what made it possible for the Mexican political regime’s author-
itarian and repressive profiles to be harmonized with a conduct that was
willing to receive persecuted leftists from other nations. Among the rea-
sons, it may be necessary to consider this conduct as a source of political
legitimation, nurturing a tradition that alluded to the regime’s revolu-
tionary origins as an expression of solidarity. In this sense, the exem-
plary nature of previous experiences—that is, the mass exile of Spanish
Republicans and the more limited actions that benefited political oppo-
nents from Latin America and Europe—was present in the political
rationality of elites that, despite their conservatism, was not willing to
sweep aside a political conduct that exalted Mexico by projecting the
image of a nation committed to the causes of freedom and justice.
Mexican solidarity was made evident both by the fact that it granted
diplomatic asylum in the capitals of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, and
Uruguay and in the decision to grant territorial asylum to those who
applied for it with the help of international humanitarian organizations.
Mexico granted protection to thousands of politically persecuted indi-
viduals, even though asylum was not the method most refugees used
to enter the country. The reality is that thousands of South Americans
arrived at their own risk and expense and later obtained their work
or student visas that would guarantee them a regularized residence
until the dangers that threatened their lives in their home countries
166 P. YANKELEVICH
disappeared, and they could choose to return or, on the contrary, decide
to continue living in Mexico.
The influx of political refugees occurred in response to the repressive
logic in each of their countries of origin. In Argentina, the political envi-
ronment that had been deteriorating since mid-1974 induced a few indi-
viduals to leave the country. The situation became worse, leading up to
the surge of repression that was caused by the 1976 coup d’état and gen-
erated a massive exodus. A similar process can be observed in Uruguay,
where repression had been on the rise since 1973, but it was not until
1975–1976 that the number of people leaving the country escalated.
Brazil, for its part, experienced two periods of departure: one related
to when João Goulart’s government was overthrown in 1964, and the
other when repression intensified as a result of grassroots protests and
the actions of guerrilla organizations from 1968–1969. Likewise, there
were two periods when Bolivians arrived in Mexico: the first wave arriv-
ing in 1971 with the rise to power of General Hugo Banzer, and the
second in 1980 after the coup led by General Luis García Meza to over-
throw President Lidia Gueiler. Lastly, there was the case of Chile, in
which the exodus was a direct response to the coup of September 1973.
The largest numbers of diplomatic asylum seekers came from Chile
and Uruguay. From the day of the coup d’état in Chile, the Mexican
embassy became a place of refuge for dozens of persecuted people.
An air bridge was established between Santiago de Chile and Mexico
City, and nearly 800 asylum seekers used it to travel out of the coun-
try from September 1973 up until November 1974, when Mexico broke
off diplomatic relations with Pinochet’s government. In addition to
these individuals were the relatives of asylum seekers who arrived later
and Chileans who moved to Mexico from other countries. It has been
estimated that nearly 5000 Chilean exiles resided in Mexico during the
Chilean dictatorship (Díaz Prieto 2002).
In the case of Uruguay, between late 1975 and early 1977, Mexico
granted asylum to just over 400 refugees who were later joined by their
families. It is estimated that the exiled Uruguayan community in Mexico
exceeded 2000 people (Dutrenit 2011).
The Mexican embassy in Buenos Aires granted asylum to about 70
Argentines between 1974 and 1976; however, the Argentine exile in
Mexico was one of the most numerous, with nearly 7000 people arriv-
ing in Mexico by their own means (Yankelevich 2009). In the case of
Brazil, the Mexican government granted asylum to about 100 individuals
between 1964 and 1979. This exile community consisted of approxi-

mately 300 people (Muñoz Morales 2016). Finally, the Bolivian exile
was made up of more than 100 diplomatic asylum seekers who, together
with their families and those who arrived by their own means, formed
a community of half a thousand people (Andújar 2010). In summary,
the largest number of South American political refugees sought asylum
in Mexico from the second half of the 1970s onwards and, in compara-
tive terms, persecuted Chileans and Uruguayans received greater diplo-
matic protection from Mexico than other persecuted South Americans
did. Mexico’s behavior varied due to the particular conditions of military
repression in each country and the way in which that repression influ-
enced the conduct of Mexican diplomats stationed in South America.
This exile was a political phenomenon with significant demographic
repercussions. Between 12,000 and 15,000 South Americans settled in
Mexico during those years. These numbers bring to mind those regis-
tered in the case of the Spanish Republic, though it is important to note
that, previously, Mexico had not been a traditional choice for South
American immigrants in the way it had been for Spanish immigrants.
The origin or consolidation of current South American communities in
Mexico is therefore a direct result of the phenomenon of exile of those
years.
It is worth mentioning that Mexico was not always among the first
options for exile. Many of the persecuted individuals sought refuge
in neighboring or nearby countries. Before 1973, Brazilians fled to
Uruguay and Chile, and it was the same for Uruguayans who took ref-
uge in Argentina from 1973 onwards. This border mobility was can-
celled as soon as the political map of the Southern Cone countries was
dominated by military governments. As early as in 1976, the joint action
of South American armies and police forces caused Mexico to turn
into one of the options, if not the only option, for refuge in the Latin
American region. For this reason, it was not unusual to find Brazilians,
Bolivians, Argentineans, Uruguayans, and Chileans seeking asylum at
Mexican embassies outside their countries of origin, nor was it surprising
that, for many exiles, Mexico would be their second or third country of
residence. That is, spatial rearrangements were common within this Latin
American diaspora, meaning that the first nation that refugees fled to was
not necessarily the same one where they would reside during the greater
part of their exile.
168 P. YANKELEVICH
When considering the different forms of exiles, that of Chile stands

out in particular. Mexico played a decisive role in the international
condemnation of Pinochet’s coup d’état. Luis Echeverría, president
of Mexico at the time, had stood by and supported Salvador Allende’s
administration, and when the coup d’état occurred, his government
immediately offered protection to the Chilean president’s relatives and
officials, as well as to those who had supported his government. Mexican
behavior toward Chileans clearly echoed Mexican conduct toward
Spanish Republicans. Not only did they help evacuate the persecuted,
but Mexico also broke off diplomatic relations with Pinochet’s gov-
ernment and did not re-establish them until 1990 when constitutional
order was restored. Exiled Chileans received aid to find lodging, food,
and employment. The Mexican government also helped to finance the
primary institution of Chilean exiles, Casa de Chile, named in clear refer-
ence to Casa de España, despite having a different profile than the latter,
focusing more on solidarity, denunciation, and aid to other communities
of South American exiles (Rojas Mira 2013).
The presence of Spanish Republican exiles was not only symbolic.
South American exiles remember their presence as exemplary, since they
provided material help for newcomers to settle in Mexico, collaborated
in the search for jobs and schools for the exiled children, and provided
help for their integration into Mexican life. Spanish Republicans were the
“parents” of the South American exile. Having spent more than 30 years
in Mexico, these Spaniards could give advice about different ways of
life in exile. A Chilean academic recalls how a group of Spanish exiles
used to invite Chilean newcomers to eat, always giving them the same
advice: “Unpack your suitcase quickly. It took us five, eight, or ten years
to unpack our suitcase, and it was a waste of time. Do the opposite. Live
naturally as a “Mexican,” from now on and as long as necessary. Have
the suitcase ready to pack so you may go back whenever your politi-
cal vocation commands you to do so, but do not be nostalgic” (Maira
1998b, p. 201).
The majority of the South American exiles were young middle-class
people between 20 and 45 years old. They mostly carried out intellec-
tual activities; among them were university professors, professionals from
different areas, students, journalists, and people linked to the world of
culture and the arts. The presence of manual laborers or technicians was
much less pronounced.
Different than when Spanish Republican exiles entered the country,

in the 1960s, Mexico was experiencing the impact of a heavy modern-
ization process. Academic life was more professional and developed
throughout an extensive network of universities and research centers.
When studying the topic of professional integration surrounding the
South American diaspora, it is important to consider that the Mexico
was experiencing accelerated economic growth due to recent oil discov-
eries. These circumstances enabled funding an expansion of existing pro-
grams at higher education institutions and even led to the foundation
of new scientific research institutes. It was a time when the state appa-
ratus was growing and began to assume new responsibilities concerning
the administration of social and economic development projects and the
implementation of cultural policies in various branches of artistic activity.
This situation helps to explain the reasons behind the areas where the
exiles were employed. The public sector, with its State Departments,
various government agencies, and public universities, was the largest
employer of exiled professionals, while refugees with lower qualifications
found jobs in the private sector.
It is difficult to estimate the number of academics and intellectu-
als that Mexico received during that time. The National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM, for its Spanish acronym) alone hosted
about a hundred Argentines (Torres 2002; León Osorio 2008; Alonso
Coratella 2016; Yankelevich 2009; Cereijido 1998). The first Bolivian
exile in 1971 was mostly made up of university professors, many of
whom were also incorporated into UNAM (Miranda Pacheco 2008),
as were Brazilians (Salles 1999; Villanueva Velasco 2014), Uruguayans
(Sala 1998; Lichtensztejn 2008, pp. 129–132; Dutrenit Bielous 2006,
pp. 131–183), and Chileans (Maira 1998a; Tarrés 1998). UNAM was
not the only institution to incorporate this academic diaspora; the newly
created Autonomous Metropolitan University (Universidad Autónoma
Metropolitana, UAM), the National Polytechnic Institute, the National
Institute of Anthropology and History, El Colegio de México, and sev-
eral universities in the states of Puebla, Guadalajara, Nuevo León, and
Veracruz followed suit. In addition, there were social science research
institutes whose foundation was a direct result of the presence of exiled
Latin American academics, such as the Center for Research and Teaching
in Economics (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica, CIDE),
which was founded in 1974, and the Latin American School of Social
170 P. YANKELEVICH
Sciences (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, FLACSO),

which was created in 1976.
Once again, the political will to accept these exiles existed in addi-
tion to the vision of university authorities who were convinced of the
importance of broadening the horizons of scientific research. In the
1970s, Mexico became the capital of political and academic reflection on
Latin America and, thanks to the exchanges between the exiles and their
Mexican hosts, this reflection managed to acquire a true Latin American
dimension.
In the field of social theory, these exchanges made it possible for top-
ics to emerge that marked the history of Latin American sociological
thought in the final third of the past century. One of these topics was
the reflection on the role of State centrality in the construction of the
Latin American political order. Never before had studies on the nature
and functions of State formations occupied so much attention on the
research agenda. This dense and abundant production is now considered
to be the result of “the Mexican moment” of social reflection, a clear
allusion to the encounter between Latin American exiles and Mexican
academics (Cortés 2016). Moreover, studies aimed at explaining new
forms of authoritarianism under military regimes opened up new hori-
zons for reflection on the necessary transition to democracy and the
emergence of a civil society.
In fact, the academic themes of this exiled intelligentsia were a con-
sequence of the political practices they developed within different tradi-
tions of Marxist and socialist thought and action (Ponza 2010). One of
their concerns was the failure of revolutionary programs and the defeat
of guerrilla projects that had been seen as a strategy for social transfor-
mation. Reflecting on that political defeat, one of the major figures of
these debates said, “Mexico was a privileged place for Latin American
exiles. We Argentines maintained relations with Chileans, Uruguayans,
Brazilians, and Central Americans. It was a continental discussion about
failure” (Portantiero 2012, p. 89). It was in Mexico that the defeat of
the armed road to socialism was contemplated, a step taken in a context
marked by the crisis of Marxism, the emergence of Euro-communism,
and the revaluation of democratic principles as the basis of a strategy for
rebuilding political order in Latin America. Among many academics,
in Mexico, the Brazilians Theotonio dos Santos, Vania Bambarria, and
Ruy Mauro Marini came together; they were the most recognized voices
of what was called the Dependency Theory. Additionally, Argentine
sociologists Juan Carlos Portantiero, José Nun, Emilio de Ípola, and

Liliana de Riz gained prominence along with the Chileans Luis Maira,
José Miguel Insulza, and Francisco Zapata, the Guatemalan Edelberto
Torres Rivas, and the Bolivian René Zavaleta Mercado.
“We discover democracy the moment we no longer have it,” said
Norbert Lechner, another major figure of this “Mexican moment.”4
Mexico was a Mecca for Latin American exiles and, thanks to their net-
works, a variety of intellectuals visited the country, namely Lechner
himself and many other important social thinkers of those years, such
as Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Alain Touraine, Ludolfo Paramio,
Guillermo O’Donnell, Norberto Bobbio, Jürgen Habermas, and
Giacomo Marramao.
Reflecting on the defeat of the armed road to socialism made it nec-
essary to rethink democracy and devise strategies that would make it
possible to transition from a military dictatorship to a democratic polit-
ical order in which socialist programs would not be diluted merely to
recognize liberal democratic values (Camou 2007; Lesgard 2003).
The Mexican left, which at that time was going through a period of
re-foundation (Illades 2011), was a privileged interlocutor in these dia-
logues. “The discussions with them,” says sociologist Roger Bartra, a
member of the Mexican Communist Party, “were extraordinarily impor-
tant. They questioned our excessive rigor or dogmatism, they made us
revise our concepts, they made us reconsider our categories, but, in the
background, they always spoke recalling the problem of the dictatorship
from which they had escaped, of the lack of democracy, of the enormous
importance of democratic alternatives.”5
This expansion of theoretical and political horizons was matched by
an extensive editorial production. The presence of exiles resulted in the
creation of new publishing houses such as Folios and Nueva Imagen,
among others, while established publishing houses expanded their cata-
logues to include new titles, mainly by Latin American authors. In the
context of the growing critique of “real socialism,” exiles organized the
most complete revision of the classics of European Marxist thought,
namely through the series Cuadernos de Pasado y Presente [Past and
Present Notebooks], which was directed by the Argentinean José Aricó
at the publishing house Siglo XXI. In Mexico, the heterodox writings
of Antonio Gramsci were translated and inserted into the renewing cur-
rents of Latin American social and political theory. Similar to the edi-
torial expansion promoted by the Spanish Republican Diaspora, now,
172 P. YANKELEVICH
three decades later, many obligatory works of reference in the social

and human sciences were translated and published in Mexico: Michel
Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Tzvetan Todorov, Ferdinand de Saussure,
Paul Ricoeur, Perry Anderson, Alain Rouquié, Emmanuel Levinas, Eric
Hobsbawm, and Bruno Bettelheim, among many others. This volumi-
nous repertoire of works and authors was part of an intellectual climate
in which many South American exiles actively participated as editors and
translators.
The presence of exiles was also present in diverse cultural and artis-
tic expressions—from journalism, cinema, and music, to theatre, plastic
arts, and literature. The marks they left on some disciplinary fields are
still evident today, for example, in the field of psychoanalysis. The exile of
Argentine and Uruguayan psychiatrists and psychologists strengthened
and diversified this profession in Mexico: new disciplinary perspectives
were incorporated and institutions for schooling and psychoanalytic prac-
tice were created (Manzanares Ruíz 2016; Blank-Cereijido 2002).
As democratic governments were gradually reinstated, most South
American exiles returned to their countries of origin. With a duration of
17 years, the Chilean exile was the longest. The other diasporas lasted
less than a decade (Roniger et al. 2017; Lastra 2016).
This was the last wave of exile that casted a large number of academ-
ics and intellectuals onto Mexican shores. An evaluation of this experi-
ence would yield a positive balance. Thousands of persecuted individuals
were able to save their lives and rebuild them on Mexican soil. Solidarity
made cultural and academic exchange possible, and it did not come
to an end when the exiles returned, but rather—thanks to formal and
informal networks—it continues to this day. Mexico was fertile ground
for political projects whose echoes continue to resonate in the respective
countries of origin. Exiles strengthened human rights movements and
the demands for justice and truth concerning the victims of these dic-
tatorships. Mexico’s solidarity helped to create the conditions for some
of these movements to flourish. In short, and as the Argentine anthro-
pologist Néstor García Canclini states, “exiles are, at times, events in
which an imposed fate can cease to be a misfortune. For this to happen,
exiles must allow themselves to be educated by that which is different,
and in this way, expand what is theirs and contribute to communica-
tion between their place of origin and their place of destination” (García
Canclini 1998, p. 72). This is precisely what occurred, and Mexico
became a place of encounter, discoveries, and communication.
Exiles as Opportunity
The reception of politically persecuted people has been one of the dif-
ferent facets of Mexico in the twentieth century. The waves of exile did
not end when South Americans returned to their home countries. In
the 1980s, Mexico widened its policy of refuge even further by provid-
ing protection to more than 40,000 Guatemalans. This was an unprec-
edented experience since it involved whole communities of indigenous
peasants who crossed the southern border of the country, escaping a war
of extermination waged by the Guatemalan army. It was an undertaking
that was just as humanitarian as the previous ones, but with totally dif-
ferent characteristics. In any case, the reception of this Central American
exodus helped to reaffirm—under new conditions and modalities—
the political will of Mexican governments to accept political refugees
(Aguayo 1985; COMAR 2000; Kauffer 2005).
Reflecting on the political regime that was legitimized in the 1910
Revolution may help to explain the nature of this political will. Like any
other, this will was arbitrary. It could not have been otherwise, since it
was based on political expediency and compromise rather than on insti-
tutions and legal norms. The case of the Jews was an exception within
the already uncustomary conduct that allowed Mexico to accept politi-
cally persecuted individuals under the restrictive immigration laws that
were in place.
From the 1920s through the late 1970s, there was a constant flow
of politically persecuted refugees. These arrivals in Mexico resulted from
a combination of individual strategies and massive procedures. In many
cases, there was clear support from the Mexican government and in oth-
ers, travel and entry to Mexico was made possible by personal or polit-
ical networks. In all of these diasporas, there was a constant presence
of academic and intellectual refugees, and the Spanish Republican exile
set a precedent for incorporating exiles into research and teaching. To a
greater or lesser extent, major institutions of higher education took on
this challenge, El Colegio de México being the most faithful to this tradi-
tion. The two great waves of exiles—those of Spain and South America—
formed their teaching staff, participated in the creation of research
centers, and contributed to academic projects that renewed knowledge in
the fields of social sciences and humanities.6
In this sense, these exiles may be seen as an opportunity that Mexico
was able to seize. There were many ideas, theories, and projects which
174 P. YANKELEVICH
traveled with refugees and then, to a large extent, flourished in Mexican

institutions. Exiles contributed to the internationalization of scientific
research in Mexico and facilitated the building of bridges over which
information, experience, and knowledge crossed and continue to cross
today.
Notes
1. ‘Ley General de Población’ (1936, pp. 3 and 6).
2. Cf. the chapter by Clara Lida, this volume.
3. Cf. the chapter by Daniela Gleizer, this volume.
4. Interview with Norbert Lechner (2016, p. 36).
5. Interview with Roger Bartra (2016, pp. 237–238).
6. Cf. chapters by Andres Lira and Arturo Alvarado, this volume.
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CHAPTER 8
International Rescue of Academics,

Intellectuals and Artists from Nazism
During the Second World War: The
Experience of Mexico
Daniela Gleizer
The Lack of a Policy to Attract Talent

While the first international conference on refugees of Nazism was
underway in Evian, France, in July 1938, Mexican President Lázaro
Cárdenas (1934–1940) gave an interview to the journalist and intellec-
tual Anita Brenner in the city of Jalapa, Veracruz, for the U.S. newspa-
per Alliance. In it, he announced his invitation to technicians, scholars,
and scientists from Germany, Austria, and Spain to settle in Mexico,
reporting that the first twenty-one were already on their way. Not only
did he guarantee permanent residence, but he also promised to grant
them rapid citizenship, since many of the positions they would occupy
required it under Mexican law. And he declared, “We will bring in more
as fast as we or they can afford it.” He also took advantage of the inter-
view to clarify that his government was not anti-foreign, anti-American,
D. Gleizer (*) 
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_8
182 D. GLEIZER
or anti-Semitic (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 14 July 1938). It should be

recalled that four months earlier, President Cárdenas had decreed the
nationalization of Mexican petroleum, and his government was facing
strong criticism, above all on the part of the American press.
The first German and Austrian refugees from the Rhineland and
Austria arrived in August, but they were neither scholars nor scientists.
They were Jewish refugees who had arrived in Mexico on tourist visas.
There was only one technician, Mr. Munz, who was an aircraft mechanic.
The rest were merchants or tradespeople. They were not invited to stay
in the country, much less were they offered citizenship. In fact, it was
very complicated for them to change their immigration status from tour-
ists to that of political exiles, which was in any case a status that pre-
cluded permission to work. Therefore, they had to be supported by the
local Jewish community (Gleizer 2014, pp. 105–106).
It is important to remember that Jewish immigration had been pro-
hibited by the Mexican government, on a confidential level, but with
considerable efficacy from 1934. Jews were considered to be elements
that “could not be assimilated” to Mexican mestizaje (miscegenation)
and, therefore, they fell into the category of “undesirable foreigners.”1
Although in the early years of Nazism there had not been a major
demand in asylum requests to Mexico—or to other Latin American
countries—given that those who were leaving Germany initially thought
it would be merely a temporary exit, things changed in 1938. The
annexation of Austria in March and the Kristallnacht in November
attested to the worsening conditions for Jews and the need to migrate,
even to faraway zones. Mexico’s position on Spanish exiles, as well as
declarations made against Nazis and Fascists by Mexican diplomats in
the League of Nations prompted a large number of Jewish refugees to
request asylum in Mexico, without any awareness of the official policy on
the subject.2
From these initial contacts with the drama of migration from Nazism,
Mexican authorities had to begin to define their position in the matter.
Until that time, the idea had prevailed that it was a European problem
that had no bearing on New World nations. However, the invitation
extended by U.S. President Roosevelt to Cárdenas to participate in the
Evian conference and the enthusiastic acceptance of the Mexican govern-
ment, which sought to seek closer ties to the United States after the rift
resulting from the oil expropriation, ended up involving Mexico in the
question.
8 INTERNATIONAL RESCUE OF ACADEMICS, INTELLECTUALS AND ARTISTS … 183
Just as in many other countries, Mexican authorities attempted

to differentiate between Jewish refugees and other types of exiles for
whom there was greater sympathy. Therefore, they revisited the catego-
ries of “racial refugees” and “political refugees” adopted by the Nazis
from 1933 in order to distinguish Jews from non-Jewish opponents to
National Socialism, who would be given different treatment. In Mexico
the distinction would be used to identify potential asylum beneficiaries.
In the words of the Minister of the Interior, Ignacio García Téllez, as
long as there were no international commitments, the country would
only receive persecuted immigrants when they were “outstanding fight-
ers for social progress, valiant defenders of Republican institutions, or
select exponents of science or the arts … being careful, on the other
hand, that disorganized or fraudulent immigrations, which were a dan-
ger of social burden or of competition that would displace our working
classes, were not allowed in” (El Nacional, 17 December 1938).
Consequently, although the possibilities that Mexico offered to the
Jewish refugees were extremely limited, the options for political exiles and
members of the anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist artistic or cultural elites seemed
broader. It is important to point out that both political refugees and intel-
lectuals/academics often fell into the same category, that of “political
asylum seeker.” In the first place, this was because Mexico did not have
legislation on refuge as a legal entity, only on that of asylum.3 In the sec-
ond place, to the fact that all European émigrés were regarded as polit-
ically persecuted people—unlike the Jews—as a result of their political
sympathies, whether or not they were involved in specific political action.
Thus, in Mexico, no distinctions were made between journalists, writers,
scientists, or professionals, and those who had belonged to political par-
ties, or who had been government deputies or trade union activists.
In this sense, Mexico’s original response was to place greater emphasis
on the political dimension of anti-Nazi exile. The United States focused
primarily on the professional capacity of exiles, and even created agen-
cies to rescue European intellectuals, artists, and academics.4 Brazil also
adopted a pragmatic position, seeking to co-opt the supply of capital and
technical and professional skills of specific refugees, based primarily on
economic considerations (Senkman 2003, pp. 78–80). Mexico, in con-
trast, agreed to give asylum preferentially to political refugees. This is
made clear in official Mexican declarations that allude to the need to save
those who “did something” to defend democracy or to oppose totalitari-
anism, under the justification that “they deserved” to be helped.
184 D. GLEIZER
Another feature of the Mexican asylum policy was the permissive-

ness and even preference in certain circumstances for Communists
(banned in places like the United States and Brazil); and particularly
for Stalinist Communists. Mexico City was the second most impor-
tant place for communist exile during World War II, second only to
Moscow, largely because of the support that German Communists
had given to the Spanish Republic in the Civil War, and Mexico’s
concomitant gratitude for it (Herf 1997, p. 40). Many of those
who went to Mexico had fought in the international brigades and
had gotten Spanish nationality, which facilitated their arrival (Katz
2002, pp. 43–44). In terms of foreign policy, accepting these refu-
gees in the country—along with the Spanish Republicans—reinforced
the progressive image of the Mexican government, by supporting
anti-imperialist and anti-Fascist positions with specific actions that
Mexican diplomats had externalized at diverse international forums,
where the country portrayed itself as a nation of principles and moral
values. In reality, it was not just a reaffirmation of national sover-
eignty in the face of European Fascism, but also to the United States,
a country that had closed its doors to these refugees, precisely for
their political ties.
As for reasons connected to internal policies, it is more difficult
to explain why Mexico’s doors were opened to political exiles of clear
Communist persuasion. In the last two years of the Cárdenas adminis-
tration (1938–1940), the government faced a serious political crisis,
spurred to a good measure by the opposition of conservative groups
to his “leftist” reforms. And in the first two years of the presidency of
Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940–1942), the shift to the right was evident.
During the Cárdenas administration, it might be thought of as a way of
recognizing the support that Cárdenas received from the Mexican left,
particularly from Vicente Lombardo Toledano and the labor movement
(Acle-Kreysing 2016). It might also have had to do with the president’s
personal sympathies, and even of certain Mexican consuls who were in
key positions, such as the consul Gilberto Bosques in Marseille, whose
preference for Communists over Social Democrats was evident (Gleizer
2015). As for the administration of Ávila Camacho, the new leader
reluctantly respected the visas granted by his predecessor, visas that
were difficult to renew, as we shall see later, but he granted virtually no
new authorizations.5 Nonetheless, it is difficult to understand why the
Cárdenas government prioritized political over academic or professional

considerations at a time when attracting prestigious scientists, academics,
and humanists who were of great potential use for the country had such
a low cost, and why the Ávila Camacho administration also showed little
interest in them as well.
In fact, neither of the two governments developed a policy to attract
talent. Frank Tannenbaum, a man very close to Roosevelt and a good
friend of Cárdenas, had proposed to the Mexican president the idea of
forming a university with scientists and academics forced to flee Nazism,
but the proposal had little traction. Perhaps, economic protectionism
on the part of the State and the lack of support on the part of Mexican
intellectuals and academics might have been one of the explanations. The
first group that expressed open opposition to the arrival of foreign doc-
tors, for example, was composed of Mexican physicians.6
A number of U.S. agencies tried to convince Cárdenas of the advis-
ability of receiving Jewish scientists, but in this case, there was also a
strong tension between the opportunity to save lives and to benefit
Mexican academia, and the consideration of not wishing to receive those
were considered “unable to assimilate” to Mexican mestizaje, as a result
of their religious or ethnic affiliation, at a time when the Mexican gov-
ernment had promoted augmenting national homogeneity as a goal.
However, Cárdenas did support the steps carried out by Daniel Cosío
Villegas to invite “a handful of first rank Spanish scientists, writers and
artists… with exemplary moral qualities” who would arrive in 1938 and
would form the Casa de España en México, the forerunner of El Colegio
de México, one of the country’s most important institutions for research
and teaching in social sciences.7 The fact that this would have been the
sole project carried out to rescue academic refugees was no accident.
The Mexican position on Spanish exiles was much more generous than
its stance on Central European exiles, given multiple factors, including
the identification of Cárdenas with the Spanish Republic’s political pro-
ject, as well as the vision of Spaniards as the most desirable immigrants
of all. Gilberto Loyo, one of the foremost authorities on migration, con-
sidered it “the last opportunity that Mexico would have for many years
to increase the flow of its Spanish population, because the Spaniard is,
without doubt, the best immigrant that Mexico can receive” (La Prensa,
4 April 1939).
186 D. GLEIZER
Some Personal Initiatives

Luis Montes de Oca, former Minister of Finance, former Director of the
Bank of Mexico (the country’s central bank), and an admirer of the work
of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, made several efforts to invite
him to Mexico.8 In her memoirs, Margit von Mises, Ludwig’s wife,
recalls the excellent conditions offered to him, “But Lu refused. He was
happy to come as a guest, but he remained firm in his decision to make
his home in the United States” (Mises 1976, p. 75; in Romero 2016,
pp. 95–96). Ludwig von Mises went to Mexico in January 1942, as the
world war raged, to give a series of lectures at the School of Economics
of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and at the
Free Law School. He also gave talks for the Association of Bankers of
Mexico, and the same chamber, together with that of the mining indus-
try, offered him work as an economic advisor, work that also included
giving classes at the UNAM and at El Colegio de México. After this visit,
Luis Montes de Oca and Ludwig von Mises kept up an intense corre-
spondence. In June 1942, Montes de Oca proposed to him the crea-
tion of an International Institute of Social Sciences under his direction.
Von Mises responded that he, Walter Sulzbach, Alfred Schütz, Louis
Rougier, and Jacques Rueff were interested (all of them exiled in New
York, without U.S. citizenship), but they asked for a salary of $6000 dol-
lars per person. “This was a fairly generous salary, and proved to be a
major stumbling block for the establishment of the Institute” (Hülsmann
2007, p. 827; in Romero 2016, pp. 95–96). In reality, it remains unclear
if this was the only obstacle that Montes de Oca faced, but the project
never came to fruition.
The man who probably had the best understanding of the remarka-
ble opportunity for Mexico to attract renowned scientists, humanists,
and artists who were in danger was Vicente Lombardo Toledano, leader
of the Mexican left, and “an opportunist of the first rank” (Zogbaum
2012b, p. 2). In this regard, Heidi Zogbaum noted, “Lombardo, a
Marxist for much of his life, and with a great sense of innovation, under-
stood early the importance of the enforced braindrain from Germany
and was determined that Mexico—and Lombardo—would benefit from
it” (Zogbaum 2012b, p. 1).
Lombardo was involved in all the stages of the long process required
for European refugees to come to Mexico. Because he had traveled to
Europe to attend various congresses, he had met major figures there,
including Otto Katz, who was, within the group of German exiles who
would go to Mexico, his closest collaborator.9 Lombardo extended
individual and group invitations to attract these exiles to Mexico. In
1938, for example, he declared in Paris before an audience of Germans
that “contrary to other South American countries, radical polit-
ical beliefs are no obstacle to immigration into Mexico,” and that the
Workers’ Confederation of Mexico (CTM) that he headed “was pre-
pared to examine cases benevolently.”10 He also intervened on count-
less occasions before the Mexican government to ensure the approval
of visas for European refugees and he made sure to follow up on cases,
for follow-up was essential given the common practice of authoriza-
tions to be suspended for no reason. Once in Mexico, he supported the
group of Stalinist Communists (who in 1941 formed its own cell of the
German Communist Party in Mexico, disobeying Third International
guidelines).11 Lombardo’s support was essential for the group to per-
form its journalistic work and carry out its anti-Fascist campaign: “He
would see to it that Freies Deutschland always had paper and that print-
ing costs were kept down through the Printers’ Union. He also helped
with money and frequently, he echoed their editorial line in El Popular”
(Zogbaum 2012b, p. 10). According to Zogbaum, when Lombardo
was replaced as the leader of the CTM by Fidel Velázquez, in February
1941, he needed a project that allowed him to continue being relevant
and having political influence,12 and the German-speaking exiles and
anti-Fascist struggle provided it. Furthermore, a number of its members
were hired to give classes at the Universidad Obrera (Worker University;
founded in 1936), including Laszlo Radvanyi, the husband of Anna
Seghers, who had been director of the Marxistische Arbeitschule, in
Berlin,13 and Otto Katz, as mentioned above. The idyll came to an end
in 1943, when Stalin officially dissolved the Comintern and the obedi-
ence of the German Communist Party (KPD) group in Mexico to Stalin
was clear. At this time, “Neither the KPD group nor Lombardo could be
useful to the other any longer” (Zogbaum 2012b, p. 16).
German-Speaking Exiles, Anti-Fascism

and the Mexican Government
The German-speaking exiles who went to Mexico arrived in dribs and

drabs. Some came from the United States, where they could no longer
remain, given their Communist affiliations, such as Ludwig Renn, Bodo
188 D. GLEIZER
Uhse, and Leo Katz, who entered Mexico in 1940. A second wave was
composed of those who arrived directly from France, thanks to the
joint work of diverse agencies that secured Cárdenas’s authorization in
the second half of 1940, including Paul Merker, Anna Seghers, Alfred
Kantorowicz, André Breton, Victor Serge, and Leo Zuckermann. From
the United States, the principal groups that tried to intercede with the
Mexican government to open its doors to European exiles were the Joint
Distribution Committee, the League of American Writers, the Joint
Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, the Unitarian Service Committee,
the American Committee to Save Refugees, the International Relief
Committee, the HICEM, and the Jewish Labor Committee. In France,
the work of the Emergency Rescue Committee, directed by Varian
Fry, stood out, as well as that of the Unitarian Service Committee,
run by Noel Field. In Mexico, the Liga Pro Cultura Alemana (League
for German Culture), the Sociedad pro Cultura y Ayuda (Society for
Culture and Help), the Comité Central Israelita de México (Israelite
Central Committee of Mexico), and other groups, such as Acción
Republicana Austríaca (Austrian Republican Movement) endeavored in
diverse ways to secure visas for refugees. The importance of these trans-
national networks of collaboration has not been sufficiently understood,
but they played a fundamental role. When outside groups did not seek
the support of collaborators who were residing in Mexico, they often
failed. It was necessary to have people who understood the local meth-
ods of negotiation, who had government connections—or who knew
someone who did—and who were familiar with the intricate channels of
bribes and corruption.14 On the other hand, when domestic requests did
not have the backing of international organizations, they were also fre-
quently rejected.
Although collaboration between Mexican and foreign agencies had
precedents—such as in the asylum case of Leon Trotsky—it was more
intensely developed after the French defeat in June 1940 and the need to
find visas for tens of thousands of refugees concentrated in Vichy France,
many of whom were actively hunted by the Gestapo. Given the slowness
and complexity of the process of getting U.S. visas, including so-called
“emergency visas,” which were approved starting in 1940, and the
impossibility that Communists or individuals with ties to leftist organiza-
tions to get them, Mexico began to emerge as an increasingly interesting
option. This was even more so when in mid-1941, visas for the United
States became virtually impossible to secure (Klein 1998, p. 306).
One of the most notorious cases of collaboration between organi-

zations in the United States, France, and Mexico was the request for a
group of twenty well-known politicians, writers, and intellectuals to be
admitted to Mexico. This request was signed by Vicente Lombardo
Toledano, among others, although a document of the Joint Distribution
Committee assures that it had been U.S. agencies that approached
Mexican intellectuals to request their intervention. Then again, accord-
ing to the acts of the Israelite Central Committee of Mexico, the inter-
vention of Enrique Gutmann, who presided over the League for German
Culture, was indispensable (Gleizer 2014, p. 194). Without doubt, con-
siderable pressure on the Mexican government was required, so it was
necessary for diverse agencies to request the immigration of a given
group of individuals at the same time.
The above-mentioned group was composed of Alfred Döblin,
Hermann Dunker, Gerhard Eisler, Andreas Ewert, Ruth Jerusalem, Rudolf
Leonhard, Hans Marchwitza, Anna Seghers, Franz Werfel, Leonhard
Frank, Konrad Heiden, Friedrich Wolf, Walter Mehring, Ernst Weiss,
Adrienne Thomas, the wife of Hermann Kesten, Franz Dahlem, Alfred
Kantorowicz, Dr. Rudolf Neumann, and Professor Julius E. Gumbel.
When the entry request for these individuals was approved, the
Mexican president stated, “these are persons who, given their anteced-
ents, represent the tradition of German culture and being defenders of
causes of justice join their personal qualities; and therefore, their pres-
ence in the Country will be accepted with true sympathy … ” (AGN,
PLC, exp. 549.2/18). Despite the fact that many of them were well-
known writers or individuals who stood out for their professional work,
the justification to receive them emphasized their active participa-
tion against imperialism and in favor of freedom. It is unclear whether
president Cárdenas knew that this list had the stamp of the German
Communist Party.15
Two days before leaving office, at the end of November 1940,
President Cárdenas also authorized the arrival of ninety German and
Austrian intellectuals and political refugees. They were divided into
four lists: Intellectual Refugees in France; Members of the International
Brigade (detained in Vernet); High Officials of the Socialist Movement
of Austria (in Montauban); and High Austrian Officials and German
Intellectuals in Sweden (AHINM, file 4-351-8-1941-6359).
In spite of President Cárdenas’s claims that the refugees would
be received with true sympathy, they faced enormous bureaucratic
190 D. GLEIZER
challenges. Most of them were in Vichy France and had serious difficul-
ties in securing exit and transit visas, and even to go to Marseille to pick
up the visa, because many of them were imprisoned in camps. The fact
that they were stateless and, therefore, did not have a valid passport fur-
ther complicated matters.
On the part of the Mexican government, the main problem was that
President Ávila Camacho did not feel committed to respect the authori-
zations approved by his predecessor. The fact that many of the refugees
could not use these permissions during the Cárdenas administration was
due to the international situation, which became much more complex
after 1940,16 and made it impossible for many to travel to Mexico until
1941 or 1942. Once Cárdenas left office, the renewal of visas, which
had expired on February 8, 1941, was extremely complicated, because
apparently they had been suspended “without cause” (Archivo Vicente
Lombardo Toledano, file 417–23298).
Regarding the list of twenty people initially authorized by Cárdenas
in 1940, still in August 1942, Edward Barsky, director of the Joint Anti-
Fascist Refugee Committee, continued trying to intercede with the gov-
ernment of Ávila Camacho by alluding to the mortal danger that some
of the members on the list were in, because their extradition to Germany
had been granted by the Vichy regime (AGN, MAC, file 546.6/17).
Bodo Uhse had tried to do the same through Lombardo Toledano.
And the Comintern had also intervened, inducing the Mexican Railway
Workers’ Union to ask President Ávila Camacho to intercede before the
authorities of Vichy France to save this group of Communist writers and
intellectuals (Zogbaum 2012b, p. 4).
According to Heidi Zogbaum, of this list, only Anna Seghers and
Andreas Ewert arrived in Mexico with their families.17 Some of their
companions had been apprehended by the Gestapo, while others were
able to get visas for the United States (Franz Werfel, Alfred Döblin,
Walter Mehring, Julius E. Gumbel, and Konrad Heiden, among others).
On many occasions, the Mexican visas, despite the difficulty in getting
them, served as an “insurance policy” in the event that the American visa
was rejected. All of them preferred to go to the United States, “in fact,
landing in Mexico was an accident for most” (Zogbaum 2012b, p. 4).
Many others were unable to get their Mexican visas renewed. Of the
second group of ninety individuals, the League for German Culture
reported in October 1941 that only the Communists who were on
the lists presented had received their visas (thanks to the intervention
of Margarita Nelken),18 but not the anti-Fascists who were not

Communists. By that time the list had shrunk from ninety to thirty-five
people, because many had fallen into the hands of German authorities,
and others were able to get emergency visas for other countries. Of
these thirty-five, only six were documented in the Mexican Consulate in
Marseille, where the others were rejected. Moreover, the visas did not
include direct family members, which posed yet another obstacle to be
overcome (AHINM, exp. 4-351-8-1941-6359).
The German-speaking exiles were composed of between one to three
hundred people.19 According to Fritz Pohle, sixty Communist exiles
arrived in Mexico, more than half of them were Jewish (Pohle 1986, p.
202; in Herf 1997, p. 41). “What made the Mexican KPD group so out-
standing among other centres of the German exile was its unusual con-
centration of journalistic and organisational talent” (Zogbaum 2012b,
p. 9). The most important personality was probably Paul Merker, the
only member of the Politburo of the German Communist Party who
was not imprisoned or in the USSR. According to Alexander Stephan,
the four writers who left their mark on German-speaking exiles were
Anna Seghers, Egon Erwin Kisch, Ludwig Renn, and Bodo Uhse.
Other active members of the group, such as Walter Janka, Otto Katz,
and Paul Merker had been more involved in organizational matters or
had served as officials in the Communist party (Stephan 2000, p. 266).
A small group of Communist or anti-Stalinist anarchists composed of
Victor Serge, Gustav Regler, Benjamin Péret and Marceau Pivert, among
others, also arrived in the country; they were close to members of the
Spanish Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) that also sought
refuge in Mexico, such as Julián Gokin, Bartolomeu Costa Amic, and
Enrique Gironella.20
The activity undertaken by German-speaking émigrés in Mexico
is well known. They headed the anti-Fascist movement through the
League for German Culture (formed in 1937 and directed by Enrique
Gutmann, which later would change its name to German-Speaking
Anti-Nazi League), the Heinrich Heine Club (founded in 1941 and
directed by Anna Seghers), and the Free Germany Movement (formed
in February 1942). Their principal periodicals were the German maga-
zine Freies Deutschland (whose first issue was published in Mexico City
in November 1941); the magazine Alemania Libre (published in Spanish
from January 1942); and the magazine Demokratische Post (starting
in 1943) (Cañadas 2013, pp. 73–89). The publishing house that they
192 D. GLEIZER
formed, El Libro Libre (The Free Book) in turn was one of the only
publishers that produced anti-Nazi German literature and it released
more than twenty titles that accounted for more than 50,000 copies
(Stephan 2000, p. 226). The most important of them was El Libro Negro
del Terror Nazi en Europa: testimonio de escritores y artistas de 16 naciones
(The Black book of Nazi terror in Europe: testimony of writers and art-
ists from 16 nations) which was published in early 1943.
As the prime supporter for the anti-Fascist movement, Vicente
Lombardo Toledano provided not only material support in different
spheres, but he also gave jobs to exiles in the Universidad Obrera, and he
hired them as collaborators for his magazine Futuro (1933–1946) (Acle-
Kreysing 2016, p. 8). The local Jewish community also collaborated
with the movement of German exiles, leading in Mexico to one of the
few cases of true collaboration between both groups. The Free German
Movement not only collaborated with Jewish Communist organiza-
tions, such as the “Liga Popular Israelita” (Israelite Popular League) or
the “Liga Israelita pro Ayuda a la URSS” (Israelite League of Support to
the USSR), but also in non-Communist Jewish and even Zionist com-
munity frameworks (Bankier 1988, p. 83). According to David Bankier
this dialogue was possible given the freedom of action that Communist
exiles had and their high intellectual caliber, which seduced members
of the Jewish community. In this way, the participation of Bruno Frei,
Egon Erwin Kisch, Theodor Balk, Rufold Feistman and others stand out
in the most important publication of the Jewish community, Tribuna
Israelita.21 Furthermore, many of the anti-Fascist meetings, where mem-
bers of the local Jewish leadership preferred not to participate, were
financed by the Jewish community.
The Mexican government under President Manuel Ávila Camacho, in
turn, adopted an ambiguous position. It is true that Mexico was a gen-
erous land of refuge, where not only émigrés could continue their lives,
but also in many cases their artistic or literary production, but things in
general were not so easy. The freedom they enjoyed had a fundamen-
tal limitation: the prohibition on interfering in Mexican domestic polit-
ical matters. This restriction, for many exiles whose life was politics,
kept them isolated from Mexican society. Moreover, Article 33 of the
Mexican Constitution—which established the power of the executive
to expel any foreigner whose presence in the country was judged to be
“pernicious” without prior judgment and the right to a hearing—was
ever-present in foreigners’ daily lives.22 In reality, the two concepts were
related: Article 33 would be applied to those who did not respect the
prohibition against involvement in the country’s internal politics.
Ávila Camacho’s government kept an eye on Central European exiles
through the Mexican intelligence services, while it also granted the
FBI permission to carry out its own monitoring. Most of the German-
speaking exiles had a thick dossier in FBI files and many of them were
prohibited from entering the United States when they returned to
Europe after the war was over (Stephan 2000, pp. 223–266; Zogbaum
2012b, p. 8).
However, the Mexican government also gave a degree of support
to the group of German-speaking exiles, particularly stemming from
Mexico’s entry in World War II, because it needed to strengthen the
anti-Fascist position within the country and to justify its decision to enter
the war with the Allies, as well as its closer ties to the United States.
“Mexico’s anti-Fascist commitment always had a practical orientation,
because the international image of the country was assumed to be linked
to national goals, whether through the country’s positioning in the pro-
gressive vanguard or, later, in the struggle of Western countries in favor
of democracy” (Acle-Kreysing 2016, p. 1).
Starting with Mexico’s involvement in the international conflict, Ávila
Camacho’s administration exempted members of the Free Germany
Movement from restrictions that would affect the rights of citizens of
Axis countries, so they were issued Identification cards with stamps of
the government party (the PRM) so their bearers could confirm their
anti-Nazi affiliation (Cañadas 2013, p. 76). Government representatives
and members of German anti-Fascist exile groups attended anti-Fascist
rallies, and among other forms of support, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines was
present at the first congress of free Germans held in Mexico City in
May 1943, representing the Ministry of the Interior (Cañadas 2013, p.
79). The most visible show of support was no doubt the prologue by
President Manuel Ávila Camacho to The Black Book of Nazi Terror in
Europe, and the reception of a group of the book’s collaborators in the
official residence of Los Pinos.
Untapped Talent
The Mexican government not only did not develop a policy to attract
talent (with the exception of the case of the Spanish Republicans), but it
also did not benefit from the talent that arrived in Mexico. Diverse cases
194 D. GLEIZER
attest to the difficult situations that refugee intellectuals, artists, and pro-
fessionals faced in Mexico.
Some of the exiles who had arrived in the 1930s to occupy specific
positions in Mexican educational institutions had considerable dif-
ficulties in keeping their jobs. This was the case of the Swiss architect
Hannes Meyer, former director of the German Bauhaus school of design,
who came to Mexico in the summer of 1939 to direct the Institute of
Planning and Urbanism (IPU) of the National Polytechnic Institute. He
had been directly invited by the Minister of Public Education, Gonzalo
Vázquez Vela, and he was dismissed in August 1941 (Leidenberger
2014, pp. 499–501). This was also the case of the married couple, Otto
Rühle and Alicia Gerstel-Rühle. He was a renowned educator, trade
unionist, Marxist, and a deputy for the German Social Democratic Party
from 1912 to 1918, and “one of the principal ideologues of council
Communism, together with Anton Panneckoek” (Jacinto 2014, pp. 166,
168). She was an intellectual known for her work in psychology, Marxist,
and feminist, who was widely recognized in Europe. The couple arrived
in Mexico thanks to the fact that Otto’s daughter from his first marriage,
Grete Rühle, was already living there. It was Grete’s husband, Federico
S. Bach, who was working in the government, who arranged the entry
visa for the Rühles. Otto arrived in 1935 to work in the Ministry of
Public Education (as an advisor for the planning of rural schools and
coordinator of textbooks in rural areas) and Alice arrived in 1936 to
work as a translator at the National Council of Higher Learning and
Scientific Research (CNESIC). Both lost their jobs in mid-1938 (Jacinto
2014, pp. 169, 175–181).
The comparison between the case of Hannes Meyer and that of the
Rühles is particularly interesting, because they lost their employment
for diametrically opposed reasons: Meyer for having been accused of
being a Stalinist who was following orders from the USSR and for hav-
ing been responsible, along with others, for the assassination of Trotsky.
The Rühles, for having been accused of being Trotskyites, because they
participated in the Dewey Commission and they were friends of Trotsky
(although they differed ideologically from him and they had not adhered
to the Fourth International) (Jacinto 2014, p. 163). Meyer had fallen
out with Diego Rivera and Juan O’Gorman, who did everything in their
power to weaken the IPU and speed the Swiss architect’s departure from
it (Leidenberger, p. 515). The Rühles were targeted by Stalinists who
had influence in the Ministry of Public Education.23 Meyer wrote in
1940: “My difficulties here are very big, bigger than I have ever had:
sharp fight from the side of the direction of the National Polytechnic
Institute, of xenophobia, of political intrigue of envy of my salary or
knowledge. A professional that had once worked in the USSR can nat-
urally be only a GPU agent!”24 Otto Rühle, in turn, wrote to Erich
Fromm: “and in the midst of all this I have become the object of Stalinist
hate, they take me for a Trotskyite, to remove me from my post in the
SEP, because education is Stalinist, not by conviction but rather because
the men who are there need it to be this way” (Jacoby 2014, p. 97; in
Jacinto 2014, p. 193).
Of course, there were also professional differences that contributed to
the dismissal of the three. Hannes Meyer, on the one hand, advocated
the social commitment of architecture, which he believed had to con-
tribute to the socialist revolutionary project and he criticized Mexican
architects for distancing themselves from the common people. According
to Georg Leidenberger, they, in turn, grew disillusioned with the former
Bauhaus director, who had gone from functionalism and universalism
to regionalism (Leidenberger, pp. 517–518). On the other hand, Otto
Rühle criticized the failure of the Soviet educational policy and thus
made enemies with Lombardo Toledano and the trade unions of the
CTM (Jacinto 2014, p. 194). Although it is unclear why Alice Gerstel-
Rühle was dismissed, clearly Stalinist harassment targeted both of them.
After he was forced out of the IPU, Hannes Meyer managed to
find other work for the Ministry of Labor, the Mexican Social Security
Institute, and the federal program to build schools known as the
CAPFCE. He also worked in the Workshop of Popular Graphic Art
(TGP). Although he was relegated to a secondary position, he was not
unemployed (Leidenberger, pp. 524–528). The Rühles were not so for-
tunate. They had serious difficulties in getting other work and for some
time Otto painted postcards for tourists that Alice sold in shops in the
city. Sadly, the woman who had been a renowned intellectual in Europe,
who had given hundreds of lectures among her many achievements,
summed it up in this way: “the literary world of this continent does not
wish to know anything about us.”25
The Rühles died in desperate circumstances; he of a cardiac ailment,
whereas she committed suicide by jumping out the window of her apart-
ment, hours after her husband’s death on June 24, 1943. Hannes Meyer
even commented on their dramatic death to a friend of his. However,
he was probably not overly surprised: “To his friends outside of Mexico,
196 D. GLEIZER
Meyer wrote of friends collapsing from physical exhaustion due to the

height of Mexico City (2300 m a.s.) but also due to psychological cri-
sis. One of their main problems, shared by Meyer, was the lack of
employment.”26 Hannes Meyer returned to Switzerland, where he died
unemployed.
What is clear from the experience of these three individuals is that
not only were they trapped in the bad blood and internal conflicts
between the pro-Stalinist and anti-Stalinist left, or between Communists
and Trotskyites, but also that, as foreigners, they were in a position of
extreme vulnerability.
Someone else who was unable to get stable employment in Mexico
was the renowned art critic Paul Westheim. An article by Peter
Chametzky on Westheim in Mexico devotes only one line to reporting,
through the voice of his wife, Marianne Frenk-Westheim, that although
he learned to read Spanish in a few weeks, the difficulty in speaking it
prevented him from finding a regular job (Chametzky 2001, p. 33).
This did not seem to be strange. In the case of Hannes Meyer, the Head
of the School of Architecture and Engineering, Guillermo Terrés, had
regarded it as “nonsense” that Meyer be appointed Director of the IPU
because he was not fluent in the language (Franklin 2016).
However, it was not only a language problem. Westheim, who became
the leading critic of Mexican art, particularly Pre-Columbian art, during
his life published hundreds of articles and close to ten books in Mexico,
written in German and translated into Spanish by his wife (Chametzky
2001, p. 33). But he had difficulties in entering the intellectual world
of Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s, primarily for differences concerning
nationalist art. Whereas a number of Mexican critics (including Justino
Fernández) believed that art should express “what is characteristically
Mexican,” Westheim thought that, “Art that attempts to impress by
means of content and not by form is journalism” (Westheim 1997, p.
256; in Ségota 2001, p. 329). Westheim’s position was surely influenced
by the role of art during Nazism. Apparently the only person who agreed
with Westheim in the Mexican art world was the painter José Clemente
Orozco. It was these disagreements with artists and art critics in the
1940s that seems to have induced Westheim to opt for a new field of
study: pre-Hispanic art (Ségota 2001, pp. 329–330). Westheim was not
a Communist, nor did he return to East Germany once the war was over.
Unlike most German-speaking exiles, he stayed on in Mexico.
Being a Stalinist Communist was also no guarantee of work or a
good economic situation. “According to an interview given by Bruno
Frei, most members of the KPD group lived on US$30 a month from
the Barsky Committee in the United States, supplemented by fees from
publications in Mexican journals and newspapers, mostly facilitated by
Lombardo” (Zogbaum 2012b, p. 9). The only writers who received roy-
alties from their books were Otto Katz and Anna Seghers. Others sought
alternative ways of making a living. Max Diamant opened a restaurant,
Paul Elle a tailor’s shop, Ludwig Renn gave inexpensive languages
classes, just as Bejamin Péret, who gave French classes and received eco-
nomic aid from the manager of the “Libro Perfecto.” Others worked
as supermarket cashiers (Cañadas 2013, p. 53). Some U.S. organiza-
tions sent money to sponsor publications, such as the Joint Anti-Fascist
Refugee Committee of New York, directed by Edward Barsky, which
sent Mexico 40,000 dollars between late 1943 and 1944 (Cañadas 2013,
p. 54).
A Final Word
Mexico’s principal contribution to the group of German-speaking exiles
that arrived in the country between 1940 and 1942 was no doubt hav-
ing offered them a place of refuge, a place where they could be safe and
recover from the terrible years of persecution they had experienced. It
also offered them a space to develop their anti-Fascist activities and many
of them were able to continue writing and publishing, probably turning
the country into the most important center of anti-Nazi literary produc-
tion in the German language.
However, despite the clues that I have offered, it is still necessary
to understand in a more profound way why the Mexican governments
of Lázaro Cárdenas and Manuel Ávila Camacho did not develop a
policy to attract talented people, nor did they make any effort for the
refugees who came to Mexico to contribute in a significant way to sci-
entific and humanistic development and to the educational effort that
was being carried out in the country. Although there were some nota-
ble exceptions, the country did not take advantage of the technical and
professional capacity of those who arrived: university professors, scien-
tists, anthropologists, economists, musicians, and so forth. The case of
Marietta Blau is perhaps one of the most significant: the great Austrian
physicist, who had been one of the founders of particle physics, received
an offer to work at the National Polytechnic Institute in 1938, thanks
to the insistence of Albert Einstein. However, she was assigned the task
of giving physics classes in Spanish to undergraduate students for twenty
198 D. GLEIZER
hours a week. This prevented her, as her colleagues feared, from being
able to continue with her innovative research, until in 1944, again with
Einstein’s help, she moved to New York.27
More extensive research is still needed on those who managed to con-
tinue their professional development in Mexico and the conditions that
made this possible. One explanation might be the ideology of post-rev-
olutionary nationalism. This could explain the fact that the category of
political asylum was not accompanied by a work permit, and the iron-
fisted protectionism of Mexican citizens in the face of foreign compe-
tition. This might explain, perhaps, why individuals such as Westheim,
who devoted his attention to Pre-Columbian art, and such as Gertrude
Duby, who “discovered” the Lacandons, were better integrated into the
country and ultimately stayed in Mexico. Their knowledge was useful
and interesting for a regime that sought to reappraise itself—particularly
its indigenous origins—in the face of foreigners. It is also necessary to
seek reasons in political affiliations, because neither Westheim nor Duby
were Communists, nor did they wish to return to Europe to build a bet-
ter future under the guidance of the Soviet Union.
No doubt an environment in which foreign mistrust prevailed and
even xenophobia was pervasive must have contributed to the situation.
The conflicts between the Stalinist and anti-Stalinist left made things
extremely difficult for many, and it compounded the vulnerability of
those who, although talented and qualified, had lost everything, from
their language to their closest family members.
For most of the Communists who returned to Europe, the future,
however, was cut short. Many of them faced Stalin’s wrath and were
arrested and even killed. The possibilities for a better future in Mexico,
to a certain extent, were also curtailed by the inability to integrate
German-speaking refugees in the country and by not offering them the
conditions necessary to remain there. As we all know, the talent that
reached the Casa de España, later El Colegio de México, shaped many
generations and its great influence is still felt today.
Notes
1. The prohibition was conveyed through the Confidential Circular no. 157,
issued by the Ministry of the Interior in April 1934. Archivo Histórico
del Instituto Nacional de Migración (AHINM), file 4-350-2-1933-54.
On Mexico’s position on Jewish refugees, see Gleizer (2014).
2. Exactly how many asylum requests were received is unknown. The docu-
ments in the Ministry of the Interior mention several thousand.
3. Whereas the refugee, as a legal category, has a broader character, which
permits collective protection (not only due to political persecution), asy-
lum has more of a political and individual character: it is requested by a
person who, as a target of state persecution, requests the protection of an
authority other than that of the territorial state to which he or she is sub-
ject to.
4. Among them is the Emergency Rescue Committee, the Emergency
Committee for Refugee Scholars, Writers and Artists, the American Guild
for German Cultural Freedom (which supported the German Academy of
Arts and Sciences in Exile), etc.
5. Pohle (1986, p. 29), Zogbaum (2012b, p. 7). However, the fact that dur-
ing the Ávila Camacho administration there was more corruption in the
Ministry of the Interior made it possible for a certain number of refu-
gees to disembark, particularly those who arrived on the Serpa Pinto in
November 1941.
6. In the United States, to avoid conflicts with the new academics who
would join universities, their salaries were paid by outside foundations
(Palmier 2006, p. 468).
7. Krauze (1980, p. 95), in Lida (1988, p. 28). Matesanz (1999, p. 252).
See also the chapter by Clara Lida on the Casa de España en México in
this same volume.
8. This section is based on the book by María Eugenia Romero (2016).
9. Otto Katz who was, in Zogbaum’s words, “Stalin’s most faithful apostle,”
was assassinated as part of the Stalinist purges in 1952 in Czechoslovakia.
10. As Zogbaum explains, the newspaper Pariser Tageszeitung quickly clari-
fied Lombardo’s statements by adding that emigration to Mexico was not
so simple and that the CTM did not have control over migration policy.
Kiessling (1980, pp. 152–153), in Zogbaum (2012b, pp. 7–8).
11. According to the Third International no country should have rival
Communist organizations and in Mexico the Mexican Communist Party
already existed. However, given that foreigners could not be involved in
the nation’s politics, they were advised to stay away from it (Zogbaum
2012b, p. 8).
12. On this Daniela Spenser maintains that Lombardo’s resignation from the
CTM was “a carefully considered act and not his loss of power or popu-
larity as some have opined or wished” (Spenser 2018, p. 218).
13. Alfons Goldschmidt, a Jewish German economist who resided in Mexico
and who had taught in the Marxistische Arbeitschule, was probably the
one who suggested the idea of the Universidad Obrera to Lombardo
Toledano, which was based on the model of that German school
200 D. GLEIZER
(Zogbaum 2012b, p. 5). Goldschmidt died in Mexico in 1940. By that

time he had spent a year teaching at the UNAM, at the invitation of the
Mexican government. He was probably the best case of “putting to use”
foreign talent in Mexico.
14. By 1941–1942 Mexican visas could be obtained for $500 dollars per per-
son (Gleizer 2014, p. 209).
15. According to Bernhard Kahn, the Jewish World Congress, half of them—
whom he knew—were already in the United States at the time of authori-
zation (Avni 1992).
16. Hannes Meyer, Otto Rühle and Alice Gerstel-Rühle, Otto Katz and his
wife, Egon Erwin Kisch, Leo Katz, Rudolf Neuhaus, Ludwig Renn,
Gustav Regler, Gertrude Düby, Rudolf and Hilde Neumann and Franz
Pfemfert, among others, arrived under Cardenism.
17. Andreas Ewert appears on a list of individuals who were requesting a
work permit in mid-1942 through the mediation of the Latin American
Workers’ Confederation (CTAL), directed by Lombardo Toledano. The
letter explains that the applicants, given their knowledge and employ-
ment, would not imply any competition with Mexicans. AHINM,
file 4-351-8-1942-7180.
18. Margarita Nelken was born in Spain. Of German Jewish parents, she was
part of the PSOE and then the Spanish Communist Party. She came to
Mexico after the Republicans lost the Spanish Civil War. In Mexico she
had important government contacts, in the president’s office and in the
Ministry of the Interior, although it is unclear how she came to have so
much influence. She was expelled from the Spanish Communist Party in
1942, which had immediate economic repercussions for her and her fam-
ily (Preston 2001, pp. 330–331).
19. Friedrich Katz estimates there were about 100 German-speaking
Communists in Mexico, Brígida von Mentz and Verena Radkau maintain
there were 200, and Jean Michel Palmier speaks of 300 Communist exiles
(Katz 2002, p. 45; von Mentz et al. 1984, p. 48; Palmier 2006, p. 571).
20. See Albertani’s manuscript “De exilio en exilio. Victor Serge en la Ciudad
de México (1941–1947).” I am grateful to the author for having pro-
vided his text.
21. In addition, Leo Katz was the first administrator of the magazine, and
Otto Katz its first editor (Bankier 1988, p. 84).
22. The famous writer Bruno Traven, who had arrived in Mexico in 1924, did
not wish to publish his books in Spanish for fear that his critique of the
exploitation of native peoples would be the reason for the application of
Article 33. Traven no doubt was a fairly paranoid individual, but there
were reasons for not being so relaxed (Zogbaum 2012a, p. 8).
23. Lizette Jacinto, my source, does not specify names.
24. Letter from Hannes Meyer to Dr. R. Grosheintz-Laval, 19 January 1940,

in Franklin (2016).
25. Jacinto (2014, p. 211). Just as Jean Michel Palmier considers: “It was per-
haps writers above all who felt most cruelly the trauma of separation from
their native tongue, their childhood and their readership. This heart-
breaking wrench was for a few of them a source of inspiration, but for
many it meant annihilation” (Palmier 2006, p. 230).
26. Meyer had recommended his friend Käte Duncker to stay in Vienna
while she could earn money. Georg Leidenberger, “Hannes Meyer and
the Communist Exile Community in Mexico” (manuscript). I thank the
author for sharing his text with me.
27. The information on the case of Marietta Blau comes from the article by
Ruth Lewin Sime, “Marietta Blau: Pioneer of Photographic Nuclear
Emulsions and Particle Physics,” 2013.
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y la política nacional. El caso de Vicente Lombardo Toledano en México
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Research, 11(2), 1–28.
CHAPTER 9
The Institutional Reception of Spanish

Émigré Intellectuals in Mexico:
The Pioneering Role of La Casa
de España, 1938–1940
Clara E. Lida
An Initial Consideration
I would like to begin this essay with a preliminary note. When speaking
of the reception of Spanish émigré intellectuals in Mexico we should
focus on La Casa de España en México (The Spanish House in Mexico),
and not on El Colegio de México, its immediate successor. In fact,
between 1938 and 1940, under the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas,
La Casa became a unique State-sponsored institution whose major
function was to receive and help in the placement of a few dozen

exiled academics, artists and other cultural figures in their host country.
As such, in spite of its short life, La Casa is remembered today as the
only academic center in Mexico founded exclusively to give aid to the
Spanish Republican émigrés. In this sense and only this, it shared certain
C. E. Lida (*) 
El Colegio de México, Mexico, Mexico
e-mail: clida@colmex.mx

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_9
206 C. E. LIDA
common features with the origins in 1933 of the University in Exile

(later to become the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of
the New School for Social Research), in New York City. But the parallel-
isms should stop there. La Casa was a very small State-financed institu-
tion conceived to last until the end of the Civil War in Spain—actually, it
lasted until late 1940. It received émigrés in many different fields, from
the humanities to the hard sciences, but was not conceived as a teach-
ing institution. The University in Exile, on the other hand, had a faculty
several times larger, mainly privately funded, and focused on the research
and teaching in the Social Sciences. The differences in size, scope and
evolution of both institutions are also quite evident, and their later devel-
opments followed very different paths.
While the University in Exile became the Graduate Faculty in an
expanding university such as the New School, the Casa disappeared in
October 1940, when El Colegio de México was founded. The new insti-
tution could neither, and did not, continue with the activities of La Casa,
nor with its policies. The triumph of Francisco Franco’s uprising, the
beginning of Second World War and the changes in Mexico’s govern-
ment after the presidential elections of 1940, put an end to the previous
period. The new institution was to be very different from its predeces-
sor: it “mexicanized” itself by ending its explicit ties with the now extinct
Spanish Republic. Like the Casa, it was also State-financed, but for years
monies were scarce, since after Cárdenas, other presidencies tended to
reverse some previous policies, and were not much inclined to support-
ing El Colegio. For example, in 1942, the State allowance granted went
down from $350,000.00 pesos under Cárdenas, to only $200,000.00
pesos under Manuel Ávila Camacho.1
In fact, the institution had to search for other sources of funding.
It turned to the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), since this institution had
supported several research projects in Spain before the Civil War, includ-
ing the Centro de Estudios Históricos, in Madrid, which some mem-
bers of El Colegio knew quite well, as we shall further on.2 At various
moments during the 1940s, the support from the American founda-
tion was instrumental in subsidizing salaries, scholarships and publica-
tions, but in reality El Colegio remained a very small, almost invisible
center for the humanities, with programs essentially devoted to History
(set up in 1941) and Philology (in 1947). Though for a brief triennium
during WW II, there was interest in setting up a program in the Social
Sciences, under the guidance of a Spanish jurist, trained as a sociologist
9 THE INSTITUTIONAL RECEPTION OF SPANISH ÉMIGRÉ … 207
in Germany, José Medina Echavarría, this endeavor failed to develop and

Medina left El Colegio for the University of Puerto Rico. Though lack-
ing degree-granting privileges, El Colegio gave scholarships to univer-
sity students who wanted to do research under the supervision of a small
handful of full-time scholars hired by El Colegio—a few were Spaniards,
other Mexicans and one Argentinian, exiled from Peronism. All in all, it
remained very modest in scope and size. In fact, by the early 1950s, most
of the established scholars had left the institution to join the National
University or universities abroad, and El Colegio entered a period of
almost dormant activity.
It wasn’t until the early 1960s, now under the direction of Daniel
Cosío Villegas, an economist by formation but with a broader inter-
est in political science, that El Colegio renewed itself, hired new fac-
ulty (mostly Mexicans), expanded in scope, became a degree-granting
institution recognised by the Mexican State, and turned progressively
into the dynamic teaching and research public institution that we know
today, mostly, though not exclusively, oriented to the Social Sciences—
at times, again with the renewed support of the Rockefeller Foundation.
By now, the imprint of the Spanish émigrés was all but extinguished.
A brief parenthesis opened in the 1970s, when El Colegio again
became an exile-receiving institution. This time, it was political refu-
gees from South America, fleeing the military dictatorships established
in Argentina, Brasil, Chile and Uruguay, who were integrated into its
professorial ranks, but in small numbers. Metaphorically speaking, El
Colegio went back to its roots in La Casa, and for a few years, it became
again an institution morally and practically committed to provide aid to
those academics in search of political asylum who could fit into its struc-
ture. But this topic falls out of the realm of this paper, which is centered
exclusively in the very origins of this story.
Besides studying the reception of Spanish intellectual émigrés by
La Casa de España, this paper will also deal briefly with the reception of
other trained professionals in exile. I refer mainly to schoolteachers who
also found the possibility of attending to a large contingent of Spanish
exiled children in schools specially set-up in Mexico for this purpose
starting in 1939. It must be underlined that having primary and second-
ary schools founded by an expatriate community, and taught mostly by
its own members, is exceptional within the realm of political exiles; we
know not of any other achieving such a feat.
208 C. E. LIDA
With this in mind, let me turn now to La Casa and the Spanish
Republican exiles in Mexico between 1938 and 1940.
Mexico, The Second Spanish Republic and the Civil War

In the late 1930s, Mexico took the lead in developing open-door policies
for the Spanish Republicans who were persecuted during the Civil War
and after the overthrow of the Second Republic. Naturally, neighboring
France received, in the winter of 1938–1939 an unexpected avalanche of
refugees, and it did so without having previously taken any steps in the
eventuality, this could occur. In fact, such eventuality took in place a very
short period of time in numbers close to 450,000 persons. By contrast,
since very early in the conflict, Mexico created or encouraged the estab-
lishment of institutions, jobs and other mechanisms to promote adequate
labor conditions for the exiles it received. The State support provided
under the leadership of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), and
his closest associates and supporters clearly played a decisive role in this
process.
Cárdenas was an active political figure and a paramount example of
a socially minded leader who, in the 1930s, fostered what was known
as Revolutionary nationalism in order to develop a country which had
been seriously impaired materially and otherwise by the Revolutionary
war launched from 1910 onward, and by the continual factional strives
of the 1920s and early 30s. Beyond significant material and economic
goals, Cárdenas also sought to create a sound State health, cultural and
educational system by founding and often financing various national
institutions for research and learning.
With the proclamation of the Spanish Republic, in 1931, México
became a close ally, with strong diplomatic, economic, commercial and
cultural ties. In mid-1993, when a military-led insurrection against the
legitimately constituted Spanish Republic took place, Mexico offered
wide-ranging material, diplomatic and humanitarian support. Mexico’s
backing could be seen on at least three fronts. First, in compliance with
the Covenant of the League of Nations, it condemned once and again all
“external aggression” against a member State, in direct reference to Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy. It should be recalled that Spain had been one
of the League’s founding members in 1920, and in 1931, had supported
Mexico‘s entry as a full-standing member.3 Secondly, its support took the
form of material aid. It would be an obvious understatement to say that
Mexico was not a prosperous country; yet it set out to help the Spanish
government with food, medicine, weapons, munitions and other military
supplies (Matesanz 1999).
But where the Mexican government excelled was in the implementa-
tion of an exceptional policy of humanitarian and institutional assistance
for refugees, victims of the Spanish War. By the end of the conflict, in
the April of 1939, almost half a million Spaniards had left Spain (mostly
for neighboring France), a diaspora which included children and adults;
mostly men and women who had worked in the country’s secondary
and tertiary sectors of the economy. Although in Mexico the immigra-
tion laws were quite restrictive, President Cárdenas avoided the issue by
instructing the Home and Foreign Secretariats to grant political asylum
in Mexico to as many refugees as possible. Thus, by the early 1950s,
exiled Spaniards totaled between 20,000 and 25,000 men, women and
children. Furthermore, help was provided for them to continue their
productive activities in the host country (Lida 2009).
At the beginning of the conflict, Mexico offered assistance to asylum-
seekers on an individual and ad hoc basis; but in 1937, as the war
intensified, a more organized system was set up to help evacuate threat-
ened children and displaced Spanish intellectuals. The idea was to
resettle in Mexico minors who were in areas of conflict and those dis-
tinguished Spaniards who lacked the physical ability to contribute much
in combatting the insurgents and were prevented from remaining in the
Peninsula due to the threat to their lives. The group of children brought
in into the city of Morelia in 1937 was composed of some 450 minors
accompanied by several teachers.4
The key figure in arranging for the evacuation of intellectual figures
was Daniel Cosío Villegas, an economist and historian familiar with
Spain’s cultural and academic life, who in 1934 founded in Mexico City
the Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), a publishing house which from
the 1940s on was to become a foremost publishing house in the Spanish-
speaking world, with many exiled Spaniards collaborating as authors,
translators, editors, technicians, etc. In the fall of 1936, Cosío had been
appointed Chargé d’Affaires at the Mexican Embassy in Portugal, a posi-
tion which gave him a privileged, yet increasingly pessimistic view of
events unfolding in Spain. The following year, he moved to Valencia, the
provisional seat of the Republican government. From there, he began to
correspond with friends close to President Cárdenas, with a plan to invite
to Mexico Spanish artists and academics facing danger. Cosío himself put
210 C. E. LIDA
forward some names, after checking them with his friends in Mexico and
high-ranking officials of the Republic.
The Reception of Spanish Émigré Scholars:

La Casa de España en México
Given the increasingly difficult situation in Spain, in July 1938, President
Lázaro Cárdenas signed the official decree to establish La Casa de
España, set up to welcome a group of Spanish intellectuals from vari-
ous fields as official guests of Mexico, so that they could continue their
work that had been interrupted by the Civil War. Cárdenas specifically
appointed each of La Casa’s first twelve members and, furthermore,
he arranged for a Federal government subsidy to grant them a modest
but decent annual salary, and to cover the travel expenses for them and
their families to come to Mexico. The President also set up a Board of
Trustees to oversee the work of La Casa and to make sure it remained in
close contact with government agencies and Mexico’s academic and cul-
tural institutions. Apart from Cosío Villegas himself, the board included
the Undersecretary of the Treasury, representing the Federal govern-
ment, the Rector of the National University (UNAM), and the Director
of the recently created National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) (Lida 1988).
La Casa began its activities in the second half of 1938. The first twelve
members were eminent intellectuals, and included philosophers, jurists,
historians, poets, art historians, literary scholars and critics, classicists,
musicologists, oncologists, neuropsychiatrists, and histologists, and
one sociologist.5 Only one of them, the poet León Felipe, had been in
Mexico before, in the 1920s. As we shall see further down, since La Casa
lacked physical facilities, most activities were sponsored and hosted by
different cultural institutions.
In early 1939, the administrative organization of La Casa was
reformed, taking advantage of the fact that Alfonso Reyes—the distin-
guished humanist, diplomat and writer—had returned to Mexico. Reyes
had been on a sensitive official mission in Brazil arranging for the sale
of Mexican oil, in order to break the international blockade that had
been placed on Mexican oil exports following President Cárdenas’ expro-
priation decree of March 1938. Upon his return from South America,
Cárdenas appointed Reyes as President of La Casa, with Cosío Villegas as
Secretary, while the Board continued acting as a supervisory body.
We should briefly recall that between 1914 and 1924 Alfonso Reyes
lived as an exile in Spain, working as a young philologist alongside lead-
ing Spanish academics in the prestigious research institute called Centro
de Estudios Históricos, where he formed strong bonds of friendships
with many prominent Spanish intellectuals. During his stay in Madrid,
he also wrote for several Spanish newspapers and cultural journals.
Who better than Reyes to create in Mexico links of solidarity with his
former Spanish colleagues?
As the Civil War came to an end, together with the defeat of the
Spanish Republic and the massive exodus of refugees, Alfonso Reyes,
who was deeply knowledgeable about the Hispanic world, along with
Daniel Cosío Villegas and the small but select and active board of trus-
tees, worked together to define La Casa de España’s novel cultural and
humanitarian activities. All parties played a dual role: on the one hand,
they had to select the most distinguished exiled scientists, artists and
intellectuals to become members of La Casa, thus creating a nucleus for
the dissemination of high-culture from the outset; on the other hand,
they casted their nets broadly to help émigrés who were not eligible to
be members of La Casa by placing them in other educational, cultural,
artistic, research, scientific and technical institutions throughout Mexico.
La Casa thus became an effective matchmaker thanks to its far-reaching
professional, personal and political connections.
La Casa’s original aim had been to provide transitional support until its
members could return to Spain. However, after the Republic’s fall in April
1939, with the consent and continuous financial support of the Mexican
government, La Casa redoubled its efforts to bring over new members
and urged other institutions in Mexico to provide additional assistance.
During its brief existence, prior to being transformed into El Colegio de
México, in October 1940, the institution received around thirty of Spain’s
foremost talents. It also helped many more, from a variety of fields—
philosophers, chemists. biologists, entomologists, medical research-
ers, astronomers, physicists, etc.—, to join various universities as well as
academic and scientific institutions, both in the capital and elsewhere
throughout the country.
Furthermore, over two years, La Casa went well beyond its call of duty
and worked as a kind of placement center by also aiding those émigrés
who did not have specific research backgrounds (such as journalists, law-
yers, architects, doctors, artists, teachers, etc.) to secure jobs in different
areas of activity in Mexico.6 All in all, some one hundred persons and
212 C. E. LIDA
their families received financial assistance in order to enable them to work

in their respective fields here and there.
Before going any further, it must be said that contrary to its name,
La Casa did not have its own facilities. The name was meant as a sym-
bol of hospitality and not as an office building or a rooming house.
In fact, it only occupied two offices set-up mainly for administrative
purposes, rented from the Banco Nacional Hipotecario Urbano y de
Obras Públicas in downtown Mexico City. All research and cultural
activities were housed by various other established academic institu-
tions. For example, the scientists were active in research laboratories at
the National University, the Polytechnic Institute, public hospitals and
medical institutes; musicians and musicologists, worked at the National
Conservatory; artists did so in different museums or at the Institute
for Fine Arts; historians and archeologists began teaching and doing
research at the National Institute for Anthropology and History
(INAH), and so on and so forth. Yet, all of them received their salary
from La Casa so they could continue to work alongside their Mexican
colleagues in their respective fields.
Above all else, La Casa stood out for the quality and diversity of the
intellectual activities it sponsored. Without fear of exaggeration, we can
confidently state that in its two short years of existence, its members gave
almost two hundred courses, lectures and conferences on topics ranging
all the way from Spanish Golden Age poetry and art to medical entomol-
ogy, from principles of sociology and the crisis of the modern state to the
role of hormones in physiology. Apart from this whirlwind of activities,
La Casa was also a prolific and high-quality publisher, producing a total
of some 40 book titles produced by the Fondo (FCE).
We should recall that before coming to Mexico, most of the members
attached to La Casa had been leading figures in their respective fields.
Many had been university professors, directors of astronomical observa-
tories, botanical gardens, hospitals, research laboratories, museums, etc.
It is also worth remembering that since the First World War, Spain had
promoted the development of various areas of knowledge, and through
grants and subsidies gave strong stimulus to Spanish researchers so that
they could take part in international conferences and obtain access to
universities abroad, as well as to laboratories and other institutions for
scientific research. Thus, many had studied or worked in top-level insti-
tutions in Germany, France, England, Italy, the United States, etc.
(Vicente 1976; Giral 1994; Otero Carvajal 2006).
We know that many of the émigré scientists in Mexico directly and

indirectly contributed to increase the range of interests, specializations
and methods analysis in the host country, and reciprocally, they were
introduced to and became involved in research being undertaken by
their Mexican colleagues. This was truly a mutually fruitful exchange.
But, as we shall see further on, for many in history, law, archeology,
anthropology, the social and the natural sciences, etc., Mexico was very
alien to them; in turn, their research on Spanish topics was of little inter-
est to Mexicans. Those few who worked on contemporary philosophy,
like José Gaos, and on social theories, like José Medina Echavarría, elic-
ited more interest among Mexican scholars, since these fields were rather
novel to them. Gaos remained in Mexico all his life and became widely
acclaimed as a professor of philosophy, but Medina left for Puerto Rico
soon after World War II, rather disappointed at his lack of immediate
success in creating a school of Sociology at El Colegio de México, which
didn’t really develop until the late 1960s and, mostly, in the 70s.7
It becomes rather evident that in these early years, the notion of trav-
elling theories from Spain to Mexico has to be almost understood in a
case by case basis, in segmented compartments, depending on each disci-
pline. It is even more difficult to evaluate when the opposite was true—
theories travelling from Mexico to Spain. The entrenched censorship set
up under Franco’s dictatorship made it practically impossible during at
least two and a half decades for Spaniards to learn about theories devel-
oped outside its borders, even if (or perhaps, particularly if) put forward
by its own émigrés (Otero Carvajal 2006). It is true that through under-
ground channels, it was possible to evade censors and introduce for-
bidden books and journals, but this was done in a trickle-down fashion
through clandestine networks or individuals, and reached only a handful
of readers. Thus, while the émigrés found a warm reception in Mexican
institutions, they also knew that their own intellectual production and
interests would elicit a very limited response in their own country.
Yet, thanks to the unstinting support of the Cárdenas government
and Mexico’s intellectuals, academics, artists and scientists themselves,
the Spaniards who had been forced into exile by an implacable dictator-
ship were given the exceptional opportunity to remake their lives and
continue their work and professional progress, backed up by jobs and
financial safety. Further down, I shall address the relative success of such
transnational experience and its paradoxes.
214 C. E. LIDA
The Other Side of the Coin

In addition to the above-mentioned intellectual émigrés, Mexico also
received some 200 primary- and secondary-level school teachers. Besides
creating La Casa, and later El Colegio, Mexico implemented another
exceptional educational innovation by allowing the founding of schools
for the exiles’ children to be taught by these émigré school teach-
ers, following the educational curriculum and programs of the Spanish
Republic. There was no direct government funding provided for this
purpose, but monies were obtained from Republican institutions all
over. The idea was that Spanish children and adolescents could begin
or resume their education that had been put on hold by the Civil War.
It was a shared belief that after the Second World War, once the dictator-
ship was toppled by Western democracies, these pupils and their parents
would be able to return to their home country.8 But let us remember
that, ultimately, their banishment lasted almost 40 years, or as long as
Franco’s life, that is to say, until 1975. Also, let us remember that this
was one of the longest political exiles in twentieth Century Western
European history.
While the establishment of schools for émigré children was largely
unprecedented in other exiles, this educational oasis paradoxically meant
that for many years those young Spaniards remained immersed in the
memory of a world from which they had been uprooted, actually isolat-
ing them from learning much about Mexico.9 In reality, these schools for
exiles were cut off from the Iberian trunk, yet their students were une-
quipped to put down roots in Mexico. Many of these refugee children
were educated looking back at a Republican past based mostly on the
memories of their parents and teachers.
For many years, these young Spanish exiles lived in a social milieu that
was endogamous and—to coin a term—exile-centric. Integration into
their new country would only take place, if at all, at the university or
in the work place, but rarely in other social contexts. This meant merg-
ing very slowly into Mexican everyday life and adapting haphazardly and
with difficulty. In fact, for years, they stayed on the sidelines of their host
country’s cultural identity intent on preserving the group’s cohesion and
a collective exiled identity, a flame many of the surviving exiles, and even
their children, kept alight up to this day.
Although La Casa de España, as well as the children’s schools, rep-
resented an attempt to facilitate the émigrés’ professional and cultural
integration in Mexico, the results were not straightforward.10 Many of

the Spanish intellectuals arrived in Mexico to find a country in which
they shared the language, despite certain idiomatic differences, and
where they were given significant help to find work. But in return, they
were expected to reorient their interests towards a country they barely
knew or understood.
Mexico’s ample support to émigré artists, intellectuals, scholars and
school teachers presented, however, a number of contradictions and
contrasts. On the one hand, as shown earlier, Mexico’s solidarity was
exceptional. Yet, there was a less visible aspect to this situation—another
side of the coin. As I just pointed out, for many of the new arrivals, par-
ticularly the more senior ones, Mexico was totally unfamiliar. Inserting
themselves in the host country often meant diverting from their previ-
ous established career-paths and refocusing their interests and research
on issues related to, and prioritized by Mexico. This was not a question
of how travelling theories worked out, but—as mentioned above—how
one has to be very cautious in applying them to the Mexican case. Many
of the Spanish émigré scholars had to face a serious and arduous effort
of adaptation to new academic fields, mostly focused on the country’s
national concerns and interests, and this meant a painful professional
amputation of their original vocational interests. After spending many
years studying, researching and accruing specialized knowledge on Spain
and other European countries, they had to start over again in unfamiliar
fields and topics. To be sure, throughout the years, this challenge even-
tually became less dramatic for some, particularly for the younger exiles
who adapted more easily. For some others, many of the new perspec-
tives had the advantage of being enriched by comparative approaches and
learning. But ultimately, we must recognize that the cost—what I have
called elsewhere the price of exile—cannot be quantified. For many émi-
grés, their uprooting signified the painful loss of a many years of scien-
tific commitment in areas of knowledge that could not be recovered.
Let me add a corollary to this: for Spain, the cost of this human
drainage amounted to decades of intellectual, scientific and academic
impoverishment and, due to the dictatorship, of isolation. It took sev-
eral generations to fill the vacuum left by the Civil War and its trail of
destruction (Otero Carvajal 2006). Intellectual and academic isolation-
ism coupled with severe censorship prevented the émigrés’ scholarly pro-
duction to reach colleagues and students in their home country, except,
as pointed out earlier, through clandestine channels. Naturally, personal
216 C. E. LIDA
travelling to a dictatorial country was also out of the question. Theories

did not travel back and forth between Mexico and Spain; in fact, until
the very late 1960s, they did not travel at all.
Conclusions
The exile experience was clearly riven by contradictions and paradoxes.
The émigrés’ desire to maintain a cohesive identity believing their return
to Spain would be assured with the return of democracy after World
War II, undoubtedly creating an inward-facing community. The hope
of an imminent return to a liberated Spain dwindled, if not altogether
disappeared in the 1950s, after the USA signed important military and
economic treaties with the dictator, strengthening his de facto totalitar-
ian government. It is quite possible that Mexico’s decision not to force
assimilation upon the newly arrived, but to allow the creation of special
spaces for them, contributed to an integration that was left incomplete,
or at least very limited. However, I must emphasize that we have been
speaking of a small contingent of scholars and other qualified profession-
als and school teachers. If we look at the numbers, we are speaking of
some 500 émigrés devoted to research, teaching and other professional
and artistic activities. Obviously, we are speaking only of a handful of all
exiles which, in 1940, represented at most a meager 5% of the total. The
remaining 95% of the Spaniards in exile in Mexico became involved in
very different economic activities and their insertion and development
took many directions not to be explored in this paper. Perhaps, they
were the ones forced by laboring contexts to adapt, and even assimilate,
into Mexican life.
Finally, it may be worth reflecting comparatively on other experiences
of exile. Surely, the process was very different for the tens of thousands
of Spaniards who remained, for example, in France, where integration,
not to mention assimilation, was essential for the refugees in every
respect, from language to employment, from education to politics, and
the few who entered an academic career had to do so adapting them-
selves to French requisites and integrating themselves into the culture of
their new country.11 Surely, something similar could be said about the
Central European émigré scholars in the United States, many of whom
being Jewish, decided to remain there as immigrants, never to return
to their countries of origin, fearful of the devastating anti-Semitic expe-
riences of the pre-war and war years. Yet, once the Second World War
was over, their intellectual production was immediately recognized in

Western Europe and eventually in the Eastern countries as well.
In short, in the case of the Spanish intellectual émigrés in Mexico
before Second World War, the contrast with other exiles is self-evident.
Both the process of reception into Mexico and the working facilities
offered, with fully State-sponsored and financed institutions such as
La Casa de España, proved a completely different—even unique—expe-
rience. But the dictatorship was exceptionally long-lived, lasting well
into 1975. In this context, until quite late in the century, Spaniards in
the Peninsula were far from knowing about travelling theories and the
transnational experience of the émigré scholars in Mexico. Their publica-
tions were censored, travelling to Spain was dangerous, and only a hand-
ful of the academic élite in Spain were able to travel and learn abroad
about their émigré counterparts. Only in the 1960s censorship began to
be slowly relaxed, but by then, the Republican exiled intellectuals were
viewed as remnants of past history, as mere topics for research and occa-
sional politics, far removed from Spain’s own experience and develop-
ment during long decades of seclusion and intellectual isolation. It was
not until after the return of democracy in Spain and diplomatic relations
with Mexico restored, that the Republican exile in Mexico became more
thoroughly understood by younger generations.
Notes
1. The whole story may be found in Lida et al. (2000).
2. The relation between the Rockefeller Foundation and El Colegio is best
studied in Morcillo-Laiz (2018).
3. Jorge Penado (2016). Also, see Chapter 7, on Lázaro Cárdenas and the
Spanish War, in Lida (2009).
4. On the reception of exiled children, see Pla Brugat (1985).
5. Luis Recaséns Siches was a philosopher of law; León Felipe a poet, José
Moreno Villa, artist and critic; José Gaos, philosopher; José María Ots
Capdequí, jurist and historian; Enrique Díez-Canedo, writer, literary
critic, diplomat; Juan de la Encina (pseudonym of Ricardo Gutiérrez
Abascal), critic and art historian; Gonzalo R. Lafora, neuro-psychiatrist;
Jesús Bal y Gay studied folklore and traditional Spanish music; Isaac
Costero was an oncologist specializing in histology; Agustín Millares
Carlo, paleographer and Latinist, and Adolfo Salazar was a musicologist.
6. For further discussion on this subject, see Lida (1988).
7. Lida and Matesanz (1990). Also in Lida et al. (2000).
218 C. E. LIDA
8. For more information about these schools and their history, see Lida et al.
(1989), Cruz (1994), Morán Gortari (2001).
9. Sandra García de Fez wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on this topic: ‘La iden-
tidad nacional de los colegios del exilio republicano español en la ciu-
dad de México (1939–1950)’, 2010. She is now preparing a book on
the national identity transmitted through education in these schools for
exiled children. Domínguez Prats (1994, p. 220), refers to a “Spanish
Hour”, when Spanish history, geography and literature were taught.
10. These topics are discussed in greater detail in Lida (2009).
11. For a discussion on the mechanisms of receiving and integrating refugees
in France and Mexico from the end of the Civil War up until the 1950s,
see Dávila Valdés (2012).
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y profesores valencianos en el exilio. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana-Comissiò
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Domínguez Prats, P. (1994). Voces del exilio. Mujeres españolas en México, 1939–
1950. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid-Universidad Complutense.
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y los intelectuales españoles refugiados: La Casa de España en México y los
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español contemporáneo y la idea de América. Vol. II: El pensamiento en el exilio.

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Antropología e Historia.
CHAPTER 10
Two Aspects of Exile
Martí Soler
A Personal Prologue
The action took place in a town close to Barcelona, of some four thou-
sand inhabitants, in the year 1939. Part of the inhabitants hailed from
Valencia and from Murcia, who had come looking for employment in the
Roca Radiadores factory and in the textile mills located nearby, where
my mother earned a living before she married, as did my aunt, both flee-
ing the hardships of agricultural labor. My father was from Barcelona, of
working class origins, and he collaborated with an institution that today
we would call a NGO, that promoted Catalan schooling.
Member of the translation program of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de

Arte, 2016. Many thanks to María del Rayo González Vázquez and to Fernando
López García from the Archivo Histórico of El Colegio de México for their help
finding and reproducing the documentation used in this article. Also to Anne
Staples, for her translation of this text to English. I am grateful to my brother
Jordi Soler Vinyes for his effort in maintaining the blog about our father Josep
Soler Vidal (http://caminsdutopia.blogspot.com).
M. Soler (*) 
Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico City, Mexico

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_10
222 M. SOLER
My sister and I were born in this town. From it, we fled to France
because of the Spanish civil war, and at the border, we were reunited a
few days later with my father. Then, we were separated and my father
was sent to the Argelés concentration camp and we (my mother, sister
and I) to a colony for refugee women and children established thanks
to an agreement between the Catalan Unió General de Treballadors and
the French Confédération Général du Travail. Soliés-Toucas is the name
of the town which took us in, close to Valloris, later made famous by
Picasso, as he installed his ceramic workshop there. The town belongs to
the department of Var and the port of Toulon is at its feet.
My father had just left, or was expelled from (there are different ver-
sions but my father told me that he had left) the Partit Socialista Unificat
de Catalunya, of which he had been one of the founders, because of his
anti-Stalinist position. Therefore, supposedly, he was taken off the list
of those eligible for tickets to Mexico, as it seems that the party con-
trolled some of those tickets. In fact, at a conference that took place at
the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the artist Carles Fontserè com-
plained about this discrimination which had kept him from coming to
Mexico as an exile.
With the doubly difficult situation caused by the beginning of the
Second World War and his forced stay in France, and knowing that he
could do nothing for us, my father urged us, against all his beliefs and
better judgement, to return to our home town. At the end of 1939,
we came back, not without fear. It was nighttime when the train pulled
up to the Estació de França in Barcelona and we found it full of Civil
Guards, who created in my mother a state of even greater anxiety. My
sister was three and she had filled her head, as all children do during
a war, with adult conversations about war and exile. Also, my father’s
absence had affected her deeply. At the station, and surrounded by Civil
Guards, she tugged at my mother’s skirt and asked “mom, have the fas-
cists killed my father?”
He, meantime, wandering around France, was recaptured and sent
to the nearest camp, eventually spending time in four or five different
ones.1 The French had their hands full with the Germans approaching
and Marechal Petain. The same was happening to the leaders of the
PSUC, which had disbanded. At that moment, a friend of my father’s,
the general secretary of the textile union of Sabadell, Jaume Camps Illa,
was in charge of the office in Paris and said to my father, “Here Soler,
take this ticket and go to Mexico.” The boat left Saint-Nazaire, arrived
10 TWO ASPECTS OF EXILE 223
in New York, and from there, my father took the train, under police
escort, to Nuevo Laredo and on to Mexico City.
The European war come to an end before my father and other exiles
were able to begin the process of bringing their families to Mexico
and to other parts of the Americas. The paperwork was not easy, as
I learned later in conversations with other young people my age, many
of whom arrived between 1946 and 1947. The boat took us to Mexico
via Havana, where we boarded Mexicana de Aviación to Mexico City.
Another family travelling with us, in the same circumstances, was from
Valencia, being comprised of the grandmother, the mother, an aunt and
a boy my age.
I began this article writing about my home town because I want to
underline the fact that this place would be the origin of many exiles.
I studied in a one room school, in which the teacher received boys of
all ages who were in grades one through five. He, Antonio Cueto, was
one of those teachers dedicated in body and soul to his students. For
him, staying in Spain was a real problem, because of his republican ideas.
When we arrived at school in the morning, we had to sing the Falange
hymn and the Carlist requetés march, the one that begins “The spirit of
Isabelle and Ferdinand reigns”. For a defeated republican, experienc-
ing this defeat day after day was not easy. But he was a fighter. He fig-
ured out how to win an occasional victory. The other schools sang the
required patriotic songs on the school playground before going into the
classrooms. We sang them inside, with the windows papered over so that
people on the outside could not see in. We sang standing up but without
making the fascist salute. It was, therefore, a school directed by a sui gen-
eris teacher, who always reminded us that he was sticking his neck out for
us and we, in turn, were absolutely loyal to him.
As 1946 progressed, one of our classmates announced that he was
going to France. I remember his mother, always dressed in mourning, as
was the custom in rural villages, black clothing that widows were obliged
to wear until their death. My classmate Sigfrid Bonmatí’s father surfaced
from his exile in France and called his wife and son to join him there.
I imaged that his father joined the maquis and had spent the war under-
cover, fighting the Nazi. Years later, on my first return trip to my place of
birth, accompanied by my wife and sons, I looked up my old teacher. He
opened the door and exclaimed “Sigfrid”? I had to disabuse him of that
hope. Sigfrid had written him from France, saying that he would visit
and as I arrived unannounced, he mistook me for that long-lost pupil.
224 M. SOLER
We spent the morning with him and he had a fine time playing with my
2 and 4 year old sons, to whom he gave one of those stamp albums that
were so popular then.
This was not the only case. My uncle Ramón, my mother’s brother,
started making frequent visits to a family from Murcia because he had
fallen in love with the eldest daughter. The mother, also in deep mourn-
ing, had four children: two boys and two girls, the youngest boy being
my age. María Cano, who would become my aunt, told us that they were
sure the father had died during the war and grieved for him. After my
uncle Ramón married, an unexpected letter arrived from his father-in-
law, asking that the family join him in France. Two identical cases? We
also knew of another family that received similar news, inviting them
to Argentina. I must suppose that these were not the only cases on the
Iberian Peninsula, especially as one can see how many times it happened
just in our small town.
As the greatly missed Dolores Pla, in her excellent research about
exile, noted in her book on Els exiliats catalans, and which came out in
my publishing house Libros del Umbral (Pla Brugat 1999), examples
like these led her to conclude that the last exiles arrived towards the end
of the 1940s, as the Bonmatí family, the Cano family, and we did, as well
as many others. Avel.lí Artís-Gener, in the prologue to Dolores’ book,
speaks of this experience, and the possibility that many exiles joined
the maquis, as I believe the father of my classmate and the father of my
aunt had done. “We are legion (including those mentioned in the book)
[…]—said Tisner. Knowing how many of us started out on the road to
exile, how many fled the oppression of the French camps—oh paradox—
only to enroll with the maquis and disappear into the common fight of
the French against the Wehrmacht” (Pla Brugat 1999, p. 9).
Dolores Pla encountered numerical evidence for the different peri-
ods. According to numbers from the General Statistics Office of Mexico,
“one can observe two distinct waves of Spaniards coming to Mexico.
The first goes from 1939 to 1942, from the beginning of exile to the
fall of France to the Nazi. The second begins in 1946, at the end of
World War II, and seems to last until the end of the 1940s—especially
until 1948—when the numbers ‘stabilize’” (Pla Brugat 1999, p. 158
and Table 7). “The data extracted from the official registries show that
between 1936 and 1938, 552 refugees came to Mexico, from 1939 to
1942, 12 127 arrived, while from 1946 to 1948 the reported number
was 4 946”, among whom were surely counted my mother, my sister and
myself. According to Pla, the total was 20,482 refugees. Javier Rubio,
however, claims that the number was higher, “since there were refu-
gees who came as tourists, visitors or even as stowaways” (Rubio 1977).
I should add that my mother, my sister and I entered as tourists.
I also imagine that these numbers do not include those exiles who
had Mexican papers or had family in Mexico, of which there were not
a few. I refer, for example, to people like León Felipe, for his sister lived
in Mexico, and himself was married to a Mexican. I can also recount the
story of Josep Jufresa, whom my father knew in Barcelona, and who had
been one of those many boys who, as they say, wanted to make it rich in
America. Jufresa, a naturalized Mexican citizen, was enthusiastic about
the idea of the republic and decided to return in 1931 to his Spanish
homeland in order to “enjoy the republic”. The circumstances were not
favorable. War came and he ended up as one more exile in Mexico.
None of this has to do with the Colegio de México or with academi-
cians. It deals with isolated cases of immigrants who were part of the sta-
tistical world that fills the studies of historians and sociologists. They are
just numbers, but they do give us a way of understanding the problem of
their immersion in a new world into which they may or not have finally
integrated.
And Now, to the Casa de España

Integration or not is the case of two members of the Casa de España
in Mexico who had to defend themselves from surely unjust accusations
about their academic activities. Two very different cases with different
outcomes were that of the psychiatrist Gonzalo R. Lafora and of the
historian José María Miquel i Vergés. The former, apparently, never felt
comfortable in Mexico, although, with Dionisio Nieto, another distin-
guished Spanish exile, he created the prestigious Institute of Medical-
Biological Research at the UNAM. Miquel i Vergés, driven by the need
to find ways to survive in Mexico, established, in order to complement
his salary at the Colegio de México, a book binding shop. He lived out
his life between exile in Mexico and his native Catalonia, between aca-
demia, artisan labor and poetry.
A glance at Alfonso Reyes’ diary (Reyes, forthcoming) from those
years is illuminating. From 1939, when he was named president of the
Casa de España en México, Reyes, who had just completed a lengthy
diplomatic service in Argentina and Brazil, faced a complicated life. He
226 M. SOLER
had decided to stay and live in Mexico but he was overwhelmed by his
limited finances, ill health, exhaustion, lack of recognition for his years in
the service, not to speak of other frustrations. He had been offered a job
in Austin, Texas, but did not want to leave the country and much less,
oh horror, to teach classes. His preference for Latin culture was clear but
he was not able to find his place in his home country, until after many
attempts to have an interview with President Lázaro Cárdenas, he finally
succeeded.
Another entry from his diary states that on April 5, 1939, Reyes
exploded. “Afternoon: meeting with Daniel Cosío and Díaz Canedo,
trying to explain to the latter that he cannot have another salary from a
school, besides the one he receives from the Casa de España. Aaayaya! A
struggle with Cosío, trying to find ways to manage the contractual rela-
tionship with Gonzalo Lafora (who does not have a laboratory in which
to work), León Felipe, and José Moreno Villa. Aaayaya! A huge effort
to bring Juan José Domenchina. Aaayaya! And in the midst of all this,
they still have not gotten around to naming me president of the Casa de
España. Aaayaya! And my expenses. Aaayaya!”
Or when Reyes expresses in his diary the fact that he is fed up with
secretarial work in the Casa de España (and he had only been there a few
months). “I do not earn enough to make devoting my life to this worth-
while”, he complains on August 29, 1939, or days later when he once
again rebels against “the disagreeable and demeaning office work of the
Casa de España”.
There were other problematic cases, such as that of Luis Recaséns
Siches, who caused one of those headaches that did not let Reyes
work on his own projects, as when he was asked to give lectures at the
University of Guanajuato. “Recaséns, on his own, felt he was authorized
to postpone until September his lectures in Guanajuato, which should
have begun today and now I must force him to comply”. And he under-
lines the word today. Neither the press nor Mexican intellectuals left him
in peace. Those Spaniards, who come to take our jobs and on top of
that, are paid more than we, was the general idea. One sees this attitude
in a letter that Reyes sent to Regino Hernández Llergo, managing edi-
tor of the magazine Hoy, on July 26, 1939, which I transcribe in my
book La casa del éxodo (Soler 2015, pp. 115–116). In the letter, he com-
plains of false accusations attributed to the work, salaries and personality
of Enrique Díez-Canedo, of José Giral and of the secretary of the Casa
de España.
It was not the only incident, as Reyes faced anew Recaséns Siches and
his “insolence”, as “he feels that his honor is being questioned”. Not
everything, however, was a headache for Reyes, as his conversations with
Enrique Díaz-Canedo, Josep Carner or José Bergamín gave him a bit of
literary breathing space. Finally, in July of 1939, “the President [Lázaro
Cárdenas] asked me not to allow more people into the Casa de España.”
“Thank God”, was his final remark.
The problem of the eminent psychiatrist Lafora was motivated, appar-
ently, by the envy of his colleagues in the research centers where he
worked while he was, at the same time, a member of the Casa de España.
Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora did his doctoral studies at the University of
Madrid, where he was recognized as an outstanding student by his teach-
ers, who recommended the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios give him
a fellowship to Germany. There he worked with such well known doc-
tors as Theodor Zeihen, at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, in the clinic
of doctor Hermann Oppenheim (these two were famous for their dis-
covery of the syndrome that now is called Zeihen-Oppenheim), at the
Psychiatric Institute of doctor Emil Kraepelin (who is recognized as the
founder of modern scientific psychiatry) and in the laboratory of Alois
Alzheimer (of whom no more is needed said) at the same Institute.
Without a doubt, no one within the group of Spanish refugees was a bet-
ter qualified psychiatrist.
Alfonso Reyes, again in his Diary, notes his reaction: “An incredible
and unexpected letter from Lafora, from Morelia, an exhibition of vul-
garities and even a lack of mental stability, frequent in psychiatrists”. It
was not long before Reyes sought the backing of the board of directors
of the Casa in order to terminate Lafora’s contract as of October 31,
1939. According to his Diary, “Yesterday, in spite of waiting as long as
possible to take this step, it was necessary to remove Lafora’s name from
the roster of the Casa de España”,2 action that was ratified in a letter
to Lafora in November of that year and which prompted a long reply
to Reyes in which Lafora enumerated many things that he had done
during the year and all that he had not been able to do for lack of a
laboratory. These arguments were part of his justification for not turn-
ing in the manuscript that he had promised, consisting of a series of lec-
tures that he had given in Morelia and Guadalajara about “Character
and personality”, and which constituted a not very indirect criticism of
the Casa de España and of his colleagues. “The public and private criti-
cisms about some of the books published by the Casa de España and my
228 M. SOLER
responsibility in maintaining my prestige in scientific circles in Europe

and America oblige me to take care with the text, thinking of readers
from all latitudes.”
As far as the laboratories were concerned, the one in the General
Hospital was inadequate for a physiologist of his stature and the
Castañeda insane asylum did not have a laboratory at all. “I have pre-
pared for study several brains of patients with medical records written
by me, in order to make entire slices with the large Sartorius microtome
belonging to the laboratory of the General Hospital. When I went to use
it, I found to my surprise that the blade for the celloidin pieces neces-
sary for these large cuts of microscopic thickness had not been bought.
This forced a delay […], and I had to acquire, with my own money, the
ingredients, jars, and even shelves for the laboratory, so as not to ask for
them from the Casa de España” (Soler 2015, p. 288). Another reason
for Reyes not renewing Lafora’s contract the following year (all members
of the Casa de España were contracted anew each year, with no excep-
tions), was that “the Board knows that you have been carrying out inde-
pendent professional work with private patients, who pay you for your
services, thus invalidating the second reason for keeping you among the
members who depend for their income on the budget of the Casa de
España in Mexico”, to which the psychiatrist answered: “I still have some
explanations concerning your mention of ‘independent professional
work’. When Dr. Perrín spoke to me last July, representing the Board
about this particular matter, I replied that from seven in the morning
until seven at night, including some Sundays, I work exclusively for the
Casa de España, which is some nine to ten hours a day, discounting time
for eating and resting, more than any other public employee. From seven
at night until ten, when I have dinner, I see patients, but not as an inde-
pendent professional but in collaboration with doctors with Mexican
medical degrees […] I explained this matter concerning the unbecoming
question of my fees, which had been attributed to me, indicating that the
amount charged had been suggested to me by prominent Mexican doc-
tors with whom I had consulted. If the fees were higher than the sug-
gested ones, it is because they were added to those of other doctors, a
practice I was obliged to follow because, not having a Mexican medical
license, I could not practice freely by myself” (Soler 2015, pp. 289–290).
And that was not all. “I added that I could not renounce this source
of income, which I believed to be legal, because I needed to send dol-
lars every month to my relatives in Spain, remittances that suffered two
strong depreciations here and there […] At the beginning of August,

I received approval of this situation through Dr. Perrín. Therefore I did
not consider that the announcement of the Board entitled Clarifications
had to do with me when it was issued a few weeks later, at the end of
August, concerning the ‘prohibition of freely exercising any profession’.
I assumed it referred to other residents” of the Casa.
Lafora saw himself as different from the rest, so there was no way
that he and Reyes could come to an agreement. They were personali-
ties that clashed. Reyes finally hid behind the Board, which was formed,
when Reyes was named president of the Casa de España, by Eduardo
Villaseñor, representing the federal government, Gustavo Baz, as rector
of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico, Enrique Arreguín,
representing the Secretaría de Educación Pública, and Daniel Cosío
Villegas, secretary of the Board and of the Casa de España.
It would be worth pondering how much influence doctor Tomás
G. Perrín wielded when making decisions that were the providence of
the director of the Casa de España. The historian Clara Lida includes
him in a list of persons on which the “directors relied” when selecting
the exiles that would be integrated into the Casa. Perrín was an eminent
Spanish doctor who had lived many years in Mexico (Lida 1988).
Jesús González Cajal (1988, pp. 675–695) wrote in a biographi-
cal essay on the Spanish psychiatrist that “his person, enjoying maxi-
mum social and scientific prestige, was the object of discussion even
in [Mexico], because of jealousy created by his triumphs and because
of his particular character traits […]”, a fact corroborated by his son
Victor: “His public and private fame increased. Soon he became the
most popular neuropsychiatrist in the city, in spite of the underground
or ‘backhanded opposition’ of his colleagues, ‘who did not understand
his therapeutic efficiency and were worried about a decrease in their cli-
entele’”. No mention was made of the problems that arose as a conse-
quence of his practice.
Not everything was fighting with his Mexican colleagues. On March
10, 1939, Lafora was elected a member of the Academy of Medicine
and exactly two months later (May 10), he was accepted as an honor-
ary member of the Mexican Society of Neurology and Psychiatry. He
had decided to edit and enlarge his lectures on “Character and per-
sonality” before leaving the Casa de España, which kept them from
being published, but he was able to establish a Laboratory for Medical
and Biological Studies in 1941, which later became the Institute for
230 M. SOLER
Medical Biological Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of

Mexico.
Knowing that his family was having a hard time in Franco’s Spain,
Lafora soon longed to reunite with it and in 1947, he returned to
Madrid, hoping that his merits would be recognized, for that is what his
friends from different psychiatric associations had promised. But all the
promises turned to smoke and his life became a disaster, his health broke
and he practically ceased publishing. He was finally named head of ser-
vice of the Provincial Hospital of Madrid in 1950 and retired in 1955.
During his last years, he received recognition from the Official College
of Physicians of Madrid in 1965 and from the Society of Neurology,
Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. He passed away at the age of 85 in 1971.
The case of José María Miquel i Vergés is very different. He was born
in 1903, and arrived as an exile in 1939. His undergraduate degree,
at the University of Barcelona, was in Philosophy and Letters. Once
in Mexico, he took his doctorate in Spanish letters, at the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma of Mexico. In Spain, rather, in Catalonia, he pub-
lished (in Catalan) poetry and studies about Catalan publishing in the
nineteenth century, as well as an anthology of Catalan poetry. In Mexico,
he continued writing poetry, and won prizes in the Floral Games of the
Catalan Language in Exile. A brief anthology edited by him was pub-
lished by Costa-Amic (ten poets in 200 pages) of the first romantic poets
who wrote in Catalan (Miquel i Vergés 1944).
Once settled into the Casa de España in Mexico in November of
1939, to which he had been recommended by Josep Carner, member of
the Junta de Cultura Española in exile, he proposed writing a “mono-
graph about the independence movement as seen in the Mexican press”.
He sent installments in March of 1940, which Alfonso Reyes wanted to
publish that same year, and others on December 14th, so that he had
to propose a new project, as was obligatory for members of the Casa
de España for each New year. It occurred to Miquel that there were no
books about the participants in the Mexican war of independence, so he
proposed to Alfonso Reyes a dictionary of insurgents and their support-
ers. In spite of his previous experiences, he undoubtedly was not fully
aware of the difficulties he would have to face, because he promised to
finish it in two years.
Alfonso Reyes by then had budgetary problems, and he would never
cease to be bedeviled by them. Among others, salaries were cut, com-
munications broke down, misunderstandings developed, but nothing too
earthshaking. At the Colegio, Miquel i Vergés offered a seminar on the

bibliography of the independence movement in which eight exceptional
doctoral students enrolled: Enriqueta López Lira, Susana Uribe, Manuel
Carrera Stampa, Carlos Bosch García, Jorge-Hugo Díaz-Thomé, Alfonso
García Ruiz, Ernesto de la Torre Villar, and Fernando Sandoval.
Returning to 1942, Miquel i Vergés’ projects involved the dictionary
of insurgents and the unedited papers of friar Servando Teresa de Mier,
which finally were published by the Colegio de México in December
of 1944 (Mier Noriega y Guerra 1944). In the archival documents of
1943, 1944, and September of 1945, Miquel reports that the dictionary
is almost finished and that he will turn it in at year’s end but a year later
and again in September of 1946, he reports that it is almost ready. By
now he has spent six years working on the dictionary but at the same
time, along with Carlos Bosch García, he worked on the nineteenth cen-
tury papers of the Spanish Embassy in Mexico, surely influenced by his
friend the ambassador Luis Nicolau d’Olwer. A series of texts relating to
Spain and Mexico would result (Miquel i Vergés 1945, 1949, 1956).
Following the chronology, in 1953 he explains the research that he
has undertaken and that has kept him from finishing the dictionary. On
April 28th he writes Alfonso Reyes and acknowledges receipt of a reply
in which the president of the Colegio informs him of the end of his con-
tract. He reacted by saying: “It is very painful for me, not only for the
years spent at this institution but also because it constitutes a serious
blow to my already debilitated domestic economy”. Reyes, surely keep-
ing in mind the reasons that Miquel mentions in his letter, answers that
“no one has ever been fired from the Colegio de México. We are just
informing you of the fact that the Board considers that the dictionary has
taken too long”, and asks him to propose a new research project: “we
only ask that this time, you give us a realistic time frame”.
Surely this exchange was prompted by the report of April 27th enti-
tled “Notes on the Dictionary of Insurgents prepared by Mr. José María
Miquel y Vergés”, which begins by saying that in order to make a long
story short, one only needs to remember the following: “September 22,
1945: Mr. Miquel y Vergés reports to the Colegio: My work, after four
years, is almost finished […] I suggest a solution which will facilitate its
completion by year’s end”, being to pay for a secretary, “just for the last
three months of the year”.
The research that Miquel carried out in several archives is not the
only activity in which he was involved and he clarifies this later, although
232 M. SOLER
in 1946 there is no mention in his yearly report of the dictionary but

rather of belonging to “a commission composed of Malagón, Bosch and
Mrs. López Lira which has started publishing the Archivo Diplomático
Hispanoamericano”. By early 1950, “Miquel, in answer to a request for
information by the Colegio, replied that: ‘the dictionary is almost fin-
ished’ and [again] he requests a secretary in order to finish quickly the
work and send it to press this same year of 1950.”
Although the dictionary was practically finished, the process would
still take years, because in July of 1952, Miquel reports to the Colegio:
“[…] in the space of at the most two months, I will be able to give the
Colegio the finished product.” Miquel started the dictionary in 1941,
and finally on January 6, 1953, he advised the Colegio: “It is with great
satisfaction that I report that the dictionary of insurgents is totally fin-
ished and within just a few days […] I will turn in the first letters [of
the alphabetized list of names] to the institution”, adding that publica-
tion “should begin as soon as possible” and, I insist, he wrote “within
just a few days”. To his credit it must be said that he was a professor of
the independence period, and gave classes from 1944 to 1947. At the
same time, he produced three books: Mina, el español frente a España,
published in 1945; El general Prim en España y en México, published in
1949, and La diplomacia española en México, 1822–1823, published by
the Colegio de México in 1956.
In December of 1953, he did, in fact, turn in the first letters of the
dictionary and started looking for a publisher. The Fondo de Cultura
Económica and Espasa Calpe were interested, although because of
its length, they had doubts about its viability if there was not support
from other institutions. The Fondo budgeted two volumes of 800 pages
each and the Colegio de México—Alfonso Reyes—looked for financing
from Petróleos Mexicanos (the Mexican petroleum state monopoly),
the National Bank of Crédito Ejidal, Altos Hornos de México, and the
National Bank de la Propiedad (a bank founded and directed by Catalan
exiles). In December of 1956, Reyes writes Miquel: “the dictionary
causes me great anguish, believe me”. When will the famous dictionary
finally be published? Many years later, in 1969, when Hermanos Porrúa
finally brought it out. Miquel i Vergés never saw it published, as he died
in 1964. (And Reyes preceded him in death in 1959.)
This magnificent work, which took 14 years to complete, never seen
by its author! I can imagine, as I have been an editor all my life, the
frustration (remember his phrase “begin publishing as soon as possible”)

he must have felt, seeing his great opus unpublished.
I have explored some of the circumstances lived by those in exile that
come from a bird’s eye view of my own personal experiences of exile.
Although they are not related to the institutions created during the years
of Lázaro Cárdenas’ presidency or with those to which Alfonso Reyes
and Daniel Cosío Villegas dedicated themselves, they are, unfortunately,
representative of the personal struggles which took place among exiles.
From the memories of my childhood, I feel that the case of these two
men speak of the struggle to survive in a world of conflict, both internal
and external, and that in this world, the Casa de España in Mexico tried
to open doors and heal wounds in spite of a difficult environment and
the inevitable clash of personalities.
Notes
1. Cf. the blog http://caminsdutopia.blogspot.com.
2. The text reads “hubo que radiar a Gonzalo Lafora”. Radiar is a galicism
that means “to remove a name from a list or roster”, apud Francisco J.
Santamaría (1959), Diccionario de mexicanismos, Mexico City: Porrúa, s.
v. “radiar”.
Bibliography
González Cajal, J. (1988). Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora: breves notas biográficas.
Revista de la Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, VIII(27), 675–695.
Lida C. E. (1988). La Casa de España en México, with the Collaboration of José
Antonio Matesanz. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
Mier Noriega y Guerra, S. T. de. (1944). Escritos inéditos de fray Servando Teresa
de Mier, introduction, notes and texts editing by J. M. Miquel i Vergés and
H. Díaz-Thomé. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
Miquel i Vergés, J. M. (1944). Els primers romàntics dels països de llengua cata-
lana. Mexico City: Biblioteca Catalana.
Miquel i Vergés, J. M. (1945). Mina, el español frente a España. Mexico City:
Xóchitl.
Miquel i Vergés, J. M. (1949). El general Prim en España y en México. Mexico
City: Hermes.
Miquel i Vergés, J. M. (1956). La diplomacia española en México, 1822–1823.
234 M. SOLER
Pla Brugat, D. (1999). Els exiliats catalans. Un estudio de la emigración

republicana española en México. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de

Antropología, Orfeó Català de México, Libros del Umbral.
Reyes, A. (forthcoming). Diario V (1938–1945), compilation, critical edition and
introduction by Javier Garciadiego Dantan. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, El Colegio de México.
Rubio, J. (1977). La emigración de la guerra civil de 1936–1939. Historia del
éxodo que se produce con el fin de la II República española, 3 vols. Madrid:
Librería Editorial San Martín.
Soler, M. (2015). La casa del éxodo. Los exiliados y su obra en la Casa de España y
El Colegio de México, 2nd ed. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
CHAPTER 11
José Gaos and José Medina Echavarría:

The Intellectual Vocation
Andrés Lira
In 1963, when I was taking some of my last courses at the Faculty of

Law of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM),
I read some texts written by José Medina Echavarría. I never met him
personally; he decided to leave Mexico for good in 1946. Later on,
when I got involved with El Colegio de México, I met José Gaos, who
used to lament over Medina’s early departure. According to Gaos, his
studies of the sociology of knowledge would have greatly benefited the
history of ideas in this country. Gaos used a familiar tone when talk-
ing about Medina Echavarría (they were classmates in high school and
went to university together during their first years in Valencia), and
he had the habit of pointing out certain disagreements between them.
‘José Gaos y José Medina Echavarría, la vocación intelectual’ (January–April

1986) Estudios Sociológicos de El Colegio de México, IV: 10, 11–27. In this
version of the article we made corrections, added bibliographical details, and
wrote a new fifth paragraph as well as an epilogue.
A. Lira (*) 
e-mail: alira@colmex.mx

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_11
236 A. LIRA
In spite of these differences, however, they always shared a series of com-

mon characteristics. It was a dynamic friendship, marked by harmonies
and counterpoints.
The Young Days

José Gaos was born on December 27, 1900, in Gijón; and José
Medina Echavarría—on December 25, 1903, in Castellón de la
Plana. Both studied humanities. Gaos initiated his academic career at
the University of Valencia and finished his studies in Madrid, where
he obtained his first university degree in 1923 and his Doctorate of
Philosophy in 1928. Medina studied law at the University of Valencia
where he earned his degree in 1924, and for the following two years,
he studied philosophy in Madrid and received his doctorate degree in
1930. Both of their doctoral theses were published and both worked
as Spanish lecturers at French universities, as this served as a sort of
apprenticeship for young scholars who wished to pursue an academic
career once they had concluded their studies in Spain. In 1931,
Medina received a scholarship to study philosophy in Germany from
the Committee for Promotion of Studies and Scientific Research
(Junta de Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas, JAE)
in Madrid. Gaos learned German and studied German philosophy
in Spain. Both were given high-level professorships: Gaos in philos-
ophy in Zaragoza and later in Madrid; Medina in philosophy of law
in Murcia. In addition to teaching, they took part in additional edu-
cational activities: they served as consultants, sat on editorial boards,
and helped develop syllabuses for their respective subject matters.
Apart from organizing classes and conferences, they both engaged in
an extensive project of translating works of German philosophy into
Spanish, gathering those that they found essential for their teaching
and research.1
Their work as writers is characterized by the quality and clarity of their
translations and, at the same time, by the difficult style used in their orig-
inal scripts. They employed complicated punctuation, dependent clauses,
and long sentences—styles which seem to reflect their thinking process
more than an actual order of presentation.
11 JOSÉ GAOS AND JOSÉ MEDINA ECHAVARRÍA: THE INTELLECTUAL VOCATION 237
Academic Life
Two parallel lives that run equidistantly to each other, though this
did not include the number of translations, classes, and original
works. Gaos—who was strictly dedicated to philosophy since the very
beginning—had an advantage: philosophy was an open field. Medina, in
turn, found a limited and impoverished academic tradition in the field
of philosophy of law, with scarce possibilities and almost no room for
productive projects. This dissatisfaction led him to the field of sociology,
the subject he taught for a course at the University of Madrid in 1934
and also the subject of a book he later put together titled Introducción a
la sociología contemporánea [Introduction to Contemporary Sociology],
which he delivered to the printer’s in 1936, though it was not made
public due to the military rebellion against the Spanish Republic (in
Mexico, Medina would take this text up again). In that same year of
1936, in June, Medina was preparing to study sociology in England and
the United States, with a scholarship from the JAE of Madrid, but the
Civil War broke out and he had to suspend his projects.2
When Fernando de los Ríos left office, Gaos was appointed rector of
the University of Madrid in September 1936. The republic’s seat of gov-
ernment moved to Valencia and commissioned Gaos to serve as a rep-
resentative at the Paris World’s Fair in 1937. From Paris, after a brief
trip to Madrid, he went to Cuba, also commissioned by the Spanish gov-
ernment to rally support for the Republican cause, and from Cuba, he
went to Mexico in August 1938. By October of that year, he was earning
acclaim for his conferences and academic projects, which would be for-
malized the following year, when it had become impossible for him to
return to a republican Spain. Gaos’ political activity had been limited to
drafting projects for the reform of primary, secondary and higher edu-
cation (approved by the authorities of the Spanish Republic), to his par-
ticipation as a voting citizen in the elections that were opened under the
republican regime, and to his affiliation with and economic contribution
to the Socialist Party and the Union of Education Workers [Unión de
Trabajadores de la Enseñanza]. Once, at the suggestion of his teacher
José Ortega y Gasset, he accepted—unsuccessfully—the candidacy of
Deputy of the Parliament of Zaragoza. In the end, he turned down other
offers in order to appear on his party’s lists.3
238 A. LIRA
In addition to being a professor and a member of several academic

bodies, Medina Echavarría won the position of Legal Counsel to the
Congress of Deputies (from 1932 to 1937). In 1938, he was appointed
Chargé d’Affaires of Spain to Warsaw, a position he apparently held until
early 1939 (AHCOLMEX, folio no. 277). We know little about his
departure to America. A friend of his, a Mexican professor, informed us
that Medina’s original plan had been to settle with his family in Cuba
because his mother was Cuban.4 He finally decided to go to Mexico.
He arrived in May 1939, and in June, he had already defined pro-
jects for courses in sociology and social psychology (according to the
notes, he made on stationary from the Montejo Hotel in Mexico City,
where he stayed the first days after his arrival). Later, invoices appear
for books acquired by La Casa de España in Mexico at his request:
works in German, French, Italian, and Portuguese that he considered
indispensable.5
Aside from their common ground of constant intellectual work, there
was a clear difference between the two friends: Gaos worked in admin-
istrative positions only because he accepted them in addition to his aca-
demic work, while Medina deliberately participated in them. Medina
had a political vocation that made him perceive the academic field as
being narrow; the subjects he preferred to teach in his classrooms were
about activities that took place outside of them, namely, in the public
arena. Medina was just preparing to enter into public life when the vio-
lent expatriation broke out. Upon losing his political grounds, he had to
return to the confinement of academic life. Without having intended to
do so, having fully matured, he approached his friend from youth once
again during his time in Mexico. From then on, methodical reflection
would be the dominant note in both existences, along with developing
programs to advance it and inviting other faculty members to participate
in it.
Gaos and Medina were always characterized by a conscious definition
of their lives as intellectuals—as thinkers and critics of the society and
culture of their time. Both of them initiated rather routine courses in
the curriculum of schools and university faculties with enthusiasm and
originality. Their bibliographic programs were published for the ben-
efit of a wide audience, whose actual interest in the matter was prob-
ably less pronounced than expected. Taxing schedules—such as the
one imposed on Medina, who had to teach his sociology course at the
School of Jurisprudence of the Universidad Nacional de México at seven
o’clock in the morning—were punctually fulfilled, despite the sleepless

nights demanded by their true work, that of research and aggiornamento
(updating and modernization). Both rejected salaries from any job out-
side their institutions and, in the lean years of El Colegio de México,
they endured substantial salary cuts.6
The passionate satisfaction of intellectual life compensated for the
austerity. There was no room for counterpoints in these parallel lives
other than those that intellectual integrity led to in itself. Their differ-
ences started to arise during the years of the Second World War, an event
which both had a personal interest in: the Spanish Civil War had been its
prelude.
“God Save Us from the Social Sciences”

The first discrepancy between them became indirectly evident. It hap-
pened in mid-1941, following the much talked-about book Ideology and
Utopia by Karl Mannheim which was published by Fondo de Cultura
Económica. As is well known, Mannheim argued that intellectuals
formed the only social group capable of reconciling the interests and
perspectives of the struggling classes. Only they would have a broad and
accurate vision of society and history, and only they could save human
freedom from the two prisons of thought: the ideology of the privileged
classes—history as inevitable and justified development—and the utopia
of the deprived—social adjustment through the overturning of historical
rhythm.
In his commentary essay published in June 1941, titled
Responsabilidad de la inteligencia [The Responsibility of Intelligence],7
Medina deemed Mannheim’s experience to be characteristic of what
was happening at the time; he regarded his thesis as an achievement
that could successfully guide intellectuals in their work. Four months
later, Gaos published Un libro de nuestros días [A book of our days], a
broad text that acknowledges the historical importance of the book but,
at the same time, introduces a more reserved perspective. Gaos stated
that intellectuals are part of society and cannot have a global and accu-
rate appreciation of the whole. This total vision must only be possible for
God, who is conceived as an omniscient being.8
The real but friendly confrontation occurred soon after. Medina
Echavarría had been able to save the historical part of his Introducción a
la sociología contemporánea from the destruction caused in Spain “by the
240 A. LIRA
events of July 1936,” as Spanish intellectuals euphemistically referred to

the Civil War. In 1940, he published his work in Mexico under the title
Panorama de la sociología contemporánea [Panorama of Contemporary
Sociology], an exemplary work in which the distribution of authors and
themes is difficult to surpass. However, Medina declared dissatisfaction
with the book for lacking a second part dedicated to theoretical and meth-
odological questions of sociology. Yet, he soon solved this problem. That
same year, 1940, he gave a series of lectures in the city of Morelia, which
resulted in the book Sociología: teoría y técnica [Sociology: Theory and
Technique], published by Fondo de Cultura Económica in August 1941.
With the publication of this title, Medina fulfilled his old eagerness to make
Introducción a la sociología contemporánea complete by adding a method-
ological section. Both in the determination of the object and in the for-
mulation and description of the methods, Medina was surprisingly abreast
of what had been published in different languages up until that point.
Sociología: teoría y técnica is, even now, a feat of the Spanish language.9
Shortly after the publication of this book, José Gaos sent his friend
Medina commentary in the form of an open letter titled “God Save Us
from the Social Sciences.”10 Gaos recognized the quality of the work, the
extensive information presented and the accuracy with which it presents
the substantivity of general sociology. Not only sociologists would be
interested in the book, but the subject would also attract the attention of
unschooled people, to which Gaos warned him:
It is understandable, it is natural, that you strive after the substantiality of

general sociology, since you have defined yourself, in general, as a sociolo-
gist: it is to strive after your own personality.
But what could “others” care if Medina fought for his personal-
ity through the affirmation of sociology as a science? For Gaos, what
Medina showed, underneath, was a will to dominate the will of other
human beings:
[…] what is decisive, then, is the struggle for science. And, truly, it is and
will be decisive […] Because it is ultimately about wanting. One can per-
fectly see his—naturalistic—“ideal” of power, of domination.
If Medina spoke of freeing social science of charlatanism and sentimen-

tality in order to bestow the necessary rigor to both observation and
the treatment of its object, it was because he wanted to treat man with
the efficiency of an engineer. This was terrible. According to Gaos, it
amounted to destroying the possibilities of human freedom. It was to
remove reason from man, to make him the object of calculations, to
influence him, to manipulate him. If the will for power hidden behind
the social sciences were fulfilled, there would be no place for its effects:
for solidarity, for creative impulses and other noble human qualities,
which—like the ignoble ones—are the fruit of irrationality. The love of
knowledge and the contemplative spirit would also be destroyed, giving
rise to a utilitarian knowledge, to techniques that would lead to autom-
atism in the hands of insensitive men (proof of which was already visible
in the efficiency of the war propaganda of their days). It was better, Gaos
concluded, to implore an omnipotent God from a conscious assumption
of our limitations as humans than to create men with unlimited powers
of social manipulation.
Gaos had taken his arguments to an extreme. His reasons for doing
so were both right and wrong. Medina contemplated his answer. He
finished it in February of the following year and, together with Gaos’
letter, published it under the title En busca de la ciencia del hombre [In
Search of the Science of Man]11 in the journal Cuadernos Americanos.
Medina acknowledged that his friend’s starting point was relevant: his
work Sociología: teoría y técnica was, in fact, an attempt to outline social
science and define its scope. But the purpose Gaos attributed to him was
inaccurate:
In essence—Medina said—it is about the following question: Is the already

intolerable state of our civilization susceptible to a rational cure or should
we hopelessly abandon ourselves to the play of blind forces? Still believing
in the first alternative, I wanted to highlight the value of the social sciences
as one of the fundamental elements of that possibility.
Medina was far from the naturalistic ideal and, at a time when history
was presenting the horrors of automation, he did not seek to annul
humanism, either. For the precise reason that there was a range of inter-
mediate possibilities between autonomic life and automatic life, it was up
to social science to illuminate all of them so that man could consciously
use his reason—that while being historical and relative, in the end, it was
still reason. Such was the mission of science. No other purpose had to be
sought.
242 A. LIRA
Science thus fulfilled its function for “the others.” It was an instru-
ment of certainty. But since his friend the philosopher was among “the
others,” he appealed to the philosophical challenge Gaos was facing:
There is talk of the need for a new faith, for new beliefs. I agree with that.
And I believe that, as a response to what it used to be in classical times,
this is the true task of philosophy today. Philosophy is vision, enlighten-
ment, total reconstruction. But I doubt very much whether it will be able
to regain that role if in the future it turns its back on the collective destiny
that science now clearly represents in human life and politics.
This is how the courteous confrontation between the two friends ended
in February 1942. From then on, there was ambiguous discord, not
in relation to their friendship and affective ties—these were preserved
despite the geographical distance that they later had between them—but
indeed with regard to their different conceptions of intellectual work.
The Loyalty of the Intellectual

Gaos began to achieve success in teaching and research in the field of the
history of ideas in Mexico and Hispanic America. Remarkable disciples,
books, articles and translations serve as evidence of his work. Medina was
not outdone by him: he worked at the Centro de Estudios Sociales at El
Colegio de México, taught courses, and participated in the Jornadas, this
center’s publications that dealt with fundamental human sciences topics.
Their teachings were backed by translations, essays, and critiques that the
authors themselves were able to save from dispersion by compiling them
in several books.
Medina Echavarría had written several essays since arriving in Mexico,
which he anthologized in the book Responsabilidad de la inteligencia
(Fondo de Cultura Económica 1943). The main theme of these works
was the ethics assumed by intellectuals in the face of the political crisis of
their time. To highlight this unity of purpose, Medina wrote a few intro-
ductory lines in which he spoke of the experience of the emigration of
European intellectuals, a fact that confirmed the intimate relationship—
perceived only in moments of brutal splits—between the community
and the intellectuals who were forced to uproot themselves from their
original environment. He highlighted the advantages of the Spanish-
speaking emigrants who were welcomed in Hispanic America and lived
surrounded by an environment that was conducive to intensifying and

continuing their work. But the essential purpose of these lines was to
point out the dangers of the “vicarious life” into which intellectuals had
fallen—figures who spoke about what was happening or should happen
in different spheres of social life and were not able to participate in them,
nor could they pay the price of responsibility.
It was a subject of painful topicality. In 1944, the Mexican econo-
mist Jesús Silva Herzog, founder and director of the journal Cuadernos
Americanos, recognized that many leading intellectuals had died vio-
lently, some had to emigrate while others yielded to the demands of
irrationalism, assumed a cynical attitude, or took refuge in some reli-
gious denomination, thus leaving the way open for the forces of total-
itarianism, war, and disaster. He called for a “traveling round table,”
which consisted of commentaries from successive writings on different
themes that were raised by participants who had been chosen for their
good reputation as critics. The table was called Lealtad del intelectual
[Loyalty of the Intellectual] and, apart from its founder, its participants
included Mariano Picón Salas from Venezuela, as well as José Gaos, José
Medina Echavarría, and Juan Larrea (Cuadernos Americanos, 3:3, 1944,
pp. 32–48).
In his contribution, José Gaos stated that the intellectual was the
product of a long historical process, a professionally defined man in
Western culture where specialization is inevitable and not without advan-
tages. As men, intellectuals could share the problems of society. As pro-
fessionals of ideas, however, should they be required to take a special
stance, different from other men, regarding the solving of these prob-
lems? Perhaps, they should, he admitted, as providers of ideas and means
of solutions, but without exceeding the limits of their capacity.
If, however, an intellectual tried to put his ideas into practice, he
would have to confront politicians on their own ground, most likely
becoming a novice politician in the process. Ideas should be given to
those who can put them into practice. Intellectuals found their satis-
faction in conceiving and sharing them. Politicians—as professionals of
power—found theirs in exercising power, and power is neither commu-
nicated nor shared: we have seen the complaisant husband who forgives
his wife and shares her, but there are no complaisant politicians. Besides,
Gaos concluded, men of ideas who simultaneously have political genius
have always been exceptional historical cases (Cuadernos Americanos,
3:3, 1944, pp. 37–40).
244 A. LIRA
Medina pointed out the social and concrete scope of the issue. The fact
that the participation of the intellectual in politics was raised as a problem
was symptomatic of a deranged society, in which solutions were frequently
sought guided by the appearance of acknowledged prestige instead of the
actual content of the problems. Intellectuals were recognized as having a
status in society that they had acquired by playing roles outside the polit-
ical arena, and they were only called to serve in government institutions
when the professionals in power had exhausted their own resources. The
intellectual in that situation made use of a hollow status:
Professors of archaeology or novelists—Medina said, alluding to common

examples in the milieu of those days—who are involved in politics tend to
show the propensity to transfer their professional or literary prestige to this
area and then cover themselves up in their other domains with a greater
or lesser halo of their political, or merely “administrative,” prestige. This
is a social fraud and quite often a painful and personal disappointment.
(Cuadernos Americanos, 3:3, 1944, pp. 40–43)
All authentic intellectuals, Medina said, lives the pains of his city as per-
sonal anguish, but public reflection on these problems should be done by
those who possess an authentic political talent—an uncommon quality
and, of course, non-existent in those who made a living from irrespon-
sible overlaps of social prestige—(Cuadernos Americanos, 3:3, 1944, pp.
43–44). This time, the vision of the two friends was convergent.
Medina continued with his work days of teaching and research, but he
thought again of emigrating at the end of 1945. In December, he went
to Colombia as a guest professor, returned briefly to Mexico, and then
left for good in the summer of 1946.
Philosophy and History, Sociology and Critical Current

Affairs
1945 and 1946 were trial years for El Colegio de México. Budgetary
problems together with an atmosphere of disillusionment following
the end of World War II led to the departure of some Spanish intellec-
tuals who, with their advice and translations, had been enriching both
the editorial catalogue of the Fondo de Cultura Económica and the life
of the institution that succeeded La Casa de España en México, which
was dissolved in October 1940 to make way for El Colegio de México.

However, the vast majority of these Spaniards remained in the country.
José Gaos helped secure its permanence and positive activity.
Encouraged by his fruitful experience as a professor, he had used his
course Introducción histórica a la filosofía [Historical Introduction
to Philosophy] to create a space for intellectual coexistence, in which
some students stood out and became speakers and colleagues. As early
as 1939, he saw the need and the possibility for some of them, such as
Leopoldo Zea, to become part of La Casa de España en México’s schol-
arship program so they could fully devote themselves to studying philos-
ophy to turn their vocation into their profession. This course gave rise to
useful teaching books, for example: Antología filosófica: La filosofía griega
[Philosophical Anthology: Greek Philosophy] (published by La Casa
de España in 1940) and—from the 1940 course about Christianity and
the Middle Ages—another book titled Del cristianismo a la edad media.
Trabajos de historia filosófica, literaria y artística [From Christianity
to the Middle Ages. Works about Philosophical, Literary, and Artistic
History] (published by El Colegio de México in 1943), which compiled
the works of Leopoldo Zea, Edmungo O’Gorman, José Luis Martínez,
Gustavo Pizarro, Tomás Gurza, Antonio Gómez Robledo, María
Ramona Rey, and Pina Juárez Fraustro.
Pleasant experiences with intellectuals, students, and colleagues moti-
vated Gaos to stay in Mexico permanently. He became a Mexican citi-
zen in 1941, and later, after 15 years of active intellectual life, he spoke
of his “empatriation” in Mexico. We previously referred to his book
Filosofía mexicana de nuestros días [Mexican Philosophy of Our Times],
in which he brought together several of his works on the subject, begin-
ning with the article Cinco años de filosofía en México [Five Years of
Philosophy in Mexico]—originally published in the National University’s
magazine Filosofía y Letras (October–December 1945), in which he pro-
vided a positive and hopeful balance of the philosophical disciplines and
the history of ideas, without holding back any merit due to the work
of his colleagues and students from the National University’s School
of Philosophy and Letters and El Colegio de México, where he estab-
lished his Seminar for the Study of the History of Ideas in the Spanish
Language in the institution’s Center of Historical Studies, which was
founded by the historian Silvio Zavala in 1941 and had been directed
by him ever since. This was a positive and hopeful balance, to which
this Spaniard continued to add results; this Spaniard who was not exiled
246 A. LIRA
but rather “translanded” and “empatriated” in Mexico and whose work

paved the way for the history of ideas in Mexico. He did so as a pro-
fessor, researcher, and author of monographic works and major antholo-
gies, in which he showed the breadth and variety of Hispanic American
thought. This was also the theme of issue 12 of the Jornadas collection
(published in 1944), a publication of El Colegio de México’s Center
for Social Studies, which, as mentioned above, was founded in 1943
and whose organization and direction was entrusted to José Medina
Echavarría. The collection dedicated its first issues to the prevailing
topic: the study of war. It later opened its scope to other human sciences
topics, more notably, to issues related to Latin America, in line with the
steps of the Center for Social Studies and the topics it began to address
as well as those that had been cultivated in the Center for Historical
Studies for some time before.
The relevant and commendable work of José Medina Echavarría
would not develop in the same optimistic terms as that of José Gaos. The
subjects and circumstances of his work overshadowed its achievements
and scope. Sociology, as “a manifestation of a moment of crisis” (subject
of Medina’s first article published in the National University’s Revista
mexicana de sociología, vol. I, no. 2), imposed a difficult follow-up: the
constructive endeavor of this science was difficult to follow, but Medina
was willing to continue his efforts to demonstrate the possible scope of
the discipline that could only be achieved by means of refined concepts
and research techniques. This was the object of his work Panorama de
la sociología contemporánea [Panorama of Contemporary Sociology] that
was published in 1940, his work Sociología: teoría y técnica [Sociology:
Theory and Technique, 1941], and of several articles of greater scope
in which he took note of “the configuration of the crisis” which he
responded to, thus paying the price of historical relativity, the sociologi-
cal work he was engaged in.
As he took on this task, he promoted the translation of important
works such as Economy and Society—Max Weber’s greatest contribu-
tion, which was revealed post-mortem by his wife Marianne Weber—it
resulted to be a problematic book and was first published in Spanish
in four volumes in 1944. Medina completed the first part, the driest
and most difficult one, which related to fundamental sociological con-
cepts. Daniel Cosío Villegas urged him to finish the text and went so
far as to publish the second volume first, forcing Medina to hasten the
composition and presentation of the translation, which he had to deliver

under a great deal of pressure.
We must warn that in this work of updating social science, Medina
was a network builder. His presence in Mexico was immediately reflected
in the catalogues of the Fondo de Cultura Económica, La Casa de
España, and El Colegio de México. Medina suggested works and possi-
ble translators to Cosio Villegas, founder and the director of the Fondo
de Cultura Económica (FCE) contacted them directly and sent them
books to translate. Some of them, such as Vicente Herrero and Vicente
Llorens, lived in Santo Domingo, where they received the works they
would translate for the FCE. Vicente Herrero would later come to
Mexico to join El Colegio de México and to continue his extensive work
as a translator for the FCE but, like so many others, he would leave the
country in 1946 (Lira 2015a, pp. 361–380).
To the rhythm of the “haste of the experience,” in the words of
Medina, and among the signs of the Second World War that was to
come, El Colegio de México inaugurated its Center for Social Studies,
which was announced with great fanfare. The highlight of the event was
an invitation to a seminar on the study of war, a subject of unquestiona-
ble importance at the time, which summoned distinguished scholars and
was open to the public, in which there was no lack of notable politicians.
The papers and discussions of this seminar were collected in the journal
Jornadas and published by the Center for Social Studies, which, as men-
tioned above, was opened the following year to the Permanent Seminar
on Latin America, hosted by the Center for Social Studies.
The journal Jornadas began with a statement written by Medina titled
Prólogo al estudio de la guerra [Prologue to the Study of War], which was
published in the first issue. Certainly, Medina had been working on this
and other subjects related to the hectic state of his days, characteristic
themes of sociology seen as the concrete social science that he professed
it to be in these works. De tipología bélica [Of a Warlike Nature, 1941]
and Soberanía y neutralidad [Sovereignty and Neutrality, 1942] are two
of Medina’s works that he collected in his book Responsabilidad de la
inteligencia: estudios sobre nuestro tiempo [Responsibility of Intelligence.
Studies on Our Time], dated and dedicated to Daniel Cosío Villegas in
1942 (the book appeared in 1943). In the preface, Medina warned the
reader that the writings compiled in this work were the fruit of his first
three years of his life in the Americas, a period of recovery that he saw as
248 A. LIRA
having come to close, works that had served him as “an escape valve in
the tensions of my own vicarious life” (Medina Echavarría 1943, p. 10).
While in this state of mind, Medina—who was determined to
turn the tension within his work into an open dialogue on current
problems—took over the direction of the Center for Social Studies and
organized the seminar on the study of the war, delivering his prologue
as the first contribution to the conference. What is more: at the sug-
gestion of Cosio Villegas, Medina participated in a meeting on eco-
nomic blocks and export surpluses, coordinated by Javier Márquez
(a Spanish economist who had been the director of the FCE’s eco-
nomics section since 1939). The purpose of the meeting was to antic-
ipate the challenges the world economy would have to face once peace
was established. Medina was invited to listen and to be listened to as
the voice of a “non-specialist.” His speech was so convincing that he
was asked to write an article based on his contribution, a text which
ultimately became a book, Consideraciones sobre el tema de la paz
[Considerations on the Subject of Peace], published by the Bank of
Mexico in 1945. The Polish sociologist Florian Snaniecki, professor at
the University of Illinois, mentioned this book positively and suggested
that it be translated into English.12
Critical current affairs and an abundance of topics in the work of the
director of the Center for Social Studies at El Colegio de México led to
disagreements with Daniel Cosío Villegas; the most notable of them had
been caused by the failure of the Center for Social Studies’ program,
from which only two of the eighteen scholarship holders who finished
their courses in 1946 actually graduated. One was Moisés González
Navarro, who presented a thesis titled El pensamiento político de Lucas
Alamán [The Political Thinking of Lucas Alamán], directed by the his-
torian Arturo Arnaiz y Freg; the other was Catalina Sierra Peimbert,
who graduated with a study on “The Birth of Mexico.” We can see the
preference for historical themes and the distance from the difficult theo-
retical and methodological exercises in which the director José Medina
Echavarría was engaged (Lida and Matesanz 2015, pp. 209–228).
Those difficult years were marked by complaints and differences with
Daniel Cosío Villegas—who encountered conflicts with several of his
collaborators, such as Javier Márquez, among others. The work of José
Medina Echavarría was suspended and a great deal of time passed before
it was absorbed; books such as those by Max Weber and other authors
that he put at the disposal of Spanish-speaking readers would have to sift
through slow reading, comprehension, and assimilation, a process which

ultimately took years to complete.
This step meant the institutionalization of sociology as a discipline and
as an academic and prospective exercise in the Spanish-speaking world,
a world in which José Gaos found an intellectual discourse that he knew
how to appropriate in order to highlight and study it historically and
methodically, while Medina had to work on the structure of comprehen-
sive sociology, developed in Germany by Max Weber, to make it appear
in the conceptual apparatus of the Latin American world.
Medina: Roles of Sociology

In 1946, his next stop after leaving Mexico was Puerto Rico. He left the
country without harvesting much of the good he had sown and would
only return sporadically. Judging by the friendly luring from Alfonso
Reyes, who promised him that things would get better at El Colegio
de México, Medina had been upset when he left. “Beyond any misun-
derstandings,” said Reyes, “the truth is that he was loved here, and that
we hoped for him to take up his work again on his terms” (as we now
know, the misunderstanding had been a personal conflict with Cosío
Villegas).13 Medina did not come back. He was willing to try another life
at the University of Puerto Rico, where he remained until 1952 when
he was hired as an editor (that is, as a proofreader and copy-editor for
economists: a Herculean and perhaps impossible task) by the United
Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
(ECLAC).14
Some of his works from previous periods and the first ones he planned
at the University of Puerto Rico were collected and published in Mexico
in a volume titled Presentaciones y planteos, papeles de sociología (pub-
lished in the series Cuadernos de Sociología of the Institute for Social
Research at the UNAM, 1953). One of those essays, Vida académica
y sociedad [Academic Life and Society] (Medina Echavarría 1953,
pp. 7–47), contains a thesis that, when it comes to Mexico, is now more
valid than ever. According to Medina, those who politicize academic life
pervert the aims of the university and turn it into a militant academy:
[It shows] the transmutation of the critical confrontation of theories

within the intellectual sphere, admissible and necessary […] in a strug-
gle of individuals and groups. It necessarily entails the interpretation
250 A. LIRA
of academic freedom as a freedom of platform; scientific analysis takes

the form of propaganda, and the reasoned maintenance of a conviction
becomes indoctrination without moderation. It is also inevitable that the
parties and movements confronting each other on a national level shame-
lessly take full advantage of the malleability of the young to manage the
student body without difficulty. […] In its militant zeal, the university
ends up abandoning its own task […] since the emergence of classicist ten-
sions and, above all, of the policymaking of parties that promote a dialectic
of violence, the conception of the militant university has incited chaos. The
problem is serious because the destiny of a liberal society is linked to the
destiny of the free university and cannot accept the easy cut of the Gordian
knot, which equals to the totalitarian way out. (Medina Echavarría 1953,
pp. 24–25)
The universities of present times should avoid both asepsis and militancy.
His ideal was a “participatory university:”
In the university, as a meeting point for people who are eager for knowl-
edge, everything can and must be examined, in fact, this has to be done
without any restriction whatsoever; what circulates on the street as dem-
agogy, as an ideological cover, as an encounter of interests, can be refined
in the academy and reduced to its modest proportions of limited truth,
if there is any at all. Society does not lose but gains from what can be an
exceptional—and undoubtedly necessary—channel of serenity; even if one
does not listen, it may express dispassionate advice that gives knowledge of
what is objectively possible. (Medina Echavarría 1953, p. 25)
In another essay, Acerca de los tipos de inteligencia [About the Types of

Intelligence] (Medina Echavarría 1953, pp. 67–92), Medina classifies
three attitudes of intellectuals towards society: (1) “functional” intel-
ligence, which assumes the daily problems of social life via knowledge
that has been established and approved by society, assuring its bearers a
secure status; (2) “detached or distant” intelligence of those who have
an aristocratic vision of life and who are able to meditatively avoid the
onslaughts of history since they could be sure of a return to a favora-
ble or, at least, well valued situation [did Medina refer to Gaos?]; and
(3) “marginal intelligence,” which manifests itself in the critical moments
and characters of historical events—the charismatic leader, the extraordi-
nary sage, capable of discerning unusual paths or knowledge. It seems as
if his own vicarious personality did not fit into any of these categories.
Gaos: The Authentic Life

In the 1950s, due to budget imbalances at El Colegio de México, Gaos
found himself in need of teaching at Universidad Femenina de México
and Mexico City College. He did so with resignation and without aban-
doning his original professorship at the UNAM. This pilgrimage ended
with the creation of full-time positions of which, due to unquestionable
merit, he was one of the first beneficiaries. At the height of his career,
Gaos remained concerned about the relationship between culture and
politics. His Confesiones profesionales [Professional Confessions], issued in
1953 and published in 1958, pointed out the need to remain wary of
the desire for brilliance (Vedettism) and flirtations with politics. In 1965,
he taught us a course on philosophical anthropology. At that time, I was
a devote reader of works on the sociology of knowledge and I talked
with him about Medina’s texts. I asked him his opinion on the “vicari-
ous life.” Gaos, as curt as he was in his answers, more or less told me the
following:
—Look: Pepe Medina speaks of intellectual life as a vicarious life because

he is a nostalgic for politics. He, more consciously than others, thinks that
intellectual life is vicarious or a substitute for the life of the others who are
not intellectuals: namely, the politicians. When he works intellectually, he
actually thinks about politics. He held a position in Parliament in times
of the Republic, and he has not forgotten about it. Nor have many of my
companions in exile forgotten about it, because they have not unpacked
since their arrival to these lands; for almost 30 years now (this conversation
occurred in 1965) they have been thinking of returning to participate in
the Spanish Republic, in a republic that liquidated its possibilities a long
time ago.
But if one turns intellectual labor into the real purpose of life, that life
and that activity are not vicarious. They are not, because what makes them
vicarious is the will to go beyond them, to give them and to give one-
self a destiny outside one’s own life. If the intellectual activity is entirely
assumed, it is an authentic life, one that stands on its own. It’s true that
it is limited, as is all life, as is the life of the politician who, I believe, also
faces limitations, sometimes even more insufferable than those suffered by
the intellectual.
In 1962, he had given a lecture on La vida intellectual [The Intellectual

Life] at the University of Puerto Rico, which he subtitled, in the words
252 A. LIRA
of Ortega y Gasset, El tapiz por el revés [The Back of the Tapestry].15

In that lecture, Gaos detailed the eagerness, frustration, and bitter acci-
dents that nourish the most beautiful and “disinterested” expressions of
philosophers, thinkers and intellectuals. The eagerness and failures of
these “professionals of arrogance” are exemplified in this lecture by refer-
ring to famous figures and by sketches of what is happening in academic
institutions, where massive criteria prevail over creative ones. As Gaos
pointed out, they created competition within activities that should not
be subject to competition, turning that which can only be achieved cum-
otium (with full and impartial dedication) into nec-otium (business). In
academic institutions, the criterion of industrial production and commer-
cial competition had been imposed onto its employees who were obliged
to “produce” as many publications as possible, to write as much as they
could, and to deliver to the “public”—which did not necessarily consist
of readers—an ever-growing quantity of “editorial waste.”
Most regrettable, however, was the fact that even intellectuals, peo-
ple who lived from and for academic institutions, had imposed criteria of
production and “efficiency” on themselves. They disdained the proper
mission of “contemplative life,” which had to be defended by all means
possible. In February 1962, when Gaos gave this lecture, he certainly
saw his own vital limits: in 1958, he had suffered his first heart attack.
Now less than ever, could he harbor illusions concerning activities that
went beyond the narrow borders of his vocation? As the end of his life
approached, he found increasingly more reasons to support the contem-
plative ideal:
There are those who cannot live if they do not believe that their lives are
moving in the direction of the future and contributing, however little, to
the advent of the future.
For many years now, I’ve been living perfectly fine without thinking
about anything like this.
I would rather be the last heir of a house of accredited nobility than the
cofounder of a house of uncertain lineage.
And, if I think like this, it is because I think that, on a deeper level, his-
torical failure is no refutation of the ideal, and that historical success is no
justification of the real.
And if I like this, it is, in turn, because I think, beneath it all, that
history is not purely reason, but rather an irrational mixture, more
than a rational synthesis, of reason and unreasonableness. (Gaos 1967,
pp. 281–282)
These reflections echo the Spanish Civil War. This experience brought
about a political skepticism in Gaos that, strangely, did not lead to nihil-
ism. Two testimonies confirm this16:
The cause of the Republic was a worthy cause. The fact that it was a lost
cause does not invalidate it in history. History is not pure reason: it is
largely irrational. The cause of the Republic, as many of us understood it,
was a good and beautiful cause: we who were faithful must be faithful to the
end, we must refrain from renouncing it to be incorporated in the march of
history, even if this abstention means that our lives remain historically inop-
erative—except by example of loyal worship of the due cause (1966).
The cause of the Republic was a good, beautiful, noble cause: it wanted
to release the Spanish people from the inhuman situation in which they
lived, while doing the least possible harm to those who kept them there for
their own benefit. To have avoided the accusations that were made against
it in a period of only five years, it would have needed an exclusive and ful-
minating decision and success, which we had no right to ask for in such a
historically short period of time. And the Republic mainly succumbed to
the international actions and omissions, related to interests that were for-
eign or contrary to those of Spain. It is a duty and an honor to be faithful
to this cause until death, even if it requires staying on the other side of history,
which is the side of reason of that which does not become real (1967).
It is a pity that Gaos did not live to see the rise of democracy in Spain.
Perhaps, his skepticism would have taken on a less pessimistic, more smil-
ing tone. His final stoicism—a stoicism of a “detached or distant” intelli-
gence—led him to define the History of Our Idea of the World as sorrow:
[…] the history of the idea of the world is the progressive and imminent
extinction of this idea: replacing a world with an idea of the world with a
world that has no idea of the world […].
Because this world is exactly the world which Marx commented on,
saying that we should not continue to contemplate it by speculating on
it—as philosophers did, who today are very much in the doldrums—, but
that we should make it another place, as revolutionaries and technicians
strive to do, the true masters of our world. (Gaos 1973, p. 744)
These words bring to mind the pessimistic visions of Western history

spread by Oswald Spengler and Max Scheler in the interwar period. His
theme, the triumph of the Homo faber over the Homo sapiens, is also
one of the central themes of Gaos’ work.
254 A. LIRA
Humanism and Development
In José Medina Echavarría: un perfil intelectual, Adolfo Gurrieri talks
about the academic isolation that Medina suffered from 1946 to 1952
while working at the University of Puerto Rico. In Chile, as editor of
ECLAC, and once again influenced by the humanist planning ideals of
Mannheim, Medina had already tried to explain, criticize, and suggest
the human implications of development, overcoming the narrow lim-
its of the techniques of economic planning. In the sixties, and with-
out abandoning his soaring ontological and epistemological demands,
Medina concentrated on the study of the Latin American reality.
Medina demanded a philosophical vision of development. In his last
two books, Filosofía, educación y desarrollo [Philosophy, Education, and
Development, Siglo XXI, 1967] and Discurso sobre política y planeación
[Discourse on Politics and Planning, Siglo XXI, 1972], he expressed his
dissatisfaction with the narrow limits of technical rationality or formal
rationality. In the 1960s, the mere possibility of a rational humanism in
planning seemed to be increasingly stifled. It was not possible to rescue
the post-war reconstruction projects. New tensions and social structures
made the social sciences’ means of study inefficient. In 1966, during a
speech given at El Colegio de México, Medina alluded to the emergence
of marginal realities that lacked a place in the usual schemes of social
sciences. “Their categories,” he stated, “date back to the 19th century,
and we intend to apply them to the realities of the 20th century.”
The main theme of Medina’s work was the lack of a guiding vision in
social sciences. In the final stage of his life, his intellectual work pointed
more vigorously to this lack and he endeavored different ways to rem-
edy it. He faced the most obvious experience of this lack: the technical
means of economic development devised in international organizations
were increasingly less efficient and more blind to real social problems.
To address this situation, Medina proposed and directed curricula that
aimed to achieve responsible visions of development problems.
In his later years, he reaffirmed the jusnaturalism that he upheld,
albeit critically, in his young days as a professor of philosophy of law.17
Ortega y Gasset—whom Medina repeatedly quoted both in his young
and his mature writings—spoke of the difference between ideas and
beliefs. The former occur to us, we have them. Beliefs, on the other
hand, maintain us, because we are inside them. We cannot renounce
beliefs even though sometimes “facts” make us see the impossibility
of their “reality.” Despite the number of “realities” that deny it and to

which the owners and professionals of technology and power seem to
adapt, Medina always affirmed the existence of an ideal which is present
in generation after generation: human freedom.18
In a disidealized world, what remains is the will to be faithful to a
“noble cause,” as the friend of his youth would say, the friend Medina
continued to talk to despite their differences in opinion or geographical
distances. This is demonstrated by the dedication of his last book titled
Discurso sobre política y planeación [Discourse on Politics and Planning],
published in 1972, five years before his death and three years after that
of Gaos: IN MY MEMORY OF JOSÉ GAOS AND HIS EXEMPLARY
FRATERNAL NATURE.
Epilogue
This work refers to the first phase of life in exile. José Gaos settled in
Mexico, but he did not stop talking about the experience of exile, which
he assumed as a transition and “empatriation” in Mexico; José Medina
Echavarría, in his plan to build Latin American sociology, would become
“the outsider who remains,” in the words of Álvaro Morcillo Laiz.
The framework of the text is made up of the statements and discus-
sions on the intellectual vocation that were expressed by the two friends,
an interrupted dialogue that will have to be evaluated from a greater
perspective, which is characterized by a surprising scope, depth, and

variety—a dialogue that seems inexhaustible and which has been mani-
festing itself in the last decades of the last century and up to now.
In 1982, volume XVII of the Complete Works of José Gaos was
published, which combined his Confesiones profesionales [Professional
Confessions] and his Aforística [Aphorisms]. To date, 17 of the 19 (pos-
sibly up to 20) volumes planned have been published (including vol.
XIX, which contains the author’s correspondence and various papers).
The appearance of vol. XVII was preceded by a book by Vera Yamuni,
titled José Gaos. El hombre y su pensamiento [José Gaos. The Man and his
Thought], which was published by UNAM in 1980 (Vera Yamuni organ-
ized and wrote a prologue for vol. XVII of the Complete Works).
That same year, La obra [The Work] of José Medina Echavarría was
published, compiled by Adolfo Gurrieri and preceded by an “intellectual
profile” and the author’s bibliography: a chronological coincidence and
a presentation of texts that invites us to appreciate the continuous and
256 A. LIRA
more recent publication of the works of both authors and of the texts
that have been written about them.
I do not intend to dwell on the bibliographical details, but would
simply like to draw the reader’s attention to The Complete Works of
José Gaos, published by UNAM in the collection Nueva Biblioteca
Mexicana, organized by the Coordinación de Humanidades, and to the
book by Aurelia Valero Pié, José Gaos. Una bigrafía intelectual, 1938–
1969, published by El Colegio de México in 2015. The second edition
of José Medina Echavarría’s Panorama de la sociología contemporánea
(El Colegio de México, 2018), with an introductory study by Laura
Angélica Moya López and Juan Jesús Morales Martín, stands out for its
historical and critical positioning of Medina’s work and for its abundant
and well-used bibliography and documentation.
We owe thanks to Laura Angélica Moya López for a biographi-
cal study from the perspective of conceptual history titled José Medina
Echavarría y la sociología como ciencia social concreta (1939–1980), also
published by El Colegio de México in 2013, and to Juan Jesús Morales
Martín for a very illustrative biography, José Medina Echavarría: Vida
y sociología, published by the same house in 2017. These books were
preceded by a testimonial and guiding volume on the life and work
of Medina Echavarría, coordinated by Adolfo Castañón and Álvaro
Morcillo Laiz and published in 2010. It includes a text written by
Moisés González Navarro, José Medina Echavarría y México /José Medina
Echavarría correspondencia, as well as El forastero que se queda: José
Medina Echavarría y la sociología latinoamericana by Álvaro Morcillo, a
text which is interesting and significant for the elaboration of the present
article.
It is significant that these books on Medina Echavarría have been
published by El Colegio de México, an institution where he has been
missed since 1946, but also where his memory and the relevance of
his work have always made him present. It should not be surprising
that the revised and annotated edition of Max Weber’s translation of
Economy and Society, which appeared in 2014, is the work of Francisco
Gil Villegas, a research professor at El Colegio de México who knew
how to value, correct, and update the efforts of José Medina Echavarría
and everyone who accompanied him in the vast undertaking of making
Weber’s great work available to Spanish-speaking readers.
As for José Gaos, we must remember that he was never absent from El
Colegio de México, the institution he returned to in 1966 as a full-time
professor, after 15 years as a professor at the National Autonomous

University of Mexico (UNAM).
Notes
1. Archive of El Colegio de México (hereafter, AHCOLMEX), dossiers of
José Gaos (file no. 155) and José Medina Echavarría (file no. 277).
2. In the AHCOLMEX, folio no. 277, are the syllabuses designed by José
Medina Echavarría. One was written shortly after he arrived in Mexico
and the other around 1946. For more details on Medina’s dissatisfaction
as a professor of Philosophy of Law, cf. Medina Echavarría (1940, p. 8).
3. AHCOLMEX, folio no. 155. Among many other interesting documents,
it contains two manuscripts by José Gaos in which he gives information
about his professional activities and his participation in the Republic.
They seem to have been written upon his arrival in Mexico. Cf. Morcillo
Laiz (2010, pp. 343–372).
4. Doctor Juan Pérez-Abreu de la Torre (Campeche, 1886–México, 1978),
sociology professor at the Faculty of Law of the unam, had contact with
Medina Echavarría and succeeded him in the above mentioned chair.
It was Don Juan Pérez-Abreu de la Torre who, in 1964, during certain
conversations, pointed out the comparison between Gaos and Medina
Echavarría that I have developed in this article.
5. The testimonies can be found in the AHCOLMEX, folio no. 277.
6. Idem, folios no. 155 and 277. Also cf. José Gaos, Cátedra de filosofía.
Curso de 1939: curso público de introducción a la filosofía, Mexico, La
Casa de España en México, n.d., 28 pages; Introducción a la filosofía.
Cursillo de diez lecciones, Mexico, La Casa de España en México, n.d.,
José Medina Echavarría, Cátedra de sociología encargada a José Medina
Echavarría [in the then National School of Jurisprudence], Mexico, La
Casa de España en México, 1939, 29 pages.
7. This commentary by José Medina Echavarría appears in his book titled
Responsabilidad de la inteligencia (ensayos sobre nuestro tiempo), 1943,
pp. 15–25.
8. This commentary pronounced by José Gaos was also published in his
book titled Filosofía de la Filosofía, Mexico, Stylo, 1947, pp. 353–358.
9. Cf. Gino Germani, ‘Prólogo’ in C. W. Mills (1961, p. 20).
10. Compiled in José Gaos, Pensamiento de lengua española, Mexico, Stylo,
1945, pp. 333–339.
11. Compiled in Echavarría (1943, pp. 27–36).
12. Letter from Ramón Iglesia (another Spanish exile who left Mexico in
1946) to Alfonso Reyes. Cf. Lira, “Vicente Herrero”, p. 374.
258 A. LIRA
13. This correspondence between Alfonso Reyes and José Medina Echavarría

can be found in the AHCOLMEX, folio no. 277.
14. A. Gurrieri (1979) José Medina Echavarría: un perfil intelectual. Revista
de la cepal, 9, Santiago de Chile, 119–173. Reprinted in A. Gurrieri
(1980).
15. This lecture was published in Gaos (1967, pp. 245–282).
16. The cited texts are published in Yamuni (1980, p. 39). I added the italics.
17. Medina Echavarría (1935). La situación presente de la filosofía jurídica.
Editorial Revista de Derecho Privado, collected in La filosofía del derecho
en la crisis de nuestro tiempo (pp. 47–185), an interesting book whose last
part is a call for everybody to study sociology as a science that pays atten-
tion to the present.
18. Medina Echavarría’s science on the difficulties of today’s world in con-
structing an ideal of freedom can be noted throughout his work and most
clearly in his last paper, “Notes on the Future of Western Democracies”,
published posthumously in Revista de la cepal (no. 4, second half
of 1977, pp. 115–138) and reproduced in La obra de José Medina
Echavarria, pp. 449–488. In this article, he warned that the only possible
reaction in the face of social problems is to affirm governments that gov-
ern effectively, but not at the expense of the dwarfing of the governed,
since this means the very destruction of the object of government. The
final idea of that essay is a quote from John Stuart Mill, after a constant
citing of Daniel Bell.
Bibliogaphy
Gaos, J. (1940). Antología filosófica. La filosofía griega. Mexico City: La Casa de
España en México.
Gaos, J. (1944). El pensamiento hispanoamericano, Mexico City: El Colegio de
México; Jornadas, 12.
Gaos, J. (1945a). Cinco años de filosofía en México. In J. Gaos (Ed.), Filosofía
mexicana de nuestros días. Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria.
Gaos, J. (1945b). Filosofía mexicana de nuestros días. Mexico City: Imprenta
Universitaria.
Gaos, J. (1958). Confesiones profesionales. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura
Económica.
Gaos, J. (1967). De antropología e historiografía, Xalapa: Universidad
Veracruzana; Cuadernos de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 40.
Gaos, J. (1973). Historia de nuestra idea del mundo, reprinted in 1979. Mexico
City: El Colegio de México, Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Gaos, J. (1999). Obras completas. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México.
González Navarro, M. (2010). José Medina Echavarría en México; José Medina

Echavarría correspondencia, text selection and notes by A. Castañón and
Álvaro Morcillo Laiz (Eds.). Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
Gurrieri, A. (1980). José Medina Echavarría, un perfil intelectual. In La obra de
José Medina Echavarría, text selection, introductory notes, and a bibliogra-
phy for José Medina Echavarría’s works by A. Gurrieri. Madrid: Ediciones de
Cultura Hispánica, Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana.
Lida, C. E., & Matesanz, J. A. (2015). El Colegio de México: una hazaña cultural,
1940–1962, collaborators: A. Alatorre, F. R. Calderón, & M. González Navarro.
Mexico City: El Colegio de México; Jornadas, 117. Originally published in 1990.
Lira, A. (2015a). Vicente Herrero. Tiempo y lugares de un traductor. In A. Lira,
Estudios sobre los exiliados españoles, with a presentation by A. Enríquez Perea.
Mexico City: El Colegio de México, pp. 361–380.
Lira, A. (2015b). Estudios sobre los exiliados españoles, with a presentation by
A. Enríquez Perea. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1940). Panorama de la sociología contemporánea. Mexico
City: La Casa de España en México, 2nd ed. (2008) with preliminary notes
by L. A. Moya López & J. J. Morales Martín. Mexico City: El Colegio de
México.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1943). Responsabilidad de la inteligencia. Estudios sobre
nuestro tiempo. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1945). Consideraciones sobre el tema de la paz. Mexico
City: Banco de México.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1953). Presentaciones y planteos. Papeles de sociología.
Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cuadernos de soci-
ología del instituto de Investigaciones Sociales.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1967). Filosofía, educación y desarrollo. Mexico City: Siglo
Veintiuno Editores.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1972). Discurso de política y planeación. Mexico City:
Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1980). La obra de José Medina Echavarría, text selec-
tion, introductory notes, and bibliography for José Medina Echavarría’s
works by A. Gurrieri. Madrid: Ediciones de Cultura Hispánica, Instituto de
Cooperación Iberoamericana.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1982 [1941]). Sociología: teoría y técnica, 3rd ed. Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Medina Echavarría, J. (1990). La filosofía del derecho en la crisis de nues-
tro tiempo, compilation, preliminary notes, and bibliography by A. Lira,
Morelia, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, El Colegio
de Michoacán. This title includes: Autobiografía humanismo y ciencia en la
obra de José Medina Echavarría by A. Lira, pp. 16–38; Bibliografía de José
Medina Echavarría, pp. 41–45 by J. Medina Echavarría: La situación presente
260 A. LIRA
de la filosofía jurídica (originally published in 1935), pp. 47–184; ¿Filosofía

del derecho? pp. 187–196, and an article by Antonio Armendáriz titled El
profesor José Medina Echavarría en la Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia, pp.
187–196.
Mills, C. W. (1961). La imaginación sociológica (F. M. Torner, Trans.), with a
preface by G. Germani. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica,.
Morales Martín, J. J. (2017). José Medina Echavarría. Vida y Sociología. Mexico
City: El Colegio de México.
Morcillo Laiz, A. (2010). El forastero que se queda: José Medina Echavarría y
la sociología latinoamericana. In A. Castañón & Álvaro Morcillo Laiz (Eds.),
José Medina Echavarría correspondencia. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
Moya López, L. A. (2013). José Medina Echavarría y la sociología como ciencia
social concreta (1939–1980). Mexico City: El Colegio de México.
Valero Pié, A. (2015). José Gaos. Una biografía intelectual, 1938–1969. Mexico
Weber, M. (2014). Economía y sociedad (J. Medina Echavarría, J. Roura Parella,
E. Ímaz, E. García Máynez, J. Ferrater Mora, & F. Gil Villegas, Trans.), new
revised edition with notes by F. Gil Villegas. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura
Económica.
Yamuni, V. (1980). José Gaos El hombre y su pensamiento. Mexico City:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Zea, L. et. al. (1943). Del cristianismo y la edad media. Trabajos de historia de la
filosofía. Mexico City: El Colegio de México; 2nd edition (2012) facsimile,
with a preface by Andrés Lira.
CHAPTER 12
The Constitution of Sociology at El Colegio

de México: Two Key Intellectual Cohorts
of Refugees and the Legacies They Left
for Mexico and Latin America
Arturo Alvarado
The Era of Social Sciences at El Colegio de México

This chapter analyzes the formation of the sociological discipline in Mexico
and Latin America. It offers a comparative study and a commemoration
of José Medina Echavarría’s and Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s sociological lega-
cies, both for the foundation of the discipline at El Colegio de México and
for their contributions to what may be called a genuine Latin American
This chapter forms part of a larger research project on recreating the legacies, the
products and the developmental paths of both the Center for Sociological Studies
(CES) at El Colegio de México and the sociological discipline in the region. I
would like to thank my collaborator Karine Tinat, as well as Serena Chew, Carlos
Escalera, Denis Salazar and Paulina González for helping me to collect notes and
revise the ideas and references.
A. Alvarado (*) 
e-mail: alvarado@colmex.mx

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_12
262 A. ALVARADO
Sociology. Several colleagues and a whole new generation of scholars have

analyzed their works as intellectuals and as human beings, considering the
broad context of the refugees’ vast activities as historians, philosophers, and
their work in other disciplines. However, there is neither an essay on the
role they played in the creation of Sociology, nor on the impact and impor-
tance of El Colegio de México for their discipline. In the following, their
work as individuals and as representatives of cohorts in two different time
periods will be examined.
During the 1930s, a series of considerable actions were carried out in
order to organize the rescue of scholars and intellectuals from European
countries in turmoil, who were forced to leave their home countries due
to civil war or the escalation of Fascism (this was the case for Mexico,
Argentina and, most certainly, the United States of America). It was a
decade in which several sociologists from Europe traveled abroad along
with their conceptions, their publications and their social research and
teaching agenda, in search for a new place where they could settle and
continue to develop their ideas.
This essay analyzes two contributions that were developed at two
different historical moments of intellectual history but share a very
uncommon and fortuitous connection. First, there was the forced exile
of José Medina Echavarría, who arrived at The Casa de España and El
Colegio de México in the late 1930s, thanks to the mediation of Daniel
Cosío Villegas from Mexico. Secondly, belonging to a different phase of
time, there is the case of Rodolfo Stavenhagen—who escaped with his
family from Germany for similar reasons in the same years and finally
settled in Mexico—whose contributions would not become important
until the 1960s. Their legacies, however, are intertwined thanks to an
institutional connection: both of them created a Center for Research
and Teaching at El Colegio de México (El Colegio, in the following),
yet in different periods of the institution, the country, and the whole
region. Both had common concerns about the progress of the world
and the country of settlement, about research and the development of
an institutional discipline. They contributed to forge the Sociology
of Development in Latin America. Only few exiles in contemporary
social sciences managed to create new institutions for social science
and research in the humanities, as was the case for the Center for Social
Studies (Centro de Estudios Sociales) in the early 1940s and the Centre
for Sociological Studies (Centro de Estudios Sociológicos) at El Colegio
in the early 70s.
12 THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIOLOGY AT EL COLEGIO DE MÉXICO … 263
The 1970s were another “epoch” in which Mexico received a large

number of exiles escaping from military dictatorships in Southern
America (ironically, during this time Medina was in Chile, working for an
international institution). The Mexican government offered them posi-
tions in different academic institutions and scientist became integrated
into the local activities while still expecting to return to their countries
(and continue fighting dictatorships). Showing a very similar attitude
as Cosío Villegas in the 30s, Rodolfo Stavenhagen (with the support
of Víctor Urquidi) invited several scholars from Chile and Argentina
to come to El Colegio and the newly created Sociological Center.
In spite of the obvious difference in time, both periods are integrally
linked by several of the questions about social research, teaching, diffu-
sion and creation of a genuine sociological interpretation of the conti-
nent. In the following, we will analyze the formation of Sociology during
the twentieth century, in a subcontinent affected both by World War II
(WWII) and its long-term consequences.
There are several overarching topics that link the two intellectuals,
both as persons and as representatives of their schools of thought. This
essay aims to address several different questions, for example: What is the
common heritage they carried from Europe to Mexico and later to Latin
America? Was it the discipline, the institutions? Which social problems
did they address? In which way would their home country and origi-
nal formation be decisive for their later production and contribution?
In which way may exile be seen as a process of production of theoretical
and methodological isomorphisms? And, moreover, how did the “local”
reality influence their thinking, their theories and their research agendas?
Their thoughts were based on the “sociologist” legacy, developed in
Mexico since the late nineteenth century or the early post-revolutionary
period. An early formulation of this discipline was introduced, among
other things, because the post-revolutionary regime promoted a change
of institutional foundations for the social sciences (like Economy,
Ethnology and Sociology as the “new” disciplines). However, both
their approaches opened up new ways and will have long-term impact
in the social sciences: Ideas of modernity and modernization; cap-
italism development and the formulation of a theory of development;
examination of the changing social structures and classes; also, ideas
about democracy and the fight against authoritarianism and totalitar-
ianism. The idea of development represents the main conceptual cre-
ation that generated the most productive Latin American debates and
264 A. ALVARADO
interpretations and that helped to construct different trajectories for

social sciences.
Structure of This Chapter

Spanish exile at El Colegio has been profoundly analyzed in the areas
of humanities and history (Lida et al. 2000). Less attention has been
paid to the disciplines of social sciences and particularly Sociology.
In this case, Medina played an important role for both the foundation
and first developments of this area at El Colegio and for the evolution
of social studies in Latin America. In the following, we will first focus
on the scholars’ intellectual and professional labor trajectories, the work-
ing conditions they faced—mainly in the academic area—and the con-
text (the nations as well as the professional, intellectual, and theoretical
mainstream ideas and groups). Afterwards, we will concentrate on the
“national and international impacts” (transnational scholars and travel-
ling theories). It is also necessary to compare the exiles with the group of
scholars from the host institutions (Mexicans, non-Mexicans, non-exiles)
and to analyze their interactions and their mutual or different interests.
Also, we need to look at the respective time intervals of exile. I consider
that each of these topics generates an interaction that influences exiles
and may also create potential conflicts.1 I will address several of these
questions by analyzing and counterpointing the trajectories of the two
cohorts in question.
Two Eras of Social and Sociological Thinking

at El Colegio de México
El Colegio and particularly its social research and teaching programs

have been endowed with more than one generation of intellectual émi-
grés. They have contributed both as individuals and as groups, as cohorts
of refugees in different periods of time. In the case of Medina, his contri-
bution might have been more that of an individual. The émigrés did not
develop their theories alone and in isolation: “context matters” and the
theories that traveled abroad got affected by their new environment.
The analysis comprises two eras. The first one focuses on the period
of the 1930s and on José Medina Echavarría. It starts with his arrival
in Mexico and his integration into the university context that culminates
with the inception of the Center for Social Studies (founded in February
1940), continues with his travels to Latin America and ends with his
long-term stance in the Latin American Institute of Economic and Social
Planning, ILPES, an international institution in Chile.
The second era begins during the 1970s. It is the period of major
institutional achievements for Rodolfo Stavenhagen and culminates
with the inauguration of the Center for Sociological Studies (in March
1973). It is also a new period of forced migration of intellectuals com-
ing from southern Latin America (the main countries of origin being
Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil). This period gives rise to a more
collective, combined effort by both nationals and foreigners to develop
social research on the consequences of development with broader disci-
plinary, theoretical and methodological approaches. We can also make
the case for indirect impacts through the arrival of other scholars like
Leopoldo Ayub, Fernando Cortés, Francisco Zapata, María Luisa Tarres,
among others. Several of them came as refugees; other groups of Latin
Americans were initially not exiles but could not return to their coun-
tries of origin (these were the cases of Vania Salles, Orlandina de Oliveira
and Jorge Padua, after completing their graduate studies) because their
schools and opportunities had been closed by the ruling dictatorships.
Thus, this study includes scholars of categories other than forced migra-
tion: Medina is a clear case, but Stavenhagen has different more com-
plex roots since he emigrated as a child and because within his group, he
serves as a representative of other foreign scholars, refugees and nation-
als. Consequently, their cohorts are also affected by their status of immi-
gration, their nationality and their generation.
According to Krohn, cited in the introductory paragraph, and sim-
ilar to Hirschmann’s distinction of “Exit, Voice and Loyalty”, we
may distinguish different types of émigrés: those assimilated and
established, those who are living in the Diaspora, and those being
outsiders or persons living “in between”. For all the different types,
personal attitudes were as influential as the scientific environment.
El Colegio and its Center for Social (later Sociological) Studies were in
this sense institutions that provided a space for exiles to continue their
work according to their personal topics and expertise, especially dur-
ing the second period (the first Center was closed down after 1944).
Institutional contexts do matter for these two cohorts of refugees.
One way of showing their impact is by analyzing the intellectual and
academic agenda led by Medina during the first, and by Stavenhagen
during the second period.
266 A. ALVARADO
For the next section, (1) we will consider their life experience
(biography, context-development) and connections with the academic
world; (2) their context of origin and the “expulsion” in the case of
Spain and Germany; (3) the moment and time of change, namely the
transition events for Medina and Stavenhagen; as well as the following
points: (4) Mexico and what it had to offer: working conditions, relation
with state, relation with society and with academia; (5) El Colegio de
México and what it had to offer (institution of arrival: entry conditions;
interaction with other colleagues; (6) social sciences in the 30s and the
70s: from the creation to the consolidation of a discipline and its institu-
tions; (7) creation and development of a research agenda for the region
(Latin America in their minds); and (8) teaching roles and proposals.
José Medina and the First Era of Sociology

José Medina Echavarría was born in Castellón de la Plana, Spain
on December 25, 1903 and died on November 13, 1973 in Chile.
According to some of his biographers (Laura Moya and Jesús Morales),
Medina studied law at the University of Madrid in 1924 and graduated
with a thesis on the absence of democracy in the Primo de Rivera dic-
tatorship. Later, with the support of some of his professors, he traveled
to France (for a stay at the University of Paris), where he got to know
the work of the positivists and Durkheim. Later, between 1930 and
1931, he went to Marburg, Germany, where he had access to readings
and discussions on the sociological approaches of other thinkers such as
Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Dilthey, Erich Rothacker, Hans Freyer, Karl
Manheim, and of course Max Weber. He returned to Spain in 1932 to
occupy an official position in the Second Spanish Republic, where he
remained until 1936 (Moya 2013b, pp. 84–85). Subsequently, he com-
peted for a position as a Professor for Philosophy of Law in Murcia,
Spain. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Medina found himself
at risk but thanks to the efforts of Cosío Villegas he then arrived safely in
Mexico and joined the National Autonomous University of Mexico and
the Casa de España in May 1939 (Moya 2015, pp. 106–107).
In 1940, Medina Echavarría delivered his first annual work plan which
included Sociology and Social Psychology courses at the Faculties of
Law and Philosophy and Letters, and a class at the School of Economics,
which he would teach until 1941. The contract program states that he
would also be responsible for two series of lectures (“cursillos”) of five
conferences each, held at two universities outside the city (Moya 2015,
pp. 106–107). Another important work of his included the development
of an editorial project that comprised several books from the Jornadas
collection at El Colegio and other publications with the newly founded
publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), establishing a
contact that would last for several decades.
In sum, Echeverría had three big projects or programs. The first
one centered on teaching: He gave several courses at the UNAM and
promoted others that would later be articulated in a first specialization
program at El Colegio. His greatest interest, however, was the academic
teaching of Sociology, which resulted in the program initiated by
El Colegio in 1943. Secondly, he participated in the creation of the
Center for Social Studies in 1943, which organized courses, conferences
on current world issues and Social Theory and developed studies on
Mexico and the Latin American region. Thirdly, he was pushing a grow-
ing publication and editing program together with El Colegio and FCE
(Medina created the Jornadas collection and shortly afterwards began
the social texts series of the FCE).2
We could argue that his greatest program and influence in those years
was the diffusion of Sociology and social thinking as a continuation of
his work in Spain. During his stay in Mexico, he was not interested in
local public affairs, but mostly in the war and the situation concerning
Spain. He showed no interest in participating in the new political regime,
and his academic relations were limited to groups from the UNAM and
El Colegio. He made isolated trips to several of Mexico’s federal states;
however, we have no records of his work there. His country of origin
was his main political and intellectual concern, which manifested itself in
the cycles of conferences and works of those years.
The working conditions at El Colegio were focused on the activities
of the academics (as “an institution in the making”), either allowing
exiles to continue their work or initiating a series of training programs
for social science in Mexico, a project in which Medina had a decisive
influence. Most of the academics were from similar cohorts to Medina’s,
several of them trained abroad and with new ideas about what the devel-
opment of social sciences in Mexico would look like in the twentieth
century (this is shown by the list of professors in the first program).
Most of the work related to the courses and seminars was developed
by the new researchers, who apparently received a salary that low that
it had to be complemented by other lines of work, such as text editing
268 A. ALVARADO
for the FCE or even classes in government institutions. The resources

came from public funds and projects coordinated with the university.
In addition, each teacher prepared the seminars, taught their semestral
courses and participated in a collective seminar.
The creation of the Center was an important moment for the devel-
opment of El Colegio in this and other areas of the arts and h umanities.3
Medina and Cosío created an ambitious training program for what they
considered to be the new specialists that Mexico needed. Training empir-
ical research experts based on theoretical-sociological knowledge was
an innovative idea. Mexico was an “open letter” for the development of
social sciences and institutions to foster the creation of knowledge and
experts, sociology being a relatively new agenda for the country and the
region.
They also proposed a single curriculum combining a comprehensive
training and a teaching program. One sentence in the program specified
that: “The best way to acquire Science is to practice it”. The program
also had an extensive series of research methodology courses and partic-
ipation was obligatory for students. For instance, they incepted a “lab-
oratory of research, where theory always works in relation to practice
[…] and the practice will be in our present needs and the ones of our
times.” This statement shows a sociological orientation towards empirical
research that has been one of the mainstays of El Colegio de México.
The collective seminars were held each semester. The aim of the
Center was to propose and foment research on historical or present
problems of Mexico and Latin America. The curriculum presented the
3 main (core) disciplines, complementing them with the disciplines of
history, anthropology, psychology, and a history of philosophical ideas
(this may have been the way to integrate several professors from different
professions at El Colegio).
Some of the courses were Economic and planning and industrializa-
tion in Mexico (most likely from Medina); Introduction to sociology;
American sociology and Weber’s Works (Medina), as well as the seminar
on wars. During these years, Medina brought his international worries to
El Colegio: war, democracy, the importance of planning, and the nega-
tive consequences of European modernity. Once he began his work at El
Colegio, he began to consider some of Mexico’s problems (apparently
because of Cosio’s influence and interest in analyzing the consequences
of revolution or the new type of government and the “national” project).
Other programs, like the study of revolutions and government plans
(and about independence) were most likely created due to the personal
interest of Cosío Villegas. They expected the graduates to influence the
Mexican entities that required the services of paid researchers. Students
that accomplished all the works (including an essay-like thesis) would
obtain a Diploma. The program lasted four years but did not end with
a university degree (which could only be granted by the UNAM). They
proposed to create human capital in a different manner from other Social
Research institutions.4 The program contrasted with various debates that
took place in Mexico in different intellectual and academic spheres con-
cerning the different versions of Marxism and each country’s discussions
of national development conditions in the early twentieth century, for
example in Peru, Chile or Argentina.
Medina’s publications in this period are fundamentally sociological
explorations on European and American themes and authors, along with
a series of essays; he begins the Jornadas series by editing the lectures
he held on war, economy and other international subjects. He devotes
much of his work to the translation of sociological texts. The publica-
tion of Max Weber’s sociological work and his work on sociology and
technology in the early 1940s is particularly noteworthy (Moya offers
a list of his publications, 2013b). Medina would remain in Mexico and
El Colegio until 1946. Among the reasons for their separation from El
Colegio are some differences with colleagues from the institution, as well
as the impossibility of returning to Spain. These were times of conflict,
disappointment, and new migration.
He then traveled to Puerto Rico and, years later, to Chile, where he
would join the Latin American Institute of Economic and Social Planning
(ILPES-ECLAC) in 1952 and experience a new stage of professional and
intellectual development, innovative in the light of its history, its trajec-
tory and the Latin American context. For some years more, he contin-
ued his project of publishing works on world sociology at the Fondo de
cultura Económica, FCE and compiled some of his works written dur-
ing that time as the “Ensayos de Sociología” [Essays of Sociology]. It is
not until 1955 that he published a couple of essays illustrating his new
interests, “The social conditions of economic development” and “Three
sociological aspects of economic development”. In 1963, he published
several works on the reception of North American sociology and texts
focusing on universities, the most notable ones centering on “Social
aspects of economic development in Latin America” and “Sociological
considerations on the development of Latin America”. These works show
270 A. ALVARADO
new theoretical and methodological approaches and a whole new field of

research on the idea of development, which would be the axis of develop-
ment of the social sciences and of the interpretations of development.
Medina established himself in Santiago de Chile in 1952 and began
with his editorial work at ECLAC. Afterwards, as the director of a sec-
tion of ILPES devoted to the social aspects of development theory, he
was able to resume his personal projects as a sociologist (Moya 2015, p.
169). In 1957, he was appointed director of the School of Sociology of
the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Chile (FLACSO). He
remained in that country until the late seventies, when he returned to
his homeland for a short period of time. After several more investiga-
tions, he decided to return to Chile and to remain there until his death
in 1977. The years at ILPES display the emergence of the idea of a spe-
cific “sociology of the subcontinent”, a new phenomenon in theory,
typologies and methods. They further demonstrate that Medina did not
experience a crisis or reconstruction of his original formation, but that he
took advantage of his Weberian formation to generate other interpreta-
tive models.
In sum, it can be stated that Echerverrías’ first idea of Sociology was
strongly influenced by French and German schools. He followed Weber,
Durkheim, Manheim, Tonnies, and others German thinkers. Later,
however, he showed great interest in American Sociology (especially

in topics like modernization and in methodologies), and later he was
interested in Parsons and his critique to functionalism; his translation of
Weber, the Chicago works, and other topics. Among his first sociological
publications, we find La situación de la sociología en 1937 [The Situation
of Sociology in 1937]. During his first period of exile in Mexico, Medina
could not be considered a public intellectual. His interest focused on
the evolution of war and the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, that
secluded him from returning and forced him to reorient his life. That is
probably why we don’t find too much production of his until he settles
in ILPES. It is then that he will become an increasingly influential intel-
lectual in the “Development community”.
Rodolfo Stavenhagen and His Time

Rodolfo Stavenhagen was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in August 1932.
Escaping the Nazi regime, he migrated with his family at the begin-
ning of WWII in 1936, and after a period in the United States he finally
arrived in Mexico City in 1940, where he would live and work the most
part of his life. He developed an early interest in the deprived living
conditions of peasants. After his first contact with indigenous communi-
ties in Chiapas, he decided to study Ethnology at the National School of
Anthropology and History (ENAH) in Mexico City (Stavenhagen 2015;
Stavenhagen and d’Avignon 2012, pp. 21–22, quoted by Rus 2018,
pp. 4–20).
The beginning of his career as an ethnologist was marked by his focus
on genuine components of Mexican problems and the Mexican insti-
tutionalization of social disciplines. He finished his first field research
experiences and his first labor responsibilities (with government pro-

grams), the first major period of supervised fieldwork being a p roject
carried out with the National Indigenist Institute (INI). Another impor-
tant experience was his participation in a project in the Cuenca del
Papaloapan, where he had to work with communities displaced by the
construction of a dam.
After this experience, he decided to obtain a degree with Robert
Redfield from the University of Chicago, which was then the leading
center for research concerning the native people of Mesoamerica and the
United States. He wrote a thesis on the city of Tijuana, Baja California,
in 1951 and returned to Mexico. A few years later, he traveled to
France to study a Ph.D. Sociology (with G. Balandier) at the Sorbonne
University. In those years, he gets to know the different French socio-
logical orientations, including Marxism, structuralism and, more inter-
estingly, the discussion of (post)colonialism in Africa. Consequently, as
he wrote later on, he “converts” himself into a sociologist, whose main
concerns were the peasant and agrarian social classes and the possibility
of change.
His Doctorate’s thesis was the famous study titled Social classes in
agrarian societies (published by Siglo XXI in México in 1969; English
edition: Anchor Press, 1975), which would soon become a classic. His
dissertation was a first systematic study of peasant societies in Latin
America, which had a strong sociological (and Marxist) background
and offered a comparative view of the problems of migration, develop-
ment and the living conditions of what was still a rural Latin America.
He acquired a strong background in Marxism. After having completed
his studies in Europe, he traveled to Brazil where he worked at the Latin
American Center for Social Science Research, sponsored by the United
Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO),
272 A. ALVARADO
only to leave the country a few weeks after the military coup d’état. It is
interesting to note that in those days he published and important article
on dualism in Latin America and developed a different conception of the
idea of internal colonialism. At his return to Mexico, he started inventing
and creating projects on teaching, research and developing group discus-
sions centering on Mexico, its social conditions, and projects to achieve
modernity. With Stavenhagen as their leader, Olivera and a handful of
other students formed a Marxist study group to talk about a possible way
forward; she says that this was the beginning of her own commitment to
critical anthropology (Olivera 2012, p. 110; quoted in Rus 2018). In the
meantime, Stavenhagen had been invited by Pablo González Casanova
to teach at the National School for Political and Social Sciences at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and was in charge
of a journal. Like Medina, he was a prolific writer of scholarly books
(around 40) and articles (more than 300).
In 1965 he published Siete tesis equivocadas sobre América Latina
[Seven Wrong Theses on Latin America], in response to the national
discussion open by González Casanova’s book La Democracia en

México [Democracy in Mexico], which had appeared earlier in 1965, and
the international discussion on development, modernization and the role
of middle and rural classes. The essay included several arguments against
main stream theories and ideas of development, making it clear that one
of the author’s concerns was the situation of indigenous peoples who,
against the current beliefs of that time, he already considered to be full
participants of Mexican and Latin American society (Stavenhagen and
d’Avignon 2012, p. 23).
The Intellectual Climate in the mid-sixties was still permeated with
the pursuit of modernity in postwar-America and Europe; multiple cur-
rents of thought converged and diverged in the public debate about the
world’s direction. The topic of Developmentalism dominated the dis-
cussion among the region’s urban intellectuals, governments, and inter-
national organizations. In Mexico, a nationalist revolutionary front was
led by a triumphalist one-party authoritarian government that attributed
the achieved growth and the “economic miracle” to its policy of “stabi-
lizing development.” It boasted about its achievements that were really
quite meager when compared with those of other countries and actually
concealed structural problems such as the failure of an agrarian reform, a
rural economic crisis, extreme inequality, the exclusion of communities,
and a lack of democracy. It promoted erroneous visions of development,

stability, equality, and democracy. Speaking of those times, Stavenhagen
(Stavenhagen and d’Avignon 2012, p. 24) writes:
“We were in the middle of a great national and international debate about
Latin America. What is expected for the future? Where are we headed?
What are the major points of reference? How can we understand what is
happening in Latin America? etc. I had just received my doctorate from the
Sorbonne, in Paris, and we were living in the years following the Cuban
Revolution (which had a huge influence on Latin American countries). It
was something totally new in Latin America. It was in this context that I
wrote ‘Seven Theses’, and I still believe that they are erroneous!” (Rabelo,
2003, p. 4)
points out that at that time the United States was hegemonic in the
world capitalist economy and was immersed in the Cold War, which
significantly limited the development of Marxist theories there while
increasing U.S. involvement in Latin America.
During his doctoral studies in France, Stavenhagen had become
familiar with the decolonization processes in Africa and Asia and the
debates about colonialism and obstacles to development and, equally
important, about the Cuban Revolution and the possible strengthen-
ing of socialism. These circumstances “prioritize[d] the economy in
interpreting the causes of the gap between advanced capitalist coun-
tries and the rest of the world.” Stavenhagen addressed these issues and
attempted to formulate a synthesis from the point of view of sociol-
ogy, developing an interrelated set of ideas grounded in his studies in
Europe, his interactions with Latin American and African colleagues,
and his experience as an ethnologist in Mexico. These ideas centered
on theories of social structure that emphasized the importance of class
to explain the dynamics of order (or conflict) in contemporary socie-
ties and to serve as the basis for a new discussion of colonialism that
many intellectuals were attempting to generate in their countries. His
ideas contested developmentalist ideological currents and the thesis of
structural dualism, which attempted to explain the differences between
a “modern” pole and a “traditional” (or backward) one and suggested
how to “overcome” them in order to achieve development. Viewed
through the lens of historical sociology, they could be understood as
offering an alternative to the pursuit of a path to Western modernity
274 A. ALVARADO
in which the expectation was the “achievement” of the material eco-

nomic, political, and social conditions of the advanced industrial coun-
tries of the capitalist bloc constructed during the Cold War. Only some
intellectuals advocated the path to modernity created by the socialist
bloc. What was at issue was not a crisis of modernity but the capac-
ity of modernization theories to explain the problems that still mark
the development of sociological theory. Stavenhagen expressed his con-
cerns about the dominant sociological theories of the time: function-
alism and Marxism of a new professional type that contrasted with the
political ideological currents of the region’s parties and labor unions.
He returned to the thinking that he had become familiar with during
his stay in Brazil.
It was also a dialogue with Latin American intellectuals who were try-
ing to show whether dualist theories focusing on internal colonialism
or dependency could help explain the situation of Latin America and its
social classes. What followed were a direct discussion and dialogues on
the proposals of Gonzalez Casanova, Jaguaribe, and others who were
drafting the theory of dependency.
As Jan Rus (2018) mentioned, Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s essay from
1965 on the seven wrong theses on Latin America challenged the way
social scientists thought about the region’s political economy and his-
tory. Originally published as a journalist essay for a broader (inteli-
gencia) audience in the Mexico City daily El Día on June 25 and 26,
1965, it questioned the prevailing assumptions of “modernization”
(by scholars, intellectuals and leftists activists) and, by consequence,
development. The prevailing thesis was that capitalist development
could help to solve Latin America’s persistent backwardness and
underdevelopment.
In the mid-sixties, Stavenhagen was invited by Urquidi to work as a
researcher at El Colegio de México, where he started a seminar on the
social conditions of Mexico and, later on, participated in the foundation
of several innovative studies on the social consequences of development,
including migration, agrarian, labor and political studies, that formed
the basis for the foundation of the Center for Social Studies in 1973.
During the mid-sixties, he also developed a series of collective projects,
which were related to his concerns about peasant, social classes, rural
societies and development and had a strong theoretical Marxist back-
ground. From those years on, he engaged in the collective project
EstructuraAgraria y desarrollo agrícola en México [Agrarian Structure
and Agricultural Development in Mexico], together with Sergio Reyes

Osorio.
In sum, Stavenhagen’s main contributions to social sciences are broad
and can be divided into at least two major periods, the first one being his
studies on peasant and development, creating (and culminating with) an
innovative discussion of the topic of development in Latin America, the
second one centering around another major period of his life that was
dedicated to the study and promotion of Human Rights and particularly
to the defense of indigenous rights (due to the limited space of this arti-
cle, this later period cannot be discussed in detail).
He was also an intellectual with strong commitment to the institu-
tional development of both the academia and government agencies
favoring indigenous and popular cultures, making him the general direc-
tor of the Department of Popular Cultures of the Mexican Ministry of
Education (1979–1983). As a social organizer, he contributed to the
creation of the Mexican Academy of Human Rights (1983); he was
also involved in crucial, historical conflicts and movements in Mexico.
Among other charges, he was a member of the committee respon-
sible to oversee the San Andrés Accords between the government and
the Zapatist movement in Chiapas (1996), and in the last period of his
career he was named the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the
Rights of Indigenous People (2001–2008) (Rus 2018). Stavenhagen
died on November 5, 2016.
Stavenhagen is a clear example of a public intellectual from Latin
America. He was a frequent commentator in newspapers, popular mag-
azines, and the broadcast media, where he talked in defense of the rights
and well-being of indigenous people. As Medina, he was also strongly
committed to teaching, ever since his studies in ethnology and his stay
at the University of Sorbonne. Together with his colleagues, he devel-
oped several seminars, participated in the new Sociology programs of the
Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and, since 1973, was the leading
figure in creating and promoting a Ph.D. program in Social Sciences at El
Colegio that offered a specialization in Sociology. Although Stavenhagen
believed it necessary to develop research in the region, he did not con-
sider it relevant to implement a Master’s Degree. According to his opin-
ion, this option was an American Academic requirement but was not
necessary for professional formation in Mexico. He also stressed the idea
of a high quality research school and formation. The first program had
an extensive and rigorous curriculum including theory, methodology and
276 A. ALVARADO
a wide (almost encyclopedic) range of specializations with a duration of

eight semesters, plus an indefinite time to finish the dissertation.
Discussion and Comparative Counterpoints

Between the Two Cohorts
In this section I will show the links and the main counterpoints of two
generations of intellectuals and refugees who contributed to forging a
new sociology and orientation in empirical research that has produced
enriching results in the region. There is a set of communicating vessels
between Medina and Stavenhagen. Most of them were not direct but
existed thanks to the communication networks between the refugee
cohorts they received, supported or which they were part of. Their the-
ories are also related by the axes of Latin American thought and debate.
However, also El Colegio de México—as the institution with the greatest
academic work in Mexico—inspired and directed them in their history
and intellectual, school and administrative environment.
In Latin American sociology, there are paths that communicate ideas
and thinkers. The latter are subject to the historical-social conditions of
their time, but not all of them (not even all of the groups they partici-
pated in) shared the dominant ideas of that era or gave the same weight
to the events of their century. Due to their personal and national history,
many thinkers were subject to “atavistic” conditions, from which they
recovered showing that they were capable of creating a space for free
thinking that promoted better social and living conditions on the con-
tinent. Medina and Stavenhagen both count as innovative people who
went beyond the typology of émigrés proposed by Krohn.
It is the arrival of refugee immigrants from the second era and
Medina’s influence on the thought promoted by FLACSO-ECLAC that
constitute the “temporal gap” in which the two generations communi-
cate (It is also the period that integrates the two different moments of
Medina’s life and work—the first one centring on development of the
CES in the 40s and the second one on his teaching program and the
empirical research on the social consequences of development—whose
underlying social considerations on development were, in some way,
based on a similar idea with divergent ideological aspects, that counter-
point Weberian and Marxist orientations).
Medina represents an era of profound changes both in Europe and
Latin America, which would lead him to propose distinct projects at two
very different points of time. Stavenhagen is an emblematic figure of

the second period of forced migration who promoted the reception of a
group of intellectuals coming from Latin America and particularly from
Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil, countries in which also Medina
had established intellectual ties at the time.
Rodolfo Stavenhagen is the link between these two epochs, playing
a similar role as Cosío Villegas for the first period, and is the leader of
the new era. The axes of the new social research at CES were the social
consequences of development, which included the topics of democracy,
modernity, social justice and peasant and indigenous rights. Seen in com-
parison, Medina is the one who adapts less but is very innovative; he has
certain features related to the concept of “exit”, while Stavenhagen is
more proactive in the public space and has more of a “voice”; however, it
is important to note that none of them is conformist; both scholars lack
or reject being “loyal” to the status quo. Both were dynamic and crea-
tive, but particularly rejected the consequences of capitalist modernity in
fascist Europe and the social injustice of development (that is, the illu-
sion of modernization itself).
At first, Medina appeared to be less connected to the Mexican reality
of the forties. The fact that he had integrated into a new institute—made
up of a group of refugees—probably isolated him from local debates.
Stavenhagen, on the other hand, intervened on a daily basis (especially in
the discussions concerning political and indigenous conflicts). The local
context and the interaction with local intellectuals affected them in dif-
ferent ways. Their work environment was not “weak” or unimportant.
Medina had a lesser impact and link to Mexico, whereas Stavenhagen
was at the core of intellectual thinking for decades, both in the case of
the academia and the public interest. While Stavenhagen was a more
public figure and intellectual in Mexico, Medina was an equally strong
thinker in the Latin American context.
We may say that the personal biography had a different impact in each
case: although their personal context concerning origin and expulsion
is similar, they respond differently when facing times of adaptation and
change. Their insertion into El Colegio is of an innovative nature and
their works contributed decisively; however, the institutional treatment
and the working conditions diverge to a great extent; Medina did not
encounter excellent conditions, whereas Stavenhagen faced a better and
more propitious context (though not without conflicts), and had more
resources at his disposal.
278 A. ALVARADO
By the second stage, the social sciences had evolved and became very
heterogeneous, complex, and fragmented; models such as the ones con-
cerning of modernization and Marxism went into crisis. While the Latin
American idea was one of Stavenhagen’s original interests, in the case
of Medina it evolved to become one of the nuclei of his “late” think-
ing, thus displacing Europe and partially Mexico. Not only did they
assume similar roles as teachers, also their program proposals were
surprisingly alike.
The two different cohorts that joined El Colegio were very produc-
tive. Nonetheless, working conditions were comparatively better in the
1970s and more refugees decided to stay in the country. The majority of
the second cohort (Zapata, Zemelman, Cortés, Tarrés, Oliveira) assimi-
lated, adapted to their new context and created new spaces in public pol-
icy, promoting international studies on inequality, poverty migration, and
labor. Several of them made important contributions to the expansion of
methodology in social sciences.
The authors and both of their generations are linked by the founda-
tion of Sociology and a strong current and effort of empirical research
that places a strong emphasis on methodological rigor. Both groups
contribute to the promotion of the institution, creating or expanding
its research capacity and generating human capital, that is, experts with
great skills and quality. There are many similarities between the original
program designed by Medina (1943) and those CES teaching programs
at El Colegio created during the 1970s.
In this sense, the original ideas brought to El Colegio and to Latin
America by Medina have ultimately been very fertile. Their sociologi-
cal formation and their rigorous use of Weberian typologies, along with
their (rationalist) élan for planning, created integral ideas on develop-
ment and its social aspects. Although Stavenhagen had been educated
following a different ideological orientation, he entered the same debate
on the situation of the subcontinent, the idea of modernity and devel-
opment, and the central challenges that had to be faced to achieve social
justice.
However, the process of assimilation was extremely different. While
Medina experienced several periods of time during which he faced seri-
ous difficulties in establishing himself, working and collaborating with
local institutions and people, Stavenhagen had better opportunities and
rarely faced the situation of mismatch or a possible “exit” from context
pointed out by Krohn. Unlike several of the intellectuals arriving during
the 1970s, Stavenhagen never even faced the expectation of a possible

return to his home country, even though the majority of them finally
decided to stay (from free will).
The two scholars chose divergent ways to integrate themselves as univer-
sity academics and took up differing leadership roles. While Stavenhagen’s
image as a progressive public intellectual was more archetypal, Medina’s
image as a member of an international organization gave him a less promi-
nent but more sober profile with a great potential for creation.
The interrelation between the different groups of refugees led to very
productive dynamics in each period, whereas the relationship with the
“local” academics produced a different kind of dynamic, sometimes of a
creative, sometimes of a confrontational nature.
There were also differences in the relationship they maintained with
the State. Stavenhagen engaged in a constant dialogue with the national
authorities and intervened proactively, building institutions and forging
public policies. Medina, on the other hand, did not actively participate in
Mexican policy. However, he did so during his stay at the Latin American
and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES)
of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
(ECLAC), as shown by his indirect influences on a set of policy propos-
als on subcontinental development and on many of the great thinkers of
that period.
Morales (2012) proposes that he had a direct influence on the devel-
opment model proposed by ECLAC, and a mediating one on the draft-
ing of the dependence model developed by Enzo Faletto and Fernando
Cardoso (Morales 2012). Thus, Medina’s relationship with the “State”
depended on his insertion as a representative of an international organi-
zation (always trying to implement his ideas of rationality and planning).
Both try to discern their ideas of democracy and modernity, along
with its consequences. Medina was particularly keen to think and criticize
authoritarianism. However, he did not discuss this during his years at
the ILPES, but focused on the role of public institutions as rational plan-
ners. Ironically, during that time he was forced to live another experience
of (military) dictatorship in Chile.
His theoretical proposals were never “uprooted” but rather adapted
to regional circumstances, since all the institutions they fought against
showed resistance and strength. Models were affected by discussions
among and with intellectuals, and by processes of change or socio-politi-
cal resistance.
280 A. ALVARADO
They evolved and were isomorphized. A clear example of the efforts

to synthesize and integrate different ideas may be found in the “seven
theses” and the dependent approach; parts of their proposals are valid in
many areas, even when altered by the corresponding productive transfor-
mations for every region and the different alternatives created to try to
explain the lack of development.
In the case of Medina, the idea of development was clearly a product
of his last stage of work. It was shaped over several decades and formed
part of his Weberian conception of modernity and rationality, leading
him to propose original theses and fields of research concerning develop-
ment, the role of the hacienda, the “porosity” of that institution and its
resistance to change. Its social typologies further changed by adding the
role of education. There is also an underlying discussion about class for-
mation and power on both authors that I cannot discuss here.
I would like to close with the categories of development and moder-
nity that necessarily establish a link between them, along with the idea
of discipline and the role of the sociologist. Medina reiterates that the
duty of Sociology as a scientific social discipline was to contribute to
solving social problems. Stavenhagen shared this proposal, adding a more
Marxist approach. However, they conceptualized and contextualized
these problems in very different ways. Both of them had impact on and
modified some institutional procedures and, simultaneously, had to adapt
to the new configuration of academic and international organizations.
Medina began the institutionalization and professionalization of a
discipline, while Stavenhagen consolidated a profession, integrating it
into a school of pluralistic thought and a line of research on the conse-
quences of capitalist development and on the need for rigorous empirical
research. Both programs offered instructions for teaching, research and
dissemination, and many of them became permanent axes of work.
The creation of the Center for Social (and later Sociological) Studies
not only generated employment but created spaces for courses, and
opened up opportunities for several young specialists, both refugees
and Mexicans, to participate in the training of students and to carry out
research that in some cases had impacts on the regional governments
policies. During the second period, the CES had up to 16 full-time
professors and researchers and several strategic projects funded by pub-
lic and international donors (it was a time of more substantial resources
than in the 1930s). The first stage of Sociological Studies was marked
by research on agrarian issues, but there were also studies on migration,
work, politics, movements, and culture, many of them on a Latin

American scale, making it more diverse than the programs of the 1940s.
Until these years, it had been an institutional practice to support and
receive refugees, and we hope this institutional distinction will remain in
history.
The structures of the contingencies confronted by the exiles in the
two periods have similar features. The ambiguities of scientists waver-
ing between exile and return were solved within different periods of
time, though in both cases it resulted more favorable to adapt and cre-
ate a hybridization of theories and methods they produced while work-
ing in Mexico or South America. The theories traveled and had a greater
impact on the countries of residence than the places of origin.
In some way, the two scholars were concerned about the consequences of
two different concepts of modernity: for Medina, it meant wars and totalita-
rism; for Stavenhagen, the Latin American legacies and its consequences of
capitalism development and modernization and class exploitation.
In conclusion, we could say that—throughout a longer period of
time—the exiles generated a new paradigm, maybe not final but certainly
sociological, that in many ways transgressed the “canonical” parameters
employed for the capitalist development of social sciences in those coun-
tries from which the theory “originated”.
Notes
1. These issues are very complex. Did they ever become public? Where and
why? What was the impact of this? Was it accepted by the hosted govern-
ment? What about the intellectuals in that country? Several migrant intel-
lectuals—Spanish Republicans and exiles arriving during the 70s—engage
in political actions in Mexico, some of them resulting to be very confron-
tational. Others became part of the intellectual elite which allowed them to
participate and to hold up their political opinions, besides continuing their
activities (in) or (concerning) their countries.
2. The collection was a result of Medina’s work as Director of the Center for
Social Studies (Centro de Estudios Sociales, CES) at El Colegio de México
between 1943 and 1946. Starting in 1939, he also coordinated the series
on Sociology of the publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE)
(Moya 2015, pp. 176–177).
3. The foundation of the CES occurred at the same time as the creation of
the Centro de Estudios Clásicos [Center for Classical Studies], whose mis-
sion it was to study and divulgate Latin and Greek and that would publish
282 A. ALVARADO
major seminal “classic” works in both Spanish and the original language
(following the work of the Catalan foundation Bernat-Metje).
4. Both the creation of the center and the diploma generated very good press
publicity in Mexico City and other projects were announced during the
year 1943 (Novedades, El Universal, Excélsior and El Popular reproduce
the El Colegio newsletter between February and July 1943).
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CHAPTER 13
Comparing Contexts, Institutions

and Periods of the Émigrés’ Arrival
and Possible Return
Ludger Pries and Pablo Yankelevich
The chapters of this volume offer an innovative comparison of two

leading scientific institutions, both founded in the context of the 1930s
when thousands of intellectuals and scientists had to flee first the German
Nazi regime and later the Franco dictatorship. The chapters invite to
comparisons on different axis. One dimension refers to the institutional
contexts of the New School and of Colmex that show some similari-
ties, but also many differences. A common denominator is that both
institutions were able to take corporate advantage—although under

varying political conditions—of what was an individual bane for the

émigrés themselves (Sect. “Institutional Contexts of Founding the New
School and Colmex”).
L. Pries (*) 
Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
e-mail: ludger.pries@rub.de
P. Yankelevich 
e-mail: pabloy@colmex.mx

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5_13
286 L. PRIES AND P. YANKELEVICH
Institutional Contexts of Founding

the New School and Colmex
The New School for Social Research in New York City and El Colegio
de México in Mexico City were established and consolidated based on
the practise of receiving and inviting exiled academics, who had fled
from the Nazi dictatorship or the Franco regime. During the 1930s,
thousands of scholars, mainly of the social sciences and humanities,
but—due to the aggressive anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime—also
those practising the natural, physical and mathematical sciences, had to
leave Europe involuntarily. Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, Joseph
A. Schumpeter and Alfred Schütz, Fritz Stern and Herbert Marcuse
escaped from Austria and Germany just before or soon after Hitler came
to power. Others chose to emigrate at the latest after the annexation of
Austria in 1938. Due to the fact that they were Jewish intellectuals and
scientists, they found themselves at risk of being murdered. Scholars like
Paul Tillich or Eduard Heimann, as well as writers such as Thomas and
Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger and Bertholt Brecht had to flee
because they were being considered leftist, Social Democrats or Socialists
and, consequently, mortal enemies of the so-called Third Reich.
From 1936 onwards, the establishment of the Franco dictatorship in
Spain until 1939 and its persistence until the first democratic elections
in 1977 obliged thousands and thousands of politically active critical
intellectuals, politicians of the former Spanish Republic and other scien-
tists to leave the country. Hundreds of thousands of unionists, Socialists
and Communists first left to France, and many had to flee from the Nazi
occupation of that country a few years later. While one part of the refu-
gees left towards the Soviet Union, others exiled to the American region,
mainly Latin America. Writers like José Gaos and Wenceslao Roces and
scientists like Juan Comas, Pedro Bosch Gimpera, Jose Giral, and Jose
Medina Echavarría emigrated to and remained in Mexico. Whereas in
Germany and Austria the basic reasons for exile ended with the defeat
over the Nazi regime in 1945, persecution of groups and people and,
with that, the need to flee Spain and stay abroad did not end until the
death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
While the Nazi regime and the Franco system represented a catastro-
phe and bane for most of those who had to flee, this European situation
was, to a certain extent, a boon for some scientific institutions outside
of Europe and, ironically, even for some of the refugees. In this vain,
13 COMPARING CONTEXTS, INSTITUTIONS AND PERIODS … 287
Adolph Lowe—a German sociologist, economist and social democrat

who emigrated to England in 1933, taught there until 1940, national-
ized as Englishman but was classified as a ‘hostile foreigner’ and went on
to the USA, where he taught economy at the New School until 1963—
“once described himself and his colleagues as Emigrationsgewinnler
(‘profiteers of emigration’). […] In the age-old history of politically, reli-
giously, or otherwise motivated expulsion, scholars have always occupied
a rather unusual position because scholarship, or science, by nature tran-
scends national boundaries” (Krohn 1993, p. 179). Especially, German
economists from the critical Kiel Institute of World Economics shared a
lot of approaches and interests with those US-American scholars favoring
the New Deal politics of the Roosevelt administration. “The small but in
those years politically influential group of New Dealers welcomed those
scholars and intellectuals with open arms” (Krohn 1993, p. 180).
Nevertheless, more than some individual, gains of the refugee situa-
tion weigh the institutional gain for the New School and the Colmex.
Table 13.1 summarizes some crucial aspects of both organizations. When
the Nazi regime began in Germany, in 1933, there already existed first
networks and initiatives of transnational solidarity and help. Three major
Table 13.1 Institutional aspects of founding the New School and Colmex
New School Colmex
General climate in Roosevelt’s New Deal since Consolidation of Mexican

country of arrival March 1933; welcoming of revolution and higher
Keynesians/New Dealers, but education; central-leftist
also certain Anti-Semitism; and nationalist government;
general cosmopolitan climate and general anti-immigration law
history of New York City and culture, antisemitism
Higher education Highly established with a mix In the making and consoli-
system of renowned private and some dation only since the 1920s,
public universities perceived low quality
Institutional setting Private organizations like Direct access of cosmopolitan
Rockefeller and Carnegie Mexican intellectuals to gov-
foundations, Oberlaender Trust, ernmental decision makers
philanthropists via personal networks
‘Windows of No established group opposed to Diplomats and intellectuals
opportunity’ recruitment of refugees; raising with access to government;
money for a dozen of refugees educational reforms since
from April to October 1933 mid-1930s
organizations were established during 1933 already: the Emergency

Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars in the USA, the
Academic Assistance Council in Great Britain (both founded in sum-
mer 1933) and the Notgemeinschaft deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland
(Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad, founded as early as
in April of 1933). Christian Fleck underlines: “It is by itself a remarkable
phenomenon that in two countries, that during World War I were ene-
mies of the middle powers, less than two decades later committees of aid
for refugees were founded. It is worth to underline that their existence
was not due to religious solidarity, state or private care, but based exclu-
sively on consciousness of professional solidarity” (Fleck 2015, p. 408).
Referring especially to the US-American case, Krohn (1993, p. 26)
underlines: “Given the passivity and indifference at the governmen-
tal level, refugee aid was left up to private organizations in all coun-
tries.” The US-government and general political climate in the country
was against refugees and especially forced migrants from Europe who
by some politicians were considered as “communists, extreme radicals,
Jewish professional agitators, refugee enthusiast” (Krohn 1993, p. 87).
Compared to the activities of these three organizations, the—formally
responsible—High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations
played a quite negligible role (Krohn 1993, p. 27).
The emergence and practice of these committees and the role of sci-
entific foundations since 1933 are well-documented (Krohn 1993;
Fleck 2015, Chapters 1 and 2; Löhr 2013; Rutkoff and Scott 1986,
Chapters 5 and 6). In the case of the USA, the Emergency Committee
in Aid of Displaced German Scholars worked hand in hand with scien-
tific and philanthropic foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation,
the Carnegie Foundation, or the Oberlaender Trust. Universities were
offered to receive half of the exiled scholars’ salary from the Emergency
Committee and the other half from one of the foundation. “Thus the
hiring of professors exiled from Germany did not cost the universities
anything, at least for the first years. In this way, the following amounts
were made available until 1945: $800,000 from the Emergency
Committee for 335 scholars, of which $317,000 came from the New
York Foundation alone; almost $1. Million from the Rockefeller foun-
dation for 303 scholars; and $317,000 from the Oberlaender Trust for
over 300 scholars” (Krohn 1993, p. 28). “From 1933 to 1944, between
1,000 and 2,000 European intellectuals settled in the United States”
(Rutkoff and Scott 1986, p. 85).
In this entire endeavor, the Director of the New School, Alvin Johnson,
played a crucial role. He recognized the unique historical opportunity for
turning the New School, founded in 1919 as a kind of adult and workers’
education and modern art like in Germany’s Volkshochschulen, into a full
graduate school able to grant university degrees (Krohn 1993, p. 60). In
1933, the New School counted with “a full-time faculty of only four or five
members” (Rutkoff and Scott 1986, p. 84). “In April of that year, as the
Nazis expelled Jewish and socialist scholars from their university positions,
Johnson saw his opportunity. Within six months, he had raised enough
money to bring a dozen, and later a score, of the most distinguished of
these refugees to the New School” (Rutkoff and Scott 1986, p. 84). To a
certain extent, the dismissal and persecution of intellectuals and scholars in
Germany was a boon for the New School, and such was also the case for the
German forced migrants who were able to settle there. “In fact, Johnson’s
failure to sustain a permanent faculty at the New School after 1922 may
have worked to the refugee’s advantage. At the New School no established
group opposed their recruitment, nor were they under any compulsion to
blend in or to become Americanized” (Rutkoff and Scott 1986, p. 86).
Compared to the New School, the case of founding first the Casa de
España in August 1938 and later, in October of 1940, renaming it El
Colegio de México, reveals both similarities and differences. From the
very beginning, it was an effort that was mainly supported not by private
foundations or universities, but that was negotiated by some intellectuals
and diplomats with the government of the leftist-socialist president Lázaro
Cárdenas. Cardenas nationalized the railway system and the petrol indus-
try in 1938 and initiated many social and educational reforms. In a similar
way as in the USA, there were some pragmatic and utilitarian reasons.
The Casa de España and later the Colegio de México were the direct
result of the encounter of political power with the intellectuals. This rela-
tionship dates back to the origins of the revolutionary regime, and in par-
ticular to the intellectual leadership of José Vasconcelos during the 1920s.
Daniel Cosío Villegas was part of a generation of intellectuals convinced
of the need to rebuild a State that would respond efficiently and profes-
sionally to the most important social demands. In order to achieve these
objectives, these scholars believed it essential to promote scientific knowl-
edge and to plan and train responsible and capable public servants. Cosío
Villegas was a lawyer and completed his postgraduate studies in Economics
at the Universities of Harvard, Cornell and Wiscosin, then attended courses
at the School of Economics and the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in
Paris. These educational experiences only helped to highlight the short-

comings of higher education in Mexico. Cosío Villegas understood that
the arrival of Spanish academics in Mexico was a great opportunity to
strengthen the teaching and research at Mexican universities, and he took
advantage of the political moment. The government of Lázaro Cárdenas
politically supported the Spanish Republic and Cosío Villegas was of the
opinion that this support should also yield academic and scientific results.
According to him, Spanish scientists would otherwise seek refuge in
other nations as Argentina, for example, despite the fact that its govern-
ment’s views were diametrically opposed to Mexico’s anti-fascist positions
(Krauze 1991, pp. 98–99).
In order to gain the support of Lázaro Cárdenas, Cosío Villegas
sought the help of his colleagues in prominent positions, as was the case
for Luis Montes de Oca, Director of the Bank of Mexico. Once Cárdenas
welcomed this idea with enthusiasm, Cosío turned to both formal and
informal international networks of academics and intellectuals in order
to select the Spaniards that would be invited. The Chilean poet Gabriela
Mistral—who had collaborated in the Vasconcelian project a dec-
ade earlier and who was a close collaborator of the League of Nations
Committee on Intellectual Cooperation—was the Chilean consul in Paris
at the time and supported Cosío Villegas in this task. Another key fig-
ure was Alfonso Reyes, an outstanding writer and Mexican ambassador
in Buenos Aires. Reyes formed the center of an extensive network of
intellectuals in Spain, France and Latin America. He had been living in
exile in Spain during the second half of the 1910s, and then held diplo-
matic positions in Madrid and Paris and South America. Reyes’ ties with
the Spanish intelligentsia were essential for the foundation of the Casa de
España and its subsequent transformation into El Colegio de México.
Daniel Cosío Villegas, in 1936 argued in favor of receiving some out-
standing Spanish scholars: “We would have a characteristic that would
provoke sympathy all over the world, in the same way as it did for various
foreign universities when having received the wise German men expulsed
by the hitlerism […]. At the same time, we would acquire ten men of
the first line, who would help us raise the level of our culture that has
fallen so many years ago” (cited according to Lida 2000, p. 33, transla-
tion LP). There were clear selection criteria according to academic qual-
ity and needed special knowledge (Lida 2000, p. 38).
Despite their different academic traditions and levels of institutional
development, both Mexico and the United States capitalized on the
European exodus. All in all, what might have been an individual bane—
the forced migration from Europe to the USA and Mexico—may defi-
nitely be described as a boon for the two institutions considered here,
which allowed them to receive highly qualified academics to strengthen
their own teaching, education and research.
Intertwining Institutional and Individual Aspects

It was not only varying institutional embedding that influenced in the
founding of the New School and Colmex, but also the individual leaders,
who promoted common organizational ideas and, at the same time, indi-
vidual careers of émigrés (Table 13.2).
Unlike New York, the Spanish diaspora in Mexico served as the foun-
dation for the creation of a new educational institution. It is true that
the contributions of academics from the Spanish exile strengthened
other Mexican university institutions, but in the case of El Colegio de
México exile made possible a new and completely innovative project.
The Colegio de México neither had to face bureaucratic inertia from for-
mer institutions of higher education nor narrow conceptions about the
urgent need to renew practices and perspectives in teaching and research
in the humanities and social sciences.
Table 13.2 Intertwining institutional and individual aspects
New School Colmex
Cosmopolitan Alvin Johnson: grounded in Daniel Cosío Villegas: intellectual

leaders scientific work, academic and writer with longstanding
management and scientific diplomatic experiences; initiated
editing; personal networks of rescue in early 1938; Alfonso
social scientists all over the Reyes, prominent writer, as refugee
world, especially in Europe himself; both with established net-
works in Europe and Latin America
Institutional goals Strengthening/upgrading Funding a new academic organi-
and effects of a well situated academic zation, strengthening the national
organization academically and higher education and opening a
internationally national-popular perspective
Forced migrants Important European countries, Exclusively Spaniards, specific
addressed and leftist-critical, Jewish persons combination of nationalistic
invited from Germany, Austria, France, populism and special relation with
Italy, Belgium ex-colonial power
Comparing Regions and Periods

The chapters of the book concentrate on the period of the 1930s
and on Europe, Mexico and the USA. But there are also interesting
insights on the situation of forced migrants from Latin America, who
had to leave their countries due to dictatorships since the 1970s. In
Mexico, the experience revolving around the Spanish Republicans
set a paradigm for academic opportunities offered by political dias-
poras. Upon the rise of the military dictatorships in Latin America,
Mexico thus reopened its doors and, a large contingent of Argentine,
Uruguayan, Chilean, Brazilian, Bolivian, Peruvian, Central American
and West Indian intellectuals and academics were hired by Mexican
universities.
During World War II, Mexico had been the center of anti-
fascist reflection and action in Latin America. Now, three decades
later, Mexico was the meeting point for critical thinkers of the Latin
American left. They debated fundamental questions of political reflec-
tion, including the nature and meaning of the essential transitions to
democracy and the central importance of human rights policies in the
construction of new political orders. Even though the impact of the
Latin American diaspora on the U.S. academic community must still
be investigated, some studies already analyze the networks of some
of these exiles and their work at U.S. institutions (Calandra 2006;
Markarian 2005).
Conclusions: Added Value of Comparative Perspective

A look at the history of the New School and the Colmex reveals a lot of
commonalities, but also interesting differences. Both organizations were
intensively promoted by outstanding persons—Alvin Johnston in the
case of the USA and Daniel Cosío Villegas (and later Alfonso Reyes) in
the case of Mexico. Both had made extensive experiences in Europe, had
substantial personal networks of academics, politicians and foundations.
In both cases, a mix of professional solidarity and instrumental exploita-
tion of ‘windows of opportunities’ could be identified. In both cases,
regardless the foreseeable exodus and exile of thousands of scholars and
intellectuals, there was a specific and, to a certain extent, contingent con-
stellation that made success possible.
The latter points at important differences between the two cases:

Although specific contingencies led to success, the structure of these
contingencies differed a lot. In the case of the New School there were
initiating European networks of solidarity and US-American fund-
ing organizations prior to 1933 based on the experiences obtained by
World War I. In the case of the Colmex, the personality and politics of
the president, the links between the president and the Mexican intelli-
gentsia, as well as cultural nearness due to colonial history were crucial.
This led to mainly governmental aid in the case of the Colmex, whereas
the US-government was reserved or even hostile to the idea of receiv-
ing many European intellectuals, so that success in the case of the New
School was possible only due to the funding by mainly private founda-
tions. Whereas the New School represented an exceptional experiment
of socially committed education in an established landscape of advanced
universities, the Colmex, right from the very beginning, was considered
a public elite institution that was financed by the federal government
with a strict meritocratic philosophy for students and scholars and was
expected to improve a precarious national academic system.
There are a lot more factors of commonalities and differences that could
be extracted from the chapters of this volume and the corresponding litera-
ture. The book concentrates on analyzing and comparing the founding and
first twenty years of experiences of both organizations. Thereby, it offers a
deeper understanding of (1) the institutional context and impact of forced
migrants in the cases of Colmex and New School, (2) the ambiguities of
the scientist’s situation between exile, emigration and return‐migration and
corresponding dynamics of application, adaptation or amalgamation or
hybridization of theories and methods they brought, and (3) of how the
‘travelling’ or transnational return of theories have an impact on the respec-
tive countries of departure, namely Spain, Germany and Austria.
In the case of Mexico, the book further points out the ambiguity
between a policy that was supportive of the Spanish Republicans and
restrictive towards persecuted Jews. In contrast to the hostility observed
in the United States, actually based on the fear of admitting political ref-
ugees with left-wing political affiliations, left-wing militancy constituted
the most effective safe-conduct to assure their entry into Mexico. The
government’s opposition to the entry of Jews derives from xenophobic
prejudices that were very present in this situation of exalted nationalism,
and from the fear that this xenophobia would lead to a powerful anti-
Semitic mobilization.
The government was nonetheless aware of the limits of their shel-

ter policy. The admittance of Spanish Republicans into the country
unleashed furious opposition from the Mexican right, which was at
risk to increase dangerously if there was an unrestricted entry of perse-
cuted Jews. On the other hand, and this was also the case for Mexico,
the book points out the continuity between the Spanish exile and the
South American one which occurred three decades later. The Colegio de
México, faithful to its exile-related origins, incorporated Latin American
academics and thus broadened its theoretical perspectives and discipli-
nary approaches in the fields of social sciences and the humanities.
Discussing such questions must not remain a mere intellectual exer-
cise. Scholars and societies in general could learn from the two cases of
the New School and the Colmex. In addition, history of forced migra-
tion of scholars and intellectuals did not end with the 1930s. As shown
in Chapter 7, a massive wave of émigrés from Latin America came to
Mexico, Europe, and the USA since the 1970s. All of these histori-
cal experiences invite to learn for dealing with the challenges of forced
migration in the twenty-first century. This holds especially for the sit-
uation of exiled academics and intellectuals e.g. of the Middle East or
Central America. In a special volume of the Journal New Research Voices
on “Syrian Academics in Exile”, the editors underline: “All across the
West we see refugees being scapegoated and a growing reluctance to
help those who genuinely need our help. Somewhere in the mess and
confusion we are beginning to lose sight of just why so many migrants
and refugees are seeking new lives in the West, more pertinently, the pos-
itives that these people bring with them” (O’Keeffe and Pásztor 2016,
p. 7). Should only the dark side of history repeat itself? This book is
an invitation to learn from the situation of forced migration during the
twentieth century in order to cope with the challenges of our days.
Bibliography
Calandra, B. (2006). L’America della solidarietà. L’accoglienza dei rifugiati cileni
e argentini negli Stati Uniti (1973–1983). Roma: Edizioni Nuova Cultura.
Fleck, C. (2015). Etablierung in der Fremde. Vertriebene Wissenschaftler in den
USA nach 1933. Frankfurt/M: Campus.
Krauze, E. (1991). Daniel Cosío Villegas. Una biografía intelectual. Mexico City:
FCE.
Lida, C. E., with the collaboration of J. A. Matesanz. (2000). La Casa de España

en México. In C. E. Lida, J. A. Matesanz, & J. Z. Vázquez (comp.), La Casa
de España y El Colegio de México: memoria 1938–2000 (pp. 21–118). Mexico
Löhr, I. (2013). Fluchthilfe zur Rettung der Zunft: Die akademische
Zwangsmigration in den 1930er-Jahren. Themenportal Geschichte. http://www.
europa.clio-online.de/site/lang__en/ItemID__634/mid__12210/40208773/
Default.aspx.
Markarian, V. (2005). Left in Transformation: Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin
American Human Rights Networks, 1967–1984. New York: Routledge.
O’Keeffe, P., & Pásztor, Z. (2016). Introduction to the Volume. New Research
Voices, 1(2), 7–9.
Rutkoff, P. M., & Scott, W. B. (1986). New School: A History of the New School
for Social Research. New York: The Free Press.
Index
A C
Aaquis (anti-Nazi Partisans), 159, 160, Cárdenas, Lázaro, 34, 39, 154–156,
183, 191–193, 197 181, 197, 205, 208, 210, 217,
Abyssinian War, 36–38, 53 226, 227, 233, 289, 290
Adaptation, 105, 215, 277, 293 Cold War, 132, 142, 144, 162, 164,
America and American. See United 165, 273, 274
States of America Colonialism, 271–274
Antifascism, 134 Columbia University firings, 75
Arendt, Hannah, 6, 14, 15, 70, Communists, 25, 26, 28–33, 35, 40,
107, 120, 123–125, 127, 131, 42, 48–50, 53–57, 60, 125, 141,
138–145, 286 144, 153–155, 160–163, 171, 184,
Argelés Concentration Camp, 6, 36, 187–192, 196, 198–201, 286, 288
40, 41, 44, 49, 156, 157, 159, Cosío Villegas, Daniel, 156, 158, 185,
222 207, 209, 211, 226, 229, 233,
Artists, 2, 5, 17, 153, 158, 161, 163, 246–248, 262, 289–292
183, 185, 186, 192, 194, 196, Cosmopolitan internationalism, 86
199, 205, 209, 211–213, 215 Critical Theory, 4, 14, 121, 141
Assimilation, 5, 17, 73, 89, 140, 216,
249, 278
D
Development, 2, 48, 55, 74, 77, 97,
B 98, 105, 112, 113, 118, 119,
Barcelona, 48, 221, 222, 225, 230 121–124, 126, 127, 143, 154,
Beard, Charles, 74, 79, 83 169, 197, 198, 206, 212, 216,
Bergstraesser, Arnold, 118–120 217, 239, 254, 262–281, 290
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 297

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99265-5
298 Index
Dewey, John, 32, 75, 76, 85, 159 Fraenkel, Ernst, 71, 118, 119, 125,
Diaspora, 3, 8–12, 167, 169, 171– 141
173, 209, 265, 291, 292 Franco Dictatorship, 285, 286
E G
Echevarría, José Medina, 14, 158, Gaos, Jose, 10, 158, 159, 213, 217,
159, 207, 213, 235, 236, 243, 235, 236, 240, 243, 245, 246,
246, 248, 254–258, 261, 262, 249, 255–257, 286
264, 266 Germany, 2, 4–7, 10, 13, 14, 16, 24,
El Colegio De México, 1, 2, 156, 38–40, 43–48, 51, 54, 57, 71,
169, 173, 185, 186, 198, 80, 86–88, 90, 91, 94, 97, 98,
205–207, 211, 213, 214, 217, 104, 106, 107, 112–120, 137,
221, 235, 239, 242, 244–249, 141, 143–145, 157, 159, 160,
251, 254, 256, 257, 261–269, 181, 182, 186, 190, 191, 193,
274–278, 281, 282, 286, 196, 207, 208, 212, 227, 236,
289–291 249, 262, 266, 270, 286–289,
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 291, 293
80 exiles, 10, 103, 135, 136, 141,
Exile, 1–8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 32, 144, 146, 161–163, 182, 183,
86, 100, 103, 107, 112, 113, 187, 188, 191–194, 196, 197,
115, 125, 126, 131–133, 135, 207
136, 138, 139, 145, 146, 151, German Jews, 41, 44, 45, 137
153–168, 172, 173, 183, 184, National Socialist, 40, 41, 47, 71,
191, 193, 199, 201, 207, 211, 87, 100
213–217, 222–225, 230, 233, Nazi Regime. See Nazism, 2
251, 255, 257, 263, 264, 270, social scientists, 1, 18, 78, 98, 106,
281, 286, 290–294. See also 107, 115, 274, 291
Germany; Spain Weimar culture, 90
and migration, 2, 3, 5, 8, 17, 83, westernization, 111–113, 116,
162, 293 118–123, 125
and return, 9 Global Solidarity Networks, 162, 293
Great Depression, 29, 38, 88
F
Fascism, 38, 39, 50, 52, 54, 57, H
78–81, 86, 140, 143, 155, 159, Higher-Education, 72, 76–78, 82,
160, 184, 262 169, 173, 237, 287, 290, 291
Fondo De Cultura Económica (FCE), reform, 77, 237, 287, 289
159, 209, 212, 232, 239, 240, Holocaust, 123, 131–133, 135, 139,
242, 244, 247, 248, 267, 269, 141
281 Hula, Erich, 70
Index 299
Humanism, 136, 241, 254 Lafora, Gonzalo R., 217, 225–227,

Hybridity, 100, 106 233
Larrea, Juan, 243
Latin America, 34, 39, 78, 153,
I 154, 159, 164, 165, 170, 246,
Innovation, 186, 214 247, 249, 261–266, 268, 269,
Integration, 3, 9, 10, 15, 18, 90, 97, 271–279, 286, 290–292, 294
104, 107, 116, 119, 122, 139, dictatorships, 45, 164, 171, 172,
168, 169, 214–216, 225, 264 207
Intelectual Loyalty, 243 Law, 5, 12, 34, 40–43, 46, 49, 58, 59,
Intellectuals 75, 76, 80, 97, 119, 120, 123,
European, 17, 146, 183, 242, 288, 143, 152, 155, 158, 162, 173,
293 181, 209, 213, 217, 236, 237,
Latin American, 153, 274 254, 257, 266, 287
refugee, 79, 87, 88, 100, 101, 135, Lederer, Emil, 77, 80, 91, 98, 101
140, 143, 173, 189, 194, 276 Liberalism, 77, 78, 81, 122, 125, 136,
social scientists, 1, 115, 274, 291 140, 142, 145
Isolationism, 85, 88, 215 Lowe, Adolph, 11, 70, 287
Italy, 13, 24, 36–40, 43, 48, 51, 53,
54, 80, 86, 141, 157, 160, 208,
212, 291 M
Marcuse, Herbert, 114, 120, 122,
123, 125, 132, 141, 145, 286
J Marschak, Jacob, 70, 94, 108
Jewish Intellectuals And Judaism, 71, Marxism, 13, 18, 120–122, 136, 140,
134, 136, 141, 162, 286 141, 145, 170, 269, 271, 274,
social scientists, 78, 98, 106 278
Johnson, Alvin, 70, 72, 74, 76, 80, McCarthyism, 132, 143
81, 85, 86, 88, 101, 139, 289, Mental Frameworks, 24, 53
291, 292 Mexico, 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18,
Jonas, Hans, 70, 72, 107 24, 25, 32, 34–36, 39, 40, 47,
51–54, 151–174, 181–201,
205–218, 222–226, 228–231,
K 233, 235, 237, 238, 240,
Keynesianism, 287 242, 244–249, 251, 255, 257,
261–264, 266–278, 281, 286,
290–294
L revolution, 34, 35, 39, 152, 268,
La Casa De España, 205, 207, 210, 287
211, 214, 217, 238, 244, 245, Miquel I Vergés, José Maria, 225,
247, 257 230–232
Modigliani, Franco, 70
300 Index
N political science and scientists, 15, 16,

Nazism, 131, 132, 134, 137, 138, 70, 115–120, 123, 142, 207
140, 141, 160, 161, 181, 182, political violence, 23–25, 39, 53, 55
185, 196
regime, 2, 5, 6, 15–17, 40, 41, 111,
270, 285–287 R
terror, 40, 41, 43, 44, 57, 160, 192, Refugee, 1–3, 6–8, 10, 11, 14, 24, 26,
193 30, 47, 52, 60, 78, 79, 88, 90,
Neumann, Franz L., 16, 114, 115, 91, 98, 100, 107, 111, 132, 133,
117, 125, 141 136–139, 141, 142, 144, 156, 157,
New Deal, 29, 33, 38, 83, 87, 88, 90, 159–161, 164–167, 169, 173, 174,
94, 97, 98, 139, 287 181–188, 190, 194, 197–199, 209,
New School for Social Research, 1, 2, 211, 214, 216, 218, 222, 224,
32, 72, 73, 77, 82, 83, 104, 139, 225, 262, 264, 265, 276, 278–281,
206, 286 286–289, 291, 294
racial, 183
religious, 1, 10, 151, 286, 288
O Rescue, 2, 73, 91, 157, 183, 185,
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 188, 199, 254, 262, 291
114, 115, 126 Return, 3, 8–12, 17, 78, 104, 112,
113, 118, 121, 124, 126, 134,
136, 144, 145, 157, 161, 163,
P 166, 196, 198, 210, 211,
Pariah Intellectuals, 138–140 214–217, 222, 223, 225, 237,
Partit Socialista Unificat De Catalunya, 238, 249, 250, 263, 265, 270,
222 272, 279, 281, 285, 293
Philosophy, 11, 15, 70, 117, 122–124, return émigrés, 265, 285
132, 145, 158, 213, 230, 236, return migration, 5
237, 242, 245, 254, 257, 266, Reyes, Alfonso, 34, 156, 158, 210,
293 211, 225, 227, 230–233, 249,
Policies, 8, 114, 152, 169, 184, 206, 257, 258, 290–292
208, 279, 280, 292 Rockefeller Foundation (RF), 91, 206,
asylum policies, 184 207, 217, 288
refugee policies, 161, 162 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 29, 34, 38, 78, 80,
Politics 87, 88, 90, 91, 134, 182, 185, 287
political crimes, 28, 54
political economics, 116
political persecution, 152, 155, 161, S
199 Schools-In-Exile, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14,
political refugees, 151, 152, 155, 15, 32, 71, 72, 79, 83, 87, 91,
157, 162, 165–167, 173, 183, 98, 107, 139, 145, 156, 158,
189, 207, 293 170, 172, 194, 206, 207, 214,
political scholars, 89 223, 263, 265, 286, 293
Index 301
Siches, Luis Recaséns, 159, 217, 226, 227 Transnationalism, 2–4, 8, 11, 14
Solidarity, 2, 39, 153, 155, 161, 162, transnational lives, 1, 5
165, 168, 172, 211, 215, 241, transnational theories, 12, 14, 15
287, 288, 292 Travelling theories, 1–4, 12–14, 213,
Spain, 2, 4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 24, 49, 50, 215, 217, 264
52–54, 57, 86, 134, 156, 157,
173, 181, 200, 206, 208–213,
215–217, 223, 228, 230, 231, U
236–239, 253, 266, 267, 269, United States of America (USA), 1,
286, 290, 293 2, 4, 7–9, 11, 13, 14, 16–18, 24,
Civil War, 2, 5, 43, 47, 51, 133, 29–33, 35, 38, 39, 45, 46, 54,
155, 156, 162, 163, 200, 222, 98, 161, 216, 262, 287–289,
239, 253, 266, 270 291, 292, 294
exiles, 2, 4, 11, 14, 86, 133, 155, American culture, 76, 134, 139,
156, 162, 173, 217, 290 143, 146
refugees, 5, 10, 157, 227 University in Exile, 16, 70–72, 77–79,
republic, 47, 52, 155, 156, 167, 83, 86, 91, 98, 101, 139, 206
184, 185, 206, 208, 211, 214, USSR, 24, 26, 28–31, 35, 37, 48, 51,
237, 251, 266, 286, 290 52, 54, 56–58, 191, 194, 195
Speier, Hans, 70, 77, 80, 98, 101, 103
Stalinism, 26, 50, 54, 55, 140, 141,
144, 155 V
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, 261–263, 265, Vicar Life, 243, 248, 251
266, 270, 272–281
Stern, Fritz, 16, 286
W
World War II, 11, 16, 47, 97, 113,
T 114, 184, 193, 213, 216, 224,
Terror, 24–30, 32, 33, 40, 42, 43, 45, 244, 263, 292
48–50, 55, 57, 59, 132, 160, 164
Totalitarianism, 73, 77, 78, 123, 124,
126, 132, 139, 141–146, 183,
243, 263

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EDITED BY LUDGER PRIES

ISBN 978-3-319-99264-8 ISBN 978-3-319-99265-5 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952674

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Cover image: © Peter Horree/Alamy Stock Photo

1 Exile Dynamics and Impacts of European Social

2 Crossroads: US and Mexican Reactions to Repression

3 Reflections on the New School’s Founding Moments,

4 Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social

5 “Agents” of “Westernization”?: The Impact of German

6 The Holocaust and German-Jewish Culture in Exile 131

7 Waves of Exile: The Reception of Émigrés in Mexico,

8 International Rescue of Academics, Intellectuals and

9 The Institutional Reception of Spanish Émigré

10 Two Aspects of Exile 221

11 José Gaos and José Medina Echavarría: The Intellectual

12 The Constitution of Sociology at El Colegio de México:

13 Comparing Contexts, Institutions and Periods of the

Arturo Alvarado, El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico

Table 1.1 Four ideal-types of international migrants 9

Exile Dynamics and Impacts of European

© The Author(s) 2019 1

Given the dramatic situation of forced migration, relatively little atten-

Based on these general remarks, the guiding questions of this chap-

Refugees Between Assimilation, Return Migration

By no means could these thousands of ‘forced migrants’ be consid-

Meanwhile, this might characterise the feelings and experiences of most

obtaining a secure livelihood, and becoming integrated into American aca-

new communication technologies, a fourth ideal-type, the transmi-

Table 1.1 Four ideal-types of international migrants

Relation Relation to Main impulse Time horizon of

Emigrant/ Roots, ancestry, Integration, Economic Long term

The ideal-type of a Diaspora-migrant could be exemplified by Jewish

adapt to the scientific norms and approaches of the country of arrival;

Travelling Theories and Transnational Theorists

situation to situation, from one period to another though the ‘circulation

Mexico of the 1930s. How did schools of theoretical thinking change

Educated in the German tradition of philosophy and political science,

Thinking and remembering, we said, is the human way of striking roots,

New School by citing Thomas Mann who characterised the University in

Given the tensions between the strategies of either assimilation, return

Burawoy, M. (2015). Travelling Theory. In Open Democracy/ISA RC-47: Open

Identität. Die Emigration deutscher Sozialwissenschaftler 1933–1945 (pp. 217–

Mecheril, P. (2003). Prekäre Verhältnisse. Über natio-ethno-kulturelle (Mehrfach-)

Srubar, I. (Ed.). (1988). Exil, Wissenschaft, Identität. Die Emigration deutscher

Crossroads: US and Mexican Reactions

Katrin Möbius and Sascha Möbius

© The Author(s) 2019 23

Soviet Union: Terror by Starvation and the Great

international press (Snyder 2010, Pos. 728). Forced collectivization had

The Great Terror

Internationally, Stalin presented collectivization and forced industrial-

Reactions in the USA

Intervention against the Stalinist regime implied a major war, a new

Fascist Italy and the Abyssinian War

The War Against Abyssinia

and the USSR.32 It was clearly a war of aggression justified by a racist

Table 1.1 Four ideal-types of international migrants 9

Exile Dynamics and Impacts of European

Table 1.1 Four ideal-types of international migrants

Travelling Theories and Transnational Theorists

Crossroads: US and Mexican Reactions

Soviet Union: Terror by Starvation and the Great

Reactions in the USA

Fascist Italy and the Abyssinian War

Reactions in the USA

Germany 1933–1939: Terror and the Creation of the

killed (Bracher et al. 1962, p. 871). In mid-1933, about 45,000 peo-

The USA and the Nazi Dictatorship

Mexico and the Nazi Dictatorship

US Reactions to the Civil War

Mexican Reactions to the Civil War

54. The same was true for Britain: Buchanan (1997, p. 1).

Reflections on the New School’s Founding

Refugee Scholars and the New School

The University in Exile: German Scholars and the New

1. The worldwide unresolved economic and social effects of World

Fig. 4.4 Alvin Johnson

Fig. 4.5 Emil Lederer 1937

Fig. 4.6 Gerhard Colm 1960’s

Fig. 4.7 Jacob Marschak 1970

Fig. 4.8 Hans Staudinger

Fig. 4.9 Arnold Brecht 1973 with German chancellor Willy Brandt

Fig. 4.10 The state department of social welfare’s translation of Emil Lederer’s

Debates on Self-Perception Among the Refugee

Fig. 4.11 Program of a symposium organized at the New School by the

“Agents” of “Westernization”?: The Impact