The mentor within [electronic resource] : the German refugee scholars of the Nazi period and their American context.

1987

1 online resource (201 p.)

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Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-04, Section: A, page: 0930.

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This dissertation examines the American reception of the refugee scholars who fled Hitler and arrived in the United States. It presents the migration within the context of the mentor-disciple relationship that had characterized American attitudes toward Germany for over a century. Surveying the rhetoric of American educators and the policies of American institutions, the study demonstrates that attitudes toward both the tradition of German scholarship and the refugee scholars reflected opinions about the quality of higher education and research in the United States. The dissertation finds that not only the past attachment to German scholarship but a renewed admiration in the 1920's for that tradition influenced later responses to the National Socialist attack upon German scholarship as well as to the presence of the refugee scholars in the United States. That renewal of respect led some educators to prolong relations with institutions and individuals in Germany, and others to bring the refugee scholars to the United States. The interest in German scholarship also influenced the types of policies devised to place refugee scholars on American campuses. Coupled with an increasing understanding of the effects of National Socialist policies upon scholarship in Germany, the problems of assimilating the refugees led to the appearance of negative attitudes regarding the practices and principles of the German scholarly heritage. During their first two decades in the United States, the refugee scholars encouraged Americans to reconsider the appeal of the tradition which they represented. The dissertation concludes that by the 1960's Americans had internalized not only the refugee scholars but their attitudes toward scholarship as well. Americans viewed the refugee scholars as testimony to the fact that the United States had succeeded to the position of scholarly eminence once occupied by Germany.

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English

July 12, 2011

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1987.

Yale University.