Ernst Kantorowicz: A Life by Robert Lerner

Author:Robert Lerner [Lerner, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Historical, Educators, History, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780691172828
Google: 3-WMDAEACAAJ
Amazon: 069117282X
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2017-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Flight

ERNST KANTOROWICZ LOST HIS “LEISURE WITH DIGNITY” painfully in 1938. Upon his return from Paris his passport was taken away from him, meaning that he could no longer travel abroad for foreign research. In 1937 his “Reclusiveness” article had been withdrawn from publication because he was Jewish, and he just managed to have his “Petrus de Vinea in England” published in January 1938 in Austria before the Anschluss of March. It clearly was time to emigrate.

At first his highest priority was to prepare a number of papers for delivery in English. He had not been offered any job outside of Germany in advance. Nor was he seeking employment in England: Bowra must have made clear to him that the employment situation there was hopeless. The United States remained (for him Palestine was out of the question), and he was advised that the best strategy for finding a position there would be to embark on a lecture tour. Hence the need for a number of papers because it was best to offer potential hosts a choice of topics. Thus from the late winter to the summer of 1938 EKa engaged himself in the task of producing a set of papers in a language he had not yet fully mastered. When he felt he was ready he sought the return of his passport. That was by no means easy, but he finally succeeded on October 29. Very soon after, on the night of November 9, the Nazis unleashed their fury against Jews in “the night of broken glass” (Kristallnacht). EKa all but certainly would have been arrested in the morning and shipped to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp had he not been sheltered. When the danger passed he managed to obtain the necessary visas. Then, at the beginning of December, he crossed the border to Holland and from there ferried to England. Two months later he sailed for New York.

His preparations for departure owed much to the helpfulness of friends. Particularly solicitous was Theodor Mommsen, who had emigrated to America in 1936 as one of the rare Germans to leave Nazi Germany without being Jewish or having a Jewish wife. (He was a bachelor.) While slowly adjusting to the new language and culture (he decided to call himself “Ted”), he gained a research position at Johns Hopkins. This led him to encourage EKa to come to America too. In a letter of early 1937 Mommsen wrote to say that American universities had nothing to be ashamed of and that he thought EKa might well be able to find a position. He insisted that he did not want to press him, nor he did he want to underestimate the difficulties. But he made clear that he would be delighted to have EKa in the same country and that if he responded positively he would see whether he could be of help.1 In June he sent a follow-up.2 Now he wrote that he had won a “Sterling Fellowship” at Yale for the next academic

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