Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research

This careful and thorough piece of intellectual history explores the work and influence of emigre social scientists, mainly economists, who left Germany after 1933 and settled at the New School in New York City. Among the 184 emigres were Rudolf Arnheim, Emil Lederer and Hans Speier. The author, who teaches modern history at the University of Luneberg in Germany, traces the pattern of the German intellectual diaspora and explains how xenophobia and anti-Semitism kept some American universities from welcoming such scholars. He describes how emigres brought laissez-faire Austrian neo-classical theories as well as more youthful reformist ideas. New School director Alvin Johnson sought to both express the school's internationalism and progressivism and also to build his fledgling institution. There, economists like Gerhard Colm critiqued Keynesian theory and influenced New Deal policy. Scholars such as Arnold Brecht and Albert Salomon also took on issues of administrative law, Weberian sociology and the sources of fascism . Krohn concludes that the impact of these emigre scholars was greater than has been previously acknowledged. (Feb.)