"Acknowledgements." A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences: Robber Barons, the Third Reich and the Invention of Empirical Social Research . Fleck, Christian. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. v–vi. Bloomsbury Collections . Web. 30 Jul. 2020. <>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com , 30 July 2020, 21:58 UTC. Copyright © Christian Fleck 2011. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, my thoughts turn to those who are no longer there to receive my thanks: my conversations with Daniel Bell, Lewis Coser, Marie Jahoda, Robert K. Merton, David Riesman, Arthur Vidich and Kurt H. Wolff provided me with authentic insights into the period that has been examined in the present book, and Lotte Schenk-Danzinger, Hildegard Hetzer, Ella Lingens, Eduard März, Paul Neurath and Gertrud Wagner did the same with respect to the world of those who could stay in, or return to, their home country of Austria. Michael Pollak was one of the few in my generation who shared my interest in the history of science; time and again, the suggestions he made when I was beginning this work helped me to find the right course for my undertaking. The present study would not have come about without the support of the archivists who facilitated my work, or sometimes even reoriented it in ways that contributed to its present form. The archivists’ role is rarely appreciated to any adequate degree. Most of the time thanks are expressed in a more general way to the institutions whose archives one was allowed to consult. I am ashamed to admit that I myself often forgot to ask for, or note, the names of those who worked with me in these archives. In place of all those others, therefore, my thanks here go to Bernard R. Crystal, at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York; Abby M. Lester, at the Columbia University Archives-Columbiana Library, New York; Elizabeth B. Dunn, at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Jochen Stollberg, at the Horkheimer-Pollock-Archiv of the library of the University of Frankfurt am Main; Mimi Bowling, at the Rare Book and Manuscript Division, New York Public Library; Colin Harris, at the Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts New Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; and Darwin H. Stapleton, Kenneth W. Rose, Thomas Rosenbaum and Monica S. Blank, at the Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. But I am grateful, as well, to the following archives and their staff: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, today part of the Center for Jewish History, New York; Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung of the Technical University of Berlin; and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Archiv and Universitätsarchiv, both at the University of Vienna. I would also like to express my thanks to the following archives for granting me permission to use literal quotes from their documents: Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York; Columbia University Archives- Columbiana Library, New York; Horkheimer-Pollock-Archiv of the library of the vi Acknowledgements University of Frankfurt am Main; Rare Book and Manuscript Division, New York Public Library; Rockefeller Archive Center; and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. I am further indebted to the university archives for graciously replying in writing to my requests and for providing me with copies from student records. At the end of a study that so strongly stresses institutional conditions, it is only fair to mention and to thank those institutions from whose support I ben- efited. In 1993/4, still at the beginning of my work (let me mention in passing that, at the time, I thought I was already at the end of my research ...), a one- year stay as a visiting scholar, endowed with the somewhat pompous Austrian- born title of ‘Schumpeter Fellow’, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the European Center of Harvard University allowed me to expose myself to the world of American science intensely enough to become halfway familiar with its inner workings. In the academic year of 1999/2000, another fellow- ship, this one at the newly established New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, allowed me to familiarize myself, after the Boston area, with that of Manhattan. I am grateful also for shorter subsidized stays at the Rockefeller Archive Center (funded with a Special Grant for Research in the History of the Social Sciences, 1998) and at the London School of Economics (European Union Social Science Information Research Facility, 1999), as well as to the Fonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) for supporting three projects which benefited the present study: P 8831-Soz, P 10061-Soz and P 16999-G04. Three further projects (project numbers 4227, 6773 and 9266) received support from the Jubiläumsfonds of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. What actually ought to follow at the end of these acknowledgements is a long list of all those who over time collaborated with me on the projects, patiently listened to my lectures, contributions to discussions and more or less elaborated speeches, or otherwise contributed to the progress of my work. I hope that no- body will be angry with me for not listing them all. My particular thanks go to Professor Mike Keen, Indiana University, South Bend, and Professor Fritz Ringer, University of Pittsburgh, who provided me with material, to Werner Reichmann, who computed the correspondence analyses, and to all those who took the time to carefully read previous versions of the whole manuscript or individual chapters – their comments helped me to avoid errors and to become clearer in what I was writing, and the abridgements they proposed enabled me to reduce the manuscript into a length that readers might be expected to toler- ate: Marianne Egger de Campo, Lola Fleck, Peter Gasser-Steiner, Rainer Götz, Judith Huber, Albert Müller, Irene Müller, Reinhard Müller, Werner Reichmann, Katharina Scherke, Markus Schweiger, Sissi Tax and the late Bernd Weiler. In addition I am very thankful to Hella Beister for the translation and to Eileen Bevis, Gordon Douglas and Daniel Huebner for polishing the manu- script further. Financial aid for bringing out an English version of the book has been provided by the Austrian Science Fund, the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research, the Vice-Rector of the University of Graz, the Alfred- Schachner-Fund and the Government of Styria. ix TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES 1.1 Number of Students per 100,000 Inhabitants, 1920, 1950, 14 1970, 2000 1.2 Students and Teaching Staff, United States, 1900–50 17 1.3 IIS Members, Affiliation and Country (in %) 29 2.1 European Fellows 1924–5 49 2.2 American Fellows 1925–6 54 2.3 Country of Residence, 1970, of RF Fellows, Nominated 72 before 1941 and after 1947 (%) 3.1 Content Analysis of Deutschen Rassenkunde 85 (German Ethnogeny) 4.1 Ratios between Austria and Germany 112 4.2 Sociologists in the Kürschners , by Status Positions (%) 116 4.3 Overview of the Samples 120 4.4 Ratio of Students per University, 1930 (Selection); 128 Graduations by Members of the Samples; Ratio of Graduations to Country, Emigrants per University 4.5 Visibility, Productivity and Recognition of Austrian and 152 German Social Scientists 4.6 Index of Reputation: Twentieth-century German-Speaking 156 Social Scientists (weighted) 5.1 Theodor W. Adorno’s Participation in the Princeton Radio 205 Research Project 5.2 Authors and No. of Articles, Mimeographed Manuscripts 216 and Chapters in Books, including Co-authorship, and Pages Written between 1937 and 1945 5.3 Ranking of Authors, Total Pages and Periods (1937–41 and 217 1942–5) 5.4 Salaries and Productivity 219 6.1 Citations of Selected Studies on Totalitarianism by German 223 Émigrés, Social Science Citation Index 1981–2003 6.2 Collaborators of the First Anti-Semitism Project of the 234 Institute of Social Research, made possible by a grant of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) 6.3 Studies of the Institute of Social Research during the 235 First Anti-Semitism Project 6.4 Development of the Typology of the Anti-Semite 260 x Tables and Figures 6.5 Variables of The Authoritarian Personality and 262 Dimensions 6.6 Authors’ Contributions to TAP by Chapters and Pages 268 A.1 Comparison of Annual Income of Scholars in Austria, Germany, 330 Great Britain and USA, c .1933 FIGURES 1.1 Development of the No. of Students in United States, Germany 13 and Austria 1.2 Development of the No. of Students and Ph.D.s, United States 17 1926–50 1.3 Andrew Carnegie’s and John D. Rockefeller’s Foundations 33 (Selection) 4.1 Comparison of the Social Background of German and 132 Austrian Social Scientists (%) 4.2 Mean Age at Promotion, Habilitation and Full Professor, 136 by Birth Cohort and Country 4.3 Mean Age at Promotion and Habilitation , by Country, Status 138 as Emigrants and Ethno-religious Affiliation, Birth Cohorts 1871–1910 4.4 Mean Age at Three Career Steps of those Born between 146 1891 and 1920 4.5 Index of Reputation, according to Birth Cohorts and Country 158 4.6 Index of Reputation, according to Migration Status and Country 159 4.7 Austrian and German Social Scientists in Comparison 161 4.8 Émigré German-speaking Social Scientists in Comparison 163 7.1 Boxplot of Reputation, Comparison of Four Groups, by Countries 304 1 INTRODUCTION From the middle of the nineteenth century, ocean liners crossed the North Atlantic on a regular basis. In the early days, this meant a two-week voyage, but by 1900 the fastest liners could make the journey in five days, and by the time ocean liners had become outmoded as a means of transatlantic transport, this had been reduced to just over three days. The first transatlantic flight was made in May 1919; the ‘flying boat’, however, still had to make three stops on its way from New York to Plymouth. From 1930, Zeppelin-type aircrafts oper- ated regular transatlantic passenger flights. The first telegrams were transmit- ted in 1858; by 1919, more than a dozen submarine transatlantic telegraph cables were operating. By 1927, technical improvements allowed for transat- lantic telephone calls. In the same year, the first shortwave radio programme started operations in the Netherlands, contributing to cultural exchange in its own way. In 1933, Germany upgraded its two-hours-per-day shortwave radio programme to a twelve-language around-the-clock service. Special efforts were made by the Nazis to broadcast their radio propaganda to the United States of America (whereas the legendary ‘Volksempfänger’ – German for ‘peo- ple’s receiver’ – was not equipped for shortwave radio reception, making transatlantic radio-listening a one-sided affair). After the Second World War PanAm, having realized its first commercial air-boat flight in May 1939 – a twenty-nine-hour endeavour – began to offer a regular transatlantic service by turboprop aircraft. In the late 1950s, jet planes started to operate, inaugu- rating the era of mass (air) tourism which now carries thousands of passengers in both directions every day. The acceleration, if any, of the transatlantic exchange of ideas cannot be measured as precisely as the speed of travel of emigrants, tourists, letters, telegrams and electronically transmitted communications or entertainment products. There is no doubt, however, as to the existence of such an exchange of ideas. The present book is concerned with the transatlantic transfer of money, people and institutions, and its impact on the development of empiri- cal social research. In this process, mutual enrichment between Europe and the United States was often simply a byproduct of activities that served other purposes. Thus, American philanthropic foundations’ allocation of research funds to European beneficiaries was instrumental to the implementation of research that was ‘made in the USA’. The twentieth century also saw an increase in researchers’ regional mobility. Initially, this was mainly a matter of voluntary, temporary displacements of individuals who had been granted some kind of scholarship. However, the 2 A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences number of those who were displaced against their will soon dramatically in- creased. The emigration of intellectuals and scholars as well as of people who, for the time being, were neither of these, but would become so after their escape, contributed significantly to transatlantic enrichments. In the relevant literature, however, this bi-directional interplay is mostly described as one-way traffic. As often as not, authors will present the trajec- tories of those they choose as the heroes of their tales in narratives of high drama. Thus, an individual arriving at his destination as a missionary of some arcane teachings may appear to have single-handedly built a utopian commu- nitarian settlement, such as New Harmony. Narratives of how someone was prevented from pursuing his or her path in the New World are no less fre- quent. In this case, latter-day admirers deplore the injustice incurred by their hero. However, these dramatic narratives about heroes do little to help us understand how institutions come into being and how they change. On the other hand, failing to account for individuals would be no less of a reduction. In the twentieth century, the social sciences underwent a kind of crystallization process in which the familiar sub-disciplines of today became differentiated. This crystallization occurred thanks to the predominance of one particular methodo- logical orientation, modelled after that of physics. According to this school of thought, there would someday be a science of social facts that, due to its use of exact methods, would be able to present verifiable results which, in turn, would yield a theory of society through accumulation of verified knowledge. Those who participated in this endeavour did away with teleological and holistic ideas, and expounded their meta-theoretical concepts with such verve and persuasion that even the sceptics were carried away. Even its confirmed opponents had to grapple with this powerful project or had to pay tribute to it with criticism. This orienta- tion of social research to a hypostasized model of physics resulted in the pre- dominance of an empiricist approach and in the vilification of everything else as ‘armchair research’. By the late 1950s, the canon of social science disciplines had been deter- mined, and the methodology that regulated them had been programmatically laid down, becoming the binding norm. The third culture (Lepenies 1985) had acquired pride of place. 1 Even if one does not share the belief that the scientis- tic construal of the social sciences is the only road to salvation, one cannot deny that in the middle of the twentieth century it was the dominant model, or paradigm, to take up a term that came into fashion in the 1960s. From the United States, where it had initially become predominant, this conception of the social sciences spread to other parts of the world and, ultimately, gained worldwide acceptance. Philanthropic foundations set up by immensely rich magnates, the so-called ‘robber barons’ of the late nineteenth and early twenti- eth century, functioned as the catalysts, not limiting themselves to activities in their own country, but promoting research in other countries as well, especially in those European nations that used to be regarded as scientific leaders. Thus, these philanthropic organizations contributed to the global predominance of the new empirical brand of the social sciences. 3 Introduction This tide of scientific exports began a few years before the Nazis took over, and continued until the outbreak of the Second World War, with Germany eventually no longer among its beneficiaries. In Europe, the Rockefeller Foundation as well as its predecessors and counterparts sponsored what they called ‘realistic’ research – a label they invented for what we today call empirical research. They invited promising young researchers to come to the United States and familiarize themselves with what was going on there. All these activities gradually evolved into a transatlantic exchange, and but for Nazi interference, enrichment might have been mutual . Before the onset of Nazi policies of exclusion and persecution of those who were deemed undesirable on racial or political grounds (most of whom took refuge abroad) individuals, funds and ideas had migrated back and forth between Europe and the United States. As the sphere of Nazi rule stabilized and expanded, this migration increasingly became a one-way flow, i.e. an escape to the United States. The last phase was the evacuation of those who had become stuck in Marseilles, where a young German helped to distribute ‘affidavits’ to his fellow sufferers and, having finished this job, escaped to Norway where he boarded a steamer to New York thanks to the last pre-Second World War fellowship awarded to a European by the Rockefeller Foundation. In Marseilles, he had called himself Beamish; in Oslo, he boarded the ship as one Albert Otto Hirschmann; and once in the United States, he dropped the last letter from this surname. In the decades to come, he richly contributed to more than one field of the social sciences. If he had been arrested and turned over to the Nazis by Vichy agents, he would in all likelihood have gone to his death in Auschwitz or, even before that, been beaten to death in a Gestapo cellar. Having been socialized in the Second Austrian Republic, I have learned to be wary of any claims to ownership by our German neighbours of what is actually Austrian. Alpine national sentiment is roused when one of ‘Us’ is claimed by the Germans. Yet, since Austrian nation-building is a comparatively recent en- deavour, Austrians are fervently devoted to the task of securing their national heritage and do not at all like to be told that in doing so, they in turn tend to be selective: ‘To be sure, Hitler is German and Beethoven is Austrian.’ For all such irony, however, it cannot be denied that differences between the two German-speaking countries exist, especially from the perspective of the history of science. Even my rather weak (or so I feel) version of patriotism was strongly tested each time that, in talking to emigrated German-speaking social scientists or on reading their texts, I noticed that they, too, said ‘Germans’ when they meant ‘Austrians’. Maybe it was the thrall of some residual nationalism that spurred me to dig further into the differences between the Germans and the Austrians. It is up to the reader to decide whether this project is justified. However, a clarification on my part seems called for. With regard to the structure and organization of the academic world, and especially of universi- ties, the commonalities between both nations are plain to see. University structures, models for academic careers and intellectual styles of discussion are so much alike that to see them as a unit seems quite appropriate. In order 4 A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences to avoid having to specify this commonality again and again in so many words, I will rely on a typology that was proposed by Johan Galtung (Galtung 1981) to distinguish between four intellectual styles: ‘Saxonic’ is his term for the British and American style, ‘Nipponic’ for that of Japan, ‘Gallic’ for the ways of France and ‘Teutonic’ for the academic mores in German-speaking coun- tries. Whenever the latter are referred to, I will use Galtung’s term. On the contrary, where commonalities are evoked that do not pertain to the academic sphere but are rooted in the family likeness between both national cultures , I will use the terms ‘German-speaking’ or ‘German-language’. When speaking of ‘Austria’, one might as well say ‘Vienna’ in many cases, since the hegemony of that former metropolis of the Habsburg Empire was indeed such as to have the ‘province’ pale beside it. That said, since this is a structural trait of Austrian society, especially as compared to the German situation, the name of the coun- try is preferred. With that, the subject of the following study is outlined. The present book is about the evolution of four phenomena, with special emphasis on their mu- tual interdependencies: (1) the emergence of empirical social research; (2) the role, in this, of the funding provided by American foundations; (3) a collective biography of those German-speaking social scientists who were active in the period between the 1920s and the 1950s; with (4) special emphasis on the dif- ferences between those who emigrated and those who stayed in their home country, and between Germans and Austrians. A ‘collective biography’ is a highly prestigious but rarely used procedure in the social sciences and humanities. In the late sixteenth century, the term ‘prosopog- raphy’ was used for the first time to refer to the comprehensive description of an individual’s physiognomy in view of elucidating his or her character. Later, the term was primarily understood to refer to descriptions of groups of individuals, and since Theodor Mommsen, prosopography has been part and parcel of the research techniques of scholars of ancient history, where it refers to the whole set of individuals mentioned in the corpus of antique inscriptions. Due to its reference to groups, the term ‘prosopography’ is also used to highlight the characteristics shared by a group of individuals. An early example of group pictures showing people who share the same trade was done, at an interval of three decades, by the Flemish painter Dirck Jacobsz: the two paintings of the members of the Amsterdam Shooting Corporation ( Group Portrait of the Amsterdam Shooting Corporation , 1532 and 1561, respectively, both at the Hermitage in St Petersburg). The histori- cal propinquity of the appearance of both the term ‘prosopography’ and these pictures of a (vocational) group suggests an emerging interest, at the time, in the representation of trades and professions. The seventeen men portrayed by Jacobsz, as well as the seven men of the later picture, show little individuality. They strongly resemble each other in their clothing, posture and features, while as a group they convey the specific impression of homogeneity based on their occ- upational background that is so peculiar to both pictures. In painting, the por- traits of homogeneous members of a vocational group soon gave way to the more individualized portraits of individual representatives of this group. In Rembrandt’s 5 Introduction Night Watch , painted almost a century after Jacobsz, the officer posing in the foreground stands out clearly against the other members of the company. The fact that collective biographies – as prosopographies, to avoid confusion with what is done in ancient history, may also be called – are rarely found has to do with the numerous difficulties that have to be mastered. Since the data one would like to use for such a portrait are very often not available, authors of collective biographies have thus far tended to focus on constellations that are well documented. This, in turn, is primarily true for individuals who were prominent at some point during their lifetimes. Robert K. Merton, in his doc- toral thesis, proposed one of the very first sociological collective biographies, analysing the members of the early Royal Society (Merton 1938). Some time before, Edgar Zilsel had analysed Giorgio Vasari’s biographies of artists in a similar attempt to demonstrate the amalgamation of the craftsman and the art- ist resulting in the novel type of the scientist which, as he saw it, had emerged in the Italian Renaissance (Zilsel 1926). Later, collective biographies of mem- bers of parliament, high officials and other members of clearly defined groups were published. The members of the respective occupational groups are char- acterized by the fact that their careers have a common peak and are traced back, so to speak, to their roots. Unfortunately, this approach means ignoring all those who failed to reach such a peak in their careers. Among the about 800 ‘sociologists’ whom I analysed, there are quite a few who failed to rise to the higher academic ranks. Many of them had no oeuvre to leave behind; some disappeared from the scene after a few years, others engaged in other careers or were prevented from pursuing the careers they had planned and hoped for. The advantages of this approach are immediately evident, but so are the problems involved: those who were left behind, were disappointed, or were ignored do not leave many traces. Inclusion of the ‘home-guard’, as they were so aptly called by Everett Hughes (Hughes 1959, 572), suggested itself from the start since, up to now, the litera- ture has made a point of analysing the two groups separately. The home-guards who had stayed put and the refugees who left are two elements of the same generation and thus were confronted with the same major historical event but chose different ways of coping with it. Relying on this generation terminology, proposed by Karl Mannheim, solves a problem which the studies that confine themselves to one of these two groups eliminate by drawing a definitional dividing line. Those who, by definition, are not part of the target group are, as a consequence, not treated in the study. My account is primarily based on archival data. This historical material has a number of advantages as compared to the sources sociologists usually draw on for their conclusions: namely, what can be found in the archives was written at that time and for that particular archive, and the authors were not biased by the questions pursued by sociologists today. Archival material differs from the ma- terial most commonly relied upon in sociology (i.e. computerized data sets and written records of observations or interviews) in that it is less clean. While this can be taken quite literally, it is primarily true in a figurative sense. The data one 6 A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences looks for, and needs, are hidden in a mountain of odds and ends. Still, the most likely reason for sociologists to keep their distance from archives and archival material is that, in an (otherwise rather rare) reluctance to indulge in discipli- nary expansionism, they regard this field as the domain of historians. An unwelcome side-effect of sociologists’ dread of archives is that sociologi- cal studies tend to be short-winded and to address long-term trends by either relying exclusively on official statistics or making do with interpretations ob- tained from historical works. Thus, the sociological community is split into the large majority of those who strictly limit themselves to the present, which can be explored by primary surveys, or to such periods as are covered by official data, i.e. mass statistics, and into the small minority of historical sociologists who bury themselves in libraries and transpose what they read into their own universe of sociological concepts. Middle-range evolutionary processes, nota- bly those of institutions on the one hand, and of generations on the other hand, are located exactly between these two poles of sociological work. The actors that are the object of this account do not belong to the great majority of the population, which typically does not leave much behind. In the course of their career, researchers tend to fill a lot of paper, some of which is available in print, while the bulk is never published because it consists of preparatory or accessory work or has failed to convince the ‘gate-keepers’ of the market of academic publications. Legacies of researchers are of primary importance for the historiography of scientific disciplines and are therefore treated with some care if the deceased enjoyed some celebrity. All those who were left to merely cherish hopes for fame are lucky to have been spared the revelation of how quickly their fame faded. Indeed, the usual repository for the legacies of third-rate to last-rate researchers is the container of some dis- posal service charged with waste-paper collection. The merciless attitude currently shown by the world of science towards those of its members whose contributions have failed to be well received finds its match in the not very noble-minded stance taken by universities and other institutions when it comes to the preservation of the memories of their former collaborators. For many of the sociologists (male and female) who are mentioned on the pages that follow, nothing remains today, only a single generation after their demise, besides what they managed to publish during their lifetimes. For many, there is neither a photograph nor a letter, or rather, to be more precise: all this may well be somewhere, but not in those places where one might rea- sonably look for it. During my search for forgotten legacies or other documents left behind by sociologists, my impression was that the social sciences are a lot more callous in their dealings with the historical material of their discipline than their neighbouring sciences or other branches of intellectual life, which tend to set great store by anything written. Sociologists’ collective lack of interest with respect to the preservation of the data of their own work and of the papers of their colleagues may well be a consequence of their fixation on the present. 7 Introduction After his demise, Paul F. Lazarsfeld’s office had to be cleared. Some of his papers were handed over to the Rare Book and Manuscript Division of the Butler Library of the Columbia University, where they still are today. The rest, which someone must have deemed unworthy of preservation, were dumped in the middle of Lazarsfeld’s office, with everyone free to help him or herself. His large collection of papers, with personal inscriptions from the authors, was thus lost, as well as the volumes of all the journals he had taken so much care to have rebound for his library. In 1945, the ‘Committee for the Study of Recent Immigration from Europe’ research group conducted a survey by questionnaire; due to the technical options of the pre-computer era, only two-dimensional cross tabulations were published (Davie 1947). At the time, social researchers had, at best, access to Hollerith tabulating machines for processing their data, while most of the time they were reduced to doing their calculations by hand or with the help of a slide rule. Re-analyses of studies like these would of course have been helpful for my own work, but Davie’s original data are lost. Contrary to a widespread notion among sociologists that is based on Max Weber’s definition of bureaucracy, state archives are, notwithstanding the norm of the written form, of very limited value, at least for the period that is of interest here. Rather, when getting in touch with the universe of Austrian archivists, one learns a new word: ‘ skartiert ’ (which can be roughly translated as ‘unavailable as missing or destroyed’), their term for records that are quite simply no longer there. These include, for example, the records of the offices of the first three post-Second World War education ministers. It is anyone’s guess as to why this should be so. University archives are more rewarding in this respect. In the Teutonic world, this primarily means information on students – i.e. courses followed, examinations taken, name of examiner, marks received – while the universe of academic personnel, assistants and professors is less well documented. Personnel records mainly consist of the official correspondence between an employee and others in his or her chain of command. American university archives, however, are different: they rarely provide information on students but quite frequently contain the legacies of former professors. Compared to the Teutonic science administration, the Rockefeller Archive Center, open since 1974, is paradise. Internal communication by notes and let- ters among the various foundations of the Rockefeller family started very early, and officers were required to keep diaries to record their contacts with third persons. These records, almost none of which ever seems to become ‘ skartiert ’, allow the researcher not only to get an overall idea in a very short time, but also to achieve a detailed reconstruction of how views changed, and why, and which decisions were reached. Just as the Rockefeller Foundation has contributed, through its funding activities, to the shaping of the emerging social sciences, the Rockefeller Archive Center has for years and years shaped the historiography of the sciences. The Teutonic disregard of the information that lies dormant in American archives has produced some strange effects. 8 A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences As an illustration, a separate chapter will be dedicated to the American side of the legendary Studies in Prejudice , the history of which has to date been exclusively written on the basis of the material that is available at the Horkheimer-Archiv in Frankfurt. For the Studies in Prejudice chapter (Chapter Six), as elsewhere in the present book, the presentation is done from an American perspective, and quite delib- erately so, in order to counterbalance the ethnocentric view of the presumed advantages of Teutonic science that prevails in German-language historiography. The account is historical but tries to draw, as far as possible, on systematic in- sights of sociology. For this, Andrew Abbott has coined the label of ‘narrative positivism’ (Abbott 2001a; Abbott 2001b), which I readily adopt because of its provocative concision, a step all the easier to take as there is no obligatory com- mitment to any sectarian school bound up with it. Whenever possible in the analysis of historical events, I tried to bring to bear insights from specialized subfields of sociology, from migration research to the sociology of organizations to the sociology of science. In this, some eclecticism was inevitable, but the gen- eral perspective that was adopted has been defined as follows by one of the an- cestors of sociology: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circum- stances existing already, given and transmitted from the past’ (Marx 1852). That opportunity structures constrain our action is one of the few insights of the social sciences to which even laymen will subscribe. While sociologists in recent times have tended to emphasize individual freedom of choice, analyses of social life in dictatorships or under conditions of forced migration, as well as of the process of assimilation to which immigrants are exposed, have for a long time been domi- nated by the opposite view. In the following, I will try to steer clear of these ex- treme positions by focusing on the interaction between these supporting or constraining structures and the individual freedom of action. Chapter One gives an overview of the shift of the hub of the science system as a whole to the United States that occurred over the course of the twentieth century, a pattern that also holds true for the social sciences and that began to dynamically unfold at about the same time the power structure of Central Europe shifted towards dictatorship. The predominance of the American sci- entific system is further due to the fact that the United States was the first country in the world to undergo a considerable expansion of its system of tertiary education, which in turn called for change in the recruitment of jun- ior scientists, and to see the emergence of new institutions dedicated to the advancement of the sciences. In Chapters Two and Three, two variants of science sponsorship are analysed in some detail: post-doctorate grants and institutional support. Developments in Germany and Austria are analysed in a comparative perspective, as well as the way American foundations reacted to the handing-over of power to the Nazis. Chapter Four is an attempt at a collective biography of German-speaking social scientists, based on an analysis of the data available for about 800 individuals. 9 Introduction The German-Austrian comparison is based on contemporary socio-demographic variables and is supplemented by an analysis of academic trajectories in these two countries as well as in the United States, the country that accommodated the largest number of academic emigrants. In addition, an attempt is made to factor in the reputation gained by these social scientists. In the subsequent chapters, the presentation proceeds on a lower level of aggregation. Doing research in terms of projects is a truly American invention. Chapters Five and Six provide a detailed analysis of two projects where emi- grated German-speaking social researchers played a leading role. The Princeton Radio Project marked Lazarsfeld’s entry into the American world of science. While he finally succeeded, in some way or other, in overcoming all the obsta- cles he met with, he never managed to convince those who funded this study that his collaborator Theodor W. Adorno was indeed capable of doing research work that would justify further support. Adorno and the emigrated Frankfurt School (formally, the Institut für Sozialforschung or Institute of Social Research) eventually got a second chance when the American Jewish Committee (AJC) proposed employing Max Horkheimer to direct a project which was eventually published as the five tomes of Studies in Prejudice . The most impor- tant study of this series was The Authoritarian Personality , the genesis of which is described in Chapter Six. This analysis is based on archival material of the AJC, as yet neglected by existing studies. Chapter Seven, the final chapter, presents the accounts of foundation offic- ers and American guest professors concerning their experiences in Germany and Austria after the Second World War. Its aim is to show how large a gap there was, by then, between American social scientists and the achievements and competencies of those of their colleagues who had lived through the years of Nazi rule in their home countries. Differences in emigrants’ readiness to return to one of the successor nations of the Third Reich strongly contributed to the marked differences between the situations of the social sciences in Germany and Austria. Since the role of financial support is of major importance in the present account, an attempt is made, in an appendix for those interested in the issue, to represent income differences over time for academics among the countries that are included in the present analysis. 10 1 THE BUILDING OF AN AMERICAN EMPIRE How did the United States become the global hub of scientific research? There is no denying that this is its position at the beginning of the twenty-first cen- tury. What is controversial, however, is whether this ‘domination’ is legitimate and rests on properly scientific grounds, or whether it is just a side-effect of the economic and military success that the United States achieved over the course of the last century. Occasionally this new centre is said to exclude its competi- tors (either intentionally or out of ignorance); sometimes it is diagnosed with initial signs of decline. Still, German authors who study the United States sys- tem of higher education like to point out that it was modelled on the German university. While obviously true for the late nineteenth century, this resem- blance is as obviously untrue for the decades that follo