Forced Migration in the History of 20th Century Neuroscience and Psychiatry

New Perspectives

Frank W. Stahnisch, Gül A. Russell, Frank W. Stahnisch, Gül A. Russell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351741408
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The forced migration of neuroscientists, both during and after the Second World War, is of growing interest to international scholars. Of particular interest is how the long-term migration of scientists and physicians has affected both the academic migrants and their receiving environments. As well as the clash between two different traditions and systems, this migration forced scientists and physicians to confront foreign institutional, political, and cultural frameworks when trying to establish their own ways of knowledge generation, systems of logic, and cultural mentalities.

The twentieth century has been called the century of war and forced-migration, since it witnessed two devastating world wars, prompting a massive exodus that included many neuroscientists and psychiatrists. Fascism in Italy and Spain beginning in the 1920s, Nazism in Germany and Austria between the 1930s and 1940s, and the impact of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe all forced more than two thousand researchers with prior education in neurology, psychiatry, and the basic brain research disciplines to leave their scientific and academic home institutions. This edited volume, comprising of thirteen chapters written by international specialists, reflects on the complex dimensions of intellectual migration in the neurosciences and illustrates them by using relevant case studies, biographies, and surveys. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

“History had taken such a large piece out of my life” — Neuroscientist refugees from Hamburg during National Socialism

Lawrence A. Zeidman, Anna von Villiez, Jan-Patrick Stellmann,
and Hendrik van den Bussche

ABSTRACT
Approximately 9,000 physicians were uprooted for so-called “racial” or “political” reasons by the Nazi regime and 6,000 fled Germany. These refugees are often seen as survivors who contributed to a “brain drain” from Germany. About 432 doctors (all specialties, private and academic) were dismissed from the major German city of Hamburg. Of these, 16 were Hamburg University faculty members dismissed from their government-supported positions for “racial” reasons, and, of these, five were neuroscientists. In a critical analysis, not comprehensively done previously, we will demonstrate that the brain drain did not equal a “brain gain.” The annihilation of these five neuroscientists’ careers under different but similar auspices, their shameful harassment and incarceration, financial expropriation by Nazi ransom techniques, forced migration, and roadblocks once reaching destination countries stalled and set back any hopes of research and quickly continuing once-promising careers. A major continuing challenge is finding ways to repair an open wound and obvious vacuum in the German neuroscience community created by the largely collective persecution of colleagues 80 years ago.

Introduction

With regard to Nazi persecution of “non-Aryan” (Jewish) and leftist neuroscientists,¹ what is the significance of Hamburg and why focus an article on this major German city? First, a comprehensive case study on the tragic “de-Jewification” (removal of Jews, in Nazi parlance) of Hamburg neurologists and psychiatrists has not been published before, especially not in English. Secondly, Hamburg hosted a relatively large group of Jewish neuroscientists (see below). Thirdly, Hamburg was of special interest in the Nazi era because the town featured one of the most important neurological clinics in the Reich and one of the few independent chairs in neurology at Hamburg-Eppendorf University Hospital, originally led by Max Nonne (1860–1959), and from 1935 on by NSDAP² member Heinrich Pette (1887–1964).³ Pette was Deputy Reichsleiter [Reich Leader] for neurology in the Gesellschaft deutscher Neurologen und Psychiater [Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists], the forcibly merged organization of the formerly separate neurology and psychiatry societies in the Nazi era (Schmuhl, 2011).

While a detailed discussion of Hamburg neuroscience’s Gleichschaltung (Nazi subordination) and its ramifications is outside the scope of this article, we will outline the general persecution measures against non-Aryan physicians in Nazi Germany and in Hamburg neurology and describe the fate of five academic Jewish neuroscientists dismissed from their positions in Hamburg: Hermann Josephy (later Herman: 1887–1960), Walter Rudolf Kirschbaum (1894–1982), Victor Kafka (1881–1955), Friedrich Wohlwill (1881–1958), and Richard Loewenberg (1898–1954). Many common and unique issues were faced by these five, and we will describe their personal and professional ramifications. We obtained the names of the dismissed Hamburg neuroscientists from two extensively researched studies in German two of us have already conducted on medical care in Hamburg in the “Third Reich” (von Villiez, 2009; van den Bussche, 2014a). The information from these books was supplemented with new data from files located at the Hamburg Staatsarchiv [Hamburg State Archive], Hamburg University History Library (Arbeitsstelle und Bibliothek fuer Universitaetsgeschichte), Norwegian Riksarkivet, Swedish Riksarkivet, the Society of the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) collection in Oxford, Archives of the Chicago Neurological Society, U.S. National Archives, and personal communications with the European historian and psychoanalyst Peter Loewenberg (b. 1933) at the University of California in Los Angeles (son of Richard Loewenberg).

The “Aryanization” of Hamburg neuroscience

Of 432 Hamburg physicians (all specialties) professionally persecuted (i.e., fired or removed from insurance panels) under the Nazis (von Villiez, 2009), 19 Hamburg University medical faculty (Professors and Privatdozenten [lecturers or adjunct professors]) were dismissed for racial or political reasons (the other 413 were private practitioners). Of these 19 academics, 16 (84%) were dismissed as “non-Aryan,” and three were forced into early retirement (van den Bussche, 2014a). The five neuroscientists we discuss below were thus representative of the largest group of persecuted academic physicians.

“De-Jewification” was a stepwise marginalization of Jewish physicians in the form of “legal” and illegal professional, financial, and physical persecutory measures, but these victims also experienced postemigration tribulations. Relentless professional legislation against Jews (including “partial-Jews” and Aryans married with non-Aryans) began soon after the Nazi Machtergreifung (“power seizure”) in January 1933. First, Jewish civil servant physicians and university professors and lecturers were dismissed under Paragraph 3 of the so-called Law for the Reestablishment of the German Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums) of April 7, 1933 (Proctor, 1988). Political dissidents (e.g., communists and “pacifists”) were also included in this massive Nazi “cleansing” (Paragraph 4; Proctor, 1988; Kater, 1989a, 1989b). Their posts were taken over by young “Aryans” (Shevell, 1999; Stahnisch, 2010). Those dismissed under Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the law should generally not receive a pension unless they had served in the role for at least 10 years (Paragraph 8). With Paragraph 6, individuals could be forcibly retired without cause to “simplify administration … even if they are not yet incapacitated.” All of those dismissed were to be removed from office by September 30, 1933 (Anonymous, 1933). Some received transient protection from the dismissals with so-called “Hindenburg exemptions,” mainly applying to doctors who were frontline World War One (WWI) fighters (Kater, 1989b). These physicians were allowed to continue their private or insurance practice for the time being. Most exemptions ended with the 1935 Nuernberg Laws, with which all full Jews l...