“In this war of ideas,” German professor of philosophy Eugen Kühnemann wrote in 1915, “America, as the greatest of the neutral western nations, is the real battleground.” 1 On this “battleground” numerous professors took a stand, Kühnemann being most visible among them. Academics mobilized and were mobilized in Britain as well as in France, Germany, the Habsburg Empire, Russia and, after 1917, also in the United States. However, the particular situation in America during the neutrality years, this essay will argue, allowed for the emergence of a specific type of politically engaged academic that—certainly as mediated by the press—was particular to the German side: the propaganda professor.
Crumbling Ties
Ever since the turn of the twentieth century the German government had stepped up its efforts to generate appreciation among the American educated class. Its attempts at cultural diplomacy on campus included an elaborate gift of plaster casts from the Kaiser directly to Harvard University as the basis for a Germanic museum in 1902/3. It had also brought about the establishment of professorial exchange programs and guest professorships at Harvard University in 1905, at Columbia University in 1906 and at the universities of Chicago and Wisconsin soon after that, to name just the most prominent ones. American universities had welcomed these offerings as another kind of asset in the ever-fiercer domestic competition for students, funds and public favour that was gaining momentum among US institutions of higher education.
Germany was trying to artificially foster and maintain a favourable transatlantic network that had formed naturally during the nineteenth century when many American scholars sought out German universities for advanced studies they could not yet obtain at home. 2 Due to their indelible belief in their own superiority in the academic sphere, German scholars and diplomatic representatives were blind and deaf to the American criticism and self-assertion that began long before the war. Jörg Nagler has shown that an outspoken American criticism of Germany’s claim to cultural superiority can be detected in the public discourse long before the rhetoric of war equated Kultur with militarism, autocracy and atrocities. 3 In 1904, when Germany staged a bombastic display of its scholarly prowess at the St. Louis World’s Fair, an American commentator almost saw it as the swansong of former glory: “[T]his showing was a magnificent attempt on the part of Germany to demonstrate that […] her universities are still the foremost in the world,” he begins, yet he continues: “In view of the marvellous advance of American universities […], this exhibit assumed a new and interesting aspect, even if it may not be assumed to become historic.” 4 The dean of philosophy at Berlin University, economist Adolf Wagner, intended a joke in 1908 when he quipped that, in the future of the republic of letters, it may no longer be “Germania docet” but, heaven forbid, “America docet.” Only his hurried addendum—“let us do everything we can to prevent this”—may suggest a secret awareness of change never to be admitted openly. 5
The coming of the First World War should have made it abundantly clear that the motives on each side of the Atlantic had been different. While the Germans thought they could now harvest the political seeds they had sown, American universities were at pains to salvage their image and to distance themselves from their German ties, as that was what the new political climate and public opinion demanded. Moreover, as US institutions had professionalized and transformed, they were keen to take their place in the academic world. But this discrepancy still seemed to have escaped many German scholars, as well as their political superiors in the Ministry of Culture, who tried to actuate old ties for propaganda purposes. In August, Friedrich Schmidt-Ott of the German Ministry of Culture encouraged the former exchange professors to write to their friends and colleagues across the Atlantic to explain the German situation in the conflict and to gain their sympathy. 6 How many German academics followed this request privately is hard to determine. Ranging from the occasional sentence in otherwise mostly scholarly or personal correspondence, to page-long explications preoccupied with current affairs, naturally the war crept into the exchange of letters within the international learned community. Some professors, however, made their efforts poignantly public.
This chapter will examine German professors who took up the cross for the German cause in the United States during the neutrality period between 1914 and 1917. The focus will be on those scholars who started out from Germany. Either they tried to influence American public opinion from afar by publishing in American newspapers, or they embarked on a transatlantic journey with the express purpose to travel the country and deliver speeches in favour of the German cause. This set-up of the analysis hence leaves out the considerable number of German-born professors employed at American universities. Some of them had already taken on American citizenship – like, for example, Franz Boas and Kuno Francke, both in 1891—or they did so during the war. Others may have made a point of remaining German, like Hugo Münsterberg. However, even if convinced of the righteousness of the German position and—like Münsterberg—not shy about saying so, these German professors faced a very different challenge. Their existence after all, depended on their academic and social standing in the United States. 7 They could not and would not dedicate their lives exclusively to propaganda work as, for example, Eugen Kühnemann did from his arrival in New York in September 1914 onwards.
Nevertheless, even for those who suspended their teaching and research for the duration of the war, or relegated it to minor importance, the reference to the authority they deduced from their membership in the academic community was key to their performance as propaganda professors. “Perhaps nothing did more to impress the public mind,” Lord Ponsonby famously wrote, “than the assistance given in propaganda by intellectuals and literary notables.” 8 An academic kinship not only implied a vague notion of impartiality and expertise, but also afforded a social position of considerable respect in the public discourse—at least in the German experience. An American newspaper article explained at the beginning of the war: “Nowhere else in the world is scholarship so venerated [as in Germany]; nowhere else is there such ready submission to the influence of teachers.” 9
Fallen Idols
Evoking their social position, German scholars mobilized quickly after the conflict erupted in the summer of 1914. 10 Even before the famous “Appeal to the Civilized World” was issued in October 1914, the two Jena professors Rudolf Eucken and Ernst Haeckel began publishing public addresses in American newspapers. “These thinkers have readers and admirers all over the world,” the Chicago Tribune reminded its readers, “their views are of particular interest.” 11 Eucken had just returned home to Germany after spending a semester at Harvard University as an exchange professor. Haeckel, too, was well known and well connected in US academic circles, especially among eugenicists. Both of them would soon after also sign the Appeal. Their effort in America started off with a “Declaration” in the New York Times on 10 September 1914. 12 The text was also picked up later by George Sylvester Viereck’s Fatherland, one of the few ardently pro-German serial publications in English. 13 Here the two German philosophers took a very explicit stand against Britain. The article framed accusations of “brutal national egotism” and “hypocritical Pharisaism” with a lament for the forced breakdown of fruitful scientific cooperation for which Britain was clearly to blame: “[Thus is] destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which was so full of promise for the intellectual uplift of humanity. But the other party has willed it so.” 14
Two days later the New York Times published yet another letter from the same two Jena authors addressed “To the Universities of America.” 15 While the Declaration, save for its appeal to the scholarly community, was more generic in its dismissal of Britain, this new text was explicitly written for an American academic audience. Haeckel and Eucken pointed out that they both felt “especially justified” in addressing their American colleagues, “as so many scientific and personal relations connect us both with the universities of America.” The entire opening paragraph is dedicated to establishing and reiterating “the lasting intercourse of scholarly research” among German and American scholars. The two authors reminded readers of the “[n]umerous American scholars who received their scientific training at our universities,” as well as of the exchange programmes. They did not fail to add a personal note: “the idea of our American friends’ thoughts and sympathies being with us gives us a strong feeling of comfort in this gigantic struggle.” And after having elaborated over four more paragraphs on the crimes of their enemies, they concluded: “[US] universities know what German culture means to the world, so we trust they will stand with Germany.” 16
It was still early days and many Americans were not yet prepared to accept the “fall of the German mandarins.” 17 Reactions in letters to the editor showed surprise, disbelief and attempts at exculpating excuses for the two German scholars whose work they appreciated and whose authority seemed well established. “I cannot help wishing that one day we may get the inside history of the last pronouncement from those beloved scholars,” wrote “R.W.” to the New York Times. The writer seemed convinced that the men could only have acted under duress, inquiring about “how long they resisted pressure” and “whether the delegation that visited them was composed wholly of scholars or perhaps a majority of militarists.” 18 An editorial in the Chicago Tribune asked similar questions and added: “One wonde...