An interesting catalogue raisonne - but little more than that - of
some 40 leading figures in the social sciences, the humanities, and
literature who fled the Nazis to the US. Coser himself is a refugee
and a distinguished sociologist (SUNY, Stony Brook). The galaxy of
intellectuals whose life and work he summarizes inevitably makes a
powerful impression in this group presentation, where cheek by jowl
we have Erik Erikson, Bruno Bettelheim, Erich Fromm, Karen Homey,
Paul Lazarsfeld, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov,
Roman Jakobson, Erwin Panovsky, Rudolph Carnap, and other
luminaries of like magnitude. The problem is that, faced with so
much talent, Coser really can't do too much more than identify it,
salute it, and run. Apart from noting the obvious preponderance of
central European Jews (and the various forms of anti-Semitism they
met in academia, especially from 1933 to 1945), he ventures some
sensible, if not surprising, generalizations: Gestalt psychologists
(Koehler, Koffka, Wertheimer) had a hard time of it, because
behaviorism ruled the roost in American universities.
Psychoanalysts scored a sweeping triumph, because, among other
things, Freud had paved the way for them. Austrian economists, who
were statistically oriented, were readily accepted by their
American colleagues; German economists, whose approach was more
historical, were not. Coser adopts political scientist Franz
Neumann's division of the refugees into three categories: 1)
scholars, most of them younger men or women, willing to give up
their European status and style (Karl Deutsch, say); 2) the
outsiders who clung to their own system and either tried to remake
America or withdrew into isolation (some inhabitants of the "gilded
ghetto" at the New School); 3) those who tried to "integrate new
experience with old tradition" (Neumann himself, Erikson, and
practically all the successful refugees). All this is very well;
but much is obviously missing, including serious analysis of
individual contributions and a real sense of the private lives of
these brilliant, often difficult, astonishingly varied people. In
these regards, Anthony Hellbut's disorderly Exiled in Paradise
(1983) has considerably more to offer (on refugee artists too, but
fewer intellectuals). Coser's solid, prosaic performance will
nonetheless have reference value. (Kirkus Reviews)
What were the contributions to American scholarship and culture
made by European refugees from Nazi persecution? How did these
emigres react to the experience of being strangers in the land of
their refuge? In this engrossing book, Lewis Coser examines the
impact of refugee intellectuals on the social sciences and the
humanities in America, painting a collective portrait that sheds
light not only on the accomplishments of the Europeans but also on
the development of the several disciplines in America that either
welcomed or rejected them. Coser explains, for example, why the
emigres had more influence in the field of psychoanalysis than in
psychology; why Austrian economists were more successful in America
than were German economists; why only a few European sociologists
made significant contributions in America. Discussing such
luminaries as Bruno Bettelheim, Jacob Marshak, Hannah Arendt,
Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Roman Jacobson, Erwin Panofsky, and
Paul Tillich, Coser describes their backgrounds, personalities, and
careers in America, providing revealing anecdotes that help to
bring these figures to life. His accounts of those who were famous
in the country of their birth but never achieved eminence or a
feeling of adjustment in America provide a poignant contrast. Coser
concludes that the refugee intellectuals were most influential in
areas of study where they filled a perceived need not previously
met or in fields where they could build on already established
traditions. His perceptive analysis of the European-born men and
women who altered American intellectual history is an absorbing and
memorable story.
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