I always found the name false which they gave us: Emigrants.
That means those who leave their country. But we
Did not leave, of our own free will
Choosing another land. Nor did we enter
Into a land, to stay there, if possible forever.
Merely, we fled. We are driven out, banned.
Not a home, but an exile, shall the land be that took us in.
…
…
But none of us
Will stay here. The final word
Is yet unspoken.
Bertolt Brecht1
December 1938
I.Izzet Bahar
University of Pittsburgh
The removal of German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian scholars from their academic posts by the Nazi regime due to racial and political reasons, and the settlement of some of them in Turkey at the invitation of the Turkish Government, has been a topic of interest in a number of recent studies. Concomitant with racist regime criteria, most of those scholars, regardless of their actual religious tendencies, were regarded as Jewish. Coincidentally, in that same year, Turkey was also searching for ways of modernizing its old-fashioned and seemingly anti-reformist academic educational system. Thus, the dismissal of German scholars turned to be a perfect match and a considerable number of scholars found asylum and employment in the newly established Turkish educational institutions.
In this study, the Jewish identity of about 80 German scholars who according to the Nazi Regime were deemed to be of Jewish origin will be analyzed. Various questions can be raised on this issue. How interested were they in Judaism? What was their relationship to the local Jewish community? Did German humiliations and the Holocaust reshape their thinking about their feeling of where they belonged? How can we relate their socio religious behavior in Turkey with their German cultural background? What about the Turkish foreign policy? Did their Jewish origin have any significance for the Turkish government? Finally, when there were alternative choices after the war, as to where to live and work, what choices did these scholars make? The fact that about 35% of these scholars decided to return to Germany will be given serious consideration and will be discussed thoroughly.
Introduction
As soon as Hitler came to power, as one of his implementations, he issued “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” on April 7, 1933 to prohibit non-Aryans from working as civil servants any more. According to the third provision of the law:2
Civil Servants who are not of Aryan descent are to be retired; if they are honorary officials, they are to be dismissed from official status.
A second decree of four days later, defined what is meant with non-Aryans:3
A person is to be regarded as non-Aryan if he is descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. It is enough for one parent or grandparent to be non-Aryan. This is to be assumed especially if one parent or one grandparent was of Jewish faith.
Thus, according to these two rulings, regardless of their academic positions and merits, and regardless of their self-identification, all public employees of Jewish race without exception were obliged to quit immediately their positions in the German governmental institutions. Concurrently, for Jewish German scholars all of whom were civil servants, there was no longer any future in Nazi Germany, and they had to find a new country to earn their bread, to practice their profession and even to save their lives. But, for these desperate individuals the question was, where to go and how?
Coincidentally, in that same year, 1933, the young Turkish Republic was also in search of civil servants capable of modernizing its old-fashioned and seemingly anti-reformist educational system. Indeed, in the early 1930s Istanbul Darülfünun, the only academic institution in the country, with its old-fashioned medrese system, was far from a dynamic and scientific educational institution. Furthermore, due to the existence of some antagonism among its academic staff towards Atatürk’s western policies, the institution was regarded as a hindrance delaying, if not preventing, the young republic’s ambitious reform movements. Indeed, according to Prof. Albert Malche, an Austrian expert in pedagogy, who was asked by the ministry of education to prepare a reform report, a new spirit and dynamism in higher education could be attained only by replacing the non productive and old-fashioned academicians with those modern, contemporary scientists who could be brought from Europe.
Thus, the dismissal of the German scholars of high academic ranks and Turkey’s search for academicians so as to reform the educational system turned out to be a perfect match. Indeed, succeeding Prof. Malche’s report, more than one hundred German scholars were recruited through a contract by the Turkish Educational Ministry and found refuge in Turkey.
In the present study, we will analyze the Jewish identity, home and national notions of those German scholars. These scholars can be viewed as typical examples of individuals belonging to the well-educated urban upper-class of German-Jewish origin. How interested where they in Judaism? What was their relationship to the local Jewish community in Turkey? Considering that they were named as “haymatloz” (stateless), in Turkey, what was their notion of home and nation? Did German humiliations, mistreatment and the holocaust reshape their thinking about their national identities and their feeling of where they belonged? How can we relate their socio-religious behavior in Turkey with their German cultural background? What about the Turkish policy and its approache to exiled German Jewish scholars? Did their Jewish origin have any significance for the Turkish government? Finally, we propose to consider the post-war final home country decisions made by these scholars. Their preferences can be seen as an indication of their notions of identity, home and nation. Accordingly, our final question will be, when there were alternative choices after the war as to where to live and work for the rest of their lives, what choices did these scholars make?
Jewish Identity of Scholars and their Relationship with Local Jewish Community
In the present study, we focus on 95 German scholars, for whom we have evidence in support of Jewish origin or links. See Table attached for the list of these scholars. Among them, 12 scholars were not actually Jewish in origin but their wives were. In view of their insistence not to divorce their wives in spite of the advantages that they could have enjoyed and the events they chose to be exposed to, these scholars are also included in our analysis. In fact, among them, the family of the astronomer Erwin Freundlich seems to be the most traditionally Jewish, although Dr. Freundlich himself was not Jewish.
The memoirs, the memories of the scholars and their family members published in different books, and although limited, the oral testimonies of some members of the Turkish Jewish community, will be used here in making an assessment of the refugees’ social life in Turkey and in evaluating their Jewishness.
Memoirs of German scholars
Several memoirs written by exiled scholars are valuable for our purpose. Among them, the most detailed is the one written by Ernst Hirsch.4 Hirsch was a promising young scholar of law when he was dismissed from the Frankfurt University. During the 19 years he was in Turkey, Hirsch actively taught in Istanbul and Ankara Universities, and made profound contributions to the modernization of the Turkish commercial legal system. In 1952, he received an offer from Berlin University and returned to Germany. Hirsch, describes himself as a German citizen of Jewish religion who does not have any conviction to Judaism.5 For him, to be a German and to be Jewish are not conflicting concepts. Hirsch describes his relationship to Judaism explicitly: 6
I never see Jews as different and distinct people. For me Jewishness has always been the belief of my ancestors, exclusively, and nothing more. Nevertheless, I did not see also a reason to leave my existing belief and to convert to another one. … Since, I do not have typical Jewish characteristics and since for years I kept a distance from all kinds of Jewish communities, I should not be viewed as Jewish neither from religious nor from social aspects.
Fritz Neumark, an economist from Frankfurt University, was another scholar who wrote about his exiled years in Turkey.7 Until his return to Germany in 1951, Neumark worked for 18 years in Istanbul University. With his excellent academic and social skills, and particularly, with his early competence in Turkish language, he became one of the most popular academicians among the German scholars. Different from Hirsch, in Neumark’s memoir there is no explicit mention of his feelings towards Judaism. Nevertheless, his silence about his Jewish origin and the scarcity of details on the Nazi Germany’s Jewish policies can be seen as indications of his aloofness to Judaism, or even the non-existence of a Jewish identity. In fact, his wife was an Aryan and his two children were baptized at early ages.8 Moreover, according to a source, he was an unbeliever.9
Among the memoirs, although it is the shortest, the one written by the Hungarian born, Frankfurt pathologist Philipp Schwartz was the most widely cited. Unlike the other memoirs, it was not written decades after, but in the last years of the war. Thus, it has a diary character and contains important details. Furthermore, as leader and representative of the exiled scholars, Schwartz was the key person, the “true ‘spiritus rector’ of the whole Turkish venture.”10 Interestingly, in his memoir, different than others, there are hints of a Jewish nationalism. For example, in a very different context, with one sentence, he mentions his view on Judaism: “Judaism can only survive as long as Jews have the consciousness of being a nation.”11 In another place, he mentions how it was difficult for a Jew to be accepted in a rather hostile and competitive German academic environment. In Schwartz’s memoirs, it is the last paragraph that particularly reveals his close relationship with Judaism. In this paragraph, he explains how he was sent to London three times by the Turkish Government to convey messages to Chaim Weizmann, the President of the World Zionist Organization.12 He even claims he was the person who arranged Weizmann’s visit of December 1938 to Turkey. In spite of all his interest in Jewish matters, Schwartz stayed in Turkey until 1951, and then interestingly preferred to go back to Germany. However, after two years he moved to the United States.
Memories, recollections of family members and testimonies from locals in Turkey
Like the memoirs described above, the memories of scholars and their family members also serve as a useful source for analyzing the social and cultural lives of exiles and their Jewish identity. However, in these recollections there is almost no mention of their religious behaviors or activities.
Indeed, in her memories Frances Hellmann, one of the daughters of Karl Hellmann describes the aloofness of the German Jewish colony to any kind of religious practice. According to her, except for the Freundlich family, there was no one in the “entire community of German émigrés who observed any Jewish holidays whatsoever! By then I was approaching my twenties, but was totally clueless as to the meaning of Passover.”13 Another émigré child, Martin Haurowitz, in his memories states that he never heard a Yiddish or Hebrew word or phrase neither from his father nor from any other professor or their wives with whom they were in social contact.14
From the Jewish nationalism point of view, other than Schwartz’s mentioned activities, the memories or evidences also do not attest any kind of such interest among the German refugees. As the only exception, we can show the pediatrician Albert Eckstein’s efforts in Ankara. Eckstein’s son and wife describe in their memories how, with initiative of Chaim Barlas, the representative of the Jewish Agency in Turkey, Eckstein tried to help in transportation of a number of Jewish children from Sweden to Palestine through Turkey using his good relationship with the Turkish prime minister.15 However, it seems in Eckstein’s activities, which were few in number, humanistic considerations were the real motivations rather than Jewish nationalistic drive.16 Eckstein is another scholar who preferred to return Germany after the end of the war.
Other than the memoirs and memories of German refugees, a number of accounts of Turkish Jews can be also seen as valuable sources for our purpose. Interestingly, all of these accounts attest to the non-interest of German scholars in Judaism or the Jewish presence in Turkey. For example, the Jewish students of those scholars and the members of the Istanbul Jewish community who had some rare social interactions with them, particularly emphasized that they could not notice any kind of Jewish identity among the scholars.17 Similarly, the members of the Ankara Jewish community affirmed that they did not notice any special attention or interest from refugee doctors even in their doctor patient relationship.18 The head of the Ankara Jewish community, who was active for the two decades starting from 1942, also did not have any remembrance with the refugees.19 According to his recollections, none of the Jewish German émigrés in Ankara ever visited the synagogue of Ankara even for reasons of curiosity.20 Thus, the interviews and evidences reflect the absence of any contact between the German scholars and the local Jewish community for any reason. In the registers of the Ashkenazic community of Istanbul, there is not any document that illustrates a Jewish marriage, birth, Britt Mila (circumcision) or Bar – Mitzvah involving German scholars. Even those who died during their stay in Turkey were not buried in a Jewish cemetery, but in Muslim cemeteries.21
As can be seen, as a common feature, all of our sources indicate that the Jewish scholars who emigrated from Germany to Turkey did not have classical Jewish identities. Besides they were not practising Jews, they also did not exhibit any kind of behavior, social interaction or consciousness which could reflect their Jewish origins or connection. Thus, they present a common but very distinctive and peculiar socio-religious behavior which needs to be scrutinized.
The 83 scholars of Jewish origin presently investigated can be seen as representatives of well-educated, highly acculturated and vastly urbanized upper-class Weimar period German Jewry, with their typical backgrounds, values, mindset and behavioral habits. Thus, their aloofness to a Jewish identity can be understood only through the analysis of similar German Jewish elites of the pre-Nazi era Germany. Moreover, thinking of Turkey’s conditions as a sterile social laboratory, free from direct influence of the vicious racial policies of the Nazi regime and of brutal war conditions, the behavior of the refugees can be used to verify the approaches widely-accepted for defining the general behavioral characteristics of the upper class German Jewry of the first decades of the twentieth century.
In order to understand the reasons of the socio-cultural behavior of the exiled scholars, a brief analysis of the cultural evolution of German Jewry will be enlightening.
Survey of the Cultural Background of the German Jewish Scholars and its Reflection on their Life in Turkey22
Beginning from the last decades of the eighteenth century, a very unique Jewish existence evolved in the German states as a result of continual interrelation with the major German society. The first period of this era, known as the age of the emancipation of the German Jewry, is also the period of transformation of multiple German states into a nation–state, along with the transformation of the estate societies into a civil society largely bourgeois in character. During the process of political consolidation and centralization, a highly ideological culture charged with enlightenment rationalism and the ideal of Bildung played a significant unifying role. Bildung can be defined shortly as a combination of “education with notions of character formation and moral education.”23 The same concept of Bildung was also adopted with its full values by the German Jewry with a passion to be accepted as equals by the German society. As described below by George L. Mosse, it became the basis of the newly forming identity of German Jews in their search to humanize their society and their lives:24
Such self-education [Bildung] was an inward process of development through which the inherent abilities of the individual were developed and realized. The term “inward process” as applied to the acquisition of Bildung did not refer to instinctual drives or emotional preferences but to cultivation of reason and aesthetic taste; its purpose was to lead the individual from superstition to enlightenment. Bildung and the Enlightenment joined hands during the period of Jewish emancipation; they were meant to complement each other. Moreover, such self-cultivation was a continuous process which was never supposed to end during one’s life. Thus those who followed this ideal saw themselves as part of a process rather than as finished products of education. Surely here was an ideal ready-made for Jewish assimilation, because it transcended all differences of nationality and religion through the unfolding of the individual personality.
Nevertheless, in spite of their cultural and social endeavor, the German Jews did not gain their full emancipation until 1871. Even then, although they were seemingly entitled to legal equality, they never become an integrated part of the German society due to the growing political and racial anti-Semitism, and the never ending social discrimination. As a consequence of this “incomplete emancipation and partial integration,”25 the history of the “post emancipation German Jewry can be seen as history of its subculture.”26 As German Jews confined within the invisible boundaries of the subculture, they steadfastly continued to hold and internalize the bourgeois notions of Bildung in order to “assert and reassert” themselves to the major community; they gave special emphasis to moral and secular individualism to ensure a dignified place in the major culture. Indeed, according to the ideals of Bildung, it was not the personal religious and national heritage, but the education and individual achievements, that were most important. Thus, as Mosse stated, “The new self-identity of the German Jews was expressed within a framework that gave it form and discipline and served to transcend Judaism and Christianity.”27
Other than the frustration of not being able to be an integrated part of the major society, there was another concurrent factor that had considerable influence on the formation of the German-Jewish identity. By time, the German Jews had to face (usually with lack of
realism) an increasingly narrow vision of Bildung. Beginning from the last decades of nineteenth century, the original concept of Bildung which was highly elaborated in the writings of the German philosophers like Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schiller and Goethe gradually started to be distorted by the Germans themselves. With changing political and economic conditions, more and more tangible elements of the popular culture owned by masses that were nourished by the rudimentary education of Volkschulle took the place of the abstract humanitarian notions that flourished from elite gymnasiums and universities. Discipline, patriotism and conformity took precedence over self-cultivation and critical mind of the Enlightenment. Particularly, after World War I, with the gradual upsurge of emotional and irrational appeals to nationalist symbols and to the myths of the distant Germanic past, the original impartial notions of Bildung, which were so important for Jews in their endeavor to integrate into the German society, were tainted and lost most of their original depth. Again, once more, with an unconscious reaction, cultured and articulate German Jewish bourgeoisie continued to cling to their wholehearted commitment to the classical concept of Bildung like a faith. However, their attitude, similar to some educated Germans that were still loyal to the original cultural ideals, no longer corresponded to the realities of German life. Concomitantly, most of German Jewry felt themselves more and more outsiders and isolated from the major society.
In spite of the growing alienation, Jews still regarded the current heightened nationalist and romanticized tendencies with optimism, and viewed the hostilities as temporary. Most of them until the very day of the Nazi regime or even later failed to comprehend the dimensions of the imminent danger that chauvinism and racism might cause, and believed that the classical tradition would defeat the evil ultimately. After all, wasn’t Germany the cradle of the Enlightenment and home to great humanist philosophers like
Schiller, Herder, Lessing and Goethe? Has not in this country “the Jew became a bourgeois from a martyr and like a miracle resurrected with a light penetrated darkness?”28 As nationalism and racism escalated, German Jewry adhered to the classical ideals of Bildung which defined their identity irrelevant to their religious beliefs national substance more passionately as if it was their own substance. For them the concept of Bildung “lifted immutability and become a secular religion.” It was “the religion of humanity … a secular faith, not dependent upon revealed religion- a faith, however, which took nothing on trust and whose truths were discovered only by a critical mind constantly refined through self-cultivation.”29 Strikingly, it was the German Jewish bourgeoisie and intellectuals rather than the middle class Germans, who with persistence continued to be the stubborn representatives and custodians of the older humanitarian and purely German values of reason and culture that surfaced with the enlightenment. Nevertheless, their strengthened belief in the freedom of the individual from all dominations and in the superiority of reason also gradually eroded their ties with Jewishness. As described by Paul Mendes-Flohr, Judaism was regarded as outdated:30
In hastening to identify with German Kultur, the Jews often viewed their own culture as an impediment, as ill suited to cognitive and axiom-logical requirements of the modern world. The tradition and folkways of their ancestral faith were not infrequently regarded as unmodern, even embarrassingly anachronistic. Jews often internalized the negative image of Judaism that prevailed even in enlightened circles.
Through their belief to individualism and potentials of human reason, the intellectual German Jews arrived at a final point of transcendence that was beyond Judaism or any other religion. According to Mosse it was the ideals of Bildung that replaced religion: 31
The void between traditional Christianity and Judaism as a revealed religion was filled by the ideal of Bildung, which has prevailed among the German bourgeoisie during the period of Jewish emancipation. It provided a meaningful heritage for some of the most articulate and intellectual German Jews. … At a time when many Germans found a secular religion in nationalism, Jews also found a secular faith-in the older concept of Bildung, based on individualism and rationality.
However, as exemplified by the exiled scholars like Fritz Neumark, Karl Hellmann and Felix Haurowitz32, in spite of their aloofness to religion, it was not uncommon among
German Jewry to baptize their children presumably motivated by the desire to protect the children from having to suffer anti-Semitism.
In the light of the above analysis, the socio-religious behavior of the exiled scholars can be explained to some extent by the described identity of the German Jewry. Indeed, they were the very last typical and perfect examples of the most articulate and intellectual German Jewry that disastrously disappeared under the racial policies of the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. During their stay in Turkey, these scholars followed inherently the footprints of their co-religionist of the pre-Nazi age and sustained the same Bildung ideals of the German-Jewish tradition which were actually abandoned or transformed by the Germans, themselves, decades ago. Thus, their lifestyle in Turkey can be seen as a reflection of German – Jewish socio-cultural behavior of the pre-Nazi Germany. The ideals that they inherited continued to guide them in their daily lives in Turkey, and formed a common ground in their relations between each other regardless of their supposed origin. It is also possible to say that although there was little contact between them, they also shared values and patterns of thought with their new Turkish acquaintances. Similar to most of their German co-religionists of their age, the elite Jews in Turkey were aware of their Jewishness. They were Jews by title, but they had little, if any, ties with Jewish traditions. As the last heirs of a long tradition which gradually evolved throughout the years since the Enlightenment, the personal self-conviction of German-Jewish scholars was apparently beyond any kind of revealed religion. It might even be more appropriate to see them as members of some kind of religion of humanity. The absence of any religious ceremonial acts in certain occasions like wedding or even funerals, during their stay in Turkey can be explained as outcomes of their indifference to an established religious conviction.
From another standpoint, for several reasons, Turkey could be seen as an ideal and “sterilized” social laboratory for observing the behavioral characteristics of German Jewish identity of the pre-Nazi era. First, in Turkey, like being in vacuum, they were living in a Muslim majority with which they had limited contact. They never mixed with the Muslim society and always remained a distinctive and segregated community with their different language, customs and social life. Secondly, the non-existence of discriminative, racial, more importantly brutal policies, and the relatively peaceful conditions in Turkey permitted the exiles to be less affected with adverse the conditions of the regime as has been the case in Germany. Thus, the exiles did not directly face the unbearable, humiliating and brutal anti-Semitic policies of Nazism which could have diverted their mindset vis-à-vis Germans and German values. The third important point is, in fact, an outcome of the second. In Turkey, the exiles did not also experience, or were not influenced by, the newly surged vibrancy in search of Jewish roots, or by any inclination to embrace a new kind of Jewish identity that appeared and gradually grew in Germany beginning from the early years of the Nazi regime in response to discriminatory racial laws. In sum, under Turkey’s living conditions, the inherited ideal of Bildung based on the Enlightenment remained unchallenged and continued to be a specific but implicit form of identity of the exiles without much alteration.
The “Jewishness” Factor in the Approach of the Turkish Government to Exiled German Scholars
Whether the Turkish government had a special interest in the Jewishness of the German scholars is another point of interest which needs to be scrutinized. In a large number of articles published in the last two decades, a common approach has been to introduce Turkey’s policy as reflecting a conscious and determined humanitarian act to save Jews from the Nazi persecution. This event has even been likened to the acceptance of the Sephardic Jews in 1492 by the Ottomans. This suggestion can be found, for example, in the publications of the Quincentennial Foundation established in Turkey to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the expulsion from Spain. Here is an excerpt: “History followed its course. The young Turkish Republic took the place of the Ottoman Empire. In 1933 the Great Atatürk invited to Turkey German university professors of Jewish origin who were under the threat of the Nazi persecution.”33 However, our sources do not provide any evidence that supports the existence of such a humanitarian motif in the recruitment of these scholars. As suggested by Fritz Neumark in his memoir, the Enlightenment principle of “harmony of the common interests”34 or the raison d’Etat policy probably explains better the Turkish motivations. A talk given by the Turkish Education Minister, Reşit Galib on July 1933, at the end of his first meeting with Schwartz and Malche can be seen as a reflection of the Turkish mindset:35
Today is a [special] day in which we accomplished an exceptional and nonexamplary work. About 500 years ago when we captured Istanbul, the Byzantine scholars emigrated to Italy and we could not avoid it. …
Consequently, the renaissance emerged. Today, we are taking the payback of it from Europe.
A set of Turkish archival documents recently disclosed sheds further light on the approach of the Turkish government and gives further support to the hypothesis of the lack of Turkish interest in the Jewishness of the scholars and the absence of concrete intentions to help them. Of course, political concerns due to possible reactions of the German government might have also been influential in the appearance of such an attitude on the Turkey side. An interesting document is a letter written by Albert Einstein to the Turkish Prime Minister, İsmet İnönü. In this letter dated September 17, 1933, Einstein, as the president of the “OSE” society in Paris, asked for İnönü’s help in allowing for “forty professors and doctors from Germany to continue their scientific and medical carrier in Turkey.”36 As can be seen from the Yiddish and French bilingual letterhead of Einstein’s letter, the Jewish character of “OSE” was very explicit. İnönü declined the request of Einstein in his response sent on November 14, with the argument that it was not possible to hire additional scholars any longer:37
… As you surely know, distinguished Professor, we have already engaged under contract more than forty professors and physicians who have the same qualities and the same capacities, and most of whom are under the same political conditions as those who are object of your letter. … Under the circumstances in which we are, it will unfortunately not be possible for us to hire a greater number of these gentlemen.
However, interestingly, Schwartz’s memoir, which was written close to the end of the war, contradicts İnönü. Schwartz describes how in early 1935 he learned from the Turkish Health Minister that during the period of correspondence with Einstein in 1933 the Turkish Government was actually in search of German scholars, particularly doctors in order to fill the “empty posts in Ankara.”38 According to what Schwartz learned from the minister, the Turkish government had come to an agreement with Professor Von Laue Sauerbruch, an Aryan German scholar who visited Inönü in the summer of 1933 and gave him a special mission to identify German scholars, particularly doctors that Turkey needed. Ironically, in spite of the long and time consuming correspondence, this attempt turned out to be dead ended and none of the German scholars proposed by Sauerbruch ended up accepting an offer from the Turkish government. Seemingly, in the face of the newly emerging posts in the German Universities, which were vacated by the academicians of Jewish origin, the German scholars did not feel any need or desire to apply for the challenging positions in the newly founded institutions in Ankara. Professor Sauerbruch later worked in German occupied Balkans as an official representative of the Nazi administration.
On the other hand, a report prepared in the summer of 1939 by Herbert Scurla, a senior officer in Germany’s Ministry of Sciences and Education who was sent by the Nazi administration to monitor the German academicians in Turkey, reflects an interesting change in the Turkish approach to German scholars.39 In the late 1930s, the Turkish government apparently became more trustful with the exiled German scholars than the Aryan scholars who were working in the country under the consent of the Nazi regime.40 Due to her unpleasant experience with Germans during the First World War, Turkey was regarding these Aryan scholars as German/Nazi elements who were working for the German interests rather than the Turkish ones. Indeed, the discomfort of Turks was not unjustified. As can be seen from the report of Scurla, Aryan scholars were expected to report regularly to the Nazi officials in the embassy, receive instructions from them and work in accordance with the Reich policies.41
Final Choices
As a last point, we focus on the final choices of the exiled scholars for continuing their life after the crisis period was over. This choice can be meaningful in assessing once more their identity and personal inclinations/preferences. The attached table lists where these 95 scholars ended up continuing their scientific (or medical) careers. After leaving aside the 16 refugee scholars who died during their stay in Turkey, 39% of them (i.e., 31 scholars out of 79) preferred to return to Germany. This percentage even increases to 58%, if we consider exclusively the scholars who were in Turkey at the end of the war (i.e., 29 scholars out of 50). From these results, it is possible to see that although these scholars had many alternatives the end of the war, a high percentage chose to go back to Germany. The decisions of these scholars are even more meaningful when we consider the fact that that most of them lost family members or friends in the Holocaust. Their ‘choice’ can be seen as a firm evidence of their inherent German character. As Brecht wrote in his poem, at the end, most of exiles spoke their final words in Germany.
1 “Concerning the label Emigrant” in Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913-1956 Ed. by John Willett and Ralph Manheim (London: Eyre Methuan Ltd., 1979), p. 301. In 1938 December, Brecht was also a political exile in Denmark.
2 “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” in A Holocaust Reader, ed. by Lucy S. Dawidowicz. (West Orange: Behrman House Inc., 1976), p. 38.
3 “First Decree for Implementation of the Law for Restoration of the Professional Civil service, April 11, 1933,” in A Holocaust Reader, p. 41.
4 Ernest Hirsch, Hatıralarım– My Memories- Kaiser Period, Weimar Republic, Atatürk’s Country (Ankara: Banka ve Ticaret Hukuku Araştırma Enstitüsü, 1985) Turkish
5 Ibid, p. 45.
6 Ibid, p . 46.
7 Fritz Neumark, Boğaziçine Sığınanlar- Those Who Took Sheltered in Bosphorus, (Istanbul: Istanbul University Press, 1982)
8 Fritz Neumark, p. 34.
9 Haymatloz- Exil in der Turkei 1933-1945- CD-ROM prepared by Vereins Aktives Museum – Berlin/Germany, 2000.
10 Neumark, p. 74.
11 Philipp Schwartz, p. 73.
12 Ibid, p. 100. A recent book written by Rıfat Bali sheds light on rather mystifying mediator activities of Schwartz between the Turkish Government and Weizmann. Bali states that during Weizmann and his wife’s visit Turkey in December 1938, other than Schwartz he met with several German scholars (according to the description in Mrs. Weizmann’s memoir, one of them must be mathematician William Prager.) in the house of Sami Günzberg, a Turkish Jew who had close relations with the president and Turkish notables in Ankara as their dentist. Schwarz also accompanied Weizmann in his meeting with Turkish prime minister during his visit in Ankara. See, Rıfat Bali, Sarayın ve Cumhuriyetin Dişçibaşısı, Sami Günzberg – The Chief Dentist of the Court and Republic, Sami Günzberg (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2007), pp. 115-130. Turkish.
13 Frances (Hellman) Güterbock’s memory quoted by Arnold Reisman. See, Arnold Reisman, Turkey’s Modernization, Refugees from Nazism and Atatürk’s Vision (Washington, DC: New Academic Publishing, LLC, 2006), p. 399.
14 Martin Haurowitz’s memory. Quoted by Reisman, p. 411. Martin Haurowitz defines his father as agnostic.
15 Klaus and Dr. Erna Eckstein-Schlossmann’s memories. Quoted by Reisman, p. 404.
16 In a book written on Albert Eckstein, he was described as a member of a “Jewish Organization.” However, in a personal communication of 2000, the writer could not specify the information and his source. Probably, what he means was Jewish Agency which Eckstein had no direct relation. See, Nejat Akar, Anadolu’da Bir Çocuk Doktoru, Ord. Prof. Albert Eckstein – A Pediatrician in Anatolia, Ord. Prof. Albert Eckstein (Ankara, 1999), p. 76.
17 Personal interviews with Yomtov Garti, Melanie Garti and Joseph Dannon, autumn 1999. 18 Personal interview with Beki L. Bahar, autumn 1999.
19 Hirsch who was in Ankara between the years 1943 and 1952, in his memoir states that he did not have any contacts with a Jewish community after 1933. Hirsch, p. 46.
20 Personal interview with Joseph Levi, autumn 1999.
21 Aykut Kazancigil, Ugur Tanyeli “Niye Geldiler, Niye Gittiler? Kimse Anlamadi – Why They Came and Went Back? No Body Understood.” In Cogito-Turkiyenin Yabancıları – The Foreigners of Turkey (Istanbul:Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2000), p. 130.
22 In addition to other sources, two works on German Jewry used extensively in this study and frequently referred are: David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999) and George L. Mosse, German Jews, Beyond Judaism (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1983).
23 George L. Mosse, p. 3. Since the meaning of Bildung is embedded part of the half-millennium of German history that shaped it, for a comprehensive meaning, emergence and evolution of its ideals see, Sorkin, pp. 15-21, and Sorkin, “Wilhelm Von Humboldt: The Theory and Practice of Self-Formation (Bildung), 1791- 1810” in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 44, No. 1. (Jan. – Mar., 1983), pp. 55-73.
24 Ibid.
25 Sorkin, p. 5.
26 Ibid, p. 173.
27 Mosse, p. 18.
28 Rabbi Caesar Seligmann, A sermon preached in the great synagogue of Hamburg, in Festpredigt zur Jahrhundertfeier des Philanthropin, 16 April 1904 quoted by Mosse, p. 15.
29 Ibid.
30 Paul Mendes-Flohr, German Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 35. 31 Mosse, p.42.
32 Dr. Martin Harwit (Haurowitz) who was being raised as a Protestant describes in his memoir, how he learned his father and mother were Jewish when he was fourteen years old. Although the Haurowitzs were Czechoslovakian in origin, their attitude to Judaism can be shown as an illustrative example of the trend. See, Reisman, pp. 410-412.
33 A Retrospection, The Quincentennial Publication, 1992, p. 19.
34 Neumark, p. 11.
35 Horst Widmann, Atatürk ve Üniversite Reformu – Atatürk and the University Reform. (Istanbul: Kabalcı Yayınları, 1999), p. 48.
36 Albert Einstein, letter of September 17, 1933 addressed to Turkish prime minister. See attached Document no.1 (BCA-Turkish Prime Minister Archives no.: 030.10.116.810.3). This letter was sent to the Turkish president as an attached letter of Sami Günzberg. Günzberg’s letter also included a detailed list of 31 proposed Jewish-German scholars.
37 İsmet İnönü, letter of November 14, 1933 addressed to Albert Einstein. See attached Document no.2 (BCA-Turkish Prime Minister Archives no.: 030.10.116.810.3B). The translation to English was done by Gad Freudenthal and Arnold Reisman. See, Reisman, “Jewish Refugees from Nazism, Albert Einstein, and the Modernization of Higher Education in Turkey (1933-1945), in Aleph: Historical studies in Science & Judaism 7. (Annual 2007), note, 35.
38 Schwartz, p. 95.
39 The Scurla Report was founded in German Foreign Ministry Archives and presented firstly by Klaus Detlev Grothusen in 1981. See, Faruk Şen, Ayyıldız Altinda Sürgün (Istanbul: Günizi Yayıncılık, 2008), pp. 27-31.
40 Particularly, in Ankara there were an important number of Aryan German scholars. Most of them were employed in the Agricultural Institute and some in different medical institutions.
41 Şen, pp. 49-51, 55.
