Taking Over the Universities

Even as the Gestapo was organizing its program of terror and intimidation, one group after another was pledging its support to National Socialism. That process could most clearly be seen in the nation’s universities, which had always boasted of their autonomy. Peter Drucker, an Austrian economist, was then a lecturer at Frankfurt University. Fearful of Hitler’s plans for Germany, he was prepared to leave the country but hoped that it would not be necessary to do so. An incident convinced him otherwise.

What made me decide to leave right away, several weeks after Hitler had come to power, was the first Nazi-led faculty meeting at the university. Frankfurt was the first university the Nazis tackled, precisely because it was the most self-confidently liberal of major German universities, with a faculty that prided itself on its allegiance to scholarship, freedom of conscience and democracy. The Nazis therefore knew that control of Frankfurt University would mean control of German academia. And so did everyone at the university.

Above all, Frankfurt had a science faculty distinguished both by its scholarship and by its liberal convictions; and outstanding among the Frankfurt scientists was a biochemist-physiologist of Nobel-Prize caliber and impeccable liberal credentials. When the appointment of a Nazi commissar for Frankfurt was announced (around February 25 of that year) and every teacher and graduate assistant at the university was summoned to a faculty meeting to hear this new master, everybody knew that a trial of strength was at hand. I had never before attended a faculty meeting, but I did attend this one.

The new Nazi commissar wasted no time on the amenities. He immediately announced that Jews would be forbidden to enter university premises and would be dismissed without salary on March 15; this was something no one had thought possible despite the Nazis’ loud anti-Semitism. Then he launched into a tirade of abuse, filth, and four-letter words such as had been heard rarely even in the barracks and never before in academia. He pointed his finger at one department chairman after another and said, “You either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.” There was silence when he finished; everybody waited for the distinguished biochemist-physiologist. The great liberal got up, cleared his throat, and said, “Very interesting, Mr. Commissar, and in some respects very illuminating: but one point I didn’t get too clearly. Will there be more money for research in physiology?”

The meeting broke up shortly thereafter with the commissar assuring the scholars that indeed there would be plenty of money for “racially pure science.” A few of the professors had the courage to walk out with their Jewish colleagues, but most kept a safe distance from these men who only a few hours earlier had been their close friends. I went out sick unto death – and I knew that I was going to leave Germany within forty-eight hours.¹

Other professors chose a different course. Martin Heidegger, a noted philosopher whose thoughts on freedom inspired students like Hannah Arendt, now told his students and colleagues that Germany’s soul needed fresh air to breathe and National Socialism would provide it. He argued that freedom of inquiry and free expression were negative and selfish ideas. Instead he encouraged his students to live up to their obligations to the national community in both “thought and deed.”