german psychological journals under national socialism: a history of contrasting paths

Journal UJ the History oJ rhe Behovioral Sciences Volume 23, April 1987

GERMAN PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNALS UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALISM: A HISTORY OF CONTRASTING PATHS

JOACHIM F. WOHLWILL

Five major German psychological journals are examined to determine the changes they manifested upon the advent of National Socialism, and the manner in which they responded to the challenges posed by the new regime's ideology and policies. Two of the journals remained largely unchanged in their content, scientific orientation, and overall tone, revealing predominantly minor forms of accommodation. Two other journals showed a pronounced change in their content, publishing a considerable amount of material of an ideological, racist, or propagandistic nature during the decade starting in 1933. The fifth journal proved an exceptional case. These differences appear to reflect the orientation and values of the editors of the respective journals. Where the editors provided the requisite leadership, scientific publication was maintained essentially free from political interference even under the difficult conditions presented by the fascist state. The article concludes with an examination of the response by postwar German psychology to this period of its history, revealing a disinclina- tion to confront the subject, which was so until very recently. Possible bases for this response are also considered.

A good deal has been written about the fate of various academic disciplines under the National Socialist regime in Germany, including material devoted to a specific area as well as works dealing with a diversity of fields.' Until recently, however, psychology had figured only to a very limited extent in these accounts. Thus the impact of National Socialism on psychology and how German psychologists responded to the politicization of intellectual and academic life when the National Socialists came to power in 1933 had received very little attention in either the German or the non-German psychological literature of the postwar era.

This situation has changed markedly, at least as far as the German-language literature is concerned, as a result of the very recent appearance of two major volumes. One, edited by Carl Graumann, is devoted to German psychology under the Nazis; the other, by Ulfried Geuter, one of the foremost historians of twentieth-century German psychology, is specifically about the professionalization of German psychology during the National Socialist era. A further volume on twentieth-century German psychology, edited by Mitchell Ash together with Geuter, includes two chapters that deal with other aspects of the same subject.2

In addition to these volumes, Geuter has contributed several essays on the topic, and a scattering of additional papers also could be cited.3 None of this literature is available in English, unfortunately. Nor, apart from a chapter by Ash in the Graumann volume on the history of the German journal, the Psychologische Forschung, does this literature touch on the changes, or lack of them, that the major academic journals under- went during the period from 1933 to the end of the war.

I am greatly indebted to Ulfried Geuter for extensive comments and valuable criticisms of earlier drafts of this article. I wish also to acknowledge the contribution of the following persons, who provided helpful comments, criticisms, and suggestions: Rudolf Arnheim, Mitchell Ash, Carl Graumann, Mary Henle, Eckart Scheerer. and Marianne Teuber.

JOACHIM F. Womwm, a developmental psychologist, is Professor of Human Development at Pennsylvania State University, College of Human Development, University Park, PA 16802. His interests center on the development of exploration, play, and creativity, and on the role of environmen- tal factors in development.

170 JOACHIM F . WOHLWILL

This particular manifestation of the impact of National Socialism on German psychology is of interest, since the content, format, and editorial policy of the journals could be expected to provide a fairly direct indication of the influence of Nazi policy and ideology on the German psychological establishment, and thus could illuminate the manner in which the academic discipline of psychology responded to the challenge that confronted it. A focus on the journals has the further advantage of depersonalizing, to an extent, this rather checkered chapter in the history of German psychology.

Accordingly, a group of five journals was chosen for detailed analysis, which among them encompassed the major share of the periodical literature in academic psychology published in pre-World War I1 Germany: The Archiv fuer die Gesamte Psychologie; the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie; the Zeitschrift fuer Angewandte Psychologie; the Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie, and the Psychologische Forschung. This list is obviously incomplete; a number of more specialized journals in such fields as animal and physiological psychology and several journals in such cognate fields as pedagogy, social work, and the like, are omitted, as are others in psychiatry and psychoanalysis and a few that were specifically spawned during the Nazi era.4 Yet the journals selected do seem to represent the major journals in which German academic psychologists of the pre-Hitler era were publishing.

DATA FOR THE JOURNALS AS A GROUP

To what extent did the assumption of power of the Nazis affect research produc- tivity in terms of the volume of material published in the target journals as a group? This question is of interest, since both the dismissal by the Nazis of a significant number of major contributors to the psychological literature5 and the frequently alleged hostility of the Nazis to intellectual and scientific pursuits generally and to psychology in particular might lead one to expect a significant drop in research output and in volume of publication.6 Indeed, Joseph Needham' reported that for a single journal in biochemistry, the Biochernische Zeitschrift, the number of volumes published dropped precipitously from thirteen per year in 1930 to five in 1938.

What was the situation in psychology in this regard? To begin with Geuter' and others have challenged the thesis that the Nazis were inimical to psychology; indeed, they maintain that psychology gained in substantive ways under the regime, notably in obtaining greater acceptance of the potential contribution that psychology stood to make to society, which was manifested in an increasing spread of professional psychology into such areas as the military, and educational and vocational counseling. Yet, if journal publication in the natural sciences went into a decline, it would be surprising not to find some evidence of the same trend in the social sciences, particularly in psychology. And indeed that is what happened.

All of the journals under discussion saw some attrition in the amount of material published, but the extent of attrition varied considerably, as shown in Table The greatest proportional drop in the amount of publication was in the Psychologische Forschung and in the Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie, although the factors at work in these two cases were radically different.

If even the two most renowned journals in general psychology (the Archiv and the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie) had their publication output cut by some 25 percent over this period, it was probably less a consequence of reduced support of psychology by the ruling authorities than of the enforced emigration from Germany of a number of the major contributors to these journals.

GERMAN PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNALS UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALISM 171

Table 1 Number of Volumes and Pages Published by Selected German Journals from 1931 through 1939

Journal 193 1-1933 1934-1936 1937-1939

Vols. Pages Vols. Pages Vols. Pages

Archiv. f. d. ges. Psychol. 11 6602 8 4675 7.5 4520

Psychologische Forschung+ 4 1475 2.5 938 1.5 562

Zeitschr. f. Psychologie 12 4552 9 3712 8 3172

Zeitschr. f. angew. Psych. 8 4204 6 2357 7 2547

Zeitschr. f. paedag. Psych. 3 1524 3 1094 3 888

*Suspended publication in 1938.

Turning to the qualitative side, both Needham and Alan Beyerchen assert that the quality of the research undertaken during the National Socialist reign suffered considerably. Inevitably their basis for such a conclusion remains impressionistic, although certainly plausible. Are there any indications of a similar decline in German psychology?

For obvious reasons it is difficult to obtain conclusive evidence of a decline in this quality during the post-1933 period, but the very fact that so many of the persons who had been leading contributors to German psychology were forced or induced to leave could not fail to have exerted some effect on the work conducted following their departure. At least one would expect some effect on the type of problem studied, and indeed there are clear signs of a shift from Gestalt psychology to the "Ganzheits" psychology of the Leipzig school, with its preoccupation with wholes at the level of society and culture, and according to Eckart Scheerer" and others, its bent towards the irrational. Similarly, there was a shift from basic research on child and developmental psychology, as was being done by William Stern, Heinz Werner, and Charlotte and Karl Buehler, to a concentration on such topics as characterology and personality typologies.

These thematic changes do not of course in and of themselves address either the question of the quality of the work being carried out and published in the target journals or the changes in that quality after the National Socialists assumed power. That is clearly a more difficult matter to judge. Yet there is an objective index that may be of some relevance for this purpose, which is the frequency with which postwar German psychologists cited material published during the Nazi years as compared to their citations of material published during a comparable pre-Nazi period. Thus search was undertaken of five German journals that were in operation during the period from 1949 to 1955: Psychologische Beitruege (1953 to 1955); Psychologische Forschung (1949-1955); Psycho fogische Rundschuu (1 949-1 955); Zeitschrift fuer Experimentelle und Angewundte Psychologie (1953-1955); and Zeitschrift fuer Psychofogie (1954-1955)."

The postwar volumes of these journals were combed for references to journal articles published in four of the five target journals during the intervals of 1927 to 1932 and 1934 to 1939, respectively. (For reasons that will become apparent later, Psychologische Forschung was excluded from this analysis.) The search yielded 1 15 references for the 1927-1932 period versus 80 citations for the 1934-1938 period. The ratio (1.44) is admittedly just about what one might expect, given that the ratio for the number of pages in these journals for 1927 to 1932 as compared to 1934 through 1938 was 1.51; on the other hand, its significance appears enhanced when we consider that it goes counter to the well-known recency effect in scientific citation.


The picture changes markedly, however, once the data of each of the four cited journals are tabulated separately. For the Zeitschrift fuer Angewandte Psychologie the ratio is 30 to 20, or 1.5; for the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie it is 60 to 23, or 2.6, and for the Zeitschrift fuer Paedogogische Psychologie it is 7 to 2 or 3.5. The Archiv fuer die Gesamte Psychologie, in contrast, goes strongly counter to the trend for the other three journals: a large majority (35 out of 51) of the citations to articles from that journal were for the post-1933 period; thus the ratio of pre- to post-1933 citations for this journal is .51! It is tempting to relate this anomalous figure for the Archiv to the descrip- tive material that follows, which shows that this journal maintained its scientific standards and values more effectively than the others, notably the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie and the Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie, with their lopsided ratios of 2.6 and 3.5, respectively, for pre-1933 to post-1933 citations.

The preceding analyses, however superficial, give some hint of the material impact of the advent of National Socialism on the target journals. Not only was there some reduction in total publication output, but with the apparent exception of the Archiv fuer die Gesamte Psychologie the material that was published seemed to be of relatively more ephemeral interest and significance to subsequent German psychologists. When considering that the Archiv fuer die Gesamte Psychologie is an exception and that the Psychologische Forschung had to be excluded from the analysis altogether, it becomes clear that it would be dangerous to generalize across these journals, and therefore an account of the actual changes in content of each of the journals individually would be of value.

Archiv fuer die Gesamte Psychologie This journal represents with the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie one of the two major

journals spanning the entire field of psychology. It dates back to 1903, when it was founded by Ernst Meumann; by 1933 it had reached volume 88. That volume and the succeeding volume contained a series of studies by Egon Brunswik and his associates on perceptual constancies, as well as articles on psychophysics by Francis Irwin (of the University of Pennsylvania) and F. M. Urban. Its editor at that time was Wilhelm Wirth, who had joined Meumann as co-editor in 1915. The journal continued to emphasize experimental research (for example, publishing articles by Otto Selz on Gestalt psychology and by Albert Wellek on musical space). Furthermore, it continued to publish for a year at least publications by Jews, such as Karl Buehler and Selz. And as late as 1939 the journal published reviews, noncommittal in tone, of books by Jewish authors, notably Else Frenkel and Franziska Baumgarten.

In regard to the publication of articles by Jews, and of reviews of and citations to works by Jewish authors, it should be noted that there does not seem to have existed any official policy in this regard and that prepublication censorship did not apply to scientific journals. Indeed, it was possible for a journal such as the Psychologische Forschung to continue publishing papers by Jews for several years after 1933. This journal represents a special case, as it was edited by Wolfgang Kohler from the United States, but there is little question that editors of German journals under the National Socialist regime generally had considerable leeway in the extent to which they exercised volun- tary censorship in such matters as book reviews and references to Jewish authors and their works in the journals they edited.

At the same time it was in the book reviews published in the Archiv that the most visible positive signs of the Nazi movement were exhibited, both in terms of the nature

GERMAN PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNALS UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALISM f 73

of the books reviewed and the sentiments expressed by some of the reviewers. An early example is a review in 1934 by G. v. Leupoldt, of Die Deutschen und ihre Nachbar- voelker (The Germans and Their Neighboring Peoples) - a curious amalgam of environmentalist and to that extent anti-racist views with at the same time blatant anti- Semitic, as well as anti-feminist, philosophy. Significantly, the reviewer’s critique centered on the author’s rejection of racial inheritance as a major influence on personality and behavior. Similarly, in the 1936 volume of the journal there appeared a lengthy critique by Bruno Petermann of a book by Thomas Garth on the psychology of race published in 193 1 (in the United States); Petermann’s critique challenged Garth’s questioning of the racial interpretation of difference in intelligence among Indians, blacks, and Mex- icans. The title of Petermann’s critique itself appears significant: “Against Garth’s Alleged Overcoming of the Idea of the Racial Soul.” Petermann soon thereafter published another brief paper reviewing the literature on racial differences, with strongly racist overtones. l 2

Although the original papers published in the journal remained generally free of material with an explicit slant toward Nazi ideology, a trend away from experimental research and toward a more introspective, speculative “brand” of psychology, dominated by mentalistic views, by a focus on personality, and so on, did seem to be discernible- possibly reflecting in part the disappearance from its pages of such previously prominent contributors as Selz, Brunswik, and Irwin. Furthermore, with the advent of World War I1 a turn toward more applied concerns became visible, as did an increasing em- phasis on military psychology in the book r e v i e ~ s . ’ ~ Some of these reviews provided both author and reviewer with an opportunity to eulogize the Fuehrer. A similar eulogy introduces a brief Festschrift for a psychologist of the Wehrmacht, Generalmajor Hans von Voss, which appeared in volume 103 (1939).

Overall, it seems that this journal provides a picture of editors struggling with the very difficult problems posed to their discipline, and to their journal, by the National Socialist takeover, and attempting to cope with and adapt to it while preserving as much as possible its independence and intellectual self-respect. For a time this did indeed prove possible to a certain extent - compare the publication of reviews of books of Jewish authors. References to publications by Jewish authors, furthermore, including Brunswik, Charlotte Buehler, Kurt Kof€ka, Werner, and Werner Wolff, were not at all uncommon.

As an example of the fundamental conflict and even ambivalence of the position of these editors, we might cite the review published in 1936 of Erich Jaensch’s Der Kampf der deutschen Geschichte (The Struggle of German History), which though laudatory in its overall tone chides the author-a man who was perhaps the most outspoken cham- pion of the Nazi cause among German psychologists - for presenting a one-sided and exaggerated position typical of the polemici~t.’~

Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie In contrast to the Archiv, the arrival of National Socialism was evident in a more

conspicuous fashion in the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie. It represented, along with the Archiv, one of the two major outlets for general psychological research, publishing basic and influential contributions by such writers as Brunswik, Charlotte Buehler, Adhemar Gelb, Eugenia Hanfmann, and David Katz, to mention only some of the more prominent authors published during the five-year period preceding the Nazi takeover. The journal had been founded in 1890 by Hermann Ebbinghaus, with Arthur Koenig as co- editor. In 1933, the editors were Katz and Friedrich Schumann, but beginning with volume 130, which appeared late in 1933, Katz (a Jew who was forced to emigrate very


soon after the Nazi assumption of power) was replaced by Jaensch and Oswald Kroh, both of whom proved to be among the most vociferous and enthusiastic adherents of National Socialist doctrine.

Inevitably, turning the editorship of this journal over to Jaensch and Kroh exerted a profound influence on its affairs, one direct manifestation of which was a substantial rise in the number of papers dealing with personality typology, from 5 percent for the period 1928 through 1932 to 17 percent for the years 1934 to 1938. Here of course we see the direct influence of Jaensch, who had already contributed various papers on this topic before assuming the editorship, but who now took full advantage of his opportunity to use the journal as a forum for reporting on his research on individual types, based on the concept of “degree of integration” of the personality.

Jaensch represents a comparatively rare example of a German psychologist who explicitly fused the racist aspects of Nazi ideology with his own psychological theory. His attempts to apply his personality typology to the demonstration of the superiority of the German-Aryan individual are in evidence at various points in the extended series of papers on his typology by him and his collaborators that appeared in the Zeitschrift from 1933 onward. Even more significant are the unabashedly political essays that he contributed to the journal, six of which appeared between 1934 and 1940. Three of them may be cited as representative; they give explicit evidence of Jaensch’s super-nationalist orientation, of his blatantly anti-Semitic views, and of his espousal of Alfred Rosenberg’s efforts to provide an intellectual foundation for Nazi ideology. l 5

It seems reasonable to assign responsibility to Jaensch and to his associate, Kroh, as well for the various polemical pieces by other authors that appeared during their tenure as editors. These include a racist, anti-Semitic tract by Hermann Mandel in volume 142, and a similar, even more virulent paper by a Dutchman (!), Jac. van Essen, in volume 150, in which the author comes to the defense of German psychology against foreign condemnation of anti-Semitic views and actions. Apart from such essays, it is again in the book reviews that we find further material attesting to the “New Order,” including reviews of books by the indefatigable Jaensch himself in volumes 132 and 136 and various other books throughout this period on National Socialism, on “folk anthropology as a basis for German education” (by Kroh), on the “will to resist” in war, and on racial issues.

The much more pronounced politicization manifest in this journal, when compared to the Archiv, especially in regard to the content of the original articles published in the two journals, is instructive in bringing out the critical role played by the editors in permitting their publications to be used to further the National Socialist cause. A similar contrast is provided by the two journals considered next, both of which are of a more applied nature.

Zeitsch rift f uer A nge wandte Psych ologie This journal (its title translates as the “Journal of Applied Psychology”) was started

by William Stern and Otto Lipmann in 1903. They were still the editors in 1933, but as Jews they were forced to give up their editorship very soon after the National Socialist takeover (Lipmann dying, apparently a suicide, shortly afterwards).16 Their successors, starting with the 1934 volume, were Otto Klemm and Philip Lersch, the latter taking over as sole editor upon the former’s death by suicide in 1939.’’ Along with the enforced change in editorship, the journal’s quality inevitably suffered from the removal


from its list of authors of such major figures as Jakob von Uexkuell and Stern, as well as of their colleagues Lipmann and Selz, all of whom had contributed papers to the 1933 volume.

At the same time the change in the actual content of the journal was not as marked as one might have thought, at least as regards the featured articles published between 1934 and 1943, when it ceased publication. A noteworthy change was the initiation in 1934 of a section on criminal psychology that was to appear periodically over the next decade. The report of the 1933 German Congress on Psychology focused perhaps dis- proportionately on the political and propagandistic side of this congress (though that side was prominent enough).I8 But again it is in the book reviews that the most noticeable influence of the new regime can be found: In volumes 47 through 51 (1935 to 1937) there were reviews of at least six books either peddling National Socialist racist doctrine (the authors included Jaensch and Petermann) or dealing with subjects inspired by the new regime, such as military psychology. All of these volumes were treated quite un- critically by their reviewers. Yet the journal still found it possible during these same years to review, quite favorably, a number of books by the Buehlers, Werner, and Baumgarten (all of whom, with the exception of Karl Buehler, were Jewish).

The picture one obtains then of the history of this journal is somewhat similar to that of the Archiv fuer Psychologie, that is, of compromises being made to appease the new regime, while still attempting to preserve the overall tone, if not the quality, of the journal as a repository for original research. The fact that this was a journal of applied psychology might well have increased the pressures on it to deal with the problems of the emerging Third Reich in a politicized fashion, and therefore the relative paucity of such material in its pages appears all the more significant. It should be noted further that, just as had been the case with the two previous journals, no attempt was made to exclude systematically references to Jewish authors from the original articles published: the names of Charlotte Buehler, Tamara Dembo, and Kurt Lewin all appear in the literature cited in the original articles of this journal, and in one paper even Sig- mund Freud’s work was discussed in a reasonably unbiased tone.”

The preceding statement requires qualification, however, for it, as well as the general account of the course the journal took during the period after 1933, does not extend to the series of Beihefte, that is, monograph supplements, issued under the same editorship. These monographs showed a rather more dramatic change, although that change did not become evident until 1936. From Beiheft number 71, published that year, through number 75 (1938) there was an unbroken series of works of an outright ideological or political nature, including one on race psychology; one on military psychology; one on relations between the heredity of character, Gestalt psychology (!), and Integration- typology (Jaensch’s theory);” one by Jaensch on the reorganization of the world of German college students; and one on psychological foundations of German cultural philosophy. After three subsequent issues devoid of political content, such material again dominated the next eight issues (79 through 87), with considerable involvement by Jaensch himself. Yet, in spite of these evident signs of Jaensch’s influence, his name does not appear as editor of this series; he seems to have assumed unofficial, de facto responsibility for it, presumably with the tacit consent of the journal editors. Significantly, following Jaensch’s death in 1940, this trend seems to have been arrested: the issues published during the war (88 to 92) are devoid of at least obvious ideological, nationalistic, or political overtones.

176 JOACHIM F. WOHLWILL

Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie

As the name indicates, this journal was established to cover the general field of educational psychology, and as such it could be expected to prove particularly vulnerable to pressures, whether from within or without, to ally the journal with the new regime’s program for political indoctrination. It had been founded in 1899 by Ernst Meumann and Otto Scheibner; in 1915 Stern replaced Meumann, but he was himself in turn replaced by Kroh, effective with the July/August 1933 issue-thus slightly earlier than Stern’s removal from the editorship of the Zeitschrift fuer Angewandte Psychologie. Kroh appears to have wasted little time in turning the journal into a forum for the dissemination of National Socialist doctrine.

Already the June issue featured a paper by Adolf Busemann on “psychology in the midst of the new movement,” yet this author did not deal explicitly with the Nazi movement as such but rather with more general nationalist currents that he perceived in German society. Indeed he found it possible to reconcile these thoughts with reference to such psychologists as Kohler, Selz, and Stern as representatives of beneficial influences on German psychology! Busemann’s analysis, and its nationalist premise, was, however, made the subject of a sharp rebuttal by Otto Bobertag, which was published in another journal.2’ (Bobertag subsequently seems to have experienced considerable difficulties because of his political views, and eventually he committed suicide.)

With the change in editorship in mid-1933, however, some immediately noticeable changes appeared in the journal’s content, which once more became most evident in the book review section. There the effect was dramatic: Of twenty-nine books reviewed in issues 7 through 12 of the 1933 volume, eighteen dealt with eugenics, genetics, and race, whereas only two of the twenty-three published in issues 1 through 6 had a similar theme. (These two appeared in issue 6, thus probably already reflecting the “New Order.”) Considering that this journal was ostensibly concerned with educational issues, this concentration on matters of heredity and race is all the more remarkable.

The journal soon became a virtual mouthpiece for Nazi propaganda directed at those encharged with the education of German youth. This focus can be seen in several articles in the following volume (1934), specifically dealing with National Socialism and the psychology of leadership in the youth movement, and again in the book review sections. Though the proportion of explicitly political books reviewed declined somewhat over that for the last half of the preceding year, they still comprised a third of the reviews; they were also concerned more with National Socialism as a political movement and related issues, and less with race and eugenics.22

Evidence of these influences was rather less conspicuous in the 1935 volume. Subse- quent volumes (through 1938) fluctuated somewhat in this regard, and it is noteworthy that even in this journal we find occasional citations to Jewish writers, such as Werner and Charlotte Buehler, as late as 1937. At the same time the politicization of the journal is evident in the very explicitly ideological and propagandistic essays that appeared with regularity, starting in 1934. Of particular note are two essays by Kroh, which appeared in 1937. While perhaps not as explicitly racist and anti-Semitic as those Jaensch wrote for the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie, as well as one that Jaensch himself published in the present Journal,23 Kroh’s nationalistic stance and obeisance to Hitl‘er and to Na- tional Socialist ideology are transparent enough. Thus we find sentiments such as: “The new feature of German education is its political and military character. Its purpose is to develop everything which can be used in the unification and perfection of the folk- state”24 and “It is precisely through the belief in the ability to master fate that the activ-


ity of the German rooted in his traits derives all its enduring character. The strengthen- ing of this belief while directing all efforts to the realization of intrinsically German goals, that was what the German needed following the inner and outer collapse, and what Adolf Hitler provided for him.”25

Since these views of Kroh are clearly relevant to the role he played in the redirec- tion of the Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie, as well as of the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie that he co-edited with Jaensch, a brief note about this little-known psychologist may be in order. Kroh started his career as an associate of Jaensch, with whom he collaborated in some of the early work on eidetic imagery in the 1920s. He subsequently became active in experimental work on perception, but his major reputation was established for work in developmental and educational psychology and for his theory of developmental phases in childhood and adolescence.26 But his sympathies with nationalist ideology found expression early on in the National Socialist era in his work, “Folk Anthropology as a Foundation for German Edu~ation,”~’ along with the articles already referred to published in his own journal. We may further refer to several pamphlets issued in a collection of “Pedagogical Studies” under his own editorship. Significantly, this collection included a short series devoted to problems of “national” education, all of which were authored by Kroh himself. Included are the essays, “Na- tional Education in the German Colleges,” and “The Cultural-Political Will of Con- temporary Germany.’y28 It is thus apparent that Kroh played a very active part in fur- thering Nazi ideology, notably in the education of youth, and his influence as editor of the journal under consideration is in keeping with his sympathies to that cause.29

In sum, the present journal, and a comparison between it and the Zeitschrift fuer Angewandte Psychologie (if we leave aside the Monograph Supplement series of the latter), provides an interesting parallel with the similar differences noted earlier in the response to the challenge of the Third Reich by the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie, compared to that of the Archiv fuer Psychologie. Evidently it was the editors’ values (and need or desire for advancement, one suspects) and the leadership they exerted that deter- mined the direction the journal was to follow, and the extent of its furtherance of or resistance to the values of the National Socialist state.

Psychologische Forschung We come, finally, to a journal that represents a case apart from all of the preceding

journals, and indeed one which is probably unique in the history of German scientific periodicals. The Psychologische Forschung constituted the major forum for the publications of the Gestalt psychologists. It was founded in 1921, under the editorship of a group of Gestaltists led by KofFka. Its focus-rather belying its title-was thus much narrower than that of the journals considered previously. As a house organ, as it were, for Gestalt psychology, furthermore, the forced emigration of its leading figures (notably Max Wertheimer, Gelb, and Lewin), and the decimation of the Institute for Psychology at the University of Berlin upon the advent of the National Socialists, consummated with Kohler’s departure in 1935, should have had a direct impact on the affairs of this journal. One would suppose, in fact, that the departure of most of the major Gestaltists from Germany would simply have caused the journal to have ceased publication. Yet this did not happen for several years.

Instead, the journal was able to continue publication under Kohler’s editorship, even after he emigrated to the United States, and to continue serving as the repository of basic Gestaltist research, independent of the political views or ethnic background


of the researchers. This is of course testimony, first of all, to Kohler’s energy, commit- ment, and sense of ethical principles, which characterized his response to the attempts by a combination of Nazi students and academic officials to take over his in~titute.~’ At the same time it also reveals the role played by the publishers of this journal, a role which has not been considered heretofore in delineating the response of the various journals to the new regime.

In this instance it seems that the publisher, Springer Verlag in Berlin, played a significant part in supporting Kohler for a number of years in his efforts to keep the journal alive, and to preserve its integrity. Thus backed by a highly reputable publisher, the journal was apparently tolerated by the German authorities for some time after Kohler’s emigration, even though he must have been persona non grata in the eyes of the new regime. The journal was probably considered too narrow in scope and in its audience to clamp down on in those years, and so, through Kohler’s leadership- he had become sole editor by 1937 -the Forschung continued to operate as a vehicle for the publication of Gestaltist writing until 1938. During that period various articles were published, primarily by German psychologists who had been students of Kohler and his colleagues and who had remained involved in Gestalt research, frequently acknowledg- ing Kohler’s guidance and support. These authors included such former students as Otto von Lauenstein and Hedwig von Restorff, as well as associates such as Hans Wallach. Conspicuous by his absence was Wolfgang Metzger, who had been among the more prominent contributors to the journal prior to 1934.31

In the long run, of course, this arrangement could not last. Indeed, the journal suspended publication in 1938, resuming in 1949 under very different auspices. (It is currently published in English, as Psychological Research, but its primary identifica- tion with Gestalt psychology vanished when it reappeared after the war.) It is not difficult to imagine what led to the demise of the original Forschung. Fortunately, we have available correspondence between Kohler and the publisher in Berlin that provides detailed information about the circumstances surrounding its suspension of publication. It suggests that the political pressure exerted on the publisher appears to have inten- sified, at least by 1938. Furthermore, the reservoir of material submitted for publication in the journal, consisting largely of studies by former students of Kohler and his colleagues in Berlin, was fast drying up.

The correspondence consists of a letter from Kohler to Springer Verlag on 6 November 1938, the publisher’s response, dated 19 November, and a final reply by Kohler, which was deferred to 7 April 1939. In his initial letter (addressed to an uniden- tified “Herr Doktor”) Kohler notes that no further contributions to the journal were to be expected, as the research that had originated in Germany while he and his colleagues were still there had already been published, and he could not recommend to his current students in the United States that they submit their work to the journal, in preference to American journals, since the Forschung did not have a large readership in the United States. He was thus forced to seek the publisher’s agreement to discon- tinue publication of the journal, although that step filled him with sorrow. The publisher responded with a statement of great regret at this request and pleaded with Kohler to reconsider it. In view of the importance of the journal, the publisher felt obligated, for the sake of the reputation of his firm, to attempt at all costs to continue the journal’s operation, even if on a reduced schedule. He concluded by alluding to the difficulty he would have in finding a new editor, and expressed his hope that the necessity for such


a step might be avoided, though he pointedly noted that he did not consider that difficulty to be completely insuperable.

Kohler seems to have taken some offense at the tone of this letter; in any event, he reiterated his conclusion that the continuation of the journal was no longer viable. Kohler’s reply, which appears below, gives a succinct sense of his values as a scientist, and as a man.

Dear Sir. I was surprised to receive from you in November a letter whose last sentence sounds almost like a threat. My communication of 16. November [an apparent mistake; his letter was dated 6 November] surely gave no cause for any such; the purely factual circumstance that we could not expect any further contributions that would justify the continuation of the “Psychologische Forschung” induced me to ask you for your consent to the cessation of our work.

This reason still remains in effect. I don’t doubt that it might be possible through all sorts of compromises to continue the journal in a fashion that is not in keeping with its past. But I do not wish to have any part in that, and I suspect that would be a disservice to the publisher, as much as to anyone else.

The situation has incidentally become even more grave in the meantime, as I have been notified that further contributions by Dr. Wallach would no longer be accepted. That is of course a decision that does not affect Dr. W. alone. I know, it is not your decision, Dr.; but that does not change the fact that no editor can permit interference from nonsubstantive influences in the selection of the content of a scientific journal. I did make certain concessions, while there was still a question of maintaining for our last students the only appropriate place for their publications. However, since their studies have appeared there no longer remains the slightest excuse for me to subject myself to offenses against the ethics of science.

I would nevertheless still like to make a proposal, whose realizability you are better able to judge than I am. It would be regrettable if we now permanently disbanded a journal, only to find later that the reasons that led to that action no longer applied. Is it possible to suspend a journal for a period of time? Between October 1937 and December 1938 no issue has appeared. To the best of my knowledge no one has complained about that. I can imagine that a second comparable pause would not be taken any more amiss. After a period of time, perhaps next February, we could resume our negotiations. I mention February as I expect to spend several months in Europe starting in FebruwA.

Most sincerely, your devoted [Wolfgang Kohler]

It is not clear what changes Kohler thought might be on the horizon in April 1939 that would alter the circumstances to which he was referring, both in regard to future submissions of articles for publication and to the prohibition against the publication of papers by Jewish authors, such as Wallach. Perhaps he was trying to buy time to forestall the publisher’s hinted intent to appoint a new editor to keep the journal going. Be that as it may, the outbreak of the war eliminated any further chance of saving the journal under Kohler’s leadership, and so the Forschung did in fact suspend publication with its 1938 volume.

POSTSCRIPT: THE TREATMENT OF THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST ERA IN THE POSTWAR ERA Before the present decade, any discussion in the German psychological literature

of this period was virtually nonexistent. German psychologists showed little inclination to examine the direction that psychology took during this period, let alone to look at the role played by psychologists, both individually and as a group, vis-a-vis the Na- tional Socialist state and its ideology.


This reluctance of German psychology to face up to its most recent past is demonstrated by the lack of response to an admittedly polemical pamphlet by Fran- ziska Baumgarten, a German-Jewish clinical psychologist who had emigrated to Switzerland prior to 1933 .33 In this publication the author accused German psychologists in blistering terms of at least passively accepting, and in many cases openly supporting and complying with, the National Socialist regime. (She claimed she had been unable to find any examples of German psychologists opposing the regime, apart from Kohler, and two minor figures, Bobertag and Helrnuth Bogen, a practicing psychologist.)

The silence with which this article34 was greeted reflected a seeming desire to repress the past history, and with very few and minor exceptions that attitude has lasted until very recently. An exception is the exchange between Ferdinand Merz and Albert Wellek.35 It was set off by a relatively brief and cursory overview of psychologists’ response to National Socialism by Merz, which elicited a sharply critical reply by Wellek, who faulted Merz for an overly selective recital of the psychologists who had in one way or another opposed themselves to the Nazis, or suffered at their hands. Wellek further objected to Merz’s claim that the Leipzig school of “Ganzhheitspsychologie” had proved particularly amenable to collusion with the National Socialist movement; he countered with assertions that its leader, Felix Krueger, though initially sympathetic to this movement, had subsequently been subjected to a temporary prohibition against lecturing, as well as being forced into early retirement, as a result of certain favorable references in his lectures to Jews such as Benedict Spinoza and the physicist Heinrich Hertz. Merz countered with a brief reply, but the argument was too narrow in focus to result in a heightened inclination of German psychologists of that day for self-examination. Nor was a subsequent paper by Wellek,36 devoted to an account of German psychologists who emigrated from Germany as a result of the rise of Nazism, any more effective in promoting such self-examination, since it was largely aimed at documenting the debt that psychology in other countries (notably the United States) owed to these emigre^.^'

There was essentially no further discussion of this subject during the 1960s and 1970s. Geuter has provided a comprehensive account of this curious phenomenon, and he has suggested some possible and quite cogent reasons for it.38 At the same time it is well to recognize the pragmatics of the situation faced by postwar German psychologists trying to reestablish themselves in academic psychology, at least in their home country. Their need to compete for the scarce opportunities for academic employment undoubtedly contributed to this thunderous silence, and to a reluctance to point fingers at those of their colleagues who had in diverse ways supported or acquiesced in the National Socialist state, thus compromising the integrity of their discipline. This stance presumably facilitated the task of the German universities to rebuild their faculties and their academic programs without regard to the involvement of particular individuals in the National Socialist movement (though all presumably had to pass muster before the Allied Denazification Courts), and thus we find a person such as Kroh resuming his academic career in 1949 with an appointment to the faculty of the Free University of Berlin (Kroh had also been offered a position at the Humbolt University in East Berlin).39 Other similar examples of German universities welcoming past Nazi sympathizers back into their midst could readily be cited.40

Devotion over and beyond the call of duty, however, appears in a commemorative issue that the Psychologische Rundschau saw fit to devote to Kroh in 1967.41 This issue, along with the numerous tributes to Kroh appearing at the time of his death in 1955, gave testimony to the position of respect and influence he had attained, for his diverse


contributions to perception, to developmental psychology, to counseling psychology, and to pedagogy, as well as for his efforts to rebuild German psychology in the early postwar era. Undoubtedly, too, his success during the war in establishing an officially recognized diplomate for psychological practitioners endeared him to many psychologists. Yet nowhere in the six papers that make up this commemorative issue (nor anywhere else, for that matter) is there the least mention of Kroh’s activities as editor of the Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie and as Jaensch’s collaborator in editing the Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie, much less of his apologia for nationalism and the National Socialist state in his writings. Indeed, the only reference to the period of the Third Reich is in the biographical article by Ernst Bornemann in the form of a disingenuous sugges- tion that Kroh developed the field of educational counseling “in collaboration with the National Socialist Party (but in deliberately nonpolitical fashion!).’”2

Thus it has remained for Graumann and his colleagues, and for Ash and Geuter in particular, to address themselves to this chapter in the history of German psychology through their recent works, which apparently originated in part during the observation in West Germany in 1983 of the fiftieth anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power. This is surely no accident. Indeed, the history of the self-examination of German psychologists parallels that of their countrymen at large. The social and physical upheaval wrought by the collapse of the Third Reich and its immediate aftermath seems to have provoked little self-reflection or stocktaking on a national scale. That had to await the advent of a new generation, one that did not feel burdened with the heritage of the past, and that had fewer reasons to repress it. Apparently much the same happened within academia, and within psychology in particular .43

CONCLUDING COMMENT This survey of the German periodical literature in the 1930s, and the attempt to

trace the impact of the advent of National Socialism on German scientific psychology as reflected in the journals covered here, leads to several conclusions. First, and most striking, there were marked differences in the form that accommodation to the new order took for different journals. Admittedly, in several cases where new editors were appointed to succeed editors who had been forced to relinquish their editorial duties, allegiance to the new regime was probably a factor in their success in securing the appointment. Yet the marked difference between the Zeitschrift fuer Angewandte Psychologie under Klemm and Lersch and the Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie under Kroh suggests that active proselytizing on behalf of the National Socialist movement was not necessarily demanded of such editors, and that more positively they could retain a certain degree of independence and freedom of movement. Under these circumstances, then, the course that a given journal took became more a matter of complex and subtle accommodations, concessions, compromises, and adaptations that presumably reflected the editors’ personality and character as much as their values and beliefs. It seems all the more significant then that the relative impact of the National Socialist regime evident in these different journals is in such good correspondence with the attention that the papers published in them appear to have received from German psychologists of the early postwar period, as shown in the citation figures presented earlier.

The present analysis is at least in part consonant with the conclusions Geuter has reached in his thorough study of German psychology under National Socialism.44 His thesis is that, far from inhibiting the progress of psychology, the advent of the new regime provided ample opportunities for psychologists to further the advancement of


psychology, and of their own particular viewpoints or professional goals. In a very few instances (specifically in the case of Jaensch) this entailed the coopting of National Socialist ideology to serve the psychologist’s own philosophical and theoretical ends qua psychologist. But for most German psychologists, this represented more a marriage of convenience, which sometimes (as in the role that Kroh played) took the form of efforts to “sell” the government on the contributions that psychologists stood to make to their society, notably through the alliance of psychology with the military as well as the general professionalization of the field.

However cogent Geuter’s analysis, it does not perhaps do sufficient justice to the diversity of ways in which German psychologists in fact responded to the challenges that confronted them upon the Nazi rise to power.45 Even those who attempted explicitly to wed their theoretical views to National Socialist ideology did so in different ways. At one pole is a virtual fusion of theory and ideology, expressed in its most extreme form in Jaensch’s work. Similar, though yet to be differentiated from the case of Jaensch, are the perhaps more opportunistic obeisances to National Socialistic dogma encountered in Kroh’s writings, as well as the crass expressions of racist philosophy found in some of the writings of Friedrich Sander, a major figure of the Leipzig School of “Ganzheit- psychologie.’46 And as noted earlier, yet another major representative of that same school, Felix Krueger, found it possible to assimilate to a degree his theoretical views to National Socialist ideas, which for him were consonant with his own long standing nationalist and conservative ideology, while distancing himself from the racist aspects of Nazi doctrine; in fact, he openly refused to abide the anti-Semitism promulgated by the National Socialist state.47

This diversity of individual adaptation to the conditions of academic, scientific, and professional life in the Third Reich emerges as a central theme from the contrasting histories of the various journals. Our account suggests, as do the writings of various individual psychologists, that in many if not most instances individuals attempted to preserve their intellectual and ethical standards intact as much as possible, through various kinds of predominantly passive accommodations to the new powers that be, and made efforts to continue their work largely apart from, if not in defiance of, the changed political context. Thus the kind of blanket indictment of German psychology as openly espousing the Nazi cause that Baumgarten presented is surely misplaced. Yet our account raises important and difficult questions of the boundaries within which such adaptations might be deemed justified, and of the responsibility borne by those individuals that step outside them. If we consider the conditions of scientific publication in con- temporary nondemocratic societies today, it is apparent that these issues remain most pertinent at present.

NOTES

1. Alan D. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Andreas Flitner, ed., Deutsches Geistesleben und Nationalsozialismus (Tuebingen: R. Wunderlich, 1965); Herbert Mehrtens and Stefan Richter, eds., Naturwissenschaft, Technik und NS-Ideologie: Beitraege zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Dritten Reichs (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980).

Carl F. Graumann, ed., Psychologie im Nationalisozialismus (Berlin: Springer, 1985); Ulfried Geuter, Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984); Mitchell 0. Ash and Ulfried Geuter, eds., Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbadeni Westdeutscher Verlag, 1985).

A comprehensive bibliography dealing with this subject can be found in a useful overview of this topic by Geuter, issued in conjunction with a university extension course. See U. Geuter, Problemgeschichte der Psychologie. Kurseinheit 2: Psychologie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Hagen, West Germany:

2.

3.


Fernuniversitaet - Gesamthochschule, 1984). See also the reference sections in Graumann, Psychologie im Nat ionalsozialismus. 4. Among these journals, one that became of some significance for German academic psychology was the

Wehrpsychologische Mifteilungen, reflecting the growing ties between German psychologists and the military establishment.

5 . Altogether, forty-five members of the German Psychological Society, or 14.6 percent of the member- ship (including seven of 20 chairholders), were forced to emigrate from Germany during the 1930s, as a result of having been dismissed from their posts. See Mitchell G. Ash, “Disziplinentwicklung und Wissenschaft- stransfer. Deutschsprachige Psychologen in der Emigration,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 7 (1984): 207-226; Geuter, Problemgeschichte der Psychologie, p. 22.

For a discussion of the hostility of the German state to science and scientists, see Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler. Geuter, in Problemgeschichfe der Psychologie, argues that there is no justification for the belief that the National Socialist regime was particularly intent on dismantling the psychological establishment; indeed, he maintains that psychology received significant support from it, notably for applied research.

6.

7. 8. 9.

Joseph Needham, The Nazi Attack on International Science (London: Watts, 1941). Geuter, Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologie. The values in this table do not agree with those that Samuel Fernberger published for the total number

of entries in German appearing in the Psychological Index between 1906 and 1935. See Samuel W. Fern- berger, “Publications, Politics, and Economics,” Psychological Bullefin 35 (1938): 84-90. For the period from 1930 through 1936, his tabulation shows a percipitous drop from 2,600 + for 1930 and 1931 to slightly over 1,OOO entries for 1932, that number being maintained with only minor fluctuations through 1936. Fernberger ascribed this drop in part to economic conditions in Germany at the time. Possibly the major journals that are included in our tabulation were buffeted from the effects of the economic depression in Germany; certainly there is no evidence of a decline in 1932 for any of these journals, relative to the preceding years. 10. Eckart Scheerer, “Organische Weltanschauung und Ganzheitspsychologie,” in Psychologie im Na- tionalsozialismus, ed. Graumann, pp. 1-14. 11. The limitation to the period prior to 1956 was based on the likelihood that references to the prewar literature would decrease sharply in frequency for later years, given the strong recency effect to which citation frequencies are subject. See Derek J. Della Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), pp. 79ff. 12. Bruno Petermann, “Wider die vorgebliche Ueberwindung der Rassenseele Idee bei Russel Thomas Garth,” Archiv fuer die Gesamte Psychologie 97 (1936): 257-293; “Wege zur Rassenlehre,” Archiv fuer die Gesamfe Psychologie 98 (1937): 557-573. 13. Compare the review by Hermann Lufft of Max Simoneit’s Deutsches Soldatenfum, in Archiv fuer die Gesamfe Psychologie 108 (1941): 437-439. 14. Significantly, the obituary that appeared some years later for Jaensch dealt quite perfunctorily with his allegiance to National Socialism; the bulk of this forty-page memorial tribute was devoted to Jaensch’s research in perception and eidetic imagery, which was discussed without reference to his political and racial philosophy with which it became overlayed. See Wilhelm Wirth, “Erich Rudolf Jaensch,” Archiv fuer die Gesamte Psychologie 106 (1940): I-XL. 15. Erich R. Jaensch, “Die Lage und die Aufgaben der Psychologie im Neuen Reich,” Zeitschriff fuer Psychologie 138 (1936): 209-238; “Der Kampf der Deutschen Psychologie und der Geisteskampf der Bewegung,” Zeitschriff fuer Psychologie 145 (1939): 273-280; “Deutsche Psychologie, von draussen Gesehen, und die Echt Neutralen Beobachter,” Zeifschrift fuer Psychologie 148 (1940): 91-99. 16. The final issue of the journal under Stern’s editorship concludes with two brief, poignant obituary notices: one for his very gifted assistant, Martha Muchow, who committed suicide shortly after the Nazi assumption of power; the other for his co-editor, Otto Lipmann. See Frank P. Hardesty, “Louis William Stern: A New View of the Hamburg Years,” in Psychology: Works in Progress, ed. K. Salzinger (New York: Academy of Sciences, Annals No. 270), pp. 30-44; Joachim F. Wohlwill, “Martha Muchow and the Life-space of the Ur- ban Child,” Human Development 28 (1985): 200-209. 17. See Albert Wellek, “Deutsche Psychologie und Nationalsozialismus,” Psychologie und Praxis 4 (1960): 177-182. Wellek suggests that Klemm took his life “in connection with” difficulties encountered by his col- league at Leipzig, Felix Kreuger, for failing to toe the party line’s espousal of anti-Semitism. 18. An account of this congress in English has been provided by Goodwin Watson, “Psychology under Hitler: The Thirteenth Congress of the German Psychological Association,” School and Sociefy 38 (1933): 732-736. Watson took the stance of an essentially neutral observer in his report, but concluded with the following remarkable statement: “My guess would be that much the largest group-more than half -feel that the crisis is over and that genuine psychology, more closely related to the whole living person than ever before, will develop in Germany on a new and advanced level. A considerable group are ‘heads over heels’ in enthusiasm for the Nazi Germany. An apparently somewhat smaller group are skeptical, waiting more or less hopefully


to see what the future will bring” (p. 736). For a more complete account of the same congress, and of the politically tinged planning for it, see U. Geuter, “Der Leipziger Kongress der deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Psychologie,” Psychologie und Gesellschaftskritik 3, 4 (1979): 6-25. 19. Johannes Neumann, “Ganzheit und Komplex,” Zeitschriyt fuer Angewandte Psychologie 54 (1938): 18-31. 20. In spite of the fact that this monograph dealt in part with Gestalt psychology, the references in it to Gestalt literature proper are restricted to one reference each to Walter Ehrenstein and Kurt Gottschaldt, along with liberal references to the writings of Friedrich Sander, a “Ganzheit” psychologist of the Leipzig school, which was an offshoot of Gestalt psychology. (Sander was, incidentally, an open sympathizer with the Na- tional Socialist cause.) 21. Adolf Busemann, “Die Psychologie inmitten der Neuen Bewegung,” Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie 34 (1933): 193-199; Otto Bobertag, “Zum Kampf fuer und gegen die Psychologie,” Zeitschrift fuer Kinderforschung 42 (1933): 190-199. 22. Particularly revealing in pointing out this journal’s new role as an organ for the dissemination of Na- tional Socialist propaganda are the advertisements on its inside front and back covers. In the issues for late 1933 and 1934 there is a profusion of material listed with a highly explicit Nazi ideological content, dealing with such subjects as German history and national awareness, as well as of race and of the education of Ger- man youth. 23. E. R. Jaensch, “Wege und Ziele der Psychologie in Deutschland,” Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie 39 (1938): 169-181. 24. Oswald Kroh, “Paedagogische Psychologie im Dienste Voelkischer Erziehung,” Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie 38 (1937): 1-13. (The quote is from Psychological Abstracts 1 1 (1937): #2453.) 25. 0. Kroh, “Deutsches Menschentum,” Zeitschrift fuer Paedagogische Psychologie 38 (1937): 113-138. The quote is from page 125 (translation by this author). For an abstract in English, see Psychological Abstracts 11 (1937): #4239. 26. 0. Kroh, Die Phasen der Jugendentwicklung (Stuttgart: Schulwarte 2, 1926). See also Rudolf Bergius, “Entwicklung als Stufenfolge,” in Entwicklungspsychologie (Handbuch der Psychologie, vol. 3, ed. Hans Thomae (Goettingen: Verlag fuer Psychologie, 1959), pp. 104-195. 27. 0. Kroh, Voelkische Anthropologie als Grundlage deutscher Erziehung (Esslingen am Neckar: Burgbuecherei, 1934). 28. 0. Kroh, Die Nationalerziehung an den Deutschen Hochschulen (Langensalza: H. Beyer & Soehne, 1938); Das Kulturpolitische Wollen Deutscher Gegenwart (Langensalza: H. Beyer & Soehne, 1937). 29. Kroh appears to have undergone some change in his world-view following the war, as indicated in his volume on educational philosophy, Revision der Erziehung (Heidelberg: Quelle u. Meyer, 1954), 2nd ed. In it he waxes eloquent for “responsibility for one’s fellow-man” as a “decisive force for the humanisation of the educational process.” Needless to say, the volume contains no reference to the events of the then recent past, much less to his own writing or thinking during the prewar era. 30. For accounts of Kohler’s response to events during the period from 1933 to 1935, see Clarke W. Cran- nell, “Wolfgang Kohler,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 6 (1970): 267-268; Mary Henle, “One Man Against the Nazis,’’ American Psychologist 33 (1978): 939-944. 31. Metzger’s case represents an interesting example of the struggle of a German psychologist to cope with the challenges to both scientific and personal values that the advent of National Socialism meant. See M. Stadler, “Das Schicksal der Nichtemigrierten Gestaltpsychologen im Nationalsozialismus,” in Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Graumann, pp. 139-164. 32. The correspondence between Kohler and Springer is in the possession of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, which has given permission to reprint the letter included here in the present writer’s translation. The author is pleased to acknowledge the contribution of Professor Mary Henle in calling his attention to this correspondence. 33. Franziska Baumgarten-Tramer, “German Psychologists and Recent Events,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 43 (1948): 452-465; Franziska Baumgarten, Die Deutschen Psychologen und die Zeitereignisse (Zuerich: Aufbau, 1949). 34. The only responses to Baumgarten’s accusations that appeared in print were two brief notes, each less than a page long, the second of which was written by a German psychologist who had emigrated to the United States. See Johann von Allesch, “German Psychologists and National Socialism,’’ Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 45 (1950): 402; Heinz L. Ansbacher, “A Note Concerning Baumgarten-Tremer’s ‘German Psychologists and Recent Events,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 46 (1951): 604. 35. F. Merz, “Amerikanische und Deutsche Psychologie,” Psychologie und Praxis 4 (1960): 78-91; Wellek, “Deutsche Psychologie und Nationalsozialismus”; F. Merz, “Deutsche Psychologie und Nationalsozialismus: Eine Erwiderung,” Psychologie und Praxis 5 (1961): 32-34.


36. A Wellek, “The Impact of the German Immigration on the Development of American Psychology,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 4 (1968): 207-229. (Originally published in German as “Der Einfluss der Deutschen Emigration auf die Entwicklung der Amerikanischen Psychologie,” Psychologische Rundschau 15 [1964]: 239-261.) 37. The subject of the emigration of German Jews and other opponents of the Hitler regime to the United States and its impact on American psychology has been dealt with much more comprehensively in another work. See Jean Mandler and George Mandler, “The Diaspora of Experimental Psychology: The Gestaltists and Others,” in The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960, ed. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 371-419. 38. U. Geuter, “Institutionelle und professionelle Schranken der Nachkriegsauseinandersetzungen ueber die Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus,” Psychologie- und Gesellschaftskritik 4 (1980): 5-39. 39. Ernst Bornemann, “Oswald Kroh zum Gedaechtnis: Rueckblick auf 50 Jahre Deutscher Psychologie,” Psychologische Rundschau 18 (1967): 223-228. 40. In some cases the rehiring of former Nazis or Nazi sympathizers by German universities may have taken place as a consequence of laws that the German parliament passed in 1951 to provide employment for persons who had run afoul of the denazification proceedings instituted by the Allies after the war. See Otto Bachof, “Die ‘Entnazifizierung’,” in Deutsches Geistesleben und Nationalsozialismus, ed. Andreas Flitner (Tuebingen: R. Wunderlich, 1965), pp. 195-216. 41. Psychologische Rundschau 18 (1967): 223-276. 42. Bornemann, “Oswald Kroh zum Gedaechtnis,” p. 227 (translation by this writer). 43. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler, presents a rather different picture for physics, where immediately after the end of the war a vigorous debate appeared in a newly founded journal over the support given by some physicists to the “Aryan physics” that the Nazis attempted to foist on the physics community. This may have been a limited and perhaps short-lived exception, instigated by a single physicist, Max von Laue, who had been an active opponent of the Nazis. 44. See Geuter, Problemgeschichte der Psychologie and Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologie. 45. For more general treatments of the response of German professors to the National Socialist era, see Wolfgang Kunkel, “Der Professor im Dritten Reich,” in Die Deutsche Universitaet im Dritten Reich (Munich: R. Piper, 1966), pp. 103-134, and Fritz Leist, “Moeglichkeiten und Grenzen des Widerstandes an der Univer- sitaet,” ibid., pp. 175-214. Leist makes extensive reference to the case of Kurt Huber, a relatively obscure psychologist who became involved in the student protests of the underground organization, “The White Rose,” and was executed, along with the leaders of that organization, in 1943. 46. See Freidrich Sander, “Deutsche Psychologie und nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung,” Na- tionalsozialistisches Bildungswesen 2 (1937): 641-649. 47. For a more complete account of this interesting psychologist and his response to the National Socialist movement, see U. Geuter, “Das Ganze und die Gemeinschaft - Wissenschaftliches und politisches Denken in der Ganzheitpsychologie Felix Kruegers,” in Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 55-88.

german psychological journals under national socialism: a history of contrasting paths

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