In memory of #kristalnacht, a short thread on #heidelberg's nazi-era history, tourist charm, and the righteous need for academic boycotts.
Remember folks, "every document of culture is a document of barbarism."
@CAPASHeidelberg @DanielABarber @anitchang
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Every tourist to #Heidelberg sees the New University Building in University Square.
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I gave my @CAPASHeidelberg lecture here last year, as does every other fellow, in a lecture hall named for American alumni.
But few know it’s dark #nazi history.
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At a dinner of the Steuben Society in New York in early 1928, American ambassador to Germany, Jacob Gould Schurman, former president of Cornell and #heidelburg alum, unexpectedly announced a 400,000-dollar fundraising campaign to finance an auditorium building for the uni.
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The above bust is now in the New University building and there are other memorials to their contribution.
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Fundraising began, and quickly superseded expectations, with John D. Rockefeller giving the largest sum, but also joined by several Jewish donors.
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The Warburg family from Hamburg is known by the London library collection. Rosenwald (Sears Roebeck dynamo) is known for their support of Black American education and artists. Before Brown v. Board of Education, Rosenwald schools for Black Americans dotted the nation.
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The 1932 building was created by Karl Gruber . Later that year Gruber was a founding member of the “Danzig” section of Kampfbund Deutscher Architekten und Ingenieure (KDAI), a Nazi organization for German architects & engineers.
The building exemplifies a nazi/fascist style.
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Initially, and between 1931 and 1936, the building’s front entrance was marked by a statue of Athena,
the goddess of wisdom, and the slogan “to the living
spirit.”
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Yet by the 1930s, Heidelberg University had transformed. Jewish academics were fired. The Jewsih student fraternity building was forcibly taken over by nazi students. Jews and leftists forbidden to eat in the cafeteria.
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Heidelberg was designed to be a model Nazi town and the University, the exemplary Nazi university.
This dept store, today a Sparkasse, can be seen from the steps of New University building.
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When the New University Building was first opened, Nazi students threw stinkbombs in protest against the “Jewish contamination” of Heidelberg’s University.
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The university administration capitulated to Nazi influence. Here is Rektor (university president) Groh
wearing Nazi uniform while conducting university
business.
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On 17 May, 1933, in front of the building and a few meters from the library, a student group organized a protest against the “un-German spirit” and a book burning of “Jewish-marxist subversive literature.”
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Things came to a head in 1936 for the 550th anniversary celebration of the University. Heidelberg invited representatives from international universities to attend the celebration.
British universities uniformly refused to sanitize Nazi propaganda.
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Despite student protests, American universities sent delegates.
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In particular, Harvard, Columbia, and Yale resisted attempts to boycott nazi celebrations of Heidelberg, claiming a boycott was against “academic freedom.”
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When the Americans came to the fete, they were in for a surprise, as the NYTimes reports.
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Goebels had turned the event into a nazi propaganda event.
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The statue of Athena was removed to be replaced by a swastika, and the building was rededicated to the “true German spirit,” code phase for Nazism.
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Image of the celebration.
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The elite American university administrators were made fools. As the NYTimes reports, this wasn’t the Heidelberg of Schurman’s nostalgia. Next year, the Americans uniformly refused to attend Gottingen’s similar anniversary celebration.
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After the war, when the city became the chief center for the US occupation, Athena was restored (where it hangs today), and the building was renamed the “States” until a fire caused damage, after German students demanded its repatriation.
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The disgraceful history of #heidelberg university is nicely documented by Stephen Remy.
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A department by department history of the nazification of the university appears in this study.
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Today tourists walk by with little sense of the horrors the square witnessed.
#neveragain #neverforget.
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my lecture in this building
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