Gassert, Philipp Leonhard

English

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AMERICAN STUDIES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY GERMANY:ON THE HISTORY AND PRE-HISTORY OF THE GERMANASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIESGHI-sponsored panel at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Ge-sellschaft für Amerikastudien (German Association for American Stud-ies), Amerikahaus, Munich, June 10-13, 2003. Moderator: Thomas Zeller(GHI/University of Maryland). Commentator: Hans-Jürgen Grabbe (Uni-versität Halle-Wittenberg). Panelists: Walter Grünzweig (UniversitätDortmund), Stefan L. Brandt (John F. Kennedy Institute Berlin), PhilippGassert (Heidelberg Center for American Studies), Rainer Schnoor (Uni-versität Potsdam), Anke Hildebrandt-Mirtschink (Universität Halle-Wittenberg), Michael Dreyer (Northwestern University).Fifty years ago, the founding of the German Association for AmericanStudies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien, or DGfA) in Marburgopened a new chapter in the history of American Studies in Germany. Tocelebrate this occasion, the DGfA devoted its 50th annual meeting toGerman-American relations. Focusing on the four topical issues of de-mocracy, ethnicity, popular culture, and political culture, the annual con-gress also provided some space for scholarly reflection as well as eyewit-ness accounts concerning the history of American Studies in Germany.Organized by Philipp Gassert and chaired by Thomas Zeller, the GHI-sponsored workshop presented six papers on the history of Americanstudies in three German states: the Third Reich, the Federal Republic ofGermany (FRG), and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The par-ticipants themselves represented a cross-section of the disciplines that arecurrently most active within the DGfA: cultural studies, history, literarystudies, and political science.A stimulating and original presentation by Walter Grünzweig en-titled “‘Knight Harvard’: Friedrich Schönemann, American Studies Spe-cialist in Nazi Germany” opened the panel. Beginning with a self-criticalappraisal of his earlier research on Schönemann, Grünzweig refutedthe conventional view of Schönemann as a tragic figure, as “yes, aNazi . . . but also a prolific and outstanding Amerikanist.” Although ear-lier researchers had not overlooked the fact that Schönemann had placedhis scholarship in the service of Nazi Foreign Studies (Auslandswissen-schaften), Schönemann’s achievements for the institutionalization ofAmerican Studies in Germany were nevertheless highlighted. After dis-covering Schönemann’s correspondence with the famous American cul-tural critic H. L. Mencken, however, Grünzweig revised his views on114 GHI BULLETIN NO. 33 (FALL 2003)Schönemann. Schönemann’s letters to Mencken clearly demonstrateSchönemann’s consistent antisemitism as well as his one-sided, highlynationalistic reinterpretation of American political culture. Grünzweigconcluded his paper with the unsettling question whether Schönemann’s“German” view forced whole generations of postwar West GermanAmerican literature specialists to focus on purely American issues. Thisallowed them to join the international American Studies mainstreamwhile preventing a serious coming to terms with the pre-1945 history oftheir field.The second culturally and methodologically reflective paper was pre-sented by Stefan L. Brandt. “From the Myth of German-Americans to theEnemy Image USA: American Studies in the Third Reich” placed Schö-nemann’s life and career in the larger context of the development ofAmerican Studies in Nazi Germany. Asking himself why American Stud-ies went through a surprising phase of rapid expansion during the Naziera, Brandt demonstrated that the growing interest in American Studieswas due to a strategic interest in the United States. Therefore, an expan-sion in scholarship did not entail an abandonment of highly ambiguousand ideologically charged views of the United States. Overall, the expan-sion of the field after 1933 and the beginning institutionalization ofAmerican Studies with its first chair at the University of Berlin was com-pletely in harmony with the political goals of the Nazi state. AmericanStudies became an “applied science” engaging in “enemy reconnais-sance” (Gegnerforschung) as well as a means of propagandistic support tofurther the regime’s ideological and political ends.The third paper, by Philipp Gassert, continued the story beyond theyear 1945. His paper was entitled “‘Within the German University a NewArea of Investigation’: On the Problem of Continuity Within the Processof the Founding of the DGfA.” Although Schönemann’s role in the found-ing of the DGfA was rather limited, Gassert argued that the fact shouldnot be overlooked that many of the association’s original 33 membersparticipated in Nazi foreign studies before 1945. Starting with an analysisof Arnold Bergstraesser’s programmatic speech of 1953, Gassert arguedthat the difficulties that American Studies encountered in postwar WestGermany were not just the result of a lingering anti-Americanism withina defeated country. They also stemmed from the fact that Amerikastudienhad been tainted by the Nazi Foreign Studies paradigm. The compromiseformula of American Studies as a “cooperative experiment,” which Berg-straesser suggested at the founding congress in 1953, allowed the variousdisciplines to cooperate under the umbrella of the DGfA, yet did not fusethem into a new integrated field as Schönemann had advocated duringthe 1920s and 1930s.GHI BULLETIN NO. 33 (FALL 2003) 115Combining the authentic views of the eyewitness with the experienceof the seasoned scholar, Rainer Schnoor presented a paper entitled “LeftDeviations: Scenes from More than 40 Years of East German and GDRAmerican Studies.” Reminding the audience of the pioneering work ofRobert Weimann, Eberhard Brüning, and Karl-Heinz Schönfelder,Schnoor argued that during the 1950s GDR American Studies took placeunder pictures of Stalin yet in a space that was relatively free of ideo-logical intrusions. Especially during the 1960s, GDR American Studieshad an almost subversive character. Young East German America spe-cialists such as Heinz Wüstenhagen discovered the voices of the “otherAmerica” of racially and socially discriminated groups, while the officialparty line railed against a “formalistic and decadent” Western culture.Supported by colorful reminiscences, Schnoor suggested that East Ger-man Amerikanisten were living in an almost schizophrenic world—dividing themselves between their enthusiasm for American pop cultureand their serious political and social involvement in the building of asocialist dictatorship.Anke Hildebrandt-Mirtschink then presented the audience with awell-researched and informative paper entitled “Continuity and Changein the ‘Cooperative Experiment’: On the History of the DGfA since thelate 1950s.” Building on her exhaustive research in the DGfA archives inMainz, Hildebrandt-Mirtschink looked at how interdisciplinary coopera-tion has withstood the test of time. Since Arnold Bergstraesser’s program-matic 1953 speech, interdisciplinary cooperation has been defined as themost promising venue for the organization to prosper. Except for theDGfA’s first decade, however, the DGfA has mostly had to live with apreponderance of literary studies scholars. At times this was perceived asa problem leading to bitter conflicts such as the notorious battle ofTutzing (1976), when historians were denied any representation on theDGfA’s advisory board. In recent years, however, these conflicts havereceded and the DGfA has coped rather well. It expanded the circulationof its journal Amerikastudien/American Studies, it successfully incorporatedEast German representatives of American Studies in 1990, and it contin-ues to recruit increasing numbers of younger scholars and students. AsHildebrandt-Mirtschink concluded, not all problems may have been dealtwith in detail; nevertheless, in reaching maturity and stability, the DGfAis no longer the “cooperative experiment” it once was, but has ratherbecome a successful “cooperative venture” (kooperatives Unternehmen).Michael Dreyer’s precise overview “Promised Land or Temple ofMethodologies? The Role of the US for German Political Science” beganwith the premise that there would be no political science in Germanywithout the United States. This holds true for the methodological basis ofthe discipline (which is less prevalent among political scientists special-116 GHI BULLETIN NO. 33 (FALL 2003)izing in the history of ideas and strongest in the subfield of internationalrelations), for most of its thematic interests, and for the professional train-ing of political scientists themselves. The organizational impact was mostvisible during the founding phase, when occupation authorities pro-moted political science as “democracy science.” Since then, however,successive generations of political scientists have had firsthand experi-ence studying or researching in the United States. Despite the importanceof the United States for the development of the discipline’s methodologi-cal and organizational background, only a handful of German politicalscientists themselves carry out research on the United States. Only withinthe subdiscipline of international relations is there a larger number ofpolitical scientists specializing in U.S. foreign policy. Furthermore, be-cause of the astounding number of political scientists working in theUnited States, the American dominance of political science is not going todisappear any time in the near future.In his informed commentary, Hans-Jürgen Grabbe asked about theparallels between the early twentieth-century emergence of the foreignstudies paradigm in Germany and the arrival of American Studies in theUnited States at about the same time. Arguing that the importance ofBergstraesser’s 1953 speech should not be overstated, he saw the emer-gence of a new generation of scholars in the 1960s as the real turningpoint toward what Walter Grünzweig has termed “an approach based onempathy” (as opposed to the “enemy reconnaissance” scholarship of thepre-1945 period). Concerning personal continuities beyond 1945, Grabbereminded the audience that many who had joined the Nazi party in 1933later became members of the anti-Nazi resistance. With regard to theGDR, Grabbe argued that historians specializing in the history of theUnited States seemed to have enjoyed less room to maneuver than rep-resentatives of American literary studies. A very lively discussion ensuedthat was augmented by the recollections of eyewitnesses such as BerndtOstendorff (Munich University), who came in contact with East GermanAmerikanisten as a student during the 1960s, and Ulrich Littmann (aformer head of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), who high-lighted the importance of the United States for the development ofAmerican Studies in Germany. Although history does not provide aguide for the future, the varied and sometimes controversial experienceof German Amerikanisten, and also the successes of German Amerikastu-dien as well as the growth of the DGfA, suggest that American Studieswill have a future in Germany that will hopefully be as interesting andstimulating as its past.Philipp GassertGHI BULLETIN NO. 33 (FALL 2003) 117

American Studies in Twentieth-Century Germany

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American Studies in Twentieth-Century Germany

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