Rude Awakenings: An American Historian's Encounter With Nazism, Communism and McCarthyism

Jr. Sicherman Carol

Description

A richly detailed portrait not only of a man struggling to lead an ethical life but of the disturbed times in which he lived.Drawing on family papers, wide-ranging interviews, FBI files, American and German newspapers, a wide array of published sources, and her own memories, the author traces Markss German American heritage, his education both formal and informal, his marriage to a fellow Communist from a poor Russian family, his rocky start as an academic, his anguish when confronted by his Communist past, and his ultimate creation of a satisfying career. Her sleuthing encompasses as well the paths to safety taken by his German friends as they found sanctuary around the worldin Russia, England, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, Palestine, Brazil, the United States, and Canada.Of particular interest is Carol Sichermans carefully researched description of the anti-Semitic atmosphere that Jewish students encountered at Harvard in the twenties and thirties, as well as the experience of a young American thrown into the turmoil accompanying the collapse of Germanys democracy and the appeal of Communism as an alternative to Nazism. Curt F. Beck, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Connecticut.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• 20th century
• History of Europe
• Germany

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780985569884
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Drawing on family papers, wide-ranging interviews, FBI files, American and German newspapers, a wide array of published sources, and her own memories, the author traces Harry Marks’s German American heritage, his education both formal and informal, his marriage to a fellow Communist from a poor Russian family, his rocky start as an academic, his anguish when con-fronted by his Communist past, and his ultimate creation of a satisfying career.
 
“Rude Awakenings is a must read for students of 20th-century political and intellectual history. It tells the story of Harry J. Marks, who, after witnessing the tragic rise of Nazism in Hitler's Germany, embraced Communism because he saw the USSR as the leading anti-fascist force in the world. Equally gripping is the story of Marks’s disillusionment with Communism and his decision to “name names” when, as a history professor in the McCarthy era, he was summoned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify about his radical past.”–Robert Cohen, Professor of History and Social Studies Education,New York University.
 
“Based on a unique treasure trove of family letters and diaries, this biography interweaves the intellectual trajectory of a well-connected American academic with his observations and ideological responses to a most dramatic period of German history and European-American relations from the early 1930s to the 1960s. This book will be read and pondered with much profit not only by scholars and college students, but also by those who continue to find the insights to be gained in retrospect from the tragedies of the 20th century indispensable for an understanding of our contemporary predicament.”–Volker R. Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University.
 
“Of particular interest is Carol Sicherman’s carefully researched description of the anti-Semitic atmosphere that Jewish students encountered at Harvard in the twenties and thirties, as well as the experience of a young American thrown into the turmoil accompanying the collapse of Germany’s democracy and the appeal of Communism as an alternative to Nazism.”–Curt F. Beck, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Connecticut.
 
Carol Sicherman taught in the English Departments of Cornell University and Lehman College of the City University of New York. Her publications include: Thomas Traherne’s Christian Ethicks , ed.; Becoming an African University: Makerere 1922-2000 . The reference works Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: The Making of a Rebel and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources won the Conover-Porter Award of the African Studies Association in 1992. She has published many articles on Renaissance and African liter atures and on higher education in East Africa. She lives in Oakland, California.
 


 
 
 
Rude Awakenings
 
An American Historian’s Encounters with Nazism, Communism, and McCarthyism
 
 
Carol Sicherman
 

Washington, DC
 


Copyright © 2011 by Carol Sicherman
 
New Academia Publishing, 2012
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.
 
Published in eBook format by New Academia Publishing
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-9855-6988-4
 
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011939247
ISBN 978-0-9836899-8-0 paperback (alk. paper)
 

New Academia Publishing
PO Box 27420, Washington, DC 20038-7420
[e-mail] www.newacademia.com
 
 


 
For Harry’s further descendants
Miriam Sicherman
Noemi Sicherman
Una Yoorim Sicherman Rose
 
Acknowledgments
A number of people have been vital to my work on this book, which originates in the papers of Harry J. Marks, my father. The family of Ernest Engelberg, an age-mate and friend in Harry’s Berlin days, has been generous with hospitality and information. A visit in 2005 to Engelberg, then ninety-six years old, his son (Achim), and wife (Waltraut) gave powerful impetus to the research. Achim later made a gift of his book about German refugee intellectuals who returned to Germany. Engelberg’s biographer, Mario Kessler, also provided useful information. Relatives and friends of other people whom Harry knew in Berlin have also been generous with their knowledge. Dorothee Gottschalk–the widow of Lutz (Ludwig) Gottschalk, whom Harry had known in Berlin–contributed her knowledge of the Gottschalk family and some of their friends. Michael Freyhan contributed knowledge of the Freyhan family. David Sanford and Irene Hirschbach gave information on the Hirschbach family, and Irene sent two unpublished biographical essays by her late husband, Ernest Hirschbach. As time went on, I came to know (electronically) Peter-Thomas Walther of Humboldt University, Gottfried Niedhart of Mannheim University, and Daniel Becker, all of whom have shared their learning.
Other people have been generous in giving me information. Harry’s late cousins, Margaret Marks and Hannah Bildersee, sent me family history twenty-five years before I dreamed of this project. Cousins of my generation, Mary Misrahi Rancatore and Julienne Misrahi Barnett, supplied additional information. When I interviewed my mother’s oldest surviving sibling, Vida Castaline, in the mid-1970s, I had no idea that I would later rely on her remarkably detailed recall of life in Russia and, later, in Boston. Sidney Lipshires, who had been a Communist official in Massachusetts and, later, Harry’s doctoral student, knew valuable details about Harry’s Communist past. Curt Beck, whose long career at the University of Connecticut (UConn) overlapped Harry’s, offered additional information about the 1950s. Emanuel Margolis, a victim of McCarthyism at UConn, was kind enough to recall those painful days with a frankness that took my breath away. Bruce Stave, also of UConn, had just finished his excellent history of the university when I began my work and helpfully answered questions. Ellen Schrecker sent the spare but illuminating notes that she made when she interviewed Harry in 1979 for No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities . Miriam Schneir gave invaluable advice at the end of the process and suggested the title. Lily Munford, Peter Schaefer, and Waltraut Engelberg helped transliterate the old German script in which most of Grete Meyer’s letters and some of the other Berlin letters were written, as well as short notes written in German by my maternal grandmother’s family. Lily, in addition to doing the lion’s share of transliteration, undertook the considerable task of translating the Meyer letters. At the very beginning, Ingrid Finnan translated three of Engelberg’s letters and insisted that I could do the other three, thus giving me an incentive to revive my college German; at the very end, she provided essential expertise in preparing the photographs for publication. Except for the Meyer letters and those that Ingrid translated, translations of letters from the Berlin friends are my own, as are any otherwise unascribed translations. Michiel Nijhoff helped with Dutch. Members of H-German, the HNet discussion group on German history, advised a trespasser in their realm.
Librarians and archivists have given essential help. These include Betsy Pittman at the Thomas R. Dodd Center at UConn; Hermann Teifer at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York and other colleagues there; staff at the Harvard University Archives; and Sydney Van Nort at the archives of City College, City University of New York. In recompense, I have donated Harry’s Berlin-related papers to the Leo Baeck Institute and the professional papers of Louis Marks, Harry’s father, to City College (Harry’s papers connected with his service at UConn are in the Dodd Center there). Two interlibrary-loan librarians–Suzanne Haber at the Mount Pleasant Public Library and Eugene Laper at Lehman College–efficiently provided innumerable books and microfilms. Noemi Sicherman patiently solved word-processing problems and later proofread; together with Soji, she gave much comfort. Doris Irons read the page proofs. Long before I dreamed of this book, my daughter Miriam Sicherman, curious about her grandfather’s past, obtained and sent a copy of his congressional testimony, which until then I had thought was secret.
The photographs come mainly from the Marks family archive. Achim Engelberg sent the photograph of the Engelberg family in Geneva in 1938, and Renate Engelberg Rauer explained the background circumstances. Harry took all other photographs of his Berlin friends. He also took the photographs of sites in Germany, with two exceptions–Mommsenstrasse 57, which I took in 2005; and the memorial to Kurt Singer, taken from Wikipedia Commons and published under the terms of its GNU Free Documentation License; Wikipedia Commons is also the source of the map of Germany, published under the same terms. The dates given in captions, some of which quote Harry, are either supplied by the photographers or inferred from other information. All of the illustrations were prepared for publication by Ingrid Finnan with enviable patience and persistence, particularly when she modified the map to include Heidelberg.
My greatest debts are to my husband, Marvin Sicherman, and to Volker Berghahn, professor of German history at Columbia University. It was Marvin who advised me to contact Volker, for he knew his reputation as a kind and erudite scholar. Volker’s immediate response to the merest hint of the materials in my possession was to say: “Write something.” When, in December 2005, I returned from visiting the Engelbergs in Berlin, he said plainly: “Either you give these materials to the Leo Baeck Institute and someone else will write them up, or write them up yourself.” I have chosen both to write them up myself and to donate them so that others may use them in thei