I have received a book in pristine condition. Why should that trigger a blog post? Because the book comes to me through the inter-library loan service of the Minneapolis Hennepin County Library - the loan is extended by the Wilson Library of the University of Minnesota.
The book is Ernst Klee's 2001 Deutsche Medizin im Dritten Reich.
The better school districts in Minneapolis teach German, if only at the high school. Like America in general, this area is ethnically German. In the years after the Civil War, disease in Memphis drove the inhabitants of Germantown as far up the Mississippi River as one could then travel: to the St Anthony falls.
The book is pristine, untouched. The bookmark ribbon was folded double across a small inner signature: it is otherwise also pristine. How could such a book stand untouched at a university with a Holocaust document center?
The book lacks a subject index, but has an index of persons. It opens with a photo and a quote from the closing chapter on Max Ufer and the Max Planck Society.
Here is a PDF on The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under the Third Reich.
Many years have passed since I stood before the photos at the Dachau memorial: somehow one photo in the Ernst Klee volume seems now to burn in my memory: the ulcerated face of a child.
Ordinarily I would have posted this under my blog on the quaint tourist town of Marburg. It is not, after all, the first time that I have found a book surprisingly pristine - or with uncut pages - in a university library. But not a book such as this.
German remains one of the languages of science at a great university such as that of Minnesota. Surely there is a simple explanation.
The book has no review at Google books.
Here is the amazon link for this book.
Here is the Ernst Klee author link at amazon.
Showing posts with label Marburg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marburg. Show all posts
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Marburg University clinic and the psychiatrists
Yes, I am back on the subject of Marburg: 2012 will be the centenary of Hermann Cohen leaving the university and still the tourist town will not have named a street for him (unlike Paul-Natorp in Cappel.)
The university further disgraced itself by the hiring it engaged in immediately after the war. Perhaps you think I exaggerate?
Here is a quote from the Schilpp volume (1957, 1981) for Karl Jaspers (the later edition contains his comments on Heidegger.) I will quote Kurt Kolle of Munich University (Psychiatry and Neurology) on page 457 (the later edition cleverly preserved pagination) in his criticism of a naive Jaspers:
The medical profession and especially the academic wing, embraced the National Socialist programme. It had meant a real prospect for a social corrective in the forced sterilization of the unfit. They had made a great deal of progress at Hadamar prior to the failure of the Wehrmacht to defeat the Slavs.
The consolation to the eugenic-minded practitioners: that the tiny German minority might yet survive in the face of the Slavic hordes and the yellow masses, the swarming brown-skinned inferiors. You really must read in this the one great consolation they could take: that so many Slavs had been prevented from reproducing through the natural coial porcess of warfare.
You think that I exaggerate. Surely I exaggerate. They sat over their coffees or beers and talked about the outcome of the war: here they were, back at their research, and what would an objective assessment be - a scientific assessment of the outcome and of their research prospects and prospects to influence social policy.
We lament the failure to de-nazify eastern Germany and Austria: but there could not be the luxury of de-nazification of the psychiatrists because too careful screening would mean having to engage foreign-trained staff - and you know what that means.
While it was thought a service to philosophy to re-isse the expanded Schilpp volume with Jaspers view of Heidegger, the real value is in having preserved the essays by Kolle, Arendt and Ricoeur. It is to be hoped that the volumes available as microfilm will be preserved as digital resources.
Documents with evidence concerning the beds being "freed" at the Marburg Anstalt - freed for use by slave labor at Stadtallendorf Nobel Dynamite - are archived here at the University of Minnesota in what had been the remnant of the German colony at Memphis, now 'ethnically polluted' but fortunately in one of the bastions of modestly cosmopolitan and liberal mid-west America.
The university further disgraced itself by the hiring it engaged in immediately after the war. Perhaps you think I exaggerate?
Here is a quote from the Schilpp volume (1957, 1981) for Karl Jaspers (the later edition contains his comments on Heidegger.) I will quote Kurt Kolle of Munich University (Psychiatry and Neurology) on page 457 (the later edition cleverly preserved pagination) in his criticism of a naive Jaspers:
[objections to Jaspers'] rigorous condemnation to any kind of eugenic measures; Jaspers denies that 'degeneration' is an 'inescapable process.' The present writer believes that Jaspers does not sufficiently take into account the total rise of the population which carries with it the danger of the suppression of valuable minorities, the increase of inferiors and the gradual dying out of the white racesThe entire paragraph is worth reading for the paragraph which follows on Jaaspers for anyone who has to deal with human beings. Not treat, understand or attempt to heal or cure: deal.
The medical profession and especially the academic wing, embraced the National Socialist programme. It had meant a real prospect for a social corrective in the forced sterilization of the unfit. They had made a great deal of progress at Hadamar prior to the failure of the Wehrmacht to defeat the Slavs.
The consolation to the eugenic-minded practitioners: that the tiny German minority might yet survive in the face of the Slavic hordes and the yellow masses, the swarming brown-skinned inferiors. You really must read in this the one great consolation they could take: that so many Slavs had been prevented from reproducing through the natural coial porcess of warfare.
You think that I exaggerate. Surely I exaggerate. They sat over their coffees or beers and talked about the outcome of the war: here they were, back at their research, and what would an objective assessment be - a scientific assessment of the outcome and of their research prospects and prospects to influence social policy.
We lament the failure to de-nazify eastern Germany and Austria: but there could not be the luxury of de-nazification of the psychiatrists because too careful screening would mean having to engage foreign-trained staff - and you know what that means.
While it was thought a service to philosophy to re-isse the expanded Schilpp volume with Jaspers view of Heidegger, the real value is in having preserved the essays by Kolle, Arendt and Ricoeur. It is to be hoped that the volumes available as microfilm will be preserved as digital resources.
Documents with evidence concerning the beds being "freed" at the Marburg Anstalt - freed for use by slave labor at Stadtallendorf Nobel Dynamite - are archived here at the University of Minnesota in what had been the remnant of the German colony at Memphis, now 'ethnically polluted' but fortunately in one of the bastions of modestly cosmopolitan and liberal mid-west America.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Hoover Institution and History: when are documents not historical documents?
The Hoover publications can be found on the web at Stanford; the Hoover Institute is at hoover.org.
I want to look at one publication, "War Through Children's Eyes" which bears the sub-title
The Soviet Occupation of Poland and the Deportations, 1939-1941
This is no simple matter: the crimes of the Soviets following their invasion of Poland rank among the most dastardly of the 20th Century as war-crimes and crimes against humanity. Few instances of more gross and murderous disregard for the then Geneva Convention are on record for the past century.
So what could be the issue? Only a few days ago I was challenging Marburg bloggers to address the documents concerning Marburg/Lahn which are here at the U. of Minnesota.
These Hoover 'documents' in this volume are presented by a foreward by Bruno Bettelheim in which he chooses to relativize the expectations of the arriving Soviets and the expectations of the Poles. Bettelheim reminds me of the famous film by the deveopmental psychologist Gesell in which a naked boy is shown but during the course of his remarks and observations the boy's perverse penile erection is passed over without comment. At the time of this publication, Bettelheim was not yet fully appreciated for the nature of his camp survivor claims (he was released in 1939 and NOT in 1945) and a defender of Arendt's distortions (she was only briefly interned in France before escaping.)
The book is composed of selected essays by children - compositions written once they had escaped to British-controlled Iran. These are not letters home collected from camp survivors or witnesses to an event. A composition written for school is not a diary and is not even a protocol of an interview for an on-going investigation. Of particular interest would be to learn where and how and why so many children had heard and then repeated that "Jews and Communists" collaborated with the Soviets and not "Communists - some of whom were Jews - " and how it is that so many of the children had such clear recall that collaborators were Jews. The reader who is not advised concerning hearsay, rumor and bias will be ill-prepared for this jarring "testimony".
As valuable as these essays by the children are, they are not historical documents. Many of the essays contain stereotypic hearsay in addition to their eye-witness accounts. Notably missing are children recounting what they did themselves to survive - whether to siblings or the less fortunate - or what their parents did - candid veracity often missing in survivor testimony - and confessed only in assured privacy and years later.
The association of this book with Bettelheim is regrettable as the essays contain stereotypic antisemitic reports with the children often repeating what they had heard about the Jews and the Soviets. These essays were written on demand and do not constitute historic documents but merely more eye-witness testimony and irretrievably muddled with hearsay - horrific and heart-wrenching - but not suitable for "selected" book form unedited and without a critical assessment. The reader is left without a simple facsimile in which one might note erasures or corrections - although the book has many photographs.
These essays were deserving of being preserved - but not all that we preserve as research materials constitute historical documents nor does their collection constitute an "archival documentary".
The title of this book should have reflected that these were compositions by survivors - compositions written after the events. The very distortions which were the mainstay of Molotov-era propaganda otherwise risk being repeated as if fro the mouths of child witnesses. Stanford University would do a service to readers by making available on the web the compositions which were not selected and any document reflecting the instructions to the students by the teachers involved and whether the compositions were written in one sitting in a room or benefited from hearsay correction by parents.
What we know of human behavior in situations were many will perish is not reflected in these accounts. In particular, no details of bullying in the traincars by victims against victims are reported although such matters are commonplace in these circumstances. Photographs of boys in boots do not indicate the fate of the weaker boy from whom the boots had been stolen. These are the sad realities and some of the many reasons that testimonials and photographs are not themselves part of an historical account no matter how much we me be tempted to use them as illustrations.
What occurred is so horrendous that a finer memorial to all victims is deserved and their memory was not well-served by Hoover Institute no matter how well-intentioned and even if ignorant of the personality and life of Bettelheim.
Having myself taught from Bettelheim's writings in college courses prior to 1981, I can only feel more anger than shame. He ranks as a more serious fraud than Harry Stack Sullivan or Margaret Mead and his name mars any memorial to suffering inflicted upon children.
The reality of war, ethnic cleansing and genocide is too important for casual "history" to pass without objection. To say nothing in opposition to this book is to countenance falsification of the past - a falsification however unintended in a story of a series of events which itself began with an immense lie.
At the very least, Stanford should release an edition with facsimilies, without selection and with a critical assessment to address both the issues raised here and elsewhere.
I want to look at one publication, "War Through Children's Eyes" which bears the sub-title
The Soviet Occupation of Poland and the Deportations, 1939-1941
This is no simple matter: the crimes of the Soviets following their invasion of Poland rank among the most dastardly of the 20th Century as war-crimes and crimes against humanity. Few instances of more gross and murderous disregard for the then Geneva Convention are on record for the past century.
So what could be the issue? Only a few days ago I was challenging Marburg bloggers to address the documents concerning Marburg/Lahn which are here at the U. of Minnesota.
These Hoover 'documents' in this volume are presented by a foreward by Bruno Bettelheim in which he chooses to relativize the expectations of the arriving Soviets and the expectations of the Poles. Bettelheim reminds me of the famous film by the deveopmental psychologist Gesell in which a naked boy is shown but during the course of his remarks and observations the boy's perverse penile erection is passed over without comment. At the time of this publication, Bettelheim was not yet fully appreciated for the nature of his camp survivor claims (he was released in 1939 and NOT in 1945) and a defender of Arendt's distortions (she was only briefly interned in France before escaping.)
The book is composed of selected essays by children - compositions written once they had escaped to British-controlled Iran. These are not letters home collected from camp survivors or witnesses to an event. A composition written for school is not a diary and is not even a protocol of an interview for an on-going investigation. Of particular interest would be to learn where and how and why so many children had heard and then repeated that "Jews and Communists" collaborated with the Soviets and not "Communists - some of whom were Jews - " and how it is that so many of the children had such clear recall that collaborators were Jews. The reader who is not advised concerning hearsay, rumor and bias will be ill-prepared for this jarring "testimony".
As valuable as these essays by the children are, they are not historical documents. Many of the essays contain stereotypic hearsay in addition to their eye-witness accounts. Notably missing are children recounting what they did themselves to survive - whether to siblings or the less fortunate - or what their parents did - candid veracity often missing in survivor testimony - and confessed only in assured privacy and years later.
The association of this book with Bettelheim is regrettable as the essays contain stereotypic antisemitic reports with the children often repeating what they had heard about the Jews and the Soviets. These essays were written on demand and do not constitute historic documents but merely more eye-witness testimony and irretrievably muddled with hearsay - horrific and heart-wrenching - but not suitable for "selected" book form unedited and without a critical assessment. The reader is left without a simple facsimile in which one might note erasures or corrections - although the book has many photographs.
These essays were deserving of being preserved - but not all that we preserve as research materials constitute historical documents nor does their collection constitute an "archival documentary".
The title of this book should have reflected that these were compositions by survivors - compositions written after the events. The very distortions which were the mainstay of Molotov-era propaganda otherwise risk being repeated as if fro the mouths of child witnesses. Stanford University would do a service to readers by making available on the web the compositions which were not selected and any document reflecting the instructions to the students by the teachers involved and whether the compositions were written in one sitting in a room or benefited from hearsay correction by parents.
What we know of human behavior in situations were many will perish is not reflected in these accounts. In particular, no details of bullying in the traincars by victims against victims are reported although such matters are commonplace in these circumstances. Photographs of boys in boots do not indicate the fate of the weaker boy from whom the boots had been stolen. These are the sad realities and some of the many reasons that testimonials and photographs are not themselves part of an historical account no matter how much we me be tempted to use them as illustrations.
What occurred is so horrendous that a finer memorial to all victims is deserved and their memory was not well-served by Hoover Institute no matter how well-intentioned and even if ignorant of the personality and life of Bettelheim.
Having myself taught from Bettelheim's writings in college courses prior to 1981, I can only feel more anger than shame. He ranks as a more serious fraud than Harry Stack Sullivan or Margaret Mead and his name mars any memorial to suffering inflicted upon children.
The reality of war, ethnic cleansing and genocide is too important for casual "history" to pass without objection. To say nothing in opposition to this book is to countenance falsification of the past - a falsification however unintended in a story of a series of events which itself began with an immense lie.
At the very least, Stanford should release an edition with facsimilies, without selection and with a critical assessment to address both the issues raised here and elsewhere.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
a note on ad hominem consideration of a line of argument
ad hominem is sometimes lumped together with attacking the example someone chose to illustrate a point rather than their argument [or, if you insist, "the" argument.]
But consider Michael Martin on R. Taylor's case for teleology and design. Martin's 1990 book reports that Taylor had occasion to respond to critics but that he did not reply (although someone sympathetic to his argument, Creel, did reply.)
When we are asked to consider such things as "I think that what Philo was trying to say ... " or "I think that what Philo may have intended was ..." then the failure to respond can be more than a refusal of dialog - especially so if the argument or line of thought has been published as a non-specialist text.
In Taylor's case, his book "Metaphysics" was not aimed just at the specialist, but also at a more general reader and likely had the philosophy student in mind.
That an effort to defend or clarify is seen to fail, is one thing. To fail to make that effort is quite another. Whether due to arrogance, or unwillingness to retract, or due to pride or neglect, it is a moral failing of the philosopher.
Sometimes the philosopher's choice of where to speak can be likened to the choice of a regrettable example. Peter Singer launched a storm of irrational and emotional protest by proposing to speak on medical ethics and the termination of life at Uni. Marburg/Lahn. This location was construed as no idle choice for the organizers and no doubt Singer was ignorant of the history of the Marburg University medical clinic in the Nazi "T4" program (and the university's readiness to hire Nazi medical staff after the war.
To make matters worse, Marburg, untouched in the war, failed to rebuild the great synagogue destroyed in the November Pogrom. Marburg and the surrounding area had failed to find even a small lane to bear the name of Hermann Cohen (other streets bear the names of academic notables - Cohen merited only a small plaque at the old university.) For years the inscription at the old site was in memory of those residents of Marburg who feel in the war ( a slight variant on typical village memorials to Great War heros which one finds in small towns in the area.)
Once Marburg psychiatric housing had been emptied, it served to house slave labourers for the Noble dynamite factory at near-by Allendorf (per documentation at the archive of the University of Minnesota.)
Historians indicate that public objections to Action-T4 had an affect on the Nazi regime: there is no historical record that any public objections by Marburg notables were ever made such as might have served to spare the Jews of Marburg, the home of theology and philosophy and sometime home to the industrious Brothers Grimm.
When a philosopher from Marburg says nothing (Heidegger never returned to Marburg to urge the rebuilding of the synagogue - nor did the illustrious Hannah Arendt) it can be as serious a concern as when a philosopher choses to advocate mercy killing in a town which has yet to come to terms with its complicity in willful human slaughter. It brings into question who is that "we" who are ready to engage Peter Singer in that particular dialog no matter how impressive his line of argument. The city of Marburg is not yet that place. Tourists arriving to see the St Elizabeth church and enjoy shopping in the quaint streets are able to enjoy their visit most often without having once to consider who is missing from the scene. A building advertises the Grimm brothers worked here; no building says "the family Rosenberg had a business here prior to ..." or "This house was purchased below market price after the Rosenberg family ...". They need not advertise: but the plaque needs to be there to be read by this generation and the next and perhaps even one more after. And the synagogue must be rebuilt. link: History page of the tiny renewed Jewish community of Marburg.
But consider Michael Martin on R. Taylor's case for teleology and design. Martin's 1990 book reports that Taylor had occasion to respond to critics but that he did not reply (although someone sympathetic to his argument, Creel, did reply.)
When we are asked to consider such things as "I think that what Philo was trying to say ... " or "I think that what Philo may have intended was ..." then the failure to respond can be more than a refusal of dialog - especially so if the argument or line of thought has been published as a non-specialist text.
In Taylor's case, his book "Metaphysics" was not aimed just at the specialist, but also at a more general reader and likely had the philosophy student in mind.
That an effort to defend or clarify is seen to fail, is one thing. To fail to make that effort is quite another. Whether due to arrogance, or unwillingness to retract, or due to pride or neglect, it is a moral failing of the philosopher.
Sometimes the philosopher's choice of where to speak can be likened to the choice of a regrettable example. Peter Singer launched a storm of irrational and emotional protest by proposing to speak on medical ethics and the termination of life at Uni. Marburg/Lahn. This location was construed as no idle choice for the organizers and no doubt Singer was ignorant of the history of the Marburg University medical clinic in the Nazi "T4" program (and the university's readiness to hire Nazi medical staff after the war.
To make matters worse, Marburg, untouched in the war, failed to rebuild the great synagogue destroyed in the November Pogrom. Marburg and the surrounding area had failed to find even a small lane to bear the name of Hermann Cohen (other streets bear the names of academic notables - Cohen merited only a small plaque at the old university.) For years the inscription at the old site was in memory of those residents of Marburg who feel in the war ( a slight variant on typical village memorials to Great War heros which one finds in small towns in the area.)
Once Marburg psychiatric housing had been emptied, it served to house slave labourers for the Noble dynamite factory at near-by Allendorf (per documentation at the archive of the University of Minnesota.)
Historians indicate that public objections to Action-T4 had an affect on the Nazi regime: there is no historical record that any public objections by Marburg notables were ever made such as might have served to spare the Jews of Marburg, the home of theology and philosophy and sometime home to the industrious Brothers Grimm.
When a philosopher from Marburg says nothing (Heidegger never returned to Marburg to urge the rebuilding of the synagogue - nor did the illustrious Hannah Arendt) it can be as serious a concern as when a philosopher choses to advocate mercy killing in a town which has yet to come to terms with its complicity in willful human slaughter. It brings into question who is that "we" who are ready to engage Peter Singer in that particular dialog no matter how impressive his line of argument. The city of Marburg is not yet that place. Tourists arriving to see the St Elizabeth church and enjoy shopping in the quaint streets are able to enjoy their visit most often without having once to consider who is missing from the scene. A building advertises the Grimm brothers worked here; no building says "the family Rosenberg had a business here prior to ..." or "This house was purchased below market price after the Rosenberg family ...". They need not advertise: but the plaque needs to be there to be read by this generation and the next and perhaps even one more after. And the synagogue must be rebuilt. link: History page of the tiny renewed Jewish community of Marburg.
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