ABSTRACT
Simultaneous with the April 1933 approval of Paul Lazarsfeld’s application for a travelling fellowship to the United States from the Rockefeller Foundation, which he had been awarded partly because anti-Semitism in Austria had frustrated his academic career there, the new Nazi Reich’s law for the “restoration” of the professional civil service went into effect. The new law began the forced exodus of university faculty members and Privatdozenten who were deemed inimical to the German state, and thus unsuitable for their positions, either by virtue of their “race” as Jews or “non-Aryans,” or for their political identity as social democrats, communists, or liberals. They did not only lose their positions, but they were also denied any possibility of earning a living in Germany. The Nazis’ aim, which was supported by many students, was to restore the “fundamental German character” of the universities. Yet in their determination to refashion German universities as centers of anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi indoctrination, they instantly destroyed the German tradition of Lern- und Lehrfreiheit, which had protected the freedom of academic inquiry.
