A School for the Republic? Cosmopolitans and Their Enemies at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, 1920-1933

Abstract

Recalling the bleak landscape of German higher education in the aftermath of World War I, Peter Gay described the “republican political scientists” of the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, a school for political studies established in Berlin in October 1920, as “directly, deliberately—I am tempted to say defiantly—involved in the political life of the Republic…”¹ Karl Dietrich Bracher was no less emphatic in pointing to the Hochschule für Politik as the only institution of its day to appreciate the significance of the multi-party system as the driving force in modern political life.² Led for nearly thirteen years by its founder and only president, the liberal political publicist, Ernst Jäckh, the Hochschule launched innovative programs in civic education and public service training designed to meet the educational needs of an emerging democracy. The Hochschule was radical in its mode of operation, holding evening classes for men and women from all vocations and educational backgrounds, including those lacking the Abitur typically required for admission to graduate and professional schools. Jäckh and his three directors of studies, Theodor Heuss (1920-1925), Hans Simons (1925-1930), and Arnold Wolfers (1930-1933), recruited what Gay described as a “first rate” standing faculty; developed a graduated, state-certified diploma program, and established specialized schools and seminars for economists, social workers, diplomat trainees, trade union officials, journalists, and teachers.³ They also established the Hochschule as a major center for international intellectual exchange, attracting the attention of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which came to view the school as a partner in the Endowment's efforts to promote European rapprochement, and of the Rockefeller Foundation, which recruited Hochschule faculty to contribute dozens of articles to the first (1934) edition of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences and supported the school's research and publication efforts in political science, a field not then recognized as a distinct academic discipline at any German university.⁴ For Peter Gay, the contribution of the Hochschule to the spirit of Weimar lay primarily in the public engagement of its leadership and faculty. Their determination to “participate in the shaping of policy” “through deliberately cultivated ties to high government officials[,]” set the Hochschule apart from the Institute for Social Research (“a group of powerful intellects,” but perhaps not “a group of powerful intellectuals”).⁵ Their orientation was decidedly cosmopolitan—committed to the promotion of German recovery through international intellectual cooperation and the development of a scientifically based program of political studies.