Verfolgung und Auswanderung deutschprachiger Sprachforscher, 1933-1945 Band 1, Einleitung und biobibliographische Daten, A-F. By Utz Maas (review)

REVIEWS Verfolgung und Auswanderung deutschprachiger Sprachforscher, 1933-1945. Band 1, Einleitung und biobibliographische Daten, A-F. By Utz Maas. Osnabrück: secólo Verlag, 1996. Pp. 288. Reviewed by Ernst Pulgram, University of Michigan This book is not about linguistics or languages but about the fate of linguists under the Nazi regime, 1933-1945. The title ofthe book specifies linguists ofGerman language, but the countries involved are chiefly Germany and, after the Anschluss of 1938, Austria. With relatively few exceptions the victims were persons who did not fit the definition 'Aryan' according to the racelaws promulgated in Nuremberg in 1936; the vast majority of them were Jews, also racially defined. In Appendix 1 (139-46), 'Chronology ofrepression' [all translations are the reviewer's], two side-by-side columns relate the course of political and racist persecution, displaying the growing severity and brutality of the repressive measures from 1933 to 1942, culminating in the conference of Wannsee, 20 January 1942, in which the Holocaust was resolved. In the 'Preface' (4-8) Maas recites the genesis of the book, featuring mainly the financial difficulties that had to be overcome on the road to publication of Volume I. Volume II is, except for some corrections, ready for the printer, but its going to press is held up by lack of funds. No doubt a favorable reception of the present volume will aid in the publication of the work. So far, M has invested fifteen years of intense labor in this enterprise, and one must admire him for managing to dedicate to it a vast amount of time and effort while fulfilling his duties as professor at the University of Osnabrück. Indeed, he repeatedly felt constrained to lay aside the project, but the moral obligation to tell the story caused him to resume it. The first problem in the writing was to determine who, among the many concerned in various ways with language and languages, was to be regarded as a proper linguist, or Sprachforscher, author of publications that could be termed truly linguistic in content and scope. M opted for being 'liberal' in his decisions, which he justifies at length in Ch. 1, 'The corpus of persons to be considered' (10-22). Members of LSA will generally agree with M's selection. Ch. 2, 'Emigration, banishment, exile' (23-46), lists 177 persons who emigrated. Among them are 20 whose departure was politically rather than racially motivated (44-46). Subchapters 2.4 and 2.5 (36-44) deal with the US in particular as land of exile. The number and quality of the immigrant linguists prompts M to conclude that 'without the German-speaking emigrants US linguistics is unthinkable' (41), and he points out that among the 29 signers of the call to the founding of LSA, 7 are Germans, of whom one, Hermann Collitz, became the first president of LSA. Ch. 3, 'Persecution inside the Reich' (47-51), exhibits two lists of persons who did not emigrate. One names eleven linguists who met death either in concentration camps (eight) or by suicide (three). The other lists 39 linguists who were persecuted for expressing opposition to the regime and were punished by being discharged from their academic posts or reassigned to another university. Some non-Aryans also somehow survived in those perilous surroundings, a few of them 'protected' by having Aryan spouses (ironically, Aryans were chastised for being married to non-Aryans), some by being 'Mischlinge' of part-Aryan parentage—though both of these categories ceased in the course of time to assure immunity. Ch. 4, 'Antisemitism' (52-62), and Ch. 5, 'Politicization and provincialization of linguistics under National socialism' (68-81), are joined under the heading 'The political background'. As regards antisemitism, endemic in greater or lesser degree in Germany and Austria, M sets up the following basic points (each ofthem is discussed extensively on pp. 52-62): '(1) Antisemitism was prevalent at the universities already in the 1920's, more virulent than in the society as a whole. (2) At universities this seems anachronistic [sic] because the group of persons concerned must be regarded as highly ' 'assimilated" [i.e. culturally Germanized Jews]. (3) With the sharpening of antisemitic persecution, the assimilated...