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the politically engaged Hans Speier put it, in the title of his autobio–
graphical essay, "Not Exile, but Hitler's Victory Was the Challenge."
Even for those who had not been politically active before 1933, reflect–
ing on their biographies often led to remarkable changes in their think–
ing and research. Before their migration, most of these emigres were not
concerned with Jewish thought or the psychological or social problems
ofJews: they were highly acculturated. After their emigration they often
faced the problems of anti-Semitism, authoritarianism or Jewish identity
for the first time. Kurt Lewin, the founder of group dynamics, and Else
Frenkel-Brunswick, one of the authors of
The Authoritarian Personality,
are exemplary.
In
1933, Kurt Lewin resigned from his position at the Psychological
Institute of the University of Berlin and emigrated to America. He re–
marked in a letter to the institute's director Wolfgang Kohler: "The ac–
tual loss of civil rights of the Jews is increasing daily and will no doubt
be carried out completely in the peculiarly systematic German way,
whether slowly and methodically, or in periodic waves. . . . I cannot
imagine how a Jew is supposed to live a life in Germany at the present
time that does justice to even the most primitive demands of truthful-
"
ness.
After his emigration, in a 1935 essay, "Socio-Psychological Problems
of a Minority Group," Lewin described the situation of a minority as
depending on the relative permeability of the boundary between in- and
out-groups. For ghetto Jews before nominal emancipation, he suggested,
rigid social boundaries were confining, but strong "we-feelings" provided
compensation. For the emancipated and assimilating Jews of nineteenth–
and early twentieth-century Europe, he said, it was difficult to develop a
feeling of belonging to either group. His thoughts on the subject even–
tually helped American social scientists to develop the concept of
"marginal" man.
In
1936, Lewin discussed national cultural differences in education.
While working at an educational research station in Iowa, he had en–
countered an apparent paradox - the fact that even the supposedly
democratic educational system of the United States has hierarchical
structures, rigidly prescribed lesson plans, and mechanically applied teach–
ing techniques.
In
a heterogeneous, pluralistic "social space" highly di–
versified by ethnic, racial and class differencess, Lewin argued, such
structures prepared children for independent action by giving them firm
behavioral guidelines and values, whereas rigidity and obedience were re–
quired in Germany's more homogeneous social system. From these ideas
came studies of so-called "authoritarian," "democratic" and "laissez-
