The Post-1933 Emigration of Communication Researchers from Germany

Abstract

The subject of this article is the emigration of German-speaking communication researchers after 1933 to the US and other countries. The article focuses on Zeitungswissenschaft (newspaper studies) in Weimar Germany and its lost works. Lost, because some of the most brilliant protagonists of this new academic field, which was first established in 1918 at the University of Leipzig, were refugees from Nazi Germany. Often, they were not able to enter an international setting of communication science due to the ruptures in their lives and careers. Their books have not been translated. These theoretical approaches were mainly of sociological impact and far from simple stimulus-response models. The Third Reich, with its aims of propaganda and lack of scientific relevance in the field, marked an end-point to a very innovative process-oriented way of thinking in early communication science in Germany. Most of the protagonists of this new thinking emigrated: for example, the sociologists Karl Mannheim and Ernest Manheim, the communication researchers Walter Auerbach and Gerhard Münzner. This article outlines the theoretical background of early communication science in Germany and the context of racist and political persecution and emigration as a social and intellectual breakdown of this science. Actually, this breakdown gains new interest in the German academic community; the past of German communication science and its very dark sides have become topics of discussion and research.