Turnips and war memorials: E.J. Gumbel's critique of German militarism, 1919-1932.

• Author: Gatens, Rosanna M.

In late summer 1932, University of Heidelberg statistician E.J. Gumbel was dismissed from his academic post and lost his "right to teach" at any German university for "conduct unbefitting his position" as a professor. (1) His offense: suggesting, in a public speech, that the most appropriate symbol for World War I memorials was the turnip, the principal source of nourishment in Germany during the wartime famine of 1917-18. To Gumbel, the turnip evoked the suffering of German civilians and soldiers like no other symbol because it served as a reminder of the horrific famine and poverty of the latter war years. He objected to conventional monuments which routinely displayed neo-classical virginal figures holding victory symbols because these romanticized war and belied the suffering of millions of Germans as a consequence of the Great War. Gumbel's dismissal resulted, in part, from a nationally-orchestrated campaign by fight-wing students to remove him from the Heidelberg faculty. (2) Their success in achieving that objective accelerated the Nazi campaign to purge German universities of all professors deemed incompatible with the goals of the coming National Socialist State.

Historians have treated the witch-hunt against Gumbel as one of the best examples of the politicization of German universities during the 1920s and early 1930s. Gumbel was a radical pacifist, a progressive socialist, and a secular Jew, and as such he became an ideal target for opponents of the Weimar Republic and the democratization of Germany's universities. On four different occasions while he served as a member of Heidelberg's Arts and Humanities Faculty, Gumbel found himself the focal point of external political controversies that resulted in University disciplinary hearings, formal reprimands, and increasing enmity from his colleagues. For nearly a decade, anti-republican student organizations manipulated faculty distrust of Gumbel to fuel their campaign for his removal from the Heidelberg faculty. This campaign enabled student opponents to advance both their own opposition to the Weimar Republic and the anti-republican agenda of parent parties, especially the National Socialist German Workers Party. In this highly charged and politically polarized atmosphere, Gumbel's colleagues concluded that his journalistic work on behalf of the German Peace Cartel and the German League for Human Rights (3) violated the University's long-standing apolitical intellectual traditions and customs. (4) They strongly questioned whether his political activism in support of a pacifist agenda--the democratization of the Weimar Republic, the establishment of social and economic equity, opposition to political violence, and rejection of the military policies of the Weimar Republic--was compatible with the impartiality expected of German scholars. As members of university faculties, such scholars were civil servants employed by the state and subject to state guidelines. Moreover, Gumbel's peers feared that student unrest centering on Gumbel would continually disrupt the University's ability to conduct classes if he were not removed from his academic post.

Was Gumbel acting irresponsibly as a scholar and academic lecturer in his efforts to be a responsible citizen of the new German Republic, as many of his colleagues believed? Did his political writings violate the long-standing, but tacit professional commitment among German professors to serve the interests of the state and the people of Germany by means of impartial scholarship? Was Gumbel's political journalism too provocative and, hence, incompatible with preserving an atmosphere of order and civility within the university? What moved Gumbel, no stranger to academic traditions, to attempt to bridge the gap between elitist scholarship and mass politics after World War I? What moved his political opponents to seek his destruction by campaigning to remove him from the Heidelberg faculty and to revoke his right to teach at any Germany university?

Because Gumbel was so often publicly vilified as a danger to the nation, the story of his ultimate dismissal from the Heidelberg faculty in 1932 allows one to evaluate whether in the academic culture of the Weimar era it was possible to conduct socially responsible science and scholarship without taking a political position on the policies of the new republic. Played out on the stage of a university criticized by volkisch and Nazi students as a "bulwark of young democracy" (5) and a "stronghold of liberalism," (6) the drama surrounding Gumbel's dismissal illustrates how difficult it was for a professor to defend his integrity as a teacher and citizen against public disapprobation based on a deeply entrenched collective understanding of the nature of national sacrifice in war.

To be sure, many members of the Heidelberg faculty were politically engaged following the Great War, especially in the German Democratic Party (DDP). Many of Gumbel's colleagues supported working coalitions among middle class political parties and Social Democrats. Furthermore, some faculty were quite outspoken in their opposition to anti-Semitism at the University. (7) Indeed, one might argue, as historian Christian Jansen does, that Gumbel's achievement of the habilitation at Heidelberg is itself an indicator of an unusual degree of liberal-mindedness among the faculty. (8) But as Jansen also points out, though many Heidelberg professors had made their peace with the Weimar Republic, that peace was a fragile one that did not bind its practitioners in any emotional way to the new state. While many Heidelberg professors preferred liberal parties, this preference did not necessarily signal a politically liberal cast of mind. (9) It should therefore come as no surprise that even the most outspoken faculty supporters of the Weimar Republic such as sociologist Willy Hellpach, a member of the DDP, and jurist Gerhard Anschutz, who contributed to the formulation of the Weimar Constitution, quickly and vociferously distanced themselves from Gumbel's political views, especially those concerning the connection between Weimar militarism and the emergence of National Socialism. Nor is it surprising that many Heidelberg faculty members feared a rising tide of student unrest in response to Gumbel's political writings. They remained trapped, as Jansen explains, in a social and politically conservative mind-set that distorted their understanding of the dangers presented by National Socialism at all levels. (10)

Professors' uneasiness about the potential for student turmoil was not unfounded. Since 1919, the University of Heidelberg had experienced its share of politically motivated student unrest. During the 1921-22 academic year, radical student activists from the right brought contemporary political conflict into the University itself, seeking to use the student government to take positions on University decisions surrounding the dismissal of right-wing extremist Arnold Ruge from the Heidelberg faculty. In June 1922, radicalized students from the left swung into action against Philip Lenard, the director of the University's Physics Institute, who ignored a state directive to fly the flag at half-mast in honor of the assassinated Walther Rathenau. After failing to persuade the University rector to take action against Lenard or convince Lenard to address them directly, students and labor unionists forced open the barricaded doors of the Institute, abducted Lenard, and nearly threw him into the Neckar River. (11)

Both Lenard and the student leaders involved in this debacle faced disciplinary hearings. The outcome of the hearings, the reinstatement of Lenard to his teaching post, and the acquittal of the student leader Carlos Mierendorf, aroused grave concern about the students' behavior. Even though they strongly disapproved of Lenard's actions, professors were even more outraged by Mierendorf's acquittal, so much so that one prominent colleague shouted down Karl Jaspers' report from the disciplinary committee on the Mierendorf case. (12) Jaspers was so disturbed by the Lenard abduction that he spoke to his seminar students about it. Though he condemned Lenard's behavior, he strongly objected to students' use of force against Lenard, arguing that such action "endangers the rule of law and the existence of the university." Moreover, this form of political activism, Jaspers declared, violated the transnational character of the university. (13) One of his students, Theodor Haubach, disagreed, arguing that the issue in the Lenard case was not the viability of the university, but rather the very existence of the Weimar Republic, which, he asserted, Lenard's behavior gravely threatened. According to Jaspers' later account of this exchange, Haubach stated baldly that "since there is not full trust in today's functioning government authority, it is necessary to make a visible response to Lenard's threat which makes clear what is being played out." (14)

Though the Nazi Party and other right-wing extremist parties had been banned from Baden, especially after the 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch, right-wing student radicals began a campaign to gain representation in the University of Heidelberg student government. Despite numerous obstacles, including having to form front organizations to run in elections, Nazi supporters gained control of leading student government positions by 1925, and found themselves in a position to politicize the academic atmosphere at the University. (15) Thus, as Gumbel began teaching at Heidelberg, tension between student political activism and professors' desire to preserve academic decorum was already apparent.

Unlike his colleagues who were members of established political parties, Gumbel was a pacifist whose political activism placed him in a much maligned minority that suffered widespread public disapproval because of its outspoken anti-war position and its rejection of the effort...