Deutsch-amerikanischer Kulturaustausch im 20. Jahrhundert

While on the outside many American universities, with their neo-Gothic quadrangles, quaintly named residential colleges, and clubby common rooms, emphasize a connection to the academic traditions of the British Isles, modern academic practice in the United States owes a greater debt to the Germans. Such familiar images as the research seminar and the doctoral degree trace their lineage quite literally back to Germany, even if the political tides of the twentieth century often made it impolitic to emphasize the connection. Since 1945, German-American educational cooperation has become much more visible, as intellectuals and institutions have developed a lively network of exchange programs that are the envy of specialists in other fields. Karl-Heinz FÜssl, a German who has taught on both sides of the Atlantic, offered a brief but detailed analysis of modern German-American educational exchanges from the establishment of the first German-language schools in the pietistic communities of colonial Pennsylvania and extending into the 1980s. The level of analysis in this chronologically organized work ranges from capsule biographies of exemplary individuals who moved between the German and American academic worlds— such as professors Hermann von Holst, Hugo MÜnsterberg, and Talcott Parsons in the early years of the twentieth century, and educational and diplomatic managers such as Hildegard Hamm-BrÜcher and Walter Friedländer in the postwar decades—to case studies of particular institutions and programs. Most notable among the case studies is his intriguing analysis of Black Mountain College in North Carolina as a refuge for artists fleeing Nazi Germany (pp. 133–50)

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