Rockefeller Foundation and German Social Sciences

Throughout the 20th century funding by American philanthropic foundations played a major role for the development of the social sciences, especially in the United States but also in Europe. For instance, Rockefeller Foundation offered fellowships to young and promising European scholars and funded large research projects over many years. Between the middle of the 1920s and the end of the 1950s this contributed to the development of social science research not only in the way of allowing researchers to continue their efforts but also by initiating and establishing a particular style of doing science. The interruption by the takeover of the Nazis in Germany and Austria caused a pause in these two countries but those scholars who were forced to leave their countries of origin got again support from special funds established by the Rockefeller Foundation for refugee scholars. In the course of the funding evaluations of European scholarship took place regularly by the officers of the Rockefeller Foundation. The archival material stored at the Rockefeller Archive Center contains a huge and still under- researched collection of contemporary reports, letters, memoranda, and evaluations of fellowships holders and institutional grantees. Using this and other sources should help to prove the assumption that American foundations not only provided money but shaped the European social sciences in the way of an un-intended export of research routines, research micro institutions, and research styles.

During the 20th century the empirical oriented social sciences changed dramatically. As a crucial invention the "project" became the quintessential mode of doing research, initiated and supported by American philanthropic foundations. For the first time external control and time patterns entered the world of academic scholarship. Between roughly the middle of the 1920s and the middle of the 1950s the Rockefeller Foundation established two new modes of supporting research: On the one hand the Foundation financed basic research not only inside the U.S. but also in several European countries. On the other hand the same Foundation created post-doc fellowships which were available for young scholars worldwide. During these years the main beneficiaries were in Austria the independent "Institut für Konjukturforschung"/Institute for Business Cycle Research and the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna; in Germany the prime recipient of funds war the Institute for World Economy, Institut für Weltwirtschaft at Kiel. Rockefeller Fellows, as the scholarship holders became named, studied mainly in the U.S. for at least one year. There they got new research ideas, became acquainted with the new mode of doing empirical research, and established social ties and sometimes became members of scientific networks. Few years later these ties were crucial when thousands of academics had to leave their country of origin because of the takeover of the Nazi party first in Germany, later on in Austria, and finally nearly everywhere in Europe. Refugee help organizations established immediately after 1933 in Great Britain and the U.S. tried to support the refugees but had to have an eye on the local labor market conditions. Only in the U.S. the market was big enough to absorb a remarkable number of immigrants. Because of this nearly all academic refugees finally arrived at the American shores. A prosopagraphy (or collective biography) of some 800 German speaking social scientists from this period shows striking differences between the Germans and the Austrians, and between the refugees and the "home-guards". Successful establishment happened in the U.S. much more often than elsewhere. After the end of WW II the Rockefeller Foundation started again with its support for foreign scholars, however the officers of the foundation experiences severe troubles to find appropriate candidates for fellowships. The literature about intellectual transatlantic relations shows some shortcomings and one-sidedness. Especially the collective side of the migration process got seldom enough attention. So called "loss balances" supported the impression that no one remained in Nazi-Germany which invited other authors to draw their attention to all those who did some kind of social research under the Nazis. Although these authors didn`t get the record right by overestimating the scientific value of these research projects under Nazi rule. A detailed analysis of all German speaking Rockefeller Fellows demonstrates that (West) Germany recovered quicker than Austria.