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Great Minds in DespairThe Forced Migration of German-Speaking Neuroscientists to North America, 1933 to 1989 |
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Examining the research impacts and personal fates of the émigré researchers who helped to build biomedical science in North America.
The twentieth century witnessed two devastating world wars that led to the exodus of millions of people. Counted among them were hundreds of neuroscientists and biological psychiatrists from Nazi Germany and its surrounding countries who were forced to emigrate in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them settled in North America, where they profoundly influenced the development of the biomedical sciences.
Focusing on the years between 1933 and 1989, Great Minds in Despair examines the long-term effects of this forced migration on scientific and medical cultures in North America and on the researchers themselves. Frank Stahnisch traces the lives and careers of approximately four hundred German-speaking doctors, scientists, and researchers over two generations. Placed in unfamiliar research settings in Canada and the United States, they helped to build the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, clinical psychology, and the cognitive sciences, even as they rebuilt their own lives amid myriad challenges including cultural adaption and the complications of relicensing. Stahnisch explores how generational factors, gender, international networking, refugee organizations, and national funding agencies shaped their experiences and affected postwar remigration.
Great Minds in Despair provides an important revision to the brain gain thesis in migration studies by turning attention to the working conditions and social acculturation of an influential academic refugee group in North America.
Focusing on the years between 1933 and 1989, Great Minds in Despair examines the long-term effects of this forced migration on scientific and medical cultures in North America and on the researchers themselves. Frank Stahnisch traces the lives and careers of approximately four hundred German-speaking doctors, scientists, and researchers over two generations. Placed in unfamiliar research settings in Canada and the United States, they helped to build the fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, clinical psychology, and the cognitive sciences, even as they rebuilt their own lives amid myriad challenges including cultural adaption and the complications of relicensing. Stahnisch explores how generational factors, gender, international networking, refugee organizations, and national funding agencies shaped their experiences and affected postwar remigration.
Great Minds in Despair provides an important revision to the brain gain thesis in migration studies by turning attention to the working conditions and social acculturation of an influential academic refugee group in North America.
Details
Part of the McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion Series (number 66 in series)
642 Pages, 6 x 9
47 photos, 8 tables
ISBN 9780228024590
June 2025
Formats: Cloth, eBook
“Stahnisch draws upon specialized literatures in both the history of emigration and exile and the history of neuropsychiatry. He is a specialist of this kind of entangled history and his work is significant for the historiography.” Emmanuel Delile, Humboldt University of Berlin
“Based on a database of nearly four hundred curricula vitae, Frank Stahnisch’s magnum opus towers over all other works in the field of neurohistorical research.” Axel Karenberg, University of Cologne
“Based on a database of nearly four hundred curricula vitae, Frank Stahnisch’s magnum opus towers over all other works in the field of neurohistorical research.” Axel Karenberg, University of Cologne
Frank W. Stahnisch is professor of history and holds the Alberta Medical Foundation / Hannah Professorship in the History of Medicine and Health Care at the University of Calgary.
Figures ix
Foreword xvii
Paul J. Weindling
Acknowledgments xxi
Abbreviations xxvii
Introduction: Marginalization, Persecution, and Forced Migration 3
1 The Erosion and Annihilation of the Weimar Brainscientific Context 27
2 Oppression, Flight, and Refuge: The Forced Migration Wave before World War II 50
3 The Society for the Protection of Science and Learning: Britain as a First “Safe Haven” 81
4 Other Networks and Ways into the United States and Canada 106
5 Affidavits, Internment, and Relicensing Processes 128
6 Arriving Old versus Arriving Young 161
7 Differences in Neuroscientific Research Cultures: Interdisciplinary Pursuit within Contemporary Brain Research 186
8 Women, Gender, and the Academic Workforce in the Neurosciences 207
9 From the Rockefeller Foundation to the National Institutes of Health in the United States and the Creation of the Medical Research Council in Canada 240
10 Adaptation, Remigration, and Rejection: The Story and Fate of the Forced Migrants in the Postwar Period 274
Conclusion: Resilience, Maladaptation, and Resources within the Cultural Picture of Scientific Research 299
Epilogue: Traces of Neuroscientific Biographies as Mirrors of a Full Century: Difficult Rapprochement with Those Who Had Stayed in Nazi Germany 314
Appendix: Tables 343
Notes 433
Bibliography 521
Index 599
Foreword xvii
Paul J. Weindling
Acknowledgments xxi
Abbreviations xxvii
Introduction: Marginalization, Persecution, and Forced Migration 3
1 The Erosion and Annihilation of the Weimar Brainscientific Context 27
2 Oppression, Flight, and Refuge: The Forced Migration Wave before World War II 50
3 The Society for the Protection of Science and Learning: Britain as a First “Safe Haven” 81
4 Other Networks and Ways into the United States and Canada 106
5 Affidavits, Internment, and Relicensing Processes 128
6 Arriving Old versus Arriving Young 161
7 Differences in Neuroscientific Research Cultures: Interdisciplinary Pursuit within Contemporary Brain Research 186
8 Women, Gender, and the Academic Workforce in the Neurosciences 207
9 From the Rockefeller Foundation to the National Institutes of Health in the United States and the Creation of the Medical Research Council in Canada 240
10 Adaptation, Remigration, and Rejection: The Story and Fate of the Forced Migrants in the Postwar Period 274
Conclusion: Resilience, Maladaptation, and Resources within the Cultural Picture of Scientific Research 299
Epilogue: Traces of Neuroscientific Biographies as Mirrors of a Full Century: Difficult Rapprochement with Those Who Had Stayed in Nazi Germany 314
Appendix: Tables 343
Notes 433
Bibliography 521
Index 599
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