«Ausgestreckte Fühler deutscher Gelehrter» - Die Universität Basel und akademische Flüchtlinge in den 1930er Jahren

In spring and early summer 1933, after the «Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service» had been passed on April 7, some 3’000 academics lost their positions at German universities and other research institutions. Despite strict immigration laws, which were a result of World War One, around 50% of the dismissed academics left Germany and tried to continue or rebuild their academic careers in exile. The largest part migrated to the UK and the US, but France, Sweden, Turkey, the British mandate of Palestine as well as Switzerland were also target countries. Whereas some countries welcomed the highly qualified displaced scholars, others were much more hesitant vis-à-vis their immigration efforts. This article aims to investigate the situation at the University of Basel in the 1930s by asking how the institution positioned itself between these two poles in the 1930s, which considerations and discourses came into play in employment situations and which influences were asserted. It aims to find out whether the university represented academic interests and refused attempts to exert political, economic, and social pressure or whether it accepted and adopted the prevailing political and social discourses at the expense of academic freedom. The example of the German pediatrician Ernst Freudenberg (1884–1967), who was appointed to the University of Basel in 1938, serves as a magnifying glass through which these questions can be examined in some depth.