Nazis purged over a third of Frankfurt university teachers, second only to Berlin

Evidence

In the initial `revolutionary’ period of the new regime, on average 14 per cent of academic staff and 11 per cent of professors were dismissed throughout the country. At the Ministry of Culture it was estimated that in the first five years after the seizure of power 45 per cent of all tenured academic posts had been reappointed. Frankfurt had the second largest number of university dismissals after Berlin. More than a third of all university teachers in Frankfurt lost their posts. The fact that a particularly nationalistic and conservative institution like the German university system was subjected to such an extensive purge can only be explained in terms of the hatred of Hitler and the Nazis for everything intellectual, for every academic activity not directly in the service of Nazi ideology and strategy. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 522

Categorization

• SEED: The paradox of a conservative, nationalistic institution being among the most heavily purged — the self-liquidation of the professoriate that welcomed Nazism — is a strong essay angle on complicity.
• XREF: connects to: Nazi purges removed a third of Frankfurt’s university teachers; Frankfurt University resisted Nazi infiltration longer than most German universities. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 463; Postwar Frankfurt had been purged of left-wing Jewish intellectuals — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1845 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The 1933 Civil Service Law purged Jewish and leftist academics from German universities #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 520
• Postwar Frankfurt had been purged of left-wing Jewish intellectuals #contradicts (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1845
• Nazi purges targeted academia out of ideological hatred, not political necessity #qualifies (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 522