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GERMAN SCHOLARS AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS
UNIVERSITY
By AUGUSTUS J. PRAHL
In every sphere of human activity, be it agriculture, manufacture, com-
merce, arts, or learning, men of German origin have helped in shaping the
future of this country. Such names as Mühlenberg, Herkimer, DeKalb,
Steuben, Follen, Lieber, Carl Schurz, and scores of others could be cited who
are known to every student of the history of the United States. Turn-
vereine and Singing Societies—two specific German institutions—have
played their part; the one in matters of education, the other in developing
a love and appreciation for music and songs.
However, we do not wish to speak in general about the influence of
Germans on American life. As the title indicates, this short article con-
cerns itself with the lives and the activities of some scholars of German
origin associated with the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryand.
Concerning the purpose of the Johns Hopkins University, President
Daniel Coit Gilman, the organizer of the institution in 1878, states in his
book, The Launching of a University, that "it was the purpose of those in
authority to have a university and that they meant by this an institution for
graduate students. The fact that so many of the graduates of our colleges
were going to Europe, particularly Germany, shows that there was a demand
for work higher than that done at the colleges." Of the six professors who
were appointed first, three were English men, the others were Americans
who had studied in Germany for a considerable length of time. These latter
three were Professors Gildersleeve, Roland, and Remsen, outstanding men
in their respective fields.
When Ira Remsen, the second president of the Johns Hopkins University
wrote his brief article, "German Influence in American Academic Develop-
ment" in Baltimore and the Sängerfest which appeared in June 1903 he
made the phrase "German thoroughness" the keynote to his remarks.
"If I were asked what American scholarship owes to Germany, I should
unhesitatingly answer that it is more than anything else this quality of
thoroughness. The German universities have been teaching this lesson for
centuries and for a century Americans have been attending these univer-
sities and have come home after having caught some of the spirit that
characterizes these great seats of learning."
We shall, however, not discuss the indirect influences which German
educational institutions might have had upon this seat of higher learning
but we shall limit ourselves to the work of scholars of German origin at the
Johns Hopkins University and to be sure to those who have been associated
with Hopkins over a period of years. Furthermore, we shall restrict our-
selves in this article to men associated with the Homewood Division of the
Johns Hopkins University.
The first German to be connected with Hopkins was Paul Haupt (1858-
1926) who was born in Görlitz in Silesia. He received his doctorate in
Semetic languages from the University of Leipzig in 1878. Haupt's first
paper, "The Oldest Semetic Verb Forms," published in the Journal of the
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Royal Asiatic Society in 1878 was written in English. In 1879 his first book
appeared, Die Sumerischen Familiengesetze. In 1883, before Haupt had
reached the age of twenty-five, he was appointed W. W. Spence Professor
of Semitic Languages at the Johns Hopkins University which had recently
been established in Baltimore. At the same time he held the rank of full
professor at the University of Göttingen. This selection shows the keen
insight and accurate judgment of President Gilman.
During the following years he spent part of his time at Hopkins and the
rest at Göttingen. Until the outbreak of World War I he went to Europe
every summer. The annual reports made by him to the President of the
Johns Hopkins University reveal the enormous scholarly productivity of
Professor Haupt. A list of his publications is found in "Preliminary Biblio-
graphy of Paul Haupt," the Johns Hopkins University Circular, December
1911. The University of Glasgow bestowed upon him the honorary LL.D.
degree in 1902.
The cordial relation and the high esteem in which he was held by the
academic world is attested by the remarks made by President Gilman in
the before-mentioned book. There we likewise read that in connection with
the 25th anniversary of President Gilman, Dr. Haupt presented him with
the most remarkable testimonial, a poem in the Assyrian language cut in
wedgeshaped characters upon a red clay tablet and baked so that the aspect
was exactly that of an Assyrian letter exhumed in recent years. The trans-
lation of the poem which accompanied the tablet with its flowery phrases
typical of the Oriental language makes delightful reading.
Dr. Haupt was the first United States delegate to the International
Congress of Orientalists at Rome in 1899 and the first United States delegate
to the International Congress of the History of Religions at Paris in 1900.
His books The New Critical Editions of Hebrew Text of the Old Testament
(1893) and The Polychrome Bible (1898) brought him international
recognition.
In reporting the death of Dr. Paul Haupt and Dr. Ira Remsen, President
Frank J. Goodnow says in Annual Report of the President, 1926-27, "By
these deaths the University has lost members who were outstanding in
their respective fields of work, and who gave unselfishly of their time and
energy to the development of this institution."
The next German scholar who joined Hopkins was Hermann Collitz.
He was born in 1855; came to this country in 1886. Prior to his call to the
University he had gained for himself the reputation as the leading scholar
in Indo-European studies at the University of Halle and as Professor of
Comparative Philology and German at Byrn Mawr College. He joined
Hopkins taking his place among such scholars as Gildersleeve and Bloom-
field. Kemp Malone, the great Johns Hopkins' scholar of English philology,
wrote in a "Dedication" which appeared in the Baltimore Sun under date
of May 17, 1935: "The University could boast of a group of giants in the
linguistic field, the like of which was not found in any other American seat
of learning." The Linguistic Society of America owes its organization to his
efforts and recognized the supremacy of Collitz by electing him its first
president. The Modern Language Association of America made him its
president in 1925. The University of Chicago bestowed upon him the
honorary doctorate in 1916. His erudition embraced all the languages and
literatures of the Indo-European group. He was at home in Sanskrit, Greek,
Latin, Prussian, Lithuanian, Celtic, Gothic, Icelandic, High and Low
German. To quote once again Kemp Malone, a man best qualified to judge
the character and the scholarship of Hermann Collitz, we read: "He
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exemplified the best tradition of the old school, combined in his own person
the linguist, the mythologist, the folklorist, and the philologist proper. As
a man he was gentle, kind, beloved by all who knew him. He retired from
active service eight years before he died but his place has never been filled
and never can be. Such is the price we must pay for greatness."
President Frank J. Goodnow said in connection with Professor Collitz's
retirement, "His retirement leaves a gap which is difficult to fill." As a
mark of their affection and esteem, his colleagues, friends, and students
presented to the University an oil portrait of Professor Collitz by Hans
Kownatzki.
President Ames, upon the death of Dr. Collitz on May 13, 1935, writes
to the Board of Trustees, "He was one of the most distinguished scholars
who has been associated with the Johns Hopkins University."
As author, Professor Collitz is best known for his books: Die Verwandt-
schaftsverhältnisse der grieschischen Dialekte (1885), and Sammlung der
grieschischen Dialektinschriften (4 volumes, 1884-1915).
Likewise a scholar of international fame was William Kurrelmeyer¹
born
at Osnabrück, Germany, in 1874. He received his Ph.D. degree from Hopkins
in 1899. After a brief stay at Franklin and Marshall College, he was called
back to his Alma Mater in 1900 where he remained until his retirement in
1944. Because he had acquired a most thorough knowledge of all the known
manuscripts of the medieval German Bible translations, the Literarische
Verein Stuttgart invited Dr. Kurrelmeyer to edit for its series The First
German Bible (Die erste deutsche Bibel) which appeared in ten volumes
in Tübingen, 1904-1905. The elaborate edition gives the variant readings of
all manuscripts concerned. This profound familiarity with the intricacies
of manuscripts in turn led Kurrelmeyer to an invesigation of the influence
of Doppeldrucke on the texts of the works of Wieland, Goethe, Lessing,
Herder, Schiller, and other German authors. These studies appeared in
various learned journals. Of fundamental significance was the monograph,
Die Doppeldrucke in ihrer Bedeutung für die Textgeschichte von Wielands
Werken, which was published in 1913. In 1923 Professor Kurrelmeyer was
honored by being invited by the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften
to edit, in collaboration with German scholars, certain volumes of the
definitive edition of Wieland's works. In the prosecution of this task, which
was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, Dr. Kurrelmeyer spent
the summers of 1923-1939 in German libraries. He was German editor of
the Modern Language Notes since 1916, editor of the Hesperia since 1935.
For the purpose of his text-critical investigations Professor Kurrelmeyer,
in the course of years, accumulated a very valuable and unique collection of
first editions in the field of German literature, as well as autograph letters
and periodicals which, upon his death (1957), was bequeathed to the Johns
Hopkins Library.
His active and leading role in the affairs of the Society for the History
of the Germans in Maryland and of the American Goethe Society, Baltimore
Chapter, of which he was one of the founders deserves special mention.
Professor Ernst Feise, a former chairman of the German Department and
Professor Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University, is a native of Braun-
schweig, born 1884. He pursued his studies first at the University of Berlin,
then Munich, receiving his Doctor's degree from the University of Leipzig
in 1908. His teachers were such famous scholars as Erich Schmidt, Roethe,
1
E. Albrecht, "Bibliography of William Kurrelmeyer," Modern Language Notes, LXVIII, 5 (1953).
This issue of the Modern Language Notes is dedicated to Dr. William Kurrelmeyer.
Likewise see: Edward H. Sehrt, "William Kurrelmeyer" in the Thirtieth Report of the Society for
the History of the Germans in Maryland.
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Witkowski, and Sievers. He was called to the University of Wisconsin in
1908 where he remained until 1917. After some years spent at Ohio State
University he was called to Hopkins in 1927 where he became full professor
one year later. His publications include editions of Gothe's Die Leiden des
jungen Werther, Hermann und Dorothea, Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen,
and an anthology: German Literature since Goethe. His extensive investi-
gations in the field of the short story, Goethe's and Heine's metrics and
in the problems of the modern drama are embodied in numerous profound
articles in German and American periodicals. Some of the best of these
scholarly productions are found in the book Xenion,²
a Festschrift, spon-
sored by his many friends and students upon his retirement in 1951. Pro-
fessor Feise's interest in dramatics led to the performance of many German
plays in the cities in which he resided. At present he is devoting his time
and artistic talents to a translation of Heine's poems into English.
Apart from his academic duties at Hopkins, the outstanding capabilities
of Dr. Feise as pedagogue found a most fruitful field as Director of the
German Summer School of Middlebury College (1931-1948), a predomi-
nantly graduate school with intensive training in the German Language
and Literature, where German is spoken exclusively. From a very modest
beginning this Summer School of German has grown under his able guidance
to such proportions that the number of students admitted had to be
limited.
Professor Feise has been a member of the American Goethe Society
since its inception in 1932 and served as its president from 1947-1953.
A prominent member of the Johns Hopkins Faculty is Ernst Cloos,
Professor and Chairman of the Department of Geology. His native city
is Saarbrücken, where he was born in 1898. He pursued his studies at
the universities of Freiburg, i. B., Göttingen and obtained his doctor's
degree from the University of Breslau in 1923. Upon completion of his
studies, Dr. Cloos covered a great part of the world in the employ of a
large business concern. His first visit to the United States was in 1924-26,
employed by Seismos G. M. B. H. Hannover carrying out in Texas geo-
physical investigations of the underground by means of artificial earth-
quakes for the purpose of finding oil. The years 1926-27 found him in
Sweden, Norway, Italy, and the Lake District of England, while 1927-28
was taken up with an exploration of the Kirkuk Area of Iraq. In 1929-30
he conducted an investigation of the Sierra Nevada granites. His asso-
ciation with Hopkins goes back to the year 1931, when he was appointed
lecturer, rising to the rank of full professor in 1941. During the second
World War Professor Cloos instructed classes in meteorology. Besides
his publications in structural geology he made two geological maps for
the State of Maryland. A grant by the Geological Society of America
was used in work on an area in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The
scholarly results of the many investigations in the various parts of the
United States and abroad appeared in numerous articles in such journals
as the Economic Geology, Journal of Geology, Zeitschrift für Geophysik,
and Proceedings of the Geology Society of America.
One of the most outstanding scholars in Romance Languages is Professor
Leo Spitzer. Born in Vienna, in 1887 he began his academic career in his
native city. After a distinguished career at the universities of Vienna,
Bonn, Marburg, Cologne, and Istambul he joined Hopkins in 1936. His
write-up in the Encyclopedia Italiana sums up his scholarly abilities as
2
Ernst Feise, Xenion: Themes, Forms, and Ideas in German Literature (Baltimore, Maryland, The
Johns Hopkins Press, 1950).
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follows: "A subtle mind, versatile, with an acute sense for the living
qualities of the language, Spitzer has undertaken, in a long series of
articles and essays to find in stylistics a bridge between linguistics and
literary genius. He places the psychological reach of linguistic facts
over and above the grammatical aspects."
Besides innumerable articles in various scholarly publications, his chief
works are: Die Wortbildung als stilistisches Mittel (1913); Aufsätze zur
romantischen Syntax und Stilistik (1928); Romanische Stil-und Literatur-
studien (1932); Essays in Historical Semantics (1947); Linguistics and
Literary History, Essays in Stylistics (1948); A Method of Interpreting
Literature (1950).
An educator and scholar of wide reputation who at the same time was
Assistant Librarian at the Johns Hopkins University, is Johannes Mattern,
born in Duisburg-Meiderich in 1882. After studying at the universities
of Münster and Bonn he came to the United States in 1907, where he
was first associated with the Library of Congress and then with the Library
of the Bureau of Statistics in Washington, D. C. He joined Hopkins in
1911 as assistant librarian and in the course of years he rose to a pro-
fessorship in Political Science. Besides the many articles dealing with
problems of political science, international law and relation, he found
time to publish such books as Employment of the Plebiscite in the Deter-
minations of Sovereignty (1920); Bavaria and the Reich (1923); Concepts
of State, Sovereignty and International Law (1928), and several others.
The remarkable academic career of Professor Arno Schirokauer, who
joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University as Professor of German
in 1945, was cut short by his untimely death in May 1954. Prior to his
coming to Baltimore he was connected with the Southwestern University,
Kenyon College, and Yale University. His life and career bear all the
earmarks of the turbulent times of the present century caused by the two
World Wars, the depression in the twenties and the horrors of the Hitler
regime in the thirties.
Born in Kottbus in 1899, he acquired his doctor's degree from the Uni-
versity of Munich in 1921, studying under such well-known scholars as
Carl von Kraus and Fritz Strich. The inflation with its devastating effects
prevented him from accepting the flattering invitation of his teacher,
Carl von Kraus, to establish himself as professor at the University of
Munich. His work as assistant librarian of the Deutsche Bücherei, Leipzig,
and as director of the Department of Education of the Central German
Broadcasting Station in Leipzig filled the pre-Hitler years. The "Odyssey"
of his life came to an end when he finally reached the United States in
1939. Of special interest to him was the field of Germanic philology and
almost all his productions evidence the spirit of the born philologist. To
mention but a few of his main contributions "Studien zur Mittelhoch-
deutschen Reimgrammatik" in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen
Sprache und Literatur (1923); "Otfried von Weissenburg" in Deutsche
Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte (1926);
"Bedeutungswandel des Romans" in Mass und Wert (1940); "Die Legende
vom Armen Heinrich" in Monatshefte (1951) .³
Another scholar of international reputation, whom the turbulent days
in Germany in the thirties brought to the shores of the United States, is
Professor Ludwig Edelstein. He was born in Berlin in 1902 and attended
3
For a complete list of Professor Schirokauer's publications see: Stanley N. Werbow, Twenty-ninth
Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland (1956), 73-75.
For a fine evalution of Professor Schirokauer as man and scholar see: Fritz Strich's introduction to
Arno Schirokauer, Germanistische Studien (Hamburg, Dr. Ernst Hauswedell & Co., 1957).
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the university of his native city from 1921 to 1924. He became associated
with the Department of the History of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins
University in 1934. A similar position he had held at the University of
Berlin from 1930-33. With brief interruption—Dr. Edelstein was Associate
Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of
Washington 1947-48, Professor of Greek at the University of California
at Berkeley 1948-50, and Martin Lecturer at Oberlin College 1956—he
became Professor of Humanistic Studies at Hopkins in 1952.
He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Philo-
logical Association, American Philosophical Association, American Asso-
ciation for the History of Medicine, and History of the Science Society.
In addition to numerous articles, Dr. Edelstein is the author of the
following books: Peri Aeron and die Sammlung der hippokratischen
Schriften, Problemata IV (1931); Aselepius, a Collection and Interpreta-
tion of the Testimonies (with Emma J. Edelstein) 2 vols., 1945. He is
the editor of Hindu Medicine (H. E. Zimmer) 1948, and Collected Essays
(Erick Frank) 1955.
A prominent member of the Department of History of the Johns Hop-
kins University is Hans Wilhelm Gatzke. Upon graduation from the Gym-
nasium in Germany in 1934, he entered Williams College as a German
exchange student in the fall of that year. Returning to Germany in 1935,
Dr. Gatzke attended the Universities of Munich and Bonn studying law.
Not finding the Hitler atmosphere of the thirties to his liking he returned
to the U. S. A. in 1937. After receiving his A. B. degree from Williams
College "with honors" in 1938, he entered the Harvard Graduate School.
During his years at Harvard he served as fellow, tutor in history, and
assistant to the senior tutor of Eliot House. He was awarded the Sheldon
Traveling Fellowship for 1941-42 and spent the year chiefly at Stanford
University in Palo Alto, California, doing research at the Hoover Library.
He did military service with the Psychological Warfare Division of the
12th Army Group and after the end of hostilities as Information Control
Officer of "Radio Frankfurt." He completed his studies at Harvard in
1947 and then joined Hopkins in 1948 advancing to a full professorship
in 1956.
The titles of his books reveal that Dr. Gatzke's special field of scholarly
research is Modern German History: Germany's Drive to the West (1950);
Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany (1954); The Present in
Perspective (1957). He was awarded the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of
the American Historical Association for his book Germany's Drive to the
West. Dr. Gatzke has also contributed articles and reviews to the Journal
of Modern History, the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, the American
Historical Review and Current History.
In addition to his academic duties and scholarly pursuits. Professor
Gatzke has served as one of the editors of the Journal of Modern History
and as a member of the Committee on German War Documents of the
American Historical Association.
In addition to these scholars who as the result of their connection with
the Johns Hopkins University have brought their share of fame and glory
to this institution, there are several more whose association with Hopkins,
however, was of a short duration. Likewise one could add the names
of a considerable number of outstanding German scholars who lectured
at Hopkins as visiting professors, among them Julius Petersen, Herman
Eduard von Holst, Johannes Hoops, Fritz Lieben, and others.
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