1 Minutes of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, Mar.15, 1928. The surviving records of the memorial are housed at the Rockefeller Archive Center in North Tarrytown, New York (hereafter RAC). At some point someone took the records of the ALS and arranged them chronologically, pasting them in sequence into two bound volumes. With the exception of the appendices, including the only published report on the ALS (in German), the documents are paginated. Consequently, it is possible to cite documents by page number, by date, or by archival folder number. The archive's records are customarily cited by the series, box, and folder numbers; the Abraham Lincoln Stiftung files are found in series 717R. However, because almost all of the ALS documents are filed in two boxes, nos. 17 and 18, I will dispense with the archival numbers when citing these papers and use dates only.
2 With the exception of a brief listing in the 1930 Annual Report of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York, 1931), for over sixty years the only other account in English of this remarkable organization was a retrospective look by Reinhold Schairer, "The Abraham Lincoln Foundation," Educational Yearbook, 1936 (London, 1937), 15570. In Geoffrey Winthrop Young: Poet, Mountaineer, Educator (London, 1996), Alan Hankinson treats Young's work with the Rockefeller Foundation but does not discuss the ALS in detail.
3 I have traced the origins of this internationalist approach in "The Humanities and International Understanding: Some Reflections on the Experience of the Rockefeller Foundation," in Kathleen D. McCarthy, ed., Philanthropy and Culture: The International Foundation Perspective (Philadelphia, 1984), 2541.
4 For a description of the memorial and its operating philosophy, see Martin Bulmer and Joan Bulmer, "Philanthropy and Social Science in the 1920s: Beardsley Ruml and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, 19221929," Minerva 19, no. 3 (autumn 1981): 347407.
5 On Merriam's work on civic education, see Barry D. Karl, Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago, 1974), 16985.
6 Arthur Woods to Beardsley Ruml, Aug. 2, 1925, RAC.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Young's response is quoted in Woods's letter to Ruml. I have not been able to find the original.
10 The Times, Mar. 20, 1932.
11 See Arnold Lunn, "Geoffrey Winthrop Young," Mountain World 81 (1960): 3, for an assessment of Young's status as a mountaineer and for a portrait of his family.
12 From the Trenches: Louvain to the Aisne, the First Record of an Eye Witness (London, 1914), 301.
13 "A Summary of Impressions Received During an Inquiry Made on Behalf of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, with a Recommendation," Oct. 1926, 9, RAC (hereafter "Summary of Impressions").
14 Ibid., 38.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Papers of Geoffrey Winthrop Young, Schule Schloss Salem, Salem am Bodensee. I am grateful to Young's son, Jocelin Young, for giving me access to his father's papers and for sharing a copy of this document with me.
18 "Summary of Impressions," 40. Modern scholarship supports Young's view of the student corps. See Michael Steinberg, Sabers and Brownshirts: The German Students' Path to National Socialism, 19181935 (Chicago, 1977).
19 "Summary of Impressions," 40.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., 38.
22 Ibid., 13.
23 Geoffrey Winthrop Young, log, Dec. 1929, RAC.
24 "Summary of Impressions," sketch B, 122.
25 Reinhold Schairer and Hans Simons, "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung: First Year's Report," July 21, 1930. Young translated this report from the German original and added a cover memorandum and comments on the ALS fellows he knew. Young's summary report may by found in volume 2 of the ALS's records, RAC.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Arnold Brecht, The Political Education of Arnold Brecht: An Autobiography, 18841970 (Princeton, N.J., 1970), 1212.
31 "Summary of Impressions," 48.
32 Ibid.
33 Quoted in Brecht, Political Education, 272-3. Brecht is paraphrasing a eulogy by Willy Hellpach, another ALS advisory board member.
34 "Summary of Impressions," 37.
35 Reinhold Schairer, "The Abraham Lincoln Foundation," Education Yearbook, 1936 (London, 1937), 162.
36 Abraham Lincoln Stiftung: First Year's Report, RAC. The quote is found in Young's cover memorandum, "Covering Report by G.W.Y.," 10.
37 On the reorganization, see Robert Kohler, "A Policy for the Advancement of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation, 19241929," Minerva 16 (winter 1978): 480515, and the previously cited work by Bulmer and Bulmer on the memorial.
38 Ibid.
39 Geoffrey Winthrop Young, diary, Dec. 14, 1929, RAC.
40 "Covering Report by G.W.Y.," 13.
41 Selskar M. Gunn, diary, June 2, 1930, RAC.
42 Thomas B. Appleget, diary, July 12, 1930, RAC.
43 Ibid.
44 This plan is summarized in Appleget's diary, July 14, 1930, RAC.
45 Schairer to Gunn, Sept. 8, 1930, RAC.
46 Minutes of Staff Conference, Nov. 19, 1930, RAC: 904, vol. III.
47 The phrase occurs in Appleget's description of the trustees' meeting in a letter to Gunn, Jan. 31, 1931, RAC.
48 Ibid.
49 John Van Sickle, "Memorandum on conversation with Dr. Hans Simons in Berlin," Feb. 17, 1933, RAC.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Tracy B. Kittredge, memorandum, "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung-Conversation," Oct. 23, 1933, RAC. The phrase "exceptional promise" is found in the Van Sickle memorandum cited in note 49.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 For example, Van Sickle attempted to interest David H. Stevens, the newly appointed director for the foundation's program in the humanities, in the ALS. See his letters to Stevens in RAC.
56 Geoffrey Winthrop Young, memorandum, "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung," Nov. 9, 1933, RAC.
57 John Van Sickle, "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung," memorandum, Nov. 20, 1933, RAC.
58 Geoffrey Winthrop Young and Hans Simons, "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung," Nov. 29, 1933. This report was prepared to bolster Young's request for support in his memorandum from Nov. 9 cited in note 56. Its description of the work of specific fellows is especially valuable.
59 Ibid.
60 Van Sickle, "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung," RAC.
61 Ibid.
62 On the Rockefeller Foundation's German policy, see Malcolm Richardson, "Philanthropy and the Internationality of Learning: The Rockefeller Foundation and National Socialist Germany," Minerva 28, no. 1 (spring 1990): 2158.
63 Appleget, diary, Dec. 7, 1933.
64 John Marshall, diary, Feb. 14, 1935: "It appeared that S. made this inquiry on behalf of friends still in Germany. S. was candid in saying that he, personally could not urge further support for the Stiftung at this time."
65 See Schairer, "Abraham Lincoln Foundation," 1602, on Young's insistence on the need for "personal guidance" along the lines of the English tutorial system.
66 Ibid., 165.
67 Tracy Kittredge, "Memorandum of interview with Dr. Hans Simons," Jan. 8, 1935, RAC.
68 The reference to eighty-two beneficiaries is found in a docket item summary at the beginning of the Lincoln Stiftung files; Young and Simons, "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung," Nov. 29, 1933, RAC.
69 Ibid.
70 The ledger sheets are found in the first section of the ALS records, following a section titled "Financial Statement" (beginning on page 22 of the file created by the Rockefeller office). The decision of the Rockefeller Foundation office in the 1930s to place these unpaginated sheets at this point in the bound volumes means that these German records are out of chronological sequencethe organizing device for the rest of the records in this series. In reading through these files, I completely missed the significance of these ledgers until, upon rereading the files many years later, I realized that I had found the key to reconstructing the roster of ALS fellows.
71 Hannah Arendt's correspondence with Karl Jaspers documents her relations with the Lincoln Stiftung. A letter from 1929 asks Jaspers for a letter of reference and mentions an interview with Hans Simons. See Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner, eds., Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers: Correspondence, 19261969 (New York, 1992), 78. Other letters show that Arendt also sought aid from a Jewish fund and from the Notgemeinschaft and in 1930 the latter offered her assistance - perhaps explaining why the Lincoln Stiftung directors did not.
72 Schairer, "Abraham Lincoln Foundation," 164.
73 Appleget to Woods, Nov. 21, 1933, RAC.
74 In addition to Hans Queling's biographical note in the Lincoln Stiftung files, see his published travel works, such as Sechs Jungen tippeln nach Indien (Berlin, 1931) and Sechs Jungen tippeln zum Himalaja (Berlin, 1933).
75 Quoted from Rogge's biographical sketch in "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung: First Year's Report."
76 Heinrich Rogge, Nationale Friedenspolitik: Handbuch des Friedensproblems und seiner Wissenschaft (Berlin, 1934). Franz von Papen contributed an introduction to this volume, which appears to be the volume outlined in the Lincoln Stiftung files. Following this work, Rogge published Hitlers Friedenspolitik und das Völkerrecht (Berlin, 1935) and Hitlers Versuche zur Verständigung mit England (Berlin, 1940).
77 Heinrich Rogge and Franz Stelter, Der Kreis Neustettin: Ein pommersches Heimatbuch (Würzburg, 1972).
78 Quoted from Gothe's biographical sketch in "Abraham Lincoln Stiftung: First Year's Report."
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid.
81 Der Angriff, Mar. 1933, quoted in Aufbruch einer jungen Generation , 43. New York Public Library pamphlet collection.
82 Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Berkeley, Calif., 1979), 232.
83 Geoffrey Winthrop Young, "Resistance in Germany," The Times, Aug. 2, 1945.
84 Young papers, Schule Schloss Salem.
85 See Kurt Hahn's own account in the commemorative volume, 80. Geburtstag Kurt Hahn: Festreden und Ansprachen (Ravensburg, n.d.), 47: "Geoffrey Young reiste nach Berlin, suchte den Vizekanzler Papen auf und Überzeugte ihn davon, dass die Zerstörung der Salemer Schulen in England beunruhigend wirken würde."
86 Young papers, Schule Schloss Salem.