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Thinking Outside the Circle: The Geistkreis and the Viennese “Kreis Culture” in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2021

Ohad Reiss-Sorokin Open the ORCID record for Ohad Reiss-Sorokin [Opens in a new window]
Ohad Reiss-Sorokin*
Affiliation:
History of Science Program, Princeton University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: oreiss@princeton.edu
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Abstract

Besides their ideas and social networks, émigré intellectuals bring with them practices for engagement with intellectual work. This article focuses on one such practice: the intellectual Kreis [circle]. It focuses on the Geistkreis, an interwar Viennese interdisciplinary intellectual circle. Based on archival research, the article uses a number of case studies to show that the Kreis was employed by the Viennese émigrés as a mental scheme and as a recipe for action. It argues that the émigrés’ adherence to the Kreis structure explains the friction between them and their hosts. By following the attempts of former Geistkreis members to create Kreis-like institutions in America, the article shows that the Kreis was more than mere organizational form. It represented an epistemical commitment to knowledge making as a collective effort, and the preference of general theoretical knowledge over specialized research. It also entailed an intermingling of “work” and “life” that did not conform to American norms.

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Articles
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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 168 - 194
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 “General Seminar: Problems of the Social Sciences, Fall Term 1942,” Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research Collection, NS.02.02.01, Box 3, Folder 26, New School Archives and Special Collections, The New School, New York. Because the article focuses on the post-emigration period I decided to stick to the Americanized from of the protagonists’ names.

2 Barber, Michael D., The Participating Citizen: A Biography of Alfred Schutz (Albany, 2004), 73Google Scholar.

3 Compare Arthur J. Vidich, “Notes on the History of the General Seminar,” Arthur J. Vidich Papers, NA.0009.01, Box 8, Folder 15, New School Archives and Special Collections, The New School, New York.

4 Krohn, Claus-Dieter, Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research, trans. and, Rita Robert Kimber (Amherst, 1993), Ch. 5Google Scholar.

5 Schutz, Alfred, “The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology,” American Journal of Sociology 49/6 (1944), 499–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ibid., 499.

7 Letter, Schutz to Voegelin, 12 Jan. 1943, in Gerhard Wagner and Gilbert Weiss, eds., A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime: The Correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin, trans. William Petropulos (Columbia, 2011), 27.

8 “Foreword,” Social Research 4/1 (1937), 263–4; Mann, Thomas, “The Living Spirit,” Social Research 4/1 (1937), 265–72Google Scholar.

9 Tillich, Paul, “Mind and Migration,” Social Research 4/1 (1937), 295–305, at 295–8Google Scholar.

10 Schutz, “The Stranger,” 501.

11 Tillich, “Mind and Migration,” 304–5.

12 Letter, Voegelin to Schutz, 28 Sept. 1943, in Wagner and Weiss, Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime, 44.

13 Schutz, “The Stranger,” 502.

14 Ibid., 505.

15 See, for example, Dekker, Erwin, The Viennese Students of Civilization (Cambridge, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Timms, Edward, “The Cultural Field,” in Timms, Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist: The Post-war Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika (New Haven, 2005), 103–22Google Scholar.

16 The literature on transnational intellectual history and émigré scholars in particular is vast, and dates back to the aftermath of World War II. For examples of recent methodological contributions see Armitage, David, “The International Turn in Intellectual History,” in McMahon, Darrin M. and Moyn, Samuel, eds., Rethinking Modern Intellectual History (Oxford, 2014), 232–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baring, Edward, “Ideas on the Move: Context in Transnational Intellectual History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 77/4 (2016), 567–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burke, Peter, Exiles and Expatriates in the History of Knowledge, 1500–2000 (Waltham, MA, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moyn, Samuel and Sartori, Andrew, eds., Global Intellectual History (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rothschild, Emma, “Arcs of Ideas: International History and Intellectual History,” in Budde, Gunilla, Conrad, Sebastian, and Ganz, Oliver, eds., Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen, 2016), 217–26Google Scholar; Stahnisch, Frank W., “Learning Soft Skills the Hard Way: Historiographical Considerations on the Cultural Adjustment Process of German-Speaking Émigré Neuroscientists in Canada, 1933 to 1963,” Journal of the History of Neuroscience 25/3 (2016), 299–319CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

17 Algazi distinguishes between three different meanings of the term “persona”: (1) a crafted image, cultivated by a famous person and projected into the world; (2) a set of regulative ideals that dictates what the best version of a philosopher, a historian, a scholar and so forth is supposed to look like; (3) a cultural template for a codified social role. In this article I use Algazi's third definition. See Algazi, Gadi, “Exemplum and Wundertier: Three Concepts of the Scholarly Persona,” Low Countries Historical Review 131/4 (2016), 8–32, at 9–16, esp. 8Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., 12–13.

19 I would like to thank Gadi Algazi for suggesting to me this fruitful distinction between the Kreis as an “idea” and the Kreis as a “model.”

20 Kuhlemann, Frank-Michael and Schäffer, Michael, eds., Kreise—Bünde-Intellektuellen—Netzwerke: Formen bürgerlicher Vergesellschaftung und politischer Kommunikation 1890–1960 (Bielefeld, 2017), 8–9Google Scholar.

21 Compare Schorske, Carl E., Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), xxv–xxviiGoogle Scholar; Craver, Earlene, “The Emigration of Austrian Economists,” History of Political Economy 18/1 (1986), 1–32, at 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Timms, Apocalyptic Satirist, 106–7; Klausinger, Hansjörg, “Academic Anti-Semitism and the Austrian School: Vienna, 1918–1945,” Atlantic Economic Journal 42 (2014), 191–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Dekker, Erwin, “The Vienna Circles: Cultivating Economic Knowledge Outside Academia,” Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 7/2 (2014), 30–53, at 44–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Edward Timms, “Die Wiener Kreise,” 131–2.

24 Engel-Janosi, Friedrich, … Aber ein stolzer Bettler: Erinnerungen aus einer verlorenen Generation (Cologne, 1974), 116–17Google Scholar.

25 The most complete contemporaneous account of membership in the Geistkreis is a memo, which was probably handed out in one of the meetings, titled “Zehn Jahre ‘Kreis’” (“Ten Years ‘Circle’”). Memo, “Zehn Jahre ‘Kreis’,” undated, in Correspondence, Herbert Furth, Felix Kaufmann Papers, Special Collections Department, University Libraries, University of Memphis. According to this document the founding members of the Geistkreis were Walter Froehlich, Herbert Furth, Friedrich Hayek, Felix Kaufmann, Maximillian Mintz, Alfred Schutz, Erich Voegelin, Friedrich Eder, Hans Heller, Robert Meyer, Georg Schiff, and Hans Seyfert. In the first decade they were joined by Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Gottfried Haberler, Friedrich Machlup-Wolf, Oskar Morgenstern, Friedrich Thalmann, Johannes Wilde, Emanuel Winternitz, Franz Glück, Karl Menger, Franz Stiassny, and Konrad Zweig. From various sources we know of a couple more people who joined the Kreis after its tenth anniversary: Robert Waelder and Otto Benesch.

26 Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, ed. Elias Sandoz, in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 34 (Columbia, 1989), 34–5.

27 Engel-Janosi, … Aber ein stolzer Bettler, 117.

28 Many of the lecture titles can be found in Engel-Janosi's memoir (Engel-Janosi, … Aber ein Stolzer Bettler, xx). Engel-Janosi's list, however, is not complete. The missing titles can be found in Memo, “Zehn Jahre ‘Kreis’”; and in “J. Herbert Furth's Personal Notebooks,” Furth Private Archive.

29 J. Herbert Furth, “Erinnerungen an Wiener Tage,” Wirtschaftspolitische Blätter 2 (1989), 247–53, at 249–51; Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 35.

30 Hansjörg Klausinger provided a detailed description of the escape routes of each and every member. See Hansjörg Klausinger, “The Austrian Economists, Hayek and the Anschluss,” conference paper read before the annual meeting of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, Paris, 2016 (a German version is forthcoming).

31 Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, 70.

32 Wanger and Weiss, Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime, 120, 186.

33 Perloff, Marjorie, The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir (New York, 2003), 125–7Google Scholar.

34 Letter, Voegelin to Schutz, 2 Jan. 1951, in Schutz, Alfred and Voegelin, Erich, Eine Freundschaft, die ein Leben ausgehalten hat: Briefwechsel 1938–1959, ed. Wagner, Gerhard and Weiss, Gilbert (Konstanz, 2004), 380–81Google Scholar.

35 Letter, Schutz to Voegelin, 22 April 1951, in Wagner and Weiss, A Friendship That Lasted A Lifetime, 135.

36 Letter, J. Herbert Furth to Helmut Wagner, 18 Jan. 1975, Correspondence, Josef Herbert Furth Papers, Box 2, Folder 191, Hoover Institution Archive.

37 Ibid.

38 E.g. the influential Austrian literary critic Leo Spitzer, the American medievalist Fredric C. Lane, the German social theorist Goetz Briefs, the American sociologist Talcott Parsons, and many others, see letter, Engel-Janosi to Voegelin, 1 June 1944, Box 11, Folder 7, EV Papers.

39 Letter, Voegelin to Engel-Janosi, 5 June 1944, Box 11, Folder 7, EV Papers.

40 Ibid.

41 Perloff, The Vienna Paradox, 153–4.

42 Letter, Voegelin to Schutz, 25 Oct. 1938, in Wanger and Weiss, A Friendship That Lasted A Lifetime, 12–13.

43 Schutz, “The Stranger,” 504–5.

44 See, for example, Joel Isaac's discussion on Harvard's “Interstitial Academy.” Isaac, Joel, Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn (Cambridge, MA, 2012), 31–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 “Oskar Morgenstern Tagbuchedition,” 27 Dec. 1956, at http://gams.uni-graz.at/archive/objects/o:ome.b55-57/methods/sdef:TEI/get?mode=1956-12-27&context=pers, my emphasis.

46 “Interview on the Austrian School Conducted by Axel Leijonhufvud, 1977 March 16,” Fritz Machlup Papers (hereafter FM Papers), Box 113, Folder 6, Hoover Institution Archive.

47 Memo: Machlup to the Economics Reading Club, 6 Nov. 1936, Box 274, Folder 5, FM Papers.

48 Letter, Machlup to the Economics Department, 9 Sept. 1938, Box 274, Folder 5, FM Papers, original emphasis.

49 Ibid.

50 Letter, Machlup to the Faculty, 27 Sept. 1938, letter, Machlup to the Economics Department, 9 Sept. 1938, Box 274, Folder 5, FM Papers.

51 “University of Buffalo; Econ. Read. Club,” Box 274, Folder 5, FM Papers.

52 Perloff, Vienna Paradox, 94–5.

53 Letter, Machlup to Professor Jon Chipman, 17 Nov. 1977, “Fritz Machlup—Correspondence,” Gottfried Haberler Papers, Box 23, Hoover Institution Archive.

54 Letter Machlup to Mises, 8 June 1934 Box 53, Folder 27, FM Papers, cited in Hansjörg Klausinger, “‘In the Wilderness’: Emigration and the Decline of the Austrian School,” History of Political Economy 38/4 (2006), 617–64, at 632.

55 Fritz Machlup, Knowledge: Its Creation, Distribution, and Economic Significance, vol. 1, Knowledge and Knowledge Production (Princeton, 1980), 11, 18.

56 Marianne E. Partee, “The History of the State University of New York at Buffalo Department of Economics, 1917–2000” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, SUNY Buffalo, 2003), 44.

57 Ibid., 48.

58 See Mises's recommendation letter, Mises to Epstein, 27 March 1935, “Letters of Recommendation for F. M. Ludwig von Mises,” Box 7, Folder 6, FM Papers.

59 Epstein, Ralph C., Supplementary Readings in Economics (New York, 1929)Google Scholar.

60 Partee, “The History of SUNY Buffalo,” 61.

61 Klausinger, “In the Wilderness,” 657.

62 Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, 40.

63 Interview with Leijonhufvud, 23.

64 Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, 24–115.

65 Compare Perloff, Vienna Paradox, 196.

66 Emanuel Winternitz, “The Luggage of an Immigrant” (unpublished manuscript, 1982), 277, at www.academia.edu/27719276/The_luggage_of_an_immigrant (accessed 26 May 2021).

67 Letter, Winternitz to Machlup, 15 March 1940(?), “Correspondence: Winternitz, Emanuel, Box 74, Folder 19, FM Papers.

68 Winternitz, The Luggage of an Immigrant, 277–8.

69 “Circular Letter. November 1, 1947,” Box 2, Folder 11, FM Papers.

70 Ibid.

71 “Constitution of the History of Ideas Club,” Box 243, Folder 12, FM Papers.

72 Ibid.

73 Letter, Wardropper to Machlup, 11 Feb. 1952, and letter, Machlup to Stimson, 19 Feb. 1952, Box 243, Folder 12, FM Papers.

74 Letter, Machlup to Stimson, 21 Oct. 1952, Box 243, Folder 12, FM Papers.

75 Anonymous review of Stimson's article, undated, Box 243, Folder 12, FM Papers.

76 “Abstract: The Idea of Private Property in Ideas (abstract),” undated, Box 243, Folder 12, FM Papers.

77 Letter, Hayek to Friedman, Sept. 1952, Friedrich A. Hayek Papers (hereafter FAH Papers), Box 63, Folder 14, Hoover Institution Archives, emphases mine.

78 Friedrich Hayek, interviewed by Leo Rosten 15 Nov. 1978, Center for Oral History Research, University of California, Los Angeles, at http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu; The best description of Hayek's “experiment” can be found in Caldwell, Bruce, Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago, 2003), 298–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The purpose of this section is to shed new light on the story of Hayek's “experiment,” from the perspective of the Viennese “Kreis culture” legacy. Compare Janek Wasserman, Marginal Revolutionaries, 206.

79 F.A. Hayek, “The Source of the Scientific Hubris: L’École Polytechnique,” in Bruce Caldwell, ed., Studies in the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Text and Documents, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, vol. 13 (Chicago, 2010), 169–87. For the best account of the genesis and scope of Hayek's “Abuse of Reason” project see Caldwell, “Introduction,” in ibid, 1–45.

80 Hayek, Friedrich A., “Scientism and the Study of Society, Part III,” Economica 11/41 (1944), 27–39, at 34–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Letter, John U. Nef to Hayek, 26 Oct. 1948, Box 55, Folder 1, FAH Papers.

82 Compare Ross B. Emmett, “Specializing in Interdisciplinarity: The Committee on Social Thought as the University of Chicago's Antidote to Compartmentalization in the Social Sciences,” History of Political Economy 42 (annual suppl.) (2010), 261–87, at 262–5.

83 “It [the committee] is a scholar's dream.” Letter, Hayek to Nef, 6 Nov. 1948, Box 55, Folder 1, FAH Papers.

84 Letter, Hayek to Friedman, Sept. 1952, Box 63, Folder 14, FAH Papers.

85 “‘Committee on Social Thought Seminar on Scientific Method and the Study of Society’, September 25, 1952,” Box 63, Folder 14, FAH Papers; John U. Nef to Hayek, 26 Oct. 1948, Box 55, Folder 1, FAH Papers.

86 In the list of over fifty names one can find philosophy: Rudolf Carnap; physics: Enrico Fermi, James Franck, Robert S. Mulliken, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller; economics: Milton Friedman and Tjalling C. Koopmans; psychology: Heinrich Klüver and James G. Miller; neurology: Robert W. Sperry; political science: Leo Strauss; Egyptology: John A. Wilson; metallurgy: Cyril Smith; and his colleagues from the Committee on Social Thought: John Nef, Edward Shils, and Yves Simon. Box 63, Folder 16, FAH Papers.

87 Ibid.

88 Letter, Bert F. Hoselitz to Hayek, 18 Sept. 1952, Box 63, Folder 16, FAH Papers.

89 Letters: Hayek to Fermi, 28 Oct. 1952, and Fermi to Hayek, 13 Oct. 1952, Box 63, Folder 15, FAH Papers.

90 See Figure 2; “University of Chicago—Seminar Materials: ‘Scientific Method’ notes,” Box 63, Folder 13, FAH Papers.

91 Ibid.

92 Hayek, “Scientism and the Study of Society,” 270–84. Compare Caldwell, Hayek's Challenge, 241–60.

93 Hayek, F. A., “Degrees of Explanation,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 6/23 (1955), 209–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weaver, Warren, “Science and Complexity,” American Scientist 36/4 (1948), 536–44Google ScholarPubMed. Compare Caldwell, Hayek's Challenge, 301–6.

94 Letter, Hayek to Friedman, “University of Chicago—Seminar Materials: ‘Scientific Method’ Outline,” Box 63, Folder 14, FAH Papers, my emphasis.

95 Hayek, The Sensory Order, vii.

96 See Friedrich A. Hayek, Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue (supplement to the Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, ed. Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar) (Chicago, 1994), 137.

97 Caldwell reports that he asked Gary Becker, who told him he has no real memory of the seminar. Caldwell, Hayek's Challenge, 299 n. 14. Among Hayek's papers no further documents were found; further research in the collections of the attendees, to the extent that we can know who they were, might help to rectify this problem. One of Hayek's students, Shirley Robin Letwin, portrays a lively picture of Hayek's seminars in Chicago. The description, I suppose, refers to no seminar in particular, but captures the general spirit of those meetings. From the description we learn that Hayek did attract a number of heavy-hitters to his seminar, even if they did not commit to his full program. Compare Shirley Robin Letwin, “The Achievement of Friedrich A. Hayek,” in Fritz Machlup, ed., Essays on Hayek (London: Routledge, 1977), 147–67, at 147–8.

98 See, for example, Polanyi, Michael, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Collins, Harry, “What Is Tacit Knowledge?”, in Schatzki, Theodore R., Cetina, Karin Knorr, and von Savigny, Eike, eds., The Practical Turn in Contemporary Theory (London and New York, 2001), 115–28Google Scholar; Collins, Harry, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge (Chicago, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Algazi, “Exemplum and Wundertier,” 12.

100 Compare Edgar, Scott, “Logical Empiricism, Politics, and Professionalism,” Science and Education 18 (2008), 177–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am aware that this claim is highly controversial, and this article is definitely not the proper place for solving this controversy. A comparative study of the different usages of the Kreis as a model and an idea by different groups of different intellectual and social status should take up this question.