by Merilyn Moos
A thousand scholarships were created for exiled students at this time (Palmier, 2006), which, from what my mother told me, she applied for but failed to obtain, probably because she was already here. Universities and colleges took on 1500 ‘exile’ teachers (Palmier, 2006).
In addition, Beveridge, the Director of the London School of Economics, (and whom Siegi later worked for) set up the Professorial Council on 3rd May 1933, which became the Academic Assistance Council and then the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning in 1936. The aim of the Professional Council was to welcome these highly educated exiles and assist refugee scholars from Germany. It also established the Academic Assistance Fund. The Society mainly supported economists with an ‘international reputation’, often therefore middle aged. This did not include Siegi! Hagerman (2006) reminds us of what befell those scholars who did not get out of Germany, were caught in France and Holland or never received permission to enter the UK: they died in the camps and prisons.
It is also worth reminding ourselves that anti-German feeling ran high even before the war, and even more so at points during the war. Prior to Kristallnacht, there had only been a limited number of people seeking refuge here. But by 1939, not only was there a Jewish exodus from Germany and Austria, but refugees from the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of Czechoslovakia and then Poland, and the increasing implementation of anti-Semitic laws in Italy caused tens of thousands to attempt to seek to continue a life in the UK. Refugees, fortunate enough to get admitted into the UK, were increasingly seen as a destabilising influence. Sympathy towards any group of refugees was uncommon, and rarely articulated in Parliament. Once war had started, German émigrés were explicitly condemned on occasions in the media as a German fifth column. Outside the remit of this paper, is also evidence for increasing incidents of antisemitism. Even in Oxford University G.R. Driver, pressing for greater assistance to refugees. commented: “There are in many quarters a disinclination to put such people on our governing bodies or …our Common Rooms…with foreigners of whom we know personally very little” (Weindling, 1996,169 ;Kushner, 1989). Siegi and Lotte would have wanted to stay in the shadows.
Siegi joined the significant refugee academic community at the Institute in 1938. Marschak (1898-1977) had founded the Oxford Institute of Statistics in 1935. Marschak had been born in Kiel, but at Berlin University had fallen under Marxist influence, and been dismissed by the Nazis following the April Act of 1933. At the Institute, he gathered round himself other left-leaning economists he had known at Kiel, whose concern was also the business cycle, such as Fritz Burchardt and Jacob Marschak.170 The Institute rapidly developed an international reputation for ‘theory-guided empirical research’ (Hagerman 2006), and, against the back drop of the 1930’s depression, a concern with the business cycle and unemployment. It became the power house for Keynesian and post-Keynesian growth theory.
The needs of Whitehall for economists combined with the call up itself quickly emptied the Institute of its former staff. (Siegi had also volunteered but been turned down because of his age.) From the late 1930’s, émigré economists dominated the research work at the Institute: Marschak, Burchardt, Mandelbaum, Schumacher, the Hungarian born Balogh and the Pole, Kalecki, ‘the towering intellectual figure’ at the Institute between 1940 and 1944 (Hagerman, 2006) and often considered an equal to Keynes, but whose work was strongly influenced by Marx. Their excellence, as Hagerman states, was exemplified by the famous report: ‘The Economics of Full Employment’, collectively produced by this group of exile economists (plus G D N Worswick) and edited by Burchardt (1902-1958). The main aim of the study was to ‘give an outline of the strategic factors on a policy of permanent full employment in industrial countries.’ Burchardt, another exile, who had already made a reputation as an economist in Germany and was a friend of Siegi’s, attempted to combine Marx with the ‘statuary circular flow’. Burchardt was delegated by the Institute to support Beveridge, whose reports ‘social Insurance and Allied Services’ 1942, followed by the better known ‘Full Employment in a Free Society’, 1944, a tide-turning text, were closely associated with Keynesian principles. Burchardt had become the effective co-ordinator at the Institute in the later war years and after the War became its Director. The Institute must remain an - if not the - outstanding example of academics in a position of influence attempting to produce policies based on a theoretical coalescing of Marx with Keynes.
Siegi at the Institute of Statistics
By the time Siegi got his job at the Institute in February 1938, Siegi had managed to put together a credible CV. He had even, if briefly, had a job at the New York Times in 1936, which, as already mentioned, he had to give up because of the refusal of the Ministry of Labour to renew his labour permit. Gayer also recommended him on the basis of work Siegi had done for him on trade cycles at the LSE (letter 13.9.37, in personal possession). Siegi had managed to obtain statistical research work at the LSE where he was subsequently appointed as a full-time Research Assistant from 19.5.37 (letter of appointment from LSE 13.5.37, in personal possession). Here he worked for Beveridge on unemployment statistics (letter from Champernowne, 28.4.37, in personal possession). These were not insignificant figures and provide a clue as to how he landed the job at the Institute.
Although the documentation does not seem to be available, Siegi must have acquired a permit to work at the Institute (and before that at the LSE). Presumably, by then, he had enough friends amongst the British Establishment’s ‘movers and shakers’, for example, men like Beveridge and Ronald Wood, that the Ministry of Labour acquiesced.
It is easy to see that the concerns of the Institute would chime with Siegi’s interests. Siegi used to insist that one should never talk of ‘economics’, always of ‘political economy’. In other words, he rejected the possibility of understanding economics outside of its political context, in his case wanting to use political economy as a way of bringing greater justice to the downtrodden and to further (some sense of) socialism. Even his original interest in economics when he studied at Munich as a very young man, was almost certainly because he believed that by studying the rules of capitalism, one would be able to better transform it.
How exactly Siegi got his job, initially doing computing work and assisting in research, according to Marschak’s 1939 reference, in this prestigious setting is unknown. It is clear from references from Marschak (1939) (obtained from the New York library), Gayer (1937), and others, that Siegi’s work was highly respected and that he was liked. Nevertheless, he had no degree and had not yet succeeded in getting his work published. Although the Institute clearly recruited many political exiles (some also Jewish), the suspicion has to be that Siegi was well acquainted with one or other of the people with influence at the Institute, most possibly Marschak whom he might well have known at Berlin University. There is an intriguing reference in a letter from Andrews (26.6.66, in personal possession), another Oxford economist at Nuffield and a friend: ‘Marschak could not believe that so good a poet [Siegi] could not be useful as a research assistant‘. Maybe, it was his contact with Beveridge, also confirmed in Andrew’s letter.
Siegi called many of these men his friends and their names cropped up regularly in conversations at meal times. Indeed Mr and Mrs Worswick became my guardians. I grew up being taught about Kalecki’s theories of trade cycles where other children hear stories about Red Riding Hood. Balogh, an exiled Hungarian who had come earlier than most to the UK, was formally attached to Balliol College but worked closely with the Institute, invited Siegi to stay in their ‘little house in the Lake District‘ (letter, 29.9.48, in personal possession). (Maybe it was Balogh who subsequently got him his job as one of Wilson’s advisors. Certainly they were still in touch in 1965 (letter 24.3.65).)
Siegi’s initial area of research at the Institute was national investment in Great Britain (letter from Bowen, 2.4.39) but this extended into research into the economic problem of mobilising resources for war purposes and the distribution of
scarce resources. The OIS was deeply involved in conducting surveys of various commodities, as part of their wartime contribution, work that was principally carried out by Worswick and Moos (W Young and F.S. Lee, 1993) Siegi also wrote on and had articles published by the Institute on International Commodity Control (1941) and Cotton exports (1942).
From the beginning of 1943, as the tides of war slowly turned, the Institute started to concern itself with post-war issues. In February 1943, the OIS published a special supplement to the normal bulletin containing three papers analysing the Beveridge Report on Social Security. In June 1943, the Institute lent Schumacher, one of their leading theoreticians, to Beveridge to help him with the economics of full employment (Young and Lee, 1993). My father had told me he worked for Beveridge at the Institute, even though he was probably one amongst other research workers doing so, and it is now not clear exactly what his role was. He also contributed to one of the best know publications of the Institutes’ (1st edition 1944, Blackwell, Oxford, from reprints on Economic Classics, NY, 1967): ‘The Economics of Full Employment‘. Also in 1943, Siegi had his research into building policy and the prices and costs of building materials published (an issue Siegi spotted early as fundamental for the post-war period, especially for the working class, given the devastation of so many homes during the war) and subsequently into the light metal and aluminium industries (letter from Burchardt, 28.6.50).
By 1945, he had been invited to teach several of the economic subjects on the prestigious Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) course at the University (letter from Dean Jones, 9.10.45, in personal possession) and had already started teaching his beloved Adult Education classes. I can only guess at what he thought of the rows of (largely) ex-public school boys (and very few girls) arrayed before him in his PPE lectures. Though Siegi’s instincts were anti-elitist and I can imagine his not entirely positive surprise at the necessity to wear the uniform of the Oxford don when teaching.171
Siegi’s precise attitude to the war is not known. He did not write explicitly about that. But I suspect that he supported the Allies without reservation. I doubt whether he held the more ‘Trotskyist’ position that one fought to persuade other soldiers that the fight was for world revolution, and he certainly did not take a pacifist position - otherwise he would not have volunteered. No longer a part of the Communist movement, and, I have no doubt, appalled by the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, he will have had a clear view of the Nazis as the greater enemy, and British democracy, however flawed, as preferable. The only injury he (or Lotte) incurred during the war was when, having volunteered as a fire fighter, which he did two nights every week, one of the other volunteers smashed his forehead open, swinging the nozzle of a hose. Siegi bore the scar for the rest of his life.
Siegi wrote extensively in this period, both work based articles and other pieces, apparently unpublished, which were on a far more political and philosophical level of analysis of the world’s events, considered in the next section. (Some of the articles listed below were published a few years after leaving Oxford but can be assumed to be extensions of his work there.) In the late 1930s, he finished but never had published a lengthy, well-researched economic analysis of Nazism, considered in the next section (which wrongly predicted that the Nazis needed the Jews). English publishers rarely took the risk of publishing the work of émigré authors (Palmier). But I imagine Siegi will have felt its non-publication as a great loss.
Siegi’s academic pieces included contributions to: Studies in War Economics, 1947, an Institute publication, a number of articles in the Economic Journal, at least some of which, according to a letter from Robinson (18.12.44) he submitted directly to Keynes, including articles on the Aluminium Industry in 1945, and ‘Laissez Faire, Planning and Ethics’, 1945; other articles were published in the prestigious Manchester School Journal, including one on aluminium, 1948 and another on coal, 1951. Siegi also had very many well-received articles published in the Institute’s Oxford Bulletin, primarily on the questions of raw material supply and prices, the building industry, manpower and finally trade and distribution, for example ‘The Food Stamp Plan’ and ‘Incentives to the Development of Mineral Resources, but also included: ‘Is Adam Smith out of date?‘, 1951. Although not one of the key movers and shakers at the Institute, this hot-house of Keynesianism can be seen as influencing the direction and perspective of his articles. He probably did not see himself as having turned his back on Marxism but rather bringing Marx up to date with Keynes. He is not the only one to have attempted this - and not the only one to have failed!
Siegi’s move into the relative respectability of left academia has to be understood within the context of Nazi Germany’s march through Europe, the subsequent outbreak of World War Two, and his disillusionment and despair at developments in the USSR. This is not the same as disillusionment with Marxism but for Siegi defence of democracy and preparations for peace became his professional priority.
It is worth mentioning here his work for the Free French Government,172 which, on the basis that the correspondence in 1942 (with an A. Morhange, with an address in SW1) from ‘France Libre’ was always addressed to S. Moos at the Institute, was, one assumes negotiated through the Institute (in personal papers). Why it was Siegi who was approached can only be surmised. Maybe yet again it was the combination of his grasp of languages and economics, maybe some forever hidden political contact, perhaps from his time in Paris. However it happened, the Institute recognised his work for France Libre by awarding him a year’s seniority from February 1943 (letter from Bowley, the Director who replaced Marschak, at the Institute, 5.2.1943, in personal possession).
For the Free French, Siegi wrote extensive papers on French Post-War requirements including the key issue of a future labour shortage, the Tobacco Industry, French Agriculture, including sheep, British-French Trade, and French Foreign Trade (all in personal possession). It was one of the few things about his past that Siegi proudly told me about - how he had helped the French against the Nazis, even suggesting he had met de Gaulle in an assignation in London. These papers reveal highly detailed statistics and almost econometric modelling. As with his research and published articles for the Institute, Siegi here is working hard to provide suitable and well-researched models for French rejuvenation under a democratic government, not to suggest any fundamental change in the balance of class forces.
Siegi was writing his articles in a second language, English. Never as eloquent as Lotte, he developed a fluency in ‘acede-meese’. Yet as Lotte suggested in one of her poems, using a second language is never the same: it is more like one is borrowing somebody else’s set of clothes and can never take it for granted that they are really yours. Yet, as we shall see, Siegi’s work was considered sufficiently important towards winning the war (or defeating Nazism), that it impressed the Oxford University authorities.
Indeed, a transformation has occurred in Siegi’s standing between his departure from the KPD exile group in 1937 and 1940, a mere three years difference. What becomes evident throughout this period is that Siegi is not seen as a suspicious Commie or even a dangerous fellow traveller. Somehow, Siegi has succeeded in turning himself into a respectable and valued academic, on the left certainly but to be trusted to do his bit for the war effort.
Lotte and the USA
Lotte had not settled after her return from the USSR and the move to Oxford. From her letters, it appears that in 1938, she informs Siegi, rather than discussing with him, her decision to go to the USA. She does not reveal her motives. (Of course, we do not have Siegi’s side of the correspondence.) The tone of her letters (which, as she herself apologises for) are erratic and often bossy.
But there are enough clues to fairly reliably divine Lotte’s reasons. She was bitterly disappointed that she had not been admitted to study economics at the LSE, despite her Firsts from Hombolt University. Her aim was to support herself while she finally achieved a degree in the US. She had made contacts and was going to get enough te
aching to support herself. She also knew there were scholarships which she did indeed apply for and won, but was unable to take up. Her life in London was not what she wanted – she made bits of money by translation work but Lotte was a fiery and brilliant woman who wanted to be an economist.
Moreover, extrapolating from her letters, I suspect she did not trust the British ruling class to hold to an anti-Nazi position on Germany and wanted to get both her and Siegi far away from Europe. And she also wanted to get her parents out of Germany and hoped to put their names down on the long list of would-be immigrants. This is not a goal she emphasises in her letters but then until after the November pogrom (Kristallnacht), almost nobody anticipated the future extermination of ‘Jews’, including Siegi.
There is a final factor which will re-appear in the section on internment. She was continuing to hunt for news of Brian, and may well have supposed, correctly, that she would find it in the US. She could not have known with what disastrous consequences.
In late 1938, Lotte finally succeeded in catching a steamer to the US. Thanks to the letters from 1939 that Siegi kept from her, we get the impression that she wanted Siegi to follow her. Written by now in fluent English, her letters are strident - Siegi appears not to be able to work out what to do and she gives him impatient instructions as to what is the best way to enter the US.
We do not have Siegi’s side of the correspondence but the impression is that he is fearful that if he applied for entry as a student, that this would not give him any future security. And, he, unlike Lotte, by this point did have a good job. How far the option of going to the US was taken seriously by Siegi is not clear. I rather think that, by this point, it was Lotte who wanted Siegi to come over - she was finally studying for her degree and would not have wanted this to be again disrupted. (Sadly, she never finished as she left to get back to England before the outbreak of war.)