Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman

by Jeremy Adelman

  5. Alexandra Richie provides an invaluable portrait in Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (New York: Carrol and Graf, 1998).

  6. Deborah Hertz, How Jews Became German: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

  7. CH to HH, 12 June 1930, PP.

  8. Hannah Arendt, “Privileged Jews,” Jewish Social Studies 8:3–30 (Jan. 1946), p. 6; Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memoirs of My Youth (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), pp. 25–27.

  9. Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 424.

  10. AOH, interview, 3 Nov. 2007; EH, interview, 29 Nov. 2006; AOH, interview by Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, n.d., box 15, folder 4, AOHP, p. 1 (hereafter, Dauzat interview); AOH, interview by Henri Jacob Hempel, Princeton April 1984 and Berlin, June 1991, PP, p. 5 (hereafter, Hempel interview).

  11. AOH to KS, 25 Oct. 1982 and 18 May 1983, KSPP.

  12. Hempel interview, p. 7.

  13. EH, interview, 29 Nov. 2006.

  14. Ursula Hirschmann, Noi senzapatria (Milan: Il Mulino, 1993), pp. 79–80.

  15. CH to HH, 26 June 1930, PP.

  16. EH, interview, 12 Dec. 2007; Weitz, Weimar Germany, p. 55.

  17. Hempel interview, p. 4; SH, interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  18. Hempel interview, p. 3.

  19. UH, Noi senzapatria, p. 81.

  20. EH to AOH, Oct. 1936, PP.

  21. AOH, interview, 6 May 2002; SH, interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  22. AOH and SH, interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  23. Fritz Stern, Five Germanys I Have Known (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2006), p. 21.

  24. AOH, “Four Reencounters,” in A Propensity to Self-Subversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 105.

  25. EH, interview, 29 Nov. 2007; UH, Noi senzapatria, 67–69.

  26. AOH, interview, 6 May 2002; AOH to Joseph Bogen, n.d., PP.

  27. Hempel interview, p. 2.

  28. EH, interview, 12 Nov. 2007.

  29. CH to HH, 17 June 1930 and 18 June 1930, PP.

  30. CH to HH, 18 June 1930, PP.

  31. AOH, interview, 6 May 2002.

  32. CH to AOH, 14 July 1925, PP.

  33. AOH, “My Father and Weltanschauung circa 1928,” in Propensity, p. 111.

  34. Hempel interview, p. 6.

  35. EH to AOH, October 1936, PP.

  36. Dauzat interview, p. 5; Hempel interview, p. 1.

  37. CH to HH, 5 June 1930, PP.

  38. AOH to parents, 1 Jan. 1930, PP.

  39. AOH to UH, 27 June 1931, PP; AOH, “Four Reencounters,” in Propensity, p. 106; SH, interview, 8 Aug. 2005.

  40. EH to AOH, Oct. 1936, PP; AOH to EH, 1 Jan. 1929, PP.

  41. AOH, interview, 6 May 2002; Hempel interview, p. 27–28; UH, Noi senzapatria, pp. 81–83.

  42. AOH to UH, 27 June 1931, PP.

  43. Hempel interview, p. 3.

  44. Ibid., pp. 2–3.

  45. Christopher Kobrak, National Cultures and International Competition: The Experience of Schering AG, 1851–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 96–97.

  46. AOH to parents, 14 July 1931, PP.

  47. AOH to parents, 24 July 1931, PP.

  48. AOH, interview, 6 May 2002.

  49. CH to HH, 26 June 1930, PP; UH, Noi senzapatria, p. 37.

  50. EH, interview, 29 Nov. 2007; Hempel interview, p. 6.

  51. EH, interview, 3 Nov. 2007; Konrad Katzenellenbogen, interview, 3 Jan. 2008.

  52. UH, Noi senzapatria, pp. 73–74.

  53. Ibid., p. 52.

  CHAPTER 2: Berlin Is Burning

  1. Box 76, folder 18, AOHP.

  2. Hempel interview, p. 12.

  3. Dauzat interview, p. 18.

  4. AOH, Der Geist, die Welt der Sittlichkeit und die Vernunft in Hegels “Phänomenologie des Geistes”—Interpretation eines Abschnittes aus der Phänomenologie, PP; Hempel interview, pp. 11–13; AOH, “On Hegel, Imperialism, and Structural Stagnation,” Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 167–175.

  5. Dauzat interview, p. 7; AOH, interview, 6 July 2002.

  6. Eric Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 254–256.

  7. AOH to parents, 20 June 1930, PP.

  8. Hempel interview, p. 16

  9. Dauzat interview, p. 5.

  10. Hempel interview, p. 6.

  11. AOH, “Four Reencounters,” in Propensity, p. 109.

  12. SH, interview, 11 Oct. 2007.

  13. AOH, interview, 6 July 2002.

  14. Hempel interview, 9.

  15. Donna Harsch, German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); William David Jones, The Lost Debate: German Socialist Intellectuals and Totalitarianism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), p. 61.

  16. Hempel interview, p. 10; Dauzat interview, p. 12. Ursula also recalls an intense meeting and debate in the working-class neighborhood of Alexanderplatz with a mysterious character with the pseudonym Miles. Later she would learn that this Miles was Richard Löwenheim. Lenin quotation from “The International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International,” Report to the Second Congress of the Communist International, 19 July 1920; the quotation is cited and paraphrased often in Hirschman’s writings.

  17. AOH, Crossing Boundaries, pp. 51–52; KS to author, 16 Dec. 2003, in author’s possession.

  18. AOH, Crossing Boundaries, p. 51.

  19. Weitz, Weimar Germany, pp. 111–113.

  20. KS to author, 16 Dec. 2003.

  21. CH to HH, 17 June 1930, PP.

  22. Hempel interview, p. 3; EH, interview, 14 Nov. 2007; Ursula Hirschmann, Noi senzapatria (Milan: Il Mulino, 1993), p. 75.

  23. Hempel interview, p. 33.

  24. Berlin Universität transcript, 22 Feb. 1933, PP.

  25. Fritz Stern, Five Germanys I Have Known (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2006), p. 105.

  26. UH, Noi senzapatria, p. 98.

  27. Ibid., p. 100.

  28. Dauzat interview, p. 35.

  29. AOH, interview, 20 May 2002.

  30. SH, interview, 11 Oct. 2007; AOH, Crossing Boundaries, p. 54.

  31. Jürgen Kuczynksi, Ein treuer Rebell. Memoiren, 1994–1997 (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1998), pp. 244–245.

  32. AOH, “Four Reencounters,” in Propensity, p. 103.

  33. EH, interview, 12 and 14 Nov. 2007.

  34. EH, interview, 14 Nov. 2007.

  35. AOH, interview, 15 May 2002.

  36. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-59/8,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT., p. 2.

  37. AOH to HH, 28 Mar. 1934.

  38. AOH to HH, 8 Sept. 1933.

  CHAPTER 3: Proving Hamlet Wrong

  1. SH and AOH, interview, 25 July 2005.

  2. AOH, “Four Reencounters,” in Propensity, pp. 95–96.

  3. Ursula Hirschmann, Noi senzapatria (Milan: Il Mulino, 1993), p. 109.

  4. Sabine Offe, email message to author, 26 Aug. 2011, in author’s possession; UH, Noi senzapatria, pp. 109 and 117; Hempel interview, p. 19.

  5. AOH, “Four Reencounters,” in Propensity, p. 106.

  6. Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), pp. 34–36.

  7. AOH, interview, 2 Oct. 2003; Crossing Boundaries, p. 57; “My Father and Weltanschaaung, circa 1928,” in Propensity, pp. 113–114.

  8. Marc Nouschi, Histoire et pouvoire d’une Grande École: HEC (Paris: R. Laffont, 1988), pp. 30–31.

  9. “HEC” notes, n.d., PP.

  10. AOH to HH, 21 Mar. 1935, PP.

  11. Hempel interview, pp. 18–19; AOH to HH, 9 Apr. 1934 and 24 Apr. 1935, PP.

  12. Undated letter from R. Arasse, Entr’aide universitaire international, PP.

&n
bsp; 13. AOH to HH, 3 May 1935; EH, interviews, 12 and 14 Nov. 2007; AOH, interview, 20 May 2002.

  14. AOH to HH, 24 Apr. 1935, PP.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.; SH, interview, 16 July 2009.

  17. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 118.

  18. AOH to Grégoire Salomon, 15 Feb. 1989, PP.

  19. Hempel interview, p. 18.

  20. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-59/8,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT., p. 3.

  21. SH, interview, 23 Sept. 2007.

  22. Hempel interview, pp. 21–22; Claudie Weill, “Le Bund russe à Paris, 1898–1940,” Archives juives 2001/2, no. 34, pp. 30–42.

  23. AOH, interviews, 21 Apr. 2002 and 2 Oct. 2003; UH, Noi senzapatria, pp. 117–120.

  24. Hempel interview, p. 21.

  25. Dauzat interview, p. 13.

  26. Miles [Walter Löwenheim], Socialism’s New Beginning: A Manifesto from Underground Germany (New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1934), pp. 48, 90, 96; Lewis Edinger, German Exile Politics: The Social Democratic Executive Committee in the Nazi Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), pp. 83–90.

  27. Dauzat interview, p. 26.

  28. AOH to HH, 9 Apr. 1934, PP; Crossing Boundaries, p. 58.

  29. UH, Noi senzapatria, pp. 113–116.

  30. AOH, Crossing Boundaries, p. 60; ibid., pp. 123–125.

  31. UH to Eugenio Colorni, 3 June 1935, PP.

  32. EH, interview, 29 Nov. 2007.

  33. AOH and SH interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  34. AOH to UH, 27 Mar. 1957, PP.

  35. AOH to UH, n.d. [early 1970s], PP.

  36. Appendix to Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 573.

  37. AOH, Crossing Boundaries, p. 58.

  38. Weber, Hollow Years, p. 89.

  39. Stanislao Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 122–123.

  40. UH, Noi senzapatria, p. 136.

  41. AOH to UH, n.d. [early 1970s], PP.

  42. Hempel interview, p. 26; SH, interview, 1 Aug. 2005.

  43. SH, interview, 1 Aug. 2005; Hempel interview, p. 26.

  44. A.O. Hirschman, interview by Franco Ferraresi, Corriere della Sera, 22 Oct. 1993.

  45. AOH, “Doubt and Antifascist Action in Italy, 1936–1938,” in Propensity, pp. 118–119; SH, interview, 16 Aug. 2005.

  46. Carlo Rosselli, Liberal Socialism, Ed. Nadia Urbinatti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

  CHAPTER 4: The Hour of Courage

  1. AOH, interview, 21 Apr. 2002.

  2. AOH, Crossing Boundaries, p. 59.

  3. Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1932), p. 15.

  4. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-59/8,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT., p. 7.

  5. Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), p. 46.

  6. Hempel interview, p. 18.

  7. AOH, interview, 21 Apr. 2002; AOH, Crossing Boundaries, p. 59.

  8. Dauzat interview, p. 20.

  9. “The Calendar of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the Forty-First Session, 1935–36.” (London, 1935), pp. 108–109.

  10. AOH, interview, 21 Apr. 2002; letter of recommendation from P. Barrett Whale, reader in economics at the University of London, 27 May 1936, PP.

  11. Dauzat interview, p. 22.

  12. Hempel interview, p. 23.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Stanislao Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 202–203.

  15. Eugenio Colorni, La malattia della metafisica: Scritti filosofici e autobiografici (Torino: Einaudi, 2009), p. 41.

  16. Dauzat interview, p. 42.

  17. Ibid., p. 22.

  18. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (New York: Harcourt Inc., 1980), pp. 9–11.

  19. Confidential File on Albert O Hirschman, FOIPA No. 1030518-000, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC.

  20. AOH, interview, 20 May 2001.

  21. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli, pp. 205–206.

  22. SH, interview, 16 Mar. 2006.

  23. AOH, Crossing Boundaries, pp. 61–63.

  24. AOH, interview, 20 May 2001.

  25. Appendix to Sergio Bertelli, Il gruppo: La formaziones del gruppo dirigente del PCIU, 1936–1948 (Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1980), p. 78.

  26. Hempel interview, p. 24; AOH to Ferdinando Briamonte, 25 Oct. 1978, PP.

  27. UH to HH, 3 Dec. 1936, PP.

  28. Ursula Hirschmann, Noi senzapatria (Milan: Il Mulino, 1993), pp. 147, 155.

  29. Eugenio Colorni, Scritti (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975), pp. 337–38; translated version from Albert and Sarah on the occasion of the birth of their first grandson to Lisa Hirschman and Peter Gourevitch on January 1, 1978, PP.

  30. O.A. Hirschmann, “Le Fecondità della Donna Italiana Secondo L’Età e il Numero dei Figli Avuti,” AOHP.

  31. O.A. Hirschmann, “Nota su due recent tavole di nuzialità della popolazione italiana,” Giornale degli Economisti (January 1938), pp. 3–10.

  32. “Io, detective dell’economia fascista,” Corriere della Sera, 13 Nov. 1987, p. 3.

  33. O.A. Hirschmann, “Les finances et l’économie italiennes: Situation actualle et perspectives,” Société d’Etudes et d’Informations Economiques, 1 juin 1938; ibid.

  34. AOH, interview, 20 May 2001; O. A. Hirschmann, “Il Franco Poincaré e la sua svalutazione,” box 77, folder 1, AOHP.

  35. AOH, interview by Franco Ferraresi, Corriere della Sera, 22 Oct. 1993.

  36. SH, interview, 23 Aug. 2007.

  37. AOH, interview, 29 July 2002; SH, interview, 1 Aug. 2005.

  38. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays (New York: Penguin, 1987), pp. 1132–1133.

  39. AOH to UH, 23 Mar. 1966, PP.

  40. Lawrence D. Kritzman, The Fabulous Imagination: On Montaigne’s Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Charles Rosen, “The Genius of Montaigne,” New York Review of Books, 14 Feb. 2009; SH to author, 5 Sept. 2007.

  41. AOH to Ferdinando Briamonte, 25 Oct. 1978, PP; Hempel interview, p. 25.

  42. AOH, “Doubt and Antifascist Action in Italy, 1936–1938,” in Propensity, pp. 118–119; AOH, Torino Talk, Oct. 1987, box 2, folder 3, AOHP.

  43. EH, interview, 16 Oct. 2006.

  44. AOH, interview, 20 May 2001.

  45. EC to AOH, 3 Sept. 1938, PP; AOH, interview, 20 May 2001.

  46. New York Times, 19 Sept. 1938.

  47. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-59/8,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  CHAPTER 5: Crossings

  1. Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage, 1994), pp. 48–52.

  2. Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), pp. 102–103.

  3. Vicki Caron, Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933–1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 163–181; Timothy P. Maga, “Closing the Door: The French Government and Refugee Policy, 1933–1939,” French Historical Studies, 12:3 (Spring 1982), p. 140.

  4. AOH to HH, 23 May 1940, PP; EH, interview, 16 Oct. 2006.

  5. EC to AOH, January 1939.

  6. Hempel interview, p. 30.

  7. AOH to Max Ascoli, 4 dic 1938, Ascoli Papers, Boston University.

  8. AOH to Max Ascoli, 30 dic 1938, Ascoli Papers, Boston University.

  9. OH to Max Ascoli, 25 May 1939, Ascoli Papers, Boston University.

  10. AOH to UH, 21 Feb. 1940, PP.

  11. Hempel interview, p
. 30.

  12. Ibid.

  13. O.A. Hirschmann, L’Activité economique, 16–31 Janvier 1939, p. 354.

  14. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-59/8,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  15. AOH, interview, 15 Apr. 2002.

  16. AOH to Ascoli, 4 dic 1938, Ascoli Papers, Boston University; O.A. Hirschmann, “Étude statistique sur la tendance du commerce extérieur vers l’équilibre et le bilatéralisme,” 1939, box 77, folder 2, AOHP.

  17. O.A. Hirschmann, “Memoire sur le control des changes en Italie,” 1939, p. 82, box 56, folder 3, AOHP.

  18. Ibid., pp. 66, 83.

  19. AOH, interview, 28 May 2002.

  20. Ibid.; Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 163–181; Maga, “Closing the Door,” p. 140.

  21. AOH to HH, 18 Sept. 1939, PP.

  22. AOH, interview, 28 May 2002.

  23. AOH to UH, 14 Mar. 1940, PP.

  24. Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968), p. 8.

  25. AOH to HH, 11 June 1940, PP.

  26. AOH to HH, 23 May 1940, PP.

  27. Hannah Diamond, Fleeing Hitler: France, 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 83.

  28. Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981).

  29. AOH, “Four Reencounters,” in Propensity, p. 97; Dauzat interview, p. 33.

  30. AOH, interview, 28 May 2002.

  31. AOH, “L’atmosphère à Merseille en 1940,” Colloque Varian Fry, Mars 1999, PP; Andy Marino, A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry (New York: St Martin’s, 1999), pp. 120–121.

  32. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-59/8,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  33. Mary Jayne Gold, Crossroads Marseilles, 1940 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), p. 155.

  34. Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1997), orig. pub. 1945, pp. 24–25.

  35. Donald Carroll, “Escape from Vichy,” American Heritage (June/July 1983), p. 88.

  36. Lisa Fittko, Escape through the Pyrenees (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), pp. 101, 117.

  37. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-59/8,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.