We Refugees Archive

Germany’s National Socialist State – Turkey’s Nation State

In Germany, the gradual rise of the National Socialists in the Weimar Republic led to their seizure of power in 1933. This marked the beginning of the rapid establishment of the Nazis’ authoritarian “Führerstaat” under Adolf Hitler. In Turkey, after rebuffing hegemonic claims on the Ottoman Empire by European powers, the nationalist movement established a Turkish Republic in 1923, marking the beginning of the construction of aTurkish nation-state under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk).

Germany as a National Socialist State

In Germany, the seizure of power by Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP (Nationalsocialist Party) in 1933 meant the end of democracy. In the course of Nazi rule, an ideological programme based on racism and anti-Semitism was implemented step by step, manifested in Nazi laws and in the creation of repressive administrative systems, leading to the mass extermination that began in 1941. As the “Reich” expanded through military conquest, Nazi laws were applied in the occupied territories together with the spreading of Nazi ideology. Some 70 million people lost their lives in the war and 6 million Jews and regime opponents were murdered by the time Hitler was defeated. Germany transitioned to democracy in 1949. 11Hilberg, Raul, 1991: Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden. Vol. 1. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, pp.56-66. Loc.cit. Vol. 3, 1991: pp. 1280-1300.

Turkey as a Nation State

After the First World War, Kemal Paşa (Atatürk) and his followers prevented the partition of Ottoman territory among the victorious powers. The year 1923 saw the establishment of a nation-state, a one-party Kemalist regime run by the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) that began forging the new republican state and social order in a ‘revolution from above’. The ‘nation’ became the movement’s goal and the overriding concept. In the process, those critical of the new Turkish regime, 22The best-known dissident is the poet Nazîm Hikmet, who is still highly revered in Turkey today: Gronau, Dietrich,1991: Nazîm Hikmet: Reinbek: Rowohlt. ranging from supporters of the old Ottoman-Islamic state order to communists and advocates of alternative nation-building programmes, were consistently eliminated. The old minority rights of the Christian and Jewish communities (millet) were abolished in a process of nationalization that favoured the former Muslim millet, the Muslims being the state people for centuries. The process of nationalizing the Turkish economy finally culminated, in 1942, in the levying of a property tax on all citizens, the ‘Varlık Vergisi’. This tax was set much higher for Christians and Jews, causing 34,647 Turkish Jews to leave the country. 33Balı, Rıfat, 2003: Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri. Aliya: Bir toplu göçün öyküsü 1946-1949. (The Jews of Turkey in the Years of the Republic. Aliya: The story of a mass emigration 1946-1948), Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, p.258. Foreign company branches in Turkey were also hit by the tax regime, cf. Glasneck, Wolfgang / Kircheisen, Inge, 1968: Die Türkei und Afghanistan – Brennpunkte der deutschen Orientpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, p. 146.

But the reform process of Turkey’s ‘republican years’ from 1923 to 1950 was directed inwardly, i.e. toward the renewal of the state order, rather than toward an expansion of the state’s territory and the spread of its ideology abroad. The process culminated in a transition to democracy from 1946, with the first democratic election taking place in 1950. 44Kreiser, Klaus, 2003: Die neue Türkei, pp.383-434 in Kreiser, Klaus / Neumann, Christioph (eds.), Kleine Geschichte der Türkei. Stuttgart: Reclam

German Refugees in 1920s Istanbul and Turkey’s New State Order

Against the background of the new world order after the First World War, refugees were arriving in the Ottoman Empire during the Turkish War of Independence, from 1919 to 1923. Most of the White Russians who had fled across the Black Sea began leaving Istanbul for France in the 1920s. Writing later about the city’s German colony in that post-war period, the director of the German High School in Istanbul recalled that, “Only after the withdrawal of the Entente in the fall of 1923 did the Germans stream back [Germany and Turkey were war losers, author’s note], gradually repossessing their cultural institutions under the stubborn resistance of the French, and rebuilding a German colony that was two-thirds smaller than before the war. Just like in the pre-war period, it again consisted mainly of merchants, commercial employees, professionals in Turkish service, and craftsmen.” 55Preußer, Richard, 1936: Deutsche in Istanbul und der übrigen Türkei, pp.43 -52 in: Verband deutscher Vereine im Ausland (ed.): Wir Deutsche in der Welt. Berlin: Otto Stollberg, p. 44.

Starting in 1929, economic refugees came to Istanbul driven from Germany by the high unemployment during the Great Depression. 66“Turkey was no longer an unknown country, skilled workers were in demand. Unemployment in Germany was disastrous and, with the young Turkish Republic needing helping hands, many Germans came to the new Republic,” according to Radt, Barbara, 2001: Geschichte der Teutonia. Herausgegeben vom Orient-Institut dr DMG. Abteilung Istanbul: Würzburg: Ergon,pp. 67, 89. Immigrants initially found favourable conditions for settling down in cosmopolitan Istanbul.

The economic and social reorganization planned by the Turkish state demanded skilled workers and specialists. Turkey had to ‘pull itself up by its own bootstraps’, so to speak, because the country needed the infrastructure for reform that it could not yet produce itself. After the First World War, Germany as a former ‘brother in arms’ soon regained the status of Turkey’s main European partner country, and remained so in the Second World War. Though Germany could not convince Turkey to fight as allies in the war, Turkey did provide vital supplies: chrome ore was fundamental for the German war economy, and much-needed agricultural products were exchanged for finished goods in a barter process. Turkey received materials for urban construction, and even entire industrial plants, from Germany. Weapons also flowed – a supply line that predated the First World War I. 77Güçlü, Yücel, 2002: Turkey’s Relations with Germany from the Conclusion of the Montreux Straits Convention up to the Outbreak of the Second World War, pp. 124-161 in Belleten Cilt LXVI (245), p. 141f. But who could install and operate the new technology? Turkey’s new educational system was designed to produce the necessary specialists, but until they could be properly trained the government sought to appoint qualified specialists from Germany. Turkey also attracted university teachers who were given leave from their posts in Germany to come and train their Turkish successors, including teachers needed for the new education system.

Turkey also hired German academics at the planning level of the reform project to plan, for example, the education system, the urban environment of Ankara or the new agricultural systems. 88Krecker, Lothar,1964: Deutschland und die Türkei im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 19-23. Koçak, Cemil, 1991: Türk-Alman Ilişkileri (1923-1939). Iki Dünya Savaşı Arasındaki Siyasal, Kültürel, Askeri ve Ekonomik Ilişkiler (Turkish-German Relations (1923-1939). The political, cultural, military and economic relations between two world wars). Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basım Evi, pp. 38-42.

It was during this period of German-Turkish relations that Turkey began to transform the Ottoman state order into a civil state based on European legal standards. With the separation of religion and the state, a secularised Turkey declared religion a private matter. Muslims had no formal representation until 1965 (establishment of the Presidency for Religious Affairs, Diyanet Işleri Başkanlığı). 99Cf. on the gradual re-Islamization since the Atatürk era and on the interpretation of the principle of secularism in the Turkish constitution throughout Turkish history cf. Erichsen, Regine, 1988: Die Religionspolitik im türkischen Erziehungswesen von der Atatürk-Ära bis heute, pp. 234-247 in: Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch, 38(2), p. 238f.

After the enactment of the Citizenship Law of 1928, all Turkish citizens received a Turkish passport. Foreigners were required to register with the Aliens Police upon arrival in Istanbul. 1010Balı, Rıfat, 20057 : Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri. Bir Türkleştirme Serüveni (The Jews of Turkey in the ‘Republican Years’. The Adventure of a Turkification). Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, p. 206. Radt, p. 89, p. 93. Although under the new Citizenship Law all Turkish citizens, regardless of faith and race, were now equal before the law, 1111Loc.cit. p. 103. the abolition of minority status in the ‘Republican years’ did not in practice immediately lead to equality of Turkish Christians and Jews with Turkish Muslims. But nationalization measures did not only affect the Turkish minorities.

In 1923, even before the proclamation of the republic, a resolution of the Kemalist Economic Congress in Izmir had initiated the expulsion of Christians and Jews from operating companies in industries such as railways and shipping. 1212Loc. cit. p.206,208, 211. Turkish Christians and Jews were quietly defined as non-Turks. The measures to nationalize the Turkish economy included a law banning entry to certain occupations, which was enacted in 1932 and came into force in 1934. 1313Loc. cit., p. 228. The law mainly affected foreign employees in Turkish companies and small-scale foreign entrepreneurs.

Because of the newly declared equality of all Turkish citizens such exclusions could not be officially justified. On the quiet the authorities reverted to the criterion of religious affiliation from Ottoman times and hired only Muslim Turks for positions in the state economy and public administration. 1414Loc. cit., p. 213, p.237. This practice of equating ‘Muslim’ and ‘Turk’ was pointed out to the professor of commercial law Ernst Hirsch at Istanbul Üniversitesi (IÜ) by a Turkish colleague and member of parliament when he was considering Turkish citizenship. He was advised to convert to Islam so that he would then be granted citizenship immediately. Hirsch did acquire Turkish citizenship without conversion. Hirsch, Ernst E.,1982: Aus des Kaisers Zeiten durch die Weimarer Republik in das Land Atatürks: eine unzeitgemässe Autobiographie. Munich: Schweitzer, pp. 278-279. The legal scholar Ernst E. Hirsch (1902-1985), who had emigrated from Frankfurt, taught commercial law at the IÜ from 1933-1943. After taking Turkish citizenship in 1943, he taught philosophy of law and sociology of law at law school in Ankara, which then became a faculty of the newly founded University of Ankara (AÜ) in 1946), pp. 278-279. This was a useful organizing criterion for ensuring a dominant position in the newly nationalized economic system for the former Muslim state people.

In the course of these measures, numerous foreigners, including members of the German colony in Istanbul, lost their livelihoods and tried to find work in professions that were still free to enter. Many hoped for a chance with long-established German merchants in possession of a trading license. But, eventually, businesses in restricted sectors had to close and Turkish companies never took back German employees. Many of these immigrants left the country, including the economic refugees who had expected a good life in Istanbul. 1515Balı 2005, p. 228.

A very different approach was taken to German specialists such as the skilled workers in German companies and also the academics in Turkish services. Their role was to assist the Turkish reform process and a permanent stay in Turkey was not intended from the outset.

However, some of these could also face limitations imposed by the Turkish government, as seen in the case of the expert commission preparing to set up a German-Turkish agricultural college, the Yüksek Ziraat Enstüsü (YZE). The commission head, Gemeimrat (Senior Privy Councillor) Dr. Oldenburg, disregarded Turkish laws and wrote a report, the German Embassy Counsellor Wilhelm Fabricius refused to submit it to the Turkish government, saying, “It is so full of injudicious attacks on the Turks that it may give rise to annoyance with German experts.” 1616Fabricius to Prüfer, German Embassy Ankara on 23.9.1933. Files of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office PA AA, RZ 207/245982. Mangold-Will is of the opinion Oldenburg only wanted to teach Turkey values(?!). Mangold-Will, Sabine, 2013: Begrenzte Freundschaft. Deutschland und die Turkei 1918-1933. Göttingen: Wallstein, p. 401. Ambassador Rudolf Nadolny had to mediate, and the commission left the country without having achieved anything. 1717Erichsen, Regine 2000: The Politics Behind Scientific Transfer Between Turkey and Germany in the Case of the Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü in Ankara, pp. 37-53 in: Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 55(2), p. 50.

Expulsion of Regime Opponents and ‘Non-Aryans’ from Nazi Germany to Turkey

After seizing power in 1933, the Nazi regime first began a bureaucratic process of plundering the ‘non-Aryan’ population, leading to their ‘death as citizens’ before, finally, being physically murdered. Refugees from the ‘Reich’ first emigrated to neighbouring countries and overseas. While most emigrants first had to build a new livelihood for themselves in a country of refuge, there was an early group of academics who, having been expelled from their universities under Nazi laws , were contractually appointed to posts at the Istanbul Üniversitesi (IÜ). 1818The decisive factor for the expulsion of Jewish and politically undesirable academics was the ‘Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums’ (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service) of 7.4.1933. On this cf. Michalka, Wolfgang, 1942: Deutsche Geschichte 1933-1945. Dokumente zur Innen- und Außenpolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, pp. 27-28. The full professors were given permission to bring their team of academic assistants, technicians and craftsmen to the IÜ. Some of their staff came with them to Turkey before the Nazi ‘expulsion machinery’ had been able to capture them; still others did not fear expulsion but came either out of interest in the job offer or out of solidarity with the expelled professors.

Turkey had recognized the opportunity to use the expulsions for the benefit of its reform programme. The Kemalists of the CHP appointed the émigrés until 1939, and then only sporadically until 1941, 1919In 1941, the orientalist Karl Süssheim came to the IÜ through the Turkish embassy in Berlin. Erichsen, Regine, 2008: Emigranten und offiziell aus Deutschland entsandte Fachleute im Bibliothekswesen: Ein Beispiel für Bedingungen und Wirkungen der Wissenschaftsemigration, pp. 87-116 in: Kubaseck, Christopher / Seufert, Günter (eds.): Deutsche Wissenschaftler im türkischen Exil: Die Wissenschaftsemigration in die Türkei 1933-1945. Würzburg: Ergon, p. 90. to posts in the newly founded model institutions whenever Nazi legislation in Germany triggered new waves of expulsions among academics and artists and, later, other professional groups as well. Some German and, from 1938, Austrian émigrés were also appointed to Turkish ministries and central enterprises of the state industrialization project. 2020For an overview of expulsions on the occasion of racist legislation in Germany and the corresponding appointments to the various model institutions and state enterprises in Istanbul and Ankara, cf. loc. cit., pp. 91,92 Family members of these approximately 300 employees were granted residence rights (without work permits). For these people, numbering around 1,000 in the period of expulsions from 1933 to 1944, Turkey became a sanctuary. 2121These numbers are, expressly, an estimate based on the Turkish file inventory and the corresponding Turkish publications, as well as the relevant archives abroad and in Germany, including the files of the institutions from which the emigrants were expelled. The numbers are open to revision. Indeed, relatives of the émigré still contact the author. A reliable source is Strauss, Herbert A. / Röder, Werner, 1999 (eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés. Volumes I-III. The ‘Dictionary’ cites the number of émigrés to Turkey as 135, relatives not counted. Academics without a post-doc qualification are not included: “The handbook remains elitist, however, since inclusion of individuals had to depend on the application of performance criteria to their biographies,” states the introduction to the German-language edition. Broszat, Martin / Silberman, Curt C., 1999: Forewords, p. IX in: Strauss, Herbert A. / Röder, Werner (eds.), Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933. Vol. I. Politik, Wirtschaft, Öffentliches Leben. Munich: K G Saur. Family members without any academic activity are recorded there, but their stay in Turkey is not easily verifiable. One approach is offered by a list of émigrés detailing the number of their relatives in Turkey: Cremer, Jan / Przytulla, Horst, 199: Exil Türkei. German-speaking emigrants in Turkey 1933-1945. Türkiyede’ki Alman asıllı politik göçmenler: Lipp GmbH, pp. 55-61. The first general inventory was made by Horst Widmann. Widmann, Horst, 1973: Exile and Educational Aid. Die deutschsprachige akademische Emigration in die Türkei nach 1933. Bern und Frankfurt am Main: Lang. In it, 144 persons are recorded and listed by name. Widmann did take into account the fluctuation of the chair holders surveyed during the period under review. But the inventory is not complete. The book also does not contain any information on the assistant craftsmen at the Turkish institutions studied, nor on their family members. Yet many of them moved to another place of refuge during the years of Nazi rule and especially after 1945. 2222Naturalizations did occur but were generally rejected because of the low income paid to Turkish specialists. One example may be mentioned. Ewald Löwenthal, appointed to the I Surgical Clinic of the IÜ along with the surgeon Rudolf Nissen, opened a private practice in Istanbul after his naturalization. He was the author’s paediatrician. Turkey did not offer them and their children a promising future. 2323E.g. cf. Neumark, Fritz, 1980: Zuflucht am Bosporus. Deutsche Gelehrte, Politiker und Künstler in der Emigration 1933-1953: Frankfurt am Main: Knecht, p. 228. Fritz Neumark (1900 – 1991) emigrated from Frankfurt to Turkey, where he taught economics and finance at the IÜ from 1933 to 1952. In any case, the Turkish state did support the émigrés against Turkish resistance at the university. 2424Thus in Peukert, Helge (ed.), 1995: Philipp Schwartz. Notgemeinschaft. Zur Emigration deutscher Wissenschaftler nach 1933 in die Türkei. Marburg: Metropolis, pp. 85-92. The old university in Istanbul (House of Knowledge, Darülfünun) had been closed in 1933 and 157 university teachers dismissed, which led to public protests. On the discussion about the closure of ‘Darülfünun’ Dölen, Emre, 2010: Darülfünun’dan Üniversiteye Geçiş. Tasfiye ve Yeni Kadrolar [The Transition from Darülfünun to University. The dismissals and the new appointments]. Istanbul: Bilgi Iletişim Grubu Yayıncılık, pp. 233-318. Notwithstanding the measures of the nationalization project against non-Turkish and ‘non-Muslim Turks’, the Kemalist regime even enacted special laws to circumvent the law banning emigrants from employment in certain positions. 2525Erichsen, Regine, 2004: Medizinemigration in die Türkei, pp.65-83 in Scholz, Albrecht / Heidel, Caris-Petra (eds.): Emigrantenschicksale. Einfluss der jüdischen Emigranten auf Sozialpolitik und Wissenschaft in den Aufnahmeländern. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, p.78.

In Germany, these émigrés had not only been at the mercy of the expulsion laws but had also been exposed to slander and spying by their Nazi colleagues. Nevertheless, the Nazi regime initially saw their expulsions of renowned scientists to Turkey as conducive to the ‘external prestige of the Reich’. Those who not already had been politically persecuted as opponents of the regime could receive certain benefits such as exemption from the ‘Reichsfluchtsteuer’, an abscondance tax generally imposed on those fleeing Germany. 2626Erichsen, Regine 2021: Der Gebrauch des Antisemitismus – Verfolgte jüdische Mediziner in der Türkei im Interessenfeld von Beruf und Politik, pp. 279-315), in: Heidel, Caris-Petra (ed.), 25 Jahre „Medizin und Judentum“. Rückblicke-Resultate-Reflexionen. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, pp. 291-315.

From their point of view, however, the émigrés in Turkey at that time could not know how racism would develop in Germany, nor could they be sure how permanent their protection in Turkey would be. After all, their residence status in Turkey was based only on temporary contracts.

Émigrés Caught between Right-Wing Nationalist Opposition in the CHP and the Violent Expansion of Nazi Power

After Atatürk’s death in 1938, anti-Semitism and xenophobia spread among Turkish officialdom. 2727That a Turkish right-wing nationalism came to resemble German National Socialism and how exclusionary politics played out in Turkey is shown by Konuk, Kader, 2013: Doğu Batı Mimesis. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, pp. 186f. The émigrés must have been worried with the German ‘Wehrmacht’ advancing into Eastern Europe, while in the same time Turkey tightened entry and settlement regulations for foreigners. Foreign families in Istanbul, some of whom had already been resident in the Ottoman Empire, with passports from territories now under National Socialist rule were asked to visit the German missions in Turkey in order to renew their passports. Since the Jews among them wanted to avoid the entry of a J (for ‘Jew’) in their passports and had not renewed them, they were considered ‘vatansız’ (in direct translation ‘homeless’, in the meaning of ‘stateless’). In fact, nineteen families were on the verge of expulsion, but the new president, Ismet Inönü, prevented it at the last moment. 2828Balı,2005, pp. 336-338.

The escalation of racism in Germany manifested itself in racist laws such as the ‘Blutschutzgesetz’ (forbidding Jews and non-Jews to marry) of 1935 and in organized violence against Jews during the pogrom on November 9, 1938. With the annexation of Austria by the ‘Wehrmacht’ in 1938 and the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia/Moravia in 1939, the Nazi state was expanding its power rapidly. 2929A chronology of racist measures and laws and on Nazi rule in Europe in Rürup, Reinhard (ed.), 1987: Topographie des Terrors. Gestapo, SS und Reichssicherheitshauptamt auf dem ‘Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände’. Berlin: Verlag Willmuth Arenhövel, pp. 109-125, pp. 104-156.

The rising numbers of refugees was leading to restrictions on admission in the countries of refuge. Representatives of 32 states and 24 aid organizations met in Evian, France, to discuss a solution, but they were unable to reach a satisfactory agreement on the admission of refugees. 3030Erichsen, Regine, 1998: Fluchthilfe, pp. 62-80 in Krohn, Claus-Dieter,/ von zur Mühlen, Patrik et.al. (eds.): Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945. Darmstadt: Primus, cols. 62-63. Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Shertok of the Jewish Agency for Palestine 3131The Jewish Agency represented the Jews of Palestine to the British Mandate government. The Mandate Government (1922-1948) had been established to create a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine then approached the Turkish President Inönü and offered a large sum of money for the admission of 200,000 Jews to Turkey. 3232Balı 2005, p.334 The Turkish parliament voted against the proposal with arguments such as being ‘swamped by foreigners’ and ‘triggering of an anti-Semitic backlash’, objections that had already been raised by other states against Jewish immigration. 3333Erichsen 1998, pp. 63, 64 With the Turkish press negatively reporting on refugee admission, Prime Minister Refik Saydam reasserted in 1939 that, “Turkey will not permit an influx of foreign Jews and it refuses to grant general admission to Jewish emigrants. An exception is only permitted in the case of scientific or technical assistants from abroad who are taken into service by Turkey. They have the right of residence in Turkey for themselves and their families for the duration of their contractual obligations. After that, they must leave the country.” 3434Thus Prime Minister Refik Saydam during his first term of office from 25. 1. to 3.4. 1939 in the Turkish daily newspaper ‘Ulus’ of 29.1.1933.

So much for the conditions of admission for emigrants. But Istanbul was to become a refugee destination on a larger scale as it became a hub for the passage to Palestine. In 1938, the Jewish Agency opened the first transit point for Jewish refugees with French and Italian passports in Istanbul. Chaim Barlas took over as director. 3535Balı 2005, p. 344.

Forcing the Germans in Turkey into Line and the Turkish reaction

In 1936, the number of Germans working in Turkey is recorded as 1,337. They include Germans settled abroad (referred to as ‘Auslandsdeutsche’), regular specialists sent by the ‘Reich’, and the émigrés in Turkish service. 3636Preußer 1936, p. 52.

In 1936, the Nazi government declared émigrés worldwide, and thus also in Turkey, to be opponents of the regime. Any remaining civil service contracts in Germany were now terminated, assets confiscated, and benefits such as exemption from the Reich Abscondance Tax discontinued: the émigrés became refugees as their return to the ‘Reich’ was no longer desired. The ‘Reich’ began to expatriate ‘politically conspicuous’ emigrants.” 3737Erichsen 2021, pp. 299-302

The Nazi regime went even further: Where bilateral relations with the host country permitted, Germany exerted pressure to have émigrés expelled from their places of refuge. The Nazi regime even began placing Germans with regular foreign residency arrangements under closer surveillance, a measure that covered the specialists sent to Turkey by the ‘Reich’ and Germans permanently established in Turkey.

In 1937 and 1939, Oberregierungsrat (Senior government cousillor) Herbert Scurla of the German Ministry of Education travelled to Turkey where, as in other countries, the Nazis now wanted to ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’. These interventions also threatened the residence status of emigrants.

An NSDAP branch had been established in Istanbul and, from 1933, began monitoring the attitude of locally based Germans and informing the consulate general. In the course of the so-called ‘Gleichschaltung’ (i.e. forcing into line, regimentation) the Germans in Turkey came under the influence of the Nazis in the colony putting German institutions in Istanbul under the control of members of the local Nazi local group in the city. 3838The ‘Gesetz über den Widerruf von Einbürgerungen und die Aberkennung der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit’ vom 14.07.1933 in Verbund mit der ‘Verordnung zur Durchführung des Gesetzes über den Widerruf von Einbürgerungen und die Aberkennung der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit vom 26.07.1933 ‘ (Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations and the Denial of German Citizenship’ in conjunction with an implementation regulation of the same name) was applied if Germans living abroad violated their “duty of loyalty to the Reich and the people”. Contravention resulted in expatriation. Neander, Joachim, 2008: Das Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht des „Dritten Reiches“ und seine Auswirkungen auf das Verfolgungsschicksal deutscher Staatsangehöriger, pp. 11-47 in theologie-geschichte. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kulturgeschichte, https://theologie-geschichte.de/ojs2/index.php/tg/issue/view/10/showToc, pp. 11-12. Jewish students began leaving the German School in Istanbul, and as late as 1943 a female Jewish student was expelled from the school. The German association ‘Teutonia’ excluded members with ‘anti-German tendencies’ from membership. 3939Radt, p.68, p.84. The German Hospital and the Protestant Church in Istanbul remained the German institutions to which the émigrés turned. 4040Erichsen, Regine, 1991: Die Emigration deutschsprachiger Naturwissenschaftler von 1933 bis 1945 in die Türkei in ihrem sozial- und wissenschaftshistorischen Wirkungszusammenhang, pp. 25-73 in Strauss, Herbert A. / Fischer, Klaus et al. (eds.): Die Emigration der Wissenschaften nach 1933. Disziplingeschichtliche Studien. Munich, London: K G Saur, p. 98.

Scurla’s focus was primarily on inspecting of the Higher Agricultural Institute (YZE) staff sent by the ‘Reich’. He drew on information from party comrades on the spot. Like Istanbul University, the YZE had been opened in 1933. Right-wing circles within the Republican People’s Party (CHP) were suspicious of the closeness to the ‘Reich’ of YZE professors seconded from German universities. This led to the non-renewal of their contracts from 1938. On the part of the Germans, as in the case of the Agricultural Commission of 1932, some of these German professors actually provoked Turkish administration of the university by breaking the rules governing their appointment. 4141Erichsen, 2000, pp. 48-50 Although pro-German officials at the Ministry of Agriculture had prevailed by 1939, Scurla’s instruction to the ‘Reich’ professors to accept their instructions only from the German Embassy and no longer from the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture contributed to the abandonment of the German-Turkish project and the German professors returned to their posts in Germany. 4242Grothusen, Klaus-Detlev (ed.), 1987: Bericht des Oberregierungsrates Dr.rer.pol. Herbert Scurla von der Auslandsabteilung des Reichserziehungsministeriums in Berlin über seine Dienstreise nach Ankara und Istanbul vom 11.-25. Mai 1939: Die Tätigkeit deutscher Hochschullehrer an türkischen wissenschaftlichen Hochschulen. Frankfurt am Main: Dağyeli, pp. 67-70, pp.72-74, p.76. German-Turkish agricultural relations have continued to this day. When the three émigrés among the staff at the university were also dismissed, Turkey did not expel them: one was able to return to Germany without personal risk, another took a job in Palestine (and returned to an appointment at Ankara University after the war), while a third rebuilt the Ankara water supply. 4343The geologist Max Pfannenstil organized the library of the YZE. He lived in Ankara for a year without a contract until he accepted the position of a civil servant librarian in Berlin in 1942, having clarified his legal situation regarding Nazi laws and deportation. In 1946 he received a full professorship at the University of Freiburg. Schwarzbach, Martin, 1976: Max Pfannenstiel in: Geologische Rundschau , 65(3), pp. 1130-1132. Bir, Atilla, 2021: Max Pfannenstiel’in Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü Kütüphane Müdürlüğü Yılları (1938-1941), Max Pfannenstiel as a Library Director at the Higher Agricultural Institute (1938-1941), pp. 341-354 in Osmanlı Bilim Araştırmaları 22(2). Otto Gerngroß, a chemist at YZE, did not receive a contract extention in 1943 and did not want to stay in Turkey (and potentially face internment). He accepted a position in Palestine, but took up an appointment at Ankara University in 1947, cf. Erichsen 2021, p.315. Geologist Wilhelm Salomon-Calvi, at YZE until 1938, was given the task of reorganizing Ankara’s water supply. He died in Ankara in 1941 and received a state funeral. Strauss / Röder Vol. II, p. 1013.The reasons for two other dismissals at two other institutes in Ankara are not yet clear.

Scurla’s second inspection objective in Turkey was to register German ‘Jews’, as defined by the ‘Reich’, who had not previously been recorded under by Nazi legislation. A questionnaire, distributed by the German missions, was designed to identify those in the German colony who had already been registered by the ‘Reich’ as ‘non-Aryans’. Passports of ‘non-Aryans’, and likewise of those who refused to answer, were no longer renewed. 4444Balı 2005. p. 337. Grothusen 1987, pp.25-27 Émigrés who had left the country in 1933, before registration by the `Reich´ authorities, now had to make a choice: passport possession meant recognition of German laws (from 1939 there was the so-called ‘Heimatschein’, an ID for Germans living abroad); whereas passportlessness could mean expulsion. An example of a decision and its consequence is the case of Traugott Fuchs, who was not registered in Germany as an ‘opponent of the Reich’ when he left Germany, was appointed to the chair of European languages at the IÜ as an assistant (along with the Romance scholar Leo Spitzer) and kept his passport. He was then called up for German military service. The émigré Herrmann Quinke, director of the German Hospital in Istanbul, issued him a certificate of unfitness for military service. 4545Thus Traugott Fuchs in an interview with the author on September 30, 1990.

Those who renounced their German citizenship when confronted by the questionnaire campaign, were, however, indeed initially threatened with expulsion. This was the line taken by the right-wing nationalist opposition within the CHP but, in the light of reports in the Turkish press highlighting expulsions of passportless Germans, the Turkish President Inönü stopped this measure. 4646Balı 2005, pp. 337-338.

Scurla’s third inspection goal was to negotiate with the Turkish government to replace the émigrés in Turkish service with regular experts sent from the Reich. 4747Grothusen 1987, pp. 115, 116 The Turkish government refused. In the Turkish parliament, Inönü’s position was ultimately able to consolidate his position and a bill by the inner-party opposition with an anti-Semitic basis was rejected. 4848Loc. cit., p.296-299

While Scurla was pushing for the émigrés in Turkey to be expatriated to the Reich in 1939, it was a recommendation that applied to all emigrants by 1941. All over the world German émigrés were expatriated.

Even under these circumstances émigrés in Turkey were able to remain in their jobs. Their contracts were renewed and their residence permits were stamped with the usual ‘haymatloz’ (the Turkish spelling of the translation of the German ‘heimatlos’, ‘vatansız’ in Turkish. Ernst Hirsch, holder of the Chair of Commercial Law at the IÜ, received from the Turkish Ministry of Education confirmation that the émigrés’ activities were in the Turkish interest. 4949Hirsch 1982, p.279.

This view was also taken of the mid-level academics and non-academics emigrants at the IÜ. In any case, they did not represent a threat to Turkish colleagues because the German academic assistants were not allowed to habilitate at the IÜ and, as for non-academic positions, the Turkish vocational training system did not produce qualified Turkish personnel until the 1950s. 5050Cf. Erichsen, Regine, 2004: Margarethe Reininger, Esther von Bülow und Lotte Löwe und ihr Beitrag zum medizinischen Wissenschafts- und Technologietransfer in die Türkei, pp. 139-155 in Heidel 2004, pp.144-148. Émigré Rudolf Kraus, an Assyriologist at the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, describes the foreigners employed in Turkish services who were not professors as “secure but low wage earners”: they considered themselves permanently employed but very poorly paid. During the war, which impacted greatly the Turkish economy, too, they could hardly afford the expensive prices of food, even eating bread that the Turks did not like. Schmidt, Jan, 2014: Dreizehn Jahre Istanbul (1937-1949). Der deutsche Assyriologe Fritz Rudolf Kraus und sein Briefwechsel im türkischen Exil. Volume II. Leiden, Boston: Brill, p. 974. When Turkey broke off relations with Germany in 1944, before declaring war on Germany in 1945, the passportless émigrés remained in their positions in Turkish institutions. On the other hand, German ID- and passport-holding emigrants, expatriates, specialists and ‘Reich’ representatives were interned until the end of the war in 1945. 5151Laqueur, Kurt, 2008: Kır Şehir. Das Leben der deutschen Konfirierten in einer anatolischen Kleinstadt pp. 187-199 in: Kubaseck / Seufert 2008, pp.188,189.

In a report on the ‘Jewish Question in Turkey’, the ‘Reich’ had already concluded in 1938 that Turkish anti-Semitism was not comparable with German racism:

Although the émigrés generally remained in Turkish service, in some cases professors did found their position undermined by Turkish competitors. Karl Hellmann in the chair of rhino-laryngology at the IÜ moved on to Palestine in 1943 when his Turkish colleague of many years pushed him out. 5353The Swedish ambassador, a patient of Hellmann, arranged employment in Palestine. On this, cf. Erichsen, Regine, 2006: Die Mediziner der 5. Aliyah und ihr Beitrag zum Aufbau des jüdischen Staates im Vergleich mit Aufbauleistungen von deutschen Emigranten in der Türkei, pp. 145-167 in Heidel, Petra-Caris (ed.): Der Einfluss des Zionismus auf Medizin und Gesundheitswesen. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, p. 158. Paul Pulewka, a pharmacologist in Ankara, took one-and-a-half years to regain his contract after being pushed out by the lobby of the emerging Turkish pharmaceutical companies, probably due to the Turkish drug control he initiated in 1940. 5454Pulewka, Paul, 1980: Neunzehn Jahre als Pharmakologe in der Türkei, pp. 199-211 in: Therapie der Gegenwart 119 (2), pp. 206-209. Thus, emigrants could remain in Turkey even without a contract, provided they found means of subsistence.

When Turkey, under pressure from England, removed three German émigrés from the Ministry of Economy, two of them ran an import-export business in Istanbul and the other then obtained a faculty position at Ankara University. 5555When England and France declared war on Germany in 1939, they demanded the dismissal of all German experts from Turkish service in the context of a defensive alliance with Turkey. The Turkish government strongly refused but did comply in three cases: Fritz Baade and Hans Wilbrandt then operated an import-export trade in Istanbul. Ernst Reuter, later mayor of Berlin, was given the chair of urban studies at the School of Political Sciences (later faculty of Ankara Üniversitesi, AÜ). So in Hirsch 1982, p. 289. In émigré circles, rumours circulated that spurious accusations of espionage lay behind some of the dismissals. 5656Neumark 1980, 209-211. Neumark, Fritz, 1981: Emigration in die Türkei, 442-460 in Lepsius, M. Rainer (ed.), Soziologie in Deutschland und Österreich 1918-1945. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, p. 447. That these grounds for dismissal were not so ‘threadbare’ has since been shown by the release of documents of the American intelligence agency OSS (Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA), which list some ‘German refugee professors’ as agents against the Nazi regime. As for espionage activities on the other side, members of the German colony found to be working for German ‘Abwehr’ (Nazi intelligence) faced automatic expulsion. 5757Rubin, Barry, 1989: Istanbul Intrigues. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, p. 51-52, p. 280.

Turkish sensitivity to espionage activities for the ‘Reich’ in the late 1930s and early 1940s was due in particular to the Wehrmacht’s plans to invade Turkey. By 1941, German troops had advanced into the vicinity of the Turkish border. The inhabitants of Istanbul were about to be evacuated. However, the development of the German campaign in Russia from 1941 onwards prevented the `Wehrmacht´ from entering Turkey. 5858Krecker1964, p.148 f.

Istanbul as a Transit City

When the Nazi regime decided, in 1941, on its ‘Final Solution’, i.e. the murder of the Jews, the expanding Nazi-German sphere of power had closed the escape routes. This made Istanbul a city of the refugees who saw Palestine as their escape destination. In this phase of Istanbul’s history as a place of refuge, the refugees were again caught between two fronts. Although Turkey was encouraging transit to Palestine, it also sought to prevent immigration to Turkey. The British Mandate government’s ‘White Paper’ on Palestine set quotas for both illegal and legal migration into the territory, faced as it was by Arab resistance. This policy distinguished between immigrants and refugees. 5959Ofer, Dalia, 1990: Escaping the Holocaust. Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel 1933-1944: New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 128-142. This meant they were not allowed to stay in Turkey or immigrate to Palestine, a situation that resulted in refugees losing their lives at sea. The best known case is the shipwreck of the ‘Struma’ that sank in the Black Sea. A total of 1,393 refugees drowned. In total, 38,542 refugees did reach Palestine by ship. 6060On the history of the ‘Struma’ and its passengers, see Ofer, loc.cit. p. 147-163; on the numbers of refugees who drowned and to those who reached Palestine, cf. loc.cit. p. 327.

With the onset of the Second World War, Turkey allowed refugee aid organizations such as the Mossad, the Histradut, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and the War Refugee Board (WRB) to coordinate refugee assistance from Istanbul. 6161Erichsen 1998, col. 175 In total, 16,474 refugees reached their destination of Palestine by land through Turkey via Istanbul. 6262Ofer 1990, p. 320

Footnotes

• 1Hilberg, Raul, 1991: Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden. Vol. 1. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, pp.56-66. Loc.cit. Vol. 3, 1991: pp. 1280-1300.
• 2The best-known dissident is the poet Nazîm Hikmet, who is still highly revered in Turkey today: Gronau, Dietrich,1991: Nazîm Hikmet: Reinbek: Rowohlt.
• 3Balı, Rıfat, 2003: Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri. Aliya: Bir toplu göçün öyküsü 1946-1949. (The Jews of Turkey in the Years of the Republic. Aliya: The story of a mass emigration 1946-1948), Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, p.258. Foreign company branches in Turkey were also hit by the tax regime, cf. Glasneck, Wolfgang / Kircheisen, Inge, 1968: Die Türkei und Afghanistan – Brennpunkte der deutschen Orientpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, p. 146.
• 4Kreiser, Klaus, 2003: Die neue Türkei, pp.383-434 in Kreiser, Klaus / Neumann, Christioph (eds.), Kleine Geschichte der Türkei. Stuttgart: Reclam
• 5Preußer, Richard, 1936: Deutsche in Istanbul und der übrigen Türkei, pp.43 -52 in: Verband deutscher Vereine im Ausland (ed.): Wir Deutsche in der Welt. Berlin: Otto Stollberg, p. 44.
• 6“Turkey was no longer an unknown country, skilled workers were in demand. Unemployment in Germany was disastrous and, with the young Turkish Republic needing helping hands, many Germans came to the new Republic,” according to Radt, Barbara, 2001: Geschichte der Teutonia. Herausgegeben vom Orient-Institut dr DMG. Abteilung Istanbul: Würzburg: Ergon,pp. 67, 89.
• 7Güçlü, Yücel, 2002: Turkey’s Relations with Germany from the Conclusion of the Montreux Straits Convention up to the Outbreak of the Second World War, pp. 124-161 in Belleten Cilt LXVI (245), p. 141f.
• 8Krecker, Lothar,1964: Deutschland und die Türkei im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 19-23. Koçak, Cemil, 1991: Türk-Alman Ilişkileri (1923-1939). Iki Dünya Savaşı Arasındaki Siyasal, Kültürel, Askeri ve Ekonomik Ilişkiler (Turkish-German Relations (1923-1939). The political, cultural, military and economic relations between two world wars). Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basım Evi, pp. 38-42.
• 9Cf. on the gradual re-Islamization since the Atatürk era and on the interpretation of the principle of secularism in the Turkish constitution throughout Turkish history cf. Erichsen, Regine, 1988: Die Religionspolitik im türkischen Erziehungswesen von der Atatürk-Ära bis heute, pp. 234-247 in: Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch, 38(2), p. 238f.
• 10Balı, Rıfat, 20057 : Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri. Bir Türkleştirme Serüveni (The Jews of Turkey in the ‘Republican Years’. The Adventure of a Turkification). Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, p. 206. Radt, p. 89, p. 93.
• 11Loc.cit. p. 103.
• 12Loc. cit. p.206,208, 211.
• 13Loc. cit., p. 228. The law mainly affected foreign employees in Turkish companies and small-scale foreign entrepreneurs.
• 14Loc. cit., p. 213, p.237. This practice of equating ‘Muslim’ and ‘Turk’ was pointed out to the professor of commercial law Ernst Hirsch at Istanbul Üniversitesi (IÜ) by a Turkish colleague and member of parliament when he was considering Turkish citizenship. He was advised to convert to Islam so that he would then be granted citizenship immediately. Hirsch did acquire Turkish citizenship without conversion. Hirsch, Ernst E.,1982: Aus des Kaisers Zeiten durch die Weimarer Republik in das Land Atatürks: eine unzeitgemässe Autobiographie. Munich: Schweitzer, pp. 278-279. The legal scholar Ernst E. Hirsch (1902-1985), who had emigrated from Frankfurt, taught commercial law at the IÜ from 1933-1943. After taking Turkish citizenship in 1943, he taught philosophy of law and sociology of law at law school in Ankara, which then became a faculty of the newly founded University of Ankara (AÜ) in 1946), pp. 278-279.
• 15Balı 2005, p. 228.
• 16Fabricius to Prüfer, German Embassy Ankara on 23.9.1933. Files of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office PA AA, RZ 207/245982. Mangold-Will is of the opinion Oldenburg only wanted to teach Turkey values(?!). Mangold-Will, Sabine, 2013: Begrenzte Freundschaft. Deutschland und die Turkei 1918-1933. Göttingen: Wallstein, p. 401.
• 17Erichsen, Regine 2000: The Politics Behind Scientific Transfer Between Turkey and Germany in the Case of the Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü in Ankara, pp. 37-53 in: Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 55(2), p. 50.
• 18The decisive factor for the expulsion of Jewish and politically undesirable academics was the ‘Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums’ (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service) of 7.4.1933. On this cf. Michalka, Wolfgang, 1942: Deutsche Geschichte 1933-1945. Dokumente zur Innen- und Außenpolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, pp. 27-28
• 19In 1941, the orientalist Karl Süssheim came to the IÜ through the Turkish embassy in Berlin. Erichsen, Regine, 2008: Emigranten und offiziell aus Deutschland entsandte Fachleute im Bibliothekswesen: Ein Beispiel für Bedingungen und Wirkungen der Wissenschaftsemigration, pp. 87-116 in: Kubaseck, Christopher / Seufert, Günter (eds.): Deutsche Wissenschaftler im türkischen Exil: Die Wissenschaftsemigration in die Türkei 1933-1945. Würzburg: Ergon, p. 90.
• 20For an overview of expulsions on the occasion of racist legislation in Germany and the corresponding appointments to the various model institutions and state enterprises in Istanbul and Ankara, cf. loc. cit., pp. 91,92
• 21These numbers are, expressly, an estimate based on the Turkish file inventory and the corresponding Turkish publications, as well as the relevant archives abroad and in Germany, including the files of the institutions from which the emigrants were expelled. The numbers are open to revision. Indeed, relatives of the émigré still contact the author. A reliable source is Strauss, Herbert A. / Röder, Werner, 1999 (eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés. Volumes I-III. The ‘Dictionary’ cites the number of émigrés to Turkey as 135, relatives not counted. Academics without a post-doc qualification are not included: “The handbook remains elitist, however, since inclusion of individuals had to depend on the application of performance criteria to their biographies,” states the introduction to the German-language edition. Broszat, Martin / Silberman, Curt C., 1999: Forewords, p. IX in: Strauss, Herbert A. / Röder, Werner (eds.), Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933. Vol. I. Politik, Wirtschaft, Öffentliches Leben. Munich: K G Saur. Family members without any academic activity are recorded there, but their stay in Turkey is not easily verifiable. One approach is offered by a list of émigrés detailing the number of their relatives in Turkey: Cremer, Jan / Przytulla, Horst, 199: Exil Türkei. German-speaking emigrants in Turkey 1933-1945. Türkiyede’ki Alman asıllı politik göçmenler: Lipp GmbH, pp. 55-61. The first general inventory was made by Horst Widmann. Widmann, Horst, 1973: Exile and Educational Aid. Die deutschsprachige akademische Emigration in die Türkei nach 1933. Bern und Frankfurt am Main: Lang. In it, 144 persons are recorded and listed by name. Widmann did take into account the fluctuation of the chair holders surveyed during the period under review. But the inventory is not complete. The book also does not contain any information on the assistant craftsmen at the Turkish institutions studied, nor on their family members.
• 22Naturalizations did occur but were generally rejected because of the low income paid to Turkish specialists. One example may be mentioned. Ewald Löwenthal, appointed to the I Surgical Clinic of the IÜ along with the surgeon Rudolf Nissen, opened a private practice in Istanbul after his naturalization. He was the author’s paediatrician
• 23E.g. cf. Neumark, Fritz, 1980: Zuflucht am Bosporus. Deutsche Gelehrte, Politiker und Künstler in der Emigration 1933-1953: Frankfurt am Main: Knecht, p. 228. Fritz Neumark (1900 – 1991) emigrated from Frankfurt to Turkey, where he taught economics and finance at the IÜ from 1933 to 1952.
• 24Thus in Peukert, Helge (ed.), 1995: Philipp Schwartz. Notgemeinschaft. Zur Emigration deutscher Wissenschaftler nach 1933 in die Türkei. Marburg: Metropolis, pp. 85-92. The old university in Istanbul (House of Knowledge, Darülfünun) had been closed in 1933 and 157 university teachers dismissed, which led to public protests. On the discussion about the closure of ‘Darülfünun’ Dölen, Emre, 2010: Darülfünun’dan Üniversiteye Geçiş. Tasfiye ve Yeni Kadrolar [The Transition from Darülfünun to University. The dismissals and the new appointments]. Istanbul: Bilgi Iletişim Grubu Yayıncılık, pp. 233-318.
• 25Erichsen, Regine, 2004: Medizinemigration in die Türkei, pp.65-83 in Scholz, Albrecht / Heidel, Caris-Petra (eds.): Emigrantenschicksale. Einfluss der jüdischen Emigranten auf Sozialpolitik und Wissenschaft in den Aufnahmeländern. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, p.78.
• 26Erichsen, Regine 2021: Der Gebrauch des Antisemitismus – Verfolgte jüdische Mediziner in der Türkei im Interessenfeld von Beruf und Politik, pp. 279-315), in: Heidel, Caris-Petra (ed.), 25 Jahre „Medizin und Judentum“. Rückblicke-Resultate-Reflexionen. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, pp. 291-315.
• 27That a Turkish right-wing nationalism came to resemble German National Socialism and how exclusionary politics played out in Turkey is shown by Konuk, Kader, 2013: Doğu Batı Mimesis. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, pp. 186f.
• 28Balı,2005, pp. 336-338.
• 29A chronology of racist measures and laws and on Nazi rule in Europe in Rürup, Reinhard (ed.), 1987: Topographie des Terrors. Gestapo, SS und Reichssicherheitshauptamt auf dem ‘Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände’. Berlin: Verlag Willmuth Arenhövel, pp. 109-125, pp. 104-156.
• 30Erichsen, Regine, 1998: Fluchthilfe, pp. 62-80 in Krohn, Claus-Dieter,/ von zur Mühlen, Patrik et.al. (eds.): Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945. Darmstadt: Primus, cols. 62-63.
• 31The Jewish Agency represented the Jews of Palestine to the British Mandate government. The Mandate Government (1922-1948) had been established to create a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine
• 32Balı 2005, p.334
• 33Erichsen 1998, pp. 63, 64
• 34Thus Prime Minister Refik Saydam during his first term of office from 25. 1. to 3.4. 1939 in the Turkish daily newspaper ‘Ulus’ of 29.1.1933.
• 35Balı 2005, p. 344.
• 36Preußer 1936, p. 52.
• 37Erichsen 2021, pp. 299-302
• 38The ‘Gesetz über den Widerruf von Einbürgerungen und die Aberkennung der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit’ vom 14.07.1933 in Verbund mit der ‘Verordnung zur Durchführung des Gesetzes über den Widerruf von Einbürgerungen und die Aberkennung der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit vom 26.07.1933 ‘ (Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations and the Denial of German Citizenship’ in conjunction with an implementation regulation of the same name) was applied if Germans living abroad violated their “duty of loyalty to the Reich and the people”. Contravention resulted in expatriation. Neander, Joachim, 2008: Das Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht des „Dritten Reiches“ und seine Auswirkungen auf das Verfolgungsschicksal deutscher Staatsangehöriger, pp. 11-47 in theologie-geschichte. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kulturgeschichte, https://theologie-geschichte.de/ojs2/index.php/tg/issue/view/10/showToc, pp. 11-12.
• 39Radt, p.68, p.84.
• 40Erichsen, Regine, 1991: Die Emigration deutschsprachiger Naturwissenschaftler von 1933 bis 1945 in die Türkei in ihrem sozial- und wissenschaftshistorischen Wirkungszusammenhang, pp. 25-73 in Strauss, Herbert A. / Fischer, Klaus et al. (eds.): Die Emigration der Wissenschaften nach 1933. Disziplingeschichtliche Studien. Munich, London: K G Saur, p. 98.
• 41Erichsen, 2000, pp. 48-50
• 42Grothusen, Klaus-Detlev (ed.), 1987: Bericht des Oberregierungsrates Dr.rer.pol. Herbert Scurla von der Auslandsabteilung des Reichserziehungsministeriums in Berlin über seine Dienstreise nach Ankara und Istanbul vom 11.-25. Mai 1939: Die Tätigkeit deutscher Hochschullehrer an türkischen wissenschaftlichen Hochschulen. Frankfurt am Main: Dağyeli, pp. 67-70, pp.72-74, p.76. German-Turkish agricultural relations have continued to this day.
• 43The geologist Max Pfannenstil organized the library of the YZE. He lived in Ankara for a year without a contract until he accepted the position of a civil servant librarian in Berlin in 1942, having clarified his legal situation regarding Nazi laws and deportation. In 1946 he received a full professorship at the University of Freiburg. Schwarzbach, Martin, 1976: Max Pfannenstiel in: Geologische Rundschau , 65(3), pp. 1130-1132. Bir, Atilla, 2021: Max Pfannenstiel’in Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü Kütüphane Müdürlüğü Yılları (1938-1941), Max Pfannenstiel as a Library Director at the Higher Agricultural Institute (1938-1941), pp. 341-354 in Osmanlı Bilim Araştırmaları 22(2). Otto Gerngroß, a chemist at YZE, did not receive a contract extention in 1943 and did not want to stay in Turkey (and potentially face internment). He accepted a position in Palestine, but took up an appointment at Ankara University in 1947, cf. Erichsen 2021, p.315. Geologist Wilhelm Salomon-Calvi, at YZE until 1938, was given the task of reorganizing Ankara’s water supply. He died in Ankara in 1941 and received a state funeral. Strauss / Röder Vol. II, p. 1013.The reasons for two other dismissals at two other institutes in Ankara are not yet clear.
• 44Balı 2005. p. 337. Grothusen 1987, pp.25-27
• 45Thus Traugott Fuchs in an interview with the author on September 30, 1990.
• 46Balı 2005, pp. 337-338.
• 47Grothusen 1987, pp. 115, 116
• 48Loc. cit., p.296-299
• 49Hirsch 1982, p.279.
• 50Cf. Erichsen, Regine, 2004: Margarethe Reininger, Esther von Bülow und Lotte Löwe und ihr Beitrag zum medizinischen Wissenschafts- und Technologietransfer in die Türkei, pp. 139-155 in Heidel 2004, pp.144-148. Émigré Rudolf Kraus, an Assyriologist at the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, describes the foreigners employed in Turkish services who were not professors as “secure but low wage earners”: they considered themselves permanently employed but very poorly paid. During the war, which impacted greatly the Turkish economy, too, they could hardly afford the expensive prices of food, even eating bread that the Turks did not like. Schmidt, Jan, 2014: Dreizehn Jahre Istanbul (1937-1949). Der deutsche Assyriologe Fritz Rudolf Kraus und sein Briefwechsel im türkischen Exil. Volume II. Leiden, Boston: Brill, p. 974.
• 51Laqueur, Kurt, 2008: Kır Şehir. Das Leben der deutschen Konfirierten in einer anatolischen Kleinstadt pp. 187-199 in: Kubaseck / Seufert 2008, pp.188,189.
• 52Bericht der Deutschen Botschaft Ankara an das Auswärtige Amt Berlin, am 1.2.1938. PAAA RZ 211 (Politische Abteilung) R 104799: Turkey Po 36, Judenfrage in der Türkei.
• 53The Swedish ambassador, a patient of Hellmann, arranged employment in Palestine. On this, cf. Erichsen, Regine, 2006: Die Mediziner der 5. Aliyah und ihr Beitrag zum Aufbau des jüdischen Staates im Vergleich mit Aufbauleistungen von deutschen Emigranten in der Türkei, pp. 145-167 in Heidel, Petra-Caris (ed.): Der Einfluss des Zionismus auf Medizin und Gesundheitswesen. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, p. 158.
• 54Pulewka, Paul, 1980: Neunzehn Jahre als Pharmakologe in der Türkei, pp. 199-211 in: Therapie der Gegenwart 119 (2), pp. 206-209.
• 55When England and France declared war on Germany in 1939, they demanded the dismissal of all German experts from Turkish service in the context of a defensive alliance with Turkey. The Turkish government strongly refused but did comply in three cases: Fritz Baade and Hans Wilbrandt then operated an import-export trade in Istanbul. Ernst Reuter, later mayor of Berlin, was given the chair of urban studies at the School of Political Sciences (later faculty of Ankara Üniversitesi, AÜ). So in Hirsch 1982, p. 289.
• 56Neumark 1980, 209-211. Neumark, Fritz, 1981: Emigration in die Türkei, 442-460 in Lepsius, M. Rainer (ed.), Soziologie in Deutschland und Österreich 1918-1945. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, p. 447.
• 57Rubin, Barry, 1989: Istanbul Intrigues. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, p. 51-52, p. 280.
• 58Krecker1964, p.148 f.
• 59Ofer, Dalia, 1990: Escaping the Holocaust. Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel 1933-1944: New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 128-142.
• 60On the history of the ‘Struma’ and its passengers, see Ofer, loc.cit. p. 147-163; on the numbers of refugees who drowned and to those who reached Palestine, cf. loc.cit. p. 327.
• 61Erichsen 1998, col. 175
• 62Ofer 1990, p. 320

The present text of the author Regine Erichsen is based on a research she performed from 1989-1997 funded  by the German Research Foundation. With a state permit in Turkey it was carried out in relevant archives in Europe accompanied by interviews with emigrés and contemporary witnesses.