Alle Orte
Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Migration and the Americas
Mit: PD Dr. Andrea Acle-Kreysing, Universität Heidelberg, Historisches Seminar
What happened to Alexander von Humboldt’s legacy when German-speaking intellectuals fleeing National Socialism encountered it from exile in Mexico? This talk explores how Humboldt’s political afterlives were reshaped after 1933 in a country where his name carried exceptional symbolic weight. Humboldt had long stood for European scientific engagement with the Americas, but also for recognition of the region’s political and cultural significance. Precisely for that reason, his legacy became contested. Celebrated by the German colony and claimed by Nazi-aligned cultural institutions, Humboldt was reread by antifascist exiles as a different kind of German ancestor: one whose rejection of biological definitions of race could be mobilized against Nazism. Focusing on German-speaking Jewish writers such as Alfons Goldschmidt and Egon Erwin Kisch, the talk builds on Nicolaas Rupke’s argument that elements of the later GDR canon of Humboldt — especially the image of him as an anti-imperial and anti-racist figure — began in wartime Mexico.
Heidelberg Center for American Studies
