Archives in Oxford and Germany
This is an excerpt of some preliminary analysis from my annotated bibliography
Archives and Primary Sources
This project uses primary material from archives in Germany and in the United Kingdom. There is a considerable corpus of German scholarship on Blochmann which has made use of the unpublished material in Germany but the sources in Oxford have remained extant. The archives in Oxford offer the most significant contribution to our knowledge of her life and this study presents previously unpublished correspondence from Elisabeth Blochmann and her contemporaries.
In his article on Blochmann, Wolfgang Klafki noted that her time in Oxford ‘will be a task of future biographical research.’[1] The sources known to German scholars were ‘quite sparse’ and so instead relied on indirect inferences from Blochmann’s essays in the first years of the end of the war. In correspondence with Hartmut Wenzel, he indicated to me that a previous contact at the University of Oxford Department of Education, John Sayer, shared some of the material from Lady Margaret Hall (LMH). There was one article on Blochmann’s time in Oxford by Eva Becker in 2003 which was published in a specialist journal in 2003 followed by a republication in Pädagogische Rundschau in 2005.[2] According to a review in literaturkritik.de, Becker made use of Blochmann’s letters to Nohl and first noted her use of code when referencing Martin Heidegger.[3] It is likely, however, that others have made use of the Nohl letters and it appears that Becker was unable to access any sources from Oxford.
In terms of English scholarship on Elisabeth Blochmann, I can confidently state that there is effectively nothing. Blochmann appears consistently in Heidegger monographs where she is credited in footnotes with identical descriptions, ‘half-Jewish’, ‘friends with Elfride’, ‘lost academic position and forced into exile’, ‘corresponded with Heidegger.’ A recent monograph on refugee scholars at the University of Oxford mentioned Blochmann’s name five times amongst the thousands of German-Jewish academics who fled to the United Kingdom in 1933.[4] This study did not, however, cite her file in SPSL nor did it mention her having been supplied a reference by Martin Heidegger. It is therefore reasonable to believe that this file and its contents is entirely unknown to other scholars.
This is a common frustration with Blochmann as there are countless studies that chronicle her precise historical time, place, and milieu, yet she lingers in footnotes. For instance, Emma Huber’s study of the H.G. Fiedler archive is of incredible value to our understanding of Blochmann’s work as a German tutor in Oxford. At first glance, the article makes no mention of her until one spots a single line in a lecture list from 1935 where ‘Miss Blochmann’ is listed as having given a lecture ‘Einführung in das Studiom von Schillers Werken’ in 1935.[5] On the same page, a photo of the German faculty from approximately 1930s, includes a woman of striking resemblance but of uncertain identity.[6] It is remarkable how Blochmann remains so obscure even in this well-researched niche.
Blochmann’s obscurity in Oxford is even more perplexing considering her prominence in German scholarship both before and after the war. One possible explanation is her limited publications in English which are few in number and tend to be less confident than those in her native German.[7] Of course this is not to say that she ever struggled with the language only that she was aware of minor imperfections. She states in her refugee application that she communicated in English ‘without difficulty’ but that she hoped ‘to be able to speak English really well soon.’ In a letter to Nohl, she was apparently invited to LMH in order to ‘perfect [her] English.’[8] She also added that her writing in English was only ‘partly good’.[9] After twenty years in Oxford, her correspondence would contain the occasional mistake and a friend remembered that she liked to ‘laugh at herself over her very rare linguistic slips’. Far more than her linguistic abilities, it seems more likely that Blochmann’s limited publications in English were a consequence of her operating away from her academic and intellectual home. As her eulogy put it,
These must have been hard years for another reason: history and Pedagogik were her own proper studies and not literature. As a tutor she could be awe-inspiring, perhaps because she was not altogether sure of herself: the rigidity was academic and when it was a case of human need no one could be kinder to her pupils.[10]
The archival material in Oxford provides more definition to Blochmann’s character, emotional state, and intellectual development. It is clear that Blochmann was significantly affected by her time in exile and her writings after the war state this outright. But it has always remained a mystery as to what she experienced while living, working, and teaching in what was, after all, a vibrant centre of intellectual life. Furthermore, her exile in 1933 is a significant event in the ongoing discourse surrounding Heidegger’s alliance with National Socialism. If anything is broadly known about Elisabeth Blochmann, it is that she suffered a similar fate as Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, and Karl Jaspers. Her nineteen years of obscurity in Oxford were the outcome of Heidegger’s betrayal.
This project aims to bring greater attention to the life and work of Elisabeth Blochmann and begins by highlighting the broader historical significance and meaning of her life in Oxford. Her correspondence demonstrates that she traversed a broader network of German scholars and emigres, many of which became architects of postwar German democracy, women’s education, and academic research. She operated within an international network while also living and working in the close, personal, environment of an Oxford women’s college. The practice of tutoring German to upper-class English women at Lady Margaret Hall extended to the social, cultural, and political life of the college. This embedding of pedagogy into the social life of students and tutors was, in her view, the strength of English women’s higher education which produced socially competent and self-confident women. This experience strongly informed Blochmann’s conceptualization of women’s education as being necessarily ‘emancipatory’ – a model she later championed in Germany. Her experience of English higher education in Oxford prompted a serious and sustained reflection on the differences with German education and much of her subsequent scholarly work attends to this comparison.[11] In correspondence with contemporaries, Blochmann is sensitive to the tensions between the shifting political landscapes in England and in Germany. She was in contact with Hans Grimm whom she helped present a lecture series while in Oxford (with the help of Helena Deneke).[12] Their correspondence partially survives in the DLA which makes it clear that the lecture that Grimm would have given in Oxford never occurred but that Blochmann was quite aligned with his views. It is worth including here:
Blochmann to Grimm, LMH Stationery
8 Nov. 1938 – [Grimm's planned lecture tour cancelled, probably due to the Sudeten crisis]
What a nice surprise it was this morning, when between the mail there was your big speech
with your friendly dedication. They gave me great pleasure – doubly so, since we couldn't
hear them here. (However, her lecture evening has remained in everyone's vivid memory – a
strong, deep impression for everyone). At this very moment, your speech and your
comprehensive understanding ...? find open ears on both sides. In any case, I sincerely wish
you so. The last few weeks have been a chain of difficult experiences for anyone who
believes in the possibility of real cooperation between English and Germans, and even if the
clouds of...? Mutual misunderstandings cannot be misunderstood, but they cloud one's
view of the near future. But it is precisely because your speech so firmly adheres to faith
that it is so valuable.
With cordial greetings also to your dear wife and son
Yours, Elisabeth Blochmann[13]
The last letter in the file is from Grimm to the British Union of Fascists requesting to join a meeting. There is no date but apparently the British Union of Fascists was officially banned in 1940 so it would be sometime before then.
Grimm an British Union of Fascists, n.d.
Dear Mr Maddon / Hadden,
May I approach you on the following subject. I am the German author of the book "Volk
ohne Raum" which is one of the most widely read books of present-day Germany. I am
revisiting England where I haven't been for a very long time and am staying in London at
present. Now I would like very much to take part in a fascist meeting. Unfortunately, I cannot be in London ... but there ... another opportunity. Would you very kindly assist me in this matter? I remember your name from a letter you wrote to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and hence I ... to address you on the matter. ... in anticipation
Yours faithfully,[14]
To give better context of their relationship, there is a wonderful excerpt from the memoirs of Helena Deneke below. Blochmann organized for her pupil Farwell, who was from Oriel College, to stay with Grimm in Germany in order to learn German. In exchange, Farwell was to assist in translations. Blochmann’s correspondence with Grimm provides more (and hilarious detail).[15]
In the village lived the well-known writer Hans Grimm, who convinced Professor Nohl that he was anti-Nazi at heart and yet kept in with them sufficiently to be allowed freedom. My pupil, Farwell {Oriel, Oxford} (was staying with him to talk English, and he drew me into the problem of helping Grimm translate a heavy verbose lecture of his into English, which he meant to give somewhere in England. Grimm was obstinately insistent on keeping ever shade of every parenthesis in his involved sentences and would not believe that a literal translation would not be understood. I remember my struggles and remember his kindness in presenting me with his book “Volk Ohne Raum”. I never heard what happened to that impossible lecture on the greatness of the German spirit. I did not fall for Hans Grimm, but he had a very nice wife, a well-born lady whom he treated with dis-respect while she slaved for him. Professor Nohl managed to arrange for her to show me over a neighbouring town and between us we managed a days’ holiday for her.[16]
Blochmann’s final years in England were devoted to working with the ‘German Educational Reconstruction’ association where she helped organized ‘summer schools’ in Birmingham and then in Germany after the collapse of the Third Reich.[17] At the suggestion of Herman Nohl, she also published a series of essays comparing English and German education in Die Sammlung from 1946 to 1951.[18] Though naturally reticent, Blochmann frequently commented on what she saw in English politics, education, and religious groups (including Jewish children’s homes and Quaker schools). Her correspondence with Herman Nohl and with Heidegger reveals some of her more spiritual and nationalist leanings with regard to the Quakers (and to a much lesser extent, Jewish schools).[19] These were her potential options for exile before she was offered the position in LMH.
I have still yet to visit the Quaker archive but I should (might skip work to make a day trip of it). I know that there will be something on Blochmann in there. Particularly because there is this whole collection about this woman Bertha Bracey (Bertha Bracey Papers (TEMP MSS 930)) and this Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens (YM/MfS/FCRA). It was super cool, I was reading about this woman and opened a Nohl-Blochmann letter to read this:
Has his Quaker meetings here – Bertha Bracey is there too, and I really hope to see her. I've called my few people here, I'll visit them tomorrow and then I'll probably go on soon, if not some holl. possibility.(Amsterdam, 10.I.34) I've just had breakfast with Miss Bracey and I'll be with her to L(ondon) tomorrow evening. drive. Prospects not bad, if not maybe H. Lion beat me to it. I write to them immediately.[20]
Apparently Blochmann and Bracey went back to London together on a boat from Amsterdam. The weather (or the ‘crossing’) was terrible according to Bracey. They spend a few weeks searching London for opportunities and talking about this Quaker school. I still haven’t figured out what’s going on with this school. Similarly, the letters to Nohl are oddly weird about the Jews she sees in London. She writes in one section that she’s grateful to be ‘outside’ of all that – meaning Proletarian Jews. Though this may just be the translation.
Blochmann was quite reflective when she found herself in England. The peaceful piety of the Quakers rubbed off on her, it seems. But there’s a longing to return to Germany that comes through in her letters to Nohl. Margaret and Helena Deneke clearly played excellent hostesses but Blochmann is strangely blasé about the LMH job. Judging from the way Deneke described it in her memoirs, they were all well-aware that it was a downgrade for an eminent German Professor like Blochmann.[21]
References
[1] Wolfgang Klafki, Pädagogisch-Politische Porträts (Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, n.d.), 148–49, accessed 14 November 2022.
[2] Eva D. Becker, ‘„Armes Deutschland“ – „Glückliches England“: Elisabeth Blochmann in Oxford 1934 Bis 1952’, Pädagogische Rundschau 49, no. 4 (2005): 433–50; Eva D. Becker, ‘Poor Germany - lucky England. Elisabeth Blochmann in Oxford 1934 to 1952’, Pädagogische Rundschau 59, no. 4 (20 July 2005): 433–50; Eva D. Becker, ‘Elisabeth Blochmann in Oxford 1934 Bis 1952’, Exil Forschung, Erkenntnisse, Ergebnisse 23, no. 2 (2003), https://www.exilverlagkoch.de/inhalte-zeitschrift-exil/; Von Axel Schmitt, ‘[No Title]’, accessed 21 July 2023, https://literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=7157&ausgabe=200406.
[3] Schmitt, ‘[No Title]’.
[4] Sally Crawford, Katharina Ulmschneider, and Jas Elsner, eds., Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930-1945 (London, England: Oxford University Press, 2017).
[5] Fiedler Archive, MS 80. G50., cited in Emma Huber, ‘H.G. Fiedler and German Studies at Oxford’, Oxford German Studies 50, no. 4 (2 October 2021): 412.
[6] Huber, ‘H.G. Fiedler and German Studies at Oxford’, 412.
[7] Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘GERMANY TODAY’, German Life and Letters 1, no. 2 (January 1948): 150–55; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘The Superstition of the Dragon in Thuringia’, Folklore 49, no. 3 (1 September 1938): 288–288; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Goethe Autographs in the Album of an Irishman’, The Modern Language Review 39, no. 1 (1944): 58–62; E. Handrich, Albert Reble, and Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Book Reviews’, International Review of Education. Internationale Zeitschrift Fur Erziehungswissenschaft. Revue Internationale de Pedagogie 4, no. 1 (December 1958): 231–36.
[8] 17 Nov., ‘Letters from Blochmann to Nohl III (for Oxford)’, n.d.
[9] ‘Verstandingung ohne Sohwierigkeit: hoffe balf wirklich gut englisch zu sprechen/einsteilen leilich gut’, p. 6 in ‘“Elisabeth Blochmann”, Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. S.P.S.L. 241/1-7’, Catalogue of the Archive of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, 1933-87 (n.d.), Weston Library, Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, https://archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/73821.
[10] K. M. Lea, ‘Elisabeth Blochmann (1892-1972)’, The Brown Book, December 1972, 42–43.
[11] Juliane Jacobi, ‘Elisabeth Blochmann : First-Lady Der Akademischen Padagogik’, in Mütterlichkeit Als Profession? Lebensläufe Deutscher Pädagoginnen in Der Ersten Hälfte Dieses Jahrhundert, ed. Ilse Brehmer (Pfaffenweiler, 1990), 260.
[12] ‘H Deneke Final.Pdf’, n.d.; Jacobi, ‘Elisabeth Blochmann : First-Lady Der Akademischen Padagogik’.
[13] Elisabeth Blochmann and Hands Grimms, ‘Grimm, Hans an Blochmann, Elisabeth [Briefe] / Grimm, Hans [Verfasser/in]; Blochmann, Elisabeth [Adressat/in]’, trans. Isabelle Heinneman, A:Grimm, Hans/England HS001321431 (1937-1938), Deutsche Literaturarchiv, Marbach-am-Neckar, https://www.dla-marbach.de/find/opac/id/HS00132143.
[14] Blochmann and Grimms, ‘Grimm, Hans an Blochmann, Elisabeth [Briefe] / Grimm, Hans [Verfasser/in]; Blochmann, Elisabeth [Adressat/in]’.
[15] Blochmann and Grimms, ‘Grimm, Hans an Blochmann, Elisabeth [Briefe] / Grimm, Hans [Verfasser/in]; Blochmann, Elisabeth [Adressat/in]’.
[16] ‘H Deneke Final.Pdf’, 269.
[17] Klafki, Pädagogisch-Politische Porträts, 149; Blochmann, ‘GERMANY TODAY’; M. Berger, ‘Elisabeth Blochmann (1892-1972)’, 2012, https://www.kindergartenpaedagogik.de/fachartikel/geschichte-der-kinderbetreuung/manfred-berger-frauen-in-der-geschichte-des-kindergartens/241/.
[18] Klafki, Pädagogisch-Politische Porträts, 150; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Die Pädagogische Reform in England’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 1 (1945): 600; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Das Englische Erziehungsideal’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 1 (1945): 519; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Das Kind in Der Englischen Welt’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 5 (1950): 88; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Englische Schulen Heute’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 15 (1960): 474; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Die Engländerin Heute Und Gestern’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 5 (1950): 194; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Akademische Tradition in England’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 2 (1947): 478; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Der Inhalt Der Erziehung in Der Grammar School’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 2 (1947): 111; Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Das Volkstümliche Singen Im 18. Jahrhundert I u. II’, Sammlung Zwangloser Abhandlungen Aus Dem Gebiete Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie 5 (1950): 417.
[19] Nov., ‘Letters from Blochmann to Nohl III (for Oxford)’; Martin Heidegger and Elisabeth Blochmann, Martin Heidegger, Elisabeth Blochmann : Briefwechsel, 1918-1969, 167 p. : ports. ; 24 cm, ed. and trans. W. Joachim, 2., durchgesehene Aufl., Marbacher Schriften 33 (Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1990), 81.
[20] Nov., ‘Letters from Blochmann to Nohl III (for Oxford)’.
[21] ‘H Deneke Final.Pdf’.
